o D E OF Writing FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN BY ARTHUR MAY APP VOL. II. ‘ » f^r* f f ^ASs BOSTON JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY 1897 y JOS g'ol K^7 Copyright, 1896, BY Joseph Knight Company. 209217 ^clomal '^xm: C. H. Simonds & Co.. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped by Geo. C. Scott & Sons FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN Volume II. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Colloquial . . . i II. The Written Language. . 23 III. A Japanese Library . . 64 IV. Temple and House . . . 105 V. Inversions and Contradictions 134 VI. The Nation’s Unity . .158 A Bibliography . . .187 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. CHAPTER I. THE COLLOQUIAL. ‘‘^OMMENT vous portez vous,” is the greeting of the Frenchman. In it he reveals the national concern, the care for polite manners and correct deportment. Likewise the Englishman’s grave “ How do you do,” and the American’s hearty “ How are you,” are significant of that upon which each most insists. In the one salutation is expressed British pride in achievement, and in the other Yankee insistance upon what one is in himself, as the criterion of worth. None the less significantly does the peculiar individuality of the Japanese appear in his greeting. The ordinary salutations are of course the non-committal 1 2 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. ones everywhere in use. As our ‘‘good morning ” and “ good evening ” are simply the conventional forms by which we show our unwillingness to commit ourselves to an opinion on any subject until we know with whom we are talking, so the Japanese are at one with the rest of the world when they salute us in the morning with their “ Ohajyo,^' “ It is honorably early; ” in the afternoon with Konnichi wa^'" “ To-day ; ” and later with “ Kojnban wa^'' “ This evening.” But whenever more is required between friends than this literal “ passing the time of the day,” then that which weighs most on the Japanese mind at once asserts itself. It is the absorbing fear lest one may, possibly, on some for- mer occasion, have been guilty of some rudeness. After the first low bow and the “ Shibaraku o me ni kakarimashita^^ “ it is a long time since I have hung upon your honorable eyelids,” comes the second obeisance, and then the great anxiety finds expression, “ O shikkei itashimashita^'' “ Pray excuse me for my rudeness the last time we met.” And this with the moral certainty that on the last meeting every THE COLLOQUIAL. 3 possible occasion for rudeness was sedu- lously avoided. But it is perhaps not so much in the greeting as in the parting word that the real heart of the people is shown. The Japanese puts into his “good- bye ” the very essence of his philosophy. His sayonara^^"' that softly flowing word which no parting guest, who has ever heard it, when sped by the entire house- hold of whose charming hospitality he has partaken, can ever forget, contains all the serene patience, all the calm resignation, all the cheerful acceptance of the universe which mark the people’s character. “ Say- onara'" means, simply, “ If it be so,” that is “ if we must part, why then we must,” and we know that after we are gone they will make the best of our absence as they have made the best of our stay. For to make the best of everything is the Japan- ese nature. Perhaps the most common phrase heard in their conversation is Shikata ga nai,'"’’ “there is no way out of it,” this expression serving them variously as noun, adjective, adverb, verb, and inter- jection. If you want, for example, to say “ it is awfully hot,” you put it in this form — 4 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. “ Atsiikute shikata ga “It being hot, there is nothing to be done.” So thor- oughly indeed is the philosophy of this phrase Shikata ga nai incorporated into their thought that one who attempts to learn the Japanese language must needs be a humble disciple of its gentle fatalism, for there is literally no way out of the difficulties which confront him. First you encounter the disheartening fact that you have to learn two languages, the written tongue differing from the col- loquial not only in its vocabulary but also in its construction. If a Japanese, for instance, reads from a newspaper to a friend, he cannot read what he finds there. He must render it as he reads into the colloquial. The difficulty of acquiring the two languages is, however, by the Occidental easily surmounted by simply paying heed to the warning once given me that any one attempting the written lan- guage after the age of twenty-five soon shows signs of mental deterioration. Even with the help of eyes trained for centuries in the recognition of characters, it takes the Japanese child seven years of uninter- THE COLLOQUIAL. 5 mitting study merely to master the abso- lutely necessary part of the alphabet, and even a life-long devotion to it will leave much of it unlearned. This initial difficulty being overcome by the Western student by the simple process of elimination, his sense of relief is again rudely shocked by finding that there are two colloquial languages — one to be used in addressing inferiors and the other in speaking to those who are presumably his equals or superiors in the social scale. These also differ not only in their vocabu- lary but in their construction. One must always, therefore, on making a visit, bethink himself to whom he is talking, or he will be sure either to demoralize the servant or to offend the host. The most useful phrase the foreigner can learn at the out- set is the already quoted “ 0 shikkei itashi- mashita^^'' “ Pray excuse my rudeness the last time we met,” for there are ten chances to one that on that occasion the wrong language was used, that what was meant for a compliment was in reality an insult, or that the deference owing to a superior was worse than wasted on a menial. 6 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Nor does the difficulty cease with the recognition and mastery of these two lan- guages. There are degrees of superiority and inferiority, and to each degree is assigned a language of its own. The distinction, for example, between your own servants and those of another must always be kept in mind in your choice of terms and construction. There is also a fine shade of difference to be observed in talking with the employe of a small inn and the servitors at a first-class hotel. Distinctions of rank specially attach to the verb you use. Not only does every verb have its common and also its polite form, the latter being conjugated through all its moods and tenses, but there are also, to express the same act, some verbs far more polite than others. When I simply see a thing myself, the plain word “ 7niru ” will answer to express the fact of my seeing. If, however, I want a friend to see anything I have, I ask him not to “ miru ” but to goraii 7iasai,'^ “ august glance deign.” If, further, I want to see something belonging to him I must use still another verb, haike7i suru^^'' which THE COLLOQUIAL. 7 implies that I would “ adoringly look ” at it. Nor is this disheartening multiplicity of languages limited only to the grada- tions of rank to be kept in mind. Even in so simple a matter as counting, a most elaborate system of classification is to be observed. In other words, I must always be thinking, not only of the rank of the person to whom I am speaking, but also of the class to which belongs every object which I would mention. If I want to say one umbrella I use for the word “ one ” the numeral “ ipponP If it is a sheet of paper of which I am talking, one of that kind is not ippon^^ but ichhuai.^"' If it is one musket, then the numeral must be neither nor '‘^ichhnaV^ but ^'‘itchoy If a whiff of smoke, it becomes ^'‘ippukii^ If an hour, if a book, “ issatsu; ” if a poem, “ isshuj ” if an animal, “ ippikij ” if a chair, “ ikki- aku;^"' if a man, ^'‘ichinmP To be sure, this is no more than an elaboration of our own “ one loaf of bread, one sheet of paper, one glass of beer, but it is an elaboration which makes in Japanese 8 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. the acquisition of the numerals, commonly the easiest of all tasks for the beginner in a language, a work of enormous diffi- culty. To confront at the start some fifty different sets of numerals makes the out- look an appalling one. This practical multiplication of lan- guages to be acquired seems, however, at first sight to be compensated by the re- assuring discover)’ that there are prac- tically only two parts of speech to be studied, namely, the noun and the verb ; and from these all the terrors of inflection are removed. Strictly speaking, there are no articles, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or conjunctions, nor yet are there any necessarj’ distinctions of per- son, gender, or case. Ordinarily there are not even any subjects to the sentences. It is not that the subject is dropped but still “ understood,'’ as so frequently hap- pens in Latin, but such a thing as a sub- ject does not exist in the mind of the Japanese speaker. If it is absolutely nec- essar}’ to introduce a subject it is done in a dreamy, indefinite sort of way as if it could have little or no connection with THE COLLOQUIAL. 9 the verb. Thus if one wants to say snow is white, he merely hints that there is such a thing as snow before he begins his sen- tence, and says, ‘‘ As for snow, white is.” The absence of personal pronouns is perhaps the most conspicuous and char- acteristic feature of the language. ‘‘ I don’t drink wine ” is, simply, “ Sake wo 7iomimasen^^'' “ wine don’t drink,” the con- text being depended on to make clear what person is meant. Wherever this is doubtful (and how seldom it is would, on careful study, astonish the Western mind so lavish in the use of pronouns), person is indicated by certain abstract nouns. If, for example, I must indicate that I am the person concerned, if the obtrusion of my- self is absolutely necessary for the under- standing of the matter in hand, I mention in the casual way above alluded to the word “ selfishness.” That makes it entirely clear. So, also, in a case of like necessity, “the augustness” means you, and “that honorable side ” supplies the need of a third person in the language. It is in this way that the elaborate system of hon- orifics becomes exceedingly useful, these 10 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. being made to do duty as pronominal adjectives. The only way by which I can directly indicate that it is my business house of which I am speaking is to call it the “ bankrupt firm,” while if I said “ the prosperous firm,” it would be at once recognized as yours. Any word of de- preciation or of exaltation is amply suffi- cient to do duty as the required personal pronoun. Relative pronouns are equally unneces- sary. All you have to do is to trans- form your entire sentence beginning with “ who ” or “ which ” into an attributive, and you will never miss your relatives. “ A man who comes ” is “ a comes man,” “ a man who has gone ” is “ a went man,” and “the carpenter who fell off the roof and broke his leg” is “the fell off the roof and broke leg carpenter.” It is all admirably simple, and the acquisi- tion of the Japanese language with naught but the noun and verb to vex us is, from one point of view, as easy as Japanese housekeeping with nothing but floor and walls to keep free from dust. But to think in Japanese. Hie labor ^ THE COLLOQUIAL. I I hoc opus est. For this requires an abso- lute inversion of every habit of thought to which we have been accustomed. A sen- tence in English translated into the cor- responding Japanese words would make absolute nonsense. It is not simply that the idioms differ but that the Japanese mind runs in an entirely different, and generally in a reversed, groove of thought. Tell your servant to go and inquire and he will not in the least comprehend what you mean. But say to him, “ Having lis- tened, come,” he will understand and do your bidding, although you have really said exactly the opposite of what you meant. In this medium of communica- tion the cart is invariably put before the horse, or you must frame your sen- tence as the Japanese build a house, roof first and walls afterward. Indeed, not merely inversion but the most compli- cated involution becomes necessary if you would put your thought in Japanese form. If you are bargaining and wish to ask, “What’s the lowest price you’ll take ? ” your query must be rendered thus, “ As for decisions place, how much 12 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. until will you acknowledge yourself van- quished?” “I have hardly ever seen any” in its proper Japanese dress assumes this extraordinary shape : “Too much have seen fact is n’t.” A close analysis will detect the identity of the two expres- sions, but the time necessary for such anal- ysis is not conducive to fluency of speech. It is no easy matter for the Occidental to run his thought into the far Eastern grooves. And still less easy is it to accustom himself to the phenomenal indefiniteness of the language. For genuine creed mate- rial it is unsurpassed. For instance, if you wish to say simply and straightfor- wardly “ He certainly knows,” your direct assertion becomes transformed into “ The not knowing thing is not.” “ Don’t tell me you don’t believe it,” appears in this shape, “Is the not believing an existing thing?” The language, as will be observed from these examples, being positively riotous with negatives, it becomes prac- tically impossible to make a direct affirma- tion having any significance. You desire. THE COLLOQUIAL. 13 for instance, to say, “ There are scarcely any more.” The Japanese equivalent is, “ How much even is not.” Possibly, a half hour spent upon the analysis of this will reveal the fact that it means, “ There is not even enough to make it worth while to ask how much there is.” So, likewise. He will surely go,’’’ is transformed into the negative indefinite, “ The not going will not be.” And the case of the boy who explained the sentence in his composition, “ Pins have saved the lives of a great many people,” by saying that his scheme of salvation consisted in “ not swallowing them,” is paralleled by the way in which the Japanese warn their children that “they had better not eat too many of those cakes.” This is the form of the warning, “ A great deal of not eating those cakes is good.” Were all Japanese sentences as short and concise as the examples already given, the unfamiliar grooves into which their thought runs might not prove a seri- ous difficulty to the average student of the language. The chief terror confronting him, however, is yet to be stated. It is 14 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. the utter chaos of expression into which its synthetic tendency carries it. The ex- treme scarcity of conjunctions, for which other parts of speech have to do duty, necessitates the inextricable mingling in one sentence of seemingly unrelated ideas as well as expressions. “The Japan- ese,” says Professor Chamberlain, in the only entertaining grammar ever written, “ always tries to incorporate the whole of a statement, however complex it may be, and however numerous its parts, within the limits of a single sentence whose members are all mutually interdependent.” Here is an example from a Buddhist sermon : “ Supposing you were to tell a horse to practise filial piety or a wolf to practise loyalty, those animals would not be able to do what you required of them. But man has the intelligence wherewith to discern right from wrong, good from evil ; and he can only then first be said to be truly man when he practises loyalty towards his masters and filial piety towards his parents; when he is affec- tionate towards his brethren; when he THE COLLOQUIAL. ^5 lives harmoniously with his wife ; when he is amiable towards his friends, and acts sincerely in all his social intercourse.” This paragraph, though long, is broken up, through the use of the convenient con- junction, into many distinct and practically detached sentences. In Japanese, all these become a single and hopelessly contorted statement, as follows : “ Horse to confronting, ‘ Filial piety ex- haust ’ ! wolf to confronting, ‘ Loyalty ex- haust’ ! that said place although, can fact is-not whereas - man as for, right-wrong good-evil discern intelligence being, lord to loyalty exhausting, parent to filial piety exhausting, brethren as - for, intercourse being-good, spouses as-for, being harmo- nious, friends to being intimate, sincerity taking, having intercourse indeed, firstly truth’s man that gets-said.” And this is brevity and simplicity itself compared with another sentence from the same volume which winds with like ex- traordinary contortions through two and a half of its pages. But the language has some excellences which would delight the heart of an Emer- 1 6 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. son. On a recent visit to Europe, our party finding its stock of superlatives becoming exhausted, and bethinking ourselves of Emerson’s reminder that “ the superlative is weak,” we invented three new degrees of comparison with which we agreed to express our admiration. These were the words, “decent,” “very fair,” “not bad,” the latter indicating the superlative. We were really in training for the expression of our thought in Japanese, which is de- void not only of the superlative, but of the comparative also. You cannot there go into ecstacies over the weather. You cannot even say it is finer to-day than yesterday. You can only say, “Than yesterday, to-day the weather is good.” But note the power which this gives you. The Japanese husband, if ever goaded by his wife’s tongue into rebellion, instead of blurting out his warning in our rough way and exclaiming, “You had better hold your tongue,” quietly says, “Remaining silent is good.” Can anything be im- agined more admirably effective ? Emer- son was right. All degrees of comparison are as useless as they are odious. THE COLLOQUIAL. 17 Elaborate in its politeness, too, the language is an index of the character of the people who use it. For slang, the most effusive expressions of consideration are substituted. For instance, if we wish to say familiarly, “ Think of that,” we might in an unguarded moment be betrayed into exclaiming, “ Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” Not so the Japanese, courteous as he is, not in out- ward deportment merely, but in his inmost fibre. He would say, “ Will you kindly hang that on your august eyebrow.^ ” And as for profanity, no vestige of it can be found in the dictionary, no hint of it in the intercourse of the lowest. What may at first sight seem to be exceptions to the rule are only additional evidences of the unsuspecting simplicity with which they have allowed certain profane foreign words to be incorporated into their lan- guage. For instance, a foreign sailor in the open ports often goes under the name of damyuraisu^'' the word being a literal transcription of the combination of sounds which met their ears when they first heard foreign sailors addressed by their officers. I 8 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. While this utter inadequacy of the lan- guage to express one’s feelings on occasion might seem to some of our Occidentals the chief of its shortcomings, making it well not to continue the enumeration of them, there is one other, at least, which should not fail to be noted. The Japanese colloquial becomes, per- haps, of all languages, the most impos- sible to understand, chiefly because it is a language of hints rather than of full and explicit statement. Its commonly used words and phrases leave so much to be understood that none but they who can gain a complete esoteric knowledge of the people’s history, habits, and life can even by the utmost effort comprehend what is being said. Generally he must be satisfied with a guess at it. Some of the most familiar examples already ad- duced will furnish illustration of this. Their very salutations are elliptical. They are no more than the barest hints of what they intend to say. The largest and often the most significant parts of the sentences remain unspoken. For the Japanese them- selves, the first word often suffices for the THE COLLOQUIAL. 19 whole originally elaborate expression, but the unaccustomed listener may as well try to guess a word from the mere mention of its initial letter, as to fathom the meaning of a phrase which is only barely begun and then abandoned. Their “ Shibarakti 0 7ne ni kakarimashita^^"' “It is a long time since we have had the pleasure of meet- ing,” is now simply “ Shibaraku^^'' “ Long time.” Their “Pray pardon my rudeness the last time we met,” is merely “ O shikkei^^'' “Honorable rudeness,” and -the whole philosophy of resignation suggested in their parting phrase has dwindled into a simple “ If so.” True it is that every language has in a degree the same characteristic. In our own conversation we also leave much to be understood. A hint is sufficient to those familiar with what we would say, and doubtless many of our commonly used phrases are but remnants of what they once were. But it is none the less true, also, that the more elliptical the forms of speech become in the use of a lan- guage, the greater the difficulty which con- fronts a would-be learner of that language. 22 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. and more hopeless mystery. To the for- eign merchant who is simply an exile from his own land until he makes enough money to return, it is, especially as he is taught it, a more or less barbarous jargon, a smattering of which proves to be for him a commercial convenience. To the missionary who goes to convert the peo- ple, and who by reason of that very purpose bars himself from all genuine sympathy and from the possibility of any- thing approaching complete mutual under- standing, it is likely to remain forever a sealed book, no matter how great his lin- guistic ability in mastering its vocabulary and construction. Doubtless there are men who fulfil the needful conditions and attain unto a mastery of the ’language itself. But they are very seldom to be found in either of the three classes mentioned. CHAPTER II. THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. J F the acquirement of the colloquial Japanese, with its wholly unfamiliar vocabulary, its complete inversion of Western thought, its phenomenal indefi- niteness, its riotous use of negatives, its involved and chaotic sentences, and its persistence in leaving everything to be understood, is a matter of almost insur- mountable difficulty to the Occidental, the obstacles in the way of the mastery of the written tongue may well appal the bravest and most indefatigable linguist among us. Did the degree of illiteracy in a country bear a necessary relation to the difficulty encountered by its people in learning their alphabet, or syllabary, or hieroglyphs, or whatever vehicle they use for the written expression of their thought, then Japan 26 24 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. should be the most illiterate country in the world, whereas it is safe to say that in that empire the ratio of illiteracy is scarcely greater than in Germany or New England. Except among the pari- ahs, it is a very rare thing to find, even in the lowest classes, a man or woman who cannot read and write, although the labor involved in these acquirements is ten, twenty, fifty times as great as that imposed upon the learner in any Western land. For every Japanese child in school, seven years, at least, is the time which must be devoted to the mere recognition of the characters employed in writing, and even then the list is by no means mas- tered. The little scholar at the end of that period is only able to recognize, pos- sibly, a tenth of all the signs which are used. He is qualified, perhaps, to read the better class of newspapers which employ only a range of about four or five thousand characters. To know the entire list of nearly fifty thousand is the rare attainment of the lifelong student of lit- erature, and it is as doubtful whether any one has succeeded in gaining such a THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 25 mastery, as it is whether there is any one in the West to-day who is familiar with every word in the Century Dictionary. That, in the face of this obstacle in the way of learning to read, the Japanese are far from being the nation of illiterates that one might expect to find there, may perhaps be accounted for by some con- siderations apart from their native intel- ligence and their habits of industry. In the first place, it may be noted that the Japanese child is born into the world with a memory for characters already organ- ized and equipped and ready for action. For ages his ancestors have had the images of such characters impressed upon and stored up in their brains, and some- what of their own power of recalling them is transmitted to their descendants. In no other way can the marvellously quick recognition of them by the little students be accounted for. And then again, besides this inherited memory, there is in each young life an inherited veneration for these characters, a perception, amounting to an instinct, of their sacred and commanding importance 26 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. in life.* In this kind of worship of the the letter, the Japanese is at one with all his far Eastern brethren, the sanctity of written words being an almost universal feature of Oriental religious faith. A curious illustration of such worship may often be noted when educated Japanese are engaged in conversation. One of them,, for instance, wishes to use some word whose meaning he can make clear only by a swift movement of his finger writing its character upon the air, and then instantly with a sweep of his hand he will brush away the invisible and intangible mark he has made, for words are too sacred to be left floating about in the air. He is an educated Japanese, free from all * In the “ Doshiko^^ or “ Teachings for the Young,” a book which has enjoyed great popularity in Japan for several hundred years, passages like this are of frequent occurrence. “ If thou leara but one character each day ’t will be three hundred and sixty characters in the year. Each character is worth a thousand pieces of gold, each dot may be the saving of many lives.” Professor Cham- berlain notes the last words of this saying as Buddhistic and to be interpreted to mean “ That the merit obtained by one who copies so much as a single dot of the Bud- dhist Scriptures will be so great as to save him from hell and cause him to be bom as a human being during sev- eral lives.” HoRlKlRl l,R.l S— FLOWEIR GARDEN AT T'oKLO. THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 27 superstitions, and would laugh at you if you charged him with this one. Never- theless, the conviction of the sacredness of words is just as surely ingrained in his being as the unconscious sweep of the arm, brushing out of existence the figure he has made, has become automatic and instinctive. So every Japanese is born with a conviction, as it were, of the worth and importance of the signs, the knowledge of which is to be to him the road to success and in the study of which a great part of his life is to be spent. Largely helped as he is in his task by an inherited memory, he is also spurred on by an ancestral veneration for the objects of his study and endeavor. That with such ghostly aid and such instinctive incitement he should succeed in what seems to us beyond the reach of human effort, is no great marvel to himself, for he is but one of the millions in Japan who generation after generation thus achieve the impossible. Nor is the help from such source limited to the immense force stored up for him by the patience and worship of his 28 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. national ancestry alone. For the Jap- anese writing is no indigenous product. For it the nation is indebted to the im- memorial civilization of China, and for ages before Japan had a national exist- ence the teeming millions of the Celestial Empire, poring over their hieroglyphics with their own inexhaustible patience and industry, had been fashioning and filling the grooves of the far Eastern brain to enable it the more readily to master the written lore of the centuries. It is hard for the Japanese with their intense national pride to acknowledge this indebtedness to China. Even as late as the beginning of the present century, under the influence of an access of patri- otic feeling, there was published what purported to be a discovery of the native Japanese alphabet of the prehistoric age. Called the “ Shindai-no-moji^^'' or “ Char- acters of the Gods,” it was an attempt to prove that, independently of China, Japan had had a simple alphabet and a written language of its own of the same divine origin as was the land itself. The iden- tity of many of these characters with those THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 29 of Korea, together with the inherent im- probability that, after having possessed a simple and convenient syllabary of their own, the Japanese should have abandoned it for the cumbrous inconveniences of the Chinese ideographs, are in themselves sufficient reasons for discrediting the au- thenticity of the alleged discovery. It is to China alone that we must look for the origins of Japan’s written language, as it is from the Chinese ideographs as a start- ing-point that we must trace the develop- ment of the far more complicated and bewildering system which the islanders now employ. The earliest Chinese writing, at a period long antedating its introduction into Japan, was as distinctly pictorial as the Egyptian hieroglyphics. This pictorial element is still an important characteristic of some Chinese characters. Many of them have assumed a conventional form which some- what disguises their meaning, but a refer- ence to earlier examples generally makes that meaning clear. Thus 1 1 1 saji^ a mountain, was at first a picture of a moun- 30 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. tain with three peaks which in the later form became simply three vertical lines, the central one overtopping the others. The sign A for nin^ man, shows him as having lost his head and arms, there now remaining only a body and two legs. The character |— | nichi^ the sun, a day, was a circle with a dot in the centre. The circle has been squared and the dot expanded to a line. The sign the moon, contains the same suggestion with one of its lines curved to represent a crescent. From the character A nyo^ woman, it would seem that she, having a like origin and form with her mate, remains more of a ba^ man than her husband. In horse, the mane, tail, and four legs can still be plainly seen, and in boku^ a tree, the roots and branches. THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 31 Another large class of characters are made by combining two pictures in one. Thus m mei^ bright or clear, is indi- cated by joining the two great luminaries, the sun and the moon, in one effulgence. The sign for rin^ a forest, is two trees side by side ; 0. tan^ morning, the sun above ,a line representing the horizon, and shiu^ a prisoner, a man inside of a square. The power of suggestion developed by this use of single signs for ideas led to an extraordinarily ingenious and even poetic symbolism. The most abstract notions were found to be capable of expression in this way. A woman under a roof sig- nified content; a man and the sign for two, or a heart and the sign for a thousand, philanthropy; heart with slave. 