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THE
EMPIRE OF THE EAST
BY
H. B. MONTGOMERY
"THIS NATION IS THE DELIGHT OF MY SOUL"
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER
WITH NINETEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1908._
[Illustration: A STAR OF THE EAST
FROM A PRINT BY TOSHIKATA]
PREFACE
On my return from another visit to Japan a few months ago I found
those persons in this country with whom I was brought into close
association extremely curious and strangely ignorant regarding that
ancient Empire. Despite the multitude of books which have of late
years been published about Japan and things Japanese a correct
knowledge of the country and the people is, so far as I can judge,
altogether lacking in England. Indeed the multiplicity of books may
have something to do with that fact, as many of them have been written
by persons whose knowledge, acquired in the course of a flying visit,
was, to say the least, perfunctory, and who had no opportunities for
viewing the life of the people from within and forming a sound
judgment on many matters upon which the writers have dogmatically
pronounced. I, accordingly, came to the conclusion not only that there
was room for one more book on Japan, but that another book was greatly
needed--a book not technical, historical, abstruse or recondite, but a
book describing in simple language Japan as it was, is, and will be.
This is the task I set before myself when I commenced to write this
volume, and the reader must be the judge to what extent I have been
successful in the accomplishment thereof. I have touched but lightly
on the material development of the country of recent years. I know
from experience that though statistics are the fad of a few they are
caviare to the great mass of the public. Nor have I dealt at all with
politics or political parties in new Japan. It is, I think,
unfortunate that the Japanese people, in adopting or adapting English
institutions, should have introduced the political party system so
much in evidence in Great Britain and other European countries.
Whether that system works well in the West, where it has been in
existence for centuries and is not always taken over-seriously by
party politicians themselves, is a question upon which I shall express
no opinion. But I think it is problematical whether such a system is
well adapted for an Oriental people, possessed of and permeated by an
ancient civilisation--a people whose feelings, sentiments, modes of
thought, prejudices and passions are so essentially different from
those of Western nations. Be that as it may, Japanese politics find no
place in this work.
The morality or otherwise of the Japanese is a matter which has been
much discussed and written about. The views of speakers and writers in
regard thereto, so far as I have been able to ascertain them, have
been largely affected by their prejudices or the particular standpoint
from which they have regarded the matter. The result, in my opinion,
has been that an entirely erroneous conception of the whole subject of
Japanese morality has not only been formed but has been set forth in
speech or writing, and a grave injustice has been done to the Japanese
in this matter, to say nothing of the entirely false view of the
whole question which has been promulgated. In this book I have
endeavoured to deal with this thorny subject, so far as it can be
dealt with in a book, free from prejudice or preconceived ideas of any
kind. I have simply confined myself to facts, and have endeavoured to
represent the whole matter as it appears to the Japanese and to
morality according to the Japanese standard.
I have deemed it necessary to deal at some length with the various
phases of Japanese art, which it is no exaggeration to say has
permeated the whole nation so that the Japanese may truthfully be
termed the most artistic people in the world. Of course it is
impossible to deal exhaustively in a work of this kind with Japanese
art. I have, however, endeavoured to describe the principal art
industries of the country and to set forth what I may term the
catholicity of art in Japan. I have also dealt with the question how
far art has been affected by the Europeanising of the nation which has
taken place of recent years, and the effect thereof.
The religion of the Japanese, the Constitution, the home life of the
people, the Army and Navy, the financial position of the country are
all subjects treated as fully as possible, inasmuch as they are
matters essential to be understood in order to realise the Japan of
to-day. The Japan of the future I have attempted to forecast in two
final chapters.
