More japonico. A critique of the effect of an idea--communityism--on the life and history of a people

Front matter

MORE JAPONICO.

A CRITIQUE OF THE EFFECT OF AN IDEA— COMMUNITYISM —ON THE LIFE AND HISTORY OF A PEOPLE.

BY

Contents

I. From First Beginnings 3

II. Res Angustae Domus 57

III. From Pillar to Post 95'

Preface

It is no easy matter to put into set form the ideas aroused by the many intricacies and shifting complexities of a national life extending over centuries. The value to contemporary thought of such a life history as that of the Japanese people must be the excuse for what the writer feels keenly to be the very insufficienfc presentment of this complex subject submitted to the consideration of the western reader. Scope and method also with two widely separated fields can present no satisfactory issue. Separate treatment, ratlier than a jumble of partial references, at least gives sharper definition. One object, and the main one, of the present volume can be said to be a reading of east into west, or vice versa ; for although the central idea and the major part of the book deals with Japanese development, there is enough of western illustration to make up a considerable part of the exposition. And the two do not unnaturally interlace with each other. After all, to one observing this eastern people close at hand, there soon appears not a difference in the apparatus of thought, not even a difference in the fundamentals of thought, but a difference in stage of development. With such an instrument as the brain this can only be brought about in one way. The westerner does think in slightly different channels from the Japanese, but this is a matter of development from an original closely alike in both. The real change is found in a comparatively recent and greater plasticity in the west, the more elastic use of the apparatus of thought, and the consequent loss of influence of well worn channels by which custom — esi:)ecially of thinking — had directed the lives of men. It is in going backward therefore toward mediaevalism and far beyond that these differing civilizations of East and West begin to come together ; and by following the same process, reasons of divergence can also be found ; causes which have been the major influence in the development of the West.

The dictum therefore that the " East is East and West is West " does not strictly hold for the two civilizations involved. The difference between these two great racial divisions of the world lies in their history. The springs of action are the same in both. Men, East and West, do not think differently, although they do at times illustrate the fact that the same result can be reached by different roads and at different periods in their history. Eastern thinking and acting is to be judged by exactly the same standard as westtrn tliinking and acting. The practical

11 PREFACE.

precepts laid down hy Confucius for the guidance of the greatest nation of the East can have the earnest endorsement of the man of the West. AVhen we find in the writings of a Japanese l)hilosopher of the eighteenth century — Kyuso — an expression such as the following:* " The mountain rears itself on high but " the base clings to the earth. The earth is its source. So are " rulers to make the top small and the base great. Then is the " empire at peace, like the mountain. But if the top is increased " and the base diminished there is danger ; it is a mountain up- " side down," we have a piece of political wisdom directed to an end so much a part of our own thinking and political experience of to-day and long past that the necessity of examining the two civilizations in the same light can hardly be denied. If this be true perhaps more congruities can be found than contrasts. It is to be admitted that is not the view usually taken. There is the westerner who has spent his "thirty years and more " in the East to acquire the comfortable assurance that the longer is his stay the greater is his ignorance. At least so he says. But these gentlemen need not be held strictly to the letter of thei r utterance, for they are usually found ready to give their views and to correct the misconceptions of those favoured with a shorter residence or shorter insight. It is fair to assume that they do have opinions on the people and the land in which they have lived ; and these opinions and conceptions — the ones of real value — will be found to be as extensive as their modesty.

The Eastern civilization, therefore, can be assumed to be not a special phase of the evolutionary process as applied to the genus homo; and its progress can be legitimately compared with that made by western nations. That the methods are identical is not pretended ; only that the general principles on which those methods are based are the same. For all civilization is based on thought. Nations, like individuids, have their idiosyncrasies. The Frenchman differs much in thought from the German, although he is the AVest Frank. What we are dealing with in the East is often a distortion, or a stunting, of some perfectly normal process which in the West has had a freer development. We have never wrapped our women's feet in bandages, and we have learned comparatively early to cast off mental bandages — to some extent. -The East is suffering from arrested development. We are seeing ourselves as we were many generations back and as our history teaches us ; and we do not recognize the picture. Whether this arrest has worked to their disadvantage, or has been a lucky accident of Nature to train them in certain conservative habits peculiarly efficient to the maintenance of the race, remains to be seen. It can be aihnitted that our Aryan civilization is far more likely to die of brain fover. It is a grave mistake to regard that of the East as fallen into a senile decay. The two civilizations resemble in some respects the two flowers

* Dr. Kuox's trauslatiou, Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan Vo]. XX.

