(orr>-n zoom:^ Present Day Japan EGBERT W. SMITH Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Columbia University Libraries https://archive.org/details/presentdayjapanOOsmit Foreword During a recent eight months’ stay in the Far East, I came into frequent contact with two quite unrelated states of mind: one, the well-nigh universal hatred felt for the Japanese, which is rapidly creating an international atmosphere fatal to the development of international broth- erhood; the other, the profound disappointment experi- enced by many young missionaries in the Orient at find- ing conditions there so different from what they had an- ticipated. Diverse as are these mental states, both have the same root, a one-sided knowledge of the facts. As a slight contribution to the fuller knowledge needed this booklet is written, — in the hope also that it may quicken Christian interest in a great people who are facing now a most critical stage in their development. Egbert W. Smith. Nashville, Tenn., January 29, 1920. Contents Page. I. Why Japan is Hated 4 II. Essentials to a Fair Judgment of Japan 7 III. Japan as a Mission Field 14 IV. The Missionary Outlook 23 V. The Immediate Need 28 VI. Questions 31 Present Day Japan The most fascinating and detested nation on earth is Japan. The unquestioned leader of the Eastern half of the world, she is also a nation in which we Americans have special reasons to be interested. For it was America that forced Japan out of her age-long seclusion and thus became in a sense sjtonsor for her future. It Avas to America that Japan first looked for friendship and guid- ance. And it is with America that her relations in recent years have become at times so strained as to be a menace to the best interests of both nations and to the peace of the world. The fascination of Japan is felt by e\'ery open-minded visitor. The physical features of the country are full of charm. The almost ever-present, though infinitely varied, combination in one and the same vieAV, of Avooded moun- tain, green valley, and blue sea, makes it the most i)ictur- esque of all lands. A trip through the Inland Sea of Jai)an is a revelation, not of sublimity, but of ravishing ever-changing natural beauty unsurq)assed upon earth. The beauty of the land, as in the case of Italy and an- cient Greece, has registered itself in the aesthetic nature of the people. In a rare degree they have as a nation the artistic sense, as seen not only in their painting and poetry, but in their dre.ss, their handiwork of all kinds, and their passionate love of flowers and trees. A more beautifully arranged and decorated interior than that of the great Mitsubishi Department Store of Tokyo is rarely seen in Europe or America. With their aestheticism goes naturally the charm of [)ersonal cleanliness and courtesy. The Englishman and his tub are not more inseparable than the Japanese and his boiling hot bath. And in politeness the Japanese 4 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN people have no superiors even among Orientals. More than once in crowded street cars Japanese men have risen to offer me their seats. Why Japan is Hated But greater than its fascination is the detestation in which Japan is held. The missionaries in Japan, while keenly aware of their failings, have yet an enduring sym- pathy and love for the Japanese people. But they are the exceptions. Not only Koreans and Chinese, who of course are intensely anti- Japanese, but the travelers and business men of other nationalities whom I met in the East, Amer- icans, Australians, Britons, Canadians, all had evil and most of them evil only to speak of the Japanese, and in many cases the feeling was bitter in the extreme. The accumulated hatred of which Japan is the object is por- tentous. The universally given explanation of this hatred is the conceit and deceit of the Japanese, two characteristics which have a peculiar power of arousing animosity. The brown and yellow races as a rule look up to the white man. His tone and habit of dominance, of assured superiority, they meet with Oriental meekness, courtesy, non-resistance, self-effacement. But to this rule the little yellow man of Japan is the one exasperating exception. Meekness, non-resistence, self-effacement are not in his lexicon. He points to the fact that in the arts of both war and peace Japan is a proved siiccess; that she is re- ceived as a political equal in the circle of the great white powers ; and that whereas it took the white nations many centuries to reach their present level, the Japanese trav- ersed the distance in fifty years. If you say they have PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 5 been simply copyists, they deny it. They claim that what they have adopted from the West they have at the same time adapted and improved. And they further say that if climbing to the top be as easy as some appear to think, why is it that no other nation in ancient or modern times has ever in fifty years climbed even half the distance that they have. But whether this conceit is justified or not, it is there, obtrusively, aggressively there; and to the av- erage white man as well as to other Orientals it is offen- sive in the extreme. But Japan’s unpopularity is due even more to her de- ceit than her conceit. Her business reputation all through the East is bad. In explanation of this it is stated that under the old regime trade was an occupation unworthy of a Japanese gentleman, a samurai. The merchants, therefore, came from, and still largely rei)resent, a so- cially and morally low stralnm of Japanese society. They adulterate their goods. They put famous trade marks on shoddy wares. A derby hat stamped with an English name, “London,” which I bought in Seoul, I found later was a purely Japane.se