An Introduction to the History of Japan Part 10

The relation of the Emperor to the people at large, during these periods of eclipse, was indirect. Between them intervened the Shogun and the _daimyo_ as actual immediate rulers, so that fidelity to the Emperor had been spoken of only academically, and their fidelity, in a concrete sense, had been solely centered in their immediate master, who reciprocated it by the protection he extended directly over them. Thus fidelity on the one hand and protection on the other hand had been conditioned by each other, and because the bond was naturally an essential link of the military regime, it was strengthened by its being handed down from generation to generation. In short, the fidelity of the j.a.panese may be said to be a product of the military regime, and owes its growth to the hereditary relation of va.s.salage. As all the ideals and virtues cherished among the _samurai_ cla.s.s used to be considered by plebeians as worthy of imitation, if practicable in their own circles, fidelity was also understood by them in the same sense as among the military circles, that is to say, as a soldierly virtue in a subordinate toward his superior. So it grew to be more disciplinary, self-sacrificing and devotional, than in the times before the military regime. This condition of the national morals had continued to the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, with occasional relaxations, of course. But now that the Shogunate and the _daimyo_ were eliminated from the political system, the foci toward which the fidelity of the people had been turned ceased to exist, and the fidelity remained, as it were, to be a cherished virtue of the nation though without a goal. It sought for a new focus, looked up one stage higher than the Shogun, and was glad to make the Emperor the object of its fervent devotion. Soon it developed almost into a pa.s.sion, because the nation became more and more conscious of the necessity of a well-centred national consolidation, and it could find nowhere else a centre more fit for it than the Emperor. His prestige could increase in this way _pari pa.s.su_ with the growth of the democratic spirit in the nation. It is not, therefore, a mere traditional preponderance, but an authority having its foundation in modern civilisation.

It cannot be denied, however, that history clothes our imperial house with special grandeur, which might not be sought in the case of any royal family newly come to power, and if conservatism would have a firm stand in j.a.pan, it must be the conservatism which sprang from this historical relation of the people to the Emperor. This explains the sudden rise of the conservative spirit, which at once changed the aspect of the country at the end of the second decade of the Meidji era. It happened just at the time when the current of Europeanisation was at its height and the realisation of the hope of the progressives, the promulgation of the Const.i.tution and the inauguration of representative government, drew very near.

In February 1889 the Const.i.tution long craved for was at last granted, and by virtue of it the first Imperial Diet was opened the next year.

This adoption of the representative system of government by j.a.pan used to be often cited as a rare example of the wonderful progress of a nation not European, and all our subsequent national achievements have been ascribed by foreigners to this radical change of const.i.tution.

Every good and every evil, however, which the system is said to possess, has been fully manifested in this country. We have since been continually endeavouring to train and accustom ourselves to the new regime, but our experience in modern party government is still very meagre, and it will take a long time to see all cla.s.ses of the people appropriately interested in national politics, which is a requisite condition to reaping the benefit of const.i.tutional government to the utmost. At present we have no reason to regret, on the contrary much reason to rejoice at, the introduction of the system.

After the const.i.tution came many organic laws, the civil and penal code, and so forth, in order of proclamation. This completion of the apparatus necessary to the existence of the modern state improved in no small measure the position of our country in the eyes of attentive foreigners.

What, however, contributed most of all to the abrogation of the rights of extraterritoriality enjoyed by foreigners on j.a.panese soil, the object of bitter complaint and pining on the part of patriots, was the victory won by our army in the war against China.

Before the outbreak of the Sinico-j.a.panese war, China had long been regarded not only by Western nations, but by the j.a.panese themselves, as far above our country in national strength, not to speak of the superiority of wealth as well as of civilisation in general. Though the victory of the expeditionary troops sent by Hideyoshi over the Chinese reinforcements despatched by the Emperor of the Ming to succour the invaded Koreans was sufficient to wipe off the military humiliation which our army had suffered on the peninsula nine hundred years before, and had much to do in enhancing the national self-confidence against the Chinese, the renewed imitation of her civilisation during the Tokugawa Shogunate turned the scale again in favour of China even to the eyes of the j.a.panese intelligents, and we had been constantly overawed by the influence of the big continental neighbour. So that the formal annexation of the Loochoo Islands in the first decade of the Meidji era against the opposing Chinese claim was considered to be a great diplomatic victory of the new government. The failure of the French expedition added also to the credit of the unfathomable force of the Celestial Empire. The grand Chinese fleet which visited our ports in the year previous to the war was thought to be more than our match, and made us feel a little disquieted. Contrary to our antic.i.p.ation, however, battle after battle ended in our victory in the war of 1894-1895, and Korea was freed from Chinese hegemony by the treaty of Shimonoseki.

Though some of the important articles of the same treaty were made useless by the intervention of the three Western powers, the war proved on the whole very beneficial to our country. The growth of the consciousness of the national strength emboldened the people to develop their activity in all directions. Several new industries began to flourish. The national wealth increased remarkably so as to enable the government to adopt a monometallic currency in gold. Education, high as well as low, was encouraged by the increase of various new schools and by the strengthening of their staffs. We laboured very hard for the ten following years, and then the Russo-j.a.panese war took place.

