Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life Part 7

A GLIMPSE OP TENDENCIES

I

The foreign concession of an open port offers a striking contrast to its far-Eastern environment. In the well-ordered ugliness of its streets one finds suggestions of places not on this side of the world,--just as though fragments of the Occident had been magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Ma.r.s.eilles, of New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile buildings--immense by comparison with the low light j.a.panese shops--seem to utter the menace of financial power. The dwellings, of every conceivable design--from that of an Indian bungalow to that of an English or French country-manor, with turrets and bow-windows--are surrounded by commonplace gardens of clipped shrubbery; the white roadways are solid and level as tables, and bordered with boxed-up trees. Nearly all things conventional in England or America have been domiciled in these districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-gla.s.s windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels.

There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals, courts, jails, and a foreign police. There are foreign lawyers, doctors, and druggists; foreign grocers, confectioners, bakers, dairymen; foreign dress-makers and tailors; foreign school-teachers and music-teachers. There is a town-hall, for munic.i.p.al business and public meetings of all kinds,--likewise for amateur theatricals or lectures and concerts; and very rarely some dramatic company, on a tour of the world, halts there awhile to make men laugh and women cry like they used to do at home.

There are cricket-grounds, racecourses, public parks,--or, as we should call them in England, "squares,"--yachting a.s.sociations, athletic societies, and swimming baths. Among the familiar noises are the endless tinkling of piano-practice, the cras.h.i.+ng of a town-band, and an occasional wheezing of accordions: in fact, one misses only the organ-grinder. The population is English, French, German, American, Danish, Swedish, Swiss, Russian, with a thin sprinkling of Italians and Levantines. I had almost forgotten the Chinese. They are present in mult.i.tude, and have a little corner of the district to themselves. But the dominant element is English and American, the English being in the majority. All the faults and some of the finer qualities of the masterful races can be studied here to better advantage than beyond seas,--because everybody knows all about everybody else in communities so small,--mere oases of Occidental life in the vast unknown of the Far East. Ugly stories may be heard which are not worth writing about; also stories of n.o.bility and generosity--about good brave things done by men who pretend to be selfish, and wear conventional masks to hide what is best in them from public knowledge.

But the domains of the foreigner do not stretch beyond the distance of an easy walk, and may shrink back again into nothing before many years--for reasons I shall presently dwell upon. His settlements developed precociously,--almost like "mushroom cities" in the great American West,--and reached the apparent limit of their development soon after solidifying.

About and beyond the concession, the "native town"--the real j.a.panese city--stretches away into regions imperfectly known. To the average settler this native town remains a world of mysteries; he may not think it worth his while to enter it for ten years at a time. It has no interest for him, as he is not a student of native customs, but simply a man of business; and he has no time to think how queer it all is. Merely to cross the concession line is almost the same thing as to cross the Pacific Ocean,--which is much less wide than the difference between the races. Enter alone into the interminable narrow maze of j.a.panese streets, and the dogs will bark at you, and the children stare at you as if you were the only foreigner they ever saw. Perhaps they will even call after you "Ijin," "Tojin," or "Ke-tojin,"--the last of which signifies "hairy foreigner," and is not intended as a compliment.

II

For a long time the merchants of the concessions had their own way in everything, and forced upon the native firms methods of business to which no Occidental merchant would think of submitting,--methods which plainly expressed the foreign conviction that all j.a.panese were tricksters. No foreigner would then purchase anything until it had been long enough in his hands to be examined and re-examined and "exhaustively" examined,--or accept any order for imports unless the order were accompanied by "a substantial payment of bargain money"(1). j.a.panese buyers and sellers protested in vain; they found themselves obliged to submit. But they bided their time,--yielding only with the determination to conquer. The rapid growth of the foreign town, and the immense capital successfully invested therein, proved to them how much they would have to learn before being able to help themselves. They wondered without admiring, and traded with the foreigners or worked for them, while secretly detesting them. In old j.a.pan the merchant ranked below the common peasant; but these foreign invaders a.s.sumed the tone of princes and the insolence of conquerors. As employers they were usually harsh, and sometimes brutal. Nevertheless they were wonderfully wise in the matter of making money; they lived like kings and paid high salaries. It was desirable that young men should suffer in their service for the sake of learning things which would have to be learned to save the country from pa.s.sing under foreign rule. Some day j.a.pan would have a mercantile marine of her own, and foreign banking agencies, and foreign credit, and be well able to rid herself of these haughty strangers: in the meanwhile they should be endured as teachers.

