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."
"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.
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.
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.
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 completelyhors 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" meansto 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 theTransactions of the Asiatic Societya very interesting paper on the history of Jiujutsu.
[1]Kano Jigoro. Mr. Kano contributed some years ago to theTransactions of the Asiatic Societya very interesting paper on the history of Jiujutsu.
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 hasnotadopted 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.
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 sensetraîneurs 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!
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.
[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".
[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".
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.
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."
[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 wordBateren,a corruption of the Portuguese or Spanishpadre, 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 aKirishitan(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 (seeTransactions 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 hisEpidemics 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.
[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 wordBateren,a corruption of the Portuguese or Spanishpadre, 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 aKirishitan(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 (seeTransactions 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 hisEpidemics 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.
[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.
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 hewoulduse such power was not a common-sense question: the real question was,couldhe 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 factowith 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.