CHAPTER XIX

JAPAN AND ASIA

When I completed the final section of my book "Japan: Real and Imaginary," last year, and sent it to the publisher, I was not a little worried lest the movement of events in the Far East proceed so rapidly that the cart upon which I was riding slip from under me and leave me to rejoin the earth as best I could. So fast did things run that I thought surely there would be a revolution in Japan, or at least universal manhood suffrage, and that without doubt Japan would withdraw from Shantung. I am afraid I shall have to confess that the wish was father to the thought. So far nothing has happened in that intricate island empire seriously to affect any of the generalizations in that book. Nor have any criticisms from my Japanese friends come forward so that I might now be able to alter my position in any way.

However, enough has happened to make it necessary for me to extend and enlarge upon some of the phases of the Japanese situation as they now obtain. In my former book I handled Japan as an integer, avoiding implications. Here I shall attempt to show how the Japanese phase of the problem of the Pacific affects the three important elements round the Pacific,--America, Australasia, and Asia. Under that head I shall have to begin where I left off in "Japan: Real and Imaginary," with the question of emperor-worship and its natural offspring, Pan-Asianism and the so-called Monroe Doctrine of Asia; with the ingrowing phases of it, democracy in Japan, and the Open Door without; with Japan's new mandates and what she is doing with them; with the fortification of the Bonin Islands and the Pescadores.

At the very outset, let me crystallize in one short paragraph the essence of the whole situation. We have in Japan now a heterogeneous nation whose ideals are essentially those of imperialism, the political grip on the people being based on the worship of the emperor. The outward consequence of this is that the entire nation is fairly united upon the questions that affect the nation as a whole, such as Pan-Asianism, the leadership of Asia. But if that were all, Japanese rulers would have things pretty much their own way. This strange consequence results, however,--that having been stimulated to feeling that a Japanese is the most superior person on earth, the populace, in this pride, is demanding greater recognition for themselves as individuals. Hence that which the military and naval parties in Japan win in their hold upon the people through increased pride of race, they lose in the enhanced difficulty which comes from a restive population. Added to which are the numerous alien elements that aggression has inherited,--a rebellious Korea and Formosa, a boycotting China, and a native element that sees itself being flaunted by world powers and unable to obtain recognition of racial equality.

It is Japan's misfortune that she is still unable to live down her reputation. With all her might she is trying to stand up to the world as a man, and not as a pretty boy such as she has been regarded heretofore. Hence, it is necessary, that after having paragraphed the make-up of Japan, I do the same with the attitude of the world toward Japan. Wherever I have gone I have been asked a certain type of question that seems to me to hold the mirror up to Japan. The questions are generally these: What business is it of ours, after all, what Japan does in Asia? Isn't it only the conceit of the white man that makes him regard himself as superior to the Japanese? Isn't it true that the Japanese haven't any room for their surplus population? Or, the more knowing, those who have read up on the subject--like the man who signed a contract with a publisher to produce four boys' books at once, one of which was on Shintoism in Japan--assume this attitude: "Let them adore their emperors; it's a charming little peculiarity." There is still a third group. It belongs to the adolescent class, to the age of boys who threaten to lick other boys with their little finger, or "I'll fight you with my right hand tied behind my back," and has been fed by the romancers who portrayed everything Japanese as petite and charming. The _Miles Gloriosus_, suffering from political second childhood, asserts: "America could wipe the floor with Japan with one hand, just as she could Ecuador." This statement was made by an Englishman with remarkably wide international experience.

Now, until Japan lives down this reputation she will be forced to make as big a showing of her might as is safe, and until then we shall doubtless have ample reason for shouting for an increased navy and an increased army. In other words, as long as we continue to publish the impression that Japan need not be regarded seriously, so long will Japan have to continue to convey the impression that she might become a menace. To deny that Japan is a disconcerting problem is to stick one's head in the sand. But Japan is no more of a menace to us than we are to her. Japan is not simply going to walk across the Pacific and slap us in the face. If any such catastrophe takes place over there, it will be a conflict. "A conflict supposes a violent collision, a meeting of force against force; the unpremeditated meeting of one or more persons in a violent or hostile manner" with another, according to Crabb. On the other hand, it is equally true that those who urge and stimulate war talk with Japan are playing into the hands of special interests that are too narrow in their thinking and too broad in their avarice, and make war inevitable.