product. When a certain Ameri- can firm objected to the Japanese merchants selling through China an inferior Japanese article labeled “Bor- den’s Eagle Brand Condensed INIilk,” they immediately changed the label, and not being very familiar with Ameri- can ornithology substituted another large American bird and continued the sale under the name of “Borden’s Buz- zard Brand Condensed Milk.” When Japan made her famous secret demands on China and the facts began to leak out, she at first denied them. In the famous conspiracy trials eight years ago the 6 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN Korean prisoners were brutally tortured to make them sign false statements prepared by the Japanese authori- ties. A leading Presbyterian elder in Korea, who was one of these 105 prisoners, related to me behind closed doors late one night how he had been incessantly tortured for thirty days by being suspended eight and ten hours at a time by a cord fastened to his two thumbs behind his back and passed over a beam in the ceiling. But he was of stout fibre and refused to sign. When his captors had brought him to the point of death and saw that he would die before signing, they gave over the attempt, and after ten months further imprisonment he was released. He showed me his thumbs permanently disfigured by the cord. Another of these former prisoners whom I met was pastor of one of the largest Presbyterian churches in Korea. On his release he went home, stood before his congregation the following Sunday, and confessed with tears that he had borne the torture as long as he could, but his flesh was weak, and at last, in fear of imminent death, he had signed to a lie. He was not worthy, he said, to be their pastor, and, resigning his office, walked out of the church. The people were in tears. They passed resolutions assuring him of their continued confidence and love, and refusing to accept his resignation. After much persuasion he resumed his work among them, with a deepened humility, I was told, and a larger spiritual power. Of course the results of examination under torture are nothing worth. Their publication is a form of falsehood. I give them as illustrating a characteristic and peculiar- ly abhorrent form of Japanese duplicity. When the Korean ui)rising began on March 1st, 1919, PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 7 I was in Japan. The efforts made by the Japanese author- ities to sui)press, deny, or distort the facts, were in evi- dence every day. The editor of the Japan Advertiser, the leading English daily in the Far East, stated in his col- umns that his special despatches from Seoul w’ere often either suppressed or their language changed in transmis- sion. While I was in Seoul, the capital of Korea, during the latter part of March, there appeared in the Seoul Press, a daily new'spai)er printed in English, the semi-official organ of the Japanese Government, whose editor is a highly cultivated and attractive Japanese gentleman with whom I became acquainted, an editorial in which the editor ridiculed the idea of cruelties having been inflicted on the Koreans. He said there was not a word of truth in these reports; they were a pack of Korean lies; the mis- sionaries should have known better than to believe them ; and so on. A leading Presbyterian missionary of Korea from whose lips I learned this incident went to the edi- tor, with whom he was on friendly terms, remonstrated with him for writing such an editorial, and told him what shocking cruelties he himself had seen with his own eyes inflicted on the Koreans by the Japanese. But the editor was not in the least disconcerted. “Oh yes,” he said, “I knew those reports were true, but I W'as wu'iting officially.” Essentials to a Fair Judgment of Japan If, upon hearing these facts, we join the ranks of the haters of Japan, we shall be acting in a very unintel- ligent and unchristian way. In judging Japan there are three things we must bear in mind. 8 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN The first is that Jaj)an is a heathen nation and can- not fairly be judged by our New Testament standards. It requires an effort to keep this in mind because Japan’s mastery of the arts of our modern material civilization is so evident, and in the big cities especially the hotels are so comfortable and elegant, the street car and train service so admirable, the streets so clean, the stores so up-to-date, the people so polite, that the super- ficial observer would never dream that beneath this smooth veneer of material progress lies stark heathenism. An indignant Korean, writing of Japan, says that she has I)ut on the face ])owder of modern culture, making her look like a whited sepulclire. The 115,000 Christian com- municants among Japan’s 58,000,000, though their influ- ence is incomparably greater than their numerical pro- l>ortion of the population, yet do not average 100 out of 50,000 of tlie poinilation. There are 150,000 pupils in Cliristian Sunday schools among 7,500,000 that attend the government day schools. And these Japanese Chris- tians, ardent patriots and many of them highly edu- cated, are the first to avow the fact that Japan is still a heatlien nation and cannot in fairness be judged by New Testament standards. The second fact to be remembered is that the things for which Japan is blamed and hated today are things wliich the so-called Cliristian nations of Europe, as late as the nineteenth century, were in the habit of commit- ting without scruple. International morality is the slowest and latest fruit of Christianify. Japan’s worst offenses against China are no darker than parts of Great Ilritain’s niueteenfh century record of dealings with that nation. Japan’s offenses against truth are not a whit PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 