So the import and export trade remained entirely in foreign hands, and it grew from nothing to a value of hundreds of millions; and j.a.pan was well exploited. But she knew that she was only paying to learn; and her patience was of that kind which endures so long as to be mistaken for oblivion of injuries. Her opportunities came in the natural order of things. The growing influx of aliens seeking fortune gave her the first advantage.

The intercompet.i.tion for j.a.panese trade broke down old methods; and new firms being glad to take orders and risks without "bargain-money," large advance-payments could no longer be exacted. The relations between foreigners and j.a.panese simultaneously improved,--as the latter showed a dangerous capacity for sudden combination against ill-treatment, could not be cowed by revolvers, would not suffer abuse of any sort, and knew how to dispose of the most dangerous rowdy in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes. Already the rougher j.a.panese of the ports, the dregs of the populace, were ready to a.s.sume the aggressive on the least provocation.

Within two decades from the founding of the settlements, those foreigners who once imagined it a mere question of time when the whole country would belong to them, began to understand how greatly they had underestimated the race. The j.a.panese had been learning wonderfully well--"nearly as well as the Chinese." They were supplanting the small foreign shopkeepers; and various establishments had been compelled to close because of j.a.panese compet.i.tion. Even for large firms the era of easy fortune-making was over; the period of hard work was commencing. In early days all the personal wants of foreigners had necessarily been supplied by foreigners,--so that a large retail trade had grown up under the patronage of the wholesale trade. The retail trade of the settlements was evidently doomed. Some of its branches had disappeared; the rest were visibly diminis.h.i.+ng.

To-day the economic foreign clerk or a.s.sistant in a business house cannot well afford to live at the local hotels. He can hire a j.a.panese cook at a very small sum per month, or can have his meals sent him from a j.a.panese restaurant at five to seven sen per plate. He lives in a house constructed in "semi-foreign style," and owned by a j.a.panese. The carpets or mattings on his floor are of j.a.panese manufacture. His furniture is supplied by a j.a.panese cabinet-maker. His suits, s.h.i.+rts, shoes, walking-cane, umbrella, are "j.a.panese make": even the soap on his washstand is stamped with j.a.panese ideographs. If a smoker, he buys his Manila cigars from a j.a.panese tobacconist half a dollar cheaper per box than any foreign house would charge him for the same quality. If he wants books he can buy them at much lower prices from a j.a.panese than from a foreign book dealer,--and select his purchases from a much larger and better-selected stock. If he wants a photograph taken he goes to a j.a.panese gallery: no foreign photographer could make a living in j.a.pan. If he wants curios he visits a j.a.panese house;--the foreign dealer would charge him a hundred per cent. dearer.

On the other hand, if he be a man of family, his daily marketing is supplied by j.a.panese butchers, fishmongers, dairymen, fruit-sellers, vegetable dealers. He may continue for a time to buy English or American hams, bacon, canned goods, etc., from some foreign provision dealer; but he has discovered that j.a.panese stores now offer the same cla.s.s of goods at lower prices. If he drinks good beer, it probably comes from a j.a.panese brewery; and if he wants a good quality of ordinary wine or liquor, j.a.panese storekeepers can supply it at rates below those of the foreign importer. Indeed, the only things he cannot buy from the j.a.panese houses are just those things which he cannot afford,--high-priced goods such as only rich men are likely to purchase. And finally, if any of his family become sick, he can consult a j.a.panese physician who will charge him a fee perhaps one tenth less than he would have had to pay a foreign physician in former times. Foreign doctors now find it very hard to live,--unless they have something more than their practice to rely upon. Even when the foreign doctor brings down his fee to a dollar a visit, the high-cla.s.s j.a.panese doctor can charge two, and still crush compet.i.tion; for, he furnishes the medicine himself at prices which would ruin a foreign apothecary. There are doctors and doctors, of course, as in all countries; but the German-speaking j.a.panese physician capable of directing a public or military hospital is not easily surpa.s.sed in his profession; and the average foreign physician cannot possibly compete with him. He furnishes no prescriptions to be taken to a drugstore: his drugstore is either at home or in a room of the hospital he directs.

These facts, taken at random out of a mult.i.tude, imply that foreign shops or as we call them in America, "stores," will soon cease to be. The existence of some has been prolonged only by needless and foolish trickery on the part of some petty j.a.panese dealers,--attempts to sell abominable decoctions in foreign bottles under foreign labels, to adulterate imported goods, or to imitate trade-marks. But the common sense of the j.a.panese dealers, as a ma.s.s, is strongly opposed to such immorality, and the evil will soon correct itself. The native storekeepers can honestly undersell the foreign ones, because able not only to underlive them, but to make fortunes during the compet.i.tion.

This has been for some time well recognized in the concessions.

But the delusion prevailed that the great exporting and importing firms were impregnable; that they could still control the whole volume of commerce with the West; and that no j.a.panese companies could find means to oppose the weight of foreign capital, or to acquire the business methods according to which it was employed.

Certainly the retail trade would go. But that signified little.

The great firms would remain and multiply, and would increase their capacities.

(1) See j.a.pan Mail, July 21, 1895.

III

During all this time of outward changes the real feeling between the races--the mutual dislike of Oriental and Occidental--had continued to grow. Of the nine or ten English papers published in the open ports, the majority expressed, day after day, one side of this dislike, in the language of ridicule or contempt; and a powerful native press retorted in kind, with dangerous effectiveness. If the "anti-j.a.panese" newspapers did not actually represent--as I believe they did--an absolute majority in sentiment, they represented at least the weight of foreign capital, and the preponderant influences of the settlements. The English "pro-j.a.panese" newspapers, though conducted by shrewd men, and distinguished by journalistic abilities of no common order, could not appease the powerful resentment provoked by the language of their contemporaries. The charges of barbarism or immorality printed in English were promptly answered by the publication in j.a.panese dailies of the scandals of the open ports,--for all the millions of the empire to know. The race question was carried into j.a.panese politics by a strong anti-foreign league; the foreign concessions were openly denounced as hotbeds of vice; and the national anger became so formidable that only the most determined action on the part of the government could have prevented disastrous happenings. Nevertheless oil was still poured on the smothered fire by foreign editors, who at the outbreak of the war with China openly took the part of China.

This policy was pursued throughout the campaign. Reports of imaginary reverses were printed recklessly, undeniable victories were unjustly belittled, and after the war had been decided, the cry was raised that the j.a.panese "had been allowed to become dangerous" Later on, the interference of Russia was applauded and the sympathy of England condemned by men of English blood. The effect of such utterances at such a time was that of insult never to be forgiven upon a people who never forgive. Utterances of hate they were, but also utterances of alarm,--alarm excited by the signing of those new treaties, bringing all aliens under j.a.panese jurisdiction,--and fear, not unfounded, of another anti-foreign agitation with the formidable new sense of national power behind it. Premonitory symptoms of such agitation were really apparent in a general tendency to insult or jeer at foreigners, and in some rare but exemplary acts of violence. The government again found it necessary to issue proclamations and warnings against such demonstrations of national anger; and they ceased almost as quickly as they began. But there is no doubt that their cessation was due largely to recognition of the friendly att.i.tude of England as a naval power, and the worth of her policy to j.a.pan in a moment of danger to the world's peace.

England, too, had first rendered treaty-revision possible,--in spite of the pa.s.sionate outcries of her own subjects in the Far East; and the leaders of the people were grateful. Otherwise the hatred between settlers and j.a.panese might have resulted quite as badly as had been feared.

In the beginning, of course, this mutual antagonism was racial, and therefore natural; and the irrational violence of prejudice and malignity developed at a later day was inevitable with the ever-increasing conflict of interests. No foreigner really capable of estimating the conditions could have seriously entertained any hope of a rapprochement. The barriers of racial feeling, of emotional differentiation, of language, of manners and beliefs, are likely to remain insurmountable for centuries.

Though instances of warm friends.h.i.+p, due to the mutual attraction of exceptional natures able to divine each other intuitively, might be cited, the foreigner, as a general rule, understands the j.a.panese quite as little as the j.a.panese understands him. What is worse for the alien than miscomprehension is the simple fact that he is in the position of an invader. Under no ordinary circ.u.mstances need he expect to be treated like a j.a.panese, and this not merely because he has more money at his command, but because of his race. One price for the foreigner, another for the j.a.panese, is the common regulation,--except in those j.a.panese stores which depend almost exclusively upon foreign trade. If you wish to enter a j.a.panese theatre, a figure-show, any place of amus.e.m.e.nt, or even an inn, you must pay a virtual tax upon your nationality. j.a.panese artisans, laborers, clerks, will not work for you at j.a.panese rates--unless they have some other object in view than wages. j.a.panese hotel-keepers--except in those hotels built and furnished especially for European or American travelers--will not make out your bill at regular prices. Large hotel-companies have been formed which maintain this rule,-- companies controlling scores of establishments throughout the country, and able to dictate terms to local storekeepers and to the smaller hostelries. It has been generously confessed that foreigners ought to pay higher than j.a.panese for accommodation, since they give more trouble; and this is true. But under even these facts race-feeling is manifest. Those innkeepers who build for j.a.panese custom only, in the great centres, care nothing for foreign custom, and often lose by it,--partly because well-paying native guests do not like hotels patronized by foreigners, and partly because the Western guest wants all to himself the room which can be rented more profitably to a j.a.panese party of five or eight. Another fact not generally understood in connection with this is that in Old j.a.pan the question of recompense for service was left to honor. The j.a.panese innkeeper always supplied (and in the country often still supplies) food at scarcely more than cost; and his real profit depended upon the conscience of the customer. Hence the importance of the chadai, or present of tea-money, to the hotel. From the poor a very small sum, from the rich a larger sum, was expected,--according to services rendered.

In like manner the hired servant expected to be remunerated according to his master's ability to pay, even more than according to the value of the work done; the artist preferred, when working for a good patron, never to name a price: only the merchant tried to get the better of his customers by bargaining, --the immoral privilege of his cla.s.s. It may be readily imagined that the habit of trusting to honor for payment produced no good results in dealing with Occidentals. All matters of buying and selling we think of as "business"; and business in the West is not conducted under purely abstract ideas of morality, but at best under relative and partial ideas of morality. A generous man extremely dislikes to have the price of an article which he wants to buy left to his conscience; for, unless he knows exactly the value of the material and the worth of the labor, he feels obliged to make such over-payment as will a.s.sure him that he has done more than right; while the selfish man takes advantage of the situation to give as nearly next to nothing as he can.

Special rates have to be made, therefore, by the j.a.panese in all dealings with foreigners. But the dealing itself is made more or less aggressive, according to circ.u.mstance, because of race antagonism. The foreigner has not only to pay higher rates for every kind of skilled labor; but must sign costlier leases, and submit to higher rents. Only the lowest cla.s.s of j.a.panese servants can be hired even at high wages by a foreign household; and their stay is usually brief, as they dislike the service required of them. Even the apparent eagerness of educated j.a.panese to enter foreign employ is generally misunderstood; their veritable purpose being simply, in most cases, to fit themselves for the same sort of work in j.a.panese business houses, stores, and hotels. The average j.a.panese would prefer to work fifteen hours a day for one of his own countrymen than eight hours a day for a foreigner paying higher wages. I have seen graduates of the university working as servants; but they were working only to learn special things.

IV

Really the dullest foreigner could not have believed that a people of forty millions, uniting all their energies to achieve absolute national independence, would remain content to leave the management of their country's import and export trade to aliens, --especially in view of the feeling in the open ports. The existence of foreign settlements in j.a.pan, under consular jurisdiction, was in itself a constant exasperation to national pride,--an indication of national weakness. It had so been proclaimed in print,--in speeches by members of the anti-foreign league,--in speeches made in parliament. But knowledge of the national desire to control the whole of j.a.panese commerce, and the periodical manifestations of hostility to foreigners as settlers, excited only temporary uneasiness. It was confidently a.s.serted that the j.a.panese could only injure themselves by any attempt to get rid of foreign negotiators. Though alarmed at the prospect of being brought under j.a.panese law, the merchants of the concessions never imagined a successful attack upon large interests possible, except by violation of that law itself. It signified little that the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha had become, during the war, one of the largest steams.h.i.+p companies in the world; that j.a.pan was trading directly with India and China; that j.a.panese banking agencies were being established in the great manufacturing centres abroad; that j.a.panese merchants were sending their sons to Europe and America for a sound commercial education. Because j.a.panese lawyers were gaining a large foreign clientele; because j.a.panese s.h.i.+pbuilders, architects, engineers had replaced foreigners in government service, it did not at all follow that the foreign agents controlling the import and export trade with Europe and America could be dispensed with. The machinery of commerce would be useless in j.a.panese hands; and capacity for other professions by no means augured latent capacity for business. The foreign capital invested in j.a.pan could not be successfully threatened by any combinations formed against it. Some j.a.panese houses might carry on a small import business, but the export trade required a thorough knowledge of business conditions on the other side of the world, and such connections and credits as the j.a.panese could not obtain.

