Chapter XLI: Introduction (8)

Another sect of purely Japanese origin deserving notice is the "Hokke" or "Nicheren." Its founder, known by the name of Nichiren, was a man of extraordinary independence and religious fervor. Wholly by his original questions and doubts as to the prevailing doctrines and customs of the then dominant sects, he was led to make independent examination into the history and meaning of Buddhistic literature and to arrive at conclusions quite different from those of his contemporaries. Of the truth and importance of his views he was so persuaded that he braved not only fierce denunciations, but prolonged opposition and persecution. He was rejected and cast out by his own people and sect; he was twice banished by the ruling military powers. But he persevered to the end, finally winning thousands of converts to his views. The virulence of the attacks made upon him was due to the virulence with which he attacked what seemed to him the errors and corruption of the prevailing sects. Surely his was no case of servile imitation. His early followers had also to endure opposition and severe persecution.

Glancing at the philosophical ideas brought from China, we find here too a suggestion of the same tendency toward originality. It is true that Dr. Geo. Wm. Knox, in his valuable monograph on "A Japanese Philosopher," makes the statement that, "In acceptance and rejection alike no native originality emerges, nothing beyond a vigorous power of adoption and assimilation. No improvements of the new philosophy were even attempted. Wherein it was defective and indistinct, defective and indistinct it remained. The system was not thought out to its end and independently adopted. Polemics, ontology, ethics, theology, marvels, heroes--all were enthusiastically adopted on faith. It is to be added that the new system was superior to the old, and so much of discrimination was shown."[AD] And somewhat earlier he likewise asserts that "There is not an original and valuable commentary by a Japanese writer. They have been content to brood over the imported works and to accept unquestioningly politics, ethics, and metaphysics." After some examination of these native philosophers, I feel that, although not without some truth, these assertions cannot be strictly maintained. It is doubtless true that no powerful thinker and writer has appeared in Japan that may be compared to the two great philosophers of China, Shushi and Oyomei. The works and the system of the former dominated Japan, for the simple reason that governmental authority forbade the public teaching or advocacy of the other. Nevertheless, not a few Japanese thinkers rejected the teachings and philosophy of Shushi, regardless of consequences. Notable among those rejecters was Kaibara Yekken, whose book "The Great Doubt" was not published until after his death. In it he rejects in emphatic terms the philosophical and metaphysical ideas of Shushi. An article[AE] by Dr. Tetsujiro Inouye, Professor of Philosophy in the Imperial University in Tokyo, on the "Development of Philosophical Ideas in Japan," concludes with these words:

"From this short sketch the reader can clearly see that
philosophical considerations began in our country with the study of
Shushi and Oyomei. But many of our thinkers did not long remain
faithful to that tradition; they soon formed for themselves new
conceptions of life and of the world, which, as a rule, are not
only more practical, but also more advanced than those of the
Chinese."

An important reason for our Western thought, that the Japanese have had no independence in philosophy, is our ignorance of the larger part of Japanese and Chinese literature. Oriental speculation was moving in a direction so diverse from that of the West that we are impressed more with the general similarity that prevails throughout it than with the evidences of individual differences. Greater knowledge would reveal these differences. In our generalized knowledge, we see the uniformity so strongly that we fail to discover the originality.

As a traveler from the West, on reaching some Eastern land, finds it difficult at first to distinguish between the faces of different individuals, his mind being focused on the likeness pervading them all, so the Occidental student of Oriental thought is impressed with the remarkable similarity that pervades the entire Oriental civilization, modes of thought, and philosophy, finding it difficult to discover the differences which distinguish the various Oriental races. In like manner, a beginner in the study of Japanese philosophy hardly gives the Japanese credit for the modifications of Chinese philosophy which they have originated.

In this connection it is well to remember that, more than any Westerner can realize, the Japanese people have been dependent on governmental initiative from time immemorial. They have never had any thought but that of implicit obedience, and this characteristic of the social order has produced its necessary consequences in the present characteristics of the people. Individual initiative and independence have been frowned upon, if not always forcibly repressed, and thus the habit of imitation has been stimulated. The people have been deliberately trained to imitation by their social system. The foreigner is amazed at the sudden transformations that have swept the nation. When the early contact with China opened the eyes of the ruling classes to the fact that China had a system of government that was in many respects better than their own, it was an easy thing to adopt it and make it the basis for their own government. This constituted the epoch-making period in Japanese history known as the Taikwa Reform. It occurred in the seventh century, and consisted of a centralizing policy; under which, probably for the first time in Japanese history, the country was really unified. Critics ascribe it to an imitation of the Chinese system. Imitation it doubtless was; but its significant feature was its imposition by the few rulers on the people; hence its wide prevalence and general acceptance.

Similarly, in our own times, the Occidentalized order now dominant in Japan was adopted, not by the people, but by the rulers, and imposed by them on the people; these had no idea of resisting the new order, but accepted it loyally as the decision of their Emperor, and this spirit of unquestioning obedience to the powers that be is, I am persuaded, one of the causes of the prevalent opinion respecting Japanese imitativeness as well as of the fact itself.

