The Awakening of Japan

Front matter

THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN

By Okakura-Kakuzo Author of "The Ideals of the East"

New York The Century Co. 1905

Publishers' Preface

Okakura-Kakuzo, the author of this work and of "The Ideals of the East," was born in the year 1863. Having been, as he has said, "from early youth fond of old things," after leaving college in 1880 he interested himself in the formation of clubs and societies for archaeological research. The Japanese Renaissance, begun at the end of the eighteenth century, suffered a brief check during the civil commotion following the opening of the country after the arrival of the American Commodore Perry. The work of Okakura was a resumption of that begun by the earlier scholars.

In 1886 this scholarly young enthusiast was sent to America and Europe as a commissioner to report on Western art education. On returning, he organ the Imperial Art School of Tokio, of which he was made director. He was also one of the chief organizers, and is still a member, of the Imperial Archzological Commission, whose duty it is to study, classify, and preserve the ancient architecture, the archives of the monasteries, and all specimens of ancient art.

Okakura was, naturally, one of the promoters of the reactionary movement against the wholesale introduction of Western art and manners. This movement was carried on by the starting of periodicals and clubs devoted to the preservation of the old life of Japan,—the work being carried on, also, in the field of literature and the drama.

In 1898 he resigned the directorship of the Imperial Art School at Tokio, having had some difference with the educational authorities in the matter of the course of instruction to be pursued therein. Nearly one half of the faculty resigned at the same time, and started, in a suburb of Tokio, a private acad called Nippon Bijitsuin. Here are kept up the ancient traditions of native art.

Simultaneously with the foundation of this school of instruction, a number of prominent painters of the national school of art in various parts of the country organized the Society of Japanese Painters, of which the president is Prince Nijo,—the head of the Fujiwara family and uncle of the crown princess,—Okakura being elected vice-president.

It is proper to state that the present work, like "The Ideals of the East," is not a translation, but is written by its Japanese author originally in English. This work is based not merely upon printed material and common hearsay, but upon information derived through the author's special acquaintance with surviving actors in the Restoration.

In "The Awakening of Japan" the author answers with profound knowledge, great vividness of expression, and intense patriotism the question now uppermost in the minds of Western observers: From what sources are drawn the intellectual and moral qualities which have enabled the present generation of statesmen, citizens, soldiers, and sailors, under an able emperor, to enter suddenly, as a first-class liberal power, into the company of nations?

The author shows clearly and picturesquely that the accomplishments of the New Japan are the natural outcome of her history,—her religion, her art, her tradition. He declares that there is no "Yellow Peril"; that the empire, though warlike, stands not for aggression but for peace I He sketches the entire history of the country, but dwells particularly upon modern events and developments,—the opening of the long-closed door of the imprisoned nation by Commodore Perry, the restoration of the Mikado to power, the new regime, the occasion of the war of 1904. He essays an answer to the anxious query of the admirers of the art of Japan: Will Japan's modern successes lead to the loss of its ancient and distinctive art? He indicates some of the tendencies which may affect the future of the Orient; and he speaks especially of the Christian attitude toward woman as an influence upon the society and civilization of Japan.

Chapter 1

THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN

THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN

The sudden development of Japan has been more or less of an enigma to foreign observers. She is the country of flowers and ironclads, of dashing heroism and delicate tea-cups,—the strange borderland where quaint shadows cross each other in the twilight of the New and the Old World. Until recently the West has never taken Japan seriously. It is amusing to find nowadays that such success as we have achieved in our efforts to take a place among the family of nations appears in the eyes of many as a menace to Christendom. In the mysterious nothing is improbable. Exaggeration is the courtesy which fancy pays to the unknown. What sweeping condemnation, what absurd praise has not the world lavished on New Japan? We are both the cherished child of modern progress and a dread resurrection of heathendom—the Yellow Peril itself!

