The white peril in the Far East; an interpretation of the significance of the Russo-Japanese war

Front matter

SIDNEY L.GULICK.

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The white peril in *e ,f " EajJ'a

Preface

On the 8th of February, 1904, Japan crossed swords with a European people. And from the destruction of the Variag on that day until the fall of Port Arthur on the ist of January, 1905, nothing but failure has been Russia's fate, nothing but success Japan's fortune. For the first time in history has an Asiatic people successfully faced a white foe. The Russo-Japanese war marks an era, therefore, in the history of the Far East, and of the world, for now begins a readjustment of the balance of power among the nations, a readjustment which promises to halt the territorial expansion of white races and to check their racial pride.

To appreciate the significance of this war as one act in the tragedy of the white peril we must understand Japan. How has she attained the power, material and temperamental, which is enabling her to face the white man and to conquer him ? This question we study in our earlier chapters. In those that follow we study the significance of the war, and the problems of the Far East in their world-setting. We are not con- 5

6 Preface

cerned with dates and battles, with armies and heroes. Rather shall we consider movements and tendencies, national ambitions and international relations.

Emphasis is laid on the peril to the Far East of the white man's ambitions and methods. Justice to white races, however, demands recognition also of the blessings they confer upon those lands. In a real sense the white peril is becoming the white blessing of the Orient. Yet the aim of the present work in these pages precludes adequate emphasis of this point.

Certain graceful writers, masters of imaginative style, have described Japan as ideal in every direction, a view widely popularized to-day by Japan's brilliant military record. But of course no thoughtful man will be misled, for national as well as individual perfection is impossible. Highly admiring Japan as 1 do, absence of criticism in the following pages does not signify acceptance of the popular unbalanced admiration.

Whatever value this work may have must be ascribed in large measure to my Japanese friends whose thought as to their national character and destiny and the real meaning of this war has definitely influenced my own point of view.

I wish also to express the deepest gratitude to

Preface 7

my sister, Mrs. Frances Gulick Jewett, for her inspiration in the inception of this study and for her laborious and invaluable assistance in revising the manuscript. Indeed this volume owes to her pen whatever of literary excellence it may possess.

The Yellow Peril vs. The White Peril, .

XIII

The Permanent Peace of the Orient — A Suggestion, .....

The White Peril in the Far East I

" Meiji" means " enlightened rule." This term was chosen by the present Emperor as the official title of the period covered by his rule. The present year (1905) is called in Japan Meiji 38, that is, the thirty-eighth year of Enlightened Rule, and the designation itself doubtless characterizes the Imperial purpose. From the start he and his councillors determined to depart from many ancient customs, notably those of international isolation.

To appreciate adequately the significance of the Meiji era and its consequences both to national life and international relations, we must glance briefly at the conditions and the spirit of the people in pre-Meiji times.

In the attitude of the Japanese towards foreigners, ancient history may be divided into two

periods, that preceding the Tokugawa regency II and that covered by that regency (1600-1867). As Occidentals we need to remember that self-sufficiency and self-determined isolation were matters exclusively of the second period. It would appear that from time immemorial Japan was entirely hospitable to foreign ways and foreign teachers. She welcomed Koreans and Chinese who brought to her new philosophical and ethical ideas, new religious creeds, and a new civilization. As in recent decades Japanese students have flocked to western lands, so in ancient times Japanese students went abroad for learning, some, if their histories may be credited, having travelled even as far as India.

How open-minded Japan was politically, intellectually and religiously in the sixteenth century may be gathered from the wide welcome given the first missionaries of Christianity. Not only Francis Xavier (1549) but scores of European priests and monks won their way into the hearts and homes of Japan. Within fifty years many hundred thousand Japanese had formally accepted the Christian faith; and not until the rulers began to suspect the monks of political designs, was the historic attitude of Japan towards foreigners changed. Nor was that change readily enforced. Edict followed edict, persecution followed persecution. Large rewards were offered for information as to the whereabouts of foreign monks and native Christians. Christianity was branded as " Ja-kyo," the "Evil Way." Yet in spite of Imperial Edicts and numberless " Banning Boards," in spite of the popular condemnation of Christianity, and in spite of its persistent persecution by the government, Christianity was not finally exterminated, nor the foreigner completely excluded from the country until tens of thousands of martyrs had given their lives as well as their fortunes in behalf of their foreign friends and of their own faith. Well nigh fifty years of determined and ruthless persecution were needed by the government to drive the dreaded foe from Japan, — eloquent testimony to the fidelity and the open-mindedness of multitudes of the people to the creeds and the teachers from other lands.