But the Japan of to-day and the Japan of the future can neither be
understood nor realised unless the reader have in his mind some idea
as to the Japan of the past--not the barbaric or uncivilised Japan
brought into contact with civilisation and suddenly discarding its
barbarism, which is, I fear, the conception many persons still have,
but, as I have sought to show, a highly civilised country holding
itself aloof from European influences and excluding, so long as
possible, the European invasion of its shores just because it had
convinced itself by painful experience that European ideas and manners
and methods were undesirable and unsuitable for a great island nation
which possessed and cherished a civilisation of its own, had high
artistic ideas and ideals, had its own code of morals, its own
conception of chivalry, and was, on the whole, undoubtedly happy,
contented, and prosperous. I trust the chapter I have written on this
subject will tend to dispel many erroneous ideas.
The book is the result of my own investigations, and the opinions
expressed therein are entirely my own. I have, however, read nearly
every work on Japan that has appeared in recent years, and when the
views put forward in any of these have not coincided with my own I
have endeavoured, by impartial investigation and inquiry, to arrive at
a correct conclusion in the matter. No doubt some of my views and
opinions will be questioned and criticised, but I claim to have
written this book with a mind free from prejudices of any kind. I have
sought to depict Japan as it really is, not the Japan seen through
glasses of various colours, of which, I think, the public has had
enough.
H. B. M.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER
I. A GLIMPSE AT THE PAST 1
II. THE COUNTRY: ITS PHYSICAL
FEATURES--PRODUCTS--FAUNA--FLORA, ETC. 17
III. THE JAPANESE RACE AND ITS LANGUAGE 29
IV. THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN, THEIR INFLUENCES
AND EFFECTS 39
V. THE CONSTITUTION--THE CROWN AND THE HOUSES
OF PARLIAMENT 49
VI. THE PEOPLE, THEIR LIFE AND HABITS 63
VII. TRADE, COMMERCE, AND INDUSTRIES 80
VIII. JAPAN'S FINANCIAL BURDENS AND RESOURCES 90
IX. EDUCATION 102
X. THE JAPANESE ARMY AND NAVY 117
XI. JAPANESE ART--INTRODUCTORY--LACQUER AND
PORCELAIN 131
XII. JAPANESE ART--SCULPTURE--METAL WORK--PAINTING 149
XIII. JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE 167
XIV. POSTAL AND OTHER MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 176
XV. LAW AND ORDER 185
XVI. LITERATURE AND THE DRAMA 193
XVII. NEWSPAPERS IN JAPAN 202
XVIII. JAPANESE MORALITY 211
XIX. JAPAN AND CHINA 221
XX. EUROPEANS IN JAPAN 231
XXI. A VISIT TO SOME BUDDHIST TEMPLES 244
XXII. THE AINOS 250
XXIII. JAPAN AS IT IS TO-DAY 258
XXIV. THE FUTURE OF JAPAN--PHYSICAL--MORAL--MENTAL 276
XXV. THE FUTURE OF JAPAN--NATIONAL--POLITICAL--ITS
INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD 288
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A STAR OF THE EAST _Frontispiece_
From a Print by Toshikata
FACING PAGE
THE SWEET SCENT OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOM 30
From a Print by Hiroshige
A CHERRY BLOSSOM PARTY 48
From a Print by Hiroshige
STREET SCENE ON NEW YEAR'S DAY 72
From a Print by Hiroshige
RICE PLANTING, PROVINCE OF HOKI 89
From a Print by Hiroshige
AMATEUR CONCHOLOGISTS 110
From a Print by Hiroshige
VIEW OF FUSI-YAMA FROM A TEA HOUSE 138
From a Print by Hiroshige
KUTANI EARTHENWARE, DECORATED WITH POLYCHROME }
ENAMELS. EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY } 146
}
INCENSE-BURNER, AWATA FAYENCE. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY }
From "The Arts of Japan," by Edward Dillon
BRONZE INCENSE-BURNER AND SMALL FLOWER-VASE. EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY 154
