The Japanese nation; its land, its people, and its life, with special consideration to its relations with the United States

Front matter

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Preface

THE present work is the outcome of my labours as Japanese exchange professor in this country, during the academic year of 1911-12, and I take this opportunity of explaining how my work began and ended.

The idea of sending public men of note unofficially from this country to Japan and from Japan to the United States, owes its inception to Mr. Hamilton Holt of New York City. When his plan had been developed to a certain degree of feasibility, the task of carrying it into effect was accepted by President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, in whose hands the idea took the more practical if the less ambitious form of an exchange professorship, and he interested certain typical universities to join in putting it into effect. After the enterprise was fairly launched, the responsibility for its continuance was passed on to, and made a part of, the work of the Carnegie Peace Endowment. My labours commenced after the project had reached its second stage of development — namely, while the Universities concerned had the matter in their immediate charge.

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Preface

In the spring of last year, the six American Universities of Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Illinois, and Minnesota— representing the Eastern, Southern, and Middle- Western portions of the Continent— united in instituting an exchange of lecturers with Japan. The object of the scheme— as I take it— is the interchange of right views and sentiments between the two peoples, rather than a mutual giving and taking of strictly academic knowledge. The appointees, whether men of science or men of affairs or of literary reputation, are expected to be convoys of warm human feeling rather than of cold scientific truth.

Through President Butler and our Embassy in Washington, negotiations were started between the said Universities and the Japanese Government. The latter expressed its readiness to meet the proposal; whereupon the association formed of those business men who visited this country a few years ago, entered into the spirit of the undertaking by assuming the financial responsibility, provided the Government would help by recommending a man for the task.

Late in June, I was unexpectedly asked to come to the United States on this deHghtful, though arduous, mission, the Government releasing me for a year from the duties of my official posts as President of the First National College, as Professor of Colonial Policy in the Imperial University of Tokyo, and as Adviser to the Formosan

Preface vii

Government. I accepted the honour with sincere pleasure and yet with trepidation. Is it necessary to explain why the appointment gave me pleasure? Reasons which will naturally suggest themselves to everyone — an enjoyable trip, meeting with congenial people, renewing old acquaintance, taking my wife to her native home, the honour of being the first exchange professor from my country — all had their due share in my willingness to come. But there was a particular reason which made the proposal singularly attractive to me. Allow me to relate a personal incident.

Nearly thirty years ago, when applying for admission to the University in Tokyo as a student, I selected English Literature for my minor course, in addition to my major study of Economics. The Dean of the Department of Literature questioned me as to my motive for combining these two apparently unrelated branches of learning. "I wish, sir, to be a bridge across the Pacific," I replied. On being pressed for further explanation, I threw aside the metaphor and told him of my desire to be a means of transmitting the ideas of the West to the East, and of the East to the West. Though it was a fancy of youth, it was a wish that had been slowl}^ forming during my collegiate days, and though the days of youth have long since gone by, the fancy has remained, waxing stronger with the progress of years.

To transmit a thought from one to another may not require an intellect of high order or an original viii Preface

cast of mind; but I am more than willing to play a second or even a third part, if I can thereby add a note — be it ever so low — toward the fuller harmony of diverse nations or of discordant notions.

Here then is my chief motive for accepting the responsibility of an untried duty which I did not enter upon boldly. No one knows better than myself how far short of its great object I have fallen, and — may I add? — ^how much farther I should have fallen if I had not had the constant assistance and never-failing attention of my wife. I must not omit a word of recognition for the loyal service rendered throughout my stay in the States by my friend and companion, Mr. Yusuke Tsurumi.

The regular demands of the lectureship consisted in delivering in each University a course of eight addresses. For these I chose the subjects given in Chapters I to VI inclusive, and Chapters VIII and XI. Chapter VII — on Education — is based on an address made before the Barnard Club in Providence, and before the Teachers* Club in Columbia University, also before the Pedagogical Seminary of Johns Hopkins. The chapter on Japan as Coloniser is an amplification of remarks made, without notes, in the Japan Conference held at Clark University, and, later, before the National Geographic Association in Washington. Chapter X is a reproduction of the paper sent to the meeting of the American Historical Association in Buffalo, December, 191 1, when illness prevented

Preface ix

tne from attending in person. The final chapter, with some slight verbal changes, is a copy of the Convocation Address which I had the honour of making at the University of Chicago near the close of last year. The first address which I delivered in this country was in response to the invitation of Leland Stanford Jr. University; but, as it contains a number of local allusions, I have placed it last as an AjDpendix.