The Occidental often finds difficulty in appreciating the significance of Japanese exclusion of Christianity and of Occidentals. We are too apt to count it a rejection of Christianity per se. But this is an error. Roman Catholicism has for a thousand years held the view that the church is superior to the state and should rule it. From time immemorial Roman Catholic missions have insisted on the ultimate political supremacy of the Pope of Rome. Japan's suspicions of the political aspirations of Christianity were fully justified. She logically excluded all foreigners because all the foreigners she knew held to a political theory of the Christian religion.

It is safe to say that no form of Christianity which seeks to subordinate the state to the Church will ever find permanent lodgment in Japan. She builded better than she knew in excluding from her land an organized religion with political aspirations. It has proved the bane of Europe and would similarly have brought suffering to japan.

Although Japan excluded Christianity and not only forbade the entrance of all foreigners but also made it a crime for the Japanese themselves to visit other lands, yet she was not wholly ignorant of the movements of the outside world. Three merchant ships from Holland were annually allowed entrance to Nagasaki, and her small colony of Dutchmen were permitted to live on a certain small island in the harbour. Through these Dutchmen she kept her eye on the West. Japanese writers indeed insist that they received far more from the West than we have realized. It must be granted nevertheless that the policy of exelusion was probably more complete for two hundred and fifty years than that which any other large nation has ever successfully maintained. Although the government itself might in a measure have kept in touch with the West, such persistent isolation, and for such definite reasons of suspicion and fear could not fail to develop among the people at large a profound antipathy to the foreigner as such. No caricature of his form or description of his character was too dreadful for credence. The Christian religion was popularly supposed to teach various forms of abomination and immorality. The very presence of foreigners on the sacred soil of Japan was supposed to pollute the land and to contaminate her people descended from the gods.

Yet we must guard here against exaggeration. Such was doubtless the view widely taught and obediently accepted. From abundant personal experiences among the farmers and the merchants, I am persuaded that at the present time this anti-foreign sentiment has relatively but light hold upon them. Naturally enough it has been felt and fostered chiefly by the ruling classes, who have looked at the foreigner not merely as individuals, as specimens of humanity, but as potential political pirates, and not without much justification, as history has shown both in the past, and especially at the present moment.

But even in the early days of renewed intercourse with the West many experiences brought to unexpected Ught a real kindliness of heart on the part of the common people towards the Occidental. Dr. Beltz has told of one such experience. With a comrade he was travelling in the interior among farmers who had never seen a foreigner. At one place he and his friend proposed to climb a mountain but they were told that because it was sacred no one was permitted to do this. Should they try, some calamity would surely be visited upon them by the local Deity. The guides refused to go with them. Smiling at the superstitions of the natives and trampling on their religious scruples, the enterprising foreigners pressed on. Strangely enough, after a hard tramp of several miles the comrade was suddenly taken ill, and there was nothing for Mr. Beltz to do but to return for help to the men whose council he had spurned and whose religious feelings he had ignored. Under such circumstances, what treatment was to be expected from the natives ? No kind attention surely, yet as a matter of fact responding generously to the needs of the foreigner, and in spite of their own strong religious scruples, those natives climbed the mountain and brought down on their shoulders the afflicted white man.

Wide personal experience in the interior of Japan, where even to this day few foreigners ever go, and constant intercourse for seventeen years with merchants, farmers, and artisans, has convinced me that unreasoning, racial antipathy has to-day practically no existence among the common people; particularly is this true at a distance from the treaty ports: and if there is little of this sentiment to-day, is it not fair to argue that it could never have been deep-rooted ? But 1 cannot say so much for official Japan nor for the common people in the ports. Here, suspicion and deep dislike have often been conspicuous. And by official Japan I do not mean merely officers who are on duty ; I refer also to the social class from which they come, and particularly to the Samurai. There can hardly be a doubt that this old warrior class entertained a genuine antipathy to the foreigner as such. In view of past history, however, the marvel is that in less than two generations, so great a part of even this warrior class has been able to set antipathy aside and to treat the foreigner as a friend.

To sum up then: — no nation has on the whole left a more honourable record in regard to its attitude towards foreigners than has Japan. The Tokugawa period of fear, suspicion and intense antipathy on the part of the ruling class, is exceptional in the history of Japan. But the causes of that antipathy are clear and they have their justification.

The cause of Japan's long isolation was the discovery of the white peril. The aggressive spirit and grasping ambitions of the white man compelled the rulers of Japan to look not only with disfavour on their politically organized religion, but altogether to forbid their coming to Japan, as the best and easiest solution of the problems connected with the white peril.

