Modern Japan, social--industrial--political

Front matter

Book.^ilfii

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

PROBLEMS OF THE NATIONS

Preface

This small volume is not a book of impressions ; nor is it a tourist's record of experiences ; nor can it be claimed that it is the result of years of study and observation growing out of a prolonged residence in Japan or contact with the Japanese people.

Yet, after having devoted the leisure of several years to a study of things Japanese, the authors visited Japan and made their investigations under the guidance of friends and acquaintances — ^native Japanese and foreign residents of many years — who were far more familiar than they with Japan, its people, its laws, its traditions and its customs.

In fact, they have gathered their information from many sources which would be difficult to indicate, nor would it be possible to mention the names of the numerous people who, whether by their writings or by direct personal assistance, have been so very helpful.

The authors can here merely express, in a general way, their gratitude and appreciation for such aid, the results of which they have tried to sift and utilize to the best of their judgment and ability.

Contents

CHAPTER ' PAGE

I Cherry Blossoms and Realities 1

II The Land and the People . 8

Chapter I Cherry Blossoms And Realities

I

When the curious foreigner landed in Japan, over sixty years ago, he imagined that he was entering a half-civiHzed country, peopled with semibarbarians, whose strange customs and poHte ways indicated a mere veneer or perhaps an imitation of Chinese civilization. What, therefore, must have been his deHght when he found himself in the midst of a novel and highly developed culture preserved for centuries uncontaminated by contact with outside influences!

When this fascinating and artistic people showed itself eager to learn the secrets of modern civilization and exhibited a marvelous facility for acquiring and adopting Western ideas and machinery, is it surprising that their teachers should have sung the praises of their apt pupils and heralded to the world a somewhat exaggerated idea of their progress and capability?

After these facile students had learned that they I could walk and even run upon their own feet and could see with their own eyes, they dismissed their instructors (though with generous presents and profuse thanks), entered into trade rivalries with foreign agents or merchants, and finally demonstrated to the world that they could fight and win real battles in true European style. Is it therefore astonishing that the erstwhile benevolent and patronizing attitude of the foreigner should have changed to one of concern or disapproval? To a certain extent indiscriminate praise gave way to harsh and undiscriminating criticism. Instead of receiving smiles and words of praise, the former protege was often greeted with frowns or sneers, his motives were frequently questioned or misrepresented and his weaknesses exposed or over-emphasized.

The Japanese themselves, though certainly more reticent and reserved, had undergone a somewhat similar process of disillusionment. Delighted at first with the novelty and utility of Western ideas and methods, grateful beyond words to their efficient instructors, overcome with a sense of their own ignorance and deficiencies, they naturally reveled in their new knowledge and often failed properly to appreciate the merits of their own civilization.

In the first mad rush for knowledge and enlightenment many of the Japanese had lost all sense of proportion and had surrendered themselves to undiscriminating admiration of nearly all things foreign. But when it became apparent that Western

CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND REALITIES 3

civilization had its defects and blemishes, the Japanese began to suspect that their own culture contained elements which were perhaps equal, if not superior, to those of Europe and America.

They began to ask, "What would it profit us as a nation if we gained the whole world and lost our own soul?" A reaction set in which led them, at least for a time, to disparage Western ideas and over-value their own attainments and achievements. This reaction has by no means exhausted itself, but beyond question their best minds are dissatisfied with many things foreign and Japanese alike and are looking forward to a sort of fusion of the best and to an elimination of the worst in both civilizations.

And if it is true that the Japanese have begun to exhibit a juster and saner appreciation of things Western, is it not time that Westerners began to exhibit a juster and more discriminating appreciation of things Japanese? Is it not time that we realized that while the Japanese may still have much to learn from us, they may possibly be able to teach us something; and that we also should aim at the adoption of the best and the elimination of the worst in both Occidental and Oriental civilizations ? The first prerequisite for such a purpose would be fuller knowledge and a mutual understanding in order that we may know what to accept and what to reject.