There is only one solution, and that is the presentation of facts. But facts alone are sometimes worse than figures. They lie like a trooper. Hence we are in the habit of saying: It is an honest fact. Facts are the most irresponsible things in the world, and without the motives and the spirit that underlie every circumstantial thing in life, they are the source of all conflict and all sorrow. Therefore, let us consider the questions that appear to be typical enough to clarify the situation, but with the motives and spiritual factors included in the answer.

First of all, then, is it really any of our business what Japan does in Asia? I shall have to split this question in two. The "our" side of the matter will have to be answered in the succeeding chapter on America in this Pacific Triangle. Here I shall handle it by inverting it. Is it any of Japan's business what interest we take in Asia? This may sound like a pugnacious question, but it is asked with all due respect to Japan. It raises the question of the Open Door in China, of Pan-Asianism, of the misnamed Monroe Doctrine of Asia. We have come to a new stage in the history of the world. People with a developed sense of justice no longer admit that a man may declare himself monarch of all he surveys without consideration of the rights of the inhabitants of the "surveyed" areas. When, during the war, everything was being done to placate Japan, a certain "understanding" was reached between Secretary Lansing and Viscount Ishii. While declaring for the Open Door it acknowledged the precedence of propinquity over distance, of time, place, and relationship. That is, it admitted that Japan was nearer the continent of Asia geographically than was America. A very remarkable observation it was. Certainly had that not been put in black and white, "understanding" would never have been possible. But what was the result of that "understanding"? Japan immediately translated it into a "Monroe Doctrine of Asia." Here, then, was a fact. Japan most decidedly is nearer Asia than are we. Ergo, Japan has the right to set herself up as the god and little Father of China, to declare the Mikado Doctrine of Asia. But is there any parallel whatsoever? Not only no parallel, but an apparent contradiction in the use of the Monroe Doctrine from the American angle; for that pronouncement involved non-interference in European or foreign affairs. If we adhere strictly to the Monroe Doctrine we have no right to set any limitations for Japan. Our concern is only with the Americas. Even the amount of understanding involved in the Ishii-Lansing agreement is in violation of our doctrine of isolation. On the other hand, we virtually pledged ourselves to keep our own hands off South America, Hence, the Monroe Doctrine, if applied to Asia by Japan, would mean the denouncement of the Twenty-one Demands made on China in 1915, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Shantung and Siberia, the return of independence to Korea,--and then the demand on the part of Japan that all European powers abstain from further extension of their influence on the continent of Asia. If ever a Monroe Doctrine of Asia was really declared, it was in the principles of Hay in his Open-Door policy. If Japan should set herself up as the guardian of Asia in this wise, she would never raise the question of whether we have any business in Asia or not. It would not be necessary. And Japan would be able to enjoy the fruits of propinquity to her heart's content. Then Japan would truly be the sponsor for a doctrine that could be called the Mikado's Doctrine of Asia and its worth would recommend itself to the respect and admiration of the world. But this, of course, is a dream, and in the words of a worthy Japanese author who "deplored" in his book "the gross diplomatic blunder which Japan made in 1915 in her dealings with China" and the "atrocities perpetrated in the attempt to crush the Korean uprising": "Manifestly, the dawn of the millennium is still far away. We have to make the best of the world as it is."

Into these criticisms of Japan's foreign policies one could read the usual white man's conceit,--asking that a yellow man make such sacrifices as no white man has ever made. There is nothing further from my mind. There is only a groping down into the depths of Japanese practices to discover, if possible, a real basis for the justification of her Pan-Asiatic pretensions.