From "The Arts of Japan," by Edward Dillon
KAKEMONO ON PAPER. ATTRIBUTED TO MATAHEI }
}
KAKEMONO ON PAPER. ATTRIBUTED TO SHIMMAN, UKIYO } 160
SCHOOL. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY }
From "The Arts of Japan," by Edward Dillon
TEA HOUSE, NEAR TOKIO 170
From a Print by Hiroshige
AERIAL TRANSPORT: BASKET SLUNG ON ROPES, PROVINCE OF HIDA 182
From a Print by Hiroshige
A LABOUR OF LOVE 198
From a Print by Toshikata
THE ETERNAL FEMININE 218
From a Print by Toshikata
A MINISTERING ANGEL 242
From a Print by Toshikata
FIREWORKS IN TOKIO (SUMMER) 264
From a Print by Hiroshige
A SIGN OF THE TIMES 278
THE EMPIRE OF THE EAST
CHAPTER I
A GLIMPSE AT THE PAST
I have seen it stated in a popular handbook that Japan possesses a
written history extending over two thousand five hundred years, while
its sovereigns have formed an unbroken dynasty since 660 B.C., but
that the "authentic history begins about 400 A.D." "Authentic history"
is, I consider, not a very apt phrase in this connection. Most
Japanese history is legendary, and authenticity in history, Japanese
or European, even much later than 400 A.D., is hopeless to look for. I
have no intention of leading my readers into, as I should find a
difficulty in extricating them from, the mazes of Japanese history at
any date. I simply propose to give them a glimpse of Japan as it has
appeared to Europeans since it was first "discovered" by three
storm-tossed Portuguese sailors about the year 1542. I say
"discovered" with full knowledge of the fact that Marco Paolo, as
early as 1275, dictated to a friend when imprisoned at Genoa that
stirring narrative, "Maravigliose Cose," which, by the way, was not
printed for nearly two centuries later. That narrative was read by
and, it is stated, so fired the imagination of Christopher Columbus as
to lead him to set out on that voyage of exploration which ended in
the discovery of America. Marco Paolo's narrative must, however, be
received with caution. I regard it as largely legendary. He never
himself visited Japan, and his glowing description of the "Isles
washed by stormy seas and abounding in gold and pearls" was founded on
what he had been told by the Chinese he had met during his Eastern
travels.
The commencement of European intercourse with Japan may, as I have
said, be taken to be 1542, when three Portuguese adventurers in a
Chinese junk were driven by stress of weather on a part of the
Japanese coast under the authority of the Prince of Bungo. The
Portuguese were kindly received by the natives, and a treaty or
arrangement seems to have been entered into whereby a Portuguese
vessel was to be annually despatched to Japan laden with "woollen
cloths, furs, silks, taffetas," and other articles. Some years later a
Japanese noble, Hansiro by name, murdered another Japanese and fled
the country. He found his way to Goa, where he came under the
influence of some Portuguese priests, and was eventually converted to
Christianity and baptized. He was, if the records of his career are
correct, desirous to bring to his fellow-countrymen not only the
knowledge of the Christian religion but many articles of European
commerce. The great Apostle of the East and disciple of Ignatius
Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, had then recently arrived in Goa, where he
appears to have taken up with ardour the project of converting Japan.
Both enterprises, the material and the spiritual, seem to have been
organised about the same time. A ship was loaded with articles likely
to be in demand in Japan, and Francis Xavier embarked in another
vessel, with the Japanese refugee and a number of Jesuit priests as
missionaries.
The vessels in due course arrived at Bungo, and both priests and
traders were cordially, not to say enthusiastically, received.
Foreigners were evidently not then excluded from Japan, and no
objection whatever was made to the Christian propaganda in any part of
the country. The efforts of the Jesuit missionaries were crowned with
remarkable success. All ranks and classes, from priest to peasant,
embraced the Catholic faith. Churches, schools, convents, and
monasteries sprang up all over the country. The only opposition came
from the Bonzes, or native priests, who felt their influence and power
declining. They appealed to the Emperor to banish the Roman Catholic
priests, but the imperial edict simply was, "Leave the strangers in
peace." For forty years or thereabouts Catholicism not only flourished
but was triumphant. Indeed, a Japanese mission of three princes was
despatched to Pope Gregory XIII. laden with valuable presents. The
arrival of this mission was acclaimed as a veritable triumph
throughout Catholic Europe. By a stroke of irony its advent there was
almost contemporaneous with not only the overthrow but the almost
total extinction of Christianity in Japan. The edict for the
banishment of the missionaries was published in 1587. It was followed
by persecutions, martyrdoms, and the rasing of all the Christian
churches and buildings--the destruction, in a word, of Christianity in
Japan. This was in due course followed by not only the expulsion of
all foreigners from the country--with the exception of the Dutch, who
were allowed to have a factory at Nagasaki--but the enactment of a
law, rigidly observed for two and a half centuries, that no Japanese
should leave his country on any pretence whatever, and no foreigner be
permitted to land therein. Prior to this edict the Japanese had been
enterprising sailors and had extended their voyages to many distant
lands. What, it might be asked, was the reason of or occasion for this
violent change in the attitude of the Japanese to Christianity and the
presence of Europeans in their midst? It is impossible, at this length
of time, to arrive at a correct answer to this question, largely mixed
up as it has been with the _odium theologicum_. We have been told that
the result was greatly or altogether due to the pride, arrogance, and
avarice of the Roman Catholic priests; to the pretensions of the Pope,
which came to be regarded with suspicion by the feudatory princes of
Japan, as also to the cupidity and cunning of the traders. How far any
or all of these alleged causes were responsible for the change in
Japanese opinion I shall not venture to pronounce. Suffice it to
remark that, whatever the cause, there must have been some powerful,
impelling influence at work to induce the nation not only to cast out
the stranger within its gates, but to exclude him for two and a half
centuries, and veto any inhabitant of Japan leaving its shores and
thus being brought into contact with, and stand the chance of being
contaminated by, the foreigner. We may regret the destruction of
Christianity in Japan, but at the same time we may, I think, accept
the fact that the uprising of Japan against the foreigner at the close
of the sixteenth century was simply the result of the gorge which had
arisen in the nation against the foreigner's manners, methods, and
morals, his trampling underfoot of national prejudices and ideas, his
cupidity, his avarice, his cruelty, his attempt to impose on Japanese
civilisation a veneer which it did not desire and deemed it was much
better without. It must be remembered that the missionaries and the
traders had a common nationality, and that the Japan of the sixteenth
century did not find it possible to differentiate between them.
Down to the nineteenth century we have to rely for our knowledge of
Japan and the Japanese on the narratives of the few travellers who
managed to visit that country more or less by stealth, or from the
information derived from Europeans serving in the Dutch factory at
Nagasaki. Every Englishman has heard of Will Adams and his Japanese
wife, but though his career was romantic and interesting it has added
but little to our knowledge of Japan at the time of his visit thereto.
In 1727 Dr. Kaemfer's work on Japan was published. Kaemfer had been
physician to the Dutch factory at Nagasaki, and, accordingly, had some
opportunities of studying Japanese life and character. His book in the
original form is rare, but I am glad to say that a cheap edition, a
reprint of the English edition produced by the Royal Society in 1727,
has recently been published in this country. Kaemfer's work is spoiled
and its utility or reliability largely impaired by the fanciful
theories put forward by the author respecting the origin of the
Japanese. Much of his information is, of course, mere hearsay, and a
great deal of it, by the light of what we now know, is not only
misleading but nonsensical. A considerable amount of space is devoted
by Kaemfer to chimerical animals, and he dilates upon the awful
sanctity that surrounds the person of the Emperor. "There is," he
remarks, "such a Holiness ascribed to all the parts of his Body that
he dares not cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails.