Has not the West as much to unlearn about the East as the East has to learn about the West? In spite of the vast sources of information at the command of the West, it is sad to realize to-day how many misconceptions are still entertained concerning us. We do not mean to allude to the unthinking masses who are still dominated by race prejudice and that vague hatred of the Oriental which is a relic from the days of the crusades. But even the comparatively well-informed fail to recognize the inner significance of our revival and the real goal of our aspirations. It may he that, as our problems have been none of the simplest, our attitude has been often paradoxical. Perhaps the fact that the history of East Asiatic civilization is still a sealed book to the Western public may account for the great variety of opinions held by the outside world concerning our present conditions and future possibilities.

Our sympathizers have been pleased to marvel at the facility with which we have introduced Western science and industries, constitutional government, and the organization necessary for carrying on a gigantic war. They forget that the strength of the movement which brought Japan to her present position is due not less to the innate virility which has enabled her to assimilate the teachings of a foreign civilization than to her capability of adopting its methods. With a race, as with the individual, it is not the accumulation of extraneous knowledge, but the realization of the self within, that constitutes true progress.

With immense gratitude to the West for what she has taught us, we must still regard Asia as the true source of our inspirations. She it was who transmitted to us her ancient culture, and planted the seed of our regeneration. Our joy must be in the fact that, of all her children, we have been permitted to prove ourselves worthy of the inheritance. Great as was the difficulty involved in the struggle for a national reawakening, a still harder task confronted Japan in her effort to bring an Oriental nation to face the terrible exigencies, of modern existence. Until the moment when we shook it off, the same lethargy lay upon us which now lies on China and India. Over our country brooded the Night of Asia, enveloping all spontaneity within its mysterious folds. Intellectual activity and social progress became stifled in the atmosphere of apathy. Religion could but soothe, not cure, the suffering of the wounded soul. The weight of our burden can never be understood without a knowledge of the dark background from which we emerged to the light.

The decadence of Asia began long ago with the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century. The classic civilizations of China and India shine the brighter by contrast with the night that has overtaken them since that disastrous irruption. The children of the Hwang-ho and the Ganges had from early days evolved a culture comparable with that of the era of highest enlightenment in Greece and Rome, one which even foreshadowed the trend of advanced thought in modern Europe. Buddhism, introduced into China and the farther East during the early centuries of the Christian era, bound together the Vedic and Confucian ideals in a single web, and brought about the unification of Asia. A vast stream of intercourse flowed throughout the extent of the whole Buddhaland. Tidings of any fresh philosophical achievement in the University of Nalanda, or in the monasteries of Kashmir, were brought by pilgrims and wandering monks to the thought-centers of China, Korea, and Japan. Kingdoms often exchanged courtesies, while peace married art to art. From this synthesis of the whole Asiatic life a fresh impetus was given to each nation. It is curious to note that each effort in one nation to attain a higher expression of humanity is marked by a simultaneous and parallel movement in the other. That liberalism and magnificence, resulting in the worship of poetry and harmony, which, in the sixth century, so characterized the reign of Vikramaditya in India, appear equally in the glorious age of the Tang emperors of China (618–907), and at the court of our contemporary mikados at Nara. Again the movement toward individualism and renationalization which, in the eighth century, is marked in India by the advent of Sankaracharya, the apostle of Hinduism, is followed, during the Sung dynasty (960–1260), by a similar activity in China, culminating in Neo-Confucianism and the recasting of the Zen school of Buddhism, a phase echoed both in Japan and Korea. Thus, while Christendom was struggling with medievalism, the Buddhaland was a great garden of culture, where each flower of thought bloomed in individual beauty.

