A History of the Japanese People Part 19

IV. Ministers and functionaries should make decorous behavior their guiding principle, for decorous behavior is the main factor in governing the people. If superiors do not behave with decorum, inferiors are disorderly; if inferiors are wanting in proper behaviour, offences are inevitable. Thus it is that when lord and va.s.sal behave with propriety, the distinctions of rank are not confused; and when the people behave with propriety, the government of the State proceeds of itself.

V. Refraining from gluttony and abandoning covetous desires, deal impartially with the suits brought before you. Of complaints preferred by the people there are a thousand in one day: how many, then, will there be in a series of years? Should he that decides suits at law make gain his ordinary motive and hear causes with a view to receiving bribes, then will the suits of the rich man be like a stone flung into water,* while the plaints of the poor will resemble water cast on a stone. In such circ.u.mstances, the poor man will not know whither to betake himself, and the duty of a minister will not be discharged.

*That is to say, they will encounter no opposition.

VI. Chastise that which is evil and encourage that which is good.

This was the excellent rule of antiquity. Conceal not, therefore, the good qualities of others, and fail not to correct that which is wrong when you see it. Flatterers and deceivers are a sharp weapon for the overthrow of the State, and a pointed sword for the destruction of the people. Sycophants are also fond, when they meet, of dilating to their superiors on the errors of their inferiors; to their inferiors, they censure the faults of their superiors. Men of this kind are all wanting in fidelity to their lord, and in benevolence towards the people. From such an origin great civil disturbances arise.

VII. Let every man have his own charge, and let not the spheres of duty be confused. When wise men are entrusted with office, the sound of praise arises. If unprincipled men hold office, disasters and tumults are multiplied. In this world, few are born with knowledge: wisdom is the product of earnest meditation. In all things, whether great or small, find the right man, and they will surely be well managed: on all occasions, be they urgent or the reverse, meet with but a wise man and they will of themselves be amenable. In this way will the State be eternal and the Temples of the Earth and of Grain*

will be free from danger. Therefore did the wise sovereigns of antiquity seek the man to fill the office, and not the office for the sake of the man.

*A Chinese expression for the Imperial house.

VIII. Let the ministers and functionaries attend the Court early in the morning, and retire late. The business of the State does not admit of remissness, and the whole day is hardly enough for its accomplishment. If, therefore, the attendance at Court is late, emergencies cannot be met: if officials retire soon, the work cannot be completed.

IX. Good faith is the foundation of right. In everything let there be good faith, for in it there surely consists the good and the bad, success and failure. If the lord and the va.s.sal observe good faith one with another, what is there which cannot be accomplished? If the lord and the va.s.sal do not observe good faith towards one another, everything without exception ends in failure.

X. Let us cease from wrath, and refrain from angry looks. Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong. We are not unquestionably sages nor are they unquestionably fools. Both of us are simply ordinary men. How can anyone lay down a rule by which to distinguish right from wrong? For we are all, one with another, wise and foolish like a ring which has no end. Therefore, although others give way to anger, let us, on the contrary, dread our own faults, and though we alone may be in the right, let us follow the mult.i.tude and act like them.

XI. Give clear appreciation to merit and demerit, and deal out to each its sure reward or punishment. In these days, reward does not attend upon merit, nor punishment upon crime. Ye high functionaries who have charge of public affairs, let it be your task to make clear rewards and punishments.

XII. Let not the provincial authorities or the kuni no miyatsuko levy exactions on the people. In a country there are not two lords; the people have not two masters. The sovereign is the master of the people of the whole country. The officials to whom he gives charge are all his va.s.sals. How can they, as well as the Government, presume to levy taxes on the people?

XIII. Let all persons entrusted with office attend equally to their functions. Owing to illness or despatch on missions their work may sometimes be neglected. But whenever they are able to attend to business, let them be as accommodating as though they had cognizance of it from before, and let them not hinder public affairs on the score of not having had to do with them.

XIV. Ministers and functionaries, be not envious. If we envy others, they, in turn, will envy us. The evils of envy know no limit. If others excel us in intelligence, it gives us no pleasure; if they surpa.s.s us in ability, we are envious. Therefore it is not until after the lapse of five hundred years that we at last meet with a wise man, and even in a thousand years we hardly obtain one sage. But if wise men and sages be not found, how shall the country be governed?

XV. To turn away from that which is private and to set one's face towards that which is public this is the path of a minister. If a man is influenced by private motives, he will a.s.suredly feel resentment; if he is influenced by resentment, he will a.s.suredly fail to act harmoniously with others; if he fails to act harmoniously with others, he will a.s.suredly sacrifice the public interest to his private feelings. When resentment arises, it interferes with order and is subversive of law. Therefore, in the first clause it was said that superiors and inferiors should agree together. The purport is the same as this.

