Part 613

"To the eye of the critical investigator, Japanese history, properly so-called, opens only in the latter part of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century after Christ, when the gradual spread of Chinese culture, filtering in through Korea, had sufficiently dispelled the gloom of original barbarism to allow of the keeping of records. The whole question of the credibility of the early history of Japan has been carefully gone into during the last ten years by Aston and others, with the result that the first date pronounced trustworthy is A. D. 461, and it is discovered that even the annals of the 6th century are to be received with caution. We have ourselves no doubt of the justice of this negative criticism, and can only stand in amazement at the simplicity of most European writers, who have accepted without sifting them the uncritical statements of the Japanese annalists. … Japanese art and literature contain frequent allusions to the early history (so-called) of the country … as preserved in the works entitled Kojiki and Nihongi, both dating from the 8th century after Christ. … We include the mythology under the same heading, for the reason that it is absolutely impossible to separate the two. Why, indeed, attempt to do so, where both are equally fabulous? … Arrived at A. D. 600, we stand on terra firma. … About that time occurred the greatest event of Japanese history, the conversion of the nation to Buddhism (approximately A. D. 552-621). So far as can be gathered from the accounts of the early Chinese travellers, Chinese civilisation had slowly—very slowly—been gaining ground in the archipelago ever since the 3rd century after Christ. But when the Buddhist missionaries crossed the water, all Chinese institutions followed them and came in with a rush. Mathematical instruments and calendars were introduced; books began to be written (the earliest that has survived, and indeed nearly the earliest of all, is the already mentioned Kojiki, dating from A. D. 712); the custom of abdicating the throne in order to spend old age in prayer was adopted—a custom which, more than anything else, led to the effacement of the Mikado's authority during the Middle Ages. Sweeping changes in political arrangements began to be made in the year 645, and before the end of the 8th century, the government had been entirely remodelled on the Chinese centralised bureaucratic plan, with a regular system of ministers responsible to the sovereign, who, as 'Son of Heaven,' was theoretically absolute. In practice this absolutism lasted but a short time, because the entourage and mode of life of the Mikados were not such as to make of them able rulers. They passed their time surrounded only by women and priests, oscillating between indolence and debauchery, between poetastering and gorgeous temple services. This was the brilliant age of Japanese classical literature, which lived and moved and had its being in the atmosphere of an effeminate court. The Fujiwara family engrossed the power of the state during this early epoch (A. D. 670-1050). While their sons held all the great posts of government, the daughters were married to puppet emperors. The next change resulted from the impatience of the always manly and warlike Japanese gentry at the sight of this sort of petticoat government. {1874} The great clans of Taira and Minamoto arose, and struggled for and alternately held the reins of power during the second half of the 11th and the whole of the 12th century. … By the final overthrow of the Taira family at the sea fight of Dan-no-Ura in A. D. 1185, Yoritomo, the chief of the Minamotos, rose to supreme power, and obtained from the Court at Kyoto the title of Shogun [converted by western tongues into Tycoon], literally 'Generalissimo,' which had till then been applied in its proper meaning to those generals who were sent from time to time to subdue the Ainos or rebellious provincials, but which thenceforth took to itself a special sense, somewhat as the word Imperator (also meaning originally 'general') did in Rome. The coincidence is striking. So is the contrast. For, as Imperial Rome never ceased to be theoretically a republic, Japan contrariwise, though practically and indeed avowedly ruled by the Shoguns from A. D. 1190 to 1867, always retained the Mikado as theoretical head of the state, descendant of the Sun-Goddess, fountain of all honour. There never were two emperors, acknowledged as such, one spiritual and one secular, as has been so often asserted by European writers. There never was but one emperor—an emperor powerless it is true, seen only by the women who attended him, often a mere infant in arms, who was discarded on reaching adolescence for another infant in arms. Still, he was the theoretical head of the state, whose authority was merely delegated to the Shogun as, so to say, Mayor of the Palace. By a curious parallelism of destiny, the Shogunate itself more than once showed signs of fading away from substance into shadow. Yoritomo's descendants did not prove worthy of him, and for more than a century (A. D. 1205-1333) the real authority was wielded by the so-called 'Regents' of the Hojo family. … Their rule was made memorable by the repulse of the Mongol fleet sent by Kublai Khan with the purpose of adding Japan to his gigantic dominions. This was at the end of the 13th century, since which time Japan has never been attacked from without. During the 14th century, even the dowager-like calm of the Court of Kyoto was broken by internecine strife. Two branches of the Imperial house, supported each by different feudal chiefs, disputed the crown. One was called the Hokucho, or 'Northern Court,' the other the Nancho, or 'Southern Court.' After lasting some sixty years, this contest terminated in A. D. 1392 by the triumph of the Northern dynasty, whose cause the powerful Ashikaga family had espoused. From 1338 to 1565, the Ashikagas ruled Japan as Shoguns. … Meanwhile Japan had been discovered by the Portuguese (A. D. 1542); and the imprudent conduct of the Portuguese and Spanish friars (bateren, as they were called—a corruption of the word padre) made of the Christian religion an additional source of discord. Japan fell into utter anarchy. Each baron in his fastness was a law unto himself. Then, in the latter half of the 16th century, there arose successively three great men—Ota Nobunaga, the Taiko Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. The first of these conceived the idea of centralising all the authority of the state in a single person; the second, Hideyoshi, who has been called the Napoleon of Japan, actually put the idea into practice, and joined the conquest of Korea (A. D. 1592-1598) to his domestic triumphs. Death overtook him in 1598, while he was revolving no less a scheme than the conquest of China. Ieyasu, setting Hideyoshi's youthful son aside, stepped into the vacant place. An able general, unsurpassed as a diplomat and administrator, he first quelled all the turbulent barons, then bestowed a considerable portion of their lands on his own kinsmen and dependents, and either broke or balanced, by a judicious distribution of other fiefs over different provinces of the Empire, the might of those greater feudal lords, such as Satsuma and Choshu, whom it was impossible to put altogether out of the way. The Court of Kyoto was treated by him respectfully, and investiture as Shogun for himself and his heirs duly obtained from the Mikado. In order further to break the might of the daimyos, Ieyasu compelled them to live at Yedo, which he had chosen for his capital in 1590, during six months of the year, and to leave their wives and families there as hostages during the other half. What Ieyasu sketched out, the third Shogun of his line, Iemitsu, perfected. From that time forward, 'Old Japan,' as we know it from the Dutch accounts, from art, from the stage, was crystallised for two hundred and fifty years. … Unchangeable to the outward eye of contemporaries, Japan had not passed a hundred years under the Tokugawa régime before the seeds of the disease which finally killed that regime were sown. Strangely enough, the instrument of destruction was historical research. Ieyasu himself had been a great patron of literature. His grandson, the second Prince of Mito, inherited his taste. Under the auspices of this Japanese Maecenas, a school of literati arose to whom the antiquities of their country were all in all—Japanese poetry and romance as against the Chinese Classics; the native religion, Shinto, as against the foreign religion, Buddhism; hence, by an inevitable extension, the ancient legitimate dynasty of the Mikados, as against the upstart Shoguns. … When Commodore Perry came with his big guns (A. D. 1853-4), he found a government already tottering to its fall, many who cared little for the Mikado's abstract rights, caring a great deal for the chance of aggrandising their own families at the Shogun's expense. The Shogun yielded to the demands of Perry and of the representatives of the other foreign powers—England, France, Russia—who followed in Perry's train, and consented to open Yokohama, Hakodate, and certain other ports to foreign trade and residence (1857-9). He even sent embassies to the United States and to Europe in 1860 and 1861. The knowledge of the outer world possessed by the Court of Yedo, though not extensive, was sufficient to assure the Shogun and his advisers that it was vain to refuse what the Western powers claimed. The Court of Kyoto had had no means of acquiring even this modicum of worldly wisdom. According to its view, Japan, 'the land of the gods,' should never be polluted by outsiders, the ports should be closed again, and the 'barbarians' expelled at any hazard. What specially tended to complicate matters at this crisis was the independent action of certain daimyos. One of them, the Prince of Choshu, acting, as is believed, under secret instructions from the Court of Kyoto, fired on ships belonging to Great Britain, France, Holland, and the United States—this, too, at the very moment (1863) when the Shogun's government … was doing its utmost to effect by diplomacy the departure of the foreigners whom it had been driven to admit a few years before. {1875} The consequence of this act was what is called 'the Shimonoseki Affair,' namely, the bombardment of Shimonoseki, Choshu's chief sea-port, by the combined fleets of the powers that had been insulted, and the exaction of an indemnity of $3,000,000. Though doubtless no feather, this broke the Shogunate's back. The Shogun Iemochi attempted to punish Choshu for the humiliation which he had brought on Japan, but failed, was himself defeated by the latter's troops, and died. Hitotsubashi, the last of his line, succeeded him. But the Court of Kyoto, prompted by the great daimyos of Choshu and Satsuma, suddenly decided on the abolition of the Shogunate. The Shogun submitted to the decree, and those of his followers who did not were routed—first at Fushimi near Kyoto (17th January, 1868), then at Ueno in Yedo (4th July, 1868), then in Aizu (6th November, 1868), and lastly at Hakodate (27th June, 1869), where some of them had endeavoured to set up an independent republic. The government of the country was reorganised during 1867-8, nominally on the basis of a pure absolutism, with the Mikado as sole wielder of all authority both legislative and executive. Thus the literary party had triumphed. All their dreams were realised. They were henceforth to have Japan for the Japanese. … From this dream they were soon roughly wakened. The shrewd clansmen of Satsuma find Choshu, who had humoured the ignorance of the Court and the fads of the scholars only as long as their common enemy, the Shogunate, remained in existence, now turned round, and declared in favour, not merely of foreign intercourse, but of the Europeanisation of their own country. History has never witnessed a more sudden 'volte-face.' History has never witnessed a wiser one."