But, alas! the Mongol horsemen under Jenghiz Khan were to lay waste — these areas of civilization, and make of them a desert like that out of which they themselves came. It was not the first time that the warriors of the steppes had appeared in the rich valleys of China and India. The Huns and the Scythians had often succeeded in temporarily inflicting their rule on the borders of these countries. After a time, however, they were either driven out, or else tamed and finally absorbed in the peaceful life of the plain. But this last Mongol outburst was of a magnitude unequaled in the past. It was destined not only to reach the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, but to cross the Ural and overflow Moscow. The descendants of Jenghiz Khan in China established the Yuen dynasty and reigned at Peking from 1280 to 1368, while their cousins began a series of attacks on India which ended in the empire of the Grand Moguls. The Yuens still adhered to Buddhism, though in the degenerate form known as Lamaism; but the Mogul emperors of Delhi, who came in the footsteps of Mahmud of Ghazni, had embraced the Arabian faith as they sped on their path of conquest through southern Asia. The Moguls not only exterminated Buddhism, but also persecuted Hinduism. It was a terrible blow to Buddhaland when Islam interposed a barrier between China and India greater than the Himalayas themselves. The flow of intercourse, so essential to human progress, was suddenly stopped. Our own time-honored relations with our continental neighbors even began to wane after the Mongol conquerors of China attempted to invade Japan in the latter part of the thirteenth century, forcing Korea to act as their ally. Their belligerent attitude continued for nearly forty years; and though, thanks to our insular position and the prowess of our warriors, we were able successfully to repel their attacks, remembrance of their aggression was not to be effaced, and even led to retaliatory steps on our part. The memory of our ancient friendship with the courts of the Tang and Sung dynasties was lost. One of the latent causes of our late war with the Celestial Empire may be found in the mutual suspicion with which the two nations have now regarded each other for many centuries. By the Mongol conquest of Asia, Buddhaland was rent asunder, never again to be reunited. How little do the Asiatic nations now know of each other! They have grown callous to the doom that befalls their neighbors.

One cannot but be struck by the con between the effect of the Mongol outburst on Buddhaland and on Christendom. The maritime races of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, by their long course of mutual aggression, were well equipped to cope with the terrific onslaught of the nomadic invaders. In spite of temporary reverses, Europe may even be said to have gained some advantage from those struggles which were so disastrous to us of the East. It was then that she first developed that power of combination which makes her so formidable to-day. The Mongol outburst, which displaced the Turkish hordes and resulted in the creation of the Saracenic and Ottoman empires, gave the Frankish nations the opportunity of uniting against a common enemy. Before the walls of Jerusalem and on the banks of the Danube met in comradeship, once and forever, the flower of Christian chivalry, and there was consolidated a conception of Christendom such as papal Rome could never alone have brought into existence. The fall of Constantinople was in itself one of the chief factors of the Italian Renaissance.

The peaceful and self-contained nature of Eastern civilization has been ever weak to resist foreign aggression. We have not only permitted the Mongol to destroy the unity of Asia, but have allowed him to crush the life of Indian and Chinese culture. From both the thrones of Peking and Delhi, the descendants of Jenghiz Khan perpetuated a system of despotism contrary to the traditional policies of the lands they had subjugated. Entire lack of sympathy between the con and the conquered, the introduction of an alien official language, the refusal to the native of any vital participation in administration, together with the dreadful clash of race-ideals and religious beliefs, all combined to produce a mental shock and anguish of spirit from which the Indians and the Chinese have never recovered. Such scholarship as was allowed to survive, was confined to those servile minds who submitted meekly to barbaric patronage. What was left of original intellectual vigor was heard only among the despairing echoes of the forest, or in the savage laughter of the bazaar. Art thenceforth becomes either ultra-conventional or else bizarre and grotesque.

Attempts to overthrow the foreign yoke were not lacking, and some of them were even successful. But the disintegration of the national consciousness under alien tyranny made renationalization almost impossible, and the native dynasties were unable to withstand fresh waves of outside aggression. In China, the Ming or Bright dynasty, which wrested the government from the Mongols in the middle of the fourteenth century, soon became a prey to internal discords. Scarcely had the destruction attendant on the Mongol reign been repaired, when, near the end of the sixteenth century, a fresh invasion came from the north, and the Manchus tore the scepter from the native rulers. In spite of the strenuous efforts made by the wiser statesmen of this new dynasty, no complete fusion of the Manchus and the Chinese has ever been accomplished. To-day the Celestial Empire is so divided against itself that it is powerless to repel outside attack. Europe, with her iron grasp on some of her most important ports, has even contemplated the partition of the whole of China. So in India the reactionary uprising of the Mahrattas and the Sikhs against the Mohammedan tyrants, though partially successful, did not crystallize into a universal expression of patriotism. This lack of unity enabled a Western power to shape her destinies.