To me, Oriental civilization is something to conjure with.

There is in the Far East more art and beauty than there is in America. When Europe was so poor as to make the Grand Moguls laugh at the simple presents which Englishmen brought them, to remark with scorn and truth that nothing in Europe compared with the silks and gold and silver of the East, the white man was humble. He wandered all over the world in search of riches which were unknown to him except by hearsay. His dominions never extended over such vast spaces as seemed mere checker-boards to Oriental monarchs. But the white man had his ships, his latent genius, and these he has developed to where his realms now so far outstrip the realms of old as thought outstrips creation. With these the white man has secured for himself a place in the world which the brown and the yellow man now greatly envy. But the Asiatics have much to look back upon and be proud of.

How much of this splendor is Japan's? A great deal! But not as much as the splendor of China, nor as much as that of India. Japan is to the East what England is to Europe. Japan is building up her ships and her material arts to such an extent that she is destined to wield and does now partly wield the same influence in Asia that England wields in Europe. But is that to be her sole contribution? Is that to justify her place as leader of Asia? Let us see.

In Europe to-day there is no crowned head who really rules. The monarch, where he does exist, is the memorial symbol of the nation's past. But the basis of rule is the people. The extent to which democracy exists in fact is not for this chapter to discuss. The slogan of rulership is democracy. Even China calls itself a republic. Round the Pacific alone are three great republican or democratic countries--Australia, New Zealand, America--whose people are reaching for greater and greater independence in the working out of their own destinies.

But what have we in Japan? We have a monarchy with a "constitutional" form of government. The monarch is said to have held his power from the beginning of time. He is literally regarded as a descendant of the gods who created Japan,--which was then the world entire. The myth of his origin would not be very different from any other myth of the origins of rulers, were it not for the recent developments in the history of Japan. At the time of the restoration of the previous emperor to power, it was decided by the rebellious daimyo that the long-neglected mikado, he who for hundreds of years had had absolutely no say in the government of his lands, should be restored to power. That is to say, because there was no one daimyo who could himself take the leadership and become shogun, they determined to rule with the tenno as nominal leader, but themselves as the real rulers. Other than in the superstitious reverence of the ignorant masses for the symbol of the tenno--whose person they had never seen--that lowly illustrious one might just as well have been non-existent for all the say he had in his country's affairs. So far, the situation might not be different from that in England, but England's Parliament is in the control of the Commons, while Japan's Diet--both upper and lower houses--is at the mercy of the cabinet, which, though ostensibly responsible to the emperor, is actually in the control of the genro and the military and naval clans. The worship of the emperor, on the other hand, is made part of the political function, the better to cow the masses into reverential obedience to the wishes of the actual rulers.

The basis for this theocratical grip on the people is Shintoism. With the Restoration in 1868, Shintoism, that ancestor-worshiping cult, was revived as the spiritual core of the new empire; Buddhism was sent packing, and all the cunning of pseudo-historians was resorted to to bolster up this effete and primitive national ideal.

"Let them worship their old emperor," say some, largely those with a love of pageantry in their unconscious. And no one could raise an argument against this if that was where it ended. If it merely meant the binding together in a communal nationalism the thought and devotion of the people, it would be a desirable performance. But the natural result of an artificially stimulated nationalism based on a myth and a deception is that it becomes proselytic in its tendencies. It is not satisfied with its native influence, but begins to reach out. In other words, it takes upon itself the duty of making the entire world one, just as religion and democracy seek to convert the world. And Shintoism is a short step to Pan-Asianism. Pan-Asianism is the logical consequence of Shintoism.

What is Shintoism? In this connection, none is more authoritative than Basil Hall Chamberlain, Emeritus Professor of Japanese and Philology at the Imperial University of Tokyo, and author of numerous scientific works on Japan. In "The Invention of a New Religion" he says (page 6):

Agnostic Japan is teaching us at this very hour how religions are sometimes manufactured for a special end--to observe practical worldly purposes.

