The Religions of Japan Part 25

The s.h.i.+ngaku Movement.

One of the most remarkable of the movements to this end was that of the s.h.i.+ngaku or New Learning. A cla.s.s of practical moralists, to offset the prevailing tendency of the age to much speculation and because Buddhism did so little for the people, tried to make the doctrines of Confucius a living force among the great ma.s.s of people. This movement, though Confucian in its chief tone and color, was eclectic and intended to combine all that was best in the Chinese system with what could be utilized from s.h.i.+nt[=o] and Buddhism. With the preaching was combined a good deal of active benevolence. Especially in the time of famine, was care for humanity shown. The effect upon the people was noticeable, followers multiplied rapidly, and it is said that even the government in many instances made them, the s.h.i.+ngaku preachers, the distributors of rice and alms for the needy. Some of the preachers became famous and counted among their followers many men of influence. The literary side of the movement[22] has been brought to the attention of English readers through Mr. Mitford's translation of three sermons from the volume ent.i.tled s.h.i.+ngaku D[=o]wa. Other discourses have been from time to time rendered into English, those by s.h.i.+bata, ent.i.tled The Sermons of the Dove-like Venerable Master, being especially famous.

This movement, interesting as it was, came to an end when the country began to be convulsed by the approaching entrance of foreigners, through the Perry treaty; but it serves to show, what we believe to be the truth, that the moral rottenness as well as the physical decay of the j.a.panese people reached their acme just previous to the apparition of the American fleet in 1853.

The story of nineteenth century Reformed Christianity in j.a.pan does not begin with Perry, or with Harris, or with the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1859; for it has a subterranean and interior history, as we have hinted; while that of the Roman form and order is a story of unbroken continuity, though the life of the tunnel is now that of the sunny road. The parable of the leaven is first ill.u.s.trated and then that of the mustard-seed. Before Christianity was phenomenal, it was potent.

Let us now look from the interior to the outside.

On Perry's flag-s.h.i.+p, the Mississippi, the Bible lay open, a sermon was preached, and the hymn "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne" was sung, waking the echoes of the j.a.pan hills. The Christian day of rest was honored on this American squadron. In the treaty signed in 1854, though it was made, indeed, with use of the name of G.o.d and terms of Christian chronology, there was nothing upon which to base, either by right or privilege, the residence of missionaries in the country. Townsend Harris, the American Consul-General, who hoisted his flag and began his hermit life at s.h.i.+moda, in September, 1855, had as his only companion a Dutch secretary, Mr. Heusken, who was later, in Yedo, to be a.s.sa.s.sinated by ronins.

Without s.h.i.+p or soldier, overcoming craft and guile, and winning his way by simple honesty and perseverance, Mr. Harris obtained audience[23] of "the Tyc.o.o.n" in Yedo, and later from the Sh[=o]gun's daring minister Ii, the signature to a treaty which guaranteed to Americans the rights of residence, trade and commerce. Thus Americans were enabled to land as citizens, and pursue their avocation as religious teachers. As the government of the United States of America knows nothing of the religion of American citizens abroad, it protects all missionaries who are law-abiding citizens, without regard to creed.[24]

j.a.pan Once More Missionary Soil.

The first missionaries were on the ground as soon as the ports were open. Though surrounded by spies and always in danger of a.s.sa.s.sination and incendiarism, they began their work of mastering the language. To do this without trained teachers or apparatus of dictionary and grammar, was then an appalling task. The medical missionary began healing the swarms of human sufferers, syphilitic, consumptive, and those scourged by small-pox, cholera and hereditary and acute diseases of all sorts.

The patience, kindness and persistency of these Christian men literally turned the edge of the sword, disarmed the a.s.sa.s.sin, made the spies'

occupation useless, shamed away the suspicious, and conquered the nearly invincible prejudices of the government. Despite the awful under-tow in the immorality of the sailor, the adventurer and the gain-greedy foreigner, the tide of Christianity began steadily to rise.

Notwithstanding the outbursts of the flames of persecution, the torture and imprisonment of Christian captives and exiles, and the slow worrying to death of the missionary's native teachers, inquirers came and converts were made. In 1868, after revolution and restoration, the old order changed, and duarchy and feudalism pa.s.sed away. Quick to seize the opportunity, Dr. J.C. Hepburn, healer of bodies and souls of men, presented a Bible to the Emperor, and the gift was accepted.

No sooner had the new government been established in safety, and the name of Yedo, the city of the Baydoor, been changed into that of T[=o]ki[=o], the Eastern Capital, than an emba.s.sy[25] of seventy persons started on its course round the world. At its head were three cabinet ministers of the new government and the court n.o.ble, Iwakura, of immemorial lineage, in whose veins ran the blood of the men called G.o.ds.

Across the Pacific to the United States they went, having their initial audience of the President of the Republic that knows no state church, and whose Christianity had compelled both the return of the s.h.i.+pwrecked j.a.panese and the freedom of the slave.

This emba.s.sy had been suggested and its course planned by a Christian missionary, who found that of the seventy persons, one-half had been his pupils.[26]

The Imperial Emba.s.sy Round the World.

The purpose of these envoys was, first of all, to ask of the nations of Christendom equal rights, to get removed the odious extra-territoriality clause in the treaties, to have the right to govern aliens on their soil, and to regulate their own tariff. Secondarily, its members went to study the secrets of power and the resources of civilization in the West, to initiate the liberal education of their women by leaving in American schools a little company of maidens, to enlarge the system of education for their own country, and to send abroad with approval others of their young men who, for a decade past had, in spite of every ban and obstacle, been furtively leaving the country for study beyond the seas.

In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of amba.s.sadors, ministers, secretaries and students were opened. They saw themselves as others saw them. They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces, their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless family life in the Christian home. They found, further yet, free churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely the condition of the present. It took but a few whispers over the telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public view like snowflakes melting on the river. The right arm of persecution was broken.

The story of the Book of Acts of the modern apostles in j.a.pan is told, first in the teaching of inquirers, preaching to handfuls, the gathering of tiny companies, the translation of the Gospel, and then prayer and waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit. A study of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, followed in order to find out how the Christian Church began. On the 10th day of March, in the year of our Lord and of the era of Meiji (Enlightened Peace) the fifth, 1872, at Yokohama, in the little stone chapel built on part of Commodore Perry's treaty ground, was formed the first Reformed or Protestant Christian Church in j.a.pan.

At this point our task is ended. We cannot even glance at the native Christian churches of the Roman, Reformed, or Greek order, or attempt to appraise the work of the foreign missionaries. He has read these pages in vain, however, who does not see how well, under Providence, the j.a.panese have been trained for higher forms of faith.

The armies of j.a.pan are upon Chinese soil, while we pen our closing lines. The last chains of purely local and ethnic dogma are being snapped asunder. May the sons of Dai Nippon, as they win new horizons of truth, see more clearly and welcome more loyally that Prince of Peace whose kingdom is not of this world.

May the age of political conquest end, and the era of the self-reformation of the Asian nations, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, be ushered in.

NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILl.u.s.tRATIONS

The few abbreviations used in these pages stand for well-known works: T.A.S.J., for Transactions of the Asiatic Society of j.a.pan; Kojiki, for Supplement to Volume X., T.A.S.J., Introduction, Translation, Notes, Map, etc., by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain; T.J., for Things j.a.panese (2d ed.), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; S. and H., for Satow and Hawes's Hand-book for j.a.pan, now continued in new editions (4th, 1894), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; C.R.M., for Mayers's Chinese Reader's Manual; M.E., The Mikado's Empire (7th ed.); B.N., for Mr.

Bunyiu Nanjio's A Short History of the Twelve j.a.panese Buddhist Sects, T[=o]ki[=o], 1887.

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS

[Footnote 1: The late Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., who applied the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, was the son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the celebrated theologian, geographer, and gazetteer. In memory of his father, Professor Morse founded this lectures.h.i.+p in Union Theological Seminary, New York, on "The Relation of the Bible to the Sciences," May 20,1865, by the gift of ten thousand dollars.]

[Footnote 2: An American Missionary in j.a.pan, p. 209, by Rev. M.L.