The reputation for imitativeness, together with the quality itself, is due in no small degree, therefore, to the long-continued dominance of the feudal order of society. In a land where the dependence of the inferior on the superior is absolute, the wife on the husband, the children on the parents, the followers on their lord, the will of the superior being ever supreme, individual initiative must be rare, and the quality of imitation must be powerfully stimulated.

XVII

ORIGINALITY--INVENTIVENESS

Originality is the obverse side of imitation. In combating the notion that Japan is a nation of unreflective imitators, I have given numerous examples of originality. Further extensive illustration of this characteristic is, accordingly, unnecessary. One other may be cited, however.

The excellence of Japanese art is admitted by all. Japanese temples and palaces are adorned with mural paintings and pieces of sculpture that command the admiration of Occidental experts. The only question is as to their authors. Are these, properly speaking, Japanese works of art--or Korean or Chinese? That Japan received her artistic stimulus, and much of her artistic ideas and technique, from China is beyond dispute. But did she develop nothing new and independent? This is a question of fact. Japanese art, though Oriental, has a distinctive quality. A magnificent work entitled "Solicited Relics of Japanese Art" is issuing from the press, in which there is a large number of chromo-xylographic and collotype reproductions of the best specimens of ancient Japanese art. Reviewing this work, the _Japan Mail_ remarks:

"But why should the only great sculptors that China or Korea ever
produced have come to Japan and bequeathed to this country the
unique results of their genius? That is the question we have to
answer before we accept the doctrine that the noblest masterpieces
of ancient Japan were from foreign lands. When anything comparable
is found in China or Korea, there will be less difficulty in
applying this doctrine of over-sea-influence to the genius that
enriched the temples of antique Japan."[AF]

Under the early influence of Buddhism (900-1200 A.D.) Japan fairly bloomed. Those were the days of her glory in architecture, literature, and art. But a blight fell upon her from which she is only now recovering. The causes of this blight will receive attention in a subsequent chapter. Let us note here only one aspect of it, namely, official repression of originality.

Townsend Harris, in his journal, remarks on the way in which the Japanese government has interfered with the originality of the people. "The genius of their government seems to forbid any exercise of ingenuity in producing articles for the gratification of wealth and luxury. Sumptuary laws rigidly enforce the forms, colors, material, and time of changing the dress of all. As to luxury of furniture, the thing is unknown in Japan.... It would be an endless task to attempt to put down all the acts of a Japanese that are regulated by authority."

The Tokugawa rule forbade the building of large ships; so that, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the art of ship-building was far behind what it had been two centuries earlier. Government authority exterminated Christianity in the early part of the seventeenth century and freedom of religious belief was forbidden. The same power that put the ban on Christianity forbade the spread of certain condemned systems of Confucianism. Even in the study of Chinese literature and philosophy, therefore, such originality as the classic models stimulated was discouraged by the all-powerful Tokugawa government. The avowed aim and end of the ruling powers of Japan was to keep the nation in its _status quo_. Originality was heresy and treason; progress was impiety. The teaching of Confucius likewise lent its support to this policy. To do exactly as the fathers did is to honor them; to do, or even to think, otherwise is to dishonor them. There have not been wanting men of originality and independence in both China and Japan; but they were not great enough to break over, or break down, the incrusted system in which they lived--the system of blind devotion to the past. This system, that deliberately opposed all invention and originality, has been the great incubus to national progress, in that it has rejected and repressed every tendency to variation. What results might not the country have secured, had Christianity been allowed to do its work in stimulating individual development and in creating the sense of personal responsibility towards God and man!

A curious anomaly still remains in Japan on the subject of liberty in study and belief. Though perfect liberty is the rule, one topic is even yet under official embargo. No one may express public dissent from the authorized version of primitive Japanese history. A few years ago a professor in the Imperial University made an attempt to interpret ancient Japanese myths. His constructions were supposed to threaten the divine descent of the Imperial line, and he was summarily dismissed.

Dr. E. Inouye, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in the Imperial University, addressing a Teachers' Association of Sendai, delivered a conservative, indirectly anti-foreign speech. He insisted, as reported by a local English correspondent, that the Japanese people "were descended from the gods. In all other countries the sovereign or Emperor was derived from the people, but here the people had the honor of being derived from the Emperor. Other countries had filial piety and loyalty, but no such filial piety and loyalty as exist in Japan. The moral attainments of the people were altogether unique. He informed his audience that though they might adopt foreign ways of doing things, their minds needed no renovating; they were good enough as they were."[AG]

As a result of this position, scholarship and credulity are curiously combined in modern historical production. Implicit confidence seems to be placed in the myths of the primitive era. Tales of the gods are cited as historical events whose date, even, can be fixed with some degree of accuracy. Although writing was unknown in Japan until early in the Christian era, the chronology of the previous six or eight hundred years is accepted on the authority of a single statement in the Kojiki, written 712 years A.D. This statement was reproduced from the memory of a single man, who remembered miraculously the contents of a book written shortly before, but accidentally destroyed by fire. In the authoritative history of Japan, prepared and translated into English at the command of the government for the Columbian Exposition, we find such statements as these:

"From the time that Amaterasu-Omikami made Ninigi-no-mikoto to descend from the heavens and subject to his administrative sway Okini-nushi-no-mikoto and other offspring of the deities in the land, descendants of the divine beings have sat upon the throne, generation after generation in succession."[AH] "Descended in a direct line from the heavenly deities, the Emperor has stood unshaken in his high place through all generations, his prestige and dignity immutable from time immemorial and independent of all the vicissitudes of the world about him."[AI] "Never has there been found a single subject of the realm who sought to impair the Imperial prestige."[AJ] It is true that in a single passage the traditions of the "age of the Deities" are described as "strange and incredible legends," but it is added that, however singular they are, in order to understand the history of the Empire's beginnings, they must be studied. Then follows, without a word of criticism or dissent, the account of the doings of the heavenly deities, in creating Japan and its people, as well as the myriads of gods. There is no break between the age of the gods and the history of men. The first inventions and discoveries, such as those of fire, of mining, and of weaving are ascribed to Amate rasu-Omikami (the Sun Goddess). According to these traditions and the modern histories built upon them, the Japanese race came into existence wholly independently of all other races of men. Such is the authoritative teaching in the schools to-day.

Occidental scholars do not accept these statements or dates. That the Japanese will evince historical and critical ability in the study of their own early history, as soon as the social order will allow it, can hardly be doubted. Those few who even now entertain advanced ideas do not dare to avow them. And this fact throws an interesting light on the way in which the social order, or a despotic government, may thwart for a time the natural course of development. The present apparent credulity of Japanese historical scholarship is due neither to race character nor to superstitions lodged in the inherited race brain, but simply to the social system, which, as yet, demands the inviolability of the Imperial line.

Now that the Japanese have been so largely relieved from the incubus of the older social order, the question rises whether they are showing powers of originality. The answer is not doubtful, for they have already made several important discoveries and inventions. The Murata rifle, with which the army is equipped, is the invention of a Japanese. In 1897 Colonel Arisaka invented several improvements in this same rifle, increasing the velocity and accuracy, and lessening the weight. Still more recently he has invented a rapid-fire field-piece to superintend whose manufacture he has been sent to Europe. Mr. Shimose has invented a smokeless powder, which the government is manufacturing for its own use. Not infrequently there appear in the papers notices of new inventions. I have recently noted the invention of important improvements in the hand loom universally used in Japan, also a "smoke-consumer" which not only abolishes the smoke, but reduces the amount of coal used and consequently the expense. These are but a few of the ever-increasing number of Japanese inventions.

In the, field of original scientific research is the famous bacteriologist, Dr. Kitazato. Less widely known perhaps, but none the less truly original explorers in the field of science, are Messrs. Hirase and Ikeno, whose discoveries of spermatozoids in Ginko and Cycas have no little value for botanists, especially in the development of the theory of certain forms of fertilization. These instances show that the faculty of original thought is not entirely lacking among the Japanese. Under favorable conditions, such as now prevail, there is good reason for holding that the Japanese will take their place among the peoples of the world, not only as skillful imitators and adapters, but also as original contributors to the progress of civilization and of science.

Originality may be shown in imitation as well as in production, and this type of originality the Japanese have displayed in a marked way. They have copied the institutions of no single country. It might even be difficult to say which Western land has had the greatest influence in molding the new social order of Japan. In view of the fact that it is the English language which has been most in favor during the past thirty years, it might be assumed that England and America are the favored models. But no such hasty conclusion can be drawn. The Japanese have certainly taken ideas and teachers from many different sources; and they have changed them frequently, but not thoughtlessly. A writer in _The Far East_ brings this points out clearly:

"While Japan remained secluded from other countries, she had no
necessity for and scarcely any war vessels, but after the country
was opened to the free intercourse of foreign powers--immediately
she felt the urgent necessity of naval defense and employed a Dutch
officer to construct her navy. In 1871 the Japanese government
employed a number of English officers, and almost wholly
reconstructed her navy according to the English system. But in the
matter of naval education our rulers found the English system
altogether unsatisfactory, and adopted the American system for the
model of our naval academy. So, in discipline, our naval officers
found the German principle much superior to the English, and
adopted that in point of discipline. Thus the Japanese navy is not
wholly after the English system, or the American, or the French, or
the German system. But it has been so constructed as to include the
best portions of all the different systems. In the case of the
army, we had a system of our own before we began to utilize
gunpowder and foreign methods of discipline. Shortly before the
present era we reorganized our army by adopting the Dutch system,
then the English, then the French, and after the Franco-Prussian
war, made an improvement by adopting the German system. But on
every occasion of reorganization we retained the most advantageous
parts of the old systems and harmonized them with the new one. The
result has been the creation of an entirely new system, different
from any of those models we have adopted. So in the case of our
civil code, we consulted most carefully the laws of many civilized
nations, and gathered the cream of all the different codes before
we formulated our own suited to the customs of our people. In the
revision of our monetary system, our government appointed a number
of prominent economists to investigate the characteristics of
foreign systems, as to their merits and faults, and also the
different circumstances under which various systems present their
strength and weakness. The investigation lasted more than two
years, which finally culminated in our adoption of the gold in the
place of the old silver standard."