However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the
night when he is asleep; because they say that what is taken from his
Body at that time had been stolen from him, and that such a theft does
not prejudice his Holiness or Dignity." In a notice of this new
edition of Kaemfer's work I have seen it asserted that the book is the
foundation of nearly all that was known or written of Japan till the
last twenty-five years. How such a statement as this came to be
published I quite fail to comprehend. There was plenty of literature
in reference to Japan far more reliable than Kaemfer's whimsical
"yarns" at a much earlier period than twenty-five years back. Sir
Rutherford Alcock's "The Capital of the Tycoon" was, I think,
published in 1863. Sir Rutherford was the first resident British
Minister in Japan, and his book remains a stirring and, making
allowance for the author's prejudices on various matters, on the whole
a vivid picture of Japan as it was in the early sixties. Alcock's book
was followed by many others, and twenty-five years ago the world was
so far from being dependent on Kaemfer for its knowledge of Japan
that, as I have said, it had even then quite a library of recent and
reliable books in regard to that country.
Following Kaemfer, a little later in the eighteenth century, a Swedish
physician, Thunberg by name, who also had been attached to the Dutch
factory at Nagasaki, wrote a book undoubtedly interesting and of great
value. That country, he remarks, is "in many respects a singular
country, and with regard to customs and institutions totally different
from Europe, or, I had almost said, from any other part of the world.
Of all the nations that inhabit the three largest parts of the globe,
the Japanese deserve to rank the first, and to be compared with the
Europeans; and although in many points they must yield the palm to
the latter, yet in various other respects they may with great justice
be preferred to them. Here, indeed, as well as in other countries, are
found both useful and pernicious establishments, both rational and
absurd institutions; yet still we must admire the steadiness which
constitutes the national character, the immutability which reigns in
the administration of their laws and in the exercise of their public
functions, the unwearied assiduity of this nation to do and to promote
what is useful, and a hundred other things of a similar nature. That
so numerous a people as this should love so ardently and so
universally (without even a single exception to the contrary) their
native country, their Government, and each other--that the whole
country should be, as it were, enclosed, so that no native can get
out, nor foreigner enter in, without permission--that their laws
should have remained unaltered for several thousand years--and that
justice should be administered without partiality or respect of
persons--that the Governments can neither become despotic nor evade
the laws in order to grant pardons or do other acts of mercy--that the
monarch and all his subjects should be clad alike in a particular
national dress--that no fashions should be adopted from abroad, nor
new ones invented at home--that no foreign war should have been waged
for centuries past--that a great variety of religious sects should
live in peace and harmony together--that hunger and want should be
almost unknown, or at least known but seldom,--all this must appear
improbable, and to many as impossible as it is strictly true, and
deserving of the utmost attention." He goes on to say, "If the laws in
this country are rigid, the police are equally vigilant, while
discipline and good order are scrupulously observed. The happy
consequences of this are extremely visible and important, for hardly
any country exhibits fewer instances of vice. And as no respect
whatever is paid to persons, and at the same time the laws preserve
their pristine and original purity, without any alterations,
explanations, and misconstructions, the subjects not only imbibe, as
they grow up, an infallible knowledge of what ought or ought not to be
done, but are likewise enlightened by the example and irreproachable
conduct of their superiors in age.
"Most crimes are punished with death--a sentence which is inflicted
with less regard to the magnitude of the crime than to the audacity of
the attempt to transgress the hallowed laws of the empire, and to
violate justice, which together with religion they consider as the
most sacred things in the whole land. Fines and pecuniary mulcts they
regard as equally repugnant to justice and reason, as the rich are
thereby freed from all punishment--a procedure which to them appears
the height of absurdity.