Should this book fall into the hands of any one of some forty thousand hearers, whom it has been my good fortune to address, in the one hundred and sixty-six lectures and speeches I have made in the course of my year's sojourn in this land, he will find that none of them is exactly like that to which he listened; but he will recognise that the general trend of thought and message is the same.

To hearer and reader I feel like apologising for not selecting more instructive subjects and for not presenting in a more interesting manner the themes chosen. It was indeed solicitude regarding the choice and treatment of subjects which caused me to embark upon this mission with trepidation. Until I faced my first audience at Brown University, I had not had the least intimation as to the character and interests of those who might favour me with their presence. While I was preparing two or three of my lectures, before leaving my country, how little did I anticipate that more than half of my lecture-halls would be graced by ladies ! My original manuscripts were prepared with a

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Preface small group of students in view, and when I compare these with the book that is now presented to the public, I am astonished at my own unsophisticated ideas of ten months ago. How in this country one comes to adjust one's thought and speech to a broad-cultured, general public! As I have grown more and more intimate with my audience, I confess my regret that I did not confine the whole field of my lectures to more specialised subjects, — particularly to the relations between the United States and Japan; but when that regret came — regrets are rarely timely visitors ! — it was too late to write the course anew. I am happy to add, however, that my regret, if late, was brief o A month before my duties ended, a countryman of mine — Kiyoshi Kawakami — brought forward the result of his serious and careful study regarding American-Japanese relations, treating the subject in a far more judicious form and attractive style than I could ever do.

If then my regret was short-lived, what of the misgivings with which I left Japan? It is only just for me to admit that these had largely vanished, ere my work was finished ; but for this fact I claim no credit to myself. Had it not been for the patience of those who did not agree with my opinion or could not follow my imperfect delivery; had it not been for the approval and sympathy of those who shared my viewpoint; had it not been for the positive encouragement and appreciation of those who are friendlily disposed toward me and

Preface xi

toward my people, my original misgivings would have been more than realised, and the first wellmeant attempt to effect a closer bond by means of an academic bridge between the two nations might have ended in disaster.

Let me therefore express my gratitude for, and gratification at, the reception accorded my lectures such as they were. Wherever I have been, be it in a great University or in a small country school ; be it in a public entertainment in large cities or in the midst of an informal family circle, I have invariably enjoyed unstinted hospitality and a gracious welcome. The newspapers, which are not always known for their courtesy, and even certain journals that have won a reputation for their anti-Japanese utterances, have very often surprised me by their friendly reports in regard to my work. The past year has been for me a continuous feast of mind and soul, and now, on the eve of my departure from America, let me cast one more glance upon the places I have visited and the people I have met, that they may the more indelibly stamp themselves upon my memory, and that I may take home the unchanged friendship of the American people towards us, so often and everywhere expressed to me.

It is very gratifying to learn that, by the time I shall reach my home, there will closely follow, in person, an envoy of American good-will. I have recently been officially informed that xii Prefa ce

Dr. Hamilton Wright Mabie has been appointed as exchange lecturer to Japan. That this able thinker, eminent writer, and perfect gentleman can and will carry the message of his country to Japan with charm and erudition, there is no shadow of doubt. Should his Japanese audience be able to express half the good-will that it is sure to feel, the first span of the trans-Pacific bridge will have been constructed.

Inazo Nitob6.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

^ I.— The East and the West . . i

11. — ^The Land or Geographical Features IN their Relation to the Inhabitants . . . . . . 21

Chapter I The East And The West

AS facilities of intercommunication, and therefore points of contact, have of late rapidly increased, and as the East and the West can now see and hear each other at close range on matters of business interests, instead of merely exchanging courtesies at a polite distance, occasions have likewise more frequently arisen for misunderstanding and for doubt. The reasons for this seem manifest, and among them is Imperialism, the overpowering trend of the last century, which, causing the stronger nations to overleap their respective territorial bounds, has brought them face to face with one another in unexpected quarters distant from home. The Dutch and the English, for instance, encountered each other in an unwonted relation on the South African veldt. The Japanese and the Russians renewed acquaintance under strained circumstances on the plains of Manchuria — somewhat after the manner of America and Spain in Cuba and the PhiHppines, or, more recently, the Italians and the Turks in Tripoli. Though I do not desire a rupture of friendship between the United States and her friends, she mayyet face some of them in unamiable converse on the pampas of South America.