Though there are honorable exceptions, it must be admitted that too many of the books on Japan hitherto produced have been written either by writers wearing rose-colored pro- Japanese spectacles or in an anti-Japanese spirit of undiscerning criticism. The Japanese themselves have begun to resent the cherry-blossom view of Japanese life almost as much as they resent the vexatious faultfinding inspired largely by the foreigners at the treaty-ports.

II

It must be admitted that an absolutely just and discriminating interpretation of things Japanese is a difficult and delicate, perhaps impossible, achievement. With the exception of the missionaries and diplomatic and consular officials, most foreigners in Japan are ranged in two opposing camps — labeled pro- or anti-Japanese. The visitor is in danger of being haled into one or the other of these camps and thus runs the risk of becoming hopelessly biased or one-sided.

In the clubs or at the treaty-ports he is in especial danger of falling into the hands of anti- Japanese merchants of narrow outlook and experience who are embittered by a sense of defeat or disappointment. On the other hand, if he be monopolized by certain types of missionaries or Japanese officials he may become saturated with too roseate a view of Japanese aims, methods and progress.

The Japanese are particularly prone to put their

CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND REALITIES 5

best foot foremost, and unless one is careful he may be misled by official attentions which tend to conceal rather than reveal social and political defects.

If one allows for a certain amount of religious bias, the missionary-educators constitute, on the whole, the best available source of first-hand guidance, at least for the student-observer with limited time and a lack of knowledge of the Japanese language. Intelligent and experienced missionaries are almost the only foreign residents in Japan who really see beneath the mask of Japanese etiquette and succeed in breaking down the reserve of the people. They alone are as a class sufficiently equipped with that intimate knowledge, charitable tolerance, life-long experience and sympathetic insight which are essential to the understanding of any race. To them the Japanese are just plain ordinary folk with the vices and weaknesses of humankind the world over, but with infinite potentialities^ for progress.

Yet one must not forget that even the best missionaries have their own peculiar limitations, among which are a bias in favor of things Western and Christian and an optimistic faith in the appearance of progress and improvement not always justified by reality. They are perhaps too apt to accept promises for performances, and they do not always appraise at their real value Japanese virtues and ideals as compared with those labeled Christian and Western,

In the interpretation of Japanese life and institutions there is involved a yet more serious difficulty than that of weighing evidence or eliminating religious bias. It is that of establishing and maintaining a more or less consistent standard or basis of criticism. As Westerners imbued with Western ideas of progress and development, we are bound to judge with a certain Occidental bias and to apply merely Western standards. If, for example, we should feel it within our province to criticize Japanese art, music or literature, we should inevitably judge from a more or less Western point of view. So with Japanese political, social and economic conditions and institutions which to us seem rather primitive or belated in comparison with our own, defective and inadequate as these may be.

To Japanese such comparisons must often seem odious and unjust, though in a work of this kind comparisons of this sort are unavoidable. However, it must be said that by adopting the forms and standards of Western civilization the Japanese have themselves invited this comparison, and it is doubtful whether they would be willing to be judged by any other standard. Like Americans of an earlier generation, they are believed to be sensitive to unfavorable criticism, though they are supposed not to resent the strictures of sincere friends.

In this light the writers of this bock would wish

CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND REALITIES 7

to be regarded. Nothing has been set down in malice. Nor has aught been written in the spirit of patronage.

Though conscious of the many courtesies received at Japanese hands, the authors have no confidence in friendship which finds expression in a mere exchange of flowery compHments or expressions of mutual good will; nor in that fellowship which ignores the main points of dispute, and carefully conceals shortcomings and defects. They can only hope that friends in Japan will not misunderstand or misinterpret their motives in presenting to the public in the succeeding chapters a frank expression of their views.

Chapter II

Like Great Britain, the Japanese homeland is insular in character. The seventy to seventy-five million inhabitants occupy a long, continuous chain of over forty-two hundred volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean. These islands, of which only about five or six hundred are inhabited, extend over two thousand miles in a longitudinal curve from Kamchatka in Russian Siberia almost to the northern extremity of the Philippine Islands. They lie from a hundred to five hundred miles distant from the continent of Asia and afford nearly every possible variety of climate and products. The Empire includes Korea, the southern extremity of the Liao-tung Peninsula, the railway zone in Manchuria, and the colony of Formosa.

The main island — ^to most foreigners the real Japan or Nippon — is Hondo or Honshu, a narrow, crescent-shaped island extending northeastward eight hundred miles (1170 miles by railway) from Shimonoseki opposite Fusan in Korea, with an area of over eighty thousand square miles — ^about equal to that of Kansas — an average width of seventy-five miles, and a coast-line variously estimated at from forty-seven hundred to sixty-six hundred miles. Honshu has a population of nearly forty millions, and contains the important cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. The triangle formed by the three cities last named constitutes one of the most thickly populated regions of the globe.

The southern end of the main island is separated from two much smaller ones — Shikoku and Kiuskiu — by the beautiful Inland Sea, an almost landlocked portion of the Pacific Ocean two hundred and seventeen miles in length.

To the north of Honshu, separated by the Tsugaru Strait, lies the island of Hokkaido, formerly known as Yezo, with an area of thirty thousand square miles — ^about that of South Carolina. Yezo was long left to the hairy Ainu, the aborigines of Japan, and is still in process of colonization.

The area of Japan proper is over 142,000 square miles; that of the whole Japanese Empire 257,290 square miles, not quite equal to that of the single state of Texas.

Japan is a country of mountains and valleys surrounded by the sea and is indented with numerous bays or inlets, affording many harbors for safe anchorage, especially on the side facing the Pacific. Like Italy and Greece with regard to each other, Nippon may be said to turn her back upon the sea that separates her from coveted China. There is lo MODERN JAPAN

a long chain of mountains running lengthwise through the main islands, or rather two chains which meet in the middle of Honshu, forming the immense upheaval popularly known as the "J^P^-" nese Alps.'^ Thus in Japan, as the saying has it, "Two voices are there: one is of the sea, one of the mountains, each a mighty voice."

The country boasts of at least two hundred volcanoes, and the delicate instruments of expert seismologists are able to detect an average of nearly fifteen hundred seismic disturbances in the course of a year. But flood, typhoon and famine are much more destructive forces, and it may be questioned whether, except in the effect on Japanese architecture, earthquakes have materially influenced the art and civilization of the Japanese.

More important in its effects on Japanese art and civilization is the climate, which may in general be characterized as very humid, necessitating frequent hot baths with resultant personal cleanliness. Rains are extremely frequent, there being an average of but two hundred fifteen fair days a year in Nippon. Owing to the long extent of the islands from the arctic north to the tropical south, the tem.perature naturally varies from extreme cold to extreme heat But the climate of the main islands is moderate.

To the insularity of Japan may be ascribed its immunity from invasion or attack. Only twice in their history have these islanders been even threat-

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE ii

ened: once at the close of the thirteenth century when Kublai Khan, after his conquests in China, sent an unlucky armada to the Japanese coasts ; and again in 1905, when the ill-fated Russian fleet met with disaster in the Korean Straits. Like England, Japan occupies a strategic position on the sea which, with the aid of her navy, has made her practically invulnerable to invaders.

To the student of Japanese economy, it is of the' first importance to note that, owing to the mountainous character of the country, only about oneseventh, i. e., less than fifteen per cent, of the soil is arable or capable of cultivation. In spite of this fact the country is predominantly agricultural and from sixty to seventy per cent, of the people are farmers or peasants.