This quotation gives an idea of the selective method that has been followed. There has been no slavish or unconscious imitation. On the contrary, there has been a constant conscious effort to follow the best model that the civilized world afforded. Of course, it may be doubted whether in fact they have always chosen the best; but that is a different matter. The Japanese think they have; and what foreigner can say that, under the circumstances and in view of the conditions of the people, they have not? One point is clear, that on the whole the nation has made great progress in recent decades, and that the conduct of the government cannot fail to command the admiration of every impartial student of Oriental lands. This is far from saying that all is perfection. Even the Japanese make no such claim. Nor is this equivalent to an assertion of Japan's equality with the leading lands of the West, although many Japanese are ready to assert this. But I merely say that the leaders of New Japan have revealed a high order of judicious originality in their imitation of foreign nations.

XVIII

INDIRECTNESS--"NOMINALITY"

The Japanese have two words in frequent use which aptly describe certain striking aspects of their civilization. They are "tomawashi ni," "yumei-mujitsu," the first translated literally signifying "roundabout" or "indirect," the second meaning "having the name, but not the reality." Both these aspects of Japanese character are forced on the attention of any who live long in Japan.

Some years ago I had a cow that I wished to sell. Being an American, my natural impulse was to ask a dairyman directly if he did not wish to buy; but that would not be the most Japanese method. I accordingly resorted to the help of a "go-between." This individual, who has a regular name in Japanese, "nakadachi," is indispensable for many purposes. When land was being bought for missionary residences in Kumamoto, there were at times three or even four agents acting between the purchaser and the seller and each received his "orei," "honorable politeness," or, in plain English, commission. In the purchase of two or three acres of land, dealings were carried on with some fifteen or more separate landowners. Three different go-betweens dealt directly with the purchaser, and each of these had his go-between, and in some cases these latter had theirs, before the landowner was reached. A domestic desiring to leave my employ conferred with a go-between, who conferred with his go-between, who conferred with me! In every important consultation a go-between seems essential in Japan. That vexatious delays and misunderstandings are frequent may be assumed.

The system, however, has its advantages. In case of disagreeable matters the go-between can say the disagreeable things in the third person, reducing the unpleasant utterances to a minimum.

I recall the case of two evangelists in the employ of the Kumamoto station. Each secured the other to act as go-between in presenting his own difficulties to me. To an American the natural course would have been for each man to state his own grievances and desires, and secure an immediate settlement.

The characteristic of "roundaboutness" is not, however, confined to Japanese methods of action, but also characterizes their methods of speech. In later chapters on the alleged Japanese impersonality we shall consider the remarkable deficiency of personal pronouns in the language, and the wide use of "honorifics." This substitution of the personal pronouns by honorifics makes possible an indefiniteness of speech that is exceedingly difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to appreciate. Fancy the amount of implication in the statement, "Ikenai koto-we shimashita" which, strictly translated, means "Can't go thing have done." Who has done? you? or he? or I? This can only be inferred, for it is not stated. If a speaker wishes to make his personal allusion blind, he can always do so with the greatest ease and without the slightest degree of grammatical incorrectness. "Caught cold," "better ask," "honorably sorry," "feel hungry," and all the common sentences of daily life are entirely free from that personal definiteness which an Occidental language necessitates. We shall see later that the absence of the personal element from the wording of the sentence does not imply, or prove, its absence from the thought of either the speaker or hearer. The Japanese language abounds in roundabout methods of expression. This is specially true in phrases of courtesy. Instead of saying, "I am glad to see you," the Japanese say, "Well, honorably have come"; instead of, "I am sorry to have troubled you," they say, "Honorable hindrance have done"; instead of "Thank you," the correct expression is, "It is difficult."

In a conversation once with a leading educator, I was maintaining that a wide study of English was not needful for the Japanese youth; that the majority of the boys would never learn enough English to make it of practical use to them in after-life, and that it would be wiser for them to spend the same amount of time on more immediately practical subjects. The reply was that the boys needed to have the drill in English in order to gain clear methods of thought: that the sharp distinctness of the English sentence, with its personal pronouns and tense and number, affords a mental drill which the Japanese can get in no other way; and that even if the boys should never make the slightest after-use of English in reading or conversation, the advantage gained was well worth the time expended. I have since noticed that those men who have spent some time in the study of a foreign language speak very much more clearly in Japanese than those who have not had this training. In the former case, the enunciation is apt to be more distinct, and the sentences rounded into more definite periods. The conversation of the average Japanese tends to ramble on in a never-ending sentence. But a marked change has come over vast numbers of the people during the last three decades. The roundaboutness of to-day is as nothing to that which existed under the old order of society. For the new order rests on radically different ideas; directness of speech and not its opposite is being cultivated, and in absolute contrast to the methods of the feudal era, directness of governmental procedure is well-nigh universal to-day. In trade, too, there has come a straightforwardness that is promising, though not yet triumphant. It is safe to assume that in all respectable stores the normal price is charged; for the custom of fixed prices has been widely adopted. If individuals are known to have the "beating down" habit, special prices are added for their sakes.