Gordon, M.D., Boston, 1892.]

[Footnote 3: Lucretia Coftin Mott.]

[Footnote 4: "I remember once making a calculation in Hong Kong, and making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."--Dr.

Legge's Letter to the Author, November 27, 1893.]

[Footnote 5: The Religions of China, p. 240, by James Legge, New York, 1881.]

[Footnote 6: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 22, Boston editions of 1859 and 1879.]

[Footnote 7: One of the many names of j.a.pan is that of the Country Ruled by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the modern j.a.panese sword (_katana_) as compared with the long and heavy (_ken_) of the "Divine" (_kami_) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of j.a.pan; Its History and Traditions," T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 58.]

[Footnote 8: The course of lectures on The Religions of Chinese Asia (which included most of the matter in this book), given by the author in Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me., in April, 1894, was upon the Bond foundation, founded by alumni and named after the chief donor, Rev.

Ellas Bond, D.D., of Kohala, long an active missionary in Hawaii.]

[Footnote 9: This is the contention of Professor k.u.mi, late of the Imperial University of j.a.pan; see chapter on s.h.i.+nt[=o].]

[Footnote 10: In ill.u.s.tration, comical or pitiful, the common people in Satsuma believe that the spirit of the great Saigo Takamori, leader of the rebellion of 1877, "has taken up its abode in the planet Mars,"

while the spirits of his followers entered into a new race of frogs that attack man and fight until killed--Mounsey's The Satsuma Rebellion, p.

217. So, also, the _Heike-gani_, or crabs at s.h.i.+monoseki, represent the transmigration of the souls of the Heike clan, nearly exterminated in 1184 A.D., while the "H[=o]j[=o] bugs" are the avatars of the execrated rulers of Kamakura (1219-1333 A.D.).--j.a.pan in History, Folk-lore, and Art, Boston, 1892, pp. 115, 133.]

[Footnote 11: The Future of Religion in j.a.pan. A paper read at the Parliament of Religions by n.o.buta Kis.h.i.+moto.]

[Footnote 12: The Ainos, though they deify all the chief objects of nature, such as the sun, the sea, fire, wild beasts, etc., often talk of a Creator, _Kotan kara kamui_, literally the G.o.d who made the World. At the fact of creation they stop short.... One gathers that the creative act was performed not directly, but through intermediaries, who were apparently animals."--Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12. See also on the Aino term "Kamui," by Professor B.H. Chamberlain and Rev. J. Batchelor, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.]

[Footnote 13: See Unbeaten Tracks in j.a.pan, by Isabella Bird (Bishop), Vol. II.; The Ainu of j.a.pan, by Rev. John Batchelor; B. Douglas Howard's Life With Trans-Siberian Savages; Ripley Hitchc.o.c.k's Report, Smithsonian Inst.i.tute, Was.h.i.+ngton. Professor B. H. Chamberlain's invaluable "Aino Studies," T[=o]ki[=o], 1887, makes scholarly comparison of the j.a.panese and Aino language, mythology, and geographical nomenclature.]

[Footnote 14: M.E., The Mythical Zoology of j.a.pan, pp. 477-488. C.R.M., _pa.s.sim_.]

[Footnote 15: See the valuable article ent.i.tled Demoniacal Possession, T.J., p. 106, and the author's j.a.panese Fox Myths, _Lippincott's Magazine_, 1873.]

[Footnote 16: See the Aino animal stories and evidences of beast wors.h.i.+p in Chamberlain's Aino Studies. For this element in j.a.panese life, see the Kojiki, and the author's j.a.panese Fairy World.]

[Footnote 17: The proprietor of a paper-mill in Ma.s.sachusetts, who had bought a cargo of rags, consisting mostly of farmers' cast off clothes, brought to the author a bundle of sc.r.a.ps of paper which he had found in this cheap blue-dyed cotton wearing apparel. Besides money accounts and personal matters, there were numerous temple amulets and priests'

certificates. See also B.H. Chamberlain's Notes on Some Minor j.a.panese Religious Practices, _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, May, 1893.]

[Footnote 18: M.E., p. 440.]