JAPANESE MORALITY
In the Preface I remarked that Japanese morality was a thorny subject.
I use the word morality in its now generally accepted rather than in
its absolutely correct meaning. Morality, strictly speaking, is the
practice of moral duties apart from religion or doctrine; it treats of
actions as being right or wrong--is, in brief, ethics. The old
"morality" play, for example, was not, as some people seem to suppose,
especially concerned with the relations of the sexes; it was a drama
in which allegorical representations of all the virtues and vices were
introduced as _dramatis personae_. However, words, like everything else
in this world, change their meaning, and, though the dictionary
interpretation of morality is, as I have stated it, colloquially at
any rate, the word has now come for the most part to signify sexual
conduct, and it is in that sense, as I have said, I use it.
The subject of the morality of the Japanese is one that has been much
discussed for many years past, and accordingly is one in regard to
which it may be urged that there is little or nothing more to be said.
I am not of that opinion. In the first place, much of the discussion
has been simply the mere assertions of men, or sometimes of women,
who either did not have the opportunity, or else had not the
inclination, to investigate matters for themselves, and were therefore
largely dependent on the hearsay evidence of not always unprejudiced
persons. Or they sometimes jumped to very pronounced and erroneous
conclusions from extremely imperfect observation or information. Let
me take as an example in point, a lady, now dead, who wrote many
charming books of travel--the late Mrs. Bishop, better known as Miss
Bird. In her journeyings through the country Miss Bird relates in
"Unbeaten Tracks in Japan," that she passed through a wide street in
which the houses were large and handsome and open in front. Their
highly polished floors and passages, she remarks, looked like still
water, the kakemonos, or wall pictures, on their side-walls were
extremely beautiful, and their mats were very fine and white. There
were large gardens at the back with fountains and flowers, and
streams, crossed by light stone bridges, sometimes flowed through the
houses. The lady, who was on the look-out for a resting-place, not
unnaturally expressed a desire to put up at one of these delightful
sylvan retreats, but her native attendant informed her that was
impossible, as they were kashitsukeyas, or tea-houses of a
disreputable character. Miss Bird, on the strength of this
information, thought it incumbent upon herself to pronounce the
somewhat sweeping judgment that "there is much even on the surface to
indicate vices which degrade and enslave the manhood of Japan." Such a
statement is, of course, the merest clap-trap, but even were it true,
it might be permissible to remark that if vice exists it is surely
better for it to be on than beneath the surface. Such vice as does
exist in Japan is, in my opinion, distinctly on the surface, and I
have no hesitation in describing the morals of the Japanese people to
be, on the whole, greatly superior to those of Western nations.
There can, I think, be no question that a large number of European
people have formed their estimate of Japanese women either from a
visit to a comic opera such as "The Geisha," or from a perusal of a
book like Pierre Loti's fascinating work, "Madame Chrysantheme." This
is in effect the story of a _liaison_ between a man and a Japanese
girl of the lower classes, with, of course, a large amount of local
colouring, and rendered generally charming by the writer's brilliant
literary style. Unfortunately, that large number of Europeans who have
never visited Japan have taken the French academician's study of a
girl of a certain class as a life picture of the typical Japanese
woman who is, accordingly, deemed to be more or less, to use an
accepted euphemism, a person of easy virtue. Nothing could, of course,
be more erroneous, no conclusion further from the truth. The remarks
of Mr. Arthur Diosy in his book, "The New Far East," on this head are
so much to the point in reference to the utter misconception of even
many visitors to Japan in the matter of the chastity of the average
Japanese women that I venture to transcribe them: "Has it not been
repeated to him (the globe-trotter) that these people have no
conception of virtue or of modesty? So he frequently treats the maids
at the inn, the charming human humming-birds who wait upon him at the
tea-house, and the Geisha summoned to entertain him, with a cavalier
familiarity that would infallibly lead to his summary expulsion from
any well-regulated hotel or public-house, or other places of public
entertainment at home, did he dare to show such want of respect to a
chambermaid or to one of the haughty fair ones serving at a bar. He
means no harm in nine cases out of ten; he has been told that
Japanese girls don't mind what you say to them, and as to the
tea-house girls, well, they are no better than they should be ... but
they are good little women, as capable of guarding their virtue as any
in the world, and it saddens one to think how often they endure, from
a feeling of consideration for the foreigner who does not know any
better, they pityingly think, cavalier treatment they would not submit
to from a Japanese."
