The Religions of Japan Part 10

Philosophical Confucianism the Religion of the Samurai.

What were the features of this modern Confucian philosophy, which the j.a.panese Samurai exalted to a religion?[12] We say philosophy and religion, because while the teachings of the great sage lay at the bottom of the system, yet it is not true since the early seventeenth century, that the thinking men of j.a.pan have been satisfied with only the original simple ethical rules of the ancient master. Though they have craved a richer mental pabulum, yet they have enjoyed less the study of the original text, than acquaintance with the commentaries and communion with the great philosophical exponents, of the master. What, then, we ask, are the features of the developed philosophy, which, imported from China, served the j.a.panese Samurai not only as morals but for such religion as he possessed or professed?

We answer: The system was not agnostic, as many modern and western writers a.s.sert that it is, and as Confucius, transmitting and probably modifying the old religion, had made the body of his teachings to be.

Agnostic, indeed, in regard to many things wherein a Christian has faith, modern Confucianism, besides being bitterly polemic and hostile to Buddhism, is pantheistic.

Certain it is that during the revival of Pure Shint[=o] in the eighteenth century, the scholars of the Shint[=o] school, and those of its great rival, the Chinese, agreed in making loyalty[13] take the place of filial duty in the Confucian system. To serve the cause of the Emperor became the most essential duty to those with cultivated minds.

The newer Chinese philosophy mightily influenced the historians, Rai Sanyo and those of the Mito school, whose works, now cla.s.sic, really began the revolution of 1868. By forming and setting in motion the public opinion, which finally overthrew the Sh[=o]gun and feudalism, restored the Emperor to supreme power, and unified the nation, they helped, with modern ideas, to make the New j.a.pan of our day. The Shint[=o] and the Chinese teachings became amalgamated in a common cause, and thus the philosophy of Chu Hi, mingling with the nationalism and patriotism inculcated by Shint[=o], brought about a remarkable result. As a native scholar and philosopher observes, "It certainly is strange to see the Tokugawa rule much shaken, if not actually overthrown, by that doctrine which generations of able Sh[=o]guns and their ministers had earnestly encouraged and protected. It is perhaps still more remarkable to see the Mito clan, under many able and active chiefs, become the centre of the Kinno[14] movement, which was to result in the overthrow of the Tokugawa family, of which it was itself a branch."

A Medley of Pantheism.

The philosophy of modