a new-englander in japan

Preface

Tuts book is the story of a New-Englander who, like many of his neighbors and kinsmen, found a career far beyond the limits of his native State. The westward adventure carried him farther than it did most of his contemporaries, and his life-work was done in the Island Empire beyond the Pacific.

In telling this story of my father’s life, I have had to deal at the outset with the environment in which he grew up — with the Puritan tradition which he inherited and which was still a vital force in the New England of his youth. It is now the fashion to concentrate attention on the unamiable aspects of Puritanism; nor is it easy, when dealing with mental attitudes quite alien to the prevailing temper of our time, to avoid the kind of caricature now current. Those whose approach is more sympathetic need, in turn, to be on their guard against prepossessions of the opposite kind. I can only say, as a historian by trade, that I have tried to present things as they were, rather than as I could wish them to have been — to explain rather than to pass judgment.

Throughout his life, my father was primarily a missionary and the motives which determined his choice of that career were not essentially different from those which appealed to other religious men of his time. More and more, however, he came to think of his special form of service as vitally related to a wide range of human interests. Fortunately, too, the country to which he went was passing through experiences of a kind peculiarly adapted to broaden his interests and enlarge his sympathies. The forty-four years of his service in Japan (1869-1913) very nearly coincided with the Meiji era of Japanese history, when the transition from feudal to modern society took place. Of that transformation, in its many and varied aspects, he was a close and sympathetic observer,

Vili PREFACE establishing personal contacts, in town and country and in every class of society, of a kind quite beyond the reach of the casual tourist or even the ordinary resident of a ‘treaty port.’ In his later years he was one of the recognized experts in ‘things Japanese.’

Naturally the passing years brought him a clearer understanding of the Japanese point of view in relation to the various problems resulting from closer intercourse with Western nations. He was, for instance, one of the early foreign critics of the extraterritorial jurisdiction exercised by Western governments in Japan. A discriminating, though friendly, critic of Japanese society, he felt keenly his responsibility as an interpreter of that society to his own countrymen and as a defender of his Japanese friends against ignorant or malicious criticism. Thus he became, more truly than most diplomatists, a mediator between the country of his birth and the people among whom he lived.

In preparing this book, which I have tried to make not merely a personal record but in some measure a contribution to the history of my father’s time, my chief reliance has been upon his correspondence. Extending, as these papers do, with no serious interruptions, from 1864 to 1913, they have enabled me to tell much of the story in his own words. Through the courtesy of Secretaries J. L. Barton and E. F. Bell of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, I have been permitted to read the official correspondence in their files. For some similar material I am indebted to the mission boards of the Reformed (Dutch) and Presbyterian Churches, and to the American Bible Society. These official papers I have supplemented by the use of a large number of personal letters. Though the narrative is based mainly on manuscript sources, I have used also material published by the Japan Mission, or by individual ‘members of it, together with biographies of some of my

PREFACE ix father’s older colleagues. For the earlier chapters and for the background generally, I have naturally drawn from many sources, which it has not seemed practicable to indicate in detail here. It is my intention, however, to deposit in the Library of the Andover Theological Seminary in Cambridge, a copy of this book, in which my authorities will be more specifically indicated.

For generous coéperation in various ways, I am indebted to many friends on both sides of the Pacific — an indebtedness imperfectly expressed in the acknowledgments I am able to make here. To my uncle, Roger S. Greene, I owe much of my information about my father’s early years. Professor Edward Y. Hincks, an Andover student in my father’s time and later a member of the Seminary faculty, kindly prepared for me a paper embodying his reminiscences, from which I have quoted freely, At Dartmouth College I was permitted to consult the college records; several of my father’s classmates, there and at Andover, have helped me to form a more definite impression of his student years. For similar assistance in connection with later chapters, I am under obligations to the Reverend L. B. Cholmondeley and Professor J. T. Swift, two of my father’s Tokyo friends, and the late W. B. Mason of Yokohama.