9 worse than the average old-fashioned European diploma- cy, illustrated in Bismarck, called hy Koosevelt a great Christian statesman, who, in his autobiography, not only acknowledges but glories in the bare faced lie by which he precipitated the Franco-Prnssian War. Jai)an’s exam- ination of prisoners by torture represents a practice common in Enroi)e a hundred years ago and especially utilized by the Roman Catholic Church. Japan’s lack of humanity, as shown in the recent cruelties inflicted on some 12,000 Koreans, may be compared witli Christian America’s sending each year shiploads of American whis- ky from the port of Boston to heathen Africa to the physical and moral ruin of hundreds of thousands of iia tives, a shipment kept uj) for decades in the face of hu- manitarian j)rotests, and that ceased only two years ago. These duplicities and inhumanities that stain the rec- ords of the Western nations are far better known to Japanese scholars and writers than to the average Eu- ropean or American. The consequence is that our denun- ciation of their misdeeds they doubt the sincerity of, and some of them are tempted, as I noted in their news- papers while I was in the East, to consider the white peo- ple a race of hypocrites. Were it not for the daily lives and influence of Christian missionaries, this feeling would be far more prevalent. That the Caucasian race, comprising only one-third of the human family, should not only occupy the West but extend its authority over so much of the East as to be in practical control of nearly nine-tenths of the land surface of the globe, and should wall off large and thinly settled portions of this area against the influx of the over- crowded populations of the East, seems to the Japanese, 10 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN penned in tlieir little archipelago and jjerplexed what to do with their snrplns popnlation, an inequitable ar- raugenieut. The thii-d thing to bear constantly in mind is dhat the whole of a nation should not be blamed for the mis- deeds of a part. A general election in Japan, as in Germany up to 1918, is indulged in by only a select few. The franchise is so restricted by property qualifications that up to last year only twenty-eight out of each thousand of the pop- ulation could vote. The present Ilara Cabinet has re- vised the election law so as to allow the franchise to about sixty of each thousand. It should be remembered also that the Japanese Diet, u la Germany, is only an advisory body. The two political i)arties in Japan are the Military Party and the Liberal or Progressive Party. The Mil- itary Party, headed by a military bureaucracy, has been in power continuously for fifty years. When Japan was studying the Western governments to find a model on which to frame her own, her choice was practically pre- determined by the fact that the chief unifying force in Japan, without which she might have fallen to i)ieces like China and Russia, was the passionate loyalty of the whole nation to the Emperor. In her search for a model the only strong and prosperous Western nation in which she found this imperial autocracy, which she had to re- tain, combined with the external forms and appearance of representative government, was Germany. Therefore autocratic and military Germany became Japan’s govern- mental and administrative model. And as Germany rose to power by her successful wars PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 11 with Denmark, Austria, and France, in 18G4, 18GG, and 1870, so Japan, her devout disciple, rose to greatness by her successful wars with China and Russia in 1894 and 1904. Under the Military Party’s leadership Japan did two things which no yellow nation had ever done since the modern world came into being. She bested in arms both by sea and land a great white nation, and she secured for herself a footing of acknowledged political equality with the foremost white peoples of the world. So iLc Military Party in Jai)an built up in the nation an immense i)restige, and in themselves an immensse self- confldence. Prussian to the core, they believed the sword to he the one secret of national greatness. It was this party that annexed Korea in 1910 and established over it a purely military government in which every Japanese government official and every Japanese school teacher wears a sword, the rattling of the sabre being always in the ears of the Koreans. It is this party whose intiuence is secretly but unceasing- ly exerted in a score of vexatious ways to hamj)er and embarrass the work of the missionaries in Korea, since militarism and Christianity are natural enemies. It is this party that took advantage of the pre-occupation of the white nations in the great war to make unjust secret demands uison China with the sword held over her. It is this i)arty that many believe to be keeping up by the use of corruption funds the civil strife in China to prove to the world China’s need of Japan’s overlordship. It is this party that is responsible for the misgovernment and atrocities in Korea. It is this party that before the war, in the opinion of C0Tni)etent eastern observers, was w'ait- ing a favorable pretext to crush America on the Pacific 12 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN and seize the Philippines, under the impression, which both she and Germany had, that America was too pacific and money-absorbed to ])ut up a real fight, an impression wliich has since given jjlace to an awe-stricken astonish- ment at the speed, power, and abandon with which Amer- ica flung herself and all she had into the fray. It is this party that today, througii the vernacular press of Japan, is keeping up a venomous anti-American propaganda, putting the worst and most anti- Japanese