Kabanata Kabanata 8 · A GLIMPSE OF TENDENCIES

. A GLIMPSE OF TENDENCIES

The foreign concession of an open port offers a striking contrast

to its far-Eastern environment. In the well-ordered ugliness of

its streets one finds suggestions of places not on this side of

the world,--just as though fragments of the Occident had been

magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Marseilles, of

New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in

colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile

buildings--immense by comparison with the low light Japanese

shops--seem to utter the menace of financial power. The

dwellings, of every conceivable design--from that of an Indian

bungalow to that of an English or French country-manor, with

turrets and bow-windows--are surrounded by commonplace gardens of

clipped shrubbery; the white roadways are solid and level as

tables, and bordered with boxed-up trees. Nearly all things

conventional in England or America have been domiciled in these

districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and

telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported

brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-glass

windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning

and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and

bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels.

There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals,

courts, jails, and a foreign police. There are foreign lawyers,

doctors, and druggists; foreign grocers, confectioners, bakers,

dairymen; foreign dress-makers and tailors; foreign

school-teachers and music-teachers. There is a town-hall, for

municipal business and public meetings of all kinds,--likewise

for amateur theatricals or lectures and concerts; and very rarely

some dramatic company, on a tour of the world, halts there awhile

to make men laugh and women cry like they used to do at home.

There are cricket-grounds, racecourses, public parks,--or, as we

should call them in England, "squares,"--yachting associations,

athletic societies, and swimming baths. Among the familiar noises

are the endless tinkling of piano-practice, the crashing of a

town-band, and an occasional wheezing of accordions: in fact, one

misses only the organ-grinder. The population is English, French,

German, American, Danish, Swedish, Swiss, Russian, with a thin

sprinkling of Italians and Levantines. I had almost forgotten the

Chinese. They are present in multitude, and have a little corner

of the district to themselves. But the dominant element is

English and American, the English being in the majority. All the

faults and some of the finer qualities of the masterful races can

be studied here to better advantage than beyond seas,--because

everybody knows all about everybody else in communities so

small,--mere oases of Occidental life in the vast unknown of the

Far East. Ugly stories may be heard which are not worth writing

about; also stories of nobility and generosity--about good brave

things done by men who pretend to be selfish, and wear

conventional masks to hide what is best in them from public

knowledge.

But the domains of the foreigner do not stretch beyond the

distance of an easy walk, and may shrink back again into nothing

before many years--for reasons I shall presently dwell upon. His

settlements developed precociously,--almost like "mushroom

cities" in the great American West,--and reached the apparent

limit of their development soon after solidifying.

About and beyond the concession, the "native town"--the real

Japanese city--stretches away into regions imperfectly known. To

the average settler this native town remains a world of

mysteries; he may not think it worth his while to enter it for

ten years at a time. It has no interest for him, as he is not a

student of native customs, but simply a man of business; and he

has no time to think how queer it all is. Merely to cross the

concession line is almost the same thing as to cross the Pacific

Ocean,--which is much less wide than the difference between the

races. Enter alone into the interminable narrow maze of Japanese

streets, and the dogs will bark at you, and the children stare at

you as if you were the only foreigner they ever saw. Perhaps they

will even call after you "Ijin," "Tojin," or "Ke-tojin,"--the

last of which signifies "hairy foreigner," and is not intended as

a compliment.

For a long time the merchants of the concessions had their own

way in everything, and forced upon the native firms methods of

business to which no Occidental merchant would think of

submitting,--methods which plainly expressed the foreign

conviction that all Japanese were tricksters. No foreigner would

then purchase anything until it had been long enough in his hands

to be examined and re-examined and "exhaustively" examined,--or

accept any order for imports unless the order were accompanied by

"a substantial payment of bargain money"(1). Japanese buyers and

sellers protested in vain; they found themselves obliged to

submit. But they bided their time,--yielding only with the

determination to conquer. The rapid growth of the foreign town,

and the immense capital successfully invested therein, proved to

them how much they would have to learn before being able to help

themselves. They wondered without admiring, and traded with the

foreigners or worked for them, while secretly detesting them. In

old Japan the merchant ranked below the common peasant; but these

foreign invaders assumed the tone of princes and the insolence of

conquerors. As employers they were usually harsh, and sometimes

brutal. Nevertheless they were wonderfully wise in the matter of

making money; they lived like kings and paid high salaries. It

was desirable that young men should suffer in their service for

the sake of learning things which would have to be learned to

save the country from passing under foreign rule. Some day Japan

would have a mercantile marine of her own, and foreign banking

agencies, and foreign credit, and be well able to rid herself of

these haughty strangers: in the meanwhile they should be endured

as teachers.

So the import and export trade remained entirely in foreign

hands, and it grew from nothing to a value of hundreds of

millions; and Japan was well exploited. But she knew that she was

only paying to learn; and her patience was of that kind which

endures so long as to be mistaken for oblivion of injuries. Her

opportunities came in the natural order of things. The growing

influx of aliens seeking fortune gave her the first advantage.

The intercompetition for Japanese trade broke down old methods;

and new firms being glad to take orders and risks without

"bargain-money," large advance-payments could no longer be

exacted. The relations between foreigners and Japanese

simultaneously improved,--as the latter showed a dangerous

capacity for sudden combination against ill-treatment, could not

be cowed by revolvers, would not suffer abuse of any sort, and

knew how to dispose of the most dangerous rowdy in the space of a

few minutes. Already the rougher Japanese of the ports, the dregs

of the populace, were ready to assume the aggressive on the least

provocation.

Within two decades from the founding of the settlements, those

foreigners who once imagined it a mere question of time when the

whole country would belong to them, began to understand how

greatly they had underestimated the race. The Japanese had been

learning wonderfully well--"nearly as well as the Chinese." They

were supplanting the small foreign shopkeepers; and various

establishments had been compelled to close because of Japanese

competition. Even for large firms the era of easy fortune-making

was over; the period of hard work was commencing. In early days

all the personal wants of foreigners had necessarily been

supplied by foreigners,--so that a large retail trade had grown

up under the patronage of the wholesale trade. The retail trade

of the settlements was evidently doomed. Some of its branches had

disappeared; the rest were visibly diminishing.

To-day the economic foreign clerk or assistant in a business

house cannot well afford to live at the local hotels. He can hire

a Japanese cook at a very small sum per month, or can have his

meals sent him from a Japanese restaurant at five to seven sen

per plate. He lives in a house constructed in "semi-foreign

style," and owned by a Japanese. The carpets or mattings on his

floor are of Japanese manufacture. His furniture is supplied by a

Japanese cabinet-maker. His suits, shirts, shoes, walking-cane,

umbrella, are "Japanese make": even the soap on his washstand is

stamped with Japanese ideographs. If a smoker, he buys his Manila

cigars from a Japanese tobacconist half a dollar cheaper per box

than any foreign house would charge him for the same quality. If

he wants books he can buy them at much lower prices from a

Japanese than from a foreign book dealer,--and select his

purchases from a much larger and better-selected stock. If he

wants a photograph taken he goes to a Japanese gallery: no

foreign photographer could make a living in Japan. If he wants

curios he visits a Japanese house;--the foreign dealer would

charge him a hundred per cent. dearer.

On the other hand, if he be a man of family, his daily marketing

is supplied by Japanese butchers, fishmongers, dairymen,

fruit-sellers, vegetable dealers. He may continue for a time to

buy English or American hams, bacon, canned goods, etc., from

some foreign provision dealer; but he has discovered that

Japanese stores now offer the same class of goods at lower

prices. If he drinks good beer, it probably comes from a Japanese

brewery; and if he wants a good quality of ordinary wine or

liquor, Japanese storekeepers can supply it at rates below those

of the foreign importer. Indeed, the only things he cannot buy

from the Japanese houses are just those things which he cannot

afford,--high-priced goods such as only rich men are likely to

purchase. And finally, if any of his family become sick, he can

consult a Japanese physician who will charge him a fee perhaps

one tenth less than he would have had to pay a foreign physician

in former times. Foreign doctors now find it very hard to

live,--unless they have something more than their practice to

rely upon. Even when the foreign doctor brings down his fee to a

dollar a visit, the high-class Japanese doctor can charge two,

and still crush competition; for, he furnishes the medicine

himself at prices which would ruin a foreign apothecary. There

are doctors and doctors, of course, as in all countries; but the

German-speaking Japanese physician capable of directing a public

or military hospital is not easily surpassed in his profession;

and the average foreign physician cannot possibly compete with

him. He furnishes no prescriptions to be taken to a drugstore:

his drugstore is either at home or in a room of the hospital he

directs.

These facts, taken at random out of a multitude, imply that

foreign shops or as we call them in America, "stores," will soon

cease to be. The existence of some has been prolonged only by

needless and foolish trickery on the part of some petty Japanese

dealers,--attempts to sell abominable decoctions in foreign

bottles under foreign labels, to adulterate imported goods, or to

imitate trade-marks. But the common sense of the Japanese

dealers, as a mass, is strongly opposed to such immorality, and

the evil will soon correct itself. The native storekeepers can

honestly undersell the foreign ones, because able not only to

underlive them, but to make fortunes during the competition.

This has been for some time well recognized in the concessions.

But the delusion prevailed that the great exporting and importing

firms were impregnable; that they could still control the whole

volume of commerce with the West; and that no Japanese companies

could find means to oppose the weight of foreign capital, or to

acquire the business methods according to which it was employed.

Certainly the retail trade would go. But that signified little.

The great firms would remain and multiply, and would increase

their capacities.

(1) See Japan Mail, July 21, 1895.

III

During all this time of outward changes the real feeling between

the races--the mutual dislike of Oriental and Occidental--had

continued to grow. Of the nine or ten English papers published in

the open ports, the majority expressed, day after day, one side

of this dislike, in the language of ridicule or contempt; and a

powerful native press retorted in kind, with dangerous

effectiveness. If the "anti-Japanese" newspapers did not actually

represent--as I believe they did--an absolute majority in

sentiment, they represented at least the weight of foreign

capital, and the preponderant influences of the settlements. The

English "pro-Japanese" newspapers, though conducted by shrewd

men, and distinguished by journalistic abilities of no common

order, could not appease the powerful resentment provoked by the

language of their contemporaries. The charges of barbarism or

immorality printed in English were promptly answered by the

publication in Japanese dailies of the scandals of the open

ports,--for all the millions of the empire to know. The race

question was carried into Japanese politics by a strong

anti-foreign league; the foreign concessions were openly denounced as

hotbeds of vice; and the national anger became so formidable that

only the most determined action on the part of the government

could have prevented disastrous happenings. Nevertheless oil was

still poured on the smothered fire by foreign editors, who at the

outbreak of the war with China openly took the part of China.

This policy was pursued throughout the campaign. Reports of

imaginary reverses were printed recklessly, undeniable victories

were unjustly belittled, and after the war had been decided, the

cry was raised that the Japanese "had been allowed to become

dangerous" Later on, the interference of Russia was applauded and

the sympathy of England condemned by men of English blood. The

effect of such utterances at such a time was that of insult never

to be forgiven upon a people who never forgive. Utterances of

hate they were, but also utterances of alarm,--alarm excited by

the signing of those new treaties, bringing all aliens under

Japanese jurisdiction,--and fear, not unfounded, of another

anti-foreign agitation with the formidable new sense of national

power behind it. Premonitory symptoms of such agitation were

really apparent in a general tendency to insult or jeer at

foreigners, and in some rare but exemplary acts of violence. The

government again found it necessary to issue proclamations and

warnings against such demonstrations of national anger; and they

ceased almost as quickly as they began. But there is no doubt

that their cessation was due largely to recognition of the

friendly attitude of England as a naval power, and the worth of

her policy to Japan in a moment of danger to the world's peace.

England, too, had first rendered treaty-revision possible,--in

spite of the passionate outcries of her own subjects in the Far

East; and the leaders of the people were grateful. Otherwise the

hatred between settlers and Japanese might have resulted quite as

badly as had been feared.

In the beginning, of course, this mutual antagonism was racial,

and therefore natural; and the irrational violence of prejudice

and malignity developed at a later day was inevitable with the

ever-increasing conflict of interests. No foreigner really

capable of estimating the conditions could have seriously

entertained any hope of a rapprochement. The barriers of racial

feeling, of emotional differentiation, of language, of manners

and beliefs, are likely to remain insurmountable for centuries.

Though instances of warm friendship, due to the mutual attraction

of exceptional natures able to divine each other intuitively,

might be cited, the foreigner, as a general rule, understands the

Japanese quite as little as the Japanese understands him. What is

worse for the alien than miscomprehension is the simple fact that

he is in the position of an invader. Under no ordinary

circumstances need he expect to be treated like a Japanese, and

this not merely because he has more money at his command, but

because of his race. One price for the foreigner, another for the

Japanese, is the common regulation,--except in those Japanese

stores which depend almost exclusively upon foreign trade. If you

wish to enter a Japanese theatre, a figure-show, any place of

amusement, or even an inn, you must pay a virtual tax upon your

nationality. Japanese artisans, laborers, clerks, will not work

for you at Japanese rates--unless they have some other object in

view than wages. Japanese hotel-keepers--except in those hotels

built and furnished especially for European or American

travelers--will not make out your bill at regular prices. Large

hotel-companies have been formed which maintain this rule,--

companies controlling scores of establishments throughout the

country, and able to dictate terms to local storekeepers and to

the smaller hostelries. It has been generously confessed that

foreigners ought to pay higher than Japanese for accommodation,

since they give more trouble; and this is true. But under even

these facts race-feeling is manifest. Those innkeepers who build

for Japanese custom only, in the great centres, care nothing for

foreign custom, and often lose by it,--partly because well-paying

native guests do not like hotels patronized by foreigners, and

partly because the Western guest wants all to himself the room

which can be rented more profitably to a Japanese party of five

or eight. Another fact not generally understood in connection

with this is that in Old Japan the question of recompense for

service was left to honor. The Japanese innkeeper always supplied

(and in the country often still supplies) food at scarcely more

than cost; and his real profit depended upon the conscience of

the customer. Hence the importance of the chadai, or present of

tea-money, to the hotel. From the poor a very small sum, from the

rich a larger sum, was expected,--according to services rendered.

In like manner the hired servant expected to be remunerated

according to his master's ability to pay, even more than

according to the value of the work done; the artist preferred,

when working for a good patron, never to name a price: only the

merchant tried to get the better of his customers by bargaining,

--the immoral privilege of his class. It may be readily imagined

that the habit of trusting to honor for payment produced no good

results in dealing with Occidentals. All matters of buying and

selling we think of as "business"; and business in the West is

not conducted under purely abstract ideas of morality, but at

best under relative and partial ideas of morality. A generous man

extremely dislikes to have the price of an article which he wants

to buy left to his conscience; for, unless he knows exactly the

value of the material and the worth of the labor, he feels

obliged to make such over-payment as will assure him that he has

done more than right; while the selfish man takes advantage of

the situation to give as nearly next to nothing as he can.

Special rates have to be made, therefore, by the Japanese in all

dealings with foreigners. But the dealing itself is made more or

less aggressive, according to circumstance, because of race

antagonism. The foreigner has not only to pay higher rates for

every kind of skilled labor; but must sign costlier leases, and

submit to higher rents. Only the lowest class of Japanese

servants can be hired even at high wages by a foreign household;

and their stay is usually brief, as they dislike the service

required of them. Even the apparent eagerness of educated

Japanese to enter foreign employ is generally misunderstood;

their veritable purpose being simply, in most cases, to fit

themselves for the same sort of work in Japanese business houses,

stores, and hotels. The average Japanese would prefer to work

fifteen hours a day for one of his own countrymen than eight

hours a day for a foreigner paying higher wages. I have seen

graduates of the university working as servants; but they were

working only to learn special things.

Really the dullest foreigner could not have believed that a

people of forty millions, uniting all their energies to achieve

absolute national independence, would remain content to leave the

management of their country's import and export trade to aliens,

--especially in view of the feeling in the open ports. The

existence of foreign settlements in Japan, under consular

jurisdiction, was in itself a constant exasperation to national

pride,--an indication of national weakness. It had so been

proclaimed in print,--in speeches by members of the anti-foreign

league,--in speeches made in parliament. But knowledge of the

national desire to control the whole of Japanese commerce, and

the periodical manifestations of hostility to foreigners as

settlers, excited only temporary uneasiness. It was confidently

asserted that the Japanese could only injure themselves by any

attempt to get rid of foreign negotiators. Though alarmed at the

prospect of being brought under Japanese law, the merchants of

the concessions never imagined a successful attack upon large

interests possible, except by violation of that law itself. It

signified little that the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha had become, during

the war, one of the largest steamship companies in the world;

that Japan was trading directly with India and China; that

Japanese banking agencies were being established in the great

manufacturing centres abroad; that Japanese merchants were

sending their sons to Europe and America for a sound commercial

education. Because Japanese lawyers were gaining a large foreign

clientele; because Japanese shipbuilders, architects, engineers

had replaced foreigners in government service, it did not at all

follow that the foreign agents controlling the import and export

trade with Europe and America could be dispensed with. The

machinery of commerce would be useless in Japanese hands; and

capacity for other professions by no means augured latent

capacity for business. The foreign capital invested in Japan

could not be successfully threatened by any combinations formed

against it. Some Japanese houses might carry on a small import

business, but the export trade required a thorough knowledge of

business conditions on the other side of the world, and such

connections and credits as the Japanese could not obtain.

