Chapter 40

THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN

[Footnote 1: "He was fond of saying that Princeton had never originated a new idea; but this meant no more than that Princeton was the advocate of historical Calvinism in opposition to the modified and provincial Calvinism of a later day."--Francis L. Patton, in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopædia, Article on Charles Hodge.]

[Footnote 2: We use Dr. James Legge's spelling, by whom these classics have been translated into English. See Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Müller.]

[Footnote 3: The Canon or Four Classics has a somewhat varied literary history of transmission, collection, and redaction, as well as of exposition, and of criticism, both "lower" and "higher." As arranged under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206-A.D. 23) it consisted of--I. The Commentary of Tso Kinming (a disciple who expounded Confucius's book, The Annals of State of Lu); II. The Commentary of Kuh-liang upon the same work of Confucius; III. The Old Text of the Book of History; IV. The Odes, collected by Mao Chang, to whom is ascribed the test of the Odes as handed down to the present day. The generally accepted arrangement is that made by the mediaeval schoolmen of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1341), Cheng Teh Sio and Chu Hi, in the twelfth century: I. The Great Learning; II. The Doctrine of the Mean; III. Conversations of Confucius; IV. The Sayings of Mencius.--C.R.M., pp. 306-309.]

[Footnote 4: See criticisms of Confucius as an author, in Legge's Religions of China, pp. 144, 145.]

[Footnote 5: Religions of China, by James Legge, p. 140.]

[Footnote 6: See Article China, by the author, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Chicago, 1881.]

[Footnote 7: This subject is critically discussed by Messrs. Satow, Chamberlain, and others in their writings on Shintō and Japanese history. On Japanese chronology, see Japanese Chronological Tables, by William Bramsen, Tōkiō, 1880, and Dr. David Murray's Japan (p. 95), in the series Story of the Nations, New York.]

[Footnote 8: The absurd claim made by some Shintōists that the Japanese possessed an original native alphabet called the Shingi (god-letters) before the entrance of the Chinese or Buddhist learning in Japan, is refuted by Aston, Japanese Grammar, p. 1; T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 77. Mr. Satow shows "their unmistakable identity with the Corean alphabet."]

[Footnote 9: For the life, work, and tombs of the Chinese scholars who fled to Japan on the fall of the Ming Dynasty, see M.E., p. 298; and Professor E.W. Clement's paper on The Tokugawa Princes of Mito, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., and his letters in The Japan Mail.]

[Footnote 10: "We have consecrated ourselves as the instruments of Heaven for punishing the wicked man,"--from the document submitted to the Yedo authorities, by the assassins of Ii Kamon no Kami, in Yedo, March 23, 1861, and signed by seventeen men of the band. For numerous other instances, see the voluminous literature of the Forty-seven Rōnins, and the Meiji political literature (1868-1893), political and historical documents, assassins' confessions, etc., contained in that thesarus of valuable documents, The Japan Mail; Kinsé Shiriaku, or Brief History of Japan, 1853-1869, Yokohama, 1873, and Nihon Guaishi, translated by Mr. Ernest Satow; Adams's History of Japan; T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p. 145; Life and Letters of Yokoi Héishiro; Life of Sir Harry Parkes, London, 1893, etc., for proof of this assertion.]

[Footnote 11: For proof of this, as to vocabulary, see Professor B.H. Chamberlain's Grammars and other philological works; Mr. J.H. Gubbins's Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words, with Introduction, three vols., Tōkiō 1892; and for change in structure, Rev. C. Munzinger, on The Psychology of the Japanese Language in the Transactions of the Gorman Asiatic Society of Japan. See also Mental Characteristics of the Japanese, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIX., pp. 17-37.]

[Footnote 12: See The Ghost of Sakura, in Mitfoid's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. II, p. 17.]

[Footnote 13: M.E., 277-280. See an able analysis of Japanese feudal society, by M.F. Dickins, Life of Sir Harry Parkes, pp. 8-13; M.E., pp. 277-283.]

[Footnote 14: This subject is discussed in Professor Chamberlain's works; Mr. Percival Lowell's The Soul of the Far East; Dr. M.L. Gordon's An American Missionary in Japan; Dr. J.H. De Forest's The Influence of Pantheism, in The Japan Evangelist, 1894.]

[Footnote 15: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., p. 96.]

[Footnote 16: The Forty Seven-Rōnins, Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I.; Chiushiugura, by F.V. Dickens; The Loyal Rōnins, by Edward Greey; Chiushiugura, translated by Enouyé.]

[Footnote 17: See Dr. J.H. De Forest's article in the Andover Review, May, June, 1893, p. 309. For details and instances, see the Japanese histories, novels, and dramas; M.E.; Rein's Japan; S. and H.; T.A.S.J., etc. Life of Sir Harry Parkes, p. 11 _et passim_.]

[Footnote 18: M.E. pp. 180-192, 419. For the origin and meaning of hara-kiri, see T.J., pp. 199-201; Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I., Appendix; Adams's History of Japan, story of Shimadzŭ.]

[Footnote 19: M.E., p. 133.]

[Footnote 20: For light upon the status of the Japanese family, see F.O. Adams's History of Japan, Vol. II., p. 384; Kinsé Shiriaku, p. 137; Naomi Tamura, The Japanese Bride, New York, 1893; E.H. House, Yoné Santo, A Child of Japan, Chicago, 1888; Japanese Girls and Women, by Miss A.M. Bacon, Boston, 1891; T.J., Article Woman, and in Index, Adoption, Children, etc.; M.E., 1st ed., p. 585; Marriage in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIII., p. 114; and papers in the German Asiatic Society of Japan.]

[Footnote 21: See Mr. F.W. Eastlake's papers in the Popular Science Monthly.]

[Footnote 22: See Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol. II, pp. 181-182. "It is to be feared, however, that this reform [of the Yoshiwara system], like many others in Japan, never got beyond paper, for Mr. Norman in his recent book, The Real Japan [Chap. XII.], describes a scarcely modified system in full vigor." See also Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 289-292.]

[Footnote 23: See Pung Kwang Yu's paper, read at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and The Chinese as Painted by Themselves, by Colonel Tcheng-Ki-Tong, New York and London, 1885. Dr. W.A.P. Martin's scholarly book, The Chinese, New York, 1881, in the chapter Remarks on the Ethical Philosophy of the Chinese, gives in English and Chinese a Chart of Chinese Ethics in which the whole scheme of philosophy, ethics, and self-culture is set forth.]

[Footnote 24: See an exceedingly clear, able, and accurate article on The Ethics of Confucius as Seen in Japan, by the veteran scholar, Rev. J.H. De Forest, The Andover Review, May, June, 1893. He is the authority for the statements concerning non-attendance (in Old Japan) of the husband at the wife's, and older brother at younger brother's funeral.]

[Footnote 25: A Japanese translation of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, in a Tōkiō morning newspaper "met with instant and universal approval," showing that Douglas Jerrold's world-famous character has her counterpart in Japan, where, as a Japanese proverb declares, "the tongue three inches long can kill a man six feet high." Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. E.H. House, in various writings, have idealized the admirable traits of the Japanese woman. See also Mr. Lafcadio Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Boston, 1894; and papers (The Eternal Feminine, etc.), in the Atlantic Monthly.]

[Footnote 26: Summary of the Japanese Penal Codes, T.A.S.J., Vol. V.,