"In the towns it often happens that the inhabitants of a whole street
are made to suffer for the malpractice of a single individual, the
master of a house for the faults of his domestics, and parents for
those of their children, in proportion to the share they may have had
in the transaction. In Europe, which boasts a purer religion and a
more enlightened philosophy, we very rarely see those punished who
have debauched and seduced others, never see parents and relatives
made to suffer for neglecting the education of their children and
kindred, at the same time that these heathens see the justice and
propriety of such punishment." Dealing with agriculture, the Swedish
physician remarked: "Agriculture is in the highest esteem with the
Japanese, insomuch that (the most barren and untractable mountains
excepted) one sees here the surface of the earth cultivated all over
the country, and most of the mountains and hills up to their very
tops. Neither rewards nor encouragements are necessary in a country
where the tillers of the ground are considered as the most useful
class of citizens and where they do not groan under various
oppressions, which in other countries have hindered, and ever must
hinder, the progress of agriculture. The duties paid by the farmer of
his corn in kind are indeed very heavy, but in other respects he
cultivates his land with greater freedom than the lord of a manor in
Sweden. He is not hindered two days together at a time, in consequence
of furnishing relays of horses, by which he perhaps earns a groat and
often returns with the loss of his horses; he is not dragged from his
field and plough to transport a prisoner or a deserter to the next
castle; nor are his time and property wasted in making roads, building
bridges, almshouses, parsonage-houses, and magazines. He knows nothing
of the impediments and inconveniences which attend the maintenance and
equipments of horses and foot soldiers. And what contributes still
more to his happiness, and leaves sufficient scope for his industry in
cultivating his land is this--that he has only one master, viz., his
feudal lord, without being under the commands of a host of masters, as
with us. No parcelling out of the land forbids him to improve to the
least advantage the portion he possesses, and no right of commonage,
belonging to many, prevents each from deriving profit from his share.
All are bound to cultivate their land, and if a husbandman cannot
annually cultivate a certain portion of his fields he forfeits them,
and another who can is at liberty to cultivate them. Meadows are not
to be met with in the whole country; on the contrary, every spot of
ground is made use of either for corn-fields or else for plantations
of esculent-rooted vegetables: so that the land is neither wasted
upon extensive meadows for the support of cattle and saddle-horses,
nor upon large and unprofitable plantations of tobacco; nor is it sown
with seed for any other still less necessary purpose; which is the
reason that the whole country is very thickly inhabited and populous,
and can without difficulty give maintenance to all its innumerable
inhabitants."
Let us now take a step, a long step, forward in time from the Swedish
physician relating his impressions in the seventeenth century, to an
American in the eighteenth century delivering his opinions on Japan
and the Japanese as viewed from the American standpoint at that
period. "The sitter is the same, and, what is more, he sits on his
heels to-day just as his grandfather did to Thunberg, yet it is hard
to see any points of resemblance--a lesson to all theologians and
politicians who still indulge the dreams that uniformity of opinion on
the plainest matters of fact and observation can ever be attained
among men, however honest and conscientious they may be in their
efforts after unity. The Chinese proverb with more wisdom declares,
'Truth is one, but opinions are many.'
"All officials serve in pairs, as spies upon each other, and this
pervades the entire polity of Japan. It is a government of espionage.
Everybody is watched. No man knows who are the secret spies around
him, even though he may be and is acquainted with those that are
official. The emperors themselves are not exempt; governors, grand
councillors, vassal princes, all are under the eye of an everlasting
unknown police. This wretched system is even extended to the humblest
of the citizens. Every town is divided into collections of five
families, and every member of such a division is personally
responsible for the conduct of the others; everything which occurs,
therefore, out of the ordinary course in any one of these is instantly
reported by the other four to save themselves from censure. The
Ziogoon (Tycoon) has his minions about the Mikado and the Grand
Council have theirs about the Ziogoon. And the cowardice engendered by
such ceaseless distrust necessarily leads to cruelty in penalties.
When an official has offended, or even when in his department there
has been any violation of law, although beyond his power of
prevention, so sure is he of the punishment of death, that he
anticipates it by ripping up his own body rather than be delivered
over to the executioner and entailing disgrace and ruin on all his
family. There cannot under such a system be anything like judicious
legislation founded on enquiry and adapted to the ever-varying
circumstances of life. As Government functionaries they lie and
practise artifice to save themselves from condemnation by the higher
powers: it is their vocation. As private gentlemen they are frank,
truthful, and hospitable."