Having said so much I feel I am free to admit that a somewhat
different standard of morality does obtain in Japan to that which
exists, or is supposed to exist, among Occidental nations. After all,
morality is to some extent a matter of convention, and a people must,
I suggest, be judged rather by the way in which it lives up to its
standard than by the standard itself, which among some Western nations
is not always strictly observed. The whole subject of morality between
the sexes is one upon which a portly volume might be written. The
sexual relations have been affected by many circumstances, some of
them entirely conventional and having little or nothing to do with
morality as such, while poetry and romance and sentiment have been
allowed to complicate, and still render difficult a dispassionate
consideration of the whole matter. Macaulay in one of his essays has
observed that "the moral principle of a woman is frequently more
impaired by a single lapse from virtue than that of a man by twenty
years of intrigue." He explains this seeming paradox by asserting that
"a vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice, while a
vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on
the whole character." "One," says Macaulay, "is a local malady, the
other is a constitutional taint." I have quoted the famous historian
in this connection because his observations are, I think, illustrative
of my contention, viz., that morality is largely a matter of
convention, sanctioned or condemned by what Macaulay terms "the
general opinion."
I frankly admit that prostitution has never been regarded in Japan as
it is, or is affected to be, in this and other European countries. In
ancient days the public women of the capital and the large towns were
as famous as in Athens of old, and were regarded as amongst the best
educated and best mannered of their sex. The Japanese have ever looked
upon prostitution as what is termed a necessary evil, and they have
always sought to regulate and supervise it with a view of obviating
those evils, terrible in their consequences, which are frequently the
result of permitting it to go unchecked. And accordingly the Yoshiwara
has long been a recognised institution in every considerable town in
the country, the Yoshiwara being that particular portion of the town
in which prostitutes are alone permitted to reside. There is, so far
as I know, no prostitution outside the Yoshiwara, and the inmates
thereof are subject to a rigorous supervision and inspection, medical
and otherwise, which has produced excellent results. The inmates of
the Yoshiwara are not recruited as are the similar class in the West.
Here the "unfortunate" usually plies her trade as a _dernier ressort_.
In a moment of temptation she has "gone wrong," as the phrase goes,
the fact becomes public, she is too often cold-shouldered and hustled
even by her immediate relations, and her downward progress is swift
and certain. Nor is there for her, except in rare cases, any chance of
rehabilitation. She is too hopeless to exclaim "Resurgam!" and if in
an optimistic frame of mind she did so purpose she would find the
consummation difficult if not impossible. She is, in a word, on the
way to irretrievable ruin and a shameful end, and she knows it.
Such is, as I have said, not the case in Japan. The lot of the
prostitute there has never been regarded with the loathing which it
excites in this country. Houses of ill-fame were, and are still,
recruited not from those whose previous lapse from virtue has rendered
no other mode of livelihood possible than that from immorality, but by
those whom stern necessity has driven to the step as a means either of
supporting themselves or of assisting parents or their near relatives.
Such a sacrifice--a terrible sacrifice, I admit--has in Japan never
been regarded with horror, but as in a sense laudable. The finger of
scorn must not be pointed at a woman who has voluntarily sacrificed
what women hold most dear, not from lust or from the desire of leading
a gay life or pampering or adorning the body, but perhaps to save
father or kin from ruin or starvation. The Yoshiwara has, of course,
other recruits, but in the main its inmates are not the victims of
lust but of self-sacrifice. There is too often a whole tragedy in the
story of a Japanese girl of this kind, and it is deplorable when the
self-righteous European comes along and points the finger of scorn at
her. I am aware that though not despised, as in this country, the lot
of the inmate of the Yoshiwara is often, if not always, a horrible
one. She is, as a rule, sold, or sells herself, for a lump sum of
money to which amount is added the cost of her outfit, usually as much
as the price paid to the woman or her relatives. Until this amount was
worked off--and the accounts were, of course, not over accurately
kept--the woman was to all intents the chattel of her master. This
has, undoubtedly, for many centuries been the custom of the country. I
am glad, however, to be able to state that quite recently the highest
court in Japan has decided that, whatever custom may have decreed, the
law gives, and will give, no sanction to any such custom. A girl
confined in the Yoshiwara was forcibly taken away therefrom. The owner
of the house in which she resided, as her debt had not been
liquidated, considered he had a lien upon her, and he invoked the aid
of the law to assist him to assert what he considered to be his rights
and retake possession of the girl. The case was strenuously fought and
taken to several courts, with the result I have stated. This decision
will probably have far-reaching effects and declaring, as it does,
that the inmates of the Yoshiwara are not slaves or chattels, it is to
be cordially welcomed.