The lack of sufficient arable land for the rapidly growing agricultural population furnishes one of the most difficult problems of Japanese statesmanship. True it is that there is still left some margin for reclamation by means of the opening of new and uncultivated land, improvements in method of cultivation, and a readjustment of farms. By such means it has been estimated that in the course of time (probably in a few generations) the land may be made to yield an increase of over fifty per cent. Furthermore, there is still considerable room for settlers in the northern island of Hokkaido. But the population of Japan proper increases yearly from five hundred thousand to six hundred thousand, or at an annual rate of 1.2 per cent., the rate being nearly equal to that of Italy and inferior only to that of Russia and Germany. Even now Japan is importing over twenty-five million dollars' worth of foodstuffs, including a cheap quality of rice from India, and her imports of both luxuries and necessities tend to increase. The average density of population surpasses that of Italy, Germany or France, and is only slightly exceeded by that of Belgium, Holland and Great Britain.

II

The peasants constitute the backbone of the nation. They are a hardy, thrifty, laborious folk, content with little and obedient to the point of servility to those in authority. They lead the normal life of the vast majority of mankind at all times and in all places and furnish a good illustration of the proprietary State which publicists Hke Belloc and Chesterton find so attractive. In no other country perhaps is there so large a proportion of small farmers owning their farms and the means of production. Nowhere is there a greater appearance of contentment, cheerfulness and prosperity in the midst of rural charm and picturesque scenery. Surely here, if anywhere, should be found a paradise on earth.

Though intensive farming is the rule and irri'gation is extremely common, there is, judged by Westem standards, a great lack of live stock,* and the agricultural methods and implements are, generally speaking, of the most primitive description. Recently there has been some progress in fruit culture. Rice is the staple crop, though barley and wheat are also extensively cultivated, and to a lesser degree, the millets, maize, soya beans, buckwheat, potatoes, tea, tobacco, ginseng and so forth. The planting and manufacture of tea is a considerable industry, but has remained curiously stationary for a number of years.

Japan is preeminently a land of small holdings. The average area farmed by each family is usually from two to four acres, and most farmers are forcedf to combine agriculture with other occupations. About one-half of the farmers own the land they cultivate subject to a heavy land tax of about fifteen to seventeen per cent. The tenants, who

♦Through the aid and encouragement of the Government there has been great improvement in this respect within recent years. In 1912 there were 1,176,743 horses and 1,399,- 468 cattle in Japan or an average of nearly one animal to each two households, and human labor is in part slowly being replaced by that of animals. Until recently, owing to the absence of cattle, the Japanese consumption of milk, meat and butter was very small.

fThis is according to the Japanese Year Books. Professor Tsumura (See Japan Magazine for July, 1915) says: "Not more than 32 per cent, of those now farming are cultivating their own land, which leaves at least two-thirds of the agricultural population tenant farmers."

constitute the remaining half of the cultivators, must pay an average of about fifty per cent, of the produce to the owner, who pays the land tax out of his share of the proceeds. But when it is noted that the tenant farmer has to pay all expenses incidental to fertilizing and sundries out of his half, it may readily be seen that the few acres under cultivation can hardly produce enough for the barest subsistence of himself and family. That the majority of peasant owners are little better off is indicated by the fact that the 5,410,000 peasant proprietors of Japan have an indebtedness of at least 541,000,000 yen or an average of one hundred yen, or fifty dollars per household.* In fact, neither the tenant nor the peasant owner could possibly subsist were it not for subsidiary occupations.

Chief among these subsidiary occupations are sericulture and filature or the rearing of silk-worms and the reeling of raw silk. These occupy at least a quarter of the households. Then follow the manufacture of such articles as braids, matting and ropes from rice straw; the making of matches, paper, fans and baskets; beekeeping, weaving, spinning, fishing and forestry-work.

*This is the estimate of the Japanese Year Book for 1914, page 341. Some authorities make it much higher. Dr. Yokoi, for example, estimates the peasant indebtedness at 1,500,000,000 yen or nearly thrice as much. In one prefecture the money lent averages 320 yen per house. See Japan Weekly Mail for February 18, 191 1.

Though the number has been increasing within recent years, there are still, relatively speaking, few Japanese landlords or middle class land capitalists with farms ranging from 25 to 75 acres, or even as large as 8 to 10 acres. Hired laborers form a very small class and earn a very small wage, ranging from $5 to $42.50 per year, an average of only $21.67 P^^ y^3,r or 19 cents per day in the case of men, and $10.97 P^^ y^^^ or 11^ cents per day in the case of women.