PREFACE. ill

which can be taken as their types. There is no more complete flower than the rose as known in the AVest. It is perfection of grace in form and delicacy of perfume. When it dies, it dies quickly and the petals fall in a pink or crimson shower. The camel ia is also a flower of grace in form. But in jjl ace of the living beauty of the rose it shows a Waxen texture that gives it an appearance of artificiality. It remains for weeks on the tree. On examination it is found that perhaps for weeks it has been a dead thing. The whole flower falls to the ground at a touch. The Japanese say that it is unpleasantly like a decapitation ; a proceeding with which they were very fomiliar as an every-day process and but a few years ago.

Civilization, East and West, can then fairly be contrasted on the same terms, and lessons can be drawn from, and made applicable to both. To do this it is necessary to sympathize with both, and this the writer thinks he can claim to do as having a stake in both hemispheres. Of course there can be a different interpretation of sympathy. To express sympathy with a "People" admits of some doubt as to the meaning of the term "People," but the interpretation perhaps is clearly enough marked in the following pages. There are many social questions troubling us to-day, East and West, and their history and their solution are much alike on both sides of the world. What Ave are struggling with is the question of the relation of men to each other ; that is of men to the State. And this question hovers, and always has hovered, between two poles — public control and public ownership of what goes to make up the national stock. It was the case in the days of the children of Heth and of the children of Israel. It holds as good for the times of Julius Ctcsar as for the twentieth century. Such a thing as private control has never existed. The question simply is — shall men combine in the State to preserve such conditions under which all can equitably exert themselves to their full powers and enjoy the fruition thereof; or shall men unite to form an abstract entity known as the State, and abandoning all effort to preserve equity among men, either enforce an equality which does not exist in nature or exact by force — as far as is possible — the full power of its units ? If the experience of history is worth anything on this point it teaches that the solution of the present ills that our civilization suffers under is not to be found in monopoly — of any kind. - Whether it be Government monopoly, individual monopoly, or communistic monopoly they are all equally bad. This question of monopoly, this old inheritance of ours from the ancient past, is quite within the fundamental powers of any state and always has been. The only basis of human society is equity ; protection against each other. The State is really the police, and these questions are simply questions of police.

Thi'oughout the term communism is used interchangeably with socialism, its special meaning — community of goods — having a retrospective not a present day meaning since the shibboleth of modern socialism — " all competition must cease " — reduces both iV PHBPACE.

to the same level.* Cominuuism is reully communityism and socialism is merely a uew name for an ancient practice. Communism or socialism can be deiijied as the fusion of the individual into an abstraction called the State, as distinct from that combination of individuals to form the State known as democracy. In communism the State eliter.s into control of the individual lo exploit him for the benefit of the community. It therefore goes far beyond the relations between individuals and takes possession of his person and his private life. There has been every grade of such extension of State power ; from the community of goods of tlie savage and the Shaker iu actual practice to the Utopias of Socialism iu theory. All those jjut in ])ractice on a national scale have ended in a despotism of the Asiatic type. Starting therefore with the old Japanese State wliich was based on a family and clan communism of the patriarchal type, gradually iu time widening its sphere, there is obtained a system in which the voice of the community becomes everything, and that of the individual is not heard. Monarch, family, ruling caste, all go down before the iron law of custom ; the necessary outcome when individualism is crushed out of the State. This is made the central theme. The development can be summarized as follows :

Chapter I, — Is a sketch of Japanese history in its formal development from earliest historical times. This is not a repetition of the sketch given in another book — Sakurambo — but is that phase which explains the present political and economic position of Japan. All history forms a connected whole, but what is sought here is the living nexus binding together pa.st and present. It is not a question of where, or when, or why a battlo Avas fought or a thing done a thousand years ago. It is the question as to why it still influences living issues to-day :

Chapter II. — Deals with the Japanese house from this point of view — its influence on Japanese thought in the past, and hence on the present :

• Thus Mr. Belfort Bax (Outlooks from tlie New Standpoint p. Ill) says that collectivism " presupposes a communistic organisation for all, by all." And of scarcity talent and its reward, he says (Religion of Socialism p. 77) " the gifted man should rather forego a portion cf his own legitimate share iu such material things. The utmost, however, that is contemplated by the socialist is his being placed ou an equal economical footing with his naturally inferior brother." This is simply following what Louis Blauc said (1S39) " Genius should assert its legitimate empire, not by the amount of the tribute which it will levy on .society, but by the greatness of the services which it will render." Louis Blanc followed Proudhon. Janet's definition of Socialism here holds good " we call Socialism every doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to correct the inequality of wealth which exists among men, and to legally establish the balance by taking from those who have too much in order to give to those who have not enough, and that in a permanent manner, and not in such and such a particular case— a famine, for instance, a public calamity, etc." (From Mr. Kiikups' " History of Socialism" pp. 5, 4G). Socialism only deals witli two political forms — the hi!4hly coutralisod .state advocated originally by St, Simon, and tho iiutonomoiia commune ndvocatod originally by Fourier and tho ideal of tho socialist anarchist wiug.