Through correspondence and conversation I have learned much that I should otherwise have missed. I should like to mention in this connection some of the Japanese friends who have been especially helpful: In Tokyo, Mr. T. Aritomi, Professor U. Bessho, Mr. Eigo Fukai, Professor N. Kishimoto, Mr. K. Kondo, Mr. J. Kono, the Reverend H. Kozaki, Mr. T. Murai, Mr. Iichiro Tokutomi, the Reverend K. Tomeoka, the Reverend K. Tsunashima, Professor K. Ukita, Mr. Y. Yamada, Mr. Jiro Yuasa; in Kobe, Mr. T. Yokoi, Mrs. Kawamoto; in Kyoto, President D. Ebina, the Reverend T. Matsuyama and Mrs. Matsuyama, Mr.

b PREFACE

E. Nakamura; in Osaka, the Reverend T. Miyagawa; in © Honolulu, Professor T. Harada.

I owe very much to my father’s colleagues in the Je apan Mission: the Reverend S. C. Bartlett, Dr. J. C. Berry, Dr. Otis Cary, Dr. Edward S. Cobb, Miss M. F. Denton, Mrs. M. L. Gordon, Miss Annie L. Howe, and Dr. Dwight W. Learned. Dr. Cary’s painstaking care in reading the greater part of the book in proof has enabled me to avoid some errors into which I should otherwise have fallen.

Finally, I should like to say that this book has been made possible largely through the codperation of my brothers and sisters.

Evarts B. GREENE

Contents

. A New Encianp Famity, 1780-1843 1 . A New Enacitanp Boynoop, 1843-1864 30 . Mippite-WesterN EXPERIENCES AND DdECcISIONS,

1864-1867 43 . New Encianp Acain. ANDOVER IN THE SIXTIES 59 . From New ENcuanp To JAPAN, 1869-1870 78 . A Treaty Port IN THE Earty SEVENTIES 101 . Missionary ProsBLems AND PRocESSES 114 . Tue BIBteE In JAPANESE 139 . Tue Missionary AND THE CHANGING ORDER 160 . Otp anpD New rin Kyoro, 1881-1887. Tur Dosut-

SHA 188 . East anp West, 1887-1890. GERMANY IN THE

Chapter I A New England Family, 1780-1843

Mucu has been said in recent years about New England provincialism, but the term does not quite adequately express the New-Englander’s attitude toward the world beyond his borders and even unsympathetic critics have had something to say about the ‘ubiquitous Yankee.’ In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he took the lead in commerce with the West Indies, with the African coast, and with the countries of southern Europe. In the early years of the Republic, when the American flag began to appear on the China coast, New England furnished more than its share of the capital and the seamanship required for these pioneer enterprises. Later still, in the middle nineteenth century, the Yankee clipper ships earned for their owners and commanders an international reputation.

While New England merchants were establishing business relations with distant peoples, the inheritors of the Puritan tradition were beginning adventures no less far-reaching in the cause of religion. The pioneer American agency for international missionary service, founded about a quarter-century after the opening of American trade with Canton, was ‘The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,’ with headquarters in Boston. Though the ‘American Board,’ as it is usually called, ultimately developed a national constituency, it was at first a distinctly New England institution, supported by the more aggressive upholders of Puritan orthodoxy. Within a quarter-century after the founding of this society in 1810, its agents made their way - to the Near East, to India, China, and the Hawaiian Islands. About forty years after the sailing of its first missionaries _ to China, and fifteen years after Commodore Perry’s treaty opened Japan to a limited intercourse with Western nations, the Board took advantage of this new opportunity for the extension of its work in the Far East. In 1869, its first representative, Daniel Crosby Greene, then a young man of twenty-six, began a service for and with the Japanese people which continued until his death in 1913. During those forty-four years, he was to share in many ways with his Japanese friends the hopes and fears, the trials and achievements of that transition from feudal to modern Japan which is known as the ‘Meiji Era.’ To determine the precise influence of any man’s contribution to the life of the New Japan is of course impossible. It has seemed worth while, however, to tell a plain story of the experiences, problems, and services of this representative American friend of the Japanese in the hope of contributing something toward better mutual understanding in this era of increasingly close contact between Western Christendom and the Far East.