Intermingled with these millions of peasant cultivators are thousands of petty handicraftsmen and small retailers supplying the villages and countryside with their wares and labor.

Ill

It can hardly be maintained that the lot of these peasants or country and village folk is a happy one. Their economic condition is deplorable and seems to be steadily growing worse. Their mental and spiritual outlook is necessarily very narrow, and they are naturally extremely conservative, superstitious and patriotic. Except for an occasional festival or pilgrimage to some religious shrine, there is a great lack of recreation and of interests larger than those of the family or village. The peasants toil early and late with little hope of recompense or reward. Is it surprising that the young people yearn for the amusements and pleasures of cities ? The peasants make good soldiers but would seem to constitute unpromising material for the development of a political or industrial democracy.

However, the Japanese bureaucracy is doing much to improve and ameliorate the economic conditions of the peasants. Many model or experimental farms and agricultural stations have been established by the Government, the main or Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station being located at Nishigahara near Tokyo. It has several branch stations at Osaka and elsewhere, and there are also a considerable number of local or prefectural farms and stations. Numerous agricultural institutions are maintained by local funds, and hundreds of lecturers on agriculture are engaged in disseminating a knowledge of practical and scientific farming. As a consequence, about twenty-five per cent, of the farming population may be said to possess some knowledge of scientific agriculture, over a million having attended farming classes or evening schools in 1 9 12. The crown of the system of agricultural education is, of course, the Agricultural College of the Imperial University at Tokyo.

Several institutes for the study and investigation of matters relating to sericulture (so important to the Japanese peasant as a subsidiary occupation) have been established, and there are also a number of local sericultural institutes. Especially to be commended are the efforts made by the Government to increase the number and improve.

the quality of horses and cattle by means of Imperial horse studs -and cattle breeding farms.

Within recent years the Government has been very successful in creating a spirit of co-operation and mutual aid among farmers. In 1900 a co-operative societies law was enacted providing for the organization of co-operative farmers' guilds or societies for obtaining credit on the purchase, sale and production of commodities. At the end of 1913 no less than 10,455 such societies had been formed with a total membership of 1,160,000 of which about eighty per cent, are farmers. Through the credit or loan societies, the hypothec and industrial banks of Japan have made considerable loans to farmers at from ten to fifteen per cent, interest, which in Japan is considered to be a low rate, the prevailing rate for a loan on credit having been as high as twenty per cent, and even more.

On the whole, it must be said that while the lot of the peasant has been somewhat improved and ameliorated, his condition, judged by Western standards, can hardly be said to be an enviable one. It is only his ignorance of the poverty of that condition and a lack of knowledge or experience of the luxuries of modern life that render his existence at all tolerable. But it is this same ignorance, combined with poverty, which induces him to submit to his fate with apparent cheerfulness, and even to sell his daughters into the slavery of the Yoshiwara or the modern factory.

Chapter III

The whole structure of social and political life in Japan is based on the family. In order to understand the Japanese family, full account must be taken of its religious, feudal and patriarchal origins. Since a very early period religion centered closely around patriarchal ideals and gave solidarity to family customs and observances which in the long run contributed much to the stability and cohesion of the whole nation. Certain collateral social evils have developed, however, along with the system.

As in the case of the early Greeks and Romans, the first gods of the Japanese were the deified forces of nature and the dead or ghosts of the dead. In the main, nature-worship and the fear and worship of the spirits of the dead shaped the patriarchal system.

The cult of nature- and ancestor-worship or the worship of the so-called kami* which included all things worthy of veneration, such as stones, moun-

*For an explanation of the kami and Shintoism, see infra, chapter yi.

i8 tains, rivers, animals and superior human beings, developed at an early period into Shintoism. Gradually a few simple laws for governing the family, clan or community were formulated. These laws were in the course of time reinforced and modified by the advent of the two later religions — Confucianism and Buddhism — introduced from China. These new religions soon absorbed Shintoism, or at least the soul of it, but the soul of old Japan — the worship of the kami — remained essentially Shinto.

