JAPAN AS IT IS TO-DAY
"In the Japan of to-day the world has before it a unique example of an
Eastern people displaying the power to assimilate and to adopt the
civilisation of the West, while preserving its own national dignity
unimpaired," aptly remarks a modern writer. It is, indeed, in its
powers of assimilation and adaptation that Japan, I think, stands
unique among not only the nations of the world at the present time,
but amongst the nations of whom we have any historical record. In one
of his books on Japan--books which I may, in passing, remark give a
more vivid insight into the life of the Japanese people than the works
of any other writer--Mr. Lafcadio Hearn remarks that the so-called
adoption of Western civilisation within a term of comparatively few
years cannot mean the addition to the Japanese brain of any organs or
powers previously absent from her, nor any sudden change in the mental
or moral character of the race. Changes of that kind cannot be made in
a generation. The Europeanising of Japan, Mr. Hearn in fact suggests,
means nothing more than the rearrangement of a part of the
pre-existing machinery of thought, while the mental readjustments
effected by taking on Western civilisation, or what passes for it,
have given good results only along directions in which the Japanese
people have always shown special capacity. There has, in a word, he
asserts, been no transformation--nothing more than the turning of old
abilities into new and larger channels. Indeed the tendency of the
people of Japan, when dispassionately investigated, will be seen to
have been always moving in the same direction. A slight retrospect
will, I think, clearly prove the truth of this assertion.
It is now about fifty years since Japan was first awakened, perhaps
rudely awakened, from her slumber of two and a half centuries. When
the European Powers and the United States of America knocked, perhaps
somewhat rudely, at her door, it turned slowly on its hinges and
creaked owing to the rust of many long years. How came it that a
country which had imported its art, literature, religion, and
civilisation, a country which until 1868 had a mediaeval feudalism for
its social basis, a country which until then was notorious for the
practice of hara-kiri and the fierceness of its two-sworded Samurai
should so suddenly take on Western attributes and become a seat of
liberty and the exponent of Western civilisation in the Far East? All
this is to some persons a rather perplexing problem. But the reasons
are not, I think, far to seek. If we go back many centuries we shall
find that Japan, though always tenacious of her national
characteristics, never evinced any indisposition to mingle with or
adopt what was good in other races. The national character for many
hundreds of years has always displayed what I may term the germs of
liberalism, and has not been influenced by narrow and petty national
ideals concerning the customs, religion, art, or literature of other
countries. As against this statement may be urged the action of Japan
in expelling the Portuguese missionaries, destroying thoroughly
Christianity, both buildings and converts, and effectually and
effectively shutting the country against all intercourse with Europe
and America for over two centuries. The answer of the Japanese of
to-day to this question is simple enough. They point out that,
although the object of St. Francis Xavier and his missionaries was
essentially spiritual, viz., to convert Japan to Christianity, that of
many of the foreigners who accompanied or succeeded him was not in any
sense spiritual, but on the contrary was grossly and wickedly
material. Accordingly Japan, having rightly or wrongly concluded that
not only her civilisation but her national life, her independent
existence, were menaced by the presence and the increasing number of
these foreigners, she decided, on the principle that desperate
diseases require desperate remedies, to expel them and to effectually
seal her country against any possibility of future foreign invasions.
I am not, I may remark, defending her action in the matter; I am only
putting forward the views of Japanese men of light and leading of
to-day in regard thereto.