Upon the frontiers of empires has been witnessed the impingement of one people upon another during the last two decades. When one calls at a neighbour's front door, one is usually received with courtesy ; on the other hand, one may possibly be considered an intruder in the backyard, no matter how innocent. Just as the marginal utility of commodities fixes their value, as economists teach us, so it is in the margins of civilisations that the power of expansive nationalities seems to be tried and determined. America has extended her borders to the Philippines, and Japan the edge of her dominions to Formosa. Here they almost meet. American trade, increasing in China, is brought into competition with Japanese, and as in these outskirts of commercial territory, inhabited by alien races, each nation tries to demonstrate and assert its own superiority, the timid are afraid that we may come to know each other in ways not always agreeable.

With the growth of Imperialism the stronger nations look upon each other with suspicion and jealousy, and, unlike the more innocent intercourse of former days, when men delighted in the ex-

XHe Hast and tHe W^est 3

change of the ideas and arts of peace, modern Imperialism, impelled by feverish megalomania and zest for commercial supremacy, has come to regard all competitors, not only as rivals, but as potential enemies, whose existence jeopardises their own and whose fate must therefore be decided at the point of the sword. Nor is Imperialism alone to blame ; for it is nowadays quite the proper thing for dilettante ethnologists and amateur sociologists to put forward their incomplete theories and insufficient data only to make the imagined abyss between the East and the West appear more hopeless. How little Blumenbach and Cuvier fancied that their classification of the human race by the colour of the skin would be taken so seriously as to become a cause of animosity among the nations of the earth ! Under these circumstances it is the duty of every lover of humanity and of peace to be an interpreter, a go-between in the supposed clash of national interests and racial sentiments.

Am I greatly mistaken in believing that, as far as the race question is concerned, we are now at a comparatively early stage of generalisation, having but just begun to perceive aggregate differences? Will not the next stage be a fuller recognition of spiritual affinity, of psychological unity — a realisation that "mankind is one in spirit " and the whole world kin?

I doubt whether in the earlier centuries of the Christian era Europe was intelligently aware of its own unity, as against the multitudinous principalities and powers of Asia, any more than these are at present conscious of their mutual ties.

The political unity forced upon Europe by the Carlovingians proved a premature coup, but religious unity survived the imperial fiasco, and brought about social unity within the boundaries of Europe. Then followed the Crusades to renew and reinforce the feeling of oneness among the warring nations. The term Christendom was then invented, — its first appearance in the English language being in 1389; but it long remained a vague, sentimental denomination. With the Reformation and the Renaissance the glamour of the Civitas Dei receded more and more into the privacy of each pious soul, while the civitas terrena, largely freed of the evil import imposed upon it by St. Augustine, was upheld by necessity, learning, and custom.

The term Christendom, which had been steadily losing its prestige as a communion of saints, God's kingdom on earth, assumed the new sense of the community of culture and the comity of nations. Its religious significance grew fainter and fainter, until it was at last displaced by the secular term, West, first used by Monsieur Comte. The selection of this term involved the thesis confirming the unity and uniformity of European civilisation, and the antithesis as to its diversity from and superiority to Oriental civilisation.

Discrimination of differences between the East

THe East and tHe "West 5

and the West certainly marks an advance in the differentiation of ideas upon the age when the nations of Europe were bHnd to their collective interests and indicates at the same time a step toward a larger synthesis, whereby Europe becomes conscious of a common bond. But the ancients seem to have made little distinction between Europe and Asia. Probably differences were not then so glaring, trade passing unencumbered to and fro, learning and peaceful arts being freely exchanged. In the borderland between Asia and Europe mingle Aryans, Semites, and Turanians. The marvellous civilisation of Babylon was not autochthonous, nor was that of ancient Crete. Indeed, how much of Greek art and thought is strictly Occidental, I should like to know. Or, how much of the arts and philosophy of Persia and India are strictly Oriental, I fain would ask. Until the Middle Ages the world was more homogeneous than now — at least in feeling and ideas.