construction upon everything done by America in Si- beria and elsewhere, inventing motives and purposes and often deeds, — and all this, not to bring on war with America — they know now they would not have the ghost of a chance — but to keep themselves in power by con- vincing the Japanese people that other nations are at heart jealous and hostile, and that in the future as in the past Japan’s one hope of safety and development lies in militarism. Blit this effort of the IMilitary Party is a clear in- dication of declining power. The utter overthrow of militaristic Germany, her teacher and model ; the world- wide disgust and hatred felt for Prussianisni and all its ways; America’s demonstration of the martial spirit and power of an unmilitary nation; the wide reading through- out Japan of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches ; the tidal wave of democracy rolling around the world, Japan being the most sensitive of nations to world currents ; — by all these things the Military Party has been weakened and the Liberal Party strengthened. Spite of militarism’s great prestige and glorious his- tory, there is a feeling in Japan that a new era of human PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 13 history has opened, and that the old sjurit and methods are out of date. “New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must onward march, and upward, Who would keep abreast of truth.” “Nor attempt the Future’s portal With the Past’s blood-rusted key.” This conviction is deepening in Japan. Out of it comes the hope and the belief of many, myself among them, that in a few years the Liberal Party will rise to power, bringing in a new day for Christian missions in all the Japanese empire, a new day for Japan and her relations to Korea and China, and a new day, I trust, of restored and ever-deepening friendship between Japan and Amer- ica. On the boat with me as I returned to America were two Japanese Christians of flue ability and culture, one the professor of English in the Imperial University of Tokyo, the other a member of the Japanese Paliament. Though neither was a preacher, yet both conducted Chris- tian services each Sunday for the hundreds of Japanese on board ship. Both belonged to the Japanese Liberal Party. My talks with them convinced me that on practi- cally all matters touched on in this essay all three of us thought alike. Both of them had been using the Korean uprising and atrocities as a proof to their own country- men that the Military Party was unfit to govern either in Korea or Japan ; and both were eager to have these atrocities published to the world iu the hope that the I'ressure of outside opinion might help to break from Japan’s neck the yoke of militarism. Clearly, therefore, it is unjust to blame the whole 14 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN Japanese nation for the doings of a military combine that misrei>resents the best element of her people and is de- nonnced as heartily by multitudes within Japan as by her bitterest critics without. Japan as a Mission Field As a mission field Japan’s distinctive mark is her combination of heathenism with western civilization. It is this that makes her so difficult and so fascinating a sphere of missionary endeavor. She has no counterpart in the modern world. Her nearest parallel is the Eonian Empire of Paul’s day. In both empires we find the same combination of heathenism, voicing itself among other ways in emperor worshij), varnished over with a bril- liant material civilization. While the latter in some respects facilitates the missionary enterprise, in others it enormously enhances its difficulty. If in our own land the multiplied absorptions and at- tractions of our modern life divert the great mass of the people from church attendance, notwithstanding Chris- tianity’s deej) roothold and tremendous prestige, how much hai’der to attract an audience in distinctly heath- en cities and towns, with the same rival iutere.sts and solicitations on every side, and nine-tenths of the people antecedently prejudiced against Christianity. In large sections of China, where the dense population live in villages, and where railroads and other features of western progress are almost unknown, the people crowd to hear the itinerating missionary as a welcome break in the deadly monotony of their village existence. The newspaper, the magazine, the picture show, and whatever else is interesting and diverting in our Ameri- PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 15 can life, lie fills tlie jilace of to them. But the misioiiary in Japan is faced not only with the hostile heathenism of the East but with the competing absorptions and attractions of the ^Vest. An unusually popular and gifted missionary told me that when his regular services at the Central Gospel Hall in his own city of 75,0110 drew in as many as seven adults who had never attended before, he thought it a fairly successful meeting. He added that by dint of hard work and advertising audiences of 200 or 300 could be se- cured in the churches, 400 in tent meetings, and GOO or 700 in theatre meetings. A complicating factor in the present .situation is the enormous enhancement of Japan’s material prosperity due to the war. Last year the number of automobiles in Tokyo doubled. In the cities and larger towns have sprung up the nnnl;in, the newly rich, wliose passion for display and lavish expenditure have so intensified throughout the nation the already eager love of luxury and lust for wealth, that the missionary finds the popular mind more than usually indilfeient to, and preoccupied against, his spiritual message. The educated classes are most accessible to Christian teaching. Yet their education, and the i»roud self-suf- ficiency characteristic