When, many centuries ago, the Koreans brought to Japan the religion,
laws, literature, and art of China, these were adopted and
assimilated. Both Buddhism and Confucianism existed side by side in
the country with the old Shinto religion. And, accordingly, during the
many centuries which have elapsed since the religion of China and the
ethical doctrines of her great teacher were introduced into Japan,
there has never been a violent conflict between them and the ancient
religion of the country. Had the Portuguese invaders confined
themselves to a religious propaganda only, the Christian converts they
made would not have been interfered with and the Christian religion,
strong and vigorous, would have existed uninterruptedly in Japan until
to-day side by side with Buddhism and Shintoism. When St. Francis
Xavier came to Japan Buddhism was the prevailing religion, and it
undoubtedly had, as it still has, a great hold upon the people. But
the preaching of the intrepid Jesuit and the missionaries he brought
with him had an enormous success. The Christian religion was embraced
by representatives of every class. In the year 1550 St. Francis,
writing to Goa, placed on record for all time his opinion of the
Japanese. "The nation," writes he, "with which we have to deal here
surpasses in goodness any of the nations ever discovered. They are of
a kindly disposition, wonderfully desirous of honour, which is placed
above everything else. They listen with great avidity to discourse
about God and divine things. In the native place of Paul they received
us very kindly, the Governor, the chief citizens, and indeed the whole
populace. Give thanks to God therefore that a very wide and promising
field is open to you for your well-roused piety to spend its energies
in." It certainly was a remarkable fact that a nation which had for so
many centuries been under the influences of Buddhism should have
welcomed these Portuguese missionaries. But it must be remembered that
Japan had not that prejudice against foreigners which is very often
the outcome of foreign conquest and foreign oppression. No foreign
Power had ever conquered or indeed set its foot in the land. Both
China and Korea had made various attempts on the independence of
Japan, but unsuccessfully. Japan had never had to endure any
humiliation at the hands of foreign invaders, consequently her
nationalism had no narrow, selfish meaning, and accordingly she saw no
reason for putting any obstacle in the way of St. Francis Xavier and
his followers until she concluded, however much or little reason there
may have been for her conclusions, that the incoming of these
foreigners in some measure menaced her national existence. Before she
arrived at that conclusion she was apparently prepared to welcome all
that was good in the ethical teaching of the Portuguese missionaries,
and, if a section of her population desired to embrace a religion to
whose ethical teaching she had no objection; there was no reason, in
her opinion, why that religion should not exist side by side with
those more ancient religions which had lived amicably together during
many centuries.
For nearly two hundred and fifty years Japan resolved to remain in a
state of isolation. Then, as I have said, European Powers and the
great Republic of the West came knocking and knocking loudly at her
doors, and as a result thereof her thinking men came to realise that
in a state of isolation a continued civilised existence is impossible.
Accordingly Japan, tentatively at first, opened certain portions of
her country to European intercourse, and as an inevitable consequence
thereof found it necessary to adopt European ideas--and European
armaments. The country had kept out the aggressor for some two
thousand years or thereabouts, and Japan clearly saw that if the
aggressor was to be kept out in the future, the near future, she would
probably have to fight to maintain her national existence. The war
with China was the outcome of the feeling that Korea under the
suzerainty of China was a constant menace to not only the prosperity
but the existence of the Empire. The same feeling undoubtedly led to
the war with Russia, as Japan considered, and rightly in my opinion,
that the possession of Korea by Russia meant the loss of national
independence. That war was not as so many wars have been, the result
of a racial hatred, the outcome of a spirit of revenge, or waged for
aggressive designs. It was forced upon Japan, and was in every sense
purely defensive. Japan waged it confident in her own strength from
the fact that in the two thousand years of her history she had, in all
the conflicts in which she had engaged, kept in view the one
ideal--the conservation of the national existence, an ideal which she
has consistently realised.
The position of Japan at the present moment is not only extremely
interesting but extraordinary in a degree. She is the cynosure for the
eyes of the civilised world, and for some years she has been subjected
at the hands of experts and amateurs of all descriptions to the most
minute investigation. Every phase of her national life has been
rigidly scrutinised and exhaustively written about. The national
character and characteristics have undergone the most intricate
psychological examination, and if the world does not now know the real
Japan it is certainly not from lack of material, literary material,
whereon to form a judgment. Indeed the attention Japan has received
has been sufficient to turn the head of any people. I am not sure that
this large output of literature on matters Japanese has effected very
much in the direction of enabling a sound judgment to be formed
regarding the country and the people. Many writers who have
dissertated upon Japan during the past couple of decades seem to have
imagined that they had discovered it, and their impressions have been
penned from that standpoint.