That full justice be done to Japan's attitude towards foreign peoples, let the reader recall the mental attitude of occidental nations during the past four hundred years towards the African, the Chinaman, and the Hindoo. Do not the white peoples of Europe and of America feel that Africa, India and Asia are regions for legitimate commercial and political expansion? Do we not act on the theory that those regions and peoples are for us to exploit to our own commercial advantage ?

It may be that we justify ourselves by enumerating our points of superiority. We note with pride our civilization, and contrast it with their barbarity; we exult in our strength and impose on their helplessness. We boast of our high morality and enlightened religion and decry their immorality and superstitions. In these things we think we hear the call of God to go forth to conquer and to rule. If we are evolutionists we appeal to the struggle for existence and felicitate ourselves on the fact that nature has made us the fittest to survive in the struggle of nations. In subduing and destroying other nations and races are we not fulfilling our destiny and theirs ?

Since the discovery of America, the dream of conquest, of empire and of unearned wealth has intoxicated the white people of the earth and made them the curse and the scourge of all the world. Japan's first reaction on coming into contact with the white man was to close her doors and decline to have anything to do with him. Who shall criticise or condemn her ? If she has feared or scorned or disdained the white man, who shall say that her instinct for self-preservation has been at fault ?

There is perhaps no truer sign of the essentially provincial character of the self-centred white peopie than their failure to discover or appreciate the noble and the beautiful in the great civilizations of the Orient, Hindoo, Chinese and Japanese. We have been blinded to these by the selfishness of our lives, the greed of our ambitions and the pride of our might. Surely the outstanding fact in the relations of the West to the East has been the peril to the yellow and brown races through the presence of the white man, whose assumption has been the theory that might makes right.

Japanese historians speak of the era of the Tokugawa regency (1600- 1867) as "the Great Peace," because during that period Japan was practically free from civil war, a condition sharply in contrast to the preceding 1,000 years of almost continuous strife.

Recent Japanese writers and public speakers, however, commonly refer to the same period of 250 years as the " Long Sleep," and to the Meiji era as the "Awakening." While Japan slept, they say, western nations forged ahead, acquired knowledge, power, wealth, and world-wide possessions. When at last Admiral Perry knocked at her doors (1853), disturbed her slumbers, and showed to her ships that moved without sails and against the wind, the insignificance of her own knowledge and power was evident. She rubbed her sleepy eyes and wondered with vague fear what it might signify.

The Tokugawa Shogunate was the first to realize in some degree the danger and the impotence of forcible resistance to the white man. Treaties were made, but probably without intention of fully executing them. By a-hand-to mouth policy of deception and evasion they hoped by apparent concession to maintain the old policy of non-intercourse with the white man.

Fortunate was it for Japan that the United States was the first nation effectually to seek entrance to the country and that Townsend Harris, the American, was the first diplomat to negotiate treaties. It required infinite tact and patience and absolute truthfulness and tireless, unruffled insistence on his part to persuade the government to make and ratify treaties which have proved to be wise and useful to Japan. To this day, the government of the United States has been the single white nation always free from aggressive schemes and always regardful of Japanese rights and interests. This fact perhaps more than any other has led the Japanese to discriminate between white peoples and to distinguish differences, a fact of the greatest importance in the evolution of New Japan.

But although the Tokugawa Shogunate promptly recognized the dangerous situation of the nation vis-a-vis vi'ith the nations of Europe, and in due time ratified one treaty after another with those dreaded peoples, admitting them to live and trade in a few specified " treaty ports," the nation itself did not apparently appreciate the situation nor accept the solution. This, with other causes, led at last to the civil war and the overthrow of the Shogunate, known in Japan as "Go-ishin" (1867), and resulted in the abolishment of the dual system of government and the establishment of the Emperor upon the throne with actual as well as nominal authority.

When, however, the Emperor assumed direct control of affairs, and studied the problems of international relations, he, too, with his councillors, discovered that Japan could not by any possible means resist the white man and hold herself aloof as formerly from the western world. The white man, with power which seemed supernatural, was already established in the treaty ports with his solemnly signed and ratified treaties. Japan discovered that steam and machinery had made the world too small for any part thereof to separate itself entirely from the broadening currents of the world's life.

These considerations were also forced home by one or two slight encounters with armed whites (Shimonoseki and Kagoshima), in which local authorities realized the absolute military and naval impotence of Japan as against the West.