32 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. anger ; with white, fear ; with ear, shame. Two hearts are friendship; man and word, fidelity; fire and water, calamity. A woman and child are tenderness ; a heart between two gates, sadness, and under a field, thought. Other combina- tions selected by Johnson from Lay’s chapters on the subject indicate that even the highest reaches of abstract thought may in like manner find adequate expres- sion. A sheep (as docile), combined with strength, signifies authoritative instruction ; with water it is the sea which feeds the clouds as the sheep are fed; with heart it means following; with mind, to cherish. “ The heart,” says St. Denys, “ was the graphic root of almost all the original characters intended to represent metaphys- ical ideas.” With the grain of wood it THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 33 represented mental bias ; with a revolving wheel, mental concentration; with wilder- ness, a maze of lovers’ talk.^ Besides the characters which are thus directly pictorial, there are many others which are made by combining two parts, one of which is phonetic, and the other, to a certain extent, descriptive. These descriptive parts, generally abbreviations of complete characters, are few in number, but are found in a great majority of the signs. The character for water is stn. In its abbreviated form of a hook with two dots over it, it may be discovered on the left-hand side of ka^ a river. As an island also suggests water, in the character which indicates it, shiii^ the same sign for water is found. The * Johnson’s “ Oriental Religions.” China — p. 426. 34 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN, sign m ko^ a flood, bears also the same mark, as does likewise n tei, a beach, and sa^ shallows. In Chinese, oil and water mingle, as in the character for the former, m y7i, the sign for the latter appears. This is because the char- acter for water is also used generically for any liquid. The sign for woman is used in all characters where it can be in any way descriptive of the meaning. Thus ka^ house, in combination with the sign for woman, is which means the marriage of a woman when she goes to live in her husband’s house. Beside this ideographic or pictorial value, very important also, in Chinese writing, is the phonetic element, especially for the understanding of the peculiar use made of the signs by the Japanese. Al- THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 35 though the change which the pronunci- ation of Chinese words underwent when they were introduced into Japan makes it a very unsafe guide in Japanese, still, in a large number of cases of characters which have the same phonetic, even the pronun- ciation given them by the Japanese will be identical. Thus the character hd^ square, combined with the class sign for speech gives or de- liberate ; with the class sign for plants ho, fragrant ; and with that for ho,, to spin. The phonetic ho,, to wrap up, with the class sign ho,, bushy or lux- thread for plants makes uriant; with that for the hand or to handle ho, to hold in the arms ; with that for disease ho, the small-pox ; with 36 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. and roast; with that for water a bubble. When the Chinese ideographs were first introduced into Japan, they were, as above stated, the only means of writ- ing which the Japanese possessed, and, as they could not be used ideographically to represent the different forms of Jap- anese words, some of them were used phonetically in writing grammatical ter- minations and proper nouns. All they wanted was a set of signs for their own words already in existence, and here they found signs ready-made in overflowing abundance. They made use of them so lavishly, however, and with such a lack of system, that there soon proved to be an embarrassment of riches. The employ- ment of some words taken bodily from THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 37 the Chinese to supplement their own vocabulary, the habit of appropriating some characters to represent native words, and others simply because they happened to be the same in sound as those with which they were familiar, led to compli- cations which proved too much for even Japanese patience. The same impulse, which, among them, has brought the art of living into an extreme of simplicity, found expression also in an attempt to simplify the art of writing. The result was the invention, in the eighth or ninth century, of a distinctive Japanese sylla- bary consisting of signs, forty-seven in number, to indicate the sounds of the vowels and of all the combinations of simple consonants with the vowels. These signs were mainly simplifications or de- 38 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. tached parts of the Chinese characters already in use phonetically. They are called kana to distinguish them from the Chinese ideographs, which are named mana. The new system had two forms. The one that is commonest and probably the first to come into use is the hira-ka7ia or hiraga7ia. It consists of the use of the cursive form of the characters most often employed phonetically. Thus i is written TO becomes 6; ha is simplified to ^ and t: 7ii runs into . The other and much simpler syllabary called kata-kaTta is made on the principle of merely tak- ing a part of a character instead of the whole cumbrous and complicated Chi- nese structure and giving to the frag- ment the same sound for which the whole THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 39 stood. In this form, yf i is the left-hand a Chinese section detached from character having the same sound ; -p ro is a half section of ha is a microscopic A ; .n ni^ a diminished and Tf; ho is the lower right-hand portion of By such devices the Japanese, following their instinct for simplification, would seem to have put themselves on the road toward the attainment of a method of writing by which they could break loose from the cumbrous Chinese system that entailed so enormous a burden upon the memory. They had invented a practical and man- ageable alphabet, which, though not so simple as the Roman, was yet simplicity itself compared with what they had been using. But they were already fettered by 40 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. the long-continued use of the old charac- ters, and that use,^ instead of diminishing, has been constantly growing since. While the new system of kana is a convenience and even a necessity for many purposes, notably in modern Japanese telegraphy, where it is exclusively employed, yet it has practically only added to the multi- plicity of the signs in actual use. For in adopting the new characters, the old ones were not and could not be abandoned, any more than can Latin words be eliminated from our vocabulary. Moreover, year after year, whenever a new word was wanted, the inexhaustible store of Chinese characters was drawn upon, with the result that the old cumbrous and complicated signs form the major part of the present written language. Since Japan was opened to the world, this proportion of Chinese words has largely increased. That open- ing created a necessity for an enormous stock of new words to express the new ideas, objects, and methods which thronged upon the attention of the nation. And exactly as we draw upon the Greek to give to our new inventions such names THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 41 as homoeopathy, telegraphy, megaphone, etc., so the Japanese went to the Chinese for words for all their Western discoveries. Professor Chamberlain has noted the curi- ous fact consequent upon this tendency, that “ in proportion as Japan drifted away from the Chinese spirit, so much the more did she appropriate to herself the Chinese vocabulary, until of recent years it has come to such a pass that an ordinary Japanese prose document has scarcely anything Japanese about it save a few particles and the- construction of the sentence.” Perhaps a fairly adequate notion of the present make-up of the written language may be gathered from the following dia- gram, showing the original source, the material, and the various uses and modifi- cations of that material. From the multiplicity of the results of this process of development, some faint conception may be gained of a few of the complications and bewilderments which must confront even a Chinaman when attempting to read the language which has been transported from his own coun- 42 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. a. <3 73 u s — ai Xi u i: ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ S ? (/i ^ »- ■■ t5u §' tA - O dj - d'd.a ^ a> .U-g = c (U (A 0) O) (A ;-. w T3 -rt *+^ ^ (U +3 .S - ^ o “5 s si " [1.^ o^ First THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 43 try to Japan. Some of his words are taken for their original meaning and value. These he can recognize. Others are used simply as signs for Japanese words of which he knows nothing, Others, with- out regard to their meaning, are appropri- ated because they sound like the Japanese syllables, while still others are mutilated or twisted beyond all recognition. Nor is the recital of difficulties yet at an end. There may be a dozen char- acters for the same sound, as well as a dozen sounds for the same character. In Japanese, as at present used, there are ten characters pronounced chu^ twenty-eight pronounced sd^ fifty-four pronounced kd. Often, too, the same character is used to represent several Japanese words, and each word generally has a number of distinct meanings. Thus the character T is used for at least ten separate words. Two of these, ge and ka^ are Chinese ; the other eight, kudaru^ kudasu^ sagaru^ moto^ oririi^ sageru, shimo and shita^ are Japanese, all with different though kindred meanings. 44 FEUDAL. AND MODERN JAPAN. Among all the perplexities thus far suggested, perhaps the greatest is that which arises from the use of some char- acters for their meaning, and others for their sound only. The language has thus become a vast punning system. Mr. Aston well illustrates this by an example of what the results would have been had the Roman numeral signs been made use of in a similar way in English. “ ‘ On the III CenaryCOa €( 2 ) times I C(3) him to you although it thCQ,” ‘ On the tercen- tenary a hundred times I sent him to you although it thundered.’ Here C has first its proper meaning and represents the Latin word cent (a hundred); second, it has its proper meaning and represents the English word ‘ hundred ; ’ third, it repre- sents the Latin sound of cent only, the meaning being different ; fourth, it repre- sents the English sound of hundred, the meaning being different.” Dr. Griffis illus- trates the same peculiarity by showing the rebus-like character of the Japanese system of borrowing words. It “was very much as if we made the different parts of a charade or rebus serv^e our purpose (of THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 45 expression). For example, if we wished to write such a word as ‘ tremendous ’ and should make a picture of a tree^ some men^ and a dose of medicine serve our purpose, we should not be doing very differently from the early Japanese.” The total results of the employment of such peculiar principles of selection upon such a vast range of material would seem to constitute a written language of suffi- cient complexity to put to the supremest test the long inherited memorizing capac- ity of the far Eastern mind, and also to furnish a sufficient number of objects of worship for the far Eastern adoration of the letter. But the whole story is not yet told. Beside these conventional signs, there is the greater multitude of uncon- ventional ones, the innumerable variations of the cursive hand arising from individ- ual habit or caprice. The changes of form which our own simple characters undergo in popular use, in the various styles of chirography and through jndul- gence in fanciful or artistic lines, must, in the case of the Chinese characters, with their often minute and indistinguishable 46 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. variations from each other, be well-nigh infinitely multiplied. Indeed, the most ancient Chinese writing shows that the play of individual fancy was an important factor in the early invention of forms, one of the oldest inscriptions known having all the lines of each character fashioned into an appearance like that of wriggling tadpoles, whence the name was given to that form. Another set called the dragon character was made with the ends of all lines ornamented with dragon’s claws. Still another set imitated the leaves of the willow, and a fourth suggested ears of corn. These, though no longer in use, save as literary curiosities, suggest, how- ever, the infinite resources for additional bewilderment available in the Chinese chirography. Furthermore, there are whole sets of characters not included in the ordinary lists of dictionaries which are yet in corn- men use in every-day affairs. For ex- ample, there is a distinct line of characters used almost exclusively upon the engraved seals employed by each Japanese to stamp the various papers in which his signature THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 47 is required, the seal taking the place of his signature. One must, therefore, be well versed in seal lore to be able to read another’s sign manual. Another variety constantly meeting the eye as one walks through the streets of a Japanese town, though seldom seen in books, is the kind of character called “ Ya-jirushi^^'" or “ house-signs,” to indicate the various shops, hotels, etc. These are not the names of the keepers or mer- chants, but arbitrary signs by which their establishments come to be familiarly known. They are sometimes ideographic symbols and sometimes borrowings from the kana^ or from the Chinese without regard to their original or commonly re- ceived meaning. With the incalculable number and va- riety of characters thus brought into use in a seemingly arbitrary manner, and with apparently no possible method of classify- ing or arranging them, like that furnished by our initial letters, the question will naturally arise whether there can be such a thing as a dictionary of this extraordi- nary tongue, and if there is, wherein it 48 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. can differ from printer’s pi. In the answer to this question, the revelation of the means devised for bringing order out of the chaos, may be seen, perhaps, the most notable instance of ingenuity which can be credited to the far Eastern mind. There has been discovered in these tens of thousands of different characters what may be said to be practically an alphabet, that is, the recurrence of a certain mark or line, or combination of lines in such large groups of the hieroglyphs that a sys- tem of arrangement under such lines or combinations of lines can be made, and a dictionary thus rendered possible. There are two hundred and fourteen of these lines or combinations of lines. They are called radicals, and are arranged in an index according to the number of strokes in each. Thus, in this index there are placed, first, all radicals of one stroke. There are six of these ; then follows a column of twenty-three, each of which is made up of two strokes. After these, thirty-three of three strokes each, and so on up to the seventeen-stroke radical, of THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 49 which there is only one example. This index of radicals is the gate to the dic- tionary, the characters in the latter being grouped under one or other of the radi- cals found in them. To find a word in the dictionary, there-i fore, the first essential is to become famil- iar with these two hundred and fourteen signs which practically serve the same purpose as do the initial letters in our dictionaries. The next step is to discover one of these in some part of the character under question. When discovered, the number of strokes of which the radical is made up is to be counted. This gives a clue to its place among the two hundred and fourteen in the index. This place will determine the part of the dictionary in which the words to be found under this radical are grouped, and then, in these groups, the approximate position of the character sought for can be ascertained by counting the number of strokes in it exclusive of the radical. Thus in the character lower horizontal line is a radical. It is one of a 50 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. single stroke. I shall, therefore, find it near the beginning of the index, and its place on that list is a guide to the part of the dictionary where the words under it are grouped. To find the relative posi- t tion of the character in that group, I count the number of strokes in it apart from the radical. There are only two such strokes. The character is therefore somewhere near the head of the group. Sometimes there is more than one radi- cal in a character. Thus in the word — volatile — two radicals may be recog- nized, one the vertical part on the left which is the abbreviated sign for water, and the other either half of the rest, this sign which is here duplicated being the one for fire. The combination of the two, it may be noted in passing, suggests the meaning of the whole word given above. For the unpractised student there is often, in such case, no way of know- ing under which of the two or more radi- cals the word is to be sought in the dictionary. In fact, the whole method, ingenious as it is, is beset with discour- THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 51 agements for the novice, so difficult is it sometimes to recognize the radical in its modified or abbreviated forms, or to know just what is to be accounted a stroke, or to have eyes of sufficient micro- scopic power to be able to number them correctly. But for all this, the Japanese or Chinese dictionary is a masterpiece of intelligent arrangement of a seemingly hopeless chaos of characters. Indeed, the inven- tion of any method, however clumsy, for classifying them, or the finding of any clue, however slight, for guidance amid their intricacies of form, would be a suffi- ciently striking evidence of the ingenuity and the power of observation of the far Eastern mind. Yet another, and, in some regards, a more marked illustration of the facility of that mind in triumphing over appar- ently insurmountable difficulties, may be gained by a visit to the printing office of a Japanese newspaper. Here the situ- ation is complicated by an element which, until very lately, has never entered into far Eastern calculations, namely, the element 52 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. of time. Their scholars, with the infinite patience of their race and with no faintest conception of the value of time, can be depended upon to get upon the track of every strange character to the ultimate finding of its meaning. But in a news- paper printing establishment, where time is of the first importance, and where scholars, as such, are not supposed to abound, the mere sight of the multitu- dinous and enormous cases of type neces- sary to hold the thousands of characters needed for the columns of a Japanese daily, together with the thought of the scholarly attainments required in one able to put his hand upon any one of them, would strike terror into the heart of the Western newspaper man absorbed in his one anxiety to get out his paper on time. And yet the thing is done daily in the great newspaper establishments of Tokyo. The process by which it is accomplished, however, is most extraordinary. The composing-room is anything but composed. Though it is full of scholars there is nothing to suggest a scholarly atmosphere. Pandemonium reigns in that THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 53 chaos of characters. The compositors themselves are quiet enough, as they sit at their desks, each with a case of the forty-seven kana before him. But every one of them has a half-dozen long arms in the shape of agile boys, who do the hunting among the infinitely multiplied divisions of the mountains of type cases containing the Chinese ideographs. The compositor takes his copy, cuts it up into small sections, and distributes these to the boys, who start upon their exciting quest, each shouting or singing in a fal- setto voice the names of the strange char- acters which they are to trace to their lairs. In and out among the cases, piled like book stacks in a great library, these boys, who must needs be something of scholars themselves, jostle against one another in their eagerness, all the time keeping up their weird chant for the refreshment of their memory. None of the objects of their search escape them, and in a few minutes the compositor has the required types on his desk ready for arrangement with whatever of the kana are needed, from the case before him. 54 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. The din made by the army of boys is increased by the men who are singing the copy to the proof-readers, until the con- fusion which reigns supreme is in full accord with the impression of chaos which the mere thought of the characters themselves imparts to the Occidental vis- itor. And yet, out of the dire confusion order and regularity are evolved, and the newspaper comes forth daily with the same punctuality, though perhaps not with the same appearance of headlong haste, as may be noted in the issue of a Western sheet. In view of all the difficulties and seem- ingly needless inconveniences attendant upon this whole complicated system of writing, the question is constantly being asked by the practical mind of the West why it is that the Japanese, who are so quick to adopt all Occidental methods which may conduce to their national prog- ress, do not hasten to rid themselves of this cumbrous means of communication with each other and substitute either their own simple syllabary of forty-seven letters, or else adopt, outright, the Roman alpha- THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 55 bet, common to the leading nations of the West. As for the latter project, it is sufficient to say that, though it has been attempted under the most favorable auspices and with a remarkably influential backing, it has suffered complete collapse. Some years ago a society was started in Tokyo called the Rornaji-Kwai^ or Roman Char- acter Association, whose object was the substitution of our alphabet for the Chh nese ideographs and the Japanese kana. It counted among its members many of the leaders in educational as well as polit- ical circles, and yet its failure was certain from the start. The difficulties in the way were far greater than those for which remedy was sought. What they were may be realized by any one who desires to change an English word by so much as a single letter. When one thinks of the exceedingly slight headway gathered after long years of effort by the movement to do away with the cumbrous and mislead- ing spelling of English, or of the moral courage often required simply to give a word its right pronunciation, some faint 56 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. conception may be gained of the obstacles in the way of so radical and revolutionary a project as that of the Ro7naji-Kwai, To this general and vital cause of failure must be added, in this instance, others arising not only from the peculiar char- acter and history of the Japanese lan- guage itself, but also from the temper and disposition of the people who use it. For example, the facilities for punning, furnished by the presence in our language of occasional duplicates or triplicates of sound in words of different meaning, hardly compensate for the ambiguity, awkwardness, or misunderstanding which the use of them often occasions. But if the scores of words of the same sound, now represented in Japanese by different and distinctive signs, were to be also writ- ten in .precisely the same way, as would necessarily be the case with the use of the Roman notation, all clue to their respective meanings would ultimately be lost. There are, for instance, now, no less than ninety-two different characters pro- nounced kd^ with sixteen compounds kd- THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 57 sho^ and twenty-four compounds kd shi. The final fate of these words when de- prived of all character is something not to be contemplated by a Japanese with any degree of equanimity. Nor would the loss to the vocabulary be the only one to be deplored. That to literature would be great and irreparable. Most of the suggestiveness and ideality conveyed to the far Eastern mind by the sight of characters which are to its re- gard pictures, would be obliterated, and reading would lose almost the whole of its charm, for it is to be remembered that the Far-Eastern reads his page preeminently with the eye, while the Roman letters convey to us, principally, an impression of sound. To make the change would, therefore, shut the Japanese out from a •whole world of instruction and delight. Against the innovation, also, the over- powering influence of the national passion, the deep undercurrent of patriotism, exerts its immense force. The national life is enshrined in its literature and upon that no sacrilegious hand must be laid. Were any change at all to be made, the force of 58 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. this feeling would be exercised in favor of the more general use of the purely Japanese kana rather than the Western alphabet. And, in fact, though some of the objections to the Roman notation inure in this also, there is now to be observed a tendency to make a larger and more general use of the national syllabary to the partial exclusion of the Chinese ideographs. This tendency has, perhaps, been stim- ulated in some degree by the war with China, and the consequent access of Jap- anese contempt for everything pertaining to the Empire across the seas. Undoubt- edly there will be, in the course of time, a marked simplification. One of the first steps to this end will be the merging of the written language in the colloquial. This brought about, it will be easier to. substitute the simpler kana syllables for the ideographs, and ultimately the desired transformation may be effected. But not even the Japanese, at the swiftness of whose transformations the world has mar- veled, can bring about a change like this save through long reaches of time, and THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 59 when it is effected, there will be much over which to mourn, even as there is cause to lament the vanishing of so many a feature of the former unique life of the nation. There will be a gain of sim- plicity, of convenience, of time ; there will be immense relief to the memory; and, in numberless ways, the strain on the mental energies of the Island people will be relaxed. But one of the doors to that world of beauty which has so long been open to them, the glimpses through which have stimulated the aesthetic life the meanest of them share, will be closed. To the men, women, and children who, in spite of the burden and toil of acquiring a knowledge of the ideographs, have pored over their intricacies with delight, have seen in them ideal forms which no West- ern eye can ever trace, and with free, bold hand have joyed in reproducing them with all the wealth of artistic form and design of which they are capable, they have been representative not only of thought but also of beauty, and when they vanish there will vanish with them a mighty stimulus to the artistic life of the nation. 