There used some years ago to be an advertisement of a "Popular
Educator" in which a youth with a curly head of hair and a face of
delightful innocence was depicted. Underneath the portrait the inquiry
was printed, "What will he become?" And there was then given an
illustrated alternative as to the appearance of this innocent youth at
different ages in his career according to the path he trod in life.
One alternative eventuated in the final evolution of an ancient and,
from his appearance, very palpable villain, the other of a
benevolent-looking old gentleman who quite evidently only lived to do
good. It seems to me that a large number of persons in various parts
of the world are to-day, as they have been for some time past, asking
the question in reference to Japan, "What will she become?" It is
without doubt a highly interesting inquiry, but the answer to it, so
far as my knowledge goes, is not like the advertisement I have
referred to, one of two courses--the one leading to perdition, the
other to prosperity. On the contrary, the answers seem to be as
numerous and varied as the answerers, and most of the answers would
appear to have been arrived at simply and merely by the false premises
and very often the entirely erroneous "facts" of the inquirers.
A favourite and fallacious method of dealing with Japan is that of
regarding it as an Oriental nation, essentially Oriental with a thin
veneer of Occidentalism. People who so reason, or occasionally do not
reason at all but confine themselves to mere assertions, suggest that
the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental is such that
not a few years of perfunctory contact but centuries of time are
necessary to bring about a real transmogrification. Persons who so
think point not only to the difference in everything material in
respect of East and West, but to a radical difference in psychology,
an entire distinction in the mental outlook of each. They accordingly
conclude that the differences so evident on all sides are not mere
accidentals but fundamental, ineradicable. Scratch the Japanese,
they in effect say, and beneath his veneer of civilisation you will
find the barbarian, barbarism and Orientalism being with these persons
synonymous terms. And if any incredulity in the matter be expressed
they will triumphantly point to the recurrence of hara-kiri among the
soldiers and sailors in the late war. A well-known writer on racial
psychology has expressed himself dogmatically on this very point. I
will quote two or three of his pronouncements in the matter.
[Illustration: FIREWORKS IN TOKIO (SUMMER)
FROM A PRINT BY HIROSHIGE]
"Each race possesses a constitution as unvarying as its anatomical
constitution. There seems to be no doubt that the former corresponds
to a certain special structure of the brain.
"A negro or a Japanese may easily take a university degree or become a
lawyer; the sort of varnish he thus acquires is, however, quite
superficial, and has no influence on his mental constitution.... What
no education can give him because they are created by heredity alone,
are the forms of thought, the logic, and, above all, the character of
the Western man.
"Cross-breeding constitutes the only infallible means at our disposal
of transforming in a fundamental manner the character of a people,
heredity being the only force powerful enough to contend with
heredity. Cross-breeding allows of the creation of a new race,
possessing new physical and psychological characteristics."
Now, whether these views be correct in the main or partially correct
as regards other races, I have no hesitation in describing them as
inaccurate to a degree in reference to the Japanese. Not peculiar
brain formation, but social evolution, environment, education are
responsible for the traits which distinguish the Japanese from other
Eastern nations. To assert, as do some psychological experts, that
the mental constitution of races is as distinct and unchangeable as
their physiological or anatomical characteristics is, to my mind, a
fact not borne out by the history of the world. Physiological or
anatomical distinctions are apparent, and can be classified; mental
idiosyncrasies do not lend themselves to cataloguing. It is, I know,
possible to draw up at any particular period a list of what I may term
the idiosyncrasies of any race at that period. A writer in a London
newspaper some little time back attempted to do so in reference to
Oriental races generally. He enumerated the degraded position of
women, the licentiousness of the men, the recognition and prevalence
of prostitution, the non-desire of the youth for play, contempt for
Western civilisation, and general hatred of foreigners. Admitting
these charges to be correct, the characteristics detailed are, I may
point out, merely ephemeral incidents. A contempt for Western
civilisation and hatred of the foreigner, for example, which was
certainly at one time pronounced in Japan, are rapidly passing away.
The position of women in that country has also greatly improved, just
as it has improved in Europe, while as regards prostitution and
licentiousness Europe has, in my opinion, no need to throw stones.
There are undoubtedly a large number of persons who are convinced, or
have been convinced, by the arguments of others, that the progress of
Japan is a mere mushroom growth which cannot last. A few years ago one
of the leading English papers in Japan attempted, to some extent, to
voice this opinion in an article striking the note of warning for the
benefit of the West against putting too much faith in those writers
who had intimately studied Japan from within, and whose works were in
general appreciation not only for their literary style, but for the
vivid insight they gave into everything respecting the country. Quoth
the journal in question:--
"In the case of such writers as Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lafcadio
Hearn, it is quite apparent that the logical faculty is in abeyance.
Imagination reigns supreme. As poetic flights or outbursts the works
of these authors on Japan are delightful reading. But no one who has
studied the Japanese in a deeper manner, by more intimate daily
intercourse with all classes of the people than either of these
writers pretends to have had, can possibly regard a large part of
their description as anything more than pleasing fancy. Both have
given rein to the poetic fancy, and thus have, from a purely literary
point of view, scored a success granted to few.... But as exponents of
Japanese life and thought they are unreliable.... They have given form
and beauty to much that never existed, except in vague outline or in
undeveloped germs in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have
unavoidably been guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation
of Arnold and Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a
century, but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's
brains. It is high time that this was pointed out. For while such
works please a certain section of the English public, they do a great
deal of harm among a section of the Japanese public, as could be
easily shown in detail did space allow."
I quite admit the fact that many Japanese themselves are quite
convinced that there is a great gulf fixed between the ideas and the
philosophy of Europe and those of the East, their own country
included. In a book dealing particularly with the art of Japan,
written in English by a Japanese, he attempts to emphasise this
matter. He remarks: "Asia is one. The Himalayas divide only to
accentuate two mighty civilisations--the Chinese, with its communism
of Confucius, and the Indian, with its individualism of the Vedas. But
not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad
expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal which is the
common-thought inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to
produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them
from those maritime people of the Mediterranean and the Baltic who
loved to dwell on the particular, and to search out the means not the
end of life." Indeed, the writer of this book appears to be in a
condition of transcendentalism in reference to the East. In another
portion of it he waxes eloquent in regard to what he terms the glory
of Asia, in language which I will briefly quote. He remarks:--
"But the glory of Asia is something more positive than these. It lies
in that vibration of peace that beats in every heart; that harmony
which brings together emperor and peasant; that sublime intuition of
oneness which commands all sympathy, all courtesy, to be its fruits,
making Takakura, Emperor of Japan, remove his sleeping robes on a
winter night because the frost lay cold on the hearths of his poor; or
Taiso of Tang forego food because his people were feeling the pinch of
famine; ... it lies in that worship of feeling which casts around
poverty the halo of greatness, impresses his stern simplicity of
apparel on the Indian prince, and sets up in China a throne whose
imperial occupant--alone amongst the great secular rulers of the
world--never wears a sword."
It were unkind to criticise eloquence of this description too
seriously. The fact, if it be a fact, that the Emperor of China never
wears a sword is in one sense interesting but it proves nothing. It is
well to get down from eloquence of this kind to concrete facts, to
come back to the point whence we started, viz., What will Japan
become? What is her present condition? Any one who compares the Japan
of to-day with the Japan of, say, thirty or forty years ago will, I
think, impatiently sweep aside some of the absurd theories to which I
have referred, psychological and otherwise. The unprejudiced man,
letting his mind indulge in retrospect, and comparing that
retrospective view with the present actuality, will, I believe, have
no difficulty in determining that though Japan is and must remain an
Oriental nation, what she has acquired of recent years is neither
veneer or varnish, but has been assimilated into the very system of
the people. Very probably Japan will never become thoroughly
Occidentalised. There are many of us who hope she never may. I
believe, however, that in adopting many Occidental customs and habits
she will adapt and modify them to her own needs, and in due course
evolve a race neither distinctly Occidental nor Oriental while
retaining many of her past customs and her ancient characteristics.