of the •Ta])anese, prevent the mis- sionary's exercising in .la]»an, as a rule, such inttuence and leadership as his race and culture would give him in other Eastern and less literate lands. In the numerous book stores and book stalls of the cities and towns are found translations of the atheistic, infidel, and agnostic literature of the West, as I’epresented by Huxley, Spencer, flaeckel, Tom Bayne, and the like. 16 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN But the ill effects of such literature it is easy to exag- gerate, for the reason that it can be read by a much small- er fraction of the population than is generally supposed. The oft-repeated statement that ninety-eight per -cent of the children of Japan are in school is understood by Americans to imply what the same percentage wonld indi- cate in our own country, namely, that the prose and poetry of the language, its books, magazines, and newspa- pers, can at least be read, thongh of course with varying degrees of appreciation, by the vast majority of the people. But the facts are quite the other way. Japanese is one of the most difficult of languages to learn to read, being written with the Chinese ideographs which require an enormous exx^euditure of time in sheer memory work. In addition to this ideograi>li the Japanese have an alxdiabet of their own of fifty letters, which is often, though not al- Avays, written alongside the ideograx)h to give the pronun- ciation of the word. Owing to the difficulty of the lan- guage an American third-year x>rimary schoolboy could come nearer intelligently reading a X'^&e of ordinary English than a Jaj)anese sixth-year boy a similar xmge of Japanese. Education in Jax)an is compulsory only through the sixth year of the x>rimary school, or until the child reaches thirteen. Not above one in a hundred and fifty takes more than the required education, the rest returning to the farm or to assist otherwise in the support of the fa mi ly. ;Most of these, from failure to keep up their reading, lose in a few years much of what they have learned. While news- X)ax)crs are taken in about one fourth of the homes, prob- ably not more than one in twenty of the people can read PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 17 and understand the editorials, though a much larger proportion can read the news columns. Only the few can read a tract so as to get much out of it unless it is written in an extremely simple style. The Japanese educational system extends over too long a period of years and the higher schools cannot provide for the large number of students that apply for admission. The average life of people in England is forty- two years; in Japan it is only tliirty-lliree years. Yet in England the average age of the student at gradu- ation is twenty-one, while in Japan it is twenty-five. At the annual entrance examinations a year ago the number of applicants for admission into the Tokyo Higher Com- mercial School was 2,500. The number admitted was 300. At the First Higher School, the college which prepares students for the Imperial University, of the 2,000 appli- cants, 300 were admitted. Of 2,000 ajiplicants at the Na- val Academy, 50 were accepted. This situation is doubly unfortunate. Either the disa])pointed young man has to give up his further education and start in life with a fail- ure scored against him, or he may wait for another year, studying and loafing, hoping for better fortune the next time. Either alternative is bad and has a direct bearing upon the more than 10,000 annual suicides in Japan. The government provides no institution of university rank for women. Medicine is the only profession in which they are given a moderate opj)ortunity. In 1918 there were about 340 women physicians practising in Japan. The main reading of the women and girls at borne who can read is the gayly covered monthly women’s magazine, of which some twenty have large circulations. Of the vices that find in heathenism a peculiarly fer- 18 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN tile soil, Japan lias her share. While Kipling says that east of Suez ‘‘there aint no Ten Commandments,” yet the immorality of the Jai»anese is so open and unblushing as to give them a bad reputation even among Orientals. tYliat can be expected of the students in the government schools when it is the prerogative of the professors to be as immoral as they choose to be. Concubinage is a com- mon feature of family life and an average of one out of every fifteen young Avomeu in Japan between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five is a prostitute or geisha girl. So great is the need for Social tt'elfare Avork and so open and inviting this field of Christian seiwice, that it is .yearly a.ssuming a larger place in the thoughts and plans of missionary agencies. Among those Avhose hard conditions of life make a special appeal are the city poor, of Avhom there are 800,000 among the 8,000,000 living in the tAventy-seA'en cities of Japan; the Eta, or outcasts, of Avhom there are 1,300,000 in Japan, and Avho constitute a large percentage (»f city slums; the farmers, Avho con- stitute more than half the population of Japan, and who are burdened with a debt of 1400,000,000; child criminals, of AAdiom there are 05,000 in the cities of Japan, only 7,000 of Avhom can he accomidated in the industrial homes; miners, of whom an ai»palling percentage are injured yearly; factory workers, numbering 1,300,000, Avhose con- ditions of life are very hard. The factory operatiA'es Avork standing and have usually a twelve-hour day Avith from tAventy to thirty minutes at noon. Some factories begin AA’ork at 4 a. m. and stop for a feAv minutes at 7 for breakfast. They run till about 6 p. m. The 850,000 girl Avorkers are miserably paid, and 