A personal experience illustrates the point. My wife and I had priced several lamps, had made note of the most satisfactory, and had gone home without buying. The next day a domestic was sent to secure the one which pleased us best. He was charged more than we had been, and in surprise mentioned the sum which we had authorized him to pay. The shopkeeper explained by saying that he always told us the true price in the beginning, because we never tried to beat him down. In truth, modern industrial conditions have pretty well banished the old-time custom of haggling. A premium is set on straightforwardness in business unknown to the old social order.

Roundaboutness is, however, closely connected with "yumei-mujitsu," the other characteristic mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. This, for the sake of simplicity, I venture to call "nominality." Japanese history is a prolonged illustration of this characteristic. For over a thousand years "yumei-mujitsu" has been a leading feature in governmental life. Although the Emperor has ostensibly been seated on the throne, clothed with absolute power, still he has often reigned only in name.[AK] Even so early as 130 A.D., the two families of Oomi and Omuraji began to exercise despotic authority in the central government, and the feudal system, as thus early established, continued with but few breaks to the middle of the present century. There were also the great families which could alone furnish wives to the Imperial line. These early took possession of the person of the Emperor, and the fathers of the wives often exercised Imperial power. The country was frequently and long disturbed by intense civil wars between these rival families. In turn the Fujiwaras, the Minamotos, and the Tairas held the leading place in the control of the Emperor; they determined the succession and secured frequent abdication in favor of their infant sons, but within these families, in turn, there appeared the influence of the "yumei-mujitsu" characteristic. Lesser men, the retainers of these families, manipulated the family leaders, who were often merely figureheads of the contending families and clans. Emperors were made and unmade at the will of these men behind the scenes, most of whom are quite unknown to fame. The creation of infant Emperors, allowed to bear the Imperial name in their infancy and youth, but compelled to abdicate on reaching manhood, was a common device for maintaining nominal Imperialism with actual impotence.

When military clans began to monopolize Imperial power, the people distinctly recognized the nature of their methods and gave it the name of "Bakufu" or "curtain government," a roundabout expression for military government. There has been a succession of these "curtain governments," the last and most successful being that of the Tokugawa, whose fall in 1867-68 brought the entire system to an end and placed the true Emperor on the throne.

But this "yumei-mujitsu" characteristic of Japanese life has been by no means limited to the national government. Every daimyate was more or less blighted by it; the daimyo, or "Great Name," was in too many cases but a puppet in the hands of his "kerai," or family retainers. These men, who were entirely out of sight, were, in very many cases, the real holders of the power which was supposed to be exercised by the daimyo. The lord was often a "great name" and nothing more. That this state of affairs was always attended with evil results is by no means the contention of these pages. Not infrequently the people were saved by it from the incompetence and ignorance and selfishness of hereditary rulers. Indeed, this system of "yumei-mujitsu" government was one of the devices whereby the inherent evils of hereditary rulers were more or less obviated. It may be questioned, however, whether the device did not in the long run cost more than it gained. Did it not serve to maintain, if not actually to produce, a system of dissimulation and deception which could but injure the national character? It certainly could not stimulate the straightforward frankness and outspoken directness and honesty so essential to the well-being of the human race.

Although "yumei-mujitsu" government is now practically extinct in Japan, yet in the social structure it still survives.

The Japanese family is a maze of "nominality." Full-grown young men and women are adopted as sons and daughters, in order to maintain the family line and name.

A son is not a legal son unless he is so registered, while an illegitimate child is recognized as a true son if so registered. A man may be the legal son of his grandmother, or of his sister, if so registered. Although a family may have no children, it does not die out unless there has been a failure to adopt a son or daughter, and an extinct family may be revived by the legal appointment of someone to take the family name and worship at the family shrine. The family pedigree, therefore, does not describe the actual ancestry, but only the nominal, the fictitious. There is no deception in this. It is a well-recognized custom of Old Japan. Its origin, moreover, is not difficult to explain. Nor is this kind of family peculiar to Japan. It is none the less a capital illustration of the "yumei-mujitsu" characteristic permeating the feudal civilization, and still exerting a powerful influence. Even Christians are not free from "nominalism," as we have frequently found in our missionary work.

A case in mind is of an evangelist employed by our mission station. He was to receive a definite proportion of his salary from the church for which he worked and the rest from the station. On inquiry I learned that he was receiving only that provided by the station, and on questioning him further he said that probably the sum promised by the church was being kept as his monthly contribution to the expenses of the church! Instances of this kind are not infrequent. While in Kyushu I more than once discovered that a body of Christians, whose evangelists we were helping to support proportionately, were actually raising not a cent of their proportion. On inquiry, I would be told that the evangelists themselves contributed out of their salary the sums needed, and that, therefore, the Christians did not need to raise it.