It was indeed fortunate that we could win after all in the war in which we put our national destiny at stake. Not only in this war with Russia, but in that with China a decade before, we had been by no means sure of victory, when we decided to enter into them. It is such a war generally that proves salutary to the victorious party, when, after having been fought with difficulty, it ends in a way better than had been antic.i.p.ated. It was so in the war of 1894-1895, and was not otherwise in that waged ten years later. These military successes, needless to say, increased still more the splendour of the imperial prerogative already magnificently revived. At the same time they countenanced the growth of conservatism. The impetus, however, which these wars gave to the general activity of the nation necessitated the people betaking themselves to the study and imitation of Western civilisation. And this Europeanisation, direct or through America, tended to make the nation more and more progressive. Thus conservatism in recent j.a.pan has been marching hand in hand with liberalism, nay, even with radicalism, each alternately outweighing the other. This is why present j.a.pan has appeared to be lacking in stability, especially in the eyes of foreign observers.

The years immediately succeeding the Russo-j.a.panese war formed the culminating period of the glorious era of Meidji, and also a turning-point of the national history. Up to that time foreign nations had been lavishing their kindness in the education of the novice nation, who seemed to them to be yet in her teens on account of having just entered into the concert of the world as a pa.s.sive hearer. They did not know what would become of j.a.pan, brought up and instructed in this way.

In military affairs the English were our first masters, then came the French and the German. In the navy, the Dutch followed by the English were our instructors. In the sphere of legislation, the first advisers were the French, to whom the Germans succeeded. The latter also taught us their science of medicine, which to study in j.a.pan the German language has become the first requisite. Besides what has been enumerated above, knowledge of all branches of industries, arts, and sciences has been introduced into our country in the highly advanced stage of the brilliant century. Who would have dreamt, however, of the victory of the j.a.panese over the Russians in January of 1904? In the war, it is true, a great many foreigners sympathised with the cause of the j.a.panese, simply because all bystanders are unconsciously wont to take the side of the weaker. The fall of Port Arthur and the annihilation of the Russian navy on the Sea of j.a.pan were beyond all expectation. They now began to think that they might be also taken unawares by us, as they thought the Russians were, forgetting that they had ignored to study the j.a.panese. They rather repented that they had underestimated the real j.a.panese unduly, and thereby they have fallen into the error of overestimation. We do not think that a sheer victory on a battlefield can in any case be taken as a measure of the progress of civilisation in the victor. Moreover, in what field could we have been able to beat any European nation except in battle, if we could beat her at all? Almost all of our cultural factors we have borrowed from foreign countries, and therefore they are of later introduction, so that they could not be easily brought by our imitation, however adroit it might be, to a stage nearly so high as they had reached in their original homes. But as to the art of fighting only, we have come to practise it since the old times, and during the successive Shogunates it had been the calling most honoured and followed by us at the expense of other acquirements. In short, it was the speciality of old j.a.pan, so that our success in arms could not testify to the sudden jump in other branches of our civilisation. Those foreigners, however, who had been accustomed to judge us from afar, looked only at the scientific and mechanical side of modern war, of which we had availed ourselves, and surmised that if we could stand excellently the test in this department, we must certainly have surpa.s.sed what they had expected of us in all respects. This surmise, which they felt not very agreeably, they flatly imputed to our dissimulation and feigning, and branded them as our national vices, instead of attributing the miscalculation to their self-deception and ignorance as regards things j.a.panese. On the contrary, we have had never the least intention to deceive any foreigner in the estimation of the merit of what we have achieved. Would it not be ridiculously absurd to a.s.sume the existence of such a tendency in any living nation in the world?

We have been thus overestimated and at the same time begun to be somewhat disliked by those short-sighted observers in foreign countries after our successful war with Russia. The pet nation of the whole world of yesterday was turned suddenly into the most suspected and dangerous nation of to-day! There have been many missionaries who had personal experience of our country, owing to their residence here for years, professing that they have tried their utmost to plead our cause.

Unfortunately, their defence of us has not availed much, for a great part of them are used to depict us as a nation still evolving. Evolving they say, for our recent national progress is too evident a fact to be refuted, and they wish to ascribe it to their fruitful endeavours.

Evolving, they say repeatedly, for they are fain to show that there is still remaining in j.a.pan a wide field reserved for them to work, lest their _raison d'etre_ in this country should otherwise be lost forever.

In fact, we are now far enough advanced as a nation as not to require the tutelage of the missionaries of recent times.

I regret that we have among us a certain number of typical braggarts, who unfortunately abound in every country, and their shameless bluffing has often caused astonishment to unprejudiced observers in foreign countries. Nevertheless, we as a nation are neither far better nor far worse than any other in the world. To remain as a petrified state, with plenty of well-preserved relics of all ages, is what we cannot bear for our country. We know well that a nation which produces sight-seers must be incomparably happier and more praiseworthy than that which furnishes quaint objects for show to please those sight-seers. If there be any other nation that wishes to make its home a peepshow for others, let it do so. That is not our business. What we aspire to earnestly as our national ideal is to make our country able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the senior Western nations in contributing to the advance and welfare of world civilisation. We shall proceed toward this goal, however fluctuating foreign opinion about us may be for years or ages to come.