,PREPACE. * V

Chapter III. — Deals with circulation, material and mental. The means of transjwrting persons, things, and ideas from one part of the country to another has a powerful influence on development :

Chapter IV. — Treats of the general course and possibilties of crystallization or development — as the case may be :

Chapter V. — Treats of the subjects of the preceding chapters as reacting with religion — and the mutual influence :

Chapter VI. — Deals with the influence of mere living on custom. It does not seem possible for any higher organization to provide for everything in advance, trusting to development on a fissile process of life units to the parent stem. Custom itself will be made a basis for such differentiation as the inelasticity of mould allows. After all, that abstraction known as the community must find expression through certain units ; and these units are unable to erect any scheme broad enough to cover all future possibilities. This is well illustrated in the growth of the Japanese State, and there is no reason to believe that it would not be the fate of an artificial product — such as the socialist State :

Chapter VII. — Deals with the existing Japanese State in its relations to the pre-Meiji era and to the individualism introduced from the West. The influence of individualism on progress comes out clearer in the contrast of the two forms of development— evolution and substitution :

Chapter VIII.— Deals with woman as a modifying factor in the communal life. The fact that women should enter into industrial life as an independent competitor is of least as much importance in Japan as in the West. The position of woman. East and West, therefore determines her power and influence as a competitor :

Chapter IX. — Closes the book in general terms.

The first four chapters seek to fully define Japanese civilization and its influence. With this definition constantly in mind, contrasts and similarities in the succeeding chapters do not require an awkward interweaving and interrupting of any theme under discussion. The development of the last five chapters is therefore always to be taken in connection with the leading exposition. It implies a mental transfer of East to West, and vice versa.

More particular reference to authorities accompany the text. In a book covering so many subjects it is only possible to claim a fairly wide course of reading and to stick to widely known and accepted facts and theories. The general reader can be trusted to determine the source of such truisms aa " go to the ant thou sluggard " etc., without the aid and distraction of many footnotes. For the interlacing and development of the facts and theories, however, the writer must accept the full responsibility. The authorities as to " Things Japanese " have already been given in the preceding volume — Sakurambo — and need not here be repeated. I would add to them, however, Doctor Gulick's

Vl' PBEFAGE,

"Evolution of the Japanese," Mr. K. Asaka-^va's "Early Institutional Life of Japan," and a pai)er read by Doctor N. Gordon Munro on " Primitive Culture " (Asiatic Society of Japan, March 8th, 1006). " Coins of Japan " by the same author contains, in addition to the treatment of a special subject, much general information connected with it. The text for early Japanese history has been Mr. W. G. Aston's translation of the Nihongi. The notes of the learned commentator enable a free use to be made of this early record which in many ways lays traps and pitfiills for the unwary. The same author's " Shinto " is the chief authority on the native religion, apart from the translations of the " Ritual " by Sir Ernest Satow. The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan can be referred to in general terms. To do otherwise would be to reproduce the Index to the numerous volumes practically confined to " Things Japanese." Mention is also to be made of the original articles and resumes from the Japanese religious and secular Press found in the " Melanges Japonais " published in Tokyo and displaying the learning and acumen usually found in its clerical editors and contributors. With one exception (from the Satyricon of Petrouius) quotations from the classics and old English chronicles are taken from Bohn's translations.

The nine sections (or chapters) forming the volume practically stand by themselves. The same idea, however, controlling the whole the chapters follow in logical order developing the theme through its different phases. Many questions are touched upon and as there is no attempt made to confine them strictly to Japanese soil but to make a contrast with the corresponding phase in western thought the treatment is necessarily discursive. Everything, however, has its special application to the theme. What has been sought is completeness. It has also been attempted to put everything in as light a form as the subject allowed so that he who runs may read. Plainness of language has been the intention all events. " Plainness of language " can be repeated, for subjcts have to be touched upon which do not always admit of delicate handling. One cannot always write virginibus puerisque. On this point, however, we will take refuge in a quotation from the clever Welsh arch-deacon. Giraldus Cambrensis says : — " Since, tlicrefore, no man is born without " faults, and he is esteemed the best whose errors are the least, " let the wise man consider everything human as connected with "himself; for in worldly affairs there is no perfect happiness " under heaven. P2vil borders upon good, and vices are con- " founded with virtues ; as the report of good qualities is delightful "to a well disposed mind, so the relation of the contrary should " not be offensive."