Taking a further step and coming down to the year 1877, I have before
me, as I write, the private letter of a naval officer of an
impressionable age visiting Japan for the first time and giving his
opinions thereof, at a period when Japan was just beginning to feel
really at work the distinct influences of Western civilisation--the
beginning, in fact, of the extraordinary metamorphosis which has been
witnessed of recent years. He remarks: "Probably to the traveller
seeking the marvellous and desiring the beautiful, there is no more
interesting country to pay a visit to than Japan. In something under a
decade that country astonished, and, at first, rather amused the
civilised world by emerging from the acme of barbarism to the
extremes of civilisation. It was but a very few years ago that a
foreigner could not land in the country unless accompanied by a
Government escort. But now that is all changed. The foreigner is
welcomed, his habits and religion are not alone tolerated but
respected; his dress is copied to an extreme that indeed proves
imitation to be the sincerest flattery, and but for the olive
complexion, flat nose and dark hair, a Japanese gentleman of the
period is very little different from his English contemporary. There
is a tendency I find among a good many persons, whose ideas on the
subject of race and geography are slightly mixed, to confound the
Japanese with the Chinese, and to imagine that the two names indicate
no greater difference than at present exist between an Englishman and
an Irishman. The fact, however, is that a greater difference exists
among these two nationalities than can be either imagined or
described, and, considering their contiguity, it is indeed surprising
that they have scarcely a habit or a pursuit in common. The mind of
the modern Japanese is progressive and acquisitive. The mind of the
Chinaman of the nineteenth century, as far as he allows it to be seen,
is as torpid and retrogressive as his ancestors of the Confucian
period.
"Up to the year 1868 Japan was governed jointly by a Tycoon and a
Mikado together with a council of the Daimios, or great feudal
princes, in whose hands all real power rested. The spiritual sovereign
was the Mikado, nominally the chief ruler, the Tycoon being considered
his first subject. All enactments required his sanction. The office of
the Tycoon was hereditary and he gradually absorbed all the powers of
the State. In 1868 a revolution occurred which culminated in the
overthrow of the spiritual head and the seating of the Tycoon on the
throne as an hereditary prince with the title of Mikado. There is now
no such person as a Tycoon in Japan. The insurrection of 1868 also saw
the downfall of the Daimios or feudal princes of Japan. These princes
had each standing armies of their own, and administered justice in
their own territories. Their retainers were the famous two-sworded men
so long a terror to Europeans, and who strongly objected to any
intercourse with foreigners, probably foreseeing its inevitable
result. In 1868 the whole of these ferocious men were disarmed, and a
standing army modelled on the French fashion established for the
defence of the Empire. The Japanese Navy was organised about the same
time by an English officer, and at first consisted of a few obsolete
American and English men-of-war. That, however, is now a thing of the
past, the Japanese Government having during the past few years spent
many millions in purchasing modern ironclads and other vessels of the
most approved type, and the Japanese Navy bids fair before long to
become a power in the Far East.
"Concerning the oft-debated question of Japanese morality I can say
little. Their ideas on the subject are, to put it mildly, somewhat
lax, and would no doubt shock any one strongly imbued with morality as
it is in vogue (theoretically) in European countries. That there is
not that privacy between the sexes which prevails in other countries
may be indicated by the fact that men and women make their ablutions
together in the public wash-houses. Nevertheless the Japanese have a
code of morality peculiar to themselves, and any infidelity on the
part of a woman to her husband is punished with severity.