6o FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. “ Their forms are its ideals, their tracing is the dragon’s flight, the serpent’s dance, the lotus bloom in the lake of ink ; their combinations are history and legend ; learning hides in their intricacy and in the subtlety of their transitions ; they are the picture-book of the child, and the art- gallery of the nation.” So wrote more than twenty years ago the one American* who, without ever visiting the East, suc- ceeded in entering into the mental and religious consciousness of its people, better even than any foreigner who has heretofore passed his life among them, save, possibly, St. Francis Xavier. And the one man who to-day, living in their midst, achieves the same rare success, bears the same testimony. Hearn has re- cently told us of a marv^elous scroll done by a boy of five which, as a piece of callig- raphy, so astonished the Japanese them- selves that they could not believe their own eyes. Written in the presence of the Emperor and Prime Minister, it so im- pressed the latter that he straightway * Samuel Johnson’s “Oriental Religions.” China — p. 430. THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 6 adopted the child as his own. This writing which, when he saw it, Hearn regarded as “ the weird, extraordinary, indubitable proof of an inherited memory so vivid as to be almost equal to the recollection of former births,” was also a confirmation of the accuracy of his own swift recognition of the inner meaning and beauty of these ideographs to the native thought. In the record of his “ First Day in the Orient,” occurs this passage : “ An ideo- graph does not make upon the Japanese brain any impression similar to that cre- ated in the Occidental brain by a letter or combination of letters, — dull, inanimate symbols of vocal sounds. To the Jap- anese brain, an ideograph is a vivid picture ; it lives ; it speaks ; it gesticu- ates. . . . What such lettering is, com- pared with our own lifeless types, can be understood only by those who have lived in the farther East, for even the printed characters of Japanese or Chinese im- ported texts give no suggestion of the possible beauty of the same characters as modified for decorative inscriptions, for 62 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. sculptural use, or for the commonest advertising purposes. No rigid conven- tion fetters the fancy of the calligrapher or designer ; each strives to make his characters more beautiful than any others; and generations upon generations of artists have been toiling from time immemorial with like emulation, so that, through cen- turies and centuries of tireless effort and study, the primitive hieroglyph or ideo- graph has been evolved into a thing of beauty indescribable. It consists only of a certain number of brush strokes, but in each stroke there is an undiscoverable secret art of grace, proportion, impercept- ible curve, which actually makes it seem alive, and bears witness that, even during the lightning moment of its creation, the artist felt with his brush for the ideal shape of the stroke equally along its entire lengthy from head to tail. But the art of the strokes is not all ; the art of their combination is that which produces the enchantment, often so as to astonish the Japanese themselves. It is not sur- prising, indeed, considering the strangely personal, animate, esoteric aspect of Jap- THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. 63 anese lettering, that there should be won- derful legends of calligraphy, relating how words written by holy experts be- came incarnate, and descended from their tablets to hold converse with mankind.” * * “ Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,” Vol. i. CHAPTER III. A JAPANESE LIBRARY. gTRAY opinions of “certain writers” appear to be greatly at variance as to the probable value of the enormous liter- ature of the far East, the larger part still locked up in the hieroglyphs. One of these writers is quoted by Chamberlain as saying that “It should be left to a few missionaries to plod their way through the wilderness of the Chinese language to the deserts of Chinese literature.” On the other hand, I have somewhere seen the statement of a traveller that “ there are a hundred Emersons in China.” Mak- ing all due allowance for exaggeration on either side, quite certain it is that there exists in China and Japan a vast store of literature and that there exists also a host of lovers of literature who, like Emerson, delight to delve among and to appropriate its treasures. That much of it is of such a nature as to feed the peculiar order of 64 !■ i Awaji-Shima. Inland Seia. A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 65 mind known as Emersonian, that order being eminently Confucian, is doubtless also true. A most interesting evidence of the existence in Japan of just such a literary atmosphere was revealed to me soon after my arrival there. I was awak- ened one morning barely after dawn by a servant bringing to my bedside a card whose hieroglyphics he translated for me into the name Nakamura Masanao, one of the most celebrated scholars in the Empire. Such a name as this, together with the knowledge I had gained a day or two before, that the earlier in the morning a Japanese made a call, the greater the respect he desired to show, sufficing to dispel all the usual feeling incident to the premature situation, I hastened as soon as possible to the room where my guest was in waiting. I found there the charm- ing old gentleman with a copy of Emer- son which I had lent him a few days before, eager for me to explain one or two passages which were obscure to him. That there were only one or two showed him to be no stranger to Emerson's 66 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. thought, the volume I had lent him hap- pening to be the only one of the works of the Concord philosopher with which he was not already familiar. Later, to his great delight, I presented to him a large portrait of his favorite American author, and still later, when visiting him at his home one day, I was ushered into his working-room, where the first thing to meet my gaze was that portrait ensconced directly over the low floor desk where he labored at his beloved work, and on which lay an open volume of the author at whose shrine he was worshipping with a devotion such as few temples consecrated to re- ligion have ever witnessed. It was this visit which I shall always remember because it gave me also the privilege of seeing the great scholar’s library. It resembled our Western pri- vate libraries in only one particular. There were the same tiers of shelves covering the walls, but no gorgeousness of bind- ing colors or of gold. Nor was there aught of that aspect of invitation which characterizes the shrine of books in a Western home. There was the same cold A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 67 simplicity which is the chief impression every Japanese room makes upon the foreigner. But the strangeness of the whole effect was due to something beside this, and so great was that strangeness that at first I could not seem to fathom its cause. Then, suddenly, the reason for it flashed upon me. The books, far more than in any Western theologian’s library, were all asleep. Instead of the vertical self-assertiveness of our volumes as they stand upon their shelves, these were all lying upon their sides, piled one upon another, as we would pile pamphlets, that being largely the form in which Jap- anese books have heretofore been printed. Most curious was it to note how this peculiarity in the mere placing of the vol- umes imparted to the room an atmosphere intensifying its stillness and making it all that a scholar’s haunt should be. And deep indeed must needs be its peace to accord with the serenity of the sage who had lived so long amid its solitudes and who now stood by my side lovingly enu- merating his literary treasures. Mani- festly it was to him no desert in which he 68 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. had passed his life, nor was there any lack of nourishing food for the sustenance of this gentle bookworm, this Oriental Emerson. That out of that sustenance had come so genuine a love and appreci- ation of the Western sage, was ample proof of its value as literature. Nor will a glance at the external aspects of the literary history of Japan lessen the impression of such value. The land was indeed cut off from literary companion- ship with Europe at a time when, in the West, the activity and achievement of letters were at their zenith, and so it suf- fered enormous loss. But they labor under a great error who imagine that, be- cause of that seclusion and its resulting loss, Japan was then without a literature. The simple truth is that the land had already had its golden age of letters. It had had a great intellectual past of its own upon which it lived in its solitude, possibly with more real sustenance to its mental fibre than we in the turmoil of our Western life are gaining from the rich pabulum furnished us by our Elizabethan age. Certain it is that, however much the A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 69 products of Japan’s golden age of liter- ature might suffer in comparison with those of the time of which we are so proud, there is one regard in which she takes precedence of all Christian Europe. That golden age of hers coming between the eighth and eleventh centuries of our era, made her, for the time being, the leading literary nation of the world. At that period, with all Christian Europe plunged in darkness, there was literary activity nowhere manifest save in Japan, China, India, the Eastern Caliphate and Saracenic Spain, and of these it may safely be said that Japan in this regard led the van. In estimating, therefore, the intrinsic worth of her literature, the time of its production and Japanese leadership at that time should by no means be left out of account. All due credit should be given the far-off isles, which, in the day of the modern world’s greatest gloom, held aloft the torch of learning, not only amid the darkness, but in a waste of waters. The ship in which Crusoe was wrecked had its store of books upon which the solitary sailor solaced himself in his iso- 70 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. lation, and kept intact the bonds which bound him to his past. So, when the great Empire out in the Pacific sealed its ports and shut itself from the world, it had a great literature of its own upon which to solace itself and feed its intel- lectual life. Else it would have met the inevitable fate consequent upon isolation, and lapsed into savagery. Many cen- turies then lay between it and the golden age of its letters, but it was none the less a golden age to a great nation of readers. The floating traditions of the shadowy origins of the land had become crystal- lized into histories which every scholar and patriot delighted to peruse. The halo of romance rested upon their own day of chivalry, whose spirit was even yet in full force and vigor, and their classical poetry, grown familiar to the people as household words, gave an added stimulus to that aesthetic existence to which, in their seclusion, they devoted themselves. Then beside and beyond these were the great Confucian learning and the sacred books of Buddhist lore, which, in the meantime, had come in A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 7 1 from over the seas with the exotic relig- ions. Ample reason was there then for the pride with which the aged scholar showed me the treasures of his library. Of the intrinsic value of these treas- ures, judged by Occidental standards, which are, of course, the only standards we can use, nothing like an adequate conception or estimate can be given within the limits of a brief chapter. Even the small fraction of the works now made accessible to Western readers is of too great volume to allow for more than a mere enumeration of their titles, and this work has already been so well done by Professor Chamberlain * that it need not be repeated. It suffices to say that his enumeration reveals no depart- ment of literature wanting in the intel- lectual life of the islanders. History, Archaeology, Religion, the Drama, Phi- losophy, Morals, Geography, Travels, Ro- mance, and Poetry — all these for centu- ries have been familiar to the Japanese student, and have formed a part of the mental equipment of the nation. So large * Things Japanese. “ Literature ” — p. 207. 72 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. indeed is the volume and variety of works in every department that great encyclo- paedias were found as needful for the Japanese student as with us to-day. Only one of these, the ^'‘Wakan Sansai Dzuye^^ a work in one hundred and five volumes, known among Orientalists as the “ Great Japanese Encyclopaedia,” can be at all compared with Western compilations of the kind, but the fact of its existence and that De Rosny speaks of it as a work of exceptional value for students of Japanese literature is significant of the extent and variety of that literature. Of the historical books mention has already been made of the oldest, the and, from the extracts given, one can form a fairly good idea of its style and contents. With this and an- other work of like character, the “iW- hongi^'" both of the eighth century, the nation was fairly well supplied with tra- ditions and annals of its own well calcu- lated to stimulate the national passion of patriotism. And of no peoples’ rec- ords or chronicles is the definition of history as “ a fable agreed upon ” more A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 73 true than is the case with a large part of the annals of Japan. Such agreement has been insisted upon until a very late day, even by the most intelligent of the Japanese, because of patriotic fear, lest by permitting doubt to be cast upon the origins of the imperial dynasty the foun- dations of the revered throne might be endangered. For this reason, in no other country have the national annals been so religiously guarded, and in none has their publication exercised so tremendous an influence upon political movements. It is a fact well known to the students of Japanese history that the issuance at the end of the seventeenth century of the '-'‘Dai Nihonshi^'' the present great standard his- tory of Japan, was the chief factor in bringing about the modern revolution in that country, a revolution of which the coming of Perry’s fleet was the mere occasion. The purpose of the book was to show by historical testimony that the Emperor was being deprived of his right- ful authority by the Shogun, and it caused the strong current of the nation’s loyalty to set toward the restoration of the former 74 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. to full power.* It is one of the minor, though none the less curious, parallelisms between Japanese and Occidental History that this revolution-breeding work should have issued from the Boston of Japan, the town of Mito, then the intellectual centre of the Empire, having for many years held such preeminence. The home of Japanese letters showed itself to be the hot-bed of militant patriotism as conspic- uously as did a century later the New England town which defied the power of Great Britain. Among the many surprises which meet' the student of Japanese literature is the extraordinary extent and richness of one department which, from the peculiar ex- periences of the Empire, would seem sure to be the most meagre of all. In a land severed from the world for many genera- tions one would scarcely look for a pro- found interest in geography, and yet, according to the testimony of De Rosny, in no other branch of their literature did the Japanese attain a perfection equal to * Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xxiii, — . I p. 7 . A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 75 that shown in their works in this field. The same writer even goes so far as, to say that hardly can the publications of Malte-Brun, Ritter, or Elisee Reclus be compared with analogous productions of Japanese learning. As early as the be- ginning of the eighth century, by govern- ment orders, encyclopaedic descriptions of every province and village were compiled, covering all ascertained facts of topog. raphy, character of soil, natural history, origin of names, local legends, and every- thing which could in any way contribute to the people’s knowledge of their own country. Of this great work, in sixty-six volumes, only one remains, together with fragments of many others, but there is enough to show its former completeness and extraordinary value. Its place has been filled in later times by works of the same character, giving, with the most minute particularity, similar local infor- mation covering the entire Empire, with the addition of its hydrography, its biog- raphies of eminent men, its monuments of art, its industries and its commerce. Be- side the extreme care and attention to 76 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. detail here shown, a characteristic com- mon to all the far Easterns, the manifest motive for the production of such works is of unusual interest, inasmuch as it furnishes another evidence, if any were needed, of the pride the Japanese take in their beautiful land, and of their eager desire for more and better knowledge of it. As a stimulus to patriotism, scarcely could the annals of their heroic past compare with the books which describe the face and features of their beloved country. Nor probably was there ever any country more minutely known by its inhabitants through the lessons of actual travel. That pleas- ure has there never been classed among the expensive luxuries. A pilgrimage, corresponding almost exactly to what we call a summer outing, was often cheaper than staying at home. The deepest pov- erty could hardly prevent any one from becoming a tourist if he so wished, and to-day, as for centuries past, the roads are filled at certain seasons with bands of happy pilgrims, exploring every nook and corner of their sacred Empire. It is for these that the Japanese Badekers, A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 77 antedating by centuries the European travellers’ despot, have been writing guide- books, in particularity and accuracy equal- ling, if not excelling, his. It may safely be said that of all people in the world, according to the criterion so often laid down, the Japanese are the best qualified for foreign travel, none others knowing so well as they the land of their nativity. Largely from the same source, namely, loyalty to country and love of its beauty, has sprung the poetry of the Japanese, and almost as voluminous as their descrip- tions of places are the metrical expressions of the ecstasy into which the sight of them throws the average patriot. Poetic effu- sions, largely mere ejaculations in the prescribed numbers of syllables, cover the boughs of the ancient plum-trees in spring almost as thickly as do the snow- white blossoms. It is not uncommon to read in the pub- lic journals the announcement that some prominent noble or Minister of State is journeying to view some famed cherry- blossom grove, and there soon follows the poem which the vision of beauty is sure to 78 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. evoke from his pen. Neither these cus- toms nor the resultant snow - storms of poems are the outcome of any mere pass- ing fashion or fad. The literature of the land is crowded with these effusions, in which it is difficult, oftentimes, to tell whether the love of country or love of nature predominates. The national pas- sion is as marked in the ancient as in the modern effusions. They breathe a fer- vent loyalty to illustrate which all the imagery of nature is drawn upon. The following poem from the “ Manyoshiti^'' or “ Collection of Myriad Leaves,” compiled at the end of the eighth century, reveals the existence of the passion in full force even then, while the title of the volume gives a hint of the multitude of poems extant at that very early date. “ By the palace of Futagi, Where our great king And divine lord Holds high rule, “ Gentle is the rise of the hills, Bearing hundreds of trees, Pleasant is the murmur of the rapids, As downward they rush : A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 79 “ So long as in the spring-time, (When the nightingale comes and sings) On the rocks Brocade-like flowers blossom, Brightening the mountain-foot ; So long as in the autumn (When the stag calls to his mate) The red leaves fall hither and thither Wounded by the showers — The heaven beclouding, “ For many thousand years May his life be prolonged To rule over all under heaven In the great palace Destined to remain unchanged For hundreds of ages.”* This poem is an example of the naga- uta^ or “ long poem,” consisting of a series of couplets of lines of five and seven syllables, with an additional single line of seven syllables. There is no other metre used save this alternation of five and seven. Into the rules of Japanese prosody, no considerations of rhyme or of * Aston’s Grammar of the Japanese Written Language — p, 201. So FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. quantity enter any more than is their syntax burdened with unnecessary dis- tinctions of person, gender, number, or case. Simplification is the rule in this as in so many another phase of their econ- omy. Most of their poems are simple indeed, being, as already said, mere ejacu- lations. Far more common than the naga-iita is the short poem, or tanka^ where the number of syllables is usually limited to thirty-one, arranged in lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven. The following is an example : “ Ya-kuino tatsu : Idzumo ya-he-gaki ; Tstima-gonii ni Ya-he-gaki tsiikiiru : So7to ya-he-gaki wo f ’’ The translation of this as given by Aston makes it an excellent illustration of the ejaculatory character of the ordinary poem. It is also interesting from the fact that it is said to be the earliest example of the tanka^ it having been taken from the “ Kojiki.'"'' A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 8l “ Many clouds arise : The clouds which come forth (are) a manifold fence For the husband and wife to retire within They have formed a manifold fence : Oh ! that manifold fence ! ” It is in this exclamatory character of the ordinary poem, combined with its extreme brevity and the complete absence of anything like poetic form, which makes very difficult its translation into aught which we could call poetry. The very clever authors of “ Sunrise Stories ” have, in this regard, succeeded far better than other translators in retaining the Japanese form, while losing little of the peculiar flavor of the Island verse and securing its recognition as poetry in our sense of the word. One of the best examples of this is called THE EXILE. ** All alone I sang — ’Til sickness came upon me, In my little den, Warmed with a stick of charcoal. Now the exile fain 82 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Would to his own land turn, But, still, the wind blows onward. “ Pleasant ’t were to wake. Although from pleasant slumber With the joyous sound. The sound of water rushing ’Gainst the speedy ship. To see the bright waves pass. The dear, dark hills draw nearer ! ” In form, the only near likeness to our own to be found in Japanese poetry is in the system of parallelisms which the Japanese often used after the fashion of the Hebrew Psalms. In descriptions of nature, as Aston has noted, one is often reminded of passages in Longfellow’s “ Hiawatha,” such as : “Ye who love the haunts of nature. Love the sunshine of the meadow, Love the shadow of the forest.” Closely like this is the following from the “ Manydshiu ” .* “ On the peak of Mikane in Miyoshinu It is said the rain falls unceasingly, It is said that snow is ever falling : A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 83 Like that rain which never ceases, Like that snow that is ever falling, Without intermission do I long For thy charms.’^ Aside from this form of its poetry, Japanese literature is also measurably full of other curious parallelisms, recalling, either in style or subject matter, our favor- ite writers of English. One of the most striking of these is a find made some years since by Professor Chamberlain, who, in his wanderings among the Tokyo book- stalls, had his attention drawn to a picture of a little man seated on a table and being gazed at by a company of giants. Swift as thought, Gulliver at Brobdingnag came to his mind. His surmise proved cor- rect. He had hit upon the Japanese Gulliver, Wasaubiyauwe, who had made voyages to the Land of Perennial Youth, to the Land of Endless Plenty, to the Land of Shams, to the Land of the Fol- lowers of the Antique, and to the Land of the Giants. From the first and the last of these stories of wonderful travel, the only ones which have received translation, it would appear that the author (the vol- 84 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. umes bearing the date of 1774) wrote in very much the same satirical vein as his English prototype. The journey to the Land of Perennial Youth, with its descrip- tion of the amusing expedients adopted by the inhabitants to compass death, which they looked upon as the one good to be desired, the most delicious fate con- ceivable, is doubtless one of the innumer- able expressions in their literature of the Japanese philosophy of death. It is that philosophy of almost absolute indifference \vhich has made inoperative there the chief missionary threat, just as reverence for the souls of the departed has steeled the native heart against the missionary insult implied in the Christian doctrine of the fate of the so-called heathen world. It is, however, in the account of the visit of this Japanese Gulliver to the Land of the Giants that the spirit of satire finds freest scope, and here again, and in even greater measure, the foreign teacher of religion and morality becomes the butt of the author’s ridicule. Wasaubiyauwe finding the giant people happy, contented, and peaceful, without A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 85 wars or quarrels among themselves on any subject, living, in fact, in an ideal state, noticed, also, that they had no philosophy, no moral code, no religion, no system of government. He therefore came to de- spise them as uncultivated, and set him- self up as their teacher of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. His experience in this field brings most forcibly to mind the obstacles which the emissaries of the Occidental faith have, in these later years, found the chief stum- bling block in the way of the dissemi- nation of their doctrines in Japan, namely, the charming good nature and the supreme indifference of the inhabitants thereof. “ After pouring forth daily such masses of words and of arguments as should have drawn an assenting nod even from a stone image, there was not one single individual among the crowd who seemed to be in the least persuaded. On the contrary, far from condescending to argue with him, they would talk of him as people do of a pet bird, smiling and saying to each other, ‘ What a queer little crea- ture it is ! It performs better than a 86 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. lap-dog and is more amusing than a par- rot, saying such a lot of sentences without being taught them.’ Vainly, therefore, did Wasaubiyauwe for the space of six or seven days expound his doctrines. He might as well have tried driving a nail into bran.” Finally, the self-appointed and disappointed missionary appealed to his special protector, the good Dr. Ka- wauchi, to explain to him the cause of this unaccountable perversity. At first, the doctor made no answer save a slight nod of the head, but as Wasaubiyauwe kept repeating his question, he smiled gently, and, stroking the little fellow’s head, replied : “It is not generally discreet or wise to tell little creatures like you the whole truth, yet, as you seem likely to under- stand me, I will tell you all about it. Listen to me, attentively. “Well, for the greater to comprehend the lesser is easy ; for the lesser to com- prehend the greater is hard indeed. The inhabitants of your world understand noth- ing of the existence of ours in this place, neither may they understand our intel- N [ K KO Oa. R A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 87 lectual grasp. But the inhabitants of our world, even down to the very women and children, have ho difficulty in understand- ing your intellectual grasp. Moreover, when one of a lower degree of intelligence observes the conduct of one possessed of a higher degree of intelligence, that con- duct appears to him mere foolishness. You, with your diminutive stature of five feet, your pitter-patterings through the tiny space of ninety thousand miles square, and your gaping visits to the scanty number of three thousand worlds, are naturally hindered by your arrogant assumption that you are acquainted with the length and breadth of the universe and by your narrow views as to the paramount reverence due to the doctrines of your sages, from comprehending what is truly great. Beings of wide intelligence dis- cern the end of a business from its com- mencement. Beings able to discern the end of a business frorn its commerrcement fall into no errors. Beings who fall into no errors commit no wickedness. It is beings of narrow intelligence, unable to discern the end of a business from its com- 88 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. mencement, forgetful of the cold of winter when the heats of summer are upon them, careless of summer heat during the winter cold, and wanting the power of reasoning from what is near to what is distant, who fall into the commission of wickedness. In your world, the intellectual powers of the inhabitants are as limited as the space in which they dwell, — void of knowledge unless specially taught, ill at ease except when licking the dregs of antiquity, un- ruly except when under direction, difficult to persuade to virtue, easy to persuade to vice. What the sages, one and all, did was to instruct and lead men by coaxing them like children ; and thus will religious and philosophical teaching have its ap- propriate sphere in the training of small minds, but of small minds only. “ ‘ Dogma is a box in which small minds are kept safe. Small minds disport them- selves inside this box, not knowing the outside. Large minds disport themselves outside the box, knowing the inside. You yourself have been sporting inside the box of the Three Thousand Worlds with- out knowing the outside. While you A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 89 have been wagging your tongue during these last six or seven days, the natives of this land have let your clamor go in at one ear and out at the other, like the whinings of a peevish child. It is on account of the narrow intellects of your world, and its evil practice, that it has been furnished with all this parapher- nalia of philosophy and religion. It is on account of the broad intellect of ours, and its virtuous practice, that Benevolence, Righteousness, Propriety, and Dogma, be- ing useless, we have no systems. “‘Do you now, Wasaubiyauwe, under- stand the mental conditions of the Land of the Giants ? But, if so, do you and your countrymen, with your tiny frames and your minute knowledge just sufficient to let you see in front of your noses, avoid pride, mischief, and foolish ingenuity, and not fail quietly to continue in the paths that Shiyaka and Confucius have traced out, spending your lives in all tranquillity and happiness,’ — and with these words, the giant patted him on the back. “Wasaubiyauwe stood gaping in fear and abashment, and recognized how 90 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. boundless are the extremes of the very little and the very great. Then, leaping on the back of his stork, he set off, and returned safely to Japan after his long- continued absence.” In all this there is the clearest possible echo of the national or Shinto faith ac- counting for its own lack of a moral code by holding that loyal subjects of the Emperor could dispense with all specific moral guidance save that of their liege lord. Whatever may be said of such loyalty as a faith or as a fanaticism, there can be no question of its commanding power as a sentiment, nor of its having proved an insurmountable obstacle to foreign mis- sionary effort. It is interesting to note in this connection that, in treating of the practical failure of Buddhism to influence Japanese literature, the authors of “Sun- rise Stories,” one of whom is a Japanese, attribute that failure to this very cause. “ Shinto stood as a rock in the flood of new beliefs, neither submerged nor swept away as were, at the same period, the pagan faiths of Western Europe. ... To A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 9 1 the Western reader nothing is stranger than the constant outcropping of Shinto sentiments in the writings of professed Buddhists. In so far as regards the pe- culiar type of patriotism, which is the essence of Shinto, the national character was already set when the Buddhist monks appeared upon the scene. . . . One or two attempts were indeed made to bring about a complete revolution, but they proved utter failures. Neither the zeal of an Empress nor the long anarchy of the civil wars could undo the work of the early ages. Loyalty, family pride, religion, and patriotism are all one in the Japanese soul. With people of Eu- ropean stock these sentiments may be said to be naturally connected, like the leaves in a bud; with the Japanese the bud has hardened into a thorn, which has always wounded the hand that has meddled with it.” Of the truth of this, the curious dis- covery of the Japanese Gulliver affords signal proof, apart from its interest as an example of literary parallelism. In the line of such parallelisms it would 92 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. be strange indeed if, among a people en- dowed with so passionate a love of nature, and such powers of keen observation, we could not find at least one Thoreau. He does not fail to appear, and he seems to have written for a far larger and more sympathetic circle of readers than the Concord philosopher has ever reached, for Kamo no Chomei’s “ Story of my Hut ” has been for centuries a famous Japanese classic. So close indeed is its resemblance to ‘‘Walden,” not only in the story itself, but also in the charming style of its relation, that it might well pass for a recital of Thoreau’s pre-exist- ence, his cycle of being covering the seven hundred years from the time of his reduction of life to its simplest ele- ments in Japan to the day of his show- ing forth the same to astonished New England. How complicated existence had become in the meantime is strikingly evi- denced by the equipment of the two hermitages. For the Japanese recluse a brazier and a wooden pillow were all that in any possible way suggested bodily needs, while the Concord despiser of civ- A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 93 ilization bowed to necessity in the shape of a bed, a table, chairs, a mirror, tongs, andirons, a kettle, a skillet, a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-board, knives and forks, plates, a cup, a spoon, oil and molasses jugs, and a lamp. On the aesthetic side^ however, Japanese civilization was almost equally imperative. Just as in the hovel of the poorest in the land there is always some touch of refinement, so there were things with which the pre-existent Tho- reau could not dispense. These were an image of Buddha placed where his brow might catch the brightness of the Western sun, pictures of Fugen and Fudo, the Gods of Meditation and Wisdom, a koto and a biwa (musical instruments). With these and with his companionship with nature he is wholly content. “ The valley, though dark with thick underwood, opens to the West, the home of the blessed, thereby offering much aid to my meditations. In spring I gaze on the purple clusters of the wistaria, which hang in heavy profusion all around. The mournful note of the cuckoo ushers in the summer, and puts me in mind of my 94 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. latter end. With autumn comes the shrill chirp of the cicadas, which I interpret as a dirge for life, empty as their cast- off shells. Snow has an attraction for me because it seems to symbolize human sin, which increases in depth and then melts away. . . . When the weather is fine I ascend the mountain peaks to gaze from afar on my native district, and to revel in the beauty of the surrounding scenery. Of this delight I cannot be deprived, as nature is not the private property of any individual. . . . On my way home I am frequently rewarded by finding a choice bough of cherry or maple, or a bunch of ferns, or a cluster of fruit, which I offer to Buddha, or reserve for my own use. A bright moon on a calm night recalls to me the men of old; the cries of the monkeys affect me to tears ; the fire-flies in the herbage gleam like the torches of Magijima. A morning shower sounds exactly like wind rustling through the trees. When I listen to the notes of a wild bird, I speculate, whether it is the male or female bird calling for its young. The bold appearance of a A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 95 solitary hart reminds me of the wide gap that exists between the world and me ; the plaintive voice of the owl fills my mind with pity. Scenes like these are found everywhere around in inexhaustible abundance, possessing for those who are profounder in reflection and quicker in apprehension than myself still more va- ried attractions. . . . Since I renounced the world’s pleasures, envy and fear have vanished from my mind. Free from re- gret and reluctance, I pursue my course as Providence directs me. Looking upon self as a floating cloud, I place no de- pendence on it, nor, on the contrary, am I in the least dissatisfied therewith. Fleeting pleasures have dwindled into insignificance over the dreamer’s pillow ; his life-long desire finds its satisfaction in the contemplation of the beautiful in nature.” It would appear from the fact that this was a Japanese classic that, to the people for whom simplicity of living had a potent charm, the exquisite simplicity of its lit- erary style made a special appeal ; and, in fact, it is this very characteristic which g6 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. among them has lifted many a book to the rank of a classic. The “ Tosa Nikki^^'' for example, a bit from a traveller’s diary of the tenth century, is another work whose sole claim for popular favor is the purity and beauty of its style. As Aston says of it: “ It contains no exciting adventures or romantic situations ; there are in it no wise maxims or novel information ; its only merit is that it describes, in simple yet elegant language the ordinary life of a traveller in Japan at the time when it was written. But these qualities have gained it a high rank amongst Japanese classics, and have ensured its being handed down to our own day as a most esteemed model for composition in the native Jap- anese style.” Aston also, in speaking of the fact that the author of this classic professes to write as a woman, calls at- tention to the extraordinarily preponderant influence of woman in the field of ancient Japanese literature. It has long been recognized that woman occupies a much higher place in Japan than in any other Oriental country, but it is none the less surprising, especially in view of the sup- A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 97 posed lack of intelligence among the sex in Japan to-day, to be told that by far the larger number of works of the best age of Japanese literature were of femi- nine authorship. “ The learned were at this time devoted to the study of Chinese, and rarely composed in any other lan- guage, whilst the cultivation of the Jap- anese language was, in a great measure, abandoned to women. It is honorable to the women of Japan that they nobly dis- charged the task which devolved upon them of maintaining the credit of their native literature. I believe no parallel is to be found in the history of European letters to the remarkable fact that a very large proportion of the best writings of the best age of Japanese literature was the work of women.” * And it may be added that, just as the colloquial now used by the women of the country is, from its purity and simplicity of diction, by far the easiest for the foreigner to learn, so, if one wishes to essay the written lan- guage, he must turn for its easiest and * Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. iii. — II p. no. 98 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. simplest lessons to the golden age of the Japanese classics, where he will find him- self again largely in debt to woman as his teacher. All the rest of Japanese literature is cumbered with the words and pedantry imported from China, and, with the exception of the productions of the time of the native Renaissance, it requires for its decipherment an extensive knowl- edge of the Chinese as well as of the Japanese. In this connection it is worthy of note that in the golden age of Japanese literature, from the eighth to the eleventh century, woman held a higher social and intellectual rank in that country than she then did in any other part of the world. The mention of a Japanese Renaissance suggests another interesting parallelism also, the name applying exactly to a re- vival of interest in purely native literature in the latter part of the last century, under the stimulus of that access of patriotism known in Japan as the Revival of Pure Shinto. The works of Motoori and Ma- buchi, written at this time, show a return to classical tastes as pronounced as was the rebirth of Grecian and Roman forms A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 99 in the Europe of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries. It is worthy of note, too, that, while in the West the return of the classic style showed a tendency to ornateness, the like movement in Japan emphasized the peculiar genius of its peo- ple by the fervor for simplicity which it awakened, the style and diction of the writers of the period being as clear and simple as were the shrines of the reha- bilitated national faith. As to the foreign influences to which Japanese literature was subjected in the long interval between its golden age and its Renaissance, both the Buddhist and the Confucian invasions of letters show the extraordinarily susceptible character of a nation which, because it once closed its gates to the world, was so long deemed impervious to all influences from without. Of these two, the first, which, from its nominal success as a religion, might be supposed to have exercised the wider sway, proved by far the less operative. While the literature of the great faith of India is in itself of surpassing value, it must be said that Japanese Buddhist lOO FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. writers have added little to the materials for its study, and the unintelligent use made of its writings in later years by a degenerate priesthood, putting them into revolving cases, a turn of which was deemed equivalent to reading them all, or chanting them, while knowing as little of their meaning as do the devotees who listen in faith to their chant, has resulted in causing Buddhist literature to rank very low in the esteem of the schol- ars of the Empire. It is possible that, among the multitude of works as yet untranslated or unread by foreigners, there are some which might be exempted from such strictures, but Professor Cham- berlain asserts that he does not know of any Japanese Buddhist book that takes, either in literature or in popularity, a place at all comparable to that taken among ourselves by the “ Imitation of Christ,” the English Prayer-book, or the u Pilgrim’s Progress.” Of the other vast body of imported literature, the great Confucian learning, it can by no means be said that it is lacking either in merit or honor in the A JAPANESE LIBRARY. lOI eyes of those Japanese scholars whose opinion is of worth. On the contrary, despite the contempt for foreign products so long and so sedulously inculcated, and the intense national feeling engendered by the peculiar experience of seclusion, de- spite also the specially hostile sentiment felt toward China among the masses at the present day, there was something in the kindling enthusiasm of my gentle old scholar friend when he spoke of his Chi- nese books; there was something in the tender reverence of his touch, as he han- dled them, which revealed the genuine worship of which they are the object. There is, in truth, no other way to the heart of lettered Japan so sure or so direct as that which a knowledge and appreciation of her classics will gain for the stranger who seeks her shores, or who would have access to her best life. Such knowledge and appreciation have been gained by very few, partly from the extreme severity of the effort required and partly from the motive which too often inspires that effort. The religious propa- gandist, who approaches this immemorial 102 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. literature as heathen and uninspired, and studies it with the main purpose of re- futing it or of belittling its teachings in comparison with his own, by that very purpose shuts against himself the doors of the heart he would enter. So, too, the foreigner who for any object would seek the friendship of the islanders either by flattering their vanity or by a display of his own Western learning will never gain that friendship. But let him prove, especially to the scholars of the Empire, his genuine appreciation of all that is wise and true in their own learning, and his way to the heart of Japan lies open. It has been often averred, even by those who have had exceptional opportunities to gain glimpses behind the scenes, that the inner life of the Japanese is absolutely inaccessible, and that it will forever re- main an unknown land, which no spiritual Perry can open. But there are approaches to it, though they can be gained only by the severest of toil. De Rosny, one of the few who have surmounted the barriers, says that in his intercourse with Japanese scholars, it has sufficed him to repeat a few A JAPANESE LIBRARY. 103 of their classical texts, or to give the exact interpretation of a rare and difficult read- ing, to establish with them the ties of a profound and lasting friendship. And the friendship thus gained, he avers,* is of a very different kind from that acquired by any other service one can render them as a teacher of the ways or of the wisdom of the Western world. Show them that you do not disdain that which their fathers cherished, that you can admire with them its beauties, and they will prove them- selves capable of that genuine friendship which Saint Francis Xavier deemed one of the finest qualities of the Japanese na- ture, and in gaining which, it may be added, he achieved the sole Christian mis- sionary success ever attained in the Orient. But if, ignorant or disdainful of their classic literature, you approach the Jap- anese to teach them in a spirit of con- descension, or to display before their eyes the marvels of that Western civilization which you have forced upon them, you will gain only that degree and kind of friendship which may grow out of their * La Civilisation Japonaise, 104 feudal and modern japan. exhaustless curiosity. They will be eager to become your pupils in order to find out the secret of your success, that they may avail themselves of it for the nation’s advancement ; and that is as near to them as you will ever get. They will be for- ever courteous with you, but they will have neither respect for your learning, friendship for yourself, nor gratitude for your teachings. CHAPTER IV. TEMPLE AND HOUSE. HE prevalence of earthquakes has doubtless been one of the main factors influencing the forms and shaping the peculiarities of Japanese architecture. The heaven-defying structures of Chicago and New York, with their storeys piled one upon another till they outrival the mythical Babel, are earth-defying as well, their builders simply trusting to the long interval of the earth wave which will some day bring them down in hideous ruin ; for no region is wholly or for all time exempt from the earthquake peril, as was clearly shown by the tremor which, a few years ago, well-nigh destroyed Charleston, as well as by the minor waves now and then felt in unwonted localities. Oddly enough, it happened that only a few months prior to the destruction wrought in Charleston, an article appeared in one of our magazines clearly demonstrating I06 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. that places in that particular part of the country might consider themselves exempt from all fear of such a visitation. We are, to-day, still building our church spires and our many storeyed monstrosities on the strength of the possibility that the interval between the last wave and the next will exceed, in length, the natural life of our structures — a hope which a glance at the earthquake statistics of the country will dispel.* In Japan, on the contrary, the quick recurring waves with their almost daily reminders of the tremendous forces to be taken into account in the building art, have had the effect of flattening towns and cities to a low, monotonous level, preclud- ing all architectural ambition heavenward. It is earth and not heaven which the Japanese dare not defy. Had Eden been located in Japan, the Tower of Babel would never have been attempted, and, *The intervals between serious or measurably de- structive tremors in the region east of the Rocky Moun- tains would seem to be shortening instead of lengthening, the dates being 1755, 1811, 1870, and 1886. The centres of disturbance in these cases were, respectively, Massa- chusetts, Missouri, Quebec, and South Carolina. TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 107 of course, the inhabitants of the world would now all be speaking Japanese. Take the Empire through, and there is an average of at least one perceptible shock every day in the year. At Tokyo, which is in what is called the earthquake belt, a distinct tremor may be expected about once a fortnight, while the delicate apparatus of the seismologist there shows that not for an instant does the earth entirely cease from quivering. As one result, the capital, with a popu- lation numbering nearly that of New York, covers an area almost as large as that of London, and looking down upon the city from one of the heights, the im- pression is that of a vast sea of sheds, even the temples lifting themselves but slightly above the level of the surrounding roofs. Spires, domes, and even chimneys are absent from the scene, and it is, there- fore, not surprising that the Occidental visitor, accustomed to associate these fea- tures with architecture, is generally ready with his verdict that in Japan no archi- tecture exists. It would be strange indeed, however. Io8 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. if in the case of a people whose art per- ceptions have been so strongly developed as to win for their land the name of the Oriental Hellas, such a verdict should be well founded. Nor is it. Though even F ergusson in his elaborate work, pro- fessing to cover all known architectural forms, makes no mention of those of Japan, there are few lands whose struc- tures are more interesting, as growing out of the peculiar history and conditions of the people, or, indeed, more worthy the name of architecture, as fulfilling some of the higher requirements of that art. Unique as the people themselves are their dwellings, and in their temples and other structures which may lay claim to be architecture in the true sense, there are certain fulfilments of art ideals which may well repay the study of the Western architect. Debarred from seeking effect by means of imposing height, and obliged to keep his temple nestling closely to the ground, the Japanese builder, knowing that he must make the most of the ground itself, seldom fails in the selection of his site TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 1 09 and in the management of his approaches fully to compensate for nature’s prohibi- tion of one of the chief elements of ar- chitectural grandeur. Almost invariably picturesque are the surroundings of his fane, suggesting ever that love of nature which is and doubtless will be, despite all foreign missionary effort, his only gen- uine worship. Seldom, also, is there lacking the Oriental feeling of the im- portance of a dignified and stately ap- proach to the temple. To this, the singular torii^ with their quaintly simple forms, and the long lines of ishidoroj or stone lanterns, lend themselves in most charming fashion ; and when to these are added the impressive shadow and bulk of the giant cryptomerias which lead up to or are grouped about the shrine, it is felt that the possible conditions of true art are fulfilled, although spire, and tower, and dome are lacking to the scene. Even where a closely investing population has grown up around the temple, the contrast between its massiveness and the clustering fragile houses over which it broods im- parts to it an added element of archi- no FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. tectural impressiveness which few Western cathedrals ever suggest. Its very lack of height becomes then one of its most effective charms. Of the same general form as the surrounding houses, it lends itself to their picturesqueness, while assert- ing its own supremacy by the solidity of its construction, by the wider sweep of its gracefully curving roof, and by the lavishness of its carved and lacquered decorations. It is to be noted, however, that, while the Japanese temple-builders have shown their careful regard for earthquake con- ditions, by the fact that many of their structures have existed for centuries, and while even the tall pagodas erected in seeming defiance of the writhings of the great earth dragon have survived repeated shocks,* yet so far as strength and faith- *The stability of these pagodas, one of them, the Yasuka pagoda in Kyoto, having stood for something like twelve hundred years, is a source of much wonder- ment to tourists, which a single glance at their internal structure will dispel. Being used, so far as is known, for a purely decorative purpose, the interior is hardly else than a mass of huge timbers, braced in every direction, enclosing a narrow well in which swings a great pendu- lum. The solid construction and bracing prevent any Templh Gatiu Shiba Toki TEMPLE AND HOUSE. Ill fulness of construction are concerned, there is not so great a difference between the temple and the dwelling as may be imagined. The Japanese home of the better class is by no means the flimsy hut of bamboo and paper it has been so often described. Open it is indeed to all the winds of heaven. Throughout the length and breadth of the Empire there is no strug- gle with the problem of ventilation. Light and airy, too, are many of the features of its construction, for wherever delicate sashwork can be used to advantage, it takes the place of walls and fills the openings. But of all other parts of the typical Japanese dwelling, the character- istic is solidity rather than flimsiness. This, indeed, the earth dragon compels. A well-built Japanese house is practically earthquake proof. The chief danger from this source in large cities arises from poorly constructed houses being thrown down and taking fire in many localities giving of the walls, while, on the recurrence of an earth- quake wave, the pendulum swings the centre of gravity into place and guards the whole structure from overthrow. I 12 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. at once, so that people are cut off from escape.