Omarudani, February 27th, 1907.

I. From First Beginnings

" It is fit tliat the Past should be dark ; though the " darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of " tradition. It is not a distance of time but a distance " of relation, whicli makes thus dusky its memorials. " What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and "bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny " in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight of " her literature and art. — " A Week on the Concord."

§ 1.

It would be interesting to speculate as to what would have been the history of Europe if a continuous chain of islands forming a barrier reef, physical and political, had extended from the North Cape of Scandinavia to the Azores. Indeed to some degree the efiect of such a barrier has been seen, and is seen to-day, in the influence exerci.sed on the mainland by Scandinavia and the British Isles thrown athwart the north western corner, lands inhabited by a fierce and enterpiising sea going population, and which for many centuries practically confined the enterprises of continental Europe within its own borders. The sea going power of Scandinavia, and later of England, has writ its name large across the history of Northern Europe, and when we find a similar physical condition existing to a far greater degree along the eastern coast of Asia, from the extreme northern point at Behring Straits to the southern continent of Australia, we very naturally attribute the difference in political results to the human factor involved. 1 here must be a difference in the mental development or equipment of the men who in East and West were placed under such similar conditions of environment. It must be confessed that at first sight the cause for such difference does not clearly exist. In both cases for many centuries, great empires with a high civilization existed, to cast their influence over more uncivilized neighbours, and in both cases these great empires were overrun by invading hordes, in turn to conquer their conquerors by their improved arts. The Aryan brain, however, seems not so much to need a model as to have the impetus given to it. If they lacked originality in their pastoral condition they did not lack imagination, as the remains of their folklore show. Restless by habit and essentially enterprising from reaction of mind on matter, the past never satisfied the race, and if it was not change of habit change of condition has spurred them on. The history of the peoples of Asia has been radically different. The ^Mongolian races do not lack either iu fierceness or mol)ility, but they do lack imagination. They have ranged from tlie ir'acific to the Atlantic Ocean. In their raids they have been brought into violent contact with the great civilizations of the Avestern Mediterranean, but tlie contact has aroused in them no originative process. The vitality expressed in the western civilizations has' aroused no answering chord in their mental equipment. On the contrary, the unimaginative, unbending system evolved by the greatest of these peoples — the Chinese — has instinctively appealed to them. Based on their own paternal system it has been the model of all the Jlongolian peoples of Asia. It has made no call on them for what was not there — imagination and progress.

How long man has been an item on Nature's ledger is not very germane to our subject. One western scientist gives him about seventy thousand years ; others more liberal niake it three times that period. If, as the geological maps of Europe in the Tertiary and early Pleistocene give reason to believe, his original habitat was that Eur- African continent represented now by the British Isles, western France, and the Mediterranean shores of Africa, he has had plenty of time to wander fir and wide. The two extremes present peculiarities of tyj)e due to isolation in their respective corners. The American, early cut oH' from all association with his kind, evolved a civilization''' of no mean order. These peoples had walled and fortified towns built of stone and brick, a representative government, an industrial population whose skill in the textile arts and in ornamental gold and silver and copper work aroused the admiration of their Spanish invaders, and their skill in the use of feathers as a material for ornamental dresses is now practically a lost art. Most important of all they had a phonetic element in their alphabet which was not mere picture writing. Tliat this civilization under its then conditions had a very promising future before it there is some reason to doubt, for it seemed to be crystallizing into fixed and

* The term civilization is used here in its looser sense to avoid an awkward iuter-repetition of the two terms, "barbarism" and "civilization." Tlie latter does, and the former can, describe a society in which there is a settled form of government, a people practising the arts and living in settlements and in houses of more or less elaborate construction, and with wliat we would call iu our modern sense " improvements," and possessed of a written language. The best distinctiou between the two terms is perhaps found in Professor Fiske's " Discovery of America " Vol, I pp. 24-38, in which he follows and elaborates on the theory of Mr, Lewis Morgan. One can readilj' appreciate why Professor Fiske withholds the teim civilization from tlie bloody I^Iexicau confederation, although it was possessed of the qunlifications of government, a great city, and a written lanptiage ; as also can be understood his hesitation in withholding the term from the more advanced Peruvian empire, which added to most of these qualifications, f;reat public improvements in the way of reads and posts, and a highly centralized imperial government over a vast territoiy, but readied no higher than the guipus, as a method of recording events, a purely mcflmnical. apparatus the key to which orally g4veu and once lostj was lost forever, --"i v .