She will, in a word, be as far as possible an eclectic nation, and it
is, so far as I know, the first time in the history of the world that
an attempt has been made to develop such.
There are, I know, many people in Europe as well as in Japan who feel
and express some apprehension in regard to what they term young Japan.
This term, like many other terms, has never been accurately defined,
but I take it to mean that portion of the country consisting of the
young or younger men who have been educated according to Western
ideas, have acquired Western modes of thought, and have developed--I
do not use the word in an opprobrious sense--a bumptiousness. It is
assumed, on what grounds I know not, that this section--it must after
all be a small section--of the population of the country has
aspirations to make things "hum," if I may use an expressive bit of
American slang. Young Japan, we are led to believe, is intensely
ambitious and extremely cocksure. It cannot and will not go slow; on
the contrary, it is in a fearful hurry, and is in reference to every
matter political, commercial, religious, a hustler. It has no doubts
upon any subject, and no difficulty in regard to making up its mind on
any matter. This is what we hear and read. How much of it all is true
I know not. I am very largely of opinion that this representation of
young Japan is altogether a caricature. Youth we know in every clime
is impulsive and impetuous. There is no need to go to Japan to
convince ourselves of that fact. But youth, if it have these defects,
also possesses enthusiasm, and I should be inclined to describe that
as one of the most pleasing characteristics of the youth of Japan.
After all, time will cure Young Japan of some of its defects. Young
Japan will grow old, and if it loses its enthusiasm it will gain
experience. I not only have no fear of these vivacious young men who
love their country and are proud of it. I regard them not as a danger,
but as a pleasing feature in the progress of Japan, and a potent
factor in its future prosperity.
The writers and critics to whom I have referred in this chapter seem
to be oblivious of the fact that progress is the law of nature. It has
nothing to do with either climate or race. I admit that it may be
affected by environment or other causes of a temporary nature. The
Occidental visiting the East sees things that are strange to him--a
people, the colour of whose skin and the contour of whose features are
different to his own; costume, style of architecture, and many other
matters entirely dissimilar to what he has viewed in his own country.
He accordingly jumps to the absolutely erroneous conclusion that these
people are uncivilised, and that their lack of civilisation is due to
some mental warp or some defect in either the structure or the size of
their brain. Of course such a conception is entirely erroneous, and
yet it is marvellous to what an extent it prevails. These people are
for all practical purposes the same as himself, except that they have
been affected by various matters and circumstances that I have called
ephemeral. What a nation, like an individual, needs is the formation
of a distinct character. Now, the character of a nation depends, in my
opinion, on the high or low estimate it has formed as to the meaning
and purpose of life, and also the extent to which it adheres to the
unwritten moral law, which is, after all, something superior to,
because higher than, mere legal enactments. I confess that as I wander
about this marvellous country of Japan, as I mingle with its common
people and see them in various phases of their lives I say to myself,
as St. Francis Xavier said of them more than three hundred years ago,
"This nation is the delight of my soul." The critic, the hypercritic,
is everywhere. He suspects everybody and everything. He can find
occult motives and psychological reasons for everything. I confess I
am a trifle tired of the critic, especially the psychological critic,
in reference to Japan. I view the people there as they are to-day, and
I have satisfied myself that we can see at work in Japan the formation
of a nation with a character. I care not to investigate the mental
processes at work, or the difference between the brain of the
Japanese and the brain of the European. I do see this, however, that
the leaders of the people, the educated and cultured classes of the
land, are intent on cutting out of the national character anything
which is indefensible, or has been found unserviceable, and equally
intent on adopting and adapting from any and every nation such
qualities as it is considered would the better enable Japan to advance
on the paths of progress and freedom, illuminating her way as a nation
and as a people by a shining illustration of all that is best in the
world, having sloughed off voluntarily and readily every
characteristic, however ancient, which reason and justice and
experience had shown to be unworthy of a power aspiring to stand out
prominently before the world.