The mission, at one time, adopted the plan of throwing upon the local churches the responsibility of deciding as to the fitness of young men for mission aid in securing a theological education. It was agreed by representatives of the churches and the mission that each candidate should secure the approval of the deacons of the church of which he was a member, and that the church should pay a certain proportion of the candidate's school expenses. It was thought that by this method the leading Christians of the young man's acquaintance would become his sponsors, and that they would be unwilling to take this responsibility except for men in whom they had personal confidence, and for whom they would be willing to make personal contributions. In course of time the mission discovered that the plan was not working as expected. The young men could secure the approval of the deacons of their church without any difficulty; and as for the financial aid from the church, that could be very easily arranged for by the student's making a monthly contribution to the church of the sum which the church should contribute toward his expenses. Although this method seems to the average Occidental decidedly deceptive, it seemed to the Japanese perfectly proper. The arrangement, it is needless to state, was not long continued. I am persuaded that the correct explanation of these cases is "yumei-mujitsu."

Not long since express trains were put on between Kobe and Tokyo. One morning at Osaka I planned to take the early express to Kyoto, distant about thirty miles. These are the second and third cities of Japan, and the travel between them is heavy. On applying for a ticket I was refused and told there was no train for Kyoto. But as multitudes were buying tickets, and going out upon the platform, I asked an official what the trouble was, and received the explanation that for this express train no tickets could be sold for less than forty miles; but if I would buy a ticket for the next station beyond Kyoto, it would be all right; I could get off at Kyoto. I was assured that I would be allowed to land and leave the station at Kyoto. This I did then, and have repeatedly done since. The same absurd rule is applied, I am told, between Yokohama and Tokyo.

But our interest in these illustrations is the light they shed on Japanese character. They indicate the intellectual angle from which the people have looked out on life. What is the origin of the characteristic? Is it due to deep-lying race nature, to the quality of the race brain? Even more clearly than in the case of "roundaboutness," it seems to me that "nominality" is due to the nature of the old social order. Feudalism has always exhibited more or less of these same features. To Anglo-Saxons, reared in a land blessed by direct government of the people, by the people, and for the people, such methods were not only needless but obnoxious. Nominal responsibility without real power has been seen to breed numberless evils. We have learned to hate all nominalism, all fiction in government, in business and, above all, in personal character. But this is due to the Anglo-Saxon social order, the product in large measure of centuries of Christian instruction.

Through contact with Westerners and the ideas they stand for, directness and reality are being assimilated and developed by the Japanese. This would be impossible were the characteristic in question due to inherent race nature necessarily bequeathed from generation to generation by intrinsic heredity.

XIX

INTELLECTUALITY

Some writers hold that the Japanese are inherently deficient in the higher mental faculties. They consider mediocre mentality to be an inborn characteristic of Japan and assert that it lies at the root of the civilizational differences distinguishing the East from the West. The puerility of Oriental science in all its departments, the prevalence of superstition even among the cultivated, the lack of historical insight and interpretation of history are adduced as conclusive evidences of this view.

Foreign teachers in Japanese employ have told me that Japanese students, as compared with those of the West, manifest deficient powers of analysis and of generalization. Some even assert that the Japanese have no generalizing ability whatever, their progress in civilization being entirely due to their remarkable power of clever imitation. Mr. W.G. Aston, in ascribing the characteristic features of Japanese literature to the fundamental nature of the race, says they are "hardly capable of high intellectual achievement."[AL]

While we may admit that the Japanese do not seem to have at present the same power of scientific generalization as Occidentals, we naturally ask ourselves whether the difference is due to natal deficiency, or whether it may not be due to difference in early training. We must not forget that the youth who come under the observation of foreign teachers in Japanese schools are already products of the Japanese system of education, home and school, and necessarily are as defective as it is.

In a previous chapter a few instances of recent invention and important scientific discovery were given.

These could not have been made without genuine powers of analysis and generalization. We need not linger to elaborate this point.

Another set of facts throwing light on our problem is the success of so many Japanese students, at home and in foreign lands, in mastering modern thought. Great numbers have come back from Europe and America with diplomas and titles; not a few have taken high rank in their classes. The Japanese student abroad is usually a hard worker, like his brother at home. I doubt if any students in the new or the old world study more hours in a year than do these of Japan. It has often amazed me to learn how much they are required to do. This is one fair sign of intellectuality. The ease too with which young Japan, educated in Occidental schools and introduced to Occidental systems of thought, acquires abstruse speculations, searching analyses, and generalized abstractions proves conclusively Japanese possession of the higher mental faculties, in spite of the long survival in their civilization of primitive puerility and superstitions and the lack of science, properly so called.

Japanese youths, furthermore, have a fluency in public speech decidedly above anything I have met with in the United States. Young men of eighteen or twenty years of age deliver long discourses on religion or history or politics, with an apparent ease that their uncouth appearance would not lead one to expect. In the little school of less than 150 boys in Kumamoto there were more individuals who could talk intelligibly and forcefully on important themes of national policy, the relation of religion and politics, the relation of Japan to the Occident and the Orient, than could be found in either of the two colleges in the United States with which I was connected. I do not say that they could bring forth original ideas on these topics. But they could at least remember what they had heard and read and could reproduce the ideas with amazing fluency.