Nevertheless the self-confidence of the foreign importers, and

exporters was rudely broken in July, 1895, when a British house

having brought suit against a Japanese company in a Japanese

court, for refusal to accept delivery of goods ordered, and

having won a judgment for nearly thirty thousand dollars,

suddenly found itself confronted and menaced by a guild whose

power had never been suspected. The Japanese firm did not appeal

against the decision of the court: it expressed itself ready to

pay the whole sum at once--if required. But the guild to which it

belonged informed the triumphant plaintiffs that a compromise

would be to their advantage. Then the English house discovered

itself threatened with a boycott which could utterly ruin it,--a

boycott operating in all the industrial centres of the Empire.

The compromise was promptly effected at considerable loss to the

foreign firm; and the settlements were dismayed. There was much

denunciation of the immorality of the proceeding(1). But it was a

proceeding against which the law could do nothing; for boycotting

cannot be satisfactorily dealt with under law; and it

afforded proof positive that the Japanese were able to force

foreign firms to submit to their dictation,--by foul means if not

by fair. Enormous guilds had been organized by the great

industries,--combinations whose moves, perfectly regulated by

telegraph, could ruin opposition, and could set at defiance even

the judgment of tribunals. The Japanese had attempted boycotting

in previous years with so little success that they were deemed

incapable of combination. But the new situation showed how well

they had learned through defeat, and that with further

improvement of organization they could reasonably expect to get

the foreign trade under control,--if not into their own hands. It

would be the next great step toward the realization of the

national desire,--Japan only for the Japanese. Even though the

country should be opened to foreign settlement, foreign

investments would always be at the mercy of Japanese

combinations.

(1) A Kobe merchant of great experience, writing to the Kobe

Chronicle of August 7, 1895, observed:--"I am not attempting to

defend boycotts; but I firmly believe from what has come to my

knowledge that in each and every case there has been provocation

irritating the Japanese, rousing their feelings and their sense

of justice, and driving them to combination as a defense."

The foregoing brief account of existing conditions may suffice to

prove the evolution in Japan of a social phenomenon of great

significance. Of course the prospective opening of the country

under new treaties, the rapid development of its industries, and

the vast annual increase in the volume of trade with America and

Europe, will probably bring about some increase of foreign

settlers; and this temporary result might deceive many as to the

inevitable drift of things. But old merchants of experience even

now declare that the probable further expansion of the ports will

really mean the growth of a native competitive commerce that must

eventually dislodge foreign merchants. The foreign settlements,

as communities, will disappear: there will remain only some few

great agencies, such as exist in all the chief ports of the

civilized world; and the abandoned streets of the concessions,

and the costly foreign houses on the heights, will be peopled and

tenanted by Japanese. Large foreign investments will not be made

in the interior. And even Christian mission-work must be left to

native missionaries; for just as Buddhism never took definite

form in Japan until the teaching of its doctrines was left

entirely to Japanese priests,--so Christianity will never take

any fixed shape till it has been so remodeled as to harmonize

with the emotional and social life of the race. Even thus

remodeled it can scarcely hope to exist except in the form of a

few small sects.

The social phenomenon exhibited can be best explained by a

simile. In many ways a human society may be compared biologically

with an individual organism. Foreign elements introduced forcibly

into the system of either, and impossible to assimilate, set up

irritations and partial disintegration, until eliminated

naturally or removed artificially. Japan is strengthening herself

through elimination of disturbing elements; and this natural

process is symbolized in the resolve to regain possession of all

the concessions, to bring about the abolishment of consular

jurisdiction, to leave nothing under foreign control within the

Empire. It is also manifested in the dismissal of foreign

employes, in the resistance offered by Japanese congregations to

the authority of foreign missionaries, and in the resolute

boycotting of foreign merchants. And behind all this

race-movement there is more than race-feeling: there is also the

definite conviction that foreign help is proof of national

feebleness, and that the Empire remains disgraced before the eyes

of the commercial world, so long as its import and export trade

are managed by aliens. Several large Japanese firms have quite

emancipated themselves from the domination of foreign middlemen;

large trade with India and China is being carried on by Japanese

steamship companies; and communication with the Southern States

of America is soon to be established by the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha,

for the direct importation of cotton. But the foreign settlements

remain constant sources of irritation; and their commercial

conquest by untiring national effort will alone satisfy the

country, and will prove, even better than the war with China,

Japan's real place among nations. That conquest, I think, will

certainly be achieved.