Mikado-worship and Japan-worship--for that is the new Japanese religion--is, of course, no spontaneously generated phenomenon. Every manufacture presupposes a material out of which it is made, every present a past on which it rests. But the twentieth-century Japanese religion of loyalty and patriotism is quite new, for in it pre-existing ideas have been sifted, altered, freshly compounded, turned to new uses, and have found a new center of gravity.... Shinto, a primitive nature cult, which had fallen into discredit, was taken out of its cupboard and dusted.

Thus Shintoism, a cult without any code of morals, in which nature was worshiped in primitive fashion, was made the basis of the national ideal. There is nothing in Shintoism that might with the greatest possible stretch of imagination become the ideal of any other nation in the world. However much Japan might assume the economic leadership of Asia, it would never be because she could obtain a following for her Shinotistic ideals. "Democracy" has become a rallying cry even to the Japanese, but there is nothing in Shintoism that might counteract that appeal.

"What about Bushido?" Japanese will ask. Regarding this, it is also well to read what Professor Chamberlain has to say:

As to Bushido, so modern a thing is it that neither Kaempfer, Siebold, Satow, nor Rein--all men knowing their Japan by heart--ever once allude to it in their voluminous writings. The cause of their silence is not far to seek: Bushido was unknown until a decade or two ago! _The very word appears in no dictionary, native or foreign, before the year 1900._ Chivalrous individuals of course existed in Japan, as in all countries at every period; but Bushido as an institution or a code of rules, has never existed. The accounts given of it have been fabricated out of whole cloth, chiefly for foreign consumption. An analysis of medieval Japanese history shows that the great feudal houses, so far from displaying an excessive idealism in the matter of fealty to one emperor, one lord, or one party, had evolved the eminently practical plan of letting different members take different sides, so that the family as a whole might come out as winner in any event, and thus avoid the confiscation of its lands. Cases, no doubt, occurred of devotion to losing causes--for example, to Mikados in disgrace; but they were less common than in the more romantic West.

And when it is further taken into consideration that Bushido, or the so-called code of the samurai, was the ideal of a special class, a class that held itself aloof from contact with the _heimin_, or common people, whom it at at all times treated with contempt, and cut down even for no other reason than that of trying the edge of a new sword, one sees how utterly unacceptable it would be to peoples of other races and nations asked to come to the support of its standards. And according to one Japanese spokesman in America, only by methods that "had the appearance of browbeating her to submission by brandishing the sword" was China brought to accept the infamous Twenty-one Demands.

I search my memory and experience earnestly trying to find a basis for Japan's leadership in Asia that is not materialistic, and I cannot find any. Energy and intellectual capacity Japan has. Her present leadership in practical affairs is a great credit to her. In time, when greater leisure will become the possession of her teeming millions, there is doubtless going to appear much more that is fine and valuable in the fabric of the race. For Japan has fire. Her people are an excitable, flaming people who may burst out in a spasmodic revulsion against their commercialization. But for the time being, her only right to a voice in the destinies of Asia is found in her industrial leadership of the East, but that is a leadership which is fraught with more menace to Japan than to the world.

Let us review hastily the results of this preëminence. From being one of the most admired nations in the world, Japan has suddenly become the object of almost universal suspicion. To a very great extent, commercial jealousy is playing its part in this change. But that is not all, by any means. There is as much enmity between British and American traders in the Far East as there is between Japanese and American, or any other two groups of nationals.

But the animosity toward Japan is deeper than that of mere trade. It lies at the bottom of much of the seeming equivocation of Japan's best foreign friends. I was talking recently to one of the leading members of the Japan Society in New York, and said of myself that I deplored being regarded as anti-Japanese in some quarters, because I was not. "But," spoke up this Japanophile, "the majority of the members of the Japan Society are anti-Japanese, or pro-Chinese, if you will." They are trying their best to defend Japan, it would seem, and to cement bad relations with good, but the result is that the ground of many sympathizers of Japan is constantly shifting, though perhaps unconsciously. It is due, I presume, to the disappointment of people in that, having regarded Japan as worthy of their sympathy and adoration, they are now finding that all is not as well as it might be.