_B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, pages 143-160._

ALSO IN: _F. O. Adams, History of Japan._

_Sir E. J. Reed, Japan, volume 1, chapters 2-16_.

_W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, book 1._

_R. Hildreth, Japan, as it was and is._

JAPAN: A. D. 1549-1686. Jesuit Missions. The Century of Christianity. Its introduction and extirpation

Francis Xavier, "the Apostle of the Indies, was both the leader and director of a widely spread missionary movement, conducted by a rapidly increasing staff, not only of Jesuits, but also of priests and missionaries of other orders, as well as of native preachers and catechists. Xavier reserved for himself the arduous task of travelling to regions as yet unvisited by any preachers of Christianity; and his bold and impatient imagination was carried away by the idea of bearing the Cross to the countries of the farthest East. The islands of Japan, already known to Europe through the travels of Marco Polo, had been reached by the Portuguese only eight years before, namely, in 1541, and Xavier, while at Malacca, had conversed with navigators and traders who had visited that remote coast. A Japanese, named Angero (Hansiro), pursued for homicide, had fled to Malacca in a Portuguese ship. He professed a real or feigned desire to be baptized, and was presented to Xavier at Malacca, who sent him to Goa. There he learned Portuguese quickly, and was baptized under the name of Paul of the Holy Faith. … Having carefully arranged the affairs of the Seminary of the Holy Faith at Goa and the entire machinery of the mission, Francis Xavier took ship for Malacca on the 14th April, 1549. On the 24th of June he sailed for Japan, along with Angero and his two companions, in a Chinese junk belonging to a famous pirate, an ally of the Portuguese, who left in their hands hostages for the safety of the apostle on the voyage. After a dangerous voyage they reached Kagosima, the native town of Angero, under whose auspices Xavier was well received by the governor, magistrates, and other distinguished people. The apostle was unable to commence his mission at once, though, according to his biographers, he possessed the gift of tongues. 'We are here,' he writes, 'like so many statues. They speak to us, and make signs to us, and we remain mute. We have again become children, and all our present occupation is to learn the elements of the Japanese grammar.' His first impressions of Japan were very favourable. … Xavier left Japan on the 20th November, 1551, after a stay of two years and four months. In his controversies with the Japanese, Xavier had been continually met with the objection—how could the Scripture history be true when it had escaped the notice of the learned men of China? It was Chinese sages who had taught philosophy and history to the Japanese, and Chinese missionaries who had converted them to Buddhism. To China, then, would he go to strike a blow at the root of that mighty superstition. Accordingly he sailed from Goa about the middle of April, 1552. … Being a prey to continual anxiety to reach the new scene of his labours, Xavier fell ill, apparently of remittent fever, and died on the 2nd of December, 1552. … The result of Xavier's labours was the formation of a mission which, from Goa as a centre, radiated over much of the coast of Asia from Ormuz to Japan. … The two missionaries, whom Xavier had left at Japan, were soon after joined by three others: and in 1556 they were visited by the Provincial of the Order in the Indies, Melchior Nunez, who paid much attention to the Japanese mission and selected for it the best missionaries, as Xavier had recommended. … The Jesuits attached themselves to the fortunes of the King of Bungo, a restless and ambitious prince, who in the end added four little kingdoms to his own, and thus became master of a large part of the island of Kiusiu. In his dominions Christianity made such progress that the number of converts began to be counted by thousands. … The missionaries perseveringly sought to spread their religion by preaching, public discussion, the circulation of controversial writings, the instruction of the youth, the casting out of devils, the performance of those mystery plays so common in that age, by the institution of 'confréries' like those of Avignon, and, above all, by the well-timed administration of alms. Nor need we be surprised to learn that their first converts were principally the blind, the infirm, and old men one foot in the grave. There are, however, many proofs in their letters that they were able both to attract proselytes of a better class and to inspire them with an enthusiasm which promised well for the growth of the mission. In those early days the example of Xavier was still fresh; and his immediate successors seem to have inherited his energetic and self-denying disposition, though none of them could equal the great mental and moral qualities of the Apostle of the Indies. They kept at the same time a watchful eye upon the political events that were going on around them, and soon began to bear a part in them. The hostility between them and the Bonzes became more and more bitter."

_The Hundred Years of Christianity in Japan (Quarterly Review, April, 1871)._

{1876}