What of the future of Japan? No one can venture any positive

prediction on the assumption that existing tendencies will

continue far into that future. Not to dwell upon the grim

probabilities of war, or the possibility of such internal

disorder as might compel indefinite suspension of the

constitution, and lead to a military dictatorship,--a resurrected

Shogunate in modern uniform,--great changes there will assuredly

be, both for better and for worse. Supposing these changes

normal, however, one may venture some qualified predictions,

based upon the reasonable supposition that the race will

continue, through rapidly alternating periods of action and

reaction, to assimilate its new-found knowledge with the best

relative consequences.

Physically, I think, the Japanese will become before the close of

the next century much superior to what they now are. For such

belief there are three good reasons. The first is that the

systematic military and gymnastic training of the able-bodied

youth of the Empire ought in a few generations to produce results

as marked as those of the military system in Germany,--increase

in stature, in average girth of chest, in muscular development

Another reason is that the Japanese of the cities are taking to a

richer diet,--a flesh diet; and that a more nutritive food must

have physiological results favoring growth. Immense numbers of

little restaurants are everywhere springing up, in which "Western

Cooking" is furnished almost as cheaply as Japanese food.

Thirdly, the delay of marriage necessitated by education and by

military service must result in the production of finer and finer

generations of children. As immature marriages become the

exception rather than the rule, children of feeble constitution

will correspondingly diminish in number. At present the

extraordinary differences of stature noticeable in any Japanese

crowd seem to prove that the race is capable of great physical

development under a severer social discipline.

Moral improvement is hardly to be expected--rather the reverse.

The old moral ideals of Japan were at least quite as noble as our

own; and men could really live up to them in the quiet benevolent

times of patriarchal government. Untruthfulness, dishonesty, and

brutal crime were rarer than now, as official statistics show,

the percentage of crime having been for some years steadily on

the increase--which proves of course, among other things, that

the struggle for existence has been intensified. The old standard

of chastity, as represented in public opinion, was that of a less

developed society than our own; yet I do not believe it can be

truthfully asserted that the moral conditions were worse than

with us. In one respect they were certainly better; for the

virtue of Japanese wives was generally in all ages above

suspicion(1). If the morals of men were much more open to

reproach, it is not necessary to cite Lecky for evidence as to

whether a much better state of things prevails in the Occident.

Early marriages were encouraged to guard young men from

temptations to irregular life; and it is only fair to suppose

that in a majority of cases this result was obtained.

Concubinage, the privilege of the rich, had its evil side; but it

had also the effect of relieving the wife from the physical

strain of rearing many children in rapid succession. The social

conditions were so different from those which Western religion

assumes to be the best possible, that an impartial judgment of

them cannot be ecclesiastical. One fact is indisputable,--that

they were unfavorable to professional vice; and in many of the

larger fortified towns,--the seats of princes,--no houses of

prostitution were suffered to exist. When all things are fairly

considered, it will be found that Old Japan might claim, in spite

of her patriarchal system, to have been less open to reproach

even in the matter of sexual morality than many a Western

country. The people were better than their laws asked them to be.

And now that the relations of the sexes are to be regulated by

new codes,--at a time when new codes are really needed, the

changes which it is desirable to bring about cannot result in

immediate good. Sudden reforms are not made by legislation. Laws

cannot directly create sentiment; and real social progress can be

made only through change of ethical feeling developed by long

discipline and training. Meanwhile increasing pressure of

population and increasing competition must tend, while quickening

intelligence, to harden character and develop selfishness.

Intellectually there will doubtless be great progress, but not a

progress so rapid as those who think that Japan has really

transformed herself in thirty years would have us believe.