In Sir Rutherford Alcock's work on Japan, "The Capital of the Tycoon,"
published some forty-four years ago, a work which, as I have elsewhere
said, is of undoubted value though somewhat marred by the prejudices
of the author, he attempted a forecast of the future of the country,
but, like so many prophets, his vaticinations have proved highly
inaccurate. "Japan," he remarked, "is on the great highway of nations,
the coveted of Russia, the most absorbing, if not the most aggressive
of all the Powers; and a perpetual temptation alike to merchant and to
missionary, who, each in different directions, finding the feudalism
and spirit of isolation barriers to their path, will not cease to
batter them in breach, or undermine them to their downfall. Such seems
to be the probable fate of Japan, and its consummation is little more
than a question of time. When all is accomplished, whether the
civilising process will make them as a people wiser, better, or
happier, is a problem of more doubtful solution. One thing is quite
certain, that the obstructive principle which tends to the rejection
of all Western innovations and proselytism as abominations, is much
too active and vigorous in the Japanese mind to leave a hope that
there will not be violent and obstinate resistance; and this
inevitably leading to corresponding violence in the assault, there
must be a period of convulsion and disorder before the change can be
effected, and new foundations laid for another social edifice."
Whether the civilising process will make the Japanese people wiser,
better, or happier is the problem the answer to which can only be
given in the future. Obviously we are not in a position to completely
answer this question to-day. Indeed, before answering it at any time
it might be advisable to invite the definition of wisdom and
happiness. There were wisdom and happiness long prior to the time when
the merchant and the missionary to whom Sir Rutherford Alcock refers
battered and undermined Japan's feudalism and spirit of isolation.
But, _mirable dictu_, Japan, instead of developing that obstructive
principle which Sir Rutherford considered was so active and vigorous
in the Japanese mind has, on the contrary, developed a spirit of
adaptation and assimilation of Western innovations, and in so doing
has in all probability saved herself from the cupidity not only of
Russia, but of other Western Powers. Sir Rutherford Alcock was not a
psychologist, but quite evidently he too misread the Japanese mind and
its workings.
Truth to tell, Japan as it is to-day gives the lie to nearly all the
prophets, and demonstrates that the psychologist is merely a
charlatan. Her development, her evolution has proceeded along no
particular lines. The fearful and awful rocks in the way, mediaevalism
and feudalism, were got rid of almost with a stroke of the pen, and
everybody in Japan, from the Emperor to the peasant, has adapted
himself to the changed order of things. It is the most wonderful
transformation scene in the history of the world, and it is still in
progress. What the end of it all will be I have, bearing the dangers
of prophecy well in mind, attempted to show in a final chapter. But I
may remark that nothing in regard to the forces at work in Japan of
recent years, and the outcome of the same so far gives me at any rate
more unmixed pleasure than the way in which the theorists have been
confounded, those men who cut and carve and label human beings,
whether individually or in the aggregate, as if they were mere blocks
of wood. The Oriental mind, we have been told, cannot do this;
Oriental prejudices and idiosyncrasies and modes of thought and
hereditary influences will not admit of that; the traditions of the
Far East, that mysterious thing, will prevent the other--we have been
told all this, I repeat, and told it _ad nauseam_. Japan as it is
to-day refutes these prophecies, these dogmatic pronouncements,
psychical and ethnological. The Japanese race, when regarded from what
I deem to be the only correct standpoint for forming a sound judgment
as to the position it holds among the races of the world, namely, in
respect of the size and convolution of the brain, occupies in my
opinion a high, a very high place. All other factors, often given such
undue prominence in forming an estimate as to the character of any
people I regard as mere accidentals. The story of Japan during the
last thirty or forty years affords ample proof of what I have said;
the position of the country to-day offers visible demonstration of it.
Japan has reached and will keep the position of a great Power, and the
Japanese that of a great people, just because of the preponderating
mental abilities of the population of the country, its capacity for
assimilation, its desire for knowledge, its pertinacity,
strenuousness, and aspirations to possess and acquire by the process
of selection the very best the world can give it.