Bereft of the spirit of initiative, tired of impotent revolts, and deprived of legitimate ambitions, the Chinese and the Indian of to-day have come to prostrate themselves before the inevitable. Some among them find refuge in the memory of past grandeur, thus hardening the crust of tradition and exclusiveness; while the souls of others, wafted among ethereal dreams, seek solace in an appeal to the unknown. The Night of Asia, which enshrouds them, is not, perhaps, without its own subtle beauty. It reminds us of the deep glorious nights we know so well in the East,—listless like wonder, serene like sadness, opalescent like love. One may touch the stars behind the veil where man meets spirit. One may listen to the secret cadence of nature beyond the border where sound bows to silence. Japan, who had proved herself equal to the task of repelling the Mongol invasion, found little difficulty in resisting that attempt at Western encroachment which, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, came in the form of the Shimabara Rebellion, instigated by the Jesuits. It has been our boast that no foreign conqueror ever polluted the soil of Japan, but these attempts at aggression from the outside hardened our insular prejudice into a desire for complete isolation from the rest of the world. Soon after the Jesuit war the building of vessels large enough to ride the high seas was forbidden, and no one was allowed to leave our shores. Our sole point of contact with the outside world was at the port of Nagasaki, where the Chinese and the Dutch were permitted, under strict surveillance, to carry on trade. For the space of nearly two hundred and seventy years we were as one buried alive!

Yet a worse fate was in store for us. The Tokugawa shoguns, who brought about this remarkable isolation of Japan, ruled the country from 1600 to 1868, and threw the invisible network of their tyranny over all the nation. From the highest to the lowest, all were entangled in a subtle web of mutual espionage, and every element of individuality was crushed under the weight of unbending formalism. Deprived of all stimulus from without, and imprisoned within our own island realm, we groped amid a maze of tradition. Darkest over us lay the Night of Asia.

Chapter 2

The Tokugawa tyrants, who initiated the policy of strict seclusion, were the successors of various lines of shoguns who, as military regents of the Mikado, had, since the twelfth century, usurped the government of Japan. Before that period, Japan was under the personal rule of the Mikado, who, with the assistance of court functionaries, reigned over the country from Kioto. The over-centralization of the imperial bureaucracy, however, was the cause of its own decay. Its neglect of provincial administration led to local disturbances and the creation of baronial es , over which the Kioto court exercised no active control. The real authority thus came into the hands of the strongest baronial power, whose representative, vested by the Mikado with the title of shogun, or commander-in-chief, ruled the country as regent, the Mikado retaining but a nominal sovereignty over the empire.

The first, or Kamakura, shogunate, so called from the city which its representatives made their capital, exercised the powers of government from 1186 to 1883. This was followed by a temporary restitution of power to the Mikado; but the reins of government soon fell into the hands of another line of shoguns, the Ashikaga, who from 1836 to 1578 ruled the country from Kioto itself. The fall of the Ashikaga shogunate was followed by a long period of civil war, during which the various great barons struggled for supremacy. Out of this state of turmoil arose that Napoleonic genius, Taiko Hideyoshi, who, born a peasant, died, in 1598, the master of unified Japan. His son was, however, unable to retain the authority left him by his father, and the dictatorship of the empire devolved, in 1600, on Lyeyasu, the first of the Tokugawa shoguns.