Daniel Crosby Greene, who was born at Roxbury, Massachusetts, now within the corporate limits of Boston, on February 11, 1843, was the son of David and Mary Evarts Greene. On both sides of the house, he came of typical New England Puritan stock. The paternal grandfather, Thomas Green, was, with several of his brothers, a young soldier in the Revolutionary War, and after his military service he settled down in Stoneham, a small town about nine miles from Boston. There he married Anna Knight and brought up a large family of children on a very modest income, his chief occupation being that of a carpenter and builder. One operation on which he is said to have been engaged was the construction of the Charles River Bridge in 1786-87. Though listed in 1784 as one of the smallest taxpayers in the town, and apparently never acquiring much property, his name appears three times in the list of selectmen. The biography of one of his sons, published while the father was still living, speaks of the latter as ‘much respected for his industry and Integrity and for being the uniform and decided supporter of good institutions and good order’; ‘though not a professor of religion,’ he was ‘a punctual attendant on public worship and highly exemplary in all the ordinary moral duties.’ In this loyalty to the established order in state, church, and society, without formal church membership, Thomas Green was typical of a large class in the New England communities of that day; for admission to full communion depended on a statement of spiritual experience which serious-minded men even then found difficult.

In this family, it was the wife who represented the more intense religious feeling. Anna Knight Green is described by the biographer just quoted as a ‘plain woman, with no more education than usually fell to the lot of a common farmer’s daughter,’ but sensible and of an ‘aimiable temper,’ ‘perhaps rather pensive.’ It is again quite in accord with Puritan traditions that she did not enter the church early in life under the influence of prevailing social conventions, but as the result of conversion, which, in her case, came some years after her marriage. The religious training which she gave her children included, as usual at that time, a thorough drill in that standard Puritan textbook, the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism.

The educational facilities of Stoneham in those days were extremely limited. A recent town historian could find up to the middle of the nineteenth century only two persons besides the ministers, who were college graduates. Thomas Green took a serious interest in the education of his children, but his expectations for them seem at first to have been comparatively modest. They were sent to a district school, taught only for a few months in the year, and then the boys were to

‘learn some good trade.’ One son, Samuel, was apprenticed to a ‘mason and bricklayer’ and another learned the carpenter’s trade. The bricklayer’s apprentice, however, developed a keen interest in higher education, and financial difficulties were finally overcome sufficiently to enable him, at the age of eighteen, to enter Phillips Academy at Andover; there he was followed a few years later by his younger brother, David.

Phillips Academy, founded during the American Revolution, was already a famous school when the older of the two brothers entered it in 1809. Timothy Dwight, then president of Yale College, spoke of it in his well-known ‘ Travels in New England and New York,’ as ‘the most respectable institution of its kind within my knowledge.’ As conceived by its founders, the school was not only to train boys in the classics and other academic studies, ‘but more especially to learn them the great end and real business of living,’ or as Dwight put it, to promote ‘virtue and true piety.’ This emphasis on moral and religious training was perhaps never more marked than under the vigorous leadership of the famous schoolmaster, John Adams, who was principal of the Academy during this period.

An interesting glimpse of school life in those days is preserved in the letters of William Person, a ‘foundation scholar’ preparing himself for the ministry. Writing in April, 1814, he spoke of the school with pride as ‘a kind of college’ giving in its later years some distinctly collegiate work. He was most impressed, however, with the religious spirit of the place. The general exercises, including morning and afternoon prayers, seemed to him ‘delightful.’ With the prayers and Bible reading there was also the singing of ‘Watts’ psalms or hymns.’ ‘Every scholar must learn to sing’ and seniors were expected to ‘comment on scriptural texts.” On Sundays, there was compulsory church attendance, and the sermon had to be listened to, for an abstract might be called for on the following day. Aside from the devotional exercises, there were formal recitations on moral and religious topics. On Monday morning, for instance, the boys had to recite on ‘ten pages of Vincent’s explanations of the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism’; for a similar exercise on Saturday, there was ‘an inestimable tract by Mason on self knowledge.’ A full programme, when combined with declamations on Wednesday afternoons and ‘our common classical studies,’ not to speak of the ‘chores’ which fell to the lot of some of the boys.