Nevertheless the self-confidence of the foreign importers, and exporters was rudely broken in July, 1895, when a British house having brought suit against a j.a.panese company in a j.a.panese court, for refusal to accept delivery of goods ordered, and having won a judgment for nearly thirty thousand dollars, suddenly found itself confronted and menaced by a guild whose power had never been suspected. The j.a.panese firm did not appeal against the decision of the court: it expressed itself ready to pay the whole sum at once--if required. But the guild to which it belonged informed the triumphant plaintiffs that a compromise would be to their advantage. Then the English house discovered itself threatened with a boycott which could utterly ruin it,--a boycott operating in all the industrial centres of the Empire.

The compromise was promptly effected at considerable loss to the foreign firm; and the settlements were dismayed. There was much denunciation of the immorality of the proceeding(1). But it was a proceeding against which the law could do nothing; for boycotting cannot be satisfactorily dealt with under law; and it afforded proof positive that the j.a.panese were able to force foreign firms to submit to their dictation,--by foul means if not by fair. Enormous guilds had been organized by the great industries,--combinations whose moves, perfectly regulated by telegraph, could ruin opposition, and could set at defiance even the judgment of tribunals. The j.a.panese had attempted boycotting in previous years with so little success that they were deemed incapable of combination. But the new situation showed how well they had learned through defeat, and that with further improvement of organization they could reasonably expect to get the foreign trade under control,--if not into their own hands. It would be the next great step toward the realization of the national desire,--j.a.pan only for the j.a.panese. Even though the country should be opened to foreign settlement, foreign investments would always be at the mercy of j.a.panese combinations.

(1) A Kobe merchant of great experience, writing to the Kobe Chronicle of August 7, 1895, observed:--"I am not attempting to defend boycotts; but I firmly believe from what has come to my knowledge that in each and every case there has been provocation irritating the j.a.panese, rousing their feelings and their sense of justice, and driving them to combination as a defense."

V

The foregoing brief account of existing conditions may suffice to prove the evolution in j.a.pan of a social phenomenon of great significance. Of course the prospective opening of the country under new treaties, the rapid development of its industries, and the vast annual increase in the volume of trade with America and Europe, will probably bring about some increase of foreign settlers; and this temporary result might deceive many as to the inevitable drift of things. But old merchants of experience even now declare that the probable further expansion of the ports will really mean the growth of a native compet.i.tive commerce that must eventually dislodge foreign merchants. The foreign settlements, as communities, will disappear: there will remain only some few great agencies, such as exist in all the chief ports of the civilized world; and the abandoned streets of the concessions, and the costly foreign houses on the heights, will be peopled and tenanted by j.a.panese. Large foreign investments will not be made in the interior. And even Christian mission-work must be left to native missionaries; for just as Buddhism never took definite form in j.a.pan until the teaching of its doctrines was left entirely to j.a.panese priests,--so Christianity will never take any fixed shape till it has been so remodeled as to harmonize with the emotional and social life of the race. Even thus remodeled it can scarcely hope to exist except in the form of a few small sects.

The social phenomenon exhibited can be best explained by a simile. In many ways a human society may be compared biologically with an individual organism. Foreign elements introduced forcibly into the system of either, and impossible to a.s.similate, set up irritations and partial disintegration, until eliminated naturally or removed artificially. j.a.pan is strengthening herself through elimination of disturbing elements; and this natural process is symbolized in the resolve to regain possession of all the concessions, to bring about the abolishment of consular jurisdiction, to leave nothing under foreign control within the Empire. It is also manifested in the dismissal of foreign employes, in the resistance offered by j.a.panese congregations to the authority of foreign missionaries, and in the resolute boycotting of foreign merchants. And behind all this race-movement there is more than race-feeling: there is also the definite conviction that foreign help is proof of national feebleness, and that the Empire remains disgraced before the eyes of the commercial world, so long as its import and export trade are managed by aliens. Several large j.a.panese firms have quite emanc.i.p.ated themselves from the domination of foreign middlemen; large trade with India and China is being carried on by j.a.panese steams.h.i.+p companies; and communication with the Southern States of America is soon to be established by the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha, for the direct importation of cotton. But the foreign settlements remain constant sources of irritation; and their commercial conquest by untiring national effort will alone satisfy the country, and will prove, even better than the war with China, j.a.pan's real place among nations. That conquest, I think, will certainly be achieved.

VI

What of the future of j.a.pan? No one can venture any positive prediction on the a.s.sumption that existing tendencies will continue far into that future. Not to dwell upon the grim probabilities of war, or the possibility of such internal disorder as might compel indefinite suspension of the const.i.tution, and lead to a military dictators.h.i.+p,--a resurrected Shogunate in modern uniform,--great changes there will a.s.suredly be, both for better and for worse. Supposing these changes normal, however, one may venture some qualified predictions, based upon the reasonable supposition that the race will continue, through rapidly alternating periods of action and reaction, to a.s.similate its new-found knowledge with the best relative consequences.

Physically, I think, the j.a.panese will become before the close of the next century much superior to what they now are. For such belief there are three good reasons. The first is that the systematic military and gymnastic training of the able-bodied youth of the Empire ought in a few generations to produce results as marked as those of the military system in Germany,--increase in stature, in average girth of chest, in muscular development Another reason is that the j.a.panese of the cities are taking to a richer diet,--a flesh diet; and that a more nutritive food must have physiological results favoring growth. Immense numbers of little restaurants are everywhere springing up, in which "Western Cooking" is furnished almost as cheaply as j.a.panese food.

Thirdly, the delay of marriage necessitated by education and by military service must result in the production of finer and finer generations of children. As immature marriages become the exception rather than the rule, children of feeble const.i.tution will correspondingly diminish in number. At present the extraordinary differences of stature noticeable in any j.a.panese crowd seem to prove that the race is capable of great physical development under a severer social discipline.

Moral improvement is hardly to be expected--rather the reverse.

The old moral ideals of j.a.pan were at least quite as n.o.ble as our own; and men could really live up to them in the quiet benevolent times of patriarchal government. Untruthfulness, dishonesty, and brutal crime were rarer than now, as official statistics show, the percentage of crime having been for some years steadily on the increase--which proves of course, among other things, that the struggle for existence has been intensified. The old standard of chast.i.ty, as represented in public opinion, was that of a less developed society than our own; yet I do not believe it can be truthfully a.s.serted that the moral conditions were worse than with us. In one respect they were certainly better; for the virtue of j.a.panese wives was generally in all ages above suspicion(1). If the morals of men were much more open to reproach, it is not necessary to cite Lecky for evidence as to whether a much better state of things prevails in the Occident.

Early marriages were encouraged to guard young men from temptations to irregular life; and it is only fair to suppose that in a majority of cases this result was obtained.

Concubinage, the privilege of the rich, had its evil side; but it had also the effect of relieving the wife from the physical strain of rearing many children in rapid succession. The social conditions were so different from those which Western religion a.s.sumes to be the best possible, that an impartial judgment of them cannot be ecclesiastical. One fact is indisputable,--that they were unfavorable to professional vice; and in many of the larger fortified towns,--the seats of princes,--no houses of prost.i.tution were suffered to exist. When all things are fairly considered, it will be found that Old j.a.pan might claim, in spite of her patriarchal system, to have been less open to reproach even in the matter of s.e.xual morality than many a Western country. The people were better than their laws asked them to be.

And now that the relations of the s.e.xes are to be regulated by new codes,--at a time when new codes are really needed, the changes which it is desirable to bring about cannot result in immediate good. Sudden reforms are not made by legislation. Laws cannot directly create sentiment; and real social progress can be made only through change of ethical feeling developed by long discipline and training. Meanwhile increasing pressure of population and increasing compet.i.tion must tend, while quickening intelligence, to harden character and develop selfishness.

Intellectually there will doubtless be great progress, but not a progress so rapid as those who think that j.a.pan has really transformed herself in thirty years would have us believe.

However widely diffused among the people, scientific education cannot immediately raise the average of practical intelligence to the Western level. The common capacity must remain lower for generations. There will be plenty of remarkable exceptions, indeed; and a new aristocracy of intellect is coming into existence. But the real future of the nation depends rather upon the general capacity of the many than upon the exceptional capacity of the few. Perhaps it depends especially upon the development of the mathematical faculty, which is being everywhere a.s.siduously cultivated. At present this is the weak point; hosts of students being yearly debarred from the more important cla.s.ses of higher study through inability to pa.s.s in mathematics. At the Imperial naval and military colleges, however, such results have been obtained as suffice to show that this weakness will eventually be remedied. The most difficult branches of scientific study, will become less formidable to the children of those who have been able to distinguish themselves in such branches.

In other respects, some temporary retrogression is to be looked for. Just so certainly as j.a.pan has attempted that which is above the normal limit of her powers, so certainly must she fall back to that limit, or, rather, below it. Such retrogression will be natural as well as necessary: it will mean nothing more than a recuperative preparation for stronger and loftier efforts. Signs of it are even now visible in the working of certain state-departments,--notably in that of education. The idea of forcing upon Oriental students a course of study above the average capacity of Western students; the idea of making English the language, or at least one of the languages of the country; and the idea of changing ancestral modes of feeling and thinking for the better by such training, were wild extravagances. j.a.pan must develop her own soul: she cannot borrow another. A dear friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the students of j.a.pan: "_Why, the English language itself has been a demoralizing influence!_" There was much depth in that observation. Setting the whole j.a.panese nation to study English (the language of a people who are being forever preached to about their "rights," and never about their "duties") was almost an imprudence. The policy was too wholesale as well as too sudden.

It involved great waste of money and time, and it helped to sap ethical sentiment. In the future j.a.pan will learn English, just as England learns German. But if this study has been wasted in some directions, it has not been wasted in others. The influence of English has effected modifications in the native tongue, making it richer, more flexible, and more capable of expressing the new forms of thought created by the discoveries of modern science. This influence must long continue. There will be a considerable absorption of English--perhaps also of French and German words--into j.a.panese: indeed this absorption is already marked in the changing speech of the educated cla.s.ses, not less than in the colloquial of the ports which is mixed with curious modifications of foreign commercial words. Furthermore, the grammatical structure of j.a.panese is being influenced; and though I cannot agree with a clergyman who lately declared that the use of the pa.s.sive voice by Tokyo street-urchins announcing the fall of Port Arthur--("_Ryojunko ga senryo sera-reta!_") represented the working of "divine providence," I do think it afforded some proof that the j.a.panese language, a.s.similative like the genius of the race, is showing capacity to meet all demands made upon it by the new conditions.

Perhaps j.a.pan will remember her foreign teachers more kindly in the twentieth century. But she will never feel toward the Occident, as she felt toward China before the Meiji era, the reverential respect due by ancient custom to a beloved, instructor; for the wisdom of China was voluntarily sought, while that of the West was thrust upon her by violence. She will have some Christian sects of her own; but she will not remember our American and English missionaries as she remembers even now those great Chinese priests who once educated her youth. And she will not preserve relics of our sojourn, carefully wrapped in septuple coverings of silk, and packed way in dainty whitewood boxes, because we had no new lesson of beauty to teach her,--nothing by which to appeal to her emotions.

(1) The statement has been made that there is no word for chast.i.ty in the j.a.panese language. This is true in the same sense only that we might say there is no word for chast.i.ty in the English language,--became such words as honor, virtue, purity, chast.i.ty have been adopted into English from other languages.

Open any good j.a.panese-English dictionary and you will find many words for chast.i.ty. Just as it would be ridiculous to deny that the word "chast.i.ty" is modern English, because it came to us through the French from the Latin, so it is ridiculous to deny that Chinese moral terms, adopted into the j.a.panese tongue more than a thousand years ago are j.a.panese to-day. The statement, like a majority of missionary statements on these subjects, is otherwise misleading; for the reader is left to infer the absence of an adjective as well as a noun,--and the purely j.a.panese adjectives signifying chaste are numerous. The word most commonly used applies to both s.e.xes,--and has the old j.a.panese sense of firm, strict, resisting, honorable. The deficiency of abstract terms in a language by no means implies the deficiency of concrete moral ideas,--a fact which has been vainly pointed out to missionaries more than once.

IX

BY FORCE OF KARMA