Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic Part 1

Evolution Of The j.a.panese, Social And Psychic.

by Sidney L. Gulick.

PREFACE

The present work is an attempt to interpret the characteristics of modern j.a.pan in the light of social science. It also seeks to throw some light on the vexed question as to the real character of so-called race-nature, and the processes by which that nature is transformed. If the principles of social science here set forth are correct, they apply as well to China and India as to j.a.pan, and thus will bear directly on the entire problem of Occidental and Oriental social intercourse and mutual influence.

The core of this work consists of addresses to American and English audiences delivered by the writer during his recent furlough. Since returning to j.a.pan, he has been able to give but fragments of time to the completion of the outlines then sketched, and though he would gladly reserve the ma.n.u.script for further elaboration, he yields to the urgency of friends who deem it wise that he delay no longer in laying his thought before the wider public.

To j.a.panese readers the writer wishes to say that although he has not hesitated to make statements painful to a lover of j.a.pan, he has not done it to condemn or needlessly to criticise, but simply to make plain what seem to him to be the facts. If he has erred in his facts or if his interpretations reflect unjustly on the history or spirit of j.a.pan, no one will be more glad than he for corrections. Let the j.a.panese be a.s.sured that his ruling motive, both in writing about j.a.pan and in spending his life in this land, is profound love for the j.a.panese people. The term "native" has been freely used because it is the only natural correlative for "foreign." It may be well to say that neither the one nor the other has any derogatory implication, although anti-foreign natives, and anti-native foreigners, sometimes so use them.

The indebtedness of the writer is too great to be acknowledged in detail. But whenever he has been conscious of drawing directly from any author for ideas or suggestions, effort has been made to indicate the source.

Since the preparation of the larger part of this work several important contributions to the literature on j.a.pan have appeared which would have been of help to the writer, could he have referred to them during the progress of his undertaking. Rev. J.C.C. Newton's "j.a.pan: Country, Court, and People"; Rev. Otis Cary's "j.a.pan and Its Regeneration"; and Prof. J. Nitobe's "Bus.h.i.+do: The Soul of j.a.pan,"

call for special mention. All are excellent works, interesting, condensed, informative, and well-balanced. Had the last named come to hand much earlier it would have received frequent reference and quotation in the body of this volume, despite the fact that it sets forth an ideal rather than the actual state of Old j.a.pan.

Special acknowledgment should be made of the help rendered by my brothers, Galen M. Fisher and Edward L. Gulick, and by my sister, Mrs.

F.F. Jewett, in reading and revising the ma.n.u.script. Acknowledgment should also be made of the invaluable criticisms and suggestions in regard to the general theory of social evolution advocated in these pages made by my uncle, Rev. John T. Gulick, well known to the scientific world for his contributions to the theory as well as to the facts of biological evolution.

S.L.G.

MATSUYAMA, j.a.pAN.

INTRODUCTION

The tragedy enacted in China during the closing year of the nineteenth century marks an epoch in the history of China and of the world. Two world-views, two types of civilization met in deadly conflict, and the inherent weakness of isolated, belated, superst.i.tious and corrupt paganism was revealed. Moreover, during this, China's crisis, j.a.pan for the first time stepped out upon the world's stage of political and military activity. She was recognized as a civilized nation, worthy to share with the great nations of the earth the responsibility of ruling the lawless and backward races.

The correctness of any interpretation as to the significance of this conflict between the opposing civilizations turns, ultimately, on the question as to what is the real nature of man and of society. If it be true, as maintained by Prof. Le Bon and his school, that the mental and moral character of a people is as fixed as its physiological characteristics, then the conflict in China is at bottom a conflict of races, not of civilizations.

The inadequacy of the physiological theory of national character may be seen almost at a glance by a look at j.a.pan. Were an Oriental necessarily and unchangeably Oriental, it would have been impossible for j.a.pan to have come into such close and sympathetic touch with the West.

The conflict of the East with the West, however, is not an inherent and unending conflict, because it is not racial, but civilizational.

It is a conflict of world-views and systems of thought and life. It is a conflict of heathen and Christian civilizations. And the conflict will come to an end as soon as, and in proportion as, China awakes from her blindness and begins to build her national temple on the bedrock of universal truth and righteousness. The conflict is practically over in j.a.pan because she has done this. In loyally accepting science, popular education, and the rights of every individual to equal protection by the government, j.a.pan has accepted the fundamental conceptions of civilization held in the West, and has thus become an integral part of Christendom, a fact of world-wide significance. It proves that the most important differences now separating the great races of men are civilizational, not physiological. It also proves that European, American, and Oriental peoples may be possessed by the same great ideals of life and principles of action, enabling them to co-operate as nations in great movements to their mutual advantage.