In 1808, the religious traditions of the Academy were reénforced by the opening of another institution on Andover Hill. Founded by the united efforts of the orthodox elements in the Congregational churches, the Andover Theological Seminary became the chief stronghold of the traditional New England theology, against the formidable Unitarian movement. Orthodoxy could no longer be successfully defended by mere repetition of old phrases and the Seminary called into its service some really able men. It is not to be supposed that many schoolboys were deeply concerned with controversial theology; but the relations of the Academy with the Seminary were close and in a country village like Andover the two institutions combined to produce an atmosphere thoroughly charged with the Puritan spirit. The seriousness with which some of the boys responded to such influences is indicated by Person’s letters and by the personal experience of Samuel Green himself. Though in the case of the latter formal church membership came several years later, the life at Andover seems to have deepened the religious impressions which he brought from his country home.

The later career of Samuel Green is also suggestive, both because of the direct influence which he seems to have had on his younger brother, and because it throws light on the religious background of the next generation. From Andover, he went to the radically different environment of Harvard College. Since the election of Henry Ware to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity in 1805, Harvard had definitely aligned itself with the Unitarian element in the Congregational churches. The general tone of college life was also adverse to the type of religious feeling encouraged at Andover. Green’s convictions were, however, too firmly fixed to be much changed by the new conditions. He associated himself with a few like-minded students in an organization called the Saturday Evening Society, which sought, in the words of his biographer, ‘to preserve the existence of a pure faith in this venerable seat of science.’ Though his relations with the faculty in other respects seem to have been satisfactory and though, after serious interruptions due to ill-health, he finally received his bachelor’s degree with high standing in 1817, his hostility to the prevailing tendencies at Harvard carried him definitely over into the opposing camp.

Harvard studies were followed by a return to the congenial associations of Andover Theological Seminary and it was only then that Samuel Green thought himself prepared for church membership. Some written statements prepared by him on this occasion show how fully he shared the traditional Puritan modes of feeling and expression. A formal narrative of his religious experience begins with the stirrings of the religious impulse in childhood, the sense of his ‘lost and undone state without a Saviour,’ followed by lapses into ‘a sort of carnal security’ alternating with periods of doubts and distress. He found himself ‘opposed to the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel. ...I cavilled at the doctrine of election; I wanted some hope to rest upon, and, if possible, to throw the blame of my guilt from myself, and even ventured to charge it upon a holy God ...I enjoyed little or no hope till within the past year... I acknowledge I now am far from certain whether I have ever been born again.’ ‘But,’ the confession ends, ‘I will, through the assistance of divine grace, put all my confidence in him who pitieth our weaknesses, and remembereth that we are dust.’

Fortified by the austere spirit of the Seminary and disciplined in its theological system, this ardent young defender of the Puritan faith passed, after two years of college teaching at Bowdoin, into pastoral service. From his first parish at Reading, close to his old home town, he was called in 1822 to the Union Church in Essex Street, Boston. This ‘new station on the walls of Zion’ was formed by orthodox members from several congregations after the definite division between the Unitarian and Trinitarian churches had carried most of the older parishes over into the Unitarian camp. Here Green remained until the breakdown of his health compelled him to withdraw from active service. His whole pastoral career covered little more than a decade; but during that period he was recognized as one of the most vigorous and influential leaders of the Puritan revival in eastern Massachusetts.

The type of Calvinistic piety which Samuel Green represented is almost, if not quite, extinct even among the leaders of his own communion and is not easily interpreted now even to religiously minded persons; but it must certainly be reckoned with by any student of New England society in the nineteenth century. Itsmorbid aspects naturally arrest attention and its intolerance of theological differences. What made the Puritan revival in spite of these defects still an invigorating influence in many directions was its steady emphasis on the personal responsibility of the humblest and most imperfect individual, the essential dignity of his calling as an instrument in fulfilling the divine purposes for mankind.

In view of Samuel Green’s attitude toward the Unitarian movement and the close association of Harvard College with that movement, it was natural that the younger brother, David, should choose instead the more conservative associations of Yale, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1821.