Such were the forces that led Japanese statesmen to abandon the old policy of exclusion and isolation. The Emperor and his councillors now adopted a plan which for wisdom and boldness can hardly be surpassed in the annals of history. While not for a moment failing to appreciate the aggressive character of white peoples and the resulting necessity of thwarting them in every move, Japanese leaders recognized that in international relations the final appeal can only be to superior power and that power, to be superior, must be informed and trained. Abandoning, therefore, her long course of self-sufficient isolation, Japan plunged into the stream of the world's life, determined to acquire all the knowledge of the world and with that knowledge to win her way to a place among the nations. Equipped with the implements and arts of war, she would then maintain her rights and her life if need be by the appeal to arms.

That decision was proclaimed to the nation in the famous edict known in Japan as the "Go Kajo no go Seibun," the Honourable Five

Articled Honourable Edict, of which the following is the translation:

1. All the affairs of the state shall be guided

by public opinion.

2. The principles of social and political economy

shall be diligently studied by both the superior and inferior classes of our people.

3. Every one in the community shall be assisted

to persevere in carrying out his will for all good purposes.

4. All old absurd usages shall be disregarded,

and resort shall be had to the right way that exists between heaven and earth.

5. Wisdom and ability shall be sought after in

all quarters of the world, for the purpose of firmly establishing the Imperial domination.

Especially important are the fourth and fifth articles which alone made possible that almost incredible series of transformations whereby feudal Japan became New Japan. The first and fourth articles secured the inner reorganization of the nation, both in form and in spirit, and the fifth established a totally new attitude towards the outer world. Sanctioned by the Emperor, these principles became the established method and spirit of the people.

In no wise, however, did this mean that fear of the foreigner had ceased. On the contrary it signified that he was even more greatly feared and that what had been a mere distant possibility had now become a dreadfully near probability.

As already indicated, the hope was that before the foreigner should become an active aggressor, Japan herself might have learned the secrets of western power and with that power might equip herself for resistance. Time has proved the wisdom of her course. Had Japan not turned face when she did, she would ere this have become the subject of some European nation. Had she not equipped herself with all the military and naval skill of the West, who would doubt the issue of the present conflict ?

But the full awakening of any nation is at best a slow process. Though Japan was opened to the world by treaty in 1853, not until 1873 were the edict boards banning Christianity taken down and not until 1889 was the constitution proclaimed which provides for national representative government and guarantees religious liberty to the people.

Merchants and missionaries were in Japan in the fifties, but it was not until the seventies that their presence exerted any appreciable influence on the nation. With the removal of the banning boards and the commencement of direct teaching and preaching by the missionaries, Japan was fairly started on her new era of western learning. Groups of young men began to study English and in due time one after another became earnest Christians and advocates of western civilization. They preached their new doctrines with fervour, gaining the ear of a wider public than could be reached by the voice of the missionary.

Early in the seventies Japan sent embassies to America and Europe to secure a modification of previous treaties, hoping thereby to regain complete sovereignty in her own country. Those early treaties had in them what were known as the "extra territorial" clauses, which provided that all causes of litigation between Japanese and foreigners should be tried in consular courts and through this requirement, Japan had discovered that western nations considered her legal processes as uncivilized. She realized that before regaining complete sovereignty, she must adjust her people and her laws to western standards. This realization has been an incentive of no mean importance in bringing Japan rapidly to her present state of high attainment. The leaders of her people have striven to modify national life and to raise all public conduct to the best standards of the West and it must be confessed that they have done it with great success.

Popular education was introduced early. Vast numbers of young men came to western lands, some at government expense but the majority at their own charges. They entered our best institutions. They not only studied the sciences but the arts and especially the industries. It is not necessary for me to describe in detail the course of the government in employing foreigners at heavy expenses to teach in their higher institutions, to start their military and naval reconstruction, to found factories, arsenals, dockyards, postal and telegraph systems, railroads, waterworks, and to introduce a thousand other devices common in the western world.

As experience was gained and young men returned with their new knowledge, the occidentalization of Japan became more and more pronounced. From the determined purpose of the rulers and a few progessive thinkers during the early seventies, this occidentalization became the fad and fashion of the multitudes during the eighties. It went to great extremes in many lines. Foreign apparel became the rage for a season. A silk hat, a dress coat, a pair of under-drawers and "geta" (clogs) constituted full dress to more than one ardent advocate of foreign ways. Japanese ladies also caught the fever, not only bringing great trouble to the lady missionaries, who were besought to teach them the mysteries of western dressmaking, hut also to their own discomfiture in person and appearance. For it is safe to say that no Japanese lady ever appears quite so attractive in a foreign gown as in her own picturesque costume.