XVI. Let the employment of the people in forced labour be at seasonable times. This is an ancient and excellent rule. Let them be employed, therefore, in the winter months when they have leisure. But from spring to autumn, when they are engaged in agriculture or with the mulberry trees, the people should not be employed. For if they do not attend to agriculture, what will they have to eat? If they do not attend to the mulberry trees, what will they do for clothing?

XVII. Decisions on important matters should not be rendered by one person alone: they should be discussed by many. But small matters being of less consequence, need not be consulted about by a number of people. It is only in the discussion of weighty affairs, when there is an apprehension of miscarriage, that matters should be arranged in concert with others so as to arrive at the right conclusion.*

*The above is taken almost verbatim from Aston's translation of the Nihongi.

For a doc.u.ment compiled at the beginning of the seventh century these seventeen ethical precepts merit much approbation. With the exception of the doctrine of expediency, enunciated at the close of the tenth article, the code of Shotoku might be taken for guide by any community in any age. But the prince as a moral reformer* cannot be credited with originality; his merit consists in having studied Confucianism and Buddhism intelligently. The political purport of his code is more remarkable. In the whole seventeen articles there is nothing to inculcate worship of the Kami or observance of Shinto rites. Again, whereas, according to the j.a.panese creed, the sovereign power is derived from the Imperial ancestor, the latter is nowhere alluded to. The seventh article makes the eternity of the State and the security of the Imperial house depend upon wise administration by well-selected officials, but says nothing of hereditary rights. How is such a vital omission to be interpreted, except on the supposition that Shotoku, who had witnessed the worst abuses incidental to the hereditary system of the uji, intended by this code to enter a solemn protest against that system?

*It is a curious fact that tradition represents this prince as having been born at the door of a stable. Hence his original name, Umayado (Stable-door).

Further, the importance attached to the people* is a very prominent feature of the code. Thus, in Article IV, it is stated that "when the people behave with propriety the government of the State proceeds of itself;" Article V speaks of "complaints preferred by the people;"

Article VI refers to "the overthrow of the State" and "the destruction of the people;" Article VII emphasises "the eternity of the State;" that "the sovereign is the master of the people of the whole country;" that "the officials to whom he gives charge are all his va.s.sals," and that these officials, whether miyatsuko or provincial authorities, must not "presume, as well as the Government, to levy taxes on the people." All those expressions amount to a distinct condemnation of the uji system, under which the only people directly subject to the sovereign were those of the minashiro, and those who had been naturalized or otherwise specially a.s.signed, all the rest being practically the property of the uji, and the only lands paying direct taxes to the Throne were the domains of the miyake.

*The word used is hyakusho, which ultimately came to be applied to farmers only.

Forty-two years later (A.D. 646), the abolition of private property in persons and lands was destined to become the policy of the State, but its foundations seem to have been laid in Shotoku's time. It would be an error to suppose that the neglect of Shinto suggested by the above code was by any means a distinct feature of the era, or even a practice of the prince himself. Thus, an Imperial edict, published in the year 607, enjoined that there must be no remissness in the worship of the Kami, and that they should be sincerely reverenced by all officials, In the sequel of this edict Prince Shotoku himself, the o-omi, and a number of functionaries worshipped the Kami of heaven and of earth. In fact, Shotoku, for all his enthusiasm in the cause of Buddhism, seems to have shrunk from anything like bigoted exclusiveness. He is quoted* as saying: "The management of State affairs cannot be achieved unless it is based on knowledge, and the sources of knowledge are Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shinto."** He who inclines to one of these three, must study the other two also; for what one knows seems reasonable, but that of which one is ignorant appears unreasonable. Therefore an administrator of public affairs should make himself acquainted with all three and should not affect one only, for such partiality signifies maladministration.

*In the Sankyo-ron.

**The order of this enumeration is significant.

DEATH OF SHOTOKU TAISHI

Prince Shotoku died in the year 621. The Records do not relate anything of his illness: they say merely that he foresaw the day and hour of his own death, and they say also that when the Buddhist priest, Hyecha of Koma, who had instructed the prince in the "inner doctrine," learned of his decease, he also announced his determination to die on the same day of the same month in the following year so as "to meet the prince in the Pure Land and, together with him, pa.s.s through the metempsychosis of all living creatures."

The last months of Shotoku's life were devoted to compiling, in concert with the o-omi Umako, "a history of the Emperors; a history of the country, and the original record of the omi, the muraji, the tomo no miyatsuko, the kuni no miyatsuko, the 180 be, and the free subjects." This, the first j.a.panese historical work, was completed in the year 620. It was known afterwards as the Kujihongi, and twenty-five years later (645) when--as will presently be seen--the execution of the Soga chief took place, the book was partially consumed by fire. Yet that it had not suffered beyond the possibility of reconstruction, and that it survived in the Ko-jiki was never doubted until the days (1730-1801) of "the prince of j.a.panese literati," Motoori Norinaga. The question of authenticity is still unsettled.

