Part 2

Of course, I would not insinuate that cases of genuine conversion were not numerous and productive of moral regeneration, or that the creed of Christendom has failed to strike root among the simple and warm-hearted peasantry. But it is certain that among the educated classes it is now viewed with rationalistic indifference.

Mr. G. W. Aston, towards the close of his “History of Japanese Literature,” makes a very significant admission:

“The process of absorbing new ideas, which has mainly occupied the Japanese nation during the last thirty years, is incomplete in one very important particular. Although much in European thought which is inseparable from Christianity has been freely adopted by Japan, the Christian religion itself has made comparatively little progress. The writings of the Kamakura and two subsequent periods are penetrated with Buddhism, and those of the Yedo age with moral and religious ideas derived from China. Christianity has still to put its stamp on the literature of the Tōkyō period.”

Whether this apathy towards Christian teaching should be attributed, as some aver, to an incapacity for abstract speculation, or, as others assert, to the revolution which its adoption would entail in the position of women, need not be discussed at present. Let the following facts speak for themselves. The latest available statistics show that the number of converts is decreasing. Even within the ranks of Japanese Christianity is a strongly marked tendency to replace foreign by native teachers, and to nationalise that religion by robbing it of many dogmas which are elsewhere regarded as essential. The case of the Dōshisha, which has been of late years a burning question among Japanese and American Christians, is one with which all who take an interest in mission work should certainly be well acquainted, for it furnishes a striking illustration of the appropriative and, to our ideas, somewhat unscrupulous proclivities of Nipponean patriots. The Dōshisha is a Christian university founded at Kyōto in 1875 under the auspices of the American Board Mission. So liberal were the contributions of foreign believers to this very flourishing institution, that at last it came to include, besides a special theological department, a girls’ school, a science school, a hospital, and a nurses’ training school. Needless to say, the Presbyterian donors inserted a clause in the constitution to the effect that their form of faith should be perpetually and obligatorily taught. Religious schools, however, cannot claim the same privileges as civil schools from the Home Department, which, on the plea of neutrality, only grants to undenominational ones special concessions with regard to military conscription. Realising that this disability acted unfavourably on the number of pupils and retarded the expansion of their work, the governing body of the Dōshisha proceeded to increase the number of native subscribers, and with their connivance to dechristianise the college, in order to escape the disadvantage already mentioned. That is, the Christian instruction was made optional instead of obligatory, but the buildings and appliances, bought with American money, were of course retained. The Board, representing the original subscribers, protested against what they did not hesitate to characterise as a flagrant breach of faith: the governing body pleaded expediency, and were prepared to redefine Christianity in accordance with their own conceptions of an undeniably vague term. There the matter rests. It might seem unfair to lay stress on this matter, were it not that this action of the Dōshisha authorities is typical of the attitude of native educationalists at the present time to foreign teaching: it forms, in fact, part of the patriotic movement, which I desire to indicate without praise or blame, more especially as that movement is so little known outside Japan. Of course, there has been for years a very natural and proper tendency to replace foreign by native officials as soon as the latter seemed capable of discharging the functions primarily entrusted to the former. But this is very different from denying to foreigners the right of founding schools at their own risk--a right which they would enjoy as a matter of course in any but reactionary States. Such, however, is the policy urged on the Government by the Higher Educational Council (composed of professors in the chief schools and colleges), which on April 17, 1899, passed the following resolution:

“Foreigners who are not conversant with Japanese shall not be allowed to become teachers in other courses than those of foreign languages or special courses in special schools and of schools exclusively intended for foreigners. _Foreigners who are licensed as teachers in the above-mentioned capacities shall not be allowed to found schools other than those exclusively intended for foreigners._”

As the founder of a school should legally be a licensed teacher, the foregoing clauses practically prohibit foreigners from establishing schools for Japanese. Besides, there is a clause prohibiting religious education and ceremonies in privileged schools. In other words, the nationalists wish education to be not only in their own hands, but also entirely secular; and those who desire to introduce from abroad theological tenets may no longer do so, if the Government should follow this advice, except from the pulpit or as private individuals. Whether such a restriction be or be not in violation of existing treaties with foreign Powers, I cannot say.