By the middle of the eighties, the foreignizing movement was in full swing. Leaders of thought were even advocating the formal adoption of Christianity; and the reasons for this were twofold. First was the thought that full benefits of western civilization would be attained more surely and quickly by adopting Christianity as the national religion. This was the argument of so eminent an educator as the late Mr. Fukuzawa. In other words the material benefits, the loaves and the fishes of what was supposed to be Christian civilization, led to the strange suggestion. The second argument was that western nations would not restore to Japan her full sovereignty unless she became Christian. Thus we see that the formal adoption of Christianity as the state religion was prompted by the desire to secure from the West full political recognition.

It is not strange that under the influence of these various motives the missionaries became popular. Their schools filled and overflowed. Even the churches grew by leaps and bounds. Indeed during the eighties every Christian enterprise was blessed with extraordinary success. Each year the gains in church membership were phenomenal.

In view of all this it is not strange that native preachers and missionaries alike foretold the speedy Christianizing of the nation. It was the common thought during this period both in America and in Japan that ere the close of the century that country would be so far Christian as to need no further missionary assistance.

As so often happens, however, a process that moves too fast is followed by reaction. Just that occurred in Japan. It is doubtful whether at the time any one realized the fact that such rapid occidentalization, such an attempt on the part of a whole people to drop its own past and clothe itself body and soul with the inner and outer accoutrements of a totally alien civilization, would necessarily result in radical revulsion of feeling and in reaction of conduct. Yet that result showed itself in the nineties, a more detailed study of which will be presented in the next chapter.

It is enough here to note that for about fifteen years after the opening of the country by treaty,

Japan was more or less uncertain what to do. Should she accept foreign intercourse or reject it ? The vast majority of the ruling class favoured the latter course. Those who were in immediate contact with the problem, who had to meet the hairy foreigner face to face, saw that the policy of rejection and continued isolation was impossible, nay suicidal. Their judgment finally carried the day, and the policy of foreign intercourse, once adopted by the Emperor, was promptly accepted by the people and in certain bald imitative forms reached its climax in the latter part of the eighties.

During that period of nearly forty years (1854- 1890) the Japanese became fairly well acquainted with the West. Foreigners were no longer for them an immense general mass. Differences began to be recognized between the politics and the spirit of the nations. Discrimination also was now for the first time exercised. In truth the feelings of the people towards the foreigner underwent great change. From the first estimate of him as "a foreign devil," acquaintance and appreciation brought such reaction that at last for a few years he was counted almost a god. All foreigners for a time came to be rated as wealthy and wise beyond all comparison, so at least I have been repeatedly told by Japanese with whom I have discussed those times. Much experience has been required to attain a discriminating judgment of the foreigner, to see that after all he is mere man with faults, foibles, and virtues. Not only has discrimination of nation from nation been secured with increasing knowledge of the diversities of spirit and purpose and international policies of the different nations, but discrimination between classes and groups of individuals of the same people has also begun to arise. This, however, came more prominently into national consciousness during the nineties and will accordingly be more particularly noted in the next chapter.

Ill

Much to the surprise of both foreigner and Japanese, there swept over Japan during the early nineties a powerful reaction against things and ways foreign. Care must be taken in the interpretation of this movement to understand just what it was and what it signified. A preliminary warning should make clear that it was not such an extreme reaction as to jeopardize the real gains of twenty years of progress. There was no apparent tendency to return to the feudal order of society, nor to desire the policy of absolute international isolation.

The reaction was rather against the unreasoning rush after foreign things which had characterized the eighties, — a rush which threatened to swamp all that was good and beautiful in Old Japan and to adopt from the West even vulgar things and useless, simply because they were western.

No sympathetic student of Japanese history can fail to approve in the main the tendencies and results of this reaction as it showed itself in many 33 ways. There was a new appreciation by the Japanese themselves of native art, clothing, and customs. In local politics a new feeling of antipathy to the foreigner was widely manifested. The use by missionaries of passports was restricted, their occupancy of relatively fine homes in conspicuous sites was criticised; Japanese who associated with foreigners or assisted them especially in Christian work and who accepted the legal ownership of property used by foreigners beyond the limits of the treaty ports were accused of being traitors and enemies to the country. But the manifestation of jthis reaction most conspicuous to the missionary was the changed interest in Christianity. As the period of reaction progressed, attendance on Christian schools not only failed to increase but actually fell off to such an extent that schools which once numbered hundreds, were reduced to scores. " Inquirers " at the churches diminished and additions to the churches for the entire period of the nineties were barely sufficient to replace defections and death.

Here was indeed a striking situation. Whereas in 1 888 it was confidently believed that the nation would be Christian by the end of the century, when that time arrived, the number of aclive church members was no greater than it had been ten years before.