Shotoku's name is further connected with calendar making, though no particulars of his work in that line are on record. j.a.panese historians speak of him as the father of his country's civilization.

They say that he breathed life into the nation; that he raised the status of the Empire; that he laid the foundations of j.a.panese learning; that he fixed the laws of decorum; that he imparted a new character to foreign relations, and that he was an incarnation of the Buddha, specially sent to convert j.a.pan. The Chronicles say that at his death n.o.bles and commoners alike, "the old, as if they had lost a dear child, the young, as if they had lost a beloved parent, filled the ways with the sound of their lamenting."

THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM AND THE CONTROL OF ITS PRIESTS

The roots of j.a.panese Buddhism were watered with blood, as have been the roots of so many religions in so many countries. From the day of the destruction of the military party under the o-muraji Moriya, the foreign faith flourished. Then--as has been shown--were built the first two great temples, and then, for the first time, a Buddhist place of worship was endowed* with rich estates and an ample number of serfs to till them. Thenceforth the annals abound with references to the advent of Buddhist priests from Korea, bearing relics or images. The omi and the muraji vied with each other in erecting shrines, and in 605, we find the Empress Suiko commanding all high dignitaries of State to make 16-foot images of copper** and of embroidery. Buddhist festivals were inst.i.tuted in 606, and their magnificence, as compared with the extreme simplicity of the Shinto rites, must have deeply impressed the people. In a few decades Buddhism became a great social power, and since its priests and nuns were outside the sphere of ordinary administration, the question of their control soon presented itself. It became pressing in 623 when a priest killed his grandfather with an axe. The Empress Suiko, who was then on the throne, would have subjected the whole body of priests and nuns to judicial examination, a terrible ordeal in those days of torture; but at the instance of a Korean priest, officials corresponding to bishops (sojo), high priests (sozu) and abbots (hotto) were appointed from the ranks of Buddhism, and the duty of prescribing law and order was entrusted to them. This involved registration of all the priesthood, and it was thus found (623) that the temples numbered 46; the priests 816, and the nuns 569.

*The endowment of religious edifices was not new in j.a.pan. A conspicuous instance was in A.D. 487, when rice-fields were dedicated to the Moon G.o.d and to the ancestor of the Sun G.o.ddess.

**The metal employed was of gold and copper; in the proportion of one part of the former to 430 of the latter. It is related that when these images were completed, the temple door proved too low to admit them, and the artisan--Tori the Saddle-maker--whose ingenuity overcame the difficulty without pulling down the door, received large honour and reward.

INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA

That not a few Chinese migrated to j.a.pan in remote times is clear.

The Records show that in the year A.D. 540, during the reign of Kimmei, immigrants from Tsin and Han were a.s.sembled and registered, when their number was found to be 7053 households. The terms "Tsin"

and "Han" refer to Chinese dynasties of those names, whose sway covered the period between 255 B.C. and A.D. 419. Hence the expression is too vague to suggest any definite idea of the advent of those settlers; but the story of some, who came through Korea, has already been traced. It was in A.D. 552, during the reign of this same Kimmei, that Buddhism may be said to have found a home in j.a.pan.

China was then under the sceptre of the Liang dynasty, whose first sovereign, Wu, had been such an enthusiastic Buddhist that he abandoned the throne for a monastery.. Yet China took no direct part in introducing the Indian faith to j.a.pan, nor does it appear that from the fourth century A.D. down to the days of Shotoku Taishi, j.a.pan thought seriously of having recourse to China as the fountain-head of the arts, the crafts, the literature, and the moral codes which she borrowed during the period from Korea.

Something of this want of enterprise may have been attributable to the unsettled state of China's domestic politics; something to the well-nigh perpetual troubles between j.a.pan and Korea--troubles which not only taxed j.a.pan's resources but also blocked the sole route by which China was then accessible, namely, the route through Korea. But when the Sui dynasty (A.D. 589-619) came to the Chinese throne, its founder, the Emperor Wen, on the one hand, devoted himself to encouraging literature and commerce; and on the other, threw Korea and j.a.pan into a ferment by invading the former country at the head of a huge army.* This happened when Shotoku Taishi was in his sixteenth year, and though the great expedition proved abortive for aggressive purposes, it brought China into vivid prominence, and when news reached j.a.pan of extensions of the Middle Kingdom's territories under Wen's successor, the j.a.panese Crown Prince determined to open direct intercourse with the Sui Court; not only for literary and religious purposes, but also to study the form of civilization which the whole Orient then revered. This resolve found practical expression in the year 607, when the omi Imoko was sent as envoy to the Sui Court, a Chinese of the Saddlers' Corporation, by name f.u.kuri, being attached to him in the capacity of interpreter. China received these men hospitably and sent an envoy of her own, with a suite of twelve persons, to the Yamato sovereign in the following year.