"The great drawback to the prosperity of Japan is a matter that
prevails in some more ancient civilised lands, viz., an enormous issue
of paper-money. Young Japan, finding it easy to print notes to pay
its obligations, printed them to the extent of twenty millions
sterling in all sizes from 5 cents to 100 dollars. The consequence is
that this paper-money has depreciated in value to the extent of 15 per
cent. The Government, however, have seen their mistake, and are
gradually calling it in, and have established a very fine mint with a
gold and silver coinage. Insurrections have also been a drag on Japan
in its progress. The Prince of Satsuma, one of the most powerful of
the ancient Daimios, has never acknowledged the present system of
government and has periodically rebelled against it. This year a
serious rebellion broke out at Kagoshima, and was not quelled without
great loss of life and a heavy expenditure. His followers behaved with
great fanaticism, many of them loading themselves with gunpowder
rushing into the midst of the enemy and setting fire to the powder,
killing themselves by so doing, but also, to the admiration of their
less ardent comrades, killing numbers of the enemy.
"Against no ancient custom has the Japanese Government more set its
face than tattooing. Any persons in Japan now either allowing
themselves to be tattooed or performing the operation on any one else
are liable to imprisonment. Blacking the teeth, a custom prevalent
among the women on being married, is rapidly dying out, being
discouraged by the authorities."
The glimpses of Japan shown us by Thunberg and the American I have
quoted prove clearly enough, even were it not amplified by a host of
other testimony I have not space to refer to, that the Japan of the
sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and early part of the nineteenth
centuries was a highly civilised country in which law and order
reigned supreme, where respect for authority was marked, the standard
of comfort, if not high, was at any rate sufficient, the domestic
relations and family life were almost ideal, clean living was the
custom, crime was at a minimum, education was universal, amusements
were plentiful, the artistic feeling and instincts were not the cult
of a class but were shared by the common people. This was the nation,
self-contained and self-satisfied, that some persons, like the young
naval officer from whom I have quoted, gravely affirm to have been
steeped in barbarism until it came under Western influences and went
in for frock-coats and silk hats for the men, Paris costumes for the
women, and an Army and Navy on European lines. If these be the factors
which constitute civilisation I admit that Japan has only recently
been civilised. Being of opinion, however, that civilisation does not
consist in costumery, but is a refining and educating influence, I
prefer to regard Japan as a country of more ancient civilisation than
Great Britain, which has of recent years determined to tack on to that
civilisation some Western manners and customs and facilities. Many of
Japan's greatest thinkers, a few Western philosophers who can look
beyond a costume, the telegraph or the telephone, are strongly of
opinion that in the process of modern development Japan has not
improved either morally or materially, and that, regarded through the
dry light of philosophy, her pretensions to be considered a highly
civilised nation were greater half a century back than they are at the
present moment. Upon that matter my readers must form their own
opinion. It is a question, the answer to which largely depends upon
the point of view from which it is regarded and the factors taken into
or left out of account.
In the first year of the Meiji (1868) the Emperor, in an edict, laid
down clearly and concisely the lines on which he and his advisers had
determined that Japan should for the future be governed. "The old
uncivilised way shall be replaced by the eternal principles of the
universe." "The best knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so
as to promote the imperial welfare." "The eternal principles of the
universe" is a resonant phrase needing interpretation. The rulers of
Japan to-day, if they were interrogated on the subject, would probably
reply that the record of Japan for over thirty-eight years past is the
practical interpretation of the Emperor's cryptic utterance. Be that
as it may, the ink was hardly dry on the Imperial edict before Japan
laid herself out with earnestness, not to say enthusiasm, to carry
into effect the principles enunciated in the edict. The whole country
was quickly in a positive ferment of energy. The brightest intellects
among its youth were despatched to foreign lands to acquire knowledge
and wisdom to be applied at home in due course, education was taken in
hand, so also was the reorganisation of the Army and Navy, and
railways, telegraphs, and various other accessories of European
civilisation were introduced into the country. Japan, in a word,
became quickly transformed and, being unable any longer to keep the
foreigner out, she determined to utilise him and in the future fight
him, should fighting be necessary, with his own weapons, intellectual
rather than material, but not omitting the material. Thirty-eight
years and more have elapsed since the issue of the Imperial edict
referred to, and this book is designed to show what results have
flowed therefrom, along what lines the development of Japan has
proceeded, and what are the position and prospects of that country
to-day.