CHAPTER I

IMPRESSIONS FROM A DISTANCE

Scepticism regarding the Existence of a Matriarchate--Glimpse of Formosa from a Steamer’s Deck in passing--Hearsay in Japan concerning the Island Colony--Opportunity of going to Formosa as a Government Official.

As to the actual existence of matriarchates I had always been sceptical. Matrilineal tribes, and those matrilocal--that was a different matter. The existence of these among certain primitive peoples had long been substantiated. But that the name should descend in the line of the mother, or that the newly married couple should take up its residence in the tribe or phratry of the bride, has not of necessity meant that the woman held the reins of power. Quite the reverse in many cases, as actual contact with peoples among whom matrilineal and matrilocal customs existed has proved to every practical observer.[1]

Those lecturers in the “Woman’s Cause” who boasted of the “great matriarchates of old” I thought weakened, rather than strengthened, the cause they would advocate by attempting to bring to its aid evidence builded on the sands. The great “matriarchates of antiquity” I was inclined to class with the “Golden Age” of the Theosophists, as representing a state of affairs not only “too good to be true,” but one in which the wish was--to paraphrase--father to the belief. And as to prehistoric matriarchates, representing a highly evolved state of civilization--in anything like the present-day significance of that word--I am still sceptical; as sceptical as I am of a Golden Age preceding the day of _Pithecanthropus_ and his kind.

But a land which is, as regards its aboriginal inhabitants--now confined to a few tribes, and those fast diminishing, in its more mountainous and inaccessible portions--sufficiently matripotestal to justify its being called a matriarchate, I have found. And this, as is often the case with a quest of any sort, rather by accident. Residence among the American Indians of New Mexico, of Arizona, and of Nevada, and a slight knowledge of the natives of certain of the Pacific Islands--particularly those of Hawaii and of the Philippines--had led me to give up the idea of finding a genuine matriarchate even among primitive peoples. Too often I had found that where those who had “passed by” had spoken of a “matriarchal state” as existing, investigation had proved one that was only matrilineal or matrilocal.

It was in Formosa that I found these matriarchal people; Formosa, that little-known island in the typhoon-infested South China Sea, so well called by its early Portuguese discoverers--as its name implies--“the beautiful.” Indeed, it was the beauty of Formosa that first attracted me. I shall never forget the first glimpse that I caught of the island as I passed it, going by steamer from Manila[2] to Nagasaki. There it lay, in the light of the tropical sunrise, glowing and shimmering like a great emerald, with an apparent vividness of green that I had never seen before, even in the tropics. During the greater part of the day it remained in sight, apparently floating slowly past--an emerald on a turquoise bed. For on that day there was no typhoon or threat of typhoon, and on such a day the China Sea can, with its wonderful blueness and calm, make amends for the many other days on which, like the raging dragon that the Chinese peasants believe it veritably to be, of murky green, spitting white foam, deck-high, it threatens--and often brings--death and destruction to those who venture upon it. Nor was the emerald island a jewel in the rough. The Chinese call it Taiwan, a name which means, in the characters of their language, Terrace Beach, [Illustration].[3] This name the Japanese--the present masters of the Island--have adopted; and it is not an inappropriate one. Nor do the terraces refer to those small, low-lying ones of the rice-paddies which for some centuries Chinese coolies have cultivated on the fertile east coast of the island; but rather to those bolder mountain terraces, carved by the hand of Nature, and covered with that wild verdure which only tropical rains, followed by tropical sunshine, can produce.[4] These terraces--gleaming brilliant green, and seeming to refract the sunlight of that April day, as we sailed across the Tropic of Cancer, which cuts Formosa through the middle--were curiously like the facets of a great emerald, polished and carefully cut.

The glimpse which I caught that day of the shining island with its vivid colouring, and seemingly wondrously carved surface, remained with me as a pleasant memory during the several years that I spent in Japan.