Ancestor-worship means that the spirits of the dead survive and are linked up with the spirits of the living descendants or hover always about them. The happiness and prosperity of the living depend largely upon the peace and happiness of the dead, who in order to continue happy require certain attentions from living descendants in the way of rites and ceremonies such as continuing the funereal repasts. Should they be neglected, the ancestral spirits would fall to the rank of malevolent demons and wander about in perpetual misery and unrest. Such spirits often bring retribution upon the living for neglect by inflicting disease upon some member of the clan, or sterility upon the soil. In fact, they often give the living no rest until the sacrifices and offerings of nourishment are renewed whereby they are restored to the tomb and to their divine attributes. Clearly the dead take a most important part in the affairs of the living and particularly in the perpetuation of families. In view of this fact, celibacy was a grave impiety and calamity : an impiety because he who did not marry put the happiness of his ancestors in peril, a calamity because no offspring meant damnation to him who did not propagate. The man who died without a son received no offerings and was exposed to perpetual hunger.

II

An important canon of this ancestral cult held that the mysterious force which perpetuated life came only from the male. The female was merely a medium for protecting and nurturing this force, therefore she was relatively unimportant in the scheme of life. Herein lies the crux of the religious deification of the male and the subjugation of the female which appears in one form or another among most primitive peoples and religions.

Marriage in its early development under the patriarchal system was never the joining together of two equal beings to live in equal fellowship. In Japan it was bringing to the son a woman who abandoned her own parents, her own ancestors, her own cult to adopt his, since no one could invoke two series of ancestors. Her prime function from the tim,e of marriage was to bear children to carry on her husband's family cult. Should she, perchance, prove sterile, this was ample ground for her being divorced, though later religious development made provisions against divorce in case the wife were otherwise satisfactory to the family — that is, docile and submissive — ^by the adoption of a son of near kin or by acquiring a son through a concubine. Should the wife bear children but be otherwise unsatisfactory to her husband's family, she was divorced and the children remained in his family, she having absolutely no legal, physical or social claim upon them.

Thus we perceive how the patriarchal system established the inferiority of woman, and Buddhist and Confucianist teaching, which centered round the patriarchal ideals, helped to reinforce her subjection and subserviency. Since the male was endowed with all the life-giving power, the female could not be his equal. Clearly by divine will she was not intended to be; therefore the wife could not rank with the husband, or the sister with the brother. This conception, to be sure, was not confined to Japan only. Up to a comparatively recent period the idea of the relative imimportance and inferiority of the female formed the warp to the social fabric of all Occidental life just as it still does throughout the entire Orient.

Some years ago a social scheme was devised in Japan whereby the woman sometimes remains in her own family and a husband is adopted for her. Under this practice the woman does not perpetuate the cult of her own ancestors. This duty falls upon the adopted husband who, in turn, abandons his own family ancestors and takes her name. In case the adopted husband is not satisfactory to her family, he is sent away and the children belong to her family. In any and all cases the ownership of the children is established with the family and not with the parents. But beyond question the patriarchal system implied the supreme dominance of the male and the absolute subjection of the woman and child, or at least the female child. Yet it is maintained that previous to the fifth and sixth centuries, when Confucianism and Buddhism were introduced, woman had more freedom and social privileges than she afterward enjoyed. Since then social and religious teachings have conspired to crystallize the standards which gave to man all the social and domestic privileges and to woman only the domestic duties.

Confucianism taught, in a word, that all women are naturally inferior to men; that the husband should have absolute right over the wife. Buddhism declares woman to be unclean and a temptation, and the moral code for women is covered by the three obediences: obedience while yet unmarried to the father; obedience when married to the husband and parents-in-law; obedience when widowed to the eldest son. "Buddhism," Chamberlain* informs us, "was the teacher under whose instruction the Japanese nation grew up." For centuries practically all education was in the hands of the Buddhist priests.