Take the early history of art, and it seems that Greece and India and China were in pretty close contact. Compare ancient Hindoo sculpture with Greek, and it is amazing to observe how closely allied they are, with the Bactrian as a link between them. Place by their side the old Chinese images, until lately almost unknown and only recently unearthed, and we feel that the lands of Plato and of Confucius were not irreconcilably opposed in culture. The victories of Alexander, somehow, do not strike me as the descent of an army of civilisation into a region of a very inferior grade of culture. The Jews served for a long time as cosmopolitan mediators between Europe and Asia through their commercial agencies; then, later, the Arabs, not yet turned hostile to Christianity, became the intermediaries of Occidental and Oriental science and art. But as the Saracens and afterwards the Ottomans — or shall we say Moslems? — interposed an almost insuperable barrier between Europe and Asia, the world was practically rent in twain. Then each began to pursue its own course, irrespective of the other's movements, so that when Europe awoke from its sleep of the Dark Ages, Asia still continued to slumber; but by the time they met again after the lapse of centuries they could hardly recognise each other's features. Rejuvenated Europe, fresh and strong, armed with science and trained in liberty — ^how could it own a friend of *'Auld Lang Syne" in decrepit Asia, worn with age and torn with discord ! Sluggard Asia had lost all consciousness of unity of any kind. You cannot call it a Buddhaland, because unlike Christ in Europe, Buddha has rivals claiming dominion with him; nor was there any unity of race, literature, or language. If there was then any East that could be named in juxtaposition to the West, it expressed chaos as against order, a crowd of Kings who reigned without governing, a nondescript mass of beings who simply existed without living. Who would not then prefer "fifty years of Europe to a cycle of Cathay"?

XHe East and tKe W^est 7

But the question in my mind is whether this difference between the East and the West is strictly scientific or of lasting value? It is said that Leibnitz divided the human family into those who could read Latin and those who could not; and Mr. Kipling mildly hints the classification of the same family into those who wear trousers and those who wear something else — to which I may suggest adding those who wear nothing. The division of mankind into East and West is more convenient but no more scientific than that of Leibnitz or Kipling; for with Alexander Pope, we may

"Ask where 's the North? At York, 't is on the Tweed; In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where."

The meridian that divides the globe into East and West is the line which passes through the place where the observer stands and through the two poles. Hence there are as many meridians as there are observers and what is East to one may be West to the other. The Arabs were called by the Hebrews the children of the East, and by the Babylonians the dwellers of the West; and they denominated themselves by either of these names. As there is no absolute meridian, East and West are merely relative terms. If the meridian at Greenwich was selected by the convention of 1884 in Washington as the basis of calculation for the world, that meridian itself was only conventional, in more senses than one, for the little English village has no other claim than its observatory to be the centre of the world. The line which there divides East from West also serves to unite them. Hence we may improve upon the rhetoric of the psalmist and say, "As near as the east is to the west"; and hence, too, it is not only when two strong men, "coming from the ends of the earth, stand face to face," but when the weakest man, fixing his eyes upon the polar star, stretches out his arms, that the two hemispheres are united, and that "there is neither East nor West, border nor breed, nor birth." Without being untrue to the land of one's birth or of one's adoption, one may say with Henry Clay, "I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance."

No small pains are taken to discover pointa of difference between East and West, and of these there are many, especially of the superficial sort; but the very fact that attempts are made to discover differences, takes points of resemblance for granted. When I listen to the analysis of Japanese character and institutions by a hypercritical foreigner — and vice versa for that matter — I am reminded of an anatomist who dissects a woman's corpse and eruditely arrays all the points wherein she differs from man, and would lead us to the inevitable conclusion that man and woman are so irreconcilably opposed in every single respect that the two can never be one. If he were so minded,

THe East and tHe West 9

a nursery psychologist could easily bring out evidence tending to show that a parent and a child are of such different mental constitution that their natural relations are unreasonable and must end in disaster. A mere description without an explanation is likely to lead to a wrong inference. Not much J^etter are the method and attitude of zoilists who write on Japan. Every oddity in manners, every idiosyncrasy in thought is magnified into a distinguishing characteristic of the East or the West, as the case may be; either way, most often for the Pharisaical purpose of self-exaltation. The very faults that are common to both, are deemed particularly blameworthy when committed by the other race. The atmosphere of the Pacific seems to possess the obnoxious power of throwing above the horizon on either side not only an inverted but a perverted mirage. For instance, a clever author of a recent book dwells in some detail on the immorality of the Japanese, which he proves by statistics — appalling figures indeed — but which will stand comparison with similar statistics of the city of New York or of Chicago, if he had only given these. The same gentleman casts a suspicion upon our public men — of course in contrast to the purity and invulnerability of American politicians, who never violate one commandment of the Decalogue — the more so as the ten commandments made no mention of graft! It is not by mutual fault-finding or by exaggerating each other's peculiarities that we can arrive at lo TKe Japanese Nation

understanding or appreciation. Not by antipathy but sympathy; not by hostiUty but by hospitality ; not by enmity but by amity, does one race come to know the heart of another. I have already intimated that the Hne of division is also the line of union, and ''What God hath joined, let no man put asunder."