*Reputed to have mustered 300,000 strong.

The annals contain an instructive description of the ceremony connected with the reception of this envoy in j.a.pan. He was met in Tsukushi (Kyushu) by commissioners of welcome, and was conducted thence by sea to Naniwa (now Osaka), where, at the mouth of the river, thirty "gaily-decked" boats awaited him, and he and his suite were conducted to a residence newly built for the occasion. Six weeks later they entered the capital, after a message of welcome had been delivered to them by a muraji. Seventy-five fully caparisoned horses were placed at their disposal, and after a further rest of nine days, the envoy's official audience took place. He did not see the Empress'

face. Her Majesty was secluded in the hall of audience to which only the princ.i.p.al ministers were admitted. Hence the ceremony may be said to have taken place in the court-yard. There the gifts brought by the envoy were ranged, and the envoy himself, introduced by two high officials, advanced to the front of the court, made obeisance twice, and, kneeling, declared the purport of his mission. The despatch carried by him ran as follows:

The Emperor greets the sovereign of Wa.* Your envoy and his suite have arrived and have given us full information. We, by the grace of heaven, rule over the universe. It is Our desire to diffuse abroad our civilizing influence so as to cover all living things, and Our sentiment of loving nurture knows no distinction of distance. Now We learn that Your Majesty, dwelling separately beyond the sea, bestows the blessings of peace on Your subjects; that there is tranquillity within Your borders, and that the customs and manners are mild. With the most profound loyalty You have sent Us tribute from afar, and We are delighted at this admirable token of Your sincerity. Our health is as usual, notwithstanding the increasing heat of the weather.

Therefore We have sent Pei Shieh-ching, Official Entertainer of the Department charged with the Ceremonial for the Reception of Foreign Amba.s.sadors, and his suite, to notify to you the preceding. We also transmit to you the products of which a list is given separately.**

*It has already been stated that j.a.pan was generally known in China and Korea by the term "Wa," which, being written with an ideograph signifying "dwarf" or "subservient," was disliked by the j.a.panese.

The envoy sent from Yamato in 607 was instructed to ask for the subst.i.tution of Nippon (Place of Sunrise), but the Sui sovereign declined to make the change and j.a.pan did not receive the designation "Nippon" in China until the period Wu Teh (A.D. 618-626) of the Tang dynasty. It is not certain at what time exactly the j.a.panese themselves adopted this nomenclature, but it certainly was before the seventh century.

**Translated by Aston in the Nihongi.

When the reading of the doc.u.ment was concluded, a high n.o.ble stepped forward, took it from the envoy's hands and advanced with it towards the audience-hall, from which another n.o.ble came out to meet him, received the letter, deposited it on a table before the chief entrance, and then reported the facts to the Empress. This ended the ceremony. The haughty condescension of the Chinese despatch does not appear to have offended the j.a.panese, nor did they cavil at the omission of one important ideograph from the t.i.tle applied to their Empress. China's greatness seems to have been fully recognized. When, a month later, the envoy took his departure, the same Imoko was deputed to accompany him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," j.a.pan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority j.a.pan replied that the coming of the emba.s.sy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity j.a.pan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, arts, ethics, and philosophies of China were copiously imported into j.a.pan.

*In this despatch j.a.pan called herself "the place where the sun comes forth," and designated China as "the place where the sun sets." The idea, doubtless, was merely to distinguish between east and west, but the Sui sovereign resented the diction of this "barbarian letter."

RANKS

It will be recognized by considering the uji system that while many t.i.tles existed in j.a.pan, there was practically no promotion. A man might be raised to uji rank. Several instances of that kind have been noted, especially in the case of foreign artists or artisans migrating to the island from Korea or China. But nothing higher was within reach, and for the hereditary Kami of an uji no reward offered except a gift of land, whatever services he might render to the State. Such a system could not but tend to perfunctoriness in the discharge of duty. Perception of this defect induced the regent, Shotoku, to import from China (A.D. 603) the method of official promotion in vogue under the Sui dynasty and to employ caps as insignia of rank.* Twelve of such grades were inst.i.tuted, and the terminology applied to them was based on the names of six moral qualities--virtue, benevolence, propriety, faith, justice, and knowledge--each comprising two degrees, "greater" and "lesser." The caps were made of sarcenet, a distinctive colour for each grade, the cap being gathered upon the crown in the shape of a bag with a border attached. The three highest ranks of all were not included in this category.

*In China to-day the distinguishing mark is a b.u.t.ton of varying material fastened on the top of the cap.