80,000 of them return home each j^ear because of illness PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 19 and broken health, the sanitary and moral conditions in which they live and Avork being exceedingly bad. The merciless exploitation of these workers under a Cliristless civilization suggests at least one vital respect in whicli such civilization is inferior to the feudal system which it disjilaced. Under the old system duties were stressed, particularly the duty of the feudal lord to give protection to his retainers, and the duty of the retainers to render military service to their lord. With all its de- fects the feudal system, out of which grew chivalry in Europe and husliido in Japan, was a glorification of, and a magnificent training in, the sense of duty. But in our modern civilization the key word is not duties but rights. Essential and inspiring to human j)rogress as is this new watcliAA'ord and ] oint of vierv, it yet contains the direst pos.sibilities of license and anarchy, and easily lends it- self to the o])i)ression of the weak by the strong. As between duties and rights, duties are reci])rocal. They unite. They tend to develop fidelity, loyalty, service. But rights are individual and divisive. They tend toward self-assertion, hardness, cruelty. Among Western peoples the change from the one viewj)oint to the other, beginning some 400 years ago, was gradual, with Christianity pres- ent to maintain the balance with its widespread and i)OW- erful preaching and teaching of duty. But in Japan feudalism disapi)eared only fifty years ago, and the trans- fer of accent is still going foiuvard more and more swiftly, with Christianity as yet too little knoAvn, and the native religions too weak, to maintain the ethical balance. The moral peril of this situation is enhanced by some of the results of modern education. The students in the great universities, through the study of science and con- 20 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN tact with the material philosojihies of the West, lose con- fidence in their non-Christian faiths. Adrift on the dark ocean of unbelief, without religious moorings or guid- ance of any kind, their last state threatens to be wojse than the first. Mbst significant and alarming are the following often quoted figures of the religious census of the sUidents of the Imperial University of Tokyo, it being understood that “agnostics,” as here used, describes not so much a philosophical conviction, as a state of utter in- decision, regarding religion. Shintoists 8 Buddhists 50 Christians 60 Atheists 1500 Agnostics 3000 Total 4618 It is a critical transition period. Symptoms of moral degeneration in both ])rivate and public life have for years been a matter of grave concern to the government. The necessity of providing an adequate ethical basis for the national life is grow’ingly felt. In 1884 the govern- ment created a Bureau of Religion under the exclusive control of tlie Minister of Education, and in 1904 it called a conference of the leading religionists of the Empire, Shintoists, Buddhists, Confucianists, and Christians, this official recognition of Christianity attracting wide at- tention, and the Christian leaders at the conference stand- ing easily foremost in their practical suggestions for the moral welfare of the people. The Japanese leaders, in the opinion of competent observers, are beginning to feel that the adoption of Western methods of life and industry and education, without the restraining guiding influence of the PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 21 religion of the Western nations, is fraught with unsus- pected perils. Hence the government’s effort to galvanize into fresh life the Shinto and Buddhist faiths and to quicken in the national consciousness the ancient and pop- ular belief that the Emperor is divine, that he is of God- blood, while all other people and peoples are of man blood, thus making loyalty a religion. The late Prince Ito voices the traditional conception of the Mikado prevailing among the masses of Japan from time immemorial when in his ‘‘Commentaries on the Con- stitution of Japan” he says, “The Emperor is heaven-de- scended, divine, and sacred.” A leading Japanese newspaper recently contained the following pronouncement : “To preserve the world peace and to promote the welfare of mankind is the mission of the Imperial family of Japan. Heaven has invested the Im- perial family with all the qualifications necessary to fulfill this mission He who can fulfill this mission is one who is the object of humanity’s admiration and adoration, and who holds the pre- rogative of administration forever. The Imperial family of Japan is as worthy of respect as God, and is the embodiment of benevolence and justice. The great principle of the Imperial family is to make popular interests paramount — most impor- tant. The Imperial family of Japan is the parent not only of her own sixty millions, but of all mankind on earth. In the eyes of the Imperial family all races are one and the same; it is above all racial considerations. All human disputes, therefore, may be settled in accordance with its immaculate jus- tice. The League of Nations which proposed to save mankind from the horrors of war can only attain its real object by placing the Imperial fam- ily at its head, for to attain its object the League must have a strong punitive force of a super-nat- ural and super-racial character, and this can only be found in the Imperial family of Japan.” 