Sufficient proof has perhaps been already adduced of anti-foreign feeling to convince an impartial reader that an Anglo-Saxon exile has some reason for feeling ill at ease in the tourists’ paradise. It might be added, however, that even the victim of patriotic manœuvres is hardly ever exposed to personal malevolence. The politest nation in the world would certainly not be guilty of any overt discourtesy. The accident of foreign birth may place you outside the pale of those secure and intimate relations which you might form with colleagues in other lands (the divergence of social and domestic habits by itself almost necessitates this), but, if the collision of financial interests should result in your ejection from a post of vantage, you cannot justly blame an individual, only those centripetal forces that give solidarity and cohesion to a race which remains, the more it changes, the more indissolubly the same. And though the patriot might think, he would never say to your face, “L’étranger, voilà l’ennemi.” On the contrary, if he had not the racial interest to consider, if he were not born in a maze of reciprocal duties which to us are inconceivable, so charming is his natural disposition that I am not at all sure that he would not, now and then, sacrifice himself to oblige an alien!

I have used the phrase “charming natural disposition” deliberately, though it may seem incongruous, or even incompatible with dislike of strangers. What traveller has not felt and described this charm? Will Adams in the beginning of the seventeenth century found “the people of this Iland good of nature, curteous aboue measure,” and Sir Rutherford Alcock in the middle of the nineteenth reports them “as kindly and well-disposed people as any in the world.” Has their nature, then, suffered any deterioration? Has contact with Europeans and Americans brought material gain at the cost of ethical loss? Many observers, both native and foreign, declare this to be the case: a little reflection will show that it cannot, for the present, be otherwise.

“Old Japan,” in the opinion of Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, “was quite as much in advance of the nineteenth century morally as she was behind materially. She had made morality instinctive.” This verdict is not yet of purely historic interest; it may be tested by all who care to travel beyond the radius of photographs and railways. In remote districts, where the innkeeper charges a minimum price, relying for profit on the generosity of his guest, whose present is acknowledged by the bestowal of a fan or an embroidered towel, even such fugitive relations rest on a benevolent rather than a wholly commercial basis. Patriarchal manners--contented submission, fidelity, courtesy--yield a rich return of domestic happiness. The struggle for life and for wealth is tempered by self-sacrificing customs and amenities. If the apprentice be willing to work for no other wage than his master’s approval and satisfaction through long probationary years, the master, on his side, will resign his charge into the hands of a younger generation before decrepitude has come to rob “honourable retirement” of its grace. If the young wife devote her summer to unquestioning service of her husband and his parents, she has her reward when her sons’ wives repay her with the same filial homage. Similar ties, imposing restraint on egoism and sanctified by public esteem, have had their full share in developing those amiable qualities which every observer has acknowledged. But the break-up of feudal society cannot fail to react on the manners which reflected feudal discipline. The Western ideals of liberty, equality, and self-assertion, the decay of religious belief, the necessity of fighting on even terms in the great competitive _mêlée_ to the tune of “The devil take the hindmost, oh!” and, it must be added, the example set by the rest of the world, which does not practise altruism, whatever its representatives may preach, all these factors tend to harden and sharpen the modernised Japanese.

