Part 26

I find it difficult to believe that the Bishop of South Tokio is right when he says that the Japanese do not trust one another; and I know that he is wrong if he in himself believes, as he implies, that the Japanese are not 'honest in trade.' But I quite admit that Englishmen who have long resided in Japan did not believe that it would be prudent for the _Times_ to adopt in Japan the instalment system of selling books, previously unknown there. When the representative of the _Times_ arrived in Japan to sell the _Encyclopædia_, he naturally asked English residents there what they thought of the project. With one exception the answer was: 'You cannot sell the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ here because almost every English and American resident has already obtained a copy from England, and, of course, the Japanese will not buy--fortunately for you, because if they did they would not pay.' The only English resident who did not say this said: 'Of course you can sell any number of _Encyclopædias_ to the Japanese, but you will never be able to collect the payments when they have once got the books. No Japanese will pay for the _Encyclopædia_ when he finds he can get it without payment.' In the face of this advice, the instalment plan of sale was adopted, with the results above described. I many add that the Japanese bought five times as many _Encyclopædias_ as were sold in France and Germany combined, fifty times as many as in Russia, more than in any other country except India, Australia, and the United States.

When I see a bishop of the Church of England, who has lived in Japan since 1898, write with so little appreciation of the Japanese, I wonder whether some of our countrymen are not as blind as the Russian statesmen who, in the early days of the war, described the Japanese as 'yellow monkeys,' and as blind as the Ambassador of the Tsar who made the statement in Tokio, before the war, that the mobilisation of one army corps in Russia would frighten the Japanese into immediate submission. No one in the _Times_ office, at any rate, can doubt that the standard of integrity among the Japanese is so high that when young men, who have bought the Encyclopædia, abandoned their employment to go to the front, their families promptly paid the instalments due, under circumstances of the utmost difficulty.--I am, sir, your obedient servant,

The Manager of Your Publication Department. Printing-house Square, E.C., _October 5_.

[1] _The Magazine of Commerce_, August 1905.

[2] See the note at the end of the volume.

VII

JAPAN AND FOREIGN CAPITAL[1]

Japan, far from becoming antagonistic to the occidental nations, as it was prognosticated by some of the Continental journalists, has given another proof of her readiness for the identification of her economic interests with those of the occidental people.

Hitherto in Japan there has been no law which regulated the mortgaging of a railway, or a mining enterprise, or a factory, together with its working system, as a corporation, that is to say, mortgaging the whole system of a railway, a mining enterprise, or a factory as an economic whole, comprising not only each particular material object but also all the organic components of its working system as the subject matter of mortgage. A radical change has now been effected in the matter.

According to the Japanese laws there are two methods for a commercial company in contracting a debt. One is the ordinary borrowing of money from a creditor, and the other is borrowing in the shape of debentures by public subscription. Now in ordinary borrowing of money the liability may be secured by mortgage, but the debentures could not be secured by mortgage, although of course the liability extends to the whole property of the company.

The first effect of the new change is the provision which enables companies to guarantee debentures by mortgage, and the second effect is the provisions which relate to the creations of economic corporations of railways, mining works, or factories for the special purpose of instituting mortgages of their economic entity.

To make the matter easier to comprehend, I will first explain it with regard to railways.

The permission of the Government originally given to the company is in the nature of a licence or concession which is to be viewed more in the light of a personal matter of the original company, and therefore it could not be a subject matter of a public auction, and therefore according to the old law, if a railway company becomes bankrupt, all the material property, either movable or immovable, would go to new hands, but the licence itself cannot but become extinct with the dissolution of the original company, viz. the original grantee.

This being so, if a railway company fails to fulfil its liability for debenture and goes into bankruptcy, the ultimate result would be that the railway system would be broken up, and the creditors would get their satisfaction only from the sale of each piece of the material property sold by public auction. Even in the case of ordinary debt, whereby all the material property can be mortgaged, the result would be practically the same.

All these inconveniences have now been removed by a series of new laws passed by the last session of the Imperial diet and promulgated on March 13, 1905, by the Imperial Government. The articles of the laws are very numerous and minute, so that it would be unnecessary to dwell upon them here in detail, but the more important parts may be summarised as follows:

_(a)_ The economic entity of a railway company may be constituted a special economic corporation for the purpose of mortgage.[2]

_(b)_ In default of payment of the mortgage liability, the whole, _i.e._ the corporation, may be subjected to auction. This provides the means for transferring, together with the material properties, the original permission of the Government, namely, the licence, to the purchaser, viz. a new company.