While even we of the West may be long in learning the full significance of what has been and still is taking place in j.a.pan and more conspicuously just now, because more tragically, in China, one thing is clear: steam and electricity have abolished forever the old isolation of the nations.

Separated branches of the human race that for thousands of years have been undergoing divergent evolution, producing radically different languages, customs, civilizations, systems of thought and world-views, and have resulted even in marked physiological and psychological differences, are now being brought into close contact and inevitable conflict. But at bottom it is a conflict of ideas, not of races. The age of isolation and divergent evolution is pa.s.sing away, and that of international a.s.sociation and convergent social evolution has begun.

Those races and nations that refuse to recognize the new social order, and oppose the cosmic process and its forces, will surely be pushed to the wall and cease to exist as independent nations, just as, in ancient times, the tribes that refused to unite with neighboring tribes were finally subjugated by those that did so unite.

Universal economic, political, intellectual, moral, and religious intercourse is the characteristic of the new aeon on which we are entering. What are to be the final consequences of this wide intercourse? Can a people change its character? Can a nation fully possessed by one type of civilization reject it, and adopt one radically different? Do races have "souls" which are fixed and incapable of radical transformations? What has taken place in j.a.pan, a profound, or only a superficial change in psychical character? Are the destinies of the Oriental races already unalterably determined?

The answers to these questions have already been suggested in the preceding paragraphs, in regard to what has already taken place in j.a.pan. But we may add that that answer really turns on our conception as to the nature of the characteristics separating the East from the West. In proportion as national character is reckoned to be biological, will it be considered fixed and the national destiny predetermined. In proportion as it is reckoned to be sociological, will it be considered alterable and the national destiny subject to new social forces. Now that the intercourse of widely different races has begun on a scale never before witnessed, it is highly important for us to know its probable consequences. For this we need to gain a clear idea of the nature both of the individual man and of society, of the relation of the social order to individual and to race character, and of the law regulating and the forces producing social evolution.

Only thus can we forecast the probable course and consequences of the free social intercourse of widely divergent races.

It is the belief of the writer that few countries afford so clear an ill.u.s.tration of the principles involved in social evolution as j.a.pan.

Her development has been so rapid and so recent that some principles have become manifest that otherwise might easily have escaped notice.

The importance of understanding j.a.pan, because of the light her recent transformations throw on the subject of social evolution and of national character and also because of the conspicuous role to which she is destined as the natural leader of the Oriental races in their adoption of Occidental modes of life and thought, justifies a careful study of j.a.panese character. He who really understands j.a.pan, has gained the magic key for unlocking the social mysteries of China and the entire East. But the j.a.panese people, with their inst.i.tutions and their various characteristics, merit careful study also for their own sakes. For the j.a.panese const.i.tute an exceedingly interesting and even a unique branch of the human race. j.a.pan is neither a purgatory, as some would have it, nor a paradise, as others maintain, but a land full of individuals in an interesting stage of social evolution.

Current opinions concerning j.a.pan, however, are as curious as they are contradictory. Sir Edwin Arnold says that the j.a.panese "Have the nature rather of birds or b.u.t.terflies than of ordinary human beings."

Says Mr. A.M. Knapp: "j.a.pan is the one country in the world which does not disappoint ... It is unquestionably the unique nation of the globe, the land of dream and enchantment, the land which could hardly differ more from our own, were it located in another planet, its people not of this world." An "old resident," however, calls it "the land of disappointments." Few phenomena are more curious than the readiness with which a tourist or professional journalist, after a few days or weeks of sight-seeing and interviewing, makes up his mind in regard to the character of the people, unless it be the way in which certain others, who have resided in this land for a number of years, continue to live in their own dreamland. These two cla.s.ses of writers have been the chief contributors of material for the omnivorous readers of the West.

It appears to not a few who have lived many years in this Far Eastern land, that the public has been fed with the dreams of poets or the snap-judgments of tourists instead of with the facts of actual experience. A recent editorial article in the _j.a.pan Mail_, than whose editor few men have had a wider acquaintance with the j.a.panese people or language, contains the following paragraph:

"In the case of such writers as Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn it is quite apparent that the logical faculty is in abeyance. Imagination reigns supreme. As poetic nights or outbursts, the works of these authors on j.a.pan are delightful reading. But no one who has studied the j.a.panese in a deeper manner, by more intimate daily intercourse with all cla.s.ses of the people than either of these writers pretends to have had, can possibly regard a large part of their description as anything more than pleasing fancy. Both have given rein to the poetic fancy and thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success granted to few.... But as exponents of j.a.panese life and thought they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs in the j.a.panese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been guilty of misrepresentation.... The j.a.panese nation of Arnold and Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century, but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's brains. It is high time that this was pointed out. For while such works please a certain section of the English public, they do a great deal of harm among a section of the j.a.panese public, as could be easily shown in detail, did s.p.a.ce allow."--_j.a.pan Mail, May 7, 1898_.