A curious sign of the independent spirit, nourished on new ideas and strangely at variance with the old, is the organised indiscipline of schoolboys. During the six months which the writer spent in the country two flagrant cases occurred of defiance of authority, by no means unusual, it would appear, in scholastic experience, if one might judge by the comments of the local Press. In one case the majority of the scholars absented themselves for a fortnight as a protest against the alleged incapacity of the teacher, and maltreated a more docile minority who endeavoured to resume their lessons. In another the upper forms refused to recognise the authority of a headmaster appointed by the Government, on the ground that his talents and attainments fell below the standard which they deemed desirable in the director of their studies. In consequence, the unfortunate nominee of the Minister of Education was completely boycotted; his class-room was deserted, his suggestions ignored; and, on the occasion of the annual prize-giving, he was publicly insulted, for, whereas the whole school rose and remained standing as a mark of respect during the speeches of distinguished visitors, when their unfortunate chief began his address they resumed their seats and engaged in loud conversation, after the manner of our own House of Commons when the suppression of an unwelcome orator is desired. The most surprising feature in both these instances was that a section of the Japanese Press, instead of regarding the incidents as deplorable, indeed, but as domestic matters, which it concerned only the governing body to regulate, made them the subject of a long polemic, sided with or against the malcontents, and, in short, exalted the revolting schoolboys into fellow-citizens “rightly struggling to be free.” The college Hampden does not shrink from his _rôle_, and is prepared in the interests of curiosity and “the higher education” to cross-examine a newly-appointed professor, insufficiently protected by a Harvard or Oxford reputation, on his knowledge of Shakespeare, his theological beliefs, his preference for “the open door” or the gradual partition of China. If this precocious independence conflict with our old-fashioned notions of modesty and reverence on the part of adolescence towards its seniors, it should make life more amusing for the professor, who, after all, is better off with inquisitive than with incurious pupils. I am confirmed in my supposition that the autonomous schoolboy is not at all abnormal by a schoolmaster of nearly ten years’ standing, who writes: “In the Occident the master expels the pupil. In Japan it happens quite as often that the pupil expels the master. Each public school is an earnest, spirited little republic.” One thing is certain. The taught are as eager to absorb knowledge as the teacher to impart it; idleness is rare; without extraordinary application but little progress can be made. For it should not be forgotten that four or five years must be devoted to the sole acquisition of a working stock of Chinese ideographs, the scholar’s needlessly complicated alphabet, before he attacks Western science, law, language, or medicine themselves supplementary to subjects of native growth. Demands so various can only be met by the most systematic precision, and in effect no country has more carefully organised popular education. To organise comes naturally to the Japanese, and this capacity explains the apparent contradiction of co-existent order and revolt. The revolt is always corporate, one organisation within another. Whether the disaffected body consist of waiters, or workmen, or schoolboys, it has to be treated as a collective unit. The objects pursued--higher wages, more liberty, more privileges--may bear the impress of democratic ambition, but the spirit in which they are fought for is that of feudal obedience to a common call.

It cannot be said that the Japanese Press has degenerated through contact with foreigners, since it is a plant, imported from abroad nearly thirty years ago, which has thriven and multiplied exceedingly on favourable soil. As might have been expected, no modern novelty is more popular than the newspaper in a land where gossip and laughter and criticism are as the breath of life to a sharp-witted, good-tempered race. More than a thousand newspapers--several illustrated, some wholly or partly in English--cater at very low prices to the public appetite. It is natural that the right to speak and print freely should be liable to abuse when first exercised. Nor could the wary group of reformers, whose task of nursing democratic institutions among hereditary partisans of a rigid caste system was no less delicate than difficult, be blamed for setting legal limits to editorial indiscretion. In India and in Egypt the British authorities are often compelled for reasons of State to quench the sacred torch of incendiary invective. But as public opinion grows better educated, it is less liable to be led astray by journalistic tirades. Moreover, the journalist soon acquires a hold, direct or indirect, on the Legislature, wherever Parliament and Press become interdependent. The Press laws of Japan have, in consequence, lost much of their severity, and the “prison-editor” (whose position corresponds to that of the _Sitz-Redaktör_ in Prussia) finds his fate of vicarious imprisonment, when the actual editor sins, grow daily less onerous. It was, indeed, urged as a reproach by opposition sheets against the Okuma-Itagaki Ministry of 1898 that five or six of the Ministers had been at some time or other inmates of his Imperial Majesty’s gaols; but the gravity of the reproach is much diminished by the explanation that in nearly every case incarceration had been inflicted for unguarded liberty of expression in the Press or on the platform. Political offences, all the world over, are merely political offences. For the Irish Nationalist Kilmainham is more sacred than Westminster. Such prisoners are no more than naughty children, locked in a dark room by a paternal Government.