The dominating personality at New Haven, during the early years of the nineteenth century, was President ‘Timothy

Dwight, who died in 1817 shortly before David Greene’s ! matriculation. During the twenty-two years of his presi-— dency, Dwight was not only an academic personage but one of the most conspicuous and effective defenders of the ‘standing order’ in Church and State. When be began his work at the college religious feeling of the traditional kind was at a low ebb; but, under his influence largely, the whole tone of student life was radically changed and Yale became once more a bulwark of orthodox Calvinism. All this was quite in harmony with David Greene’s earlier training at home and at Andover.

A serious-minded youth, much troubled at times about his religious problems, Greene was not so much preoccupied with these personal experiences as to prevent his taking high rank as a student; a standing sufficient to bring him, shortly after graduation, the offer of a tutorship in the college. There was time also for some lasting friendships and even for the ‘careless and quiet gaiety of college life,’ as he wrote a few years later in a letter to his most intimate friend a@ propos of an approaching college reunion. The intellectual discipline provided in that day had its backbone in the classics and the upper classes were instructed in philosophy along with theological lectures by the college professor of divinity.

After college came a year of teaching in a Boston school for girls, and apparently some questionings as to his future career. A letter to a Yale classmate, recalling pleasant memories of college days and speaking with special feeling about the death of a much-admired teacher, ends on a note of self-depreciation. He reproaches himself with living ‘rather idly and very uselessly ... not flattering myself with any very pleasing prospects .. . nor feeling half so anxious about my life in future, as the hurrying months ought to make me.’ Meantime, however, he was keeping up his associations with

_ 1This spelling, with the final e, was the one ° adopted by David Greene, possibly a reversion to an older usage.

college friends then studying theology at Andover. There he presently joined them, though his theological studies were interrupted for one year by a teaching engagement in an academy at Amherst, Massachusetts.

The Andover Seminary of the twenties was still the outstanding intellectual center of orthodox Calvinism. Leonard Woods, the Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, and Moses Stuart, Professor of Sacred Literature, were in their prime as teachers and controversialists, crossing swords from time to time with the Unitarians in Boston and Cambridge. They aimed to keep safely within the limits of orthodoxy as defined in the ‘Associates Creed’ of the Seminary — a formidable document from a twentieth-century point of view, though sufficiently comprehensive to shelter more or less divergent groups within the Calvinistic fold.

With strenuous orthodoxy, Andover combined genuine zeal for scholarship. College graduation was the normal requirement for admission and the Seminary prided itself on helping to pull up college standards. Moses Stuart, entering on his duties with a meager linguistic equipment, became one of the notable promoters of Hebrew scholarship in this country, and also a pioneer in the study of contemporary German theology. Indeed, some friends of the Seminary complained that students were giving too much attention to the writings of ‘lax and infidel writers and commentators.’ Stuart insisted, however, on the necessity of acquainting his pupils with the results of German scholarship. It was, he said, ‘a very mistaken prudence’ ‘that makes an Index Expurgatorius to a Library for the use of theological students’; such a library should not ‘consist only of those books the sentiments of which are approved.’ It seemed to these robust controversialists that their pupils and successors should know something of the enemy’s weapons as well as of their own. The respect for scholarship shown by their teachers had a marked influence on the Andover graduates of the next half-century, a remarkable proportion of whom became college presidents and professors. Especially notable was the contribution which Andover made in this way to the cause of higher education in the Middle West. In the field of foreign missions also. Andover scholarship made an enviable record, especially in Biblical translation. .

With all its concern for scholarship, the Seminary also emphasized the need of cultivating the devotional spirit. Woods wrote of himself and his colleagues that ‘while we gave importance to literary acquisition, we gave a still higher place to spiritual improvement.’ The regulations of the Seminary required that every public lecture be ‘preceded and followed by prayer’; the Sunday sermons to the students should be ‘devout, practical, doctrinal, and pungent, rather than speculative and metaphysical.’ The importance of church music was also recognized by the founders, as it was by the promoters of the evangelical revival generally. Serious attention should be given to the forming of ‘a true taste for genuine Church Music.’ Students who had ‘tolerable voices’ for singing were to be ‘duly instructed in the theory and practice of this celestial art.” An important feature of student life from the beginning was the keen interest in foreign missions. The founders of the Seminary belonged to the same group of clergy and laymen who had been active in the American Board. A large proportion of the early missionaries were trained at Andover and the record of their achievements was cherished as a prime source of inspiration for the younger men. The feeling was not altogether unlike that with which, in the seventeenth century, the young recruits of the Society of Jesus were stirred to emulation of the pioneer missionaries in America and the Far East.