_(c)_ A company, which in reality may be taken as a syndicate, may be formed for advancing money by means of debentures. Such company may acquire legal recognition and may represent the creditors of debentures. It forms a particular kind of commercial company, and is called 'trust company.'

_(d)_ At the option of the creditors, means of compulsory control of the railway in the interest of creditors are also provided for in the laws.

_(e)_ Special provisions are made to meet the cases where the syndicate and investors are of foreign nationality: namely, the means of recognising foreign syndicates by the Japanese Government, and also the means of affording convenience for foreign investors.

_(f)_ Further provisions are made for facilitating the registration of constituting the said corporation, and the registration of the mortgage thereof, for these affairs, as far as railways are concerned, are now entrusted, by the new laws, to the Minister of Communications, to whose control the railways belong, and not to the local courts of law, as is the case with all other kinds of mortgages.

This change of our laws gives very great facility to foreign investors who may be willing to lend money on railway securities.

The case of mining enterprises were similar because they are also based on licences. For them also much the same changes have been effected by the new laws, so that their economic entity may now be mortgaged in the interests of either an ordinary creditor or investors in debentures.

The cases of ordinary factories differ in origin from those of the railways or mines, they not being based on a concession or licence like railway or mining enterprises. But for them also the new laws have made provisions for the means of constituting corporations for the purpose of guaranteeing debenture by mortgage. Provisions have also been made for guaranteeing debenture by mortgaging ships, any definite property either immovable or movable, or any legal claims which are secured by written instruments.

[1] The _Outlook_.

[2] The law also permits the companies constituting such a corporation of a part of the whole for a similar object. But as its general purport does not materially differ, I omit its account in order to avoid confusion.--_The Author_.

VIII

THE LANGUAGES OF CHINA AND JAPAN

People often ask me if there is any affinity between the Chinese language and ours. I can at once say there is no affinity whatever, but this requires much explanation before I can clearly show it.

The written language of China, viz. ideographs, is the same all over the extensive sphere of China proper, but its pronunciation is different almost in every province. The spoken language of the Chinese is, roughly speaking, the same as the written language, as is the case in the Western nations. Therefore, the Chinese residing in different provinces do not understand each other colloquially, except those educated in the Mandarine Chinese, which is in fact the pronunciation used in Peking amongst the Mandarins and studied by all Mandarins in provinces as well as those in Peking.

The first difference between Chinese and Japanese is that the former is monosyllabic, whilst the latter is polysyllabic. The second difference, which is a natural consequence of the first, is that in Chinese there is no declension of nouns or conjugation of verbs, whilst in Japanese there are conjugations of verbs and a method of the formation of the cases of nouns which is in purport similar to declensions. The third difference is the position or order of words in sentences. The fourth difference is the difference of pronunciation of the Chinese ideographs, viz. characters, even when they are used in our writing in their original shapes.

I will now explain in detail all these points in the succeeding pages.

To begin with, Chinese is monosyllabic, as I said. Each word, which always has one signification, be it a noun or a verb, has only one sound. Thus a harbour in Chinese is _kong_, whilst it is _minato_ in Japanese; and a man in Chinese is _jen_, whilst it is _hito_ in Japanese. It is the same with verbs. The sound of each word of Chinese never changes, whatever position it may stand in relation to other words in the same sentence, that is to say, there is no declension and no conjugation. Each word is represented by a distinct ideograph, and, from what I have just said, it follows that the form of the ideographs also never changes, in the same way as the sounds do not change.

In Chinese different shades of meaning as to the actions and agents are expressed by the position of the words, by addition of some other words. In simple sentences, therefore, it resembles English very much; thus, for instance, when a Chinese says: 'John likes Paul,' it is plain, like English, that he who likes Paul is John, and he who is liked is Paul. When a Chinese wishes to express the same idea in the passive voice, he would say, 'Paul by John is liked,' which is the same as 'Paul is liked by John,' Neither has Chinese any preposition like English or French, nor any post-position like Japanese, to designate the cases, except a few which resemble prepositions meaning 'from,' 'to,' and 'by,' but even these are very sparingly employed and by no means with any regularity. When a verb is used as a substantive the form is still identical; thus one identical ideograph, 'like,' may represent a verb 'to like' or a substantive 'liking.' Of course there are many terms designating one thing or one action consisting of more than one sound; such are, however, combinations of two or three distinct words, like the English word 'firearms' or 'seesaw,' and therefore none of them could properly be called one distinct polysyllabic word.