Although Formosa is now a Japanese colony--has been since 1895--one is able to get curiously little definite information in Japan regarding the island. From the Japanese themselves one hears only of the marvellous energy and skill of the Japanese in exploiting the resources of the island--sugar, camphor, tea--and the manufacture of opium, a Government monopoly. From the English, Scottish, and Canadian missionaries stationed in Formosa, who sometimes spend their summers in Japan, one hears more of the exploiting, on the part of the Japanese, of the Chinese population of Formosa--a fact which later I found to be cruelly true.

Now and then, while I was in Japan, I heard vague rumours of head-hunting aboriginal tribes in the mountains of Formosa, but regarding these I could gain little exact information. The Japanese, when questioned about the aborigines, were either curiously uncommunicative, or else launched at once into panegyrics concerning the nobility of the Japanese authorities in Formosa in allowing dirty, head-hunting savages to live, especially as some of these dirty head-hunters had dared to rebel against the Japanese Government of the island. Of the manners and customs of the aborigines, however, the Japanese seemed wholly ignorant. Nor were the missionaries from Formosa much better informed, as far as the aborigines were concerned. Their mission work, they said, was confined to the Chinese population of the island, with now and then tactful attempts at the conversion of the Japanese. But as for the aboriginal tribes--yes, they believed there were such people in the mountains; one of their number, when going from one Chinese village to another in the interior of the island, had seen a queen or “heathen priestess” of the aborigines carried on the shoulders of her followers. More they did not know--yes, probably it was true that these savages cut off people’s heads whenever they had a chance. They were heathen--what could one expect?...

While failing to get much accurate information regarding the aborigines of Formosa, I managed, on the other hand, to get a good deal of misinformation. One book in particular, I remember, written obviously by one who had never been there, gave the impression that the whole island was inhabited by savages, with a “small sprinkling at the ports of Japanese, Chinese, English, and Filipinos.”

The most trustworthy information concerning Formosa--as I later learned, after I myself had been to the island--was that obtained through the columns of the _Japan Chronicle_, an English newspaper published in Kobe. This information was in connection, particularly, with “reprisal-measures” of extraordinary severity taken by the Japanese Government of Formosa against certain of the aboriginal tribes, some members of which had risen in revolt against the Japanese gendarmerie (_Aiyu-sen_) placed in authority over them. This curiously cruel strain in the Japanese character was at that time difficult for me to believe[5] (I had not then been in Korea, or in any of the other Japanese dependencies). But what was said of the Formosan aborigines aroused my interest to such an extent that I was anxious to study them at first-hand.

Circumstances, however, prevented my going to Formosa for some time. A “foreigner”--American or European--anywhere in the Japanese Empire is always more or less under surveillance; in the colonies--Formosa and Korea--more rather than less. Any attempt to go to Formosa to carry out independent investigation of the aborigines would, I knew, have been politely thwarted by the Japanese authorities. A “personally conducted tour” could, finances permitting, have easily been arranged. I would have been most politely received by the Japanese officials of the island, and escorted by them to those places which they wished me to see, and introduced to those people whom they wished me to meet. Such had been the experience of several “foreigners” who had gone to visit the island and “study its people.” To live for any length of time in Formosa one must satisfy the Japanese authorities that definite business demands one’s presence there. At that time I had no “definite business which demanded my presence” in Formosa. Nor had a “bradyaga”[6] like myself the capital to start a business in tea or sugar, which would have given a credible excuse for living in the island. Besides, a _woman_ tea-exporter!--the Japanese authorities would scarcely have been satisfied.