But even more harmful to the reading public of England and America are the hastily formed yet, nevertheless, widely published opinions of tourists and newspaper correspondents. Could such writers realize the inevitable limitations under which they see and try to generalize, the world would be spared many crudities and exaggerations, not to say positive errors. The impression so common to-day that j.a.pan's recent developments are anomalous, even contrary to the laws of national growth, is chiefly due to the superficial writings of hasty observers.

Few of those who have dilated ecstatically on her recent growth have understood either the history or the genius of her people.

"To mention but one among many examples," says Prof. Chamberlain, "the ingenious Traveling Commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, Mr. Henry Norman, in his lively letters on j.a.pan published nine or ten years ago, tells the story of j.a.panese education under the fetching t.i.tle of 'A Nation at School'; but the impression left is that they have been their own schoolmasters. In another letter on 'j.a.pan in Arms,' he discourses concerning 'The j.a.panese Military Re-organizers,' 'The Yokosuka dockyard,' and other matters, but omits to mention that the reorganizers were Frenchmen, and that the Yokosuka dockyard was also a French creation. Similarly, when treating of the development of the j.a.panese newspaper, he ignores the fact that it owed its origin to an Englishman, which surely, to a man whose object was reality, should have seemed an object worth recording. These letters, so full and apparently so frank, really so deceptive, are, as we have said, but one instance among many of the way in which popular writers on j.a.pan travesty history by ignoring the part which foreigners have played. The reasons for this are not far to seek. A wonderful tale will please folks at a distance all the better if made more wonderful still. j.a.panese progress, traced to its causes and explained by references to the means employed, is not nearly such fascinating reading as when represented in the guise of a fairy creation, sprung from nothing, like Aladdin's palace."--"_Things j.a.panese," p. 116_.

But inter-racial misunderstanding is not, after all, so very strange.

Few things are more difficult than to accommodate one's self in speech, in methods of life, and even in thought, to an alien people; so identifying one's deepest interest with theirs as really to understand them. The minds of most men are so possessed by notions acquired in childhood and youth as to be unable to see even the plainest facts at variance with those notions. He who comes to j.a.pan possessed with the idea that it is a dreamland and that its old social order was free from defects, is blind to any important facts invalidating that conception; while he who is persuaded that j.a.pan, being Oriental, is necessarily pagan at heart, however civilized in form, cannot easily be persuaded that there is anything praiseworthy in her old civilization, in her moral or religious life, or in any of her customs.

If France fails in important respects to understand England; and England, Germany; and Germany, its neighbors; if even England and America can so misunderstand one another as to be on the verge of war over the boundary dispute of an alien country, what hope is there that the Occident shall understand the Orient, or the Orient the Occident?

Though the difficulty seems insurmountable, I am persuaded that the most fruitful cause of racial misunderstandings and of defective descriptions both of the West by Orientals, and of the East by Occidentals, is a well-nigh universal misconception as to the nature of man, and of society, and consequently of the laws determining their development. In the East this error arises from and rests upon its polytheism, and the accompanying theories of special national creation and peculiar national sanct.i.ty. On these grounds alien races are p.r.o.nounced necessarily inferior. China's scorn for foreigners is due to these ideas.

Although this pagan notion has been theoretically abandoned in the West, it still dominates the thought not only of the mult.i.tudes, but also of many who pride themselves on their high education and liberal sentiments. They bring to the support of their national or racial pride such modern sociological theories as lend themselves to this view. Evolution and the survival of the fittest, degeneration and the arrest of development, are appealed to as justifying the arrogance and domineering spirit of Western nations.

But the most subtle and scholarly doctrine appealed to in support of national pride is the biological conception of society. Popular writers a.s.sume that society is a biological organism and that the laws of its evolution are therefore biological. This a.s.sumption is not strange, for until recent times the most advanced professional sociologists have been dominated by the same misconception. Spencer, for example, makes sociology a branch of biology. More recent sociological writers, however, such as Professors Giddings and Fairbanks, have taken special pains to a.s.sert the essentially psychic character of society; they reject the biological conception, as inadequate to express the real nature of society. The biological conception, they insist, is nothing more than a comparison, useful for bringing out certain features of the social life and structure, but harmful if understood as their full statement. The laws of psychic activity and development differ as widely from those of biologic activity and development as these latter do from those that hold in the chemical world. If the laws which regulate psychic development and the progress of civilization were understood by popular writers on j.a.pan, and if the recent progress of j.a.pan had been stated in the terms of these laws, there would not have been so much mystification in the West in regard to this matter as there evidently has been.