The Tokugawa shogunate differed from those preceding it in that it was virtually a monarchy, despite its apparent feudalistic form. Even under the great Taiko, the government of the country was conducted by a council composed of five of the most powerful barons, but under the Tokugawa régime it became purely autocratic. Iyeyasu framed for his descendants a course of policy which enabled them to retain their rule through fourteen generations, until the recent restoration of the Mikado in 1868. He not merely curtailed the power of the barons until they were such only in name, but erected safeguards against every possible source of danger to his dynasty. He not only cut us off from all outside intercourse, but so separated the different classes of society, that the idea of national unity became completely lost. The subtleness of his machinations is manifest not less in his elaborate scheme for maintaining military ascendancy than in the way in which he took advantage of our own idiosyncrasies and secret vanities to disarm all opposition to his rule. In order that he might yoke us unresistingly to the car of routine, he soothed our feelings and delighted our souls by appeals to that love and worship for the past that is one of our national instincts. Our bonds were, in fact, largely of our own weaving, and Iyeyasu but lulled us to sleep, unmindful of the future, within the chrysalis of tradition. Perhaps it is for this, that he knew us only too well, we execrate his memory to-day.

The mechanism of the Tokugawa rule cannot be adequately described in brief; not only is it exceedingly complicated, but it is without striking parallel in the history of any country. It affords the peculiar spectacle of a society perfectly isolated and self-complete, which, acting and reacting upon itself, produced worlds within worlds, each with its separate life and ideals, and its own distinct expressions in art and literature. It exhibits all the subtleness of European class distinction, plus the element of caste as understood in India. We can here but indicate its main phases.

First, over all was the Mikado. That sacred conception is the thought-inheritance of Japan from her very beginning. Mythology has consecrated it, history has endeared it, and poetry has idealized it. Buddhism has enriched it with that reverence which India pays to the "Protector of the Law," and Confucianism has confirmed it with the loyalty which China offers to the "Son of Heaven." The Mikado may cease to govern, but he always reigns. He exists not by divine right, but by divine law,—a fact of man and nature. He is always there, like our beloved mountain of Fuji, which stands eternally in silent beauty, or like the glorious sea which forever washes our shore.

We must remember, however, that the political significance of the Mikado has not always been the same. As we are often unconscious of the every-day facts of nature, because of their unquestioned existence, so we became unconscious of the Mikado, and basked in the daylight, unmindful of the sun above. Clouds of successive usurpations long obscured the heavens, so that devotion to the Solar Throne became a distant though never entirely forgotten homage. By the sixteenth century, when Iyeyasu assumed the shogunate and became in reality absolute monarch of Japan, all memory of the personal rule of the Mikado had been lost for four long centuries. The Mikado’s court at Kioto, the former capital of the imperial government, was still existent, owing to its past prestige, but it was only a faint reflection of its former glory.

The great genius of Iyeyasu is apparent in his full recognition of the Mikado in the national scheme. In strong contrast to the arrogance and utter neglect which the preceding shoguns displayed toward the court, he spared no effort to show his respect. He augmented the imperial revenues, invited the daimios (feudal lords) to participate in rebuilding the imperial palace, restored the court ceremonial and etiquette, and was unceasing in his ministrations to the welfare of the imperial household. He even started the unprecedented ceremony of the shogun paying personal homage to the throne, and a brilliant pageant yearly passed from his castle of Yedo (now known as Tokio), dazzling the delighted eyes of the populace as it wended its way slowly toward Kioto. All this was flattering to the national love of tradition. It was considered as heralding the advent of the millennium.

But behind this appearance of loyalty to the throne lay hidden the subtlest snares of the Tokugawas. If they recognized the necessity of the imperial cult, they determined that they alone should be its high-priests, and that others should worship at a respectful distance. In the name of sanctity, the Kioto court was deprived of those last remnants of political authority which former regencies had suffered it to retain. A strong garrison was stationed in Kioto, ostensibly for the protection of the palace, but its members were chosen from the tried body-guard of the Tokugawas themselves. They continued to invite one of the imperial princes to take the monastic vows and reside in Yedo as lord abbot of the Uyeno temple, by which means they always virtually held at their capital a hostage from the Kioto court. No daimio was allowed to seek audience of the Mikado without their consent.

The Mikado, unseen and unheard, commanded a mysterious awe. His palace now became the "Forbidden Interior" in the strict sense of the word. The ancient political significance of the court was lost in a semi-religious conception. No wonder that the Westerners who first visited our country wrote that there were two rulers in Japan, the temporal in Yedo, and the spiri in Kioto. In spite of the constant loyalty which our forefathers expressed for the Mikado in Tokugawa days, they had none of the fiery enthusiasm which inspires us to-day. With them it was symbolism; with us it is a living reality.