In Japanese, unlike Greek, Latin, or German, there is no proper declension in nouns. In this respect it is more like English or French, but it has a method of forming the cases, so that in this respect it differs from Chinese. Our cases are formed by putting after them the so-called _ga--no--ni--wo_--thus:

_Hana ga saku_ . . Flowers blossom _Hana no Kage_ . . The shade of flowers _Hana ni chikazuku_ . . Approach the flowers _Hana wo Miyo_ . . See the flowers (imperative).

_Ga_ is generally omitted in writing. It is more like the Greek _Ge_, which is often suffixed to the nominative substantives. _Ni_ is equal to the English _to_ and the French _à_; but such ideas as the English _by_ or _in_, or the French _en_ or _par_, are generally expressed by it. There is another particle _wa_ for the nominative, its position is the same.

_Made_ (until, jusqu'à) and _yori_ or _kara_ (from, de) are also put after the substantives. In fact, all equivalents to English or French prepositions are put after the substantive, and therefore they are more appropriate to be called the post-positions.

In Chinese the idea of time is generally very vague, it is mostly left to the conjecture of the hearers or readers, as the case may be, from the context of the whole sentence. But when it is necessary to express it, it is also done by addition of some words, such as 'already' or 'once.' Thus a Chinese would say, 'John once like Paul,' meaning 'John once liked Paul,' or 'John already come,' meaning 'John has already come.' But this is very different in our language. We have regular declensions of verbs in both the active voice and the passive voice and their form is accordingly changed. Thus, for instance:

_Kitaru_ - come _Kitaran_ - shall come _Kitarishi_ - has come _Kitare_ - come (imperative).

I shall here develop my dissertation a little further, and make some comparison between our language and some of the European languages.

In Japanese there is no gender in nouns, for grammatical purposes, although some words from their very nature signify male or female; thus, for instance, _otoko_ = man, _onna_ = woman, _ondori_ = cock, and _mendori_ = hen. To us it sounds very odd that the Germans give feminine gender to the sun and masculine to the moon, whilst the French do vice versa, or that both the French and German give masculine gender to 'regiment' or 'battalion,' but feminine gender to 'company.' In this respect the English method of dividing into masculine, feminine, and neutral, allowing only on rare occasions, for poetical purpose, personification of inanimate objects, sounds more rational and comprehensible to our ears. It follows, therefore, that our nouns do not modify their forms on account of the gender, and that it is more like English in this respect.

We have, moreover, no number in the nouns. Whereas in European languages nouns which have no number are exceptions and very few, all the nouns in Japanese are without number without any exception. When we wish to express any particular numerical idea, we make use of a numerical adjective in a similar manner as the English would say 'a sheep,' 'ten sheep,' or 'numerous sheep.' Here again we can see that our nouns never change their form on account of the number. It is true, we also put after the nouns _ra_, _tachi_, or _domo_ to signify plural, but it is rare, and the style becomes rather clumsy unless it is done very carefully.

Furthermore, there is no gender or number in our verbs. All conjugations are the same whatever gender or number they may relate to. It goes without saying that in Chinese also there is neither gender nor number in its nouns and verbs. It also goes without saying that in Japanese as well as Chinese there is, like English, no gender or number in adjectives. I may also add here that, like Latin, there are no articles either in Chinese or Japanese.

As to the adverbs in Chinese, they are as a rule identical with adjectives, the difference between them being only perceived by the context, although there is a certain form which always gives adverbial signification, and which is done by putting another word after an adjective (there are three or four words which are used for the purpose of thus forming adverbial terms). In Japanese adverbs are formed by suffixing _ni_ and _to_, like the English _ly_ and French _ment_. As _shizukani_ (slowly) _yuku_ (goes), and _shizushizu to_ (slowly and slowly) _yuku_ (goes). _To_ may be written _toshite_ according to euphony.

The use of conjunctions in Japanese and Chinese is much similar to that of the Western languages, except that in both Chinese and Japanese it is very commonly understood. Thus where the Europeans say, 'East and West' or 'black and white,' we both, Chinese and Japanese, would simply say, 'West East' or 'white black,' unless we have some particular reasons in giving emphasis to the distinction.

In Chinese the pronouns also have no gender, so also in Japanese. When we particularly wish to designate gender, we say, 'that man' or 'this woman,' which in reality is no longer a pronoun. As to the number of pronouns, it is formed by adding another word after it; but in Chinese this is by no means uniformly done, for in most cases where the meaning is plain enough, the same person as that of the singular number is also used for the plural. It is so especially with regard to the third person, but even in the first person this occurs sometimes, as for instance when two opposing objects, one of which is on one's own side, are collectively spoken of. There is something similar in English as far as the third person is concerned, but the Chinese carry it even into the first person. Thus in English may be written, 'When the enemy attacked us we have repulsed him,' but a Chinese would go further and write, 'When the enemy attacked me, I have repulsed him,' without meaning that he, the writer himself, did it alone, or did it at all, but that the army on his side did it.