22 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN One Sunday morning’ I saw scores of Japanese chil- dren, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, pouring out of a Buddhist temple, and was told that the Buddhist “Sunday school” had just closed. On a fine building in a Japanese city I saw the large letters, Y. M. B. A., Young Men’s Buddhist Association. In some Buddhist services may be heard the very same hymns, with but a few words changed, sung to the very same tunes, that we have ])een familiar with from childhood : “What a friend we have in Buddha,” “Buddha loves me, this I know,’’ “All hail the power of Buddha’s name.” This copying of Christian- ity is a profoundly significant and pathetic symptom of heathenism’s growing self-distrust. A leading Japanese writer and scholar commenting in a recent article on the deficiencies of Japanese education, especially moral education, says : “No ethical principle save that of loyalty to the Emperor is permitted to be taiight to the students of the grammar and the middle school grades.” Another has an article on “Disregard for Honesty a Grave National Defect.” Scores of such state- ments could be quoted. Thus various and multiplying are the evidences of Japan’s conviction of the inadequacy of her traditional belief and teachings to furnish an ethical basis for the national life. Coincident with the gloomy and growing sense of the failure of her former religious and ethical guides has come the decisive overthrow of the nation whose military and governmental system has been her pat- tern for fifty years. In both its administrative and spir- itual history, Japan has reached the end of an era. Again the nation is on quest, seeking a new national model and a new ethical power for the new day that is before it. PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 23 The Missionary Outlook That this quest will mean a new study and apprecia- tion of Christianity we regard as certain. For the su- preme distinction of Jaiian is her sense of values. She is the Jacob among the nations. With his crookedness and duplicity Jacob coml)ined an appreciation of the best that secured him the birthright at Ileersheba, the bless- ing at the -Tabbok, and lifted him steadily through the years to his final membership in Israel’s i)atriarchal trin- ity. And Japan, unlovely as are many of her traits and ways, was the one Oriental nation to appreciate, and to seek at once to secure for herself, the superior civiliza- tion of the West. Desjtite sins of method and mistakes of judgement the secret of Japan's jthenomenal juogress has been this clear-eyed i)erception of values, combined with a i)atriotic zeal to assimilate the best wherever found. It is this that has made her the most imitative and eclectic of the nations, and it is this that ^nll event- ually lead her, we huml)ly believe, to see and seek in ChristianiW the suj>ply of her moral and spiritual needs. No nation has a greater capacity for self-devotion. In glad and instant readiness to die for his country the Japanese soldier has no superior. In a Buddhist temple I saw a huge rope made wholly of women’s hair which they had gladly given to provide the means to hoist the tem])le pillars into jdace. Somelinies in one day 1 would pass hundreds of ])ilgrims, with their big round pilgrim hats like inverted bowls, jdodding their wearisome jour- neys of .some 800 miles to the various heathen shrines. In- deed the slirines and temples of Japan 1 found better kept and more largely attended than those of China. The 24 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN Japanese are a spiritually aspiring race. The national tendency to suicide is in part but the misdirected ex- pression of the inherently noble feeling that life is simply a means to an end, and is worth retaining only as- it furnislies the soul a highway for its affections or am- bitions to move onward to their goal. In refreshing contrast to their neighbor nations the Japanese people as a rule do not look down upon manual labor. The women of even the cultivated and wealthy class are usually busily occupied with household duties. Though the physical constitution of the Japanese is not particularly strong, yet from the highest to the lowest Japan is a nation of toilers. This is one reason why week-night religious services and women’s church society meetings are apt to be thinly attended. While Japan has a bad reputation for the production of cheap and shoddy articles of merchandise made only to sell, yet in matters of larger and deeper import her people have much of what we used to call German thoroughness. The government is continually appointing commissions of inquiry to study conditions and policies in Japan and other lands. It publishes carefully pre- pared reports, full of facts and figures, on education, in- dustry, sanitation, and the like. Among all classes of l)eo])le scholarship is greatly admired. Titles and degrees are far more prized and confer far greater distinction and consequent increase of influence in Japan than in Amer- ica. The thoughtful habit of the people I can illustrate in the conversion of a certain Japanese physician whom I met and had tea with, who was not only successfully running a hospital, but was mayor of the town by election PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 25 of his fellow-citizens. This man’s wife years before had become interested in the gospel while he was an atheist. But he would listen to the instructions given her by the visiting missionary and would sometimes get into a discussion with the native evangelist. While arguing one day about the nature of God they ai)pealed to the missionary, lie replied that two blind men were once arguing about what the suu was like. As neither had ever seen it, the argument was endless, till one who had seen the sun described it to them. Said the missionary, “You can argue ’without end; why not go to Jesus, who alone has seen God, and learn about God from Him?” At several succeeding visits the atheist said nothing. The missionary