* But so substantial are the dwellings of the better class that, though in the denser parts of the cities subject to con- flagrations, their term of life is naturally very short, it is no uncommon thing elsewhere in Japan to find houses cen- turies old bearing witness to the solidity of the materials employed and to faith- fulness in construction. From base to ridge, indeed, these requirements must be observed to meet the ever-recurring wave shock, and most ingeniously have the builders met the conditions thereby imposed. Foundation there is none, it being nec- essary to cut off as far as may be possible all connection with the quivering earth. This is accomplished by placing the build- ing on posts, which are not set into the ground, but made to rest on stones, the latter, if convex on the upper surface, necessitating a corresponding concavity * In the great earthquake at Yedo, in 1855, when i2o,cxx) lives were lost, fires were kindled in forty-five different localities in tlie city. TEMPLE AND HOUSE. II3 on the lower ends of the posts. The wave may then rock the house, but, unless of unusual power, it cannot seize it with sufficiently strong grasp to accomplish its overthrow. Opposed to the shock is also the solid frame, with its curious bracing and dovetailing, the result of centuries of wrestling with the arch enemy. The most extraordinary feature, however, as one seemingly least suitable to meet the exigency, is the enormously heavy tiled roof. When houses are expected to rock every week or two like ships at sea, their ballast, one would think, should be kept low in the hold, but in Japan experience has evidently proved that the roof is the place for ballast, and that it cannot be loaded too much. Could the wave actu- ally seize the building, it might give it enough lurch and sway to make the pon- derous roof an element of danger. But because connection with the ground is cut off, as just described, no grip can be taken, and every pound of weight above serves to steady the structure. The fun- damental principle of Japanese architec- ture, as necessitated by seismic conditions, I 14 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. is thus a striking illustration of the law of reversal governing the whole life of this strange people. The roof becomes the real foundation ; the anchor which holds the craft is carefully kept away from the ground, and top-heaviness be- comes an essential for safety. But though of necessity thus heavily weighted, the Japanese roof bears no aspect of clumsiness. The artistic in- stinct of the people has found a way to overcome all such impression by bending the broad eaves upward in graceful curves, thus instantly changing the expression from that of weight to one of airy light- ness. The building, far from suggesting that its roof serves as an anchor, seems rather to be endowed by it with means of flight, and no suspicion of undue heavi- ness attaches to it. The upward trend given by the Jap- anese to his temple roofs, a peculiarity shared with him by the Chinese, when placed in contrast with the downward bend characterizing, with scarcely an ex- ception, the roof lines of India, suggests the curious and interesting query whether TEMPLE AND HOUSE. II5 roof lines may not be directly indicative of ethnic character, whether indeed they do not closely follow even the facial lines which mark well-defined mental differ- ences. Grecian architecture, for example, with its level lines and symmetrical dis- position, bears a close analogy to the typical Grecian countenance, whose facial lines indicate the poise and balance of the Greek mind. The difference between the facial lines of the Greek and those of the Hindoo on the one hand, and of the far Eastern on the other, is exactly that to be noticed between faces which indicate respectively minds in repose, ab- sorbed in profound meditation, or prevail- ingly light-hearted. In the first state the facial lines are horizontal, in the second they are drawn downward, in the third they slant upward. It might, therefore, be interesting to inquire whether, in this regard, architecture may not be taken as an index of racial peculiarities, and whether the mental poise of the Greek, the dreamy brooding of the Hindoo on the mystery of existence, and the cheerful gaiety of the far Eastern have not given Il6 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. unconscious witness of themselves in the predominant expression of the structures of their respective lands. If it be so, then to seismic conditions, and the eminently practical as well as artistic fashion in which they have been met, may be added the disposition of the Japanese mind itself, as one of the in- fluences shaping the forms of the national architecture. Another element which has had a con- trolling effect in imparting, to the Japanese home especially, a peculiar architectural charm, is the extraordinary economy with which its artistic effects have been achieved. Enforced for centuries as this virtue has been, not only by stern neces- sity, because of the poverty of the people, but also by rigid sumptuary laws, and by the very power of fashion itself, the prac- tice of economy having ever been the road to social, as well as political ad- vancement, the result is a dwelling in which is shown perhaps, more clearly than is exhibited in any other structure in the world, what taste and cleverness can do with the most limited means. Possibly, TEMPLE AND HOUSE. II7 it is in the interests of economy that the domestic architecture of Japan has be- come one of the best known examples of the observance of the architectural law that the construction should itself be dec- oration. While on the Buddhist temples, indeed, the Oriental instinct for lavish ornament is indulged to the fullest extent, the homes of the Japanese, like the native Shinto shrines, are devoid of any sem- blance of ornament, save that which their constructive features themselves furnish. At the same time, these latter are so few and so simple that it would seem hopeless to fashion them into any sort of an effec- tive whole. Yet, with nothing but a floor, a few perfectly plain square posts, and a simple low roof, with no help from walls and wall surfaces, these being practically abolished, there is that in the mingled simplicity and strength of the construction, in the perfect feeling for proportion, in the excellence of the workmanship, and in the dainty devices for convenience and comfort here and there seen, which invests the Japanese dwelling with its irresistible charm. It seems built, not for vulgar Il8 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. use, but solely to delight the eye. Though perfectly adapted to the peculiar wants of the people, it is its artistic quality which first and last impresses the beholder. Not the aspect of a habitation, but rather that of a summer pavilion is the impres- sion which it gives even after long famili- arity with its features. The most being made out of the slenderest of structural resources, the typical Japanese dwelling becomes thereby, and without extraneous aid, a thing of artistic beauty. The long, narrow verandas with the gleam of their polished planks, the unbroken floor ex- panse, filled every inch with the soft and closely fitting mats, the solid satin-finished posts standing here and there sturdily bearing their heavy burden, and contrast- ing so well with the delicate lattice and paper screens which do duty as walls, the beam work with its paneled spaces, forming a frieze of rare simplicity and beauty, make up a habitation in which no necessity for decorative features is felt, although in the construction the most careful economy must manifestly be every- where observed. TEMPLE AND HOUSE. II9 Even when the builder’s means permit, and a passion for ornament can be in- dulged, the spirit of restraint manifested shows how closely akin to the Greek feel- ing is the artistic instinct of the Japanese. In one regard, indeed, in the genius of concentration which the far Eastern has developed, the Greeks are even surpassed. Decoration, when it can be afforded, must be confined to a single spot, and that not upon the exterior, but in the very penetralia of the dwelling. Nor even here does it consist of aught extraneous or of the nature of veneer. It must still inhere in the beauty or preciousness of the constructive members. In the fash- ioning of the tokofioma^ or place of honor, in the principal room, are lavished the fine and precious woods in the delicate grain or close texture or curious markings and forms of which the Japanese con- noiseur delights. To the selection of these the builder devotes his time and thought, while upon their finish and fitting the carpenter bestows his utmost skill. Such is the farthest extreme to which the art of Japanese architectural decoration is 120 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. carried. There is no attempt at carving, no hint of design, no trace of moulding, no division of the column into base, shaft, and capital, no pigment used, no tracery essayed. It is the simple column and beam left as nature formed them, or else squared and polished with loving care and patience. Yet cases have been known where the cost of this tiny corner of a single room has exceeded the value of the whole of the rest of the dwelling. Fol- lowing the principle of concentration, this corner becomes the sole show place in the entire house. In this single niche is hung the solitary kake^nono^ or scroll picture selected for the time being from, it may be, the vast collection of the owner, and underneath it blooms the single flower or spray of blos- soms from among those which the season affords. These, together with a small, low stand upon which is placed a single curio, also chosen out of a multitude of similar treasures carefully laid away in the storehouse, are everything in the way of garnishment to be seen on entering a Japanese dwelling. □ z-ASHiKi OR Parlor. r TEMPLE AND HOUSE. I2I Frequently changed as these objects are, the relative beauty, rarity, or value of a new selection depending upon the honor or esteem in which an expected guest is held, the result of this system of concen- trating the attention forms a striking contrast to the distracting effect of the innumerable objects of “ bigotry and virtue ” offered to the inspection of a guest in one of our Western homes. There one sees so much that he sees noth- ing and carries away with him no one well-defined impression. When, however, one visits a Japanese home, not only is his eye gladdened without being distracted, but also, if he be instructed in the ways of Japanese politeness, all sense of embar- rassment may be banished and a charming topic of conversation introduced, it being a recognized point of etiquette that com- ments upon the picture, the flower, or the curio displayed — comments sure to elicit Japanese enthusiasm — may be and even ought to be essayed by the guest. That these island people have thus been clever enough in their friendly greetings to sub- stitute for inane commonplaces upon the 122 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. weather a topic of essential interest would be of itself a sufficing evidence of the superiority of their civilization to our own in at least one regard. Most interesting is it also in this con- nection to note how completely in Japan the spirit of restraint is substituted for the love of ostentation prevailing in the West. Invited on one occasion to inspect the collection of Marquis Tokugawa, the vision of a vast bewilderment of rare and costly objects rose before my mind as the sensation in store for me ; for the Tokugawas are the family which, for the two hundred and fifty years of the seclu- sion of the country, held the shogunate and swayed the destinies of the Empire. And therefore any adequate estimate of the extent and value of the collections of cu- rios and objects of art inherited by them is simply out of the question. Such a collection it was to be my rare privilege to behold. Ushered into the reception- room of the yashiki, or mansion of the Marquis, no change from that which seems to Western eyes the usual aspect of barrenness and emptiness was to be TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 123 seen, save on one side of the floor a range of ten low dais or stands, on which were placed as many curios. Here was a won- derful piece of lacquer, on which months or perhaps years of labor and skill had been lavished. There was a historic sword, its sheath gleaming with gold, and its hilt covered with rare devices in metal work. Next was an exquisite bit of silverware, and then a marvellously wrought bronze. Each had its date and history carefully authenticated and pre- served. Each had doubtless been selected from the full storehouses of the Marquis with the most painstaking judgment and discrimination, as typical of its class or kind. Each was described with loving rev- erence. And thus it was that, instead of the vision of bewilderment of which I had dreamed and from which could have resulted no impression save the vague re- membrance of lavish display, every one of those exquisitely rich and dainty ob- jects became an imperishable possession of my own. Hospitality had reached its acme of reflnement. The chief decorative, if not the chief 124 feudal and modern japan. constructive, material used in Japanese architecture is the bamboo. Though partly owing to the necessities enforced by the long isolation, it was doubtless ^largely through the genius for concentra- tion just now noted that the use of a single material became so universally adopted that Japan’s civilization has often been called a bamboo civilization. There are other lands, it is true, in which extensive use has been made of this marvellous wood, but there are no others in which its employment subserves such varied pur- poses, or where it is fashioned by a peo- ple’s ingenuity and taste into so many appliances refined and dainty as well as useful. Other nations have had the range of the world in gathering materials for the construction and adornment of their homes, but Japan lavished her inventive energies and her artistic skill upon this one product of her own soil to such effect that, if we could imagine its abolition, more than half of the picturesqueness and charm of her life would vanish with it. Never surely was there a material better fitted, by its varied and serviceable qual- TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 125 ities, to fill the needs of a secluded people so far as to give its name to their civilization. Of extraordinarily rapid growth, attain- ing sometimes a height of seventy feet in less than two months, straight as an arrow, combining well-nigh the strength and hardness of iron with the lightness of cork, round, hollow, smooth, of straight and easy cleavage, and as elastic as it is rigid, it is small wonder that the prac- tical genius of the island nation centred in its development and its application to their needs. But few realize the extent to which that development has been car- ried. Not only have all these qualities been recognized and turned to account, but also every portion of the tree, from its root to the tip of its every twig, has been utilized by native ingenuity, until its presence asserts itself in every fea- ture of the people’s domestic economy. Though the houses are not indeed built of it, as many erroneously suppose, yet in their adornment and furnishings, and in all the appliances which belong to home life, the bamboo everywhere asserts its usefulness and its dainty charm. 126 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. At the Festival of the New Year, the common birthday of every subject of the Mikado’s realm, there is placed before every gate or doorway in the Empire a kadoinatsu^ or gate pine-tree. It is a young pine, to which are fastened plum branches and the graceful foliage of the bamboo. The plum in Japanese symbol- ism typifies sweetness of heart, and the pine the strength of vigorous old age. It is in loving recognition of the depend- ence of these upon the virtue, the fidelity, and the constancy of which the bamboo is the type that the people on their com- mon natal-day bind together the three to guard from harm their dwellings. That, in those dwellings, whatever may be the faults of the Japanese, there is sweetness of disposition and loving reverence for age, none who have been privileged to enter there can deny. That there is also conjoined with these a higher degree of virtue, fidelity, and constancy than the Western world has yet been willing to credit to the Oriental will sooner or later be recognized. Certain it is that the qualities typified by the tree, which is TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 127 of iron hardness as well as of graceful beauty, which lacks not strength because of the rapidity of its growth, which is inflexible as steel, though it may sway idly in the wind, are the qualities which are prized by the true heart of Japan, and are becoming to-day, if they have not always been, the nation’s ideals. The suggestion of the advantages which might accrue to us from the cultivation in our Southern States of the material entering so largely into the economy of the Japanese household, a suggestion so obvious and so practical that it is a mar- vel that Americans have not already acted upon it, leads to the larger question of the possible adaptation to Western uses of Japanese domestic architecture itself. Were one to judge from the essays in this direction already made by the natives, in their eagerness to adopt the features of Western civilization and to transform their dwellings into some semblance of European styles, such adaptation would seem out of the question. For what is at present called the foreign style of house in Japan is so termed, as an old resident 128 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. has observed, because foreign to all known styles of architecture. Certainly nothing more dismal in the way of architectural failure can anywhere be found than the results of the attempt to graft Western features upon Japanese dwellings. If, to Western eyes, the Japanese room is bare and comfortless, to the same eyes a far more desolate forlornity is presented in the aspect of the “ European room ” in a Japanese house. Just as in the rolling stock of their railroads, the islanders have managed to combine all the inconveniences and discomforts of both the English and the American systems, with scarce a hint of the representative advantages of either, so in their combination architecture they have succeeded in incorporating every crude, cheerless, and inartistic feature characteristic of Western domestic fash- ions to the exclusion of any evidence of such real civilization as the Occidental has yet attained. There is scarcely any- thing in the Empire more pathetic than the outcome of these attempts on the part of the hospitable islanders to make us feel at home. TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 29 Aside from this complete failure on the part of a most ingenious people to incor- porate Western features in their dwellings, there are other reasons for doubt whether it is possible or desirable for them to make any essential change in the fashion of their homes. Admirably fitted as they are to their needs, and to the unique civi- lization of which they are perhaps the most complete outward expression, there is no valid reason why the land should be deprived of their picturesque beauty, or the people of the. genuine comforts which they so well supply. In only two regards, to wit, the lack of privacy involved in their construction and their perviousness to cold, can much fault be found with them from the far Oriental standpoint of comfort. The first diffi- culty, if it seems to be necessary, in view of the rapidly changing conditions, to meet it, might be obviated in the homes of the well-to-do, at least, by the substitu- tion, in the case of some rooms, of more solid walls for the sliding screens. And as to the non-adaptability of the house to wintry conditions, it is to be noted that, 130 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. inured as they are to cold by centuries of exposure, little complaint on this score is heard from the Japanese themselves. It would hardly be wise to change their amply ventilated quarters for the close and stifling rooms in which alone the Occidental finds what he calls comfort. And where a modification of the all- out -door life which a Japanese leads becomes necessary, it is easily possible, by a few simple contrivances, to trans- form a well-built Japanese summer pa- vilion into a sufficiently cold-defying winter residence, to make it at all seasons thor- oughly habitable, and, even in the West- ern sense of the word, comfortable. I have, myself, in one of the most exposed situations in New England, added to my house a fac-simile of such a pavilion, in which every feature of Japanese construc- tion is preserved. In summer, it is open underneath, as well as around, to all the winds of heaven. It is practically naught but roof and floor. In the autumn, a half day’s labor suffices to transform it for winter’s use into the most easily warmed room in the house, it being not only Grove. TEMPLE AND HOUSE. I3I protected from the searching winds, but also flooded with sunshine through the glazed walls. No great necessity would therefore seem to exist for the importa- tion into Japan of aught except a few Western ideas of comfort and the adap- tation of the native homes to its de- mands. On the other hand, the Japanese have so much to teach us in the way of sim- plicity of construction, economy of mate- rial, and the principles of ornament, that in a land where the “ Queen Anne ” and “ Colonial ” fevers have had their day in domestic architecture, it is quite possible that motives from this far Oriental style may next claim the attention of our archi- tects. In fact, for our seashore summer homes, the Japanese house in its entirety, with the exception of its peculiarly matted floors, would be well-nigh ideal, because of its simplicity and ease of construction, not to mention its cheapness, and the rapidity with which it could be built. For more substantial structures, a com- bination of the Japanese dwelling and temple, using the beam and plaster walls 132 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. of the latter, is wholly practicable for winter use, while the introduction of the graceful upward curving roof would afford a pleasing relief to the angularities with which we so pertinaciously insist upon crowning our dwellings. For interiors, there is literally no end to the useful hints one might gather from the results of far Eastern ingenuity. The principle of sliding walls could, indeed, only sparingly be used to advantage, al- though in many cases they might well be substituted for our clumsy folding-door arrangements; but it is a marvel that the beautiful wooden ceilings, so ingeniously laid that the boards or panels may shrink or swell without showing the slightest sign of so doing, have not already come into common use among us. When we add to these wholly practical features the Japanese motives for interior decoration, enabling the architect to produce rooms which even without a particle of furniture in them will satisfy the eye by their simple beauty, and, above all, when we have learned the Japanese principle of concentration in adornment, and substitute TEMPLE AND HOUSE. 133 it for the “ domination of things ” under which we now groan, we may begin to acknowledge our indebtedness to the re- fined civilization of the far East. CHAPTER V. INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. pROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN in his “Things Japanese,” after com- menting upon the hopelessness of the attempts of foreigners to estimate and describe the characteristics of the Jap- anese people, gives up the task himself, although no one is more competent for it, and is content with simply quoting the extraordinarily variant opinions of those who have essayed it. Beginning with the testimony of Saint Francis Xavier, “ This nation is the delight of my soul,” the list ends with that of a modern religious propa- gandist, who avers it to be “ the universal experience of those who remain long enough in this country to see beneath the surface, that first impressions are very de- ceitful.” Between the enthusiastic praise of the earliest and most successful mis- sionary, and the disparaging tone of com- ment which later teachers of foreign creeds 134 INVERSIONS AND CONTR*ADICTIONS. 1 35 almost universally adopt toward a people proving to be unexpectedly intractable to their religious influences, there is the widest possible range of opinion as to the real qualities of the Japanese nature. Will Adams, the sailor shipwrecked on their shores just as they were closing their gates to the world, living among them for twenty years, and becoming one of them, seems to have held no disparaging views, either of human nature or of heathen nature, and his quaint comments in still quainter English embody opinions which have stood the test of time. “ The people of this Hand of lapon are good of nature, curteous aboue measure, and .valiant in warre ; their iustice is seuerely excecuted without any partialitie upon transgressors of the law. They are gouerned in great ciuilitie, I meane, not a land better gou- erned in the world by ciuill policie. The people be verie superstitious in their re- ligion and are of diures opinions.” Kamp- fer, also privileged to study the people in their seclusion, a century later bears wit- ness to the result of what Adams calls their superstitions by afflrming “that in 136 FEUDAL \nD modern JAPAN. the practice of virtue, in purity of life, and in outward devotion, they far outdo the Christians.” To-day, however, whatever virtues they possess not only cannot be attributed to such a source, since no one, as Professor Chamberlain says, now ac- cuses the Japanese of superstitious relig- ionism, but there is the utmost variety of opinion as to what the virtues are, and even, in some quarters, a doubt as to the existence of any at all. While every one acknowledges the irresistible charm of the land and of the people, the few who have attempted to analyze that charm, by means of the study of the Japanese char- acter, have, sooner or later, found them- selves confronting ah insoluble enigma, or involved in hopeless contradictions and paradoxes. Those best versed in the fas- cinating study generally reach the final conclusion that here is a people about whom anything could be said, and every- thing would be true, that no adjective, whether of praise or of blame, would be wholly out of place in a description of their mental and moral characteristics. Of cour.se, the same thing may be said INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 37 in a degree of any nation, and the same difficulty is encountered in any endeavor to make an estimate of any versatile people or complex civilization. As Mr. Dening has so well pointed out, there is hardly any living person concerning some essential part of whose character entire agreement exists even among his intimate acquaintances. And when from the study of the character of individuals we pass to that of nations, the difficulty is immeasur- ably enhanced. In the case of Japan it becomes, from special causes, insurmount- able. One of these causes is to be found in the almost utter incompetency of all Occi- dental observers of Oriental character. The one essential for fairness in making such estimates as we would essay is the firm resolution to make them from the Oriental point of view, and that point of view it is impossible for us to attain unless we can succeed in psychologically standing on our heads. Inversion is the confirmed and ineradicable habit of the far Oriental. It characterizes, not only the general mode as well as every detail of his outward life. 138 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. but also his intellectual and moral being. It is not simply that his ways and thoughts differ from ours. They are the total re- versal of ours. In our childhood we were accustomed to picture the inhabitants of the antipodes as standing upon their heads. We were so far right in our imaginings that that is really the only thing the far Oriental does not -do in inversion of our ways. It has been a matter of much regret to me that, during my residence in Japan, I did not keep a memorandum of the numberless and minute details of art, and thought, and life there, in which this prin- ciple of inversion is exemplified. There are, however, enough held in memory amply to illustrate something more than a mere bent of the Japanese mind; that bent is carried so far as to become a somersault. Taking a walk the morning after arrival in the country, one of the first things to meet my eye was a house in process of construction. All that was visible as yet was the roof, fully completed before the substructure was begun. The tools used by the carpenters were, in their