A recent public meeting in Tokyo in which Christian students of the University spoke to fellow-students on the great problems of religion, revealed a power of no mean order in handling the peculiar difficulties encountered by educated young men. A competent listener, recently graduated from an American university and widely acquainted with American students, declared that those Japanese speakers revealed greater powers of mind and speech than would be found under similar circumstances in the United States.

The fluency with which timid girls pray in public has often surprised me. Once started, they never seem to hesitate for ideas or words. The same girls would hardly be able to utter an intelligible sentence in reply to questions put to them by the pastor or the missionary, so faint would be their voices and so hesitating their manner.

The question as to whether the Japanese have powers of generalization receives some light from a study of the language of the people. An examination of primitive Japanese proves that the race, prior to receiving even the slightest influence from China, had developed highly generalized terms. It is worth while to call attention here to a simple fact which most writers seem to ignore, namely, that all language denotes and indeed rests on generalization. Consider the word "uma," "horse"; this is a name for a whole class of objects, and is therefore the product of a mind that can generalize and express its generalization in a concept which no act of the imagination can picture; the imagination can represent only individuals; the mind that has concepts of classes of things, as, for instance, of horses, houses, men, women, trees, has already a genuine power of generalization. Let me also call attention to such words as "wake," "reason"; "mono," "thing"; "koto," "fact"; "aru," "is"; "oro," "lives"; "aru koto," "is fact," or "existence"; "ugoku koto," "movement"; "omoi," "thought"; this list might be indefinitely extended. Let the reader consider whether these words are not highly generalized; yet these are all pure Japanese words, and reveal the development of the Japanese mind before it was in the least influenced by Chinese thought. Evidently it will not do to assert the entire lack of the power of generalization to the Japanese mind.

Still further evidence proving Japanese possession of the higher mental faculties may be found in the wide prevalence and use of the most highly generalized philosophical terms. Consider for instance, "Ri" and "Ki," "In" and "Yo." No complete translation can be found for them in English; "Ri" and "Ki" may be best translated as the rational and the formative principles in the universe, while "In" and "Yo" signify the active and the passive, the male and the female, the light and the darkness; in a word, the poles of a positive and negative. It is true that these terms are of Chinese origin as well as the thoughts themselves, but they are to-day in universal use in Japan. Similar abstract terms of Buddhistic origin are the possession of the common people.

Of course the possession of these Chinese terms is not offered as evidence of independent generalizing ability. But wide use proves conclusively the possession of the higher mental faculties, for, without such faculties, the above terms would be incomprehensible to the people and would find no place in common speech. We must be careful not to give too much weight to the foreign origin of these terms. Chinese is to Japanese what Latin and Greek are to modern European languages. The fact that a term is of Chinese origin proves nothing as to the nature of the modern Japanese mind. The developing Japanese civilization demanded new terms for her new instruments and increasing concepts. These for over fifteen centuries have been borrowed from, or constructed out of, Chinese in the same way that all our modern scientific terms are constructed out of Latin and Greek. It is doubtful if any of the Chinese terms, even those borrowed bodily, have in Japan the same significance as in China. If this is true, then the originating feature of Japanese power of generalization becomes manifest.

Indeed from this standpoint, the fact that the Japanese have made such extensive use of the Chinese language shows the degree to which the Japanese mind has outgrown its primitive development, demanding new terms for the expression of its expanding life. But mental growth implies energy of acquisition. The adoption of Chinese terms is not a passive but an active process.

Acquisition of generalized terms can only take place with the development of a generalizing mind. Foreign terms may help, but they do not cause that development.

In a study of the question whether or not the Japanese possess independent powers of analysis and generalization, we must ever remember the unique character of the social environment to which they have been subjected. Always more or less of an isolated nation, they have been twice or thrice suddenly confronted with a civilization much superior to that which they in their isolation had developed. Under such circumstances, adoption and modification of ideas and language as well as of methods and machinery were the most rational and natural courses.

The explanation usually given for the puerilities of Oriental science, history, and religion has been short and simple, namely, the inherent nature of the Oriental races, as if this were the final fact, needing and admitting no further explanation. That the Orient has not developed history or science is doubtless true, but the correct explanation of this fact is, in my opinion, that the educational method of the entire Orient has rested on mechanical memorization; during the formative period of the mind the exclusive effort of education has been to develop a memory which acts by arbitrary or fanciful connections and relations. A Japanese boy of Old Japan, for instance, began his education at from seven to eight years of age and spent three or four years in memorizing the thousands of Chinese hieroglyphic characters contained in the Shisho and Gokyo, nine of the Chinese classics. This completed, his teacher would begin to explain to him the meaning of the characters and sentences. The entire educational effort was to develop the powers of observing and memorizing accidental, superficial, or even purely artificial relations. This double faculty of observing trifling and irrelevant details, and of remembering them, became phenomenally and abnormally developed.

Recent works on the psychology of education, however, have made plain how an excessive development of a child's lower mental faculties may arrest its later growth in all the higher departments of its intellectual nature; the development of a mechanical memory is well known as a serious obstacle to the higher activities of reason. Now Japanese education for centuries, like Chinese, has developed such memory. It trained the lower and ignored the higher. Much of the Japanese education of to-day, although it includes mathematics, science, and history, is based on the mechanical memory method. The Orient is thus a mammoth illustration of the effects of over-development of the mechanical memory, and the consequent arrest of the development of the remaining powers of the mind.

Encumbered by this educational ideal and system, how could the ancient Chinese and Japanese men of education make a critical study of history, or develop any science worthy of the name? The childish physics and astronomy, the brutal therapeutics and the magical and superstitious religions of the Orient, are a necessary consequence of its educational system, not of its inherent lack of the higher mental powers.

If Japanese children brought up from infancy in American homes, and sent to American schools from kindergarten days onward, should still manifest marked deficiencies in powers of analysis and generalization, as compared with American children, we should then be compelled to conclude that this difference is due to diverse natal psychic endowment. Generalizations as to the inherent intellectual deficiencies of the Oriental are based on observations of individuals already developed in the Oriental civilization, whose psychic defects they accordingly necessarily inherit through the laws of social heredity. Such observations have no relevancy to our main problem. We freely admit that Oriental civilization manifests striking deficiencies of development of the higher mental faculties, although it is not nearly so great as many assert; but we contend that these deficiencies are due to something else than the inherent psychic nature of the Oriental individual. Innumerable causes have combined to produce the Oriental social order and to determine its slow development. These cannot be stated in a sentence, nor in a paragraph.

In the final analysis, however, the causes which produce the characteristic features of Japanese social order are the real sources of the differentiating intellectual traits now characterizing the Japanese. Introduce a new social heredity,--a new system of education,--one which relegates a mechanical memory to the background,--one which exalts powers of rational observation of the profound causal relations of the phenomena of nature, and which sets a premium on such observation, analysis, and generalization, and the results will show the inherent psychic nature of the Oriental to be not different from that of the Occidental.

XX

PHILOSOPHICAL ABILITY

We are now prepared to consider whether or not the Japanese have philosophical ability. The average educated Japanese believe such to be the case. The rapidity and ease with which the upper classes have abandoned their superstitious faiths is commonly attributed by themselves to the philosophical nature of their minds. Similarly the rapid spread of so-called rationalism and Unitarian thought and Higher Criticism among once earnest Christians, during the past decade, they themselves ascribe to their interest in philosophical questions, and to their ability in handling philosophical problems.

Foreigners, on the other hand, usually deny them the possession of philosophical ability.

Dr. Peery, in his volume entitled "The Gist of Japan," says: "By nature, I think, they are more inclined to be practical than speculative. Abstract theological ideas have little charm for them. There is a large element in Japan that simulates a taste for philosophical study. Philosophy and metaphysics are regarded by them as the profoundest of all branches of learning, and in order to be thought learned they profess great interest in these studies. Not only are the highly metaphysical philosophies of the East studied, but the various systems of the West are looked into likewise. Many of the people are capable of appreciating these philosophies, too; but they do it for a purpose." Other writers make the same general charge of philosophical incompetence. One or two quotations from Dr. Knox's writings were given on this subject, under the head of Imitation.[AM]

What, then, are the facts? Do the Japanese excel in philosophy, or are they conspicuously deficient? In either case, is the characteristic due to essential race nature or to some other cause?

We must first distinguish between interest in philosophical problems and ability in constructing original philosophical systems. In this distinction is to be found the reconciliation of many conflicting views. Many who argue for Japanese philosophical ability are impressed with the interest they show in metaphysical problems, while those who deny them this ability are impressed with the dependence of Japanese on Chinese philosophy.

The discussions of the previous chapter as to the nature of Japanese education and its tendency to develop the lower at the expense of the higher mental faculties, have prepared us not to expect any particularly brilliant history of Japanese philosophy. Such is indeed the case. Primitive Japanese cosmology does not differ in any important respect from the primitive cosmology of other races. The number of those in Old Japan who took a living interest in distinctly metaphysical problems is indisputably small. While we admit them to have manifested some independence and even originality, as Professor Inouye urges,[AN] yet it can hardly be maintained that they struck out any conspicuously original philosophical systems. There is no distinctively Japanese philosophy.

These facts, however, should not blind us to the distinction between latent ability in philosophical thought and the manifestation of that ability. The old social order, with its defective education, its habit of servile intellectual dependence on ancestors, and its social and legal condemnation of independent originality, particularly in the realm of thought, was a mighty incubus on speculative philosophy. Furthermore, crude science and distorted history could not provide the requisite material from which to construct a philosophical interpretation of the universe that would appeal to the modern Occidental.

In spite, however, of social and educational hindrances, the Japanese have given ample evidence of interest in metaphysical problems and of more or less ability in their solution. Religious constructions of the future life, conceptions as to the relations of gods and men and the universe, are in fact results of the metaphysical operations of the mind. Primitive Japan was not without these. As she developed in civilization and came in contact with Chinese and Hindu metaphysical thought, she acquired their characteristic systems. Buddhist first, and later Confucian, metaphysics dominated the thought of her educated men. In view of the highly metaphysical character of Buddhist doctrines and the interest they have produced at least among the better trained priests, the assertion that the Japanese have no ability in metaphysics cannot be maintained.