But, in truth, it is not the political columns which have most influence on the circulation of Tōkyō journals. If the typical leading article seems to English taste wanting in force and directness, abounding in vague sonorities, that is a fault shared by European editors, who are bound to veil an oracle with traditional obscurity. This trait is, of course, intensified by the impersonal periphrases of the language. Where the director of the journal is most to blame is in allowing his organ to become the medium of worse than American personalities. The newspaper which enjoys the largest circulation among the middle and lower classes of the capital devotes much attention to maintaining the prestige of its _chronique scandaleuse_. The Prime Minister, the foreign merchant or professor, the Buddhist high-priest, will discover that his amours, embellished with corroborative detail and treated with more regard to artistic effect than the facts warrant, command the most flattering and embarrassing popularity. What would be thought of a London newspaper which should record so minutely the movements of a visiting prince as to chronicle the names of professional beauties visited by him, as well as the price paid for their transitory favours? The aggrieved hero or villain has no doubt legal remedy, should he choose to prosecute the offending reporter; but the remedy would be worse than the disease, since not only is it dilatory and expensive, but the protracted advertisement would tend to circulate rather than to kill the slander. Besides, in the eyes of an indulgent public gallantry, as our French neighbours call it, excites more amusement then reprobation. At any rate, libellous paragraphs, with their inevitable accompaniment of blackmail, are at present sufficiently numerous to detract from the high reputation deservedly enjoyed by more scrupulous journals such as the _Nihon_, the _Nichi Nichi_, and the _Jiji Shimpo_. The _feuilleton_ flourishes. When illustrated by woodcuts, representing a Japanese woman tied naked to a tree and assaulted by Russian sailors, it makes good fuel for chauvinistic flame; but such outrages on taste are rare, and in general the reader prefers adventurous romance, with a spice of unreality, in the vein of Jules Verne or the elder Dumas.

Proximity to the continent where manners count for less than dollars has, in the opinion of many, made the present generation less polite and more mercenary than its predecessors. One certainly misses the exquisite courtesy still in vogue in outlying districts, when one has occasion to remark the rudeness or familiarity of certain classes in or near Tōkyō. But this declining courtesy, which cannot be called general, is not to be attributed solely to ignorant dislike of strangers. As soon as the sensitive native discovers that ceremonious attention is apt to be mistaken for obsequiousness, his pride intervenes and his bearing becomes less affable. The example of ill-mannered tourists has, it is true, demoralised the service of certain hotels, where the visitor persists in regarding the attendant _musumé_ as a plaything, but the incivility of the rickshaw-man when his invariable attempt to overcharge is frustrated rests on no other basis than the presumption, not confined to one country, that since the traveller has arrived to spend money, he should be encouraged to spend it as freely as possible. Sometimes, too, an amusing reciprocal patronage is to be observed. If the tourist be inclined to regard the peasant as a living toy invented for his diversion, the peasant not infrequently will see in the tourist a helpless, rather childish creature, pleased by infantile things and unable to speak a word of Japanese. He therefore pities, protects, and fleeces him. None but the incapable rich, whom vanity or idleness compels to become dependent on inferiors, should dream of employing a professional guide. He probably is less well informed than “Murray”; he seeks on every pretext to prolong his services; he exacts a commission on every purchase made, both from his employer and the shopkeeper, for if the latter refuse he will conduct the customer elsewhere. Notwithstanding these peculiarities, he is perhaps worth his price to hurried visitors.

How far materialism has gone in replacing dutiolatry by worship of the golden calf, to what extent the old high ideals have ceased to affect the relations of the Japanese to one another--such a question is difficult, perhaps impossible, to answer satisfactorily. Mr. B. H. Chamberlain declares roundly that “patriotism is the only ideal left,” but on such a nice point it is better to let the native speak for himself.

From _The Orient_, a monthly magazine, Buddhistic in sympathy and of modern tendency, is quoted the following unequivocal indictment:

“Spiritually there is very undeniable decadence. Open ports, huge fleets of steamers, thousands of miles of rails, telephone and telegraph wires, a navy ranking at least seventh in the world’s list, a consolidated postal system, flourishing banks, and all else of like nature, are nothing more than signs of material progress. Like our allies, we have grown worldly wise, and have come to view the almighty dollar with a feeling akin to veneration. People point, and with justice, to the tremendous social revolution of the Restoration days; but where we have got rid of _daimyō_ and _shōmyō_, of _hatamoto_ and _samurai_, have we not plutocrats and bureaucrats as potent and unconscionable as the most tyrannical of the one-time feudal barons? The outcast pariahs--the _eta_--no longer exist in law or name; but they exist in fact. The operatives of the Ōsaka mills, the wretched human shambles of the prostitute quarters, the sick and suffering poor--are these not social pariahs and even worse? We miss the sternly martial virtue of the days of yore; the unbending dignity of the true, the real _Yamato-damashii_ (the spirit of Japanese chivalry).... Never were bribery and corruption more rife: the whole machinery of the State is suffering from this dry-rot; and even those who are called upon to set the country an example have their price. Nepotism is taking the place of clannish interdependence. One’s fortunes are easily made if one happens to be a ‘forty-second cousin’ of a favourite courtesan, a popular _geisha_, or a spoiled mistress.”