Then there is that peculiar twist to Japanese psychology that somewhat unnerves the Westerner. This is not a language difficulty, though it is best illustrated by a linguistic example. A Canadian in Kobe told me that he felt a strange shifting in his own mentality as a result of the study of Japanese, something queer entered his thinking processes. This is of course absurd as a concrete argument, but it indicates that which I am striving to uncover in the Japanese mind and method which works upon the Western mind, and puzzles and perplexes the white man in his relations with the Japanese. And in the wider fields of Japanese life, it makes us tighten our muscles when we survey and weigh the expressions of the best Japanese minds, expressions by which they hope, earnestly no doubt, to better our relations with them.

Take, for instance, the growth of democracy. As I have said, when I left Japan it was with a sense of revolution impending. Agitation had got so far out of bonds that it seemed nothing but complete collapse of the Government could follow. The agitation has gone on, violent expressions are often used, democracy is hailed and Japanese "propagandists" abroad assert with a boldness that is inexplicable their faith in democracy and their hatred of militarism and bureaucracy. But democracy in Japan is virtually non-existent. Japan is to-day no nearer liberalism than Russia was in 1905. One dreads to make parallels, when one thinks how it was that Russia got rid of her czars, that the dreadful war in Europe alone made it possible for a change in the Russian Government. Is it going to take such a war to accomplish this in Japan? Some of the most ardent Japanese in America boldly answer, "Yes."

Again, China! Many Japanophiles will say that our love of China is based on our trade with her, and her own weakness to resist it, while at the same time pointing to our enormous trade with Japan as proof of friendship. That is false. True, that, compared with Japan, China is no "menace" to America. But though China is the root of our problem, there is something in the nature of the true Oriental that makes him charming, jovial, childlike and lovable. Japan is, of course, not truly Oriental. Japan is essentially Malay, mixed with some Oriental and a little Caucasian. But in the two and a half years of my residence in Japan I did not once come across a white person who had that same unexplainable admiration for the native that is the outstanding characteristic of white men in China. Be that as it may--and that is, after all, a personal matter--that which enters into the Sino-Japanese problem is the attitude of the Japanese to the Chinese. None was so ready to exalt the Japanese as were the foreigners after the Boxer uprising in 1900. Then the Japanese were hailed for their helpfulness and their dexterity. But the manner of Japanese in China to-day goes against the grain of people. They ask themselves constantly: For nearly seven years Japan has promised faithfully to withdraw from Shantung, and her promises are as earnestly being expressed to-day. Is it, then, so hard to remove troops? Not so hard to move them in, it seems.

Those of us who listen to Japanese promises are from Missouri. Japan in conjunction with the Allies sent troops to Siberia to "protect" Vladivostok. Each of the Allies were supposed to send seven thousand troops. Japan sent close to one hundred thousand. She has earnestly promised to withdraw them ever since. Why are they not withdrawn?

Then comes the hardest thing of all to reconcile with her promises,--Japan's actions in Korea. It is easy to sentimentalize over the fate of nations. Korea's independence is a slogan that doesn't mean much, though Korea claims four thousand years of civilized existence. An independent Korea doesn't offer very great promise, even if one is constrained to sympathize with her aspiration for independence. Korea might just as well be an integer of the Japanese Empire. She had ample time in which to expel foreign intriguers and denounce her own grafters, for the sake of independence, years ago. But what has that to do with Japanese atrocities in Korea? What has that to do with the action of Japanese merchants who, according to Japan's own envoy to Korea, Count Inouye, acted worse than conquerors. Count Inouye said:

All the Japanese are overbearing and rude in their dealings with the Koreans.... The Japanese are not only overbearing but violent in their attitude towards the Koreans. When there is the slightest misunderstanding, they do not hesitate to employ their fists. Indeed, it is not uncommon for them to pitch Koreans into the river, or to cut them down with swords. If merchants commit these acts of violence, the conduct of those who are not merchants may well be imagined. They say: "We have made you an independent nation, we have saved you from the Tonghaks, whoever dares to reject our advice or oppose our actions is an ungrateful traitor." Even military coolies use language like that towards the Koreans.[1]

[1] In _Nichi, Nichi Shimnun_, quoted by Professor Longford in _The Story of Korea_, pp. 137-338.