action, re- INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 39 versed. The planes were drawn toward instead of being pushed from the body; the saws cut on the up-stroke instead of the down ; the gimlets were threaded the opposite way from ours, as were also the screws; drawing knives were pushed in- stead of pulled, and keyholes made upside down, the keys turning backward. When built, the best rooms of the house are located at the rear. A Japanese entering it takes off his shoes instead of his hat ; if he takes up a book to read, he opens it at the back; he reads from right to left, instead of from left to right; the letters are ranged vertically instead of horizon- tally ; the larger margin of the page is at the top instead of at the bottom, and the foot-notes are at the top. If he has an old Japanese clock to consult, he will see the hand stationary and the face revolving backward, while the hours will be marked 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, reckoning onward from noon. If he writes a letter, he will take a roll instead of a sheet, write along the curve of the roll a missive which begins exactly as one of ours would end, and vice versa, and then putting it into an envelope 140 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. opening at the end, after addressing it to United States, Ohio, Cincinnati, Smith, John, Mr., he will seal it, turn it over, and put his postage stamp on the back. If he is making up accounts he puts down the figures first and the items afterward. If you are teaching him to write the Roman alphabet, he will invariably begin making each letter at the point opposite where you began it. If he mounts a horse it is on the right side, where all the fasten- ings of the harness are also. The mane is brushed on the left side, and when he puts his horse in the stall he backs him in tail foremost. After-dinner speeches are made before dinner, thus insuring brevity, and furnish- ing the topic for conversation. Women take pride in indicating, as nearly as possi- ble, their exact age by the details of their costume, and it is the absorbing desire of the young ladies to grow old that they may share the reverence given to age. Should you meet in the street what seems a specially festive procession, you know that a funeral is in progress. White is the indication of mourning. The coffin, in- f" C-'.' Ir t i-. INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 14I Stead of being laid horizontally on the bier, is placed upright, and in that position it is buried. Thus, from the beginning to the end of life, in all its detail and experience, a prin- ciple of inversion holds good, which, apart from its bearing upon the difficulty beset- ting us in our attempts to estimate Jap- anese characteristics, suggests many an interesting query. Of course, our first conclusion is that theirs is the wrong way, because it is the opposite of that which we have been taught is the only right way. But an analysis of almost any one of their methods, with a search for the practical reasons therefor, will show that it possesses manifest advantage over ours. Besides the rationale suggested in -one or two of the cases given above, many another might be adduced. For example, by care- ful experimenting with the use of the Jap- anese saw in comparison with the workings of our own, I am convinced that the former has superior merit in the ease and firmness with which it can be guided by the hand of the workman. So, too, when the Jap- anese began their year in the spring, in- 142 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. stead of at midwinter, we should give them all due credit for a sense of the fitness of things. In some things, of course, they blunder, being human. But, in others, however much they may differ from our own, the islanders should be given some credit for knowing what they are about. F urthermore, if we are inclined to arrogate for our methods the advantage of long experience in their use, or the sanction of conservatism, our contention must needs be abandoned at once, for theirs are by far the older ways. It is we who are the innovators. It is, however, as said above, with re- gard to the bearings of this inverted way of doing things Japanese upon the fair way of our looking at things Japanese, that the matter becomes of interest and impor- tance. No principle of so universal a scope and of so far-reaching an influence as to enter into all the details of personal, domestic, and industrial life, can be with- out effect also upon the moral and mental being of the far Oriental. The question of the moral standard of which he makes use, and of the probability of that being INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 43 inverted also, it remaining at the same time good, wise, and useful, is suggested at least to the Occidental observer, and, if nothing else, is a question of curious if not of vital interest. At all events, it must needs impress him with a sense of the well-nigh insurmountable initial diffi- culty before him in estimating the moral characteristics of the Japanese people, and give him caution. In the case of this unique people, also, there is to be taken into account, not only the principle of inversion, but, like- wise, the presence of extraordinary contra- dictions, which must needs be traced to their sources before any fair or even intel- ligent judgment can be rendered. Of course, the same is true in a degree of any nation or of any complex civilization. The study of the whole of its ethnic, political, and social history is the essential prior condition for assuring anything like justice in an estimate of its character. It is, how- ever, true of Japan in such an eminent degree that there is scarcely any other regard in which her uniqueness is more manifest. In fact, it would be strange 144 feudal and modern japan. indeed if a people of such an extraordh nary ethnic origin, and a nation which had passed through so abnormal an expe- rience, did not exhibit what seem to us well- nigh impossible incongruities of character and disposition. It is no matter of sur- prise that Pierre Loti, in his attempts to portray these, exhausts his own peculiarly rich vocabulary, and in a breath, as it were, speaks of the Japanese as petit ^ bizarre^ disparate^ heterogene^ invraise7n- blable^ mignon^ bariole^ extravagant^ U7i- imaginable^ frHe^ monstrueux, grotesque^ rnievre^ exotique^ lilliputien^ miniscule^ manure^ and so on. We may marvel, indeed, at the range of the qualities upon which writers on Japan have insisted as characteristic. Every one of such writers, save those who under the influence of the fascinations of the land have lost all power of discrimination, can be readily convicted of the most glaring inconsistencies. At the same time it is comparatively easy to see why there should be such a range and why incongruities and contradictory traits should enter into the make-up of the national character. INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 45 Take, for instance, the virtue with which the name of Japan is more often associated than with any other, the virtue of hospitality. That virtue, if no other, is manifestly in the blood. Ethnically the Japanese must have descended from a combination of races uniting and in- tensifying in one people all those kindly feelings toward the stranger for which Orientals have always been famed. To strengthen this disposition there was added in their case the influence of physical iso- lation, than which no more powerful stim- ulus to the spirit of hospitality is known to exist. And yet, only forty years ago, a powerful fleet was sent to these islands for the ostensible purpose, — a purpose, how- ever, fully justified by the facts — of de- manding humane treatment of shipwrecked sailors, who chanced to be cast upon their shores. To the modern traveller, also, there is no more perplexing feature of the Japanese disposition toward the foreigner than the absorbing desire of the native to stand well in the eyes of the Western world; while all the time and among all classes there is an ill-concealed contempt 146 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. for foreign opinion, such contempt just at the present juncture amounting to a strong and distinct anti-foreign spirit, negativing in many cases, and bidding fair to destroy the reputation of the islanders in the mat- ter of their leading and distinctive virtue. But however greatly the seeming dimi- nution or temporary obliteration of such a virtue is to be deplored, the incongruity noted may be readily explained if not en- tirely justified. The impulse to hospitality on the part of the Japanese is racial and in the blood. The contempt for foreigners is the outcome of an abnormal political experience continued through three long centuries, during which generation after generation was assiduously educated in such contempt and taught that the very existence of their beloved land was de- pendent upon keeping the rest of the world at a distance. That out of these centuries of stern repression the Japanese emerged with the pulses of human and kindly feel- ing still so strongly beating as to win praise for their hospitality from the very sailors who had come to complain of their cruelty, is an assurance that the virtue so INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 47 long associated with their name is in no danger of permanent obliteration. It has survived centuries of inculcated hatred, and since the* country was opened it has remained largely proof against actual ex- perience of the rapacity and tyranny of the Western world for the last forty years, rapacity and tyranny amply justifying the fears instilled during the, period of seclu- sion. Many a land might submit to the dictation of an alliance of all the rest of the world. But when such an alliance goes so far as to dictate to a nation through forty years of long-suffering just what method it may employ to raise reve- nues for the support of its own govern- ment, it is scarcely fair to ask that nation to keep forever a smiling face, or to wel- come its oppressors every day in the year with effusive hospitalities.^ Yet this is * On the emergence of Japan from seclusion, the Western Powers, taking advantage of her ignorance and helplessness, obtained her assent to a provision by which she was restricted to a tariff of nominally five but practi- cally only three per cent, on all imports. It was the ex- pressed intent of Minister Harris, who framed the treaty upon which those with the other Powers were based, that revision within a few years should be provided for, but the Powers, taking advantage of an ambiguity in the 148 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. what Japan has done. It would be inter- esting to know what she has been thinking of us all the time. During the recent war with China the Western world, which had learned with undisguised astonishment not only of the uniform successes of the Japanese army, but also of the extraordinary spirit of discipline, obedience, and humanity char- acterizing every man in that army, was immeasurably shocked to hear of the sud- den outburst of barbarity now known to history as the Port Arthur massacre. Though greatly exaggerated by a sensa- tional correspondent, who achieved a world-wide reputation for seldom being within a hundred miles of any of the scenes he described, there undoubtedly was, under perhaps the most tremendous provocation which can stir the human soul to wrath, an indiscriminate slaughter of all bearing the semblance of the Chinese revision clause, have continued to this day to dictate to Japan on this vital point in the management of her owm finances. By the new treaties, to take effect in 1899, ^ greater latitude is graciously conceded, but only after another period of years will Japan gain complete au- tonomy. INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 49 fiends who had tortured, dismembered, and thrown in the path of the approach- ing army the bodies of their comrades. Although exaggerated, although palliated by the provocation, and although paral- leled by many a like slaughter in the annals of even late modern warfare, called civilized because participated in by West- ern armies, it was, nevertheless, a distinct shock to the sensibilities, and a grievous disappointment to the heart of the West- ern world, to learn of the sudden lapse of the Japanese army into barbarism. That it was but a momentary lapse the whole earlier and later record of the campaign clearly proves. Now the real marvel of it all is that the lapse was only momen- tary, that it did not recur again and again during the struggle. For the tendency toward it is a distinct characteristic of the Japanese nature, and is the outcome of the peculiar elements and experiences which have gone into the making of the nation’s life. During my residence in the country I chanced to witness two theatrical perform- ances which, taken together, were striking 150 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. proofs of the inheritance by the Japanese of a duplex soul. They were two differ- ent dramatizations of the story of the Forty-seven Ronins. In the one there was the nearest possible rendering of the Greek feeling that nothing repulsive or calculated to shock refined sensibilities should find direct expression. In the hara-kiri scene, the victim, with stately dignity, retired to the room appointed for the purpose. There were a few moments of expressive silence, and then a white plum blossom fell 'from a tree overhang- ing the door, to tell that all was over. There was probably no one in the audi- ence who did not recognize the impres- sive suggestiveness of the scene; no one who was not deeply moved by it. It fully accorded with the sensitive and gentle nature of a people who ever shrink from even the mention of grief and death. The other representation of the same storj' was, without exception, the most grue- some spectacle of blood and slaughter which it is possible to conceive as being enacted on the stage. Every detail of the method of self-immolation was repre- INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. I5I sented with revolting realism. The act- ors almost literally waded in gore. And yet here again the audience, in no way different from the other in class or char- acter, though far more noisy in its demon- strativeness, was just as deeply moved, and was even wrought up to a pitch of pas- sionate excitement in its approval of the scene. In the veins of the race there is not only blood, but a taste for blood, inherited from their far-away ancestry, and intensi- fied by centuries of fiercest conflict. Not all the native gentleness of the people, nor •the refining influences of their art, nor the softening tendencies of their long experience of isolation and peace, nor the mild teachings of their Buddhist sages, though they have done much to conceal, can ever eradicate the inherent fierceness of the Japanese nature. There will in- evitably be times when the ethnic ele- ments of their moral being will assert themselves and win momentary victories over the whole outcome of the people’s careful training in the gentler virtues. By reason of that training the Japanese will 152 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. always be gentle ; but also by reason, per- haps, of the Malay blood in his veins, he can be as cruel as the grave. He is to- day full of mercy and tenderness, but none can be more revengeful. He is to all outward seeming the most pliant and yielding of men, but when aggressiveness is needed or demanded by aught he loves, there is no lack of its spirit. In the moral character of the nation, there is not simply a variety of qualities such as mark human nature generally, but, owing to its peculiar origin and history, and especially to its long hermit life, which has differentiated it from the rest of the world, there are in the disposition and tendencies of the Japanese, two distinct and practically contradictory sets of qual- ities ; the one set being mainly ethnic in origin, and the other the result of ex- ternal influences at various times brought to bear upon a people afterward left to themselves for centuries to work out their own problems of assimilation. Ethnically it is easy to account for the latent cruelty in their disposition which has at times turned their land into a slaughter-field, Dai b utsu S' • ' INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 53 for the fearful extremes to which their spirit of revenge will carry them in the perpetration of the most hideous of crimes, and for the fierce aggressiveness they show in forwarding their boundless ambi- tions. But into the land, welcomed with genuine hospitality, came the Confucian learning to lead the minds of the people away from scenes of slaughter to the teachings of order, industry, and good government as the means to exalt the nation. Into it also came, with a like wel- come, the lessons of the life of Asia’s best religious guide, teaching the gospel of gentleness and peace. In the long isola- tion which followed, somehow these op- posing influences never became merged, and so fashioning a merely neutral or colorless race, but in the striking individ- uality of the nation, as it at present ex- ists, the contradictory elements seem to remain each in full force, giving to the Japanese, in a more marked degree, per- haps, than has been the case in any other land, the distinction of possessing a genuinely double nature ; of having a capacity or showing, as occasion may re- 154 feudal and modern japan. quire, either of two sets of opposing qual- ities with all the intensity which natively belongs to it, as if it had never been brought under the influence of the other. Of the possible results of this extraor- dinarily unassimilated combination of op- posing tendencies, it is likely that we may have in the not distant future an illustra- tion. The Japanese are eminently a peace- ful people, and one of their most fondly cherished ambitions is to forward the industrial development of their country, that the idyllic contentment and simple life of the people so long enjoyed may become a confirmed possession. What- ever may be said of their soaring ambi- tion in other directions as bringing on the late war with China, the only ostensi- ble cause, and really the main cause of that conflict, was commercial, the internal troubles of Korea, in the abatement of which China refused to cooperate with Japan, seriously interfering with the in- dustrial interests of the latter. And when the war was brought to so triumphant a conclusion, the islanders, happy indeed in the new position they had attained in the INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 55 eyes of the world, looked still forward to the peaceful victories which their land might gain in the fields of industry and commerce. These were to be their crown- ing triumph. The world should also see what energies they could put forth in the interests of peace. But with the respect they had also won the jealousy of the European powers, three of the strongest of which united to despoil the nation of the fruits of its victories. That act, per- haps the most flagrant and unjustifiable piece of diplomatic browbeating known to history, not only transformed the Japa- nese nation, but also gave to its ambition a totally different direction. Japan yielded the point with the fine outward courtesy which it knows so well how to employ. But its heart within is to-day black with rage, and its one consuming desire is to prepare for the inevitable fray which Western jealousy has provoked. The de- velopment of Japanese industry and trade, while still pursued with unabated vigor, is carried on only with the secondary motive of thus adding strength to the national resources against the day of vengeance. 1 56 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. That unholy alliance is responsible for converting a people who love peace pre- eminently, into a nation to whom success in war is the highest ambition, and who will henceforth bend all its fiery energies to compass its revenge. Whether it can succeed in this is, of course, open to ques- tion. But it is none the less lamentable that, through Western greed, the better nature of this great empire, so well able to shine in the arts of peace, will for many a long year be kept in abeyance, and its intensely fierce spirit of patriotism be enlisted in the furtherance of warlike ambitions. The union of contradictories thus noted, each extreme kept in full force, instead of blending with and modifying the other, is as marked in the mental characteristics as it is in the moral qualities of the Japa- nese. As Miss Scidmore has so well said : “ They and their outward surroundings are so picturesque, theatrical, and artistic, that at moments they appear a nation of poseiirs — all their world a stage, and all their men and women merely players ; a trifling, superficial, fantastic people, bent INVERSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 1 57 on nothing but pleasing effects. Again, the Occidental is as a babe before the deep mysteries, the innate wisdom, the phil- osophies, the art, the thought, the subtle refinements of this finest branch of the yel- low race. . . . They are at once the most sensitive, artistic, and mercurial of human beings, and the most impassible, conven- tional, and stolid ; at once the most stately, solemn, and taciturn, and the most playful, whimsical, and loquacious. . . . Dreaming, procrastinating, and referring all things to the mythical mionichi (to-morrow) they can yet amaze one with a wizard-like rapidity of action and accomplishment.” It is surely no wonder that the nation whose ethnic origin is shrouded in mys- tery, whose history has been in every way unique, and in whose mental being there exist such flat contradictions should be now the confusion of the moralists, the despair of the missionaries, the enigma of the century. CHAPTER VI. THE nation’s unity. OT the least interesting result of the hermit life of Japan is the way in which it seems to have contributed to the racial homogeneity of the nation. Because of it the Japanese are now practically an unmixed race, and perhaps the only civi- lized people who can lay claim to that dis- tinction. That the original invaders of the islands were of a mixed stock is doubtless true ; but, unlike almost all other peoples, their seclusion gave them time and opportunity for thorough assimilation, with the result that the nation stands to-day not only as the unique people, with a strik- ing individuality of its own, but also as the single example of a race practically free from admixture with foreign elements. Professor Petrie, in a recent address before the British Association, has pointed out the fact that mixture of races has now THE nation’s unity. 59 gone so far that the very word race itself requires a new definition. From the mi- grations and minglings which have taken place on every continent, have resulted such mere agglomerations of people that, in the old sense of the word, there is scarcely a genuine race in existence to- day. With the exception of peoples like the Hebrews and Copts, whose blood has been kept measurably pure by religious ostracism, there is hardly any nation save the Japanese which can lay claim to any- thing like homogeneity. What Western religious prejudice has done for the pariah remnants of ancient peoples, isolation has done for the great Empire of the far East. There is presented the interesting sight of a nation forty millions strong compacted into a unity such as, from the very nature of the case, cannot elsewhere be found. This unity of hers is doubtless a factor which must be taken into account in any forecast of her coming influence in the world of nations. For now that Japan is taking her place among the great powers, not the least among her resources must be reckoned this marked homogeneity of her l6o FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. people. To the intensity of their love of country must be added an almost equally intense pride of race, both destined to be potent forces in the modern struggle for existence and supremacy. For it is to be noted that this marked integration of the nation’s life is by no means of the simple, primitive kind which characterizes other Pacific island people, or merely isolated tribes. The homoge- neity which Japan exhibits is in its com- plexity of a very advanced type ; for whatever may be thought of her civiliza- tion in other regards, in its elaboration it may not only compare with that of any of the highly evolved Western nations, but in some of its aspects it may be regarded as one of the best illustrations of the higher unity, or unity in complexity, which has been wrought out by any single peo- ple. Certainly, nothing more elaborate than the Japanese code of etiquette, and scarcely anything more genuine than the now innate and exquisitely refined polite- ness of her people, is elsewhere to be found. Little, too, is to be noted among Western nations more perfect in simplicity THE nation’s unity. l6l and at the same time more complex and intricate in detail than Japan’s old-time administration of law, of social customs, and of domestic economies. In these, as well as in many other regards, the unity with which she enters and faces the mod- ern world is a highly evolved unity, des- tined to become, in its time, a factor of no small influence in the rivalry of nations. Whether she is in danger of losing this marked individuality of hers, since aban- doning her hermit life and opening her doors to those whom in a certain sense she is right in regarding as barbarians ; whether this singular people is destined by such emergence into the world to become as commonplace and uninteresting as the rest of us, has been of late a question of absorbing interest to her Western friends. It has been such a pleasure to contemplate her oddity, so great a refreshment to find a people who have worked out for them- selves a refined and complex civilization of their own, that the vision of what Japan may become under subjection to Western influences — her blood so long kept pure, mingled with foreign strains ; her unity 1 62 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. of national feeling destroyed ; her pride of race laid low, and all the distinctive fea- tures of her civilization obliterated — is a disturbing one to all who have known the fascination of her life and have witnessed the extraordinary transformations which have marked her emergence from her long seclusion. In some regards this fear and pain would seem to be amply justified. The rapid decadence of her art, the growing disposition of her artisans to assimilate their work to that of the Western world, the eagerness of her youth to ape Occi- dental fashions of manner and dress, and the open contempt shown by the rising generation for everything connected with the religion and civilization of the feudal Empire, would seem to be signs pointing to the early disappearance of the distinc- tive features of Japanese life, and the merging of the nation’s unity and individ- uality in the tide of so-called modern prog- ress. Tourists are being told to hasten their steps thither if they wish to see any traces left of Old Japan, or if they care to know for themselves aught of the peculiar THE nation’s unity. 163 charm she has exerted heretofore upon all who have sought her shores. And, indeed, if certain picturesque features of the feudal times were the only source of that charm, the advice is already too late. The scenic effects of the old regime have even now vanished, or can be witnessed only on the stage where they are reproduced with rare fidelity. The pomp and display of officialdom are of the commonplace West- ern type, and the elaborate ceremonial, to the evolution of which Japan seems to have devoted the most of her time and energies during her long seclusion, is a thing of the past. In governmental features, also, an irrev- ocable change has come over the Empire, all departments of official life being mod- elled after those of the West. The army is French. The navy is English. The policemen remind one of students in a German university. Railroad, telegraph, postal, and lighthouse service are in great measure merqly improvements on Ameri- can inventive skill and enterprise. A change, also detrimental to the old-time picturesqueness, has likewise passed over 164 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. the industrial aspect of the cities and larger towns. The once clear air, un- tainted by smoke, now bears sooty wit- ness to the invasion of Western methods of toil, and chimneys break the sky line once broken only by gracefully curving temple-roofs. Yet apart from these and like innovar tions affecting the surface aspect of the industrial and economic life of the Em- pire, and undeniably detracting from the sensational charm which this people once exerted over foreign visitors, Japan re- mains to - day practically unchanged. Though less attractive to the transient tourist, the nation, largely because of the stable elements of its character and life, is becoming a more intensely interesting study than ever, rewarding every explora- tion into its ways with marvels and sensa- tions as fresh as if the discovery of the islands were a thing of yesterday. Old Japan has not vanished, nor is it in any danger of vanishing. A five minutes’ stroll from the railway line, or even from a city thoroughfare, will carry one into the very heart of it, where he may see all Magakubo Villagh Nakascndd. r 1 :;1 THE nation’s unity. 