However widely diffused among the people, scientific education

cannot immediately raise the average of practical intelligence to

the Western level. The common capacity must remain lower for

generations. There will be plenty of remarkable exceptions,

indeed; and a new aristocracy of intellect is coming into

existence. But the real future of the nation depends rather upon

the general capacity of the many than upon the exceptional

capacity of the few. Perhaps it depends especially upon the

development of the mathematical faculty, which is being

everywhere assiduously cultivated. At present this is the weak

point; hosts of students being yearly debarred from the more

important classes of higher study through inability to pass in

mathematics. At the Imperial naval and military colleges,

however, such results have been obtained as suffice to show that

this weakness will eventually be remedied. The most difficult

branches of scientific study, will become less formidable to the

children of those who have been able to distinguish themselves in

such branches.

In other respects, some temporary retrogression is to be looked

for. Just so certainly as Japan has attempted that which is above

the normal limit of her powers, so certainly must she fall back

to that limit, or, rather, below it. Such retrogression will be

natural as well as necessary: it will mean nothing more than a

recuperative preparation for stronger and loftier efforts. Signs

of it are even now visible in the working of certain

state-departments,--notably in that of education. The idea of

forcing upon Oriental students a course of study above the

average capacity of Western students; the idea of making English

the language, or at least one of the languages of the country;

and the idea of changing ancestral modes of feeling and thinking

for the better by such training, were wild extravagances. Japan

must develop her own soul: she cannot borrow another. A dear

friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me

while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the

students of Japan: "_Why, the English language itself has been a

demoralizing influence!_" There was much depth in that

observation. Setting the whole Japanese nation to study English

(the language of a people who are being forever preached to about

their "rights," and never about their "duties") was almost an

imprudence. The policy was too wholesale as well as too sudden.

It involved great waste of money and time, and it helped to sap

ethical sentiment. In the future Japan will learn English, just

as England learns German. But if this study has been wasted in

some directions, it has not been wasted in others. The influence

of English has effected modifications in the native tongue,

making it richer, more flexible, and more capable of expressing

the new forms of thought created by the discoveries of modern

science. This influence must long continue. There will be a

considerable absorption of English--perhaps also of French and

German words--into Japanese: indeed this absorption is already

marked in the changing speech of the educated classes, not less

than in the colloquial of the ports which is mixed with curious

modifications of foreign commercial words. Furthermore, the

grammatical structure of Japanese is being influenced; and though

I cannot agree with a clergyman who lately declared that the use

of the passive voice by Tokyo street-urchins announcing the fall

of Port Arthur--("_Ryojunko ga senryo sera-reta!_") represented

the working of "divine providence," I do think it afforded some

proof that the Japanese language, assimilative like the genius of

the race, is showing capacity to meet all demands made upon it by

the new conditions.

Perhaps Japan will remember her foreign teachers more kindly in

the twentieth century. But she will never feel toward the

Occident, as she felt toward China before the Meiji era, the

reverential respect due by ancient custom to a beloved

instructor; for the wisdom of China was voluntarily sought, while

that of the West was thrust upon her by violence. She will have

some Christian sects of her own; but she will not remember our

American and English missionaries as she remembers even now those

great Chinese priests who once educated her youth. And she will

not preserve relics of our sojourn, carefully wrapped in septuple

coverings of silk, and packed away in dainty whitewood boxes,

because we had no new lesson of beauty to teach her,--nothing by

which to appeal to her emotions.

(1) The statement has been made that there is no word for

chastity in the Japanese language. This is true in the same sense

only that we might say there is no word for chastity in the

English language,--became such words as honor, virtue, purity,

chastity have been adopted into English from other languages.

Open any good Japanese-English dictionary and you will find many

words for chastity. Just as it would be ridiculous to deny that

the word "chastity" is modern English, because it came to us

through the French from the Latin, so it is ridiculous to deny

that Chinese moral terms, adopted into the Japanese tongue more

than a thousand years ago are Japanese to-day. The statement,

like a majority of missionary statements on these subjects, is

otherwise misleading; for the reader is left to infer the absence

of an adjective as well as a noun,--and the purely Japanese

adjectives signifying chaste are numerous. The word most commonly

used applies to both sexes,--and has the old Japanese sense of

firm, strict, resisting, honorable. The deficiency of abstract

terms in a language by no means implies the deficiency of

concrete moral ideas,--a fact which has been vainly pointed out

to missionaries more than once.