My desire to learn at first-hand something of the aborigines of Formosa remained, therefore, more or less an inchoate inclination on my part, and I turned my attention to other things. Then, curiously enough, as coincidences always seem curious when they affect ourselves, a few months later, when I was in Kyoto, studying Mahayana Buddhism,[7] came an offer from a Japanese official to go to Formosa as a teacher of English in the Japanese Government School in Taihoku, the capital of the island.[8]

I had taught English in Japan--both in Tokyo and Kagoshima[9]--and I knew that however Japanese people in different parts of the empire might vary in other respects, on one point, at least, they were singularly alike; that is, in their incapacity for the ready assimilation of a European tongue. This in rather curious contrast to their ability for imitation in other respects. No; teaching English to Japanese was no sinecure. But it opened for me the way to go to Formosa; it gave me an “excuse for being,” as far as existence on that island was concerned. Consequently I accepted the offer to teach in the school which had been built for the sons of Japanese officials in Formosa,[10] and in September 1916 I sailed from Kobe, Japan, for Keelung, the northernmost port of Formosa.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is but fair to add, however, that among tribes with whom the matrilocal custom exists, the position of the woman is apt to be better than among those that are patrilocal. This particularly as far as the treatment of the wife is concerned. The husband is regarded always more or less as a visitor--an “auslander”--among his wife’s people; one over whom the influence of his father-in-law and brothers-in-law has a chastening effect. In matrilocal tribes the real power lies usually in the hands of the father and the elder brother of the wife, who have absolute authority over her and over her children.

[2] Formosa is only 225 miles (approximately) north of Cape Engano, the northernmost point of the Philippine Islands, of which Manila is the capital.

[3] Some Chinese scholars maintain that Terrace Bay (i.e. a bay surrounded by terraces) is a more accurate translation than Terrace Beach.

[4] There is some difference of opinion as to the origin of the name. Shinji Ishii, the Japanese writer, suggests that the Chinese name, Taiwan, is a corruption of _Paiwan_, the name of one of the aboriginal tribes of the island. In this connection it must be remembered that the Japanese, generally speaking, are prone to deny to the Chinese capacity for poetic conception, or appreciation of beauty. I, however, who have lived among the Chinese, and know their genuine appreciation of the beautiful in nature, and their habit of fixing the poetic concept of a moment by crystallizing it in a word or phrase, think “Terrace Beach” or “Terrace Bay” the more probable meaning of _Taiwan_.

[5] I had gone to Japan under the glamour of the writings of Lafcadio Hearn.

[6] Vagabond--or wanderer--as nearly as that expressive Russian word “бродяга” can be translated into English.

[7] To be exact, I was, when in Kyoto, devoting my attention chiefly to the study of _Shin-shu_ (not to be confounded with Shinto)--one of the many sects into which Mahayana Buddhism is now divided, the sect associated with the two great Hongwanji temples of Kyoto--and comparing these teachings with those of _Zen-shu_, another sect of Mahayana Buddhism, which I had previously studied in a Zen monastery in Kamakura.

[8] As a teacher in this school I ranked as a “two-button” official (_sōninkan_) of the Japanese Government, and thus technically entitled to wear two buttons on the sleeve of my coat, and to carry a short sword with a white handle. The Director of the school, the Head Master and the heads of one or two departments and the other “foreign” teachers were also “two-button” officials. The majority of the teachers were “one-button” officials (_hanninkan_), entitled to wear only one button on the sleeve of their coats and to carry a black-handled sword. The “two-button” officials were “invited”--i.e. practically commanded--to attend official government banquets and similar functions, and to meet visiting princes and other notables from the “mother-country.” The “one-button” officials escaped these honours.

[9] The picturesque and interesting--because still untouristized--city in the extreme south of Japan, situated under the shadow of Sakurajima, the still active volcano, which early in 1914--the year that I was in Kagoshima--destroyed a portion of the city, and killed several hundred of its inhabitants.

[10] A school for the daughters of Japanese officials has also been established in Taihoku; but it is an interesting commentary upon the position of women in Japan, even at the present time, that while several “foreign” (English and American) teachers are engaged for the boys’ school, no “foreign” teacher is employed for the girls’ school. That would be “too expensive for a girls’ school,” the Japanese say. Also, while the curriculum of the two schools is--with the exception of English--practically the same, yet the boys’ school is called a Middle School (Chu Gakkō), because the boys are expected to go later to a Higher School, for the completion of their education; while the girls’ school is called a Higher School (Kōtō Gakkō) because the education of girls is supposed to be completed with the completion of the course in this school.