The atrocities in Korea committed by the Japanese in the uprising of 1919 would parallel the most exaggerated reports of what happened to Belgium. Yet America's treaty with the Kingdom of Korea, ignored when Japan annexed the empire in 1910, has never been abrogated. Where is Bushido in Japan, that it does not rise in indignation at these atrocities? It has done so, but so faintly that it might just as well have saved itself the effort. Apology after apology, but atrocity following each apology with the same inexorable ruthlessness of fate. Likewise, the massacres in Nikolajevks, and Chien-tao are still unanswered. They require a public apology of some sort.

If I am charged with deliberately selecting things derogatory to Japan, I can only say that nothing, in my mind, that Japan may have done for the good of Korea and of the world, none of the virtues which Japan possesses can ever counterbalance these crimes. Yet intelligent Japanese write:

Fortunately, a change of heart has come to the Mikado's Government ... there will be established ... a School Council to discuss matters relating to education. [No mention is made of the up-rooting of the native language.] The step may be slow, but the goal is sure. Korea's union with Japan was consummated after the bitter experience of two sanguinary wars and _the mature deliberation of the best minds of the two peoples_.

The italics are mine. Who were these minds? No mention is made of the assassination of the Korean Queen by Japanese, later "exonerated." In other words, now that the lion has eaten the lamb he is going to tell the lamb the best way in which he can be digested, for they are "discussing matters" to their mutual advantage.

One is inclined to become bitter in the rehearsal of such facts, the feeling being induced by the evasive apologies of rhetoricians. But these outstanding facts must be faced if any true judgment can be formed of Japan's position in the Far East: If it is her aim merely to dominate in Asia, then Japan has set out to do it masterfully. But if the leadership of the yellow race is her aim, if Pan-Asianism means the uplifting of all Oriental races now under the heel of the white race, then Japan has chosen the most unfortunate line of action. She is running an obstacle race in which the silken garments of Bushido are likely to suffer considerable wear and tear. Credit Japan deserves for her administrative ability. Certain it is that no country in the Orient to-day has the same capacity to rule that Japan has. In international affairs, Japan has proved herself a match for the shrewdest diplomats of the Western world. It is not to be marveled at that the yellow races should be willing to yield her her position and her prestige. Thousands of Chinese who could not afford a Western education are now being educated in the universities of Japan; many Indians are doing likewise. In the simple matter of road-building, Japan has done what few Oriental countries seem to have the capacity to do. It is natural that the Orient should look to Japan for leadership in government and industry, in direction and help. But is Japan giving it?

The experiences of Tagore in Japan are not reassuring. He turned from Japan as from a gross imitator of the West from which he had escaped. He expressed keen disappointment at what he saw in modern Japan. In the "New York Times," recently, there was an article by a Chinese called "The Uncivilized United States," the thesis of the writer being that the Americans lacked the gentlemanliness of the English. The Chinese was obviously a great admirer of the Japanese and repeated over and over again that the Tokugawas were great rulers because they advocated the rule by "tenderness of heart"; but he, too, despaired of the modern Japan, of its great industries and little heart.

That, of course, has been the oft-repeated criticism of America from older countries, and need not discourage Japan. But Japan is making that greater error of believing that a world which has won civil liberty and enlightenment after so many centuries of strife, has builded for the masses at least a semblance of economic freedom and democracy, is going to yield all this blithely to an antiquated ideal of Oriental imperialism that has not even the virtues of Oriental mysticism to recommend it.