In the Seminary, as at Yale, David Greene was regarded by his associates as a man of distinctly religious temperament, with exacting standards of conduct for himself and for others as well. It was here that, in 1825, at the age of twenty-eight, he first formally became a church member. Intellectually he made his mark as a well-informed man and a clear thinker; but a friendly critic recalled some lack of ‘facility and gracefulness in speaking.’ Perhaps this limitation helps to explain why he never undertook the responsibilities of a permanent pastorate though he did a few years after graduation receive formal ordination as an ‘evangelist.’ In any case, the career which he chose was a natural outcome of his Andover training with its strong missionary spirit. He finished his theological course in 1826 and later in the same year became one of the assistant secretaries of the American Board. In this position and in the full secretaryship to which he was promoted six years later, he continued until in 1848 ill-health compelled him to retire from his chosen profession.

So it came about that, for more than twenty years, the most intimate personal and official associations of David Greene were those of Boston and its immediate neighborhood. His professional interests brought him into the closest relations with the activities — religious, philanthropic, and educational — which gathered about the upper end of Boston Common and the adjacent section of the old town. For many years his daily routine took him back and forth from his home on Pinckney Street (beyond the Beacon Street side of the Common) to Hanover Street and Cornhill. In 1836, he moved with his family to the neighboring village of Roxbury; but he still could, and often did, walk from his Roxbury house to his Boston office. His son Crosby was not born until the later years of his life in Roxbury; but the old Boston life of the thirties and forties is an essential part of the family background.

The Boston of 1826 was a small city, judged by twentieth-century standards. The Federal census of 1830 showed about sixty thousand inhabitants, largely confined to the small peninsular area of colonial days. The old town was nevertheless full of life and energy. Between 1820 and 1850 the population was more than trebled and the processes which have made the modern city were well under way. During the early years of this period, maritime interests dominated the life of the community to an extent hardly realizable at the present time. As late as 1840, the Federal census of ‘persons employed’ in the city of Boston, showed more persons listed under ‘Navigation of the Ocean’ than under all the other headings put together. Boston capital was largely invested in trade with the East Indies and China; such firms as Bryant and Sturgis and Russell and Company were well known in the Far East. It was also a time of transition from the sailing ship to the trans-Atlantic steamer. The great era of the clipper ship came in the forties and fifties; but contemporary with this development was the inauguration in 1840, of regular steamship service between Liverpool and Boston. By 1843, this modern improvement had become an old story, and Amos Lawrence remarked that the arrival of the Liverpool boat caused scarcely more excitement than would have been felt fifty years earlier by the inhabitants of Groton over the coming of the weekly stage from Boston.

Manufactures, however, were developing and increasing the interest of Massachusetts in the protective tariff policy of the Whig party, though there were occasional setbacks. In 1829, David Greene wrote to a friend in New Haven about one such period of discouragement: ‘Every body here in Boston is failing, and all looks like general bankruptcy. The manufactories in which our capitalists have engaged so largely are found to be great sink-holes, as the Western people call them, without bottom.’ Another interest, attaching Massachusetts more firmly to the rest of the country, was railroad-building. In the early thirties journeys from Boston to Worcester and Lowell were still taken by stage; but in 1835 steam railroad communication was established with both these cities and by 1841 trains were running through to Albany. An interesting indication of popular interest in this revolutionary enterprise is the statement of one of its chief promoters, that the financing of it “commenced and has been completed by the middling class in the community.’ Significant also of the connection between the economic history of the period and its religious enterprises is the fact that in 1843 the American Board ventured to hold its annual meeting as far west as Rochester, New York.