Next to the Mikado, and foremost in social rank (the imperial line being considered above all class distinctions), came the kuges, or court aristocracy of Kioto. The exalted position which they held in society arose from their association with the Mikado. From their position near the throne, they were called poetically the Friends of the Moon and Guests of the Cloud. Their fortunes waxed and waned with those of the imperial household, to which, regardless of the immense political changes that have come over Japan since the days when they actively participated in the conduct of the empire, they have ever remained faithful. Herein again lies another remarkable example of that obstinate tenacity which makes the Japanese race preserve the old while it welcomes the new.

The kuges were the successors of those princely bureaucrats who participated in the imperial rule from the year 645 to 1166. The old system of government, together with its social customs and art expressions, was based mainly on that of the Tang dynasty of China. The kuges have always remained guardians of its ideals. While China was trying one policy after another, and Japan herself was passing through various different phases of feudalism toward the monarchism of the Tokugawas, the kuges continued to live the life which preceded the twelfth century. Their costumes were of the eleventh, their etiquette of the tenth century. They read Chinese with the intonation of the Tang period, and danced to the classic measure of the Bugaku music, the inheritance of an era preceding the ninth century. They delighted in the purism of the Fujiwara poetry, and affected the technic of the ancient school of painting. It is to their devotion to the past that we owe the preservation of the Kharma-kanda (ritualistic observances) of India and the early Buddhist doctrines of China.

The Tokugawa government humored and honored the court nobles because of their association with the Mikado and the place they occupied in the history of the nation. The kuges were given precedence over the daimios, and their incomes, if not greatly increased, were at least assured to them. This last must have been gratifying to those of them who remembered the disastrous days when they had to sell autograph poems for their sustenance. They were contented, and the Tokugawas kept them well disposed toward themselves by intermarriage and timely financial aid. All political power, however, was completely taken from the kuges, notwithstanding the high-sounding titles which they were still allowed to retain. The duty of the privy councilor would consist in debating on the merits of a love-ditty, and that of the high minister of state in presiding over a competition of nightingales. It was in those days of refined folly that the queen in our game of chess was solemnly abolished by imperial command.

Theoretically, next to the court no of Kioto in social position, but actually far prouder and more powerful, came the daimios, or feudal lords (literally grandees), nearly three hundred in number. These were divided into classes—the Tozama daimios, who were the descendants of the barons of former days, and the daimios of recent creation, who had been ennobled by the Tokugawas, either for their services, or because they traced their lineage to some member of that family. In the early days of Tokugawa rule, the Tozama daimios were a source of great danger, as their ancient warlike spirit remained as yet untamed. The methods that Iyeyasu and his successors employed in maintaining military ascendancy, and in generally bringing the daimios under absolute control, are a study in themselves. Any map of Japan in the early days of the Tokugawas will show the feudatory provinces so distributed that all political combination between them was rendered impossible. On such a map we will find the daimiates of Tokugawa creation, which were constantly being augmented in size and strength, wedged in between the earlier daimiates. Gradually all strategical points on the main roads of communication throughout the country were taken from the Tozama daimios, and either held by the shogun himself or put into the hands of his minions. The practice of assembling the daimios at Yedo to sit in conference over questions of territorial rights soon led to the inauguration of a system by which each daimio was obliged to leave his territory every alternate year and pay personal homage to the shogun, while his family were required to reside permanently at the capital as hostages. In this manner the greater part of such time as the daimios were not under immediate control of the shogun was consumed in journeying to and from their provinces, so that but little opportunity was given them to form or carry out conspiracies against the government. The newly enacted law of inheritance demanded the approval of the government in each case of succession to the daimiates, and also in all cases of marriage. A constant drain was maintained on their feudatory income by inviting the daimios to assist in repairing the imperial palace, and in other public works. Jealousy and rivalry were encouraged to such an extent that they resulted in a lamentable condition of mutual distrust and espionage.