The assertion of Miss Bird, already referred to, that the manhood of
Japan is enslaved and degraded by vice is one which I have no
hesitation in describing as gross exaggeration. Vice, of course, there
is in Japan, vice of various kinds and degrees, but the ordinary
Japanese man is not, in my opinion, nearly so immoral as the average
European. The chastity of the Japanese woman I place still higher. The
fact, already stated, that the inmates of the Yoshiwara are not
generally recruited from those who have lapsed from virtue might be
urged in proof of this. Nor is the fact that prostitution is not in
Japan regarded with the same loathing as in this country, in my
opinion, to be taken as any evidence of an immoral tone. The ideas
that obtain on the matter, in Japan at any rate, hold out the
possibility of moral redemption for the inmates of the Yoshiwara, and
as a matter of fact many women in Japan who, through the force of
compulsion, have entered this place, frequently marry, and marry well,
and subsequently live absolutely chaste lives. The standard of
morality among the married women of Japan is, I may remark, high, and
is rarely lowered.
I hope I shall not shock my readers if I remark that I consider the
stringent regulations that exist in Japan as to the supervision of the
Yoshiwara in many respects admirable. It will probably surprise many
persons to learn that the high state of organisation in regard to
everything connected with the superintendence of these places, as also
the development of lock hospitals, is largely due to the zeal and
exertions of the late Dr. G. Birnie Hill, of the Royal Navy, who was
for many years lent by the Admiralty to the Japanese Government for
that purpose. Under his auspices a stringent system of medical
supervision was organised, which has been attended with excellent
results in the direction of stamping out and obviating diseases which,
I may observe, are of foreign importation. I know that the existence
of any system of medical inspection will, in the estimate of a large
number of estimable men and women in this country, be regarded as
proof positive of the immorality of the Japanese. "We mustn't
recognise vice," is their contention. I am of opinion, on the
contrary, that we should either recognise vice and restrict, restrain,
and regulate it, or else make vice illegal, as the Puritans did, and
fine or imprison both men and women addicted to it. I could understand
either of these two courses, but I must confess that I altogether fail
to fathom the state of mind of those persons who adopt neither
opinion, but either assert or infer that in the name of religion,
morality, modesty, and many other commendable things, we should permit
our streets and thoroughfares to be infested by women plying their
immoral trade with all the resultant consequences.
[Illustration: THE ETERNAL FEMININE
FROM A PRINT BY TOSHIKATA]
As I stated at the commencement of this chapter, a nation should be
judged not only by its standard of morality but by the degree in which
it lives up to or falls short of that standard. Judged by this, surely
the fairest, the only fair, rule, Japan has every reason to be
considered a moral country. Those shocking crimes which appear to be
the outcome of either the aberration or the inversion of the sexual
instincts are almost unknown there. Nor do I consider that the public
estimate of prostitution on the whole makes for immorality. If an evil
exist, and prostitution is undoubtedly an evil, it is surely better to
regulate it than to affect to be oblivious of it. The Japanese
attitude towards prostitution at any rate leaves a door open for the
woman who has, from whatever the reason, lapsed from the paths of
virtue to return thereto. This appears to my mind to be a more
satisfactory state of things than the continual harrying and worrying
of prostitutes in the name of indignant virtue and the driving of them
on the streets. The aspect of the great thoroughfares of London,
especially by night, does not give the Oriental visitor thereto a high
idea of English morality. It is, nevertheless, an extraordinary fact
that the Englishman or the Englishwoman who has mayhap lived in London
most of his or her life, when he or she visits Japan in the course of,
perhaps, "a round the world trip" in ninety days, and learns that
there is in each Japanese town a Yoshiwara, the inmates of which are
subject to supervision and regulation, lifts up his or her hands in
holy horror, returns home with a virtuous indignation, and has no
hesitation in henceforth declaring, whether in speech or writing, that
the Japanese are a grossly immoral people.
The average Japanese is, very rightly in my opinion, indignant at the
constant assertions of writers, well or ill-informed, that his country
is essentially immoral. He is not only indignant but astounded. He
has, if he has been to this country, seen here much that has not
tended to impress him with the belief that the English people are
themselves in a position to dogmatise on this vexed question of
morality. He is, if he has visited the great cities and towns of Great
Britain, by no means convinced that the action of Japan in
establishing a Yoshiwara whose inmates are under proper supervision,
medical and otherwise, is not better from every point of view, that of
morality included, than turning loose women into the streets to accost
every passer-by and place temptations in the way of youth. On the
other hand, the Japanese who has not left his own country, but is of
an observant nature and of a logical disposition, fails to comprehend
why the European in Europe should dogmatise upon and affect to be
disgusted with what he terms the immorality of the Japanese. The
Japanese who has lived all his life in his own country has had ample
opportunities for studying the Europeans resident there, and I fear he
has not always been impressed by their high moral tone or their
ultra-moral conduct. I might say much more upon that head, but I shall
refrain.
I conclude this chapter by reiterating the expression of my belief
that the Japanese are, when rightly considered, a moral people. They
have their own code of morals, and they act up to it. There are few
nations of whom as much could be said.