FROM FIRST BEGINNIJTGS. ^

set formulas ivhich barred farther progress- in their narrow limits, and in this respect presented a curious analogy to the great nation separated from them by the ^viJe expanse of the Pacific. Their Asian neighbours, however, had an advantage. The Mongolians, as represented by the Chinese, had undoubted contact in remote antiquity with the great civilizations of western Asia — Chaldea and Assyria — and in more recent times with the Aryan races of India. The Chinese were not absolutc'ly isolated in their development, and the Chinese ^yere the standard for the Mongolian races of the North. AVhether subjecting these ])eopl&s to her rule or being over run and subjected in turn by them, all that the Chinese possessed, whether original or lx)rrowed, passed into the heritage of the Mongolian tribes. The Semitic element in Cliinese civilization is of no small importance. Antedating in their authentic history the legendary history of China by tAVO thousand years, the Chaldean shepherds early evolved an astronomy, hence mathematics, hence an influence on architecture and the ai-ts that have left their traces even on the ancient Middle Kingdom ; and, more important, have turned her philosophers to the contemplation of order on earth as exemplified by order in the heavens, a condition of thought which in Confucius and Laotsze took a peculiarly practical and prosaic direction.

§2.

Now it is a nlattcr of history that the European peoples were not . on such terms with each other that their difierent migrations took place without internal friction. It was by no means a happy family arrangement, but on the contrary largely an apt illustration of that negative law of Nature known as the Survival of the Fittest. In these fiimily collisions the victor took the young women, knocked the aged on the head, and of the surviving able bodied male prisoners among his ojiponents turned such portion as he was able to digest into soup and ragouts and made the rest slaves. Perhaps Ave can exempt the Aryan from the more immediate and recent charge of cannibalism which seems to have been practically universal in prehistoric times. Even in recent times, however, our ancestors were addicted to drinking an enemy's blood or eating some of the more important organs of the body as a specific for courage. Aggravated mavliem we might also call the action of tlic Irish jiiince, Dermot MacMurrough who, on seeing the head of his particular aversion, savagely bit and tore with his teeth the lips and nose. This was in 1170, A.D. There is no reason to believe that there was any less family friction among the yellow races, and by the time the Japanese reached their island home we need not believe tliat their frame of mind was so cast as to lead them tj dispense v»"ith the mailed fist and adopt a milder form of persuasion. Nowhere and at no time has such lieen the case and the only peaceful immigration has been into unoccupied lands — if sucli have ever existed in the World's history.

Hence the first appearance of the Japanese in the archipelago is in the role of a warrior race, for the islands were already occupied by a people but little advanced in barbarism, fairly comparable perhaps to the negritos or to the Australian tribes. As to Avho this indigenous ])eople were there is no little amount of controversy. The Stone Age is well represented in Japan by neolithic implements, which lead to a belief in a type of savagery or barbarism not aa far advanced as the lake dwellers of Europe of about 1,500 B.C. That is as nuich as can be gathered from Japanese sources. These deal with legends relating to contests with two widely different peoples. They had to struggle with early immigrants of their own race and the accounts so marked can be readily distinguished. But these legends also refer to struggles with an indigenous race — the Ycmishi — and to "earth spiders" as the Kojiki calls them. Beyond the fact that in part, at least, they seemed to be Troglodytes or cave dwellers little information is given of them except to distinguish them as aliens and to carry on a w«r of extermination Avith them. it is the nature of this warfare, the absolute irreconcileability of the two races, by which the legends mark off this indigenous race. Cave dwellings, to-day, are common enough ; but those jiow in existence have been plainly proved to be Japanese. Although the Ainu, nowonly found in Hokkaido, are mentioned — as Yemishi — in the Kojiki and Nihongi, this may be a name given to them later than some of the earlier lengends, and the same people may be referred to throughout in the old records;. The absence of any tradition of an immigration among the Ainu themselves, or of » contest to gain their present habitat ha« lal good judges to believe that the " earth spiders " wore the Ainu themselves. In fact evidence of the existence of a third contestant is purely negative. Indigenous names have all been traced to known sources — Ainu, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Indigenous implements do not differ essentially from those attributed to the early Yemishi, and indigenous habits, even to cave dwelling at the present day, is in no wise different from that attribute<l to the present aboriginal race — the Ainu. It can be addtxl that no such settled condition as Avas known in Europe during the Stone Age existed in Japan. No such collection of stone dwellings evidencing not only settlement but some industrial and even religious developmeiit as at Trer Ceiri in Wales.*