There is something grand and graceful in the old belief or beliefs as to the locality of paradise. In the early Christian Church, on the occasion of his baptism, a new convert was made first to face the West in abjuring the devil and his work, because the West was, according to Cyril, the region of darkness; and then he turned toward the East in receiving ablution, because in that quarter of the heavens was shown God's peculiar favour. In strange contrast to this, did the Buddhists place the abode of the blest in the West, whither the sun itself makes its daily pilgrimage.

Not in the Occident and not in the Orient, but in the union of both, will be revealed many of the secrets of Divine dispensation as yet hidden from our sight. A few days before I left Japan, Seiho, the greatest painter of Modern Japan, said to me : "Though I do not profess any familiarity with European masters, I have great hopes in that region of art where the East and West come together — not the neutral land that lies barren between the two, but where Western art fades into Eastern, or where the Eastern lapses into the Western, or where the two domains overlap, as it

THe East and the West II

were. " As I listened to him, I thought to myself that this remark of his may be applied to other activities and walks of human life as well as to art. May we not say that some of the greatest discoveries of biology have been made in the borderland where the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet? Some of the most fertile principles have been found in the newly cultivated field which joins chemistry with physics; and as for psycho-physics, delving as it does in a realm not yet named, between the territories of mind and of matter, it has struck rich veins of precious knowledge. We may expect the greatest fertility in the virgin soil where apparently contrary natures meet and wed.

It is said that the genius of the East is spiritual, mystical, psychical, and that of the West is materialistic, actual, physical; it is said that the forte as well as the fault of the East is religion and sentiment, and that of the West, science and reason; it is said that the East delights in generalisation and universal concepts, and the West in particulars and special knowledge; that the one leans to philosophy and ideas, and the other to practice and facts; that Oriental logic is deductive and negative, and Occidental logic inductive and positive. It is also said that in political and social life, solidarity and socialism characterise the East, and individualism and liberty, the West; it is said again that the Asiatic mind is impersonal and rejects the world, whereas the European mind is personal and accepts the world. The strength of

Europe lies in the mastery of man over nature, and the weakness of Asia in the mastery of nature over man. In the land of the morning, man looks for beauty first and writes his flighty thoughts in numbers; in the land of the evening, man's first thought is for utility, and he jots down his observations in numerals. He who watches the setting sun, pursues whither it marches, and his watchword is Progress and his religion is the cult of the future. He who greets the effulgent dawn is therewith content and cares not for its further course, but rather turns in wonderment to the source whence it came, hence his religion is the cult of the past. The matin disposes man to contemplation, the vesper hour to reflection. In the East man lives for the sake of life ; in the West man lives for the means of living.

On the whole there is food for thought in this contrast of race peculiarities; but such general characterisation is of little practical use in diplomacy or in commerce, for the individuals with whom we deal do not always conform to a type, and the wider the scope allowed to individual activity, the greater is the divergence from the type. This is distinctly so in Japan, where the thought and the influence of the East and of the West find their meeting ground. It is well known that the sea which surrounds my country is the richest in varieties of fish, because the various currents of the ocean which wash our shores and the rivers which flow into its waters meet and

XKe !East and tHe 'West 13

mingle and offer favourable conditions to various forms of animal life. It is along the line which unites the East and the West that we should look for a higher and a richer successor to our present civilisation.

But instructive and interesting as is fishing on the high seas of speculation, there is a more pressing and utilitarian demand for the study of the regions where Europe and Asia come in direct contact. Or — to put the case more concisely — there is, at present, urgent and practical need for America to understand Japan. As long as our planet is round, a segmental or hemispheric progress, however deep, can only remain fragmentary and falls short of perfect culture. Only in a mutual understanding between the opposite points of the compass, can man read the final destiny of the race, whereas without comprehending the antipodal soul, he can never discover his own shortcomings or his peculiar gifts. Very truly says Bailey :

*"Tis light translateth night; 'tis inspiration expounds experience; 't is the West explains the East ";

and it is only tautological to add that 't is the East explains the West.