In Japanese the number of the pronouns is far more precise than it is in Chinese. One thing which may be novel to the Western readers is that in Chinese there are many different _I_'s and _you_'s, and still more in Japanese. They all signify, when used, a certain difference in degree of politeness. It is one of the difficult points in our colloquial language. I may here note that in the West it is almost impossible to carry on a conversation for a few minutes without making use of so many _I_'s, _he_'s, and _you_'s, but, like Latin, pronouns are used very sparingly in Chinese, still less in Japanese. In Latin the form of the verbs suggests very easily the person which is the substantive understood. In Chinese the context suggests it, while in Japanese the construction of sentences based upon conjugation does it.

Relative pronouns, _who_, _which_, _qui_, _que_, or _dont_, do not exist both in Chinese and Japanese. This is one of the great difficulties when we translate Western books. We must write the phrase governed by the relative pronouns as a distinct one or else must employ a clumsy method in rendering the whole sentence.

From what I have stated above, it would appear that Chinese is very simple as far as the analysis of the words is concerned, for they have no declension and conjugation. The difficulty of the students of Chinese does not lie in remembering different forms of declensions and conjugations, but first in remembering so many ideographs, one by one, and secondly to make head and tail of the agglomeration of ideographs, for one can never tell from their form which is a noun and which is a verb, or which is an objective or which is a possessive case. Definite meaning of Chinese sentences could only be appreciated by those who have accustomed themselves by long experience. But even such people often differ in their interpretation of some phrases, by giving different attributive to one or other particular ideograph in a sentence, not only in its meaning but in its position as regards the part of speech. This often occurs in interpretation of classical books. All this, however, does not signify that Chinese is a poor language, because its literal standard is really very highly developed.

The Japanese language is also simple enough as far as the analysis of words is concerned. Nouns never change their forms under any circumstances, except that their cases are made by the use of _ga_, _no_, _ni_, or _wo_, which is only an addition. Verbs are conjugated, but it is done simply to denote time and voice, and for no other reason. In a word, we may say that Japanese grammar is very easy. The real difficulty of Japanese is in the proper construction of phrases, for it is by it that many shades of meaning are suggested. True it is that this is more or less so with all languages. Difference of the degree of politeness or gracefulness is manipulated by difference of construction everywhere, but the variety of this difference is more complicated in Japanese than in any other language, and it can only be acquired by long practice and observation. This is why all foreigners who study Japanese think it is so easy at the commencement and so difficult after they have made a little progress. Nevertheless, colloquial Japanese is on the whole easy, because one can learn it easily so long as he is not sensitive of nicety or grace. There is in open ports even a new Japanese spoken between foreigners and natives, in which no _ga--no--ni--wo_ is used, or no conjugation of verbs employed, and yet it is perfectly intelligible.

Now as to the difference of the order of words between Japanese and Chinese. Where in English one says, 'I cannot go,' in Chinese one would say, 'I not can go,' whilst in Japanese it would be, 'I go can not.' This order of Japanese has a slight resemblance to German, but the difference lies in that, whilst in German it is chiefly so in subordinate sentences, it is in Japanese uniformly so under any circumstances. In Chinese a verb which governs an object directly or indirectly always precedes the object; thus, like English, a Chinese would say, 'Girls eat cakes,' or 'he goes to Paris,' but in Japanese the verb succeeds; thus a Japanese would say, 'Girls cakes eat,' or 'he Paris to goes.' In this respect of order there is some resemblance between Latin and Japanese.

From all that I have said it is plain that there is no affinity between Chinese and Japanese so far as construction is concerned, but I may go further. There is no resemblance whatever suggestive of same origin between any Chinese and Japanese word, except those whose introduction into Japan at later ages is clearly known.

In speaking of the Japanese language in the foregoing pages, I have made no difference between the colloquial and the written one, but in fact there is much difference between them which requires some notice here. Even in the West written phrases can be, and are often, much shortened than spoken ones; but in Japan this difference is carried almost to the extreme, so much so, that they assume almost entirely different shape, the phrases of the spoken language being unsparingly curtailed in those of the written one. Of course, there are some old books which were written like the colloquial, and of late years much movement is made for an assimilation of the written and spoken languages, making the written one approach the spoken one. But as the matter stands at present the difference is still very great.