j.a.pan would not have appeared to have "jumped out of her skin," or suddenly to have escaped from the heredity of her past millenniums of development. This wide misunderstanding of j.a.pan, then, is not simply due to the fact that "j.a.panese progress, traced to its causes and explained by reference to the means employed, is not nearly such fascinating reading as when represented in the guise of a fairy creation," but it is also due to the still current popular view that the social organism is biological, and subject therefore to the laws of biological evolution. On this a.s.sumption, some hold that the progress of j.a.pan, however it may appear, is really superficial, while others represent it as somehow having evaded the laws regulating the development of other races. A nation's character and characteristics are conceived to be the product of brain-structure; these can change only as brain structure changes. Brain is held to determine civilization, rather than civilization brain. Hampered by this defective view, popular writers inevitably describe j.a.pan to the West in terms that necessarily misrepresent her, and that at the same time pander to Occidental pride and prejudice.

But this misunderstanding of j.a.pan reveals an equally profound misunderstanding in regard to ourselves. Occidental peoples are supposed to be what they are in civilization and to have reached their high attainments in theoretical and applied science, in philosophy and in practical politics, because of their unique brain-structures, brains secured through millenniums of biological evolution. The following statement may seem to be rank heresy to the average sociologist, but my studies have led me to believe that the main differences between the great races of mankind to-day are not due to biological, but to social conditions; they are not physico-psychological differences, but only socio-psychological differences. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is because of his social heredity, and the Chinaman is what he is because of his social heredity. The profound difference between social and physiological heredity and evolution is unappreciated except by a few of the most recent sociological writers. The part that a.s.sociation, social segregation, and social heredity take in the maintenance, not only of once developed languages and civilizations, but even in their genesis, has been generally overlooked.

But a still more important factor in the determination of social and psychic evolution, generally unrecognized by sociologists, is the nature and function of personality. Although in recent years it has been occasionally mentioned by several eminent writers, personality as a principle has not been made the core of any system of sociology. In my judgment, however, this is the distinctive characteristic of human evolution and of human a.s.sociation, and it should accordingly be the fundamental principle of social science. Many writers on the East have emphasized what they call its "impersonal" characteristics. So important is this subject that I have considered it at length in the body of this work.

Sociological phenomena cannot be fully expressed by any combination of exclusively physical, biological, and psychic terms, for the significant element of man and of society consists of something more than these--namely, personality. It is this that differentiates human from animal evolution. The unit of human sociology is a self-conscious, self-determinative being. The causative factor in the social evolution of man is his personality. The goal of that evolution is developed personality. Personality is thus at once the cause and the end of social progress. The conditions which affect or determine progress are those which affect or determine personality.

The biological evolution of man from the animal has been, it is true, frankly a.s.sumed in this work. No attempt is made to justify this a.s.sumption. Let not the reader infer, however, that the writer similarly a.s.sumes the adequacy of the so-called naturalistic or evolutionary origin of ethics, of religion, or even of social progress. It may be doubted whether Darwin, Wallace, Le Conte, or any exponent of biological evolution has yet given a complete statement of the factors of the physiological evolution of man. It is certain, however, that ethical, religious, and social writers who have striven to account for the higher evolution of man, by appealing to factors exclusively parallel to those which have produced the physiological evolution of man, have conspicuously failed. However much we may find to praise in the social interpretations of such eminent writers as Comte, Spencer, Ward, Fiske, Giddings, Kidd, Southerland, or even Drummond, there still remains the necessity of a fuller consideration of the moral and religious evolution of man. The higher evolution of man cannot be adequately expressed or even understood in any terms lower than those of personality.

EVOLUTION OF THE j.a.pANESE

I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

Said a well educated and widely read Englishman to the writer while in Oxford, "Can you explain to me how it is that the j.a.panese have succeeded in jumping out of their skins?" And an equally thoughtful American, speaking about the recent strides in civilization made by j.a.pan, urged that this progress could not be real and genuine. "How can such a mushroom-growth, necessarily without deep roots in the past, be real and strong and permanent? How can it escape being chiefly superficial?" These two men are typical of much of the thought of the West in regard to j.a.pan.

Seldom, perhaps never, has the civilized world so suddenly and completely reversed an estimate of a nation as it has that with reference to j.a.pan. Before the recent war, to the majority even of fairly educated men, j.a.pan was little more than a name for a few small islands somewhere near China, whose people were peculiar and interesting. To-day there is probably not a man, or woman, or child attending school in any part of the civilized world, who does not know the main facts about the recent war: how the small country and the men of small stature, sarcastically described by their foes as "Wojen,"

pygmy, attacked the army and navy of a country ten times their size.