thought he had lost interest. But later he applied for baptism and said that he had been learn- ing from Jesus. He also told the missionary that he had a book containing full notes which he had taken of every sermon, every conversation, every explanation, that he had heard from the missionary’s lips. In Japan, as in i)re-war Germany, no tourist can fail to be struck with the traveling habit of the people. The trains seem to be always crowded. Not only individuals, but families, seem continually on the move. While this roving disposition makes it harder to build up and sus- tain a church at any given point, yet its general effect is favorable to the spread of Christianity. The floating population, loosed from family and temple ties, is the most easily reached. This is, j)erhaps, one reason why students, teachers, and officials are found in such large numbers in the churches, and i)robaldy also why railway men are among the most approachable of the laboring classes. Since “the good seed are the children of the 26 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN kingdom,” by this traveling habit there is secured for it a far A\ider sowing. At the close of the regular church service one night at Tokushima there came to the platform a man who was a total stranger to the church and the city, but who, when his request to speak was granted, delivered one of the most original and striking personal testimonies to Chri.st's power to save that I ever heard. The most ambitious boys in the Avorld are those of Japan. Teacher after teacher told me that the one flam- ing ambition of every school boy is to become famous. To a sober-minded American Christian there is something .startling, and at the same time ])rofoundly significant and insi>iring, in the intensity and universality of this passion in the breasts of Japanese youth. Here is a force of incalculable jiower, waiting only the right training and direction to produce the Cliristian leaders, saints, and heroes of the new Japan and the new Eastern world. In this connection is to be noted the suiq)rising will- ingness of lieathen parents to send their little boys and girls to the Christian kindergarten, which is a form of mission work whose popularity among all classes proves it j)eculiarly adapted to the child-loving Japanese heart. It not only influences the coming generation at its most impressionable age; it serves also as a natural and happy way of introducing Christian songs and truths and teach- ers into Japanese homes. While visiting the historic and beautifully templed town of Nikko, I spent two nights at a native inn and had several earnest conversations, assisted by a mission- ary companion, with the young woman who brought us our meals. Before we left she declared with deep feeling PRESENT-DAY JAPAN 27 and evident sincerity her acceptance of Christ and her purpose to live a Christian life. We were much inter ested to learn from her that when a child she had once attended for a few months a mission school. It was there no doubt that the good seeds were planted which years after were to spring up aud bear fruit unto life eternal. The hope of Japan is Christ, and the easiest, broadest, shortest “way of the Lord” into Japan, is through the children. So individual and distinctive are Japan’s national his- tory, structure, and spirit, her social and domestic tra- ditions, habits, and points of view, her stage of industrial aud educational development; so unique is her combina- tion of Eastern heathenism with Western civilization ; that of all mission fields hers is the most in.spiring chal- lenge to missionary resourcefulness and originality. The substance of the minister’s message, and the funda- mental requirement to convey it both by teaching and by incarnation, are the same for every land. Yet the method of presenting and illustrating the truth, of win- ning native converts, of reaching the young, the outside masses, the nation at large, aud of doing many other vitally essential things, must be most carefully adapted to the national mind, habit, and stage of advancement. A method of instructing converts which succeeded ad- mirably in China I found would prove utterly impracti- cable in Japan on account of the personal sensitiveness and self-sufficiency of the Japanese. Proti’acted meetings of a week or ten days are as common in the Korean and Chinese as in our American churches. But throughout the greater part of Japan no such meeting as a rule will be attended by the same people for more than half a 28 PRESENT-DAY JAPAN week at most, and our missionary and native evange- lists expect tlieir station and ont-station protracted meet- ings to last two nights. The most famous and gifted evangelist in Japan, -Mr. Kanamori, has one sermon of nearly three hours length in which he treats successively the themes of God, Sin, and Salvation. And this sermon he preaches night after night without the change of a sentence to the changing audiences that throng to hear him. This original method, in his hands, certainly has proved highly successful. One of Japan’s pi’ominent missionaries, taking advantage of the exceptional popularity of the press in Japan, is blaz- ing a new trail in what he aptly calls newspaper evangel- ism. Japan’s uniqueness as a mission field should evoke plans that are not simply importations or modifications of methods used in America, China, or India, but are the direct outgrowth of an exhaustive and penetrating study of the peculiar conditions in Japan. When the four men of St. Mark’s Gospel found they could not get their sick friend to Jesus by the ordinary front-door way, they adopted the novel and adventurous ladder-and-roof route, abandoning all precedent, and guided only by a common- sense study of conditions. And what Jesus saw and re- warde