65 the simplicity, the quaintness, and the quiet content which have there dwelt for a thousand years ever the same. To a foreigner the surpassing charm of a long residence in the land comes from the fact that the sense of novelty is never sated. So much is left, so unchanged are the people, that they are practically untouched by the tremendous revolution, which has affected only the political and economic machinery of the Empire. Even the por- tions of the country most affected by for- eign influences are still predominantly Japanese in aspect, and will, in all prob- ability, undergo no further essential change except in localities which may be given over to modern industrial enterprise. Still further, the prophecy may be hazarded that in almost every regard the tide of change has reached its height, and that a reversion to whatever in the old order of things is abased on reason, or to what- ever the revolution has not thus far suC' ceeded in eradicating, is now going on. The young men who have been most eager to learn Western ways, even those who have spent years in Europe or Amer- I 66 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. ica and who have shown their power of ready adaptation to foreign modes of life, on their return to their native country take up again, with a more eager facility, the old ways of living in which they were reared. However cosmopolitan they have become, Japanese they remain, and the ancient modes of life assert their hold upon them. For purposes of business and travel they are still to be seen in for- eign garb ; but in the home, for which that garb is wholly unfit, they resume the national and comfortable dress which so well accords with their grace of manners, and is so marked an index of the superi- ority of their civilization. Very striking are many of the evidences of the per- sistence of customs impressed by the age- long drill of that immemorial civilization. On a railway journey one often sees a Japanese, on entering the carriage, shufile off his shoes, and, mounting his seat, sit thereon on his heels, the habit of centuries having rendered this position more com- fortable and restful for him. If the very muscles of the body thus insist upon a return to the old life, it is measurably THE nation’s unity. 167 hopeless, even were it desirable, to look for any radical or lasting revolution in the national, intellectual, or emotional life of Old Japan. The avid nations of the West who, on the opening of the country, in view of the changes wrought in its life, thought they were witnessing the breaking up of an ancient Empire, and believed they should have a reversion of its effects, seemed one and all to have forgotten that Japan is the most Oriental of all Oriental lands, and that, therefore, there is in the very con- stitution of the national character, as well as in the fortunate isolation of the country, an insurmountable barrier to any assault upon the national integrity. Although Professor Petrie in the ad- dress mentioned above makes no mention of Japan, nothing could furnish a better illustration of his position than the results of all such assaults which have thus far been made upon her. “ The foremost principle,” says he, which should be always kept in view, is that the civilization of any race is not a system which can be changed at will. 1 68 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Every civilization is the growing product of a very complex set of conditions. To attempt to alter such a system apart from its conditions, is impossible. No change is legitimate or beneficial to the real character of a people except what flows from conviction and the natural growth of the mind. And if the imposition of a foreign system is injurious, how miserable is the imposition of a system such as ours which is the most complex, unnatural, and artificial that has been known ; a system developed in a cold country, amid one of the hardest, least sympathetic, most self-denying [ascetic?] and calculating people of the world ! The result is death ; we make a dead house and call it civilization. Scarcely a single race can bear the contact and the burden. And then we talk about the mysterious decay of savages before white men.” That Japan, while illustrating, in some conspicuous Ways, the deleterious influ- ences of such contact, has so far escaped its blight as to have steadily grown in power and prestige from the day she opened her doors to Western civilizadon, THE nation’s unity. 169 would, of itself, seem to be a sufficient assurance that her friends may count upon her retention of her unique individuality and of the nation’s unity. If further assurance were needed, there are many considerations to inspire hope, if not to promote solid conviction, that this interesting people will remain practi- cally intact. Were there no other assur- ance, the unconquerable self-respect of the nation would alone suffice. To fortify this virtue, so conspicuous in the people’s character, there has always been the proud consciousness that no invader’s foot has ever pressed the soil of the realm, and there is now added the fact that alone of all Oriental Empires this one has not been in any sense subjugated even by Western influences. As a writer in the Japan Mail has recently suggested, there is great significance in the fact that what- ever Japan has adopted and sought to assimilate has been a matter of free choice, that hers has not been a case of the forcing of an alien civilization upon a conquered nation, and that “ the effect of a n^w form of civilization upon the East- 170 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. ern mind depends far more on the moral feelings of the recipients,, on the presence or absence of self-respect, independence of spirit, patriotism, ambition and the like than anything else.” Whatever may be claimed for the practical benefits conferred on India by British rule, no benefit or sum of benefits can compensate for the moral detriment which has followed the subju- gation of that land by British arms. The people have learned to respect their con- querors more than themselves. A sense of their own inferiority paralyzes the will and extinguishes national ambitions. But Japan, on the contrary, far from being subjected to Western domination, was not even forced to open her doors to Western influences. As is well known to every student of her internal history, dur- ing a long period prior to the arrival of Commodore Perry’s fleet in 1854, forces were at work within the Empire, forces in the interests of the nation’s unity, which brought about the great revolution. Perry’s guns and the subsequent diplo- matic brow-beating on the part of the Western powers were not the cause but THE nation’s unity. I7I the occasion of the seemingly sudden change which was wrought. They simply precipitated a crisis which was sure to happen sooner or later in any case. In this regard, and it is a vital point to consider with reference to the future of this great Empire, the impact of Western civilization was from the beginning met by a people self-conscious and self-respect- ing. There will, therefore, be no such melting away and disappearance as has been the sad fate of the North American Indian, under the blight of European civ- ilization, nor can there be a transformation of a high-spirited and intellectual race into unambitious and spiritless people such as are now merely happy under British rule in the East. Japan from the very begin- ning of the new order of things not only knew what she was about and has con- sciously directed all her policy to secure the coveted ends in view, but also, she has, through all the tremendous changes undergone, preserved her inalienable self- respect. Her age-long training in this potent quality is now likely to stand her in good stead. In spite of their long 172 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. seclusion from the world, the Japanese were no children when they stepped into the arena of modern life. Children per- haps they were in their quick perceptions, but these only furnished them with an additional arm of power with - which to meet and overcome the wiles of the in- vader. There are few who can so swiftly “ size up ” the stranger and pass so infalli- ble a judgment on character as these same children. Children they were too, in some regards, in their ignorance. But it was an ignorance of which, in most points, advan- tage could be taken but once. The West- ern merchants who hailed the opening of the country as furnishing a market for their antiquated and cast-off machinery have had the same experience as have the teachers of obsolete Western isms, in quickly discovering that the Japanese were in search only of the newest and best the world could offer, and that they were fully capable of recognizing and passing judgment upon the best. Chil- dren they were, also, in their exhaustless curiosity. But they were children of their beloved country, and, in gazing about the THE nation’s unity. 73 world, they bad little thought for anything but the search for whatever might be of advantage to that country. Their very fickleness, which in the eyes of most for- eigners has seemed to stamp them as in- corrigible children, has its source in this idolatrous love of their native land. They will try for themselves everything and any- thing that at last they may find what will best serve its ends and redound to its glory. They do not, as many think, love change for the sake of change. On the contrary, their whole life for centuries bears witness to their desire for perma- nence and steadfastness. But their con- servatism, ingrained as it is, is not of the sodden kind exemplified by the Chinese. Given the opportunity which the breaking down of the artificial barriers furnished, and for the sake of the welfare of their land, they are seized with a burning desire to prove all things, and then to hold fast that which will be for the nation’s good. Hence, they have turned — these children, with their ignorance, with their eager curi- osity, with their quick perceptions — now to one land or people, now to another, 174 feudal and modern japan. determined that each should be explored and tried before any ultimate choice should be made. They were children, but, unlike most children, they seem to have determined from the outset that they would make the most and the best of the experience of others, and when, on their emergence into modern life, the centuries of the West’s hard -won experience lay before them as a guide or as a warning, they seemed animated by a common im- pulse, not only to possess the best the Occident could give them, but also to avoid, as far as possible, the evils to which follies and blunders of the foreigners had led. Never did a nation have a grander opportunity to utilize the experience of other lands, and never did a nation cred- ited with being the merest children com- port itself with such wisdom, in view of the bewilderment of choice which lay before it. From the very start, the Japanese lead- ers seem to have recognized their mar- vellous opportunity. Here was a country which in its long seclusion, blessed with centuries of peace, had passed its time in THE nation’s unity. 75 studying the arts and refinements of peace, and in making the most of its slender re- sources. It had in these directions built up a high civilization, of the inherent su- periority of which its people were proudly conscious. Suddenly brought face to face with the magnificent material civilization of the West, while they realized that in many regards they had been distanced by that civilization, yet they knew that in many others they were far in advance of it. There was, therefore, nothing in the situation to impair their self-respect. At the same^ time they saw, as if by in- stinct, their opportunity to add to their national resources the matured and chas- tened experience of the centuries of West- ern history; that a vast object-lesson lay before them, by the study of which their land might be saved from the untoward fate which had overtaken other Oriental countries and be lifted to a high pinnacle of honor among the nations. With what discriminating wisdom they have looked over the field and made their choice, as well as also with what care they still apply themselves to the avoid- 176 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. ance of the difficulties and dangers into which the Western world has stumbled, and out of which it has won its way only with sore travail, is evident from the study of almost any department of the political or social life of the Empire. Japan is to-day under constitutional gov- ernment. In the West there is no country enjoying that blessing, v/hose people have not been obliged to tight for it. Its priv- ileges have been slowly wrested from those who inherited or held irresponsible power, and only step by step through long centu- ries of misrule has the baUle been won. At a great price have Occidentals obtained this freedom. Japan, on the contrary, has presented herself with the gift. From the very outset, without the slightest ripple of disturbance in her political or social life, in obedience to no insistent demand of the people clamoring for their rights, the leaders trimmed the sails of the ship of state with this end in view. They seemed to recognize, as if by instinct, the secret of the power and influence of the leading civilized nations of the West, and they bent their energies to the quiet accom- THE nation’s unity. 77 plishment, in a few short years, of a change in the system of government for their own land which might lead to like results. It was by no means the course or the policy to be expected under the revival of Imperialism which had just taken place. The Emperor had hardly been restored to his throne and to actual power when the spontaneous movement began to have that power shared with the people. The tremendous access of loyalty which the Restoration gave to the popular heart^was something which Im- perialism could have used at will for its own ends. But, instead of making such a use of it, instead of looking to the throne, or thinking only of its preroga- tives, the wise leaders of the land, with the history and experience of the great Western world before them, thought only of the nation and of its possible future with the best of Western governmental systems from which to take pattern. Nor when this policy was carried to fruition was the choice of a constitution made either hastily or under the influence of bias or prejudice, or with regard to the 178 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. excellence or successful working of its various features in other lands and under other conditions. The one thought was still of the Japanese nation itself, of its conditions and needs, and of the provi- sion to be made for these. And so it has resulted that the present constitution of Japan, while in one sense a thing of shreds and patches, is a marvel of adap- tation to the history and traditions of the Empire, and to its exigencies as the Empire to-day exists. Modelled in the main after that of the German Empire, as the country whose political status more nearly than was the case with any other European nation corresponded with that of Japan, it also follows some of the sug- gestions of English governmental meth- ods, as well as features gathered from the organic laws of other European nations. But in none of its provisions is there any slavish adherence to what has happened to grow out of the peculiar experiences of any of these lands. In all things, regard has been given solely to a wise principle of adaptation, and, where changes have been made, it has almost uniformly been THE nation’s unity. 79 done because a careful study of European history 4ias furnished arguments for the necessity of making them. In fact, the briefest study of this extraordinary instru- ment suffices to absolve the Japanese from the charge of being in any sense mere imitators, or of indulging in indiscriminate admiration of all things Western. It shows, in the most conclusive way, that in the interests of their own nation, and with their eyes fixed on its past as well as on its future, they are determined to use every help the West can give them, to profit by every warning the West can furnish, and to avoid, so far as may be possible, every pitfall into which any Occi- dental government has stumbled. For example, the composition of the Upper House of their Parliament proves that in the minds of the framers of the organic law of the nation there lay, not only the whole of the peculiar history of that nation, but also the practical diffi- culties which European history has re- vealed. There is no trenching upon those prerogatives of the Imperial House, which have always been the object of the peo- l8o FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. pie’s affectionate regard, and the repre- sentatives of the revered dynast^ are put in the forefront of the governing body. The heads of the great families, formerly daimios, but now called marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons, as well as the many samurai, who, since the Restoration, have been raised to the peerage, have their dignity as well as the loyalty of their clansmen recognized, those of the higher orders being given seats in virtue of their rank, and those of the lower orders by election from the members of their own class. Next come nominees of the Emperor on account of meritorious services to the State or of erudition, the latter cause appealing strongly to one of the great reverences of the nation. Finally, the people themselves are by no means un- recognized, but have a strong representa- tion in the Upper as well as in the Lower House, each city and each prefecture hav- ing the privilege of electing one member to the House of Peers through the votes of the fifteen of its citizens paying the highest taxes on land, industry, or trade, THE nation’s unity. l8l Although a State religion exists in Japan, its official representatives, instead of cumbering the House of Peers, are ex- pressly excluded from any participation whatever in the Government. With an Upper House thus constituted, it would be difficult to imagine any such stolidly obstructive element as so often blocks legislation in England, or any approach to the lamentable decadence into which the American Senate has of late fallen. Nor in the provisions for the election of the members of the Lower House is there any indication that Japan means, in the near future at any rate, to repeat the error into which the United States has fallen of making suffrage an inherent right to be indiscriminately conferred, instead of a covetable privilege to be earned and deserved. The age limit is fixed at twenty-five years, thus carefully guarding against the effects of that tendency to precocity which is one of the marked lim- itations of the Japanese character. This, together with a high property qualifi- cation and restrictions as to the term of residence in any given place, while I 82 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. making the number of voters quite small for a population of forty millions, has the immense advantage of rendering the pos- session of the suffrage a distinction and privilege. Practically, there are found to be very few entitled to it who do not exercise it, while the field is open for its bestowal upon those who may hereafter be deemed worthy of it. As it is at present used, though it is necessarily open to abuse, and though elections by it are often accompanied with passion and tur- moil, the dignity which attaches to it is a safeguard, and insures reasonably satis- factory results. But, however much it may be abused, it is safe to say that with a constituency so composed the absurd spec- tacle which is now presented in the United States, of submitting one of the most deli- cate financial questions which has ever puzzled the brains of intelligent men, to the arbitrament of ballots in the hands of the veriest boors and ignoramuses in the land, will not be repeated in Japan. Besides the composition of the two houses of Parliament, there are other fea- tures in the new organic law which prove THE nation’s unity. 1 83 the far - seeing wisdom of its framers. Fully cognizant of the peculiar character- istics of their own people, they did not provide for party government, the Cabinet being made responsible to the Emperor alone. This, it may easily be conjectured, was not done solely out of regard for the imperial dignity. It is one of the singular contradictions of the Japanese nature mentioned in the last chapter, that while the spirit of national unity is so strongly marked, and while the people are homo- geneous to a degree, party government is at present an impossibility, owing to an utter lack of the cohesive quality in the Japanese mind. It would seem that among them the sentiment of loyalty to principle is carried so far as to blunt all sense of proportion in matters of principle ; that is, it is very difficult for a Japanese to unite with his fellows for the purpose of carrying out any great measure if there is the slightest difference of opinion among them in any trifling matter of detail. Such a differ- ence is often deemed sufficient ground for the formation of a new party. Hence, 184 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. until this peculiar native tendency is changed or corrected, it will hardly be deemed wise to attempt the establishment of party government. Apart from the wisdom shown in the various provisions of the Constitution, it is evident also that the rulers of the country, from the very beginning of the new career of the nation, have had their eyes wide open to the dangers to be feared from in- discriminate immigration. The Empire is not yet open, nor will it be until 1899, when the new treaties go into effect. Per- mission for a foreigner to travel in the interior is still jealously guarded as a priv- ilege and favor, never conceded as a right. And even when the country is at length nominally open, it is quite safe to predict that it will remain practically closed. The nation’s unity will be kept intact. Tourists may overrun the land; mission- aries may claim it for their own; and Western business men may exploit it as a coveted field for new enterprises; but, whatever advantage may thus be taken of Japanese hospitality, some quiet but effective way, like those in using which Biw-a. Lake: THE nation’s unity. 1 85 the Japanese are such adepts, will be found to neutralize the advantage. The popular cry of “Japan for the Japanese ” will be recognized as no mere expression of the passing day, or of momentary im- pulse. That cry is the utterance of an age-long, inveterate, and still sternly fixed determination of the people that their beautiful land shall not in any way or in any sense become the prey of the for- eigner. It is to guard herself at every point against such a fate that Japan is to-day not only developing her internal industries, but also, while steadily adding to the strength and efficiency of her military and naval re- sources, carrying the flag of her mercan- tile marine to all the lands of the West, that it may be recognized as a flag to be respected by the nations. That it has already won respect, and that the unity and dignity of the peo- ple whom it represents will hereafter be measurably safe from foreign encroach- ment, is now no matter for question. If it were, a sufficient answer is suggested by the fact that it was recently necessary for I 86 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. three of the greatest military powers of the world to unite in the most formidable alliance known to modern history in order to wrest from Japan the fruits of her victories. THE END. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. I. HISTORY. a. General Histories. Murray, D. The Story of Japan, N. Y., 1894. This is, without doubt, the best general history of Japan in any European lan- guage. The mythology, archaeology, and early history are treated with considerable detail. From the time of the culmination of the monarchical power in the tenth century, to the landing of the first Chris- tian missions in the sixteenth, it is meagre and unsatisfactory, but from that time to the unification of the Empire under lyeyasu and the expulsion of the Chris- tians, and also from the opening of the country by Commodore Perry to within a few years of the present time, it is both full and accurate. The reign of the 187 1 88 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Tokugawa dynasty is left an almost com- plete blank, but the periods which are most carefully treated are those of the greatest interest and significance to the Western reader. The style is fairly good, and the book is interesting reading throughout. Riordan, R. and TakayanagIjT. Sun- rise Stories, N. Y., 1896. Although primarily devoted to an ac- count of Japanese literature, this book gives a sketch of Japanese history which, while less complete than that of Murray, is more evenly balanced and fully as accurate. Griffis, W. E. The Mikado’s Em- pire, Sixth edition, N. Y., 1880. Book first is a history of Japan down to the present time. While much less scholarly and satisfactory than Murray, it contains a great deal which is of value on the periods where Murray is weakest, namely, the civil wars of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, and the Mongol invasion. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 89 Griffis, W. E. Japan; its History, Folklore and Art, Boston, 1892, One of the volumes of the Riverside library for young people. The historical part covers much the same ground as does the first book of “ The Mikado’s Empire,” but in a much more concise form. Rosny, L. de. La Civilisation Jap- ONAISE, Paris, 1883. The chapters on Japanese mythology and early history are of great value, al- though some of M. de Rosny’s theories are hardly accepted by the best Japanese scholars of the present time. b. Histories of Special Periods. Chamberlain, B. H. Translation of THE “ KoJIKI ” OR RECORDS OF AN- CIENT Matters. Vol. x.. Supple- ment, Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo, 1883. The most important contribution to the study of Japanese history that has yet appeared. Professor Chamberlain’s Intro- duction treats exhaustively of the origin. 190 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. the prehistoric traditions, and the early customs of the Japanese people, and of the authenticity of the earlier history. The first volume of the Kojiki, which contains the most important part of Jap- anese mythology, is at times strongly written, and is for the most part interest- ing reading ; the second volume, largely pseudo - historical, is generally dull, and the third or historical book is of a dryness to appal the stoutest reader. The history is brought down to 628, A. D. Aston, W. G. Early Japanese His- tory. Vol. XVI., Part 3. Trans- actions Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo, 1888. An important but rather dry investiga- tion into the truth of the accounts of Japanese history before the end of the fifth century, A. D. Hildreth, R. Japan As It Was and Is, Boston, 1855. The account of the Jesuit missions given here is the best and the most com- plete that has yet been published. Fur- A BIBLIOGRAPHY. I9I thermore, the descriptions of Japan under the Tokugawa dynasty, although they are almost entirely derived from members of the Dutch settlement at Deshima, who had few opportunities for acquiring information, are far better than others of the same period. This is the only book that deals at all satisfactorily with modern Japan to the time of Perry’s expedition. It is un- fortunately out of print and rare. Dening, W. Life of Toyotomi Hide- YOSHi. Five volumes, Tokyo, 1890. Hideyoshi was perhaps the ablest man whom Japan has yet produced. During his ascendency Christianity attained its greatest prosperity. Aston, W. G. Hideyoshi’s Invasion OF Korea. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vols. ix. and xi., Tokyo, 1881, 1883. A scholarly and interesting history of the Japanese attempt to conquer Korea in the sixteenth century, especially inter- esting at the present time owing to the campaign of 1894 having been fought over the same territory. 192 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Geerts, Dr. The Arima Rebellion. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, XL, I., Tokyo, 1883. This was a rebellion in the south of Japan in which the Christians were in- volved. Its outcome was the final expul- sion of Christianity from the country. Meriweather, C. Life of Date Mas- AMUNE. Transactions Asiatic Soci- ety of Japan, Vol. xxi., Tokyo, 1893. Date was a contemporary^ of lyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa dymasty, and was one of the ablest men of his time. This sketch gives a good description of the state of Japan at that time and an account of an embassy by Date to the Pope in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Clement, E. W. The Tokugawa Princes of Mito. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xviii.. Part I, Tokyo, 1890. Mito was one of the principal branches of the Tokugawa family. It was largely through the influence of this clan that the Restoration of the Emperor was brought about in 1868. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 193 Aston, W. G. H. M. S. Phaeton at Nagasaki. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vols. vii. and iv., Tokyo, 1879. An account of the visit of an English warship to Nagasaki in 1808, giving a good picture of the Japanese life of that time. Adams, F. O. History of Japan, Lon- don, 1874-5. Two volumes. While called a History of Japan from the earliest time to 1865, the larger and only important part deals with the his- tory after Perry’s first expedition. For this period it is largely taken from Jap- anese sources and is in every way admi- rable. Black, J. R. Young Japan, Yoko- hama AND Yeddo, Yokohama, 1880- 81. Two volumes. About half of the work is taken up with the municipal history of Yokohama, and this part is of little interest ; but besides this there is a great mass of information on Japanese history at the time of the 194 feudal and modern japan. Restoration which cannot be found else- where. It also contains the best account of the War of the Restoration. The style is generally poor, and the author shows little power of arrangement. Clement, E. W. The Mito Civil War. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xix., ii., Tokyo, 1891. One of the minor wars which preceded and led up to the War of the Restoration in 1868. Griffis, W. E. Townsend Harris. First American Envoy in Japan, Bos- ton, 1895. The greater part of this volume consists of the Diary of Minister Harris from his arrival in Japan in 1856, to the signing of the first treaty with the United States, in 1858. This diary is of great value not only as revealing the character of a just and broadminded diplomat, but also be- cause it gives an account of the intrigues of the de facto government of Japan at that time as seen by a keen-witted foreign observer. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 195 House, E. H. The Japanese Expe- dition TO Formosa, Tokyo, 1875. Of much interest at present, not only on account of the recent acquisition of For- mosa by Japan, but because the diplo- matic complications which led to the expedition were similar to those which preceded the late war between China and Japan. A good abstract of Mr. House’s account is given in Volume ii. of Black’s Young Japan. House, E. H. The Kagoshima Af- fair, Tokyo, 1875. House, E. H. The Shimonoseki Af- fair, Tokyo, 1875. Two incidents which had an important bearing upon the course of Japanese his- tory immediately preceding the War of the Restoration, and which vividly illus- trate the overbearing policy at that time adopted by foreign powers toward the newly opened country. Mounsey, a. H. The Satsuma Re- bellion, London, 1879. A complete account of one of the most 196 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. interesting episodes in the modern history of Japan. This rebellion, which, in some of its aspects, resembled the Civil War in the United States, occurred in 1877. In its sanguinary character, and in its rev- elation of the soldierly qualities of the Japanese after three centuries of profound peace, it is suggestive of some of the sources of the coming power of Japan. Bramsen, W. Japanese Chronolog- ical Tables, Tokyo, 1880. Of much use to the historical student as giving the modern equivalents of dates according to the old Japanese calendar. II. LANGUAGE. a. The Colloqtiial, Chamberlain, B. H. Handbook of Colloquial Japanese, London and Tokyo. Second edition, 1890. Not only essential for intelligent study of the colloquial, but also unique among A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 197 grammars for its entertaining character. Exceptionally accurate in its scholarship, it is the safest and most enlightening guide to the intricacies of the spoken language. MacCaulay, C. An Introductory Course in Japanese, Yokohama, 1896. The only easily accessible book which gives any great amount of material for practice in the reading and study of the colloquial. Although it contains a very good short grammar, it will be found most useful after a preliminary study of Chamberlain’s Handbook. It also has the advantage of familiarizing the student with the forms of the Jap- anese kana. Aston, W. G. Grammar of the Japa- nese Spoken Language. Fourth edition, Tokyo and London, 1888. Largely of the same character as Cham- berlain’s Handbook, but although shorter and less complete, it supplements some of its features. 198 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Imbrie, W. Handbook of English Japanese Etymology, Yokohama, 1880. A well classified phrase-book rather than a grammar, yet furnishing many useful grammatical comments. Satow, E. Kwaiwa Hen. Yokohama, 1873, three volumes. A phrase-book which, although poorly arranged and unfortunately very scarce, is a valuable aid in the acquirement of the purest colloquial. Imbrie, W., ed. Koeki Mondo, Tokyo, 1882. This is a Japanese book in easy collo- quial, edited for the use of foreign stu- dents. It furnishes very good practice both in the colloquial and in the reading of the kana. Knox, G. W., ed. Shin Gaku Michi NO Hanashi, Tokyo, 1882. This is also edited for the use of for- eigners. Its special advantage consists in the use in the text, without kana^ of A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 199 about three hundred of the Chinese char- acters most frequently employed. A table of these is given with pronunciations. (There are a few other Japanese books in the colloquial, the names of which can be found in the Introduction to Chamberlain’s Handbook and in Aston’s Grammar of the Spoken Language.) b. The Written Language. Chamberlain, B. H. A Simplified Grammar of the Japanese Lan- guage. (Modern written style), Lon- don and Yokohama, 1886. The only grammar of the written lan- guage in any way useful to the beginner. Aston, W. G. A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language. Second edition, London, 1877. The most careful and scholarly gram- mar of the written language, yet, because based on Japanese grammatical methods, it is of little use except for advanced students. 200 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Chamberlain, B. H. A Romanized Japanese Reader. Three volumes, London and Yokohama, 1886. A collection of extracts from Japanese books, illustrating all the styles in common use, with an English translation and full grammatical notes. A good guide to the selection of those Japanese books which are the best for practice. c. Chinese Characters. Lay, a. H. Chinese Characters. Tokyo, 1895. A small dictionary of the four thousand Chinese characters most commonly used, with all of their different pronunciations. Also a list of the most important names of places and persons. Essential to the learner as a guide to the selection of the best characters. Fukuzawa, Y. Monji NO OsHiE. Tokyo, 1874. Three volumes. The first two volumes contain about seven hundred of the commonest char- A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 201 acters with explanations or examples of their use, in very easy written Japanese. The other volume contains about three hundred common characters in the cursive form, with examples. T^jese volumes necessitate the use of dictionaries. They are by far the best books for beginners in the study of characters. d. Dictionaries. Hepburn, J. C. Japanese-English and English - Japanese Dictionary. Third edition, Tokyo and London, 1886. The only Japanese dictionary which embodies any attempt at completeness, but, it having been compiled when complete- ness and accuracy were out of the ques- tion, it lacks a considerable body of important words. Whitney, W. N. Index of Chinese Characters in Hepburn’s Dic- tionary. Tokyo, 1888. Essential to all who wish to use Hep- burn in reading Japanese books. 202 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Gubbins, J. H. a Dictionary of Chi- nese-Japanese Words in the Jap- anese Language. London, 1888, three volumes. Contains only one class of Japanese words, but is remarkably complete in that class, and is an essential supplement to Hepburn. Satow, E. M. and Ishibashi, M. An English-Japanese Dictionary of THE Spoken Language. London, 1876. The only good English-Japanese Dic- tionary. III. LITERATURE. Riorden, R., and Takayanagi, T. Sunrise Stories. New York, 1896. The only genuinely sympathetic account of Japanese literature, as a whole, which is accessible to English readers. The cleverness with which the various epochs and styles are woven together makes the A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 203 book a most attractive and entertaining one. Satow, E. M. Japanese Literature. (An article in Appleton’s American Cyclopedia.) An exceedingly full and accurate, but dry enumeration of all departments and all prominent works under this head. Chamberlain, B. H. The Classical Poetry of the Japanese. Boston, 1880. The introduction, treating of the nature of Japanese poetry, is very valuable. The exceeding difficulty of rendering that poetry into English verse is manifest in the examples given, which are taken from the best period of the native literature. Rosny, L. de. Anthologie Japonaise. Paris, 1871. Covers much tHe same ground as the preceding, but, in addition to the French translation, it contains the original Jap- anese text. 204 feudal and modern japan. Chamberlain, B. H. On the Various Styles Used in Japanese Liter- ature. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xiii.. Part i, Tokyo, 1885. A very clear description of the numer- ous styles which characterize the various classes of the Jiterature of the country. Aston, W. G. An Ancient Japanese Classic. Transactions Asiatic Sbci- ciety of Japan, Vol. iii.. Part 2, Tokyo, 1884. Criticism of and extracts from the “ Tosa Nikki^' referred to in the Chap- ter on Literature. Purcell, T. A., and Aston, W. G. A Literary Lady of Old Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xvi.. Part 3, Tokyo, 1889. Extracts from a popular miscellany of the classical period, entitled “ Makura no SoshiP A charming though somewhat trifling piece of court gossip. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 205 Dixon, J. M. “ A Description of My Hut.” a Translation from the Jap- anese of Chomei. Translations Asi- atic Society of Japan. Vol. xx., Part 2, Tokyo, 1893. Referred to in the Chapter on Litera- ture. IV. RELIGION. Griffis, W. E. The Religions of Japan. New York, 1895. This is the only work which essays to cover the field of Japanese religions, and it is as sincere an attempt to be just to them as is possible for an earnest advocate of the Occidental faith. Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of Un- familiar Japan. Two volumes, Boston, 1894. Hearn, Lafcadio. Out of the East. Boston, 1895. 2o6 feudal and modern japan. Hearn, Lafcadio. Kokoro. Boston, 1896. Professor Wigmore in his “ Materials for the Study of Private Law in Old Japan” says: “As yet we know but little of the real religious life of the Japanese; but fortunately Mr. Lafcadio Hearn is now making a special study of religion in con- nection with local life. It is a little singu- lar that the person who of all sojourners in Japan has expressed himself in the most pronounced manner against the mission system should be the person best informed on Japanese religion.” Lowell, Percival. Occult Japan. Boston, 1895. A semi -philosophical and amusing in- vestigation into the esoteric elements of Shinto. Gordon, M. L. An American Mission- ary IN Japan. Boston, 1893. Perhaps the fairest book which has been written by a missionary on Christian missions in Japan. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 207 Chamberlain, B. H. The Kojiki. Transactions Asiatic Society of Ja- pan, Vol. X., Supplement, Tokyo, 1883. Apart from its historical character the Kojiki is to be considered the Bible of Japanese. Sato, E. Ancient Japanese Rituals. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. VII., Parts 2 and 4, Tokyo, 1879. Affords an interesting study of primitive Shinto Nature worship as well as some of the best examples of early Japanese literature. Sato, E. The Shinto Temples of Ise. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. II., Tokyo, 1874. Ise is the Mecca of Japan, its shrines being the centre of the patriotic cult of the nation. Sato, E. The Revival of Pure Shinto. Transactions Asiatic Soci- ety of Japan, Vol. iil., appendix, Tokyo, 1875. An account of the Renaissance of Shinto 2o8 feudal and modern japan. studies at the end of the last and begin- ning of the present century, which was instrumental in bringing about the resto- ration of the imperial power. It also contains an elaborate and able review of one of the most brilliant periods of Jap-, anese literature. V. THE FINE ARTS. Anderson, W. Pictorial Arts of Japan. Boston, 1886. The best popular treatment of the sub- ject. It consists largely of plates, and is somewhat expensive. Anderson, W. History of Japanese Art. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. vii.. Part 4, Tokyo, 1879. Containing the substance of the preced- ing, but without illustrations. Gonse, L. L’Art Japonaise. Paris, 1883. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 209 Covers a broader field than Anderson, but is less satisfactory. An abridgment less expensive was published in 1886. Anderson, W. Descriptive and His- torical Catalogue of a Collec- tion OF Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum. London, 1886. Contains valuable comments on various pictures with much miscellaneous informa- tion on the subject of Japanese art. Audsley, G. a. The Ornamental Arts OF Japan. London, 1882-84. Audsley, G. A., and Bowes, J. L. Cera- mic Art of Japan. Liverpool, 1875. Two volumes. Very valuable though somewhat inac- cessible because of its cost. Bowes, J. L. Japanese Poetry. Liver- pool, 1890. Bowes, J. L. Handbook to the Bowes Museum of Japanese Art Work. Liverpool, 1890. 210 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Bowes, J. L. Japanese Enamels. Liv- erpool, 1884. Bowes, J. L. Japanese Marks and Seals. London, 1882. Morse, E. S. Japanese Homes and THEIR Surroundings. New York, 1889. The only book giving a clear and ade- quate idea of Japanese domestic archi- tecture, in all the details of its construc- tion and ornament. PiGGOTT, F. T. Music and Musical Instruments of Japan. London, 1893. A very satisfactory, but necessarily tech- nical treatment of a subject, concerning which little has ever been written. PiGGOTT, F. T. Music of the Jap- anese. Transactions Asiatic So- ciety of Japan, Vol. xix.. Part 2, Tokyo, 1891. Contains the substance of the preced- ing and is much less expensive. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 21 I CoNDER, J. Landscape Gardening in Japan. Tokyo, 1893. Two volumes. Superbly illustrated volumes giving all needed information on the subject. CoNDER, J. The Art. of Landscape Gardening in Japan. Transac- tions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XIX., Part 2, Tokyo, 1886. The substance of the preceding with- out illustrations. CoNDER, J. Japanese Flower Ar- rangement. Tokyo, 1889. CoNDER, J. The Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangement. Transac- tions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XVII., Part 2, Tokyo, 1889. Of equal value on this subject with the same author’s works on Japanese garden- ing. CoNDER, J. The History of Japanese Costume. Transactions Asiatic So- ciety of Japan, Vol. viii., 3, and ix., 3. Tokyo, 1881. 212 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. The first part treats of the old court costumes, and the second of the armor. Chamberlain, B. H, Notes by Mo- TOORi ON Chinese and Japanese Art. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xiii., 3, Tokyo, 1884. A very interesting essay on the subject by the writer to whom Professor Cham- berlain gives the highest place in Japanese literature. VI. LAWS AND GOVERNMENT. WiGMORE, J. H. Materials for the Study of Private Law in Old Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xx., supplement, To- kyo, 1892. Referred to at length in Preface and in Vol. I., Chapters 3 and 4. (WiGMORE, J. H.) New Codes and Old Customs. Reprinted from the Japan Mail, Yokohama, 1892. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 213 A concise and clear comparison of the feudal laws with the modern codes re- cently adopted by Japan. Simmons, D. B. Notes on Land Ten- ure AND Local Institutions in Old Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xix.. Part i, Tokyo, 1891. The source of a large portion of the material used for the chapter on “ The People under Feudalism.” Grig.sby, W, E, The Legacy of Iyeyasu. Transactions Asiatic So- ciety of Japan, Vol. iii., part 2, Tokyo, 1895. A good summary of the political code left by the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty. Gubbins, J. H. The Feudal System IN Japan under the Tokugawa Shoguns. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xv.. Part 2, Tokyo, 1887. 214 feudal and modern japan. An outline of the administrative machin- ery of the Tokugawa period. Tarring, J. Land Provisions of the Taiho Ryo. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. viii., Tokyo, 1880. An example of the earliest known land laws of Japan. Masujima, R. Modern Japanese Le- gal Institutions. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vok xviii., Part 2, Tokyo, 1890, The best general summary of modern Japanese legal methods. The author is, perhaps, the leading barrister of Japan at the present time. Longford, J. H. A Summary of the Japanese Penal Codes. Trans- actions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. V., Part 2, Tokyo, 1877. An interesting abstract of the old crim- inal laws as modified soon after the im- perial Restoration. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 215 Kuchler, L. W. Marriage in Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol XIII., Part i, Tokyo, 1885. A resume of laws and customs now in force relating to marriage and divorce. Masujima, R. The Japanese Legal Seal. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xvii.. Part 2, Tokyo, 1889. A good exposition of the Japanese method of legal signature. VII. MISCELLANEOUS. Chamberlain, B. H., and Mason, W. B* A Handbook for Travellers in Japan. London, 1894, fourth edition. Murray’s Guide Book for Japan. This edition contains much added historical and archaeological information. Chamberlain, B. H. Things Japanese. London and Tokyo, 1890. A small encyclopedia of subjects relat- 21 6 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. ing to Japan. The author’s extensive knowledge of these subjects and his ac- curate scholarship make him a very com- petent compiler. Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of Un- familiar Japan. Boston, 1894. Two volumes. Sketches of Japanese life and scenery. This is the first of Mr. Hearn’s books on Japan, and is valuable as containing his early impressions of the country, which are nearer to the truth of things than have been those of any other tourist or even, it may be said, than the matured observations of long-time foreign resi- dents. Hearn, Lafcadio. ' Out of the East. Boston, 1895. In this book may be plainly noted a distinct advance on the part of Mr. Hearn, from first impressions to philo- sophical deductions. Hearn, Lafcadio. Kokoro Boston, 1896. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 217 Here the religious and philosophical elements are predominant. The three books taken together reveal the causes and the justification of the author’s en- thusiasm for his adopted country ; for he has now become a Japanese subject. The various stories which are interspersed in these volumes are the only ones in any foreign language which are true to Jap- anese life. The progress from the fine but somewhat florid style of the first book to that of the third, which is equal to any to be found in contemporary literature, is noticeable. Lowell, Percival. The Soul of the •Far East. Boston, 1888. Presents very clearly certain salient features of Japanese psychology, and then entertainingly misinterprets them with great philosophical skill. Finck, H. T. Lotus Time in Japan. New York, 1895. The best account of the country by any of the modern travellers. 21 8 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. SCIDMORE, E. R. JiNRIKISHA DAYS IN Japan. New York, 1891. Miss Scidmore, having had the advan- tage of several years’ residence in Japan, has given descriptions marked by unusual accuracy. CuRZON, G. N. Problems of the Far East. Volume i., London, 1894. The high official position of Mr. Curzon and his reputation for scholarship render him the most trustworthy authority of the day on the intricate questions of Oriental politics. Norman, H. The Real Japan. New York, 1892. With some of the faults incident to news- paper correspondence, this series of letters contains much accurate information in re- gard to the Europeanized aspects of mod- ern Japan. It is already out of date. Norman, H. Peoples and Politics OF THE Far East. New York, 1896. Written upon much the same lines as Mr. Curzon’s book. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 219 Mitford, a. B. Tales of Old Japan. London, 1871. Two volumes. The best pictures of life in Japan in feudal times. Beside the principal stories there are full and valuable notes, a few excellent examples of Buddhist sermons, and some fairy tales. Brauns, D. Japanische Marchen und Sagen. Leipzig, 1885. A large and well selected collection of fairy tales and legends. Junker von Langegg, F. A. Japan- ische Thee Geschichten. Wien, 1884. A smaller collection of fairy tales than the preceding, but very satisfactory. Japanese Fairy Tale Series. London, 1888. Eighteen volumes. Translated by the best Japanese schol- ars, these charming little volumes, in bind- ing and illustration, are wholly in keeping with the best Japanese taste. Rein, J. J. Japan; Travels and Re- searches. London, 1884. 220 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Rein, J. J. The Industries of Japan. London, 1889. “No person wishing to study Japan seriously,” says Professor Chamberlain, “ can dispense with these admirable vol- umes. The ‘ industries ’ have been studied with a truly German patience and set forth with a truly German thoroughness.” It may be added that while the volume on “ industries ” may be wholly relied upon, occasional inaccuracies may be found in the other. Lowell, Percival. Noto. Boston, 1890. An account, very brilliantly and enter- tainingly written, of a visit to a remote and unfrequented part of Japan. Bacon, A. M. Japanese Girls and Women. Boston, 1891. The exceptional opportunities which Miss Bacon enjoyed gave her the rare privilege of a glimpse into the real do- mestic life of Japan. She has recorded her observations with much simplicity and accuracy. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 221 Parsons, A. Notes in Japan. New York, 1896. Valuable largely because of the great beauty of the illustrations, drawn by the author. Alcock, Sir R. The Capital of the Tycoon. London, 1863. Two vol- umes. Written by a keen observer, whose position as British Minister at Yedo gave him exceptional opportunities, but who lived there during a transition period when it was impossible for any foreigner to form a just estimate of either Japanese politics or Japanese character. Hildreth, R. Japan as It Was and Is. Boston, 1885. Gives the best pictures of Japanese life during the period of seclusion. It is largely a compilation from accounts of early travellers. — . Manners and Cus- toms OF THE Japanese in the 222 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Nineteenth Century. Harper and Brothers. New York, 1841. A small book containing material of much the same character as the preced- ing. Although of great value, these two books contain many errors incident to the difficulty of acquiring accurate information at the time they were compiled. Both are out of print and scarce. Golownin, V. Memories of Captiv- ity IN Japan, in 1811-13. Second edition, London, 1824. Three vol- umes. All the knowledge the author, a Rus- sian naval officer, had of Japan he gained during the two years of his captivity. Ir? spite of this disadvantage, his estimate of the Japanese character is unprejudiced and discriminating. An account of ad- venture of absorbing interest. Lanman, C. The Leading Men of Japan. Boston, 1886. The only collection of biographies of Japanese celebrities, and of special value as acquainting one with the personnel of A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 27,3 the present government. Many names which have recently become prominent are, of course, not to be found in it. Kaempfer, E. An Account of Japan. London, 1853. An abridged translation of the work of the ablest foreign observer in Japan dur- ing the Tokugawa period. Batchelor, J. The Ainu of Japan. London, 1892. The best book on the Aborigines of Japan who are now to be found only in the northern island of Yezo. Batchelor, J. Notes on the Ainu. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. X., Part 2, Tokyo, 1882. Of much the same character as the preceding. ViAUD, L. M. J. (Pierre Loti). Jap- ONERiES d’Automne. Paris, 1889. Sketches characterized by great beauty of style combined with much misrepresen- tation and distortion. 224 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. Dixon, J. M. Japanese Etiquette. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. III., Part I, Tokyo, 1885. The only treatment of the subject. Dening, W. The Gakushikaiin. Trans- actions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XV., Part I, Tokyo, 1887. An account of a literary and scientific association in Tokyo, corresponding to the French Academy, together with an interesting paper on the custom of adop- tion in Japan. Dening, W. Mental Characteristics OF THE Japanese. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xvix.. Part I, Tokyo, 1891. Perhaps the best estimate of the Jap- anese character which has been made by any single writer. McClatchie, R. H. Japanese Her- aldry. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. v.. Part i, Tokyo, 1877. The only easily accessible treatment of the subject. A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 225 McClatchie, R. H. The Sword of Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. ii., Tokyo, 1874. A fairly satisfactory account of the history of Japanese sword-making. Satow, E. On the Early History of Printing in Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. x.. Part I, Tokyo, 1882. A very able and complete history of this art. Whitney, W. N. Notes on the His- tory OF Medical Progress in Japan. Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan. Vol. xii.. Part 4, Tokyo, 1885. Containing much curious information such as is not to be found elsewhere, and suggesting many interesting parallel- isms between the medical history of the West and that of the far East. In the absence of comprehensive works on Japan, the records of the Transactions of the various Asiatic Societies afford the widest range of material for the general 226 FEUDAL AND MODERN JAPAN. student. Besides those so often mentioned and quoted in these volumes, the Transac- tions of the Royal Asiatic Society and of the German Asiatic Society furnish many papers on Japan of much value. For gaining an intimate knowledge of the later steps of the revolution through which the nation has passed, the files of the ‘‘Japan Mail” are almost indispen- sable. hij ' ''' ~ -.s i Boston College Library Chestnut Hill 67, Mass. Books make kept for two weeks unless a shorter time is specified. Two cents a day is charged for each 2-week book kept overtime; 25 cents a day for each overnight book. If you cannot find what you want, inquire at the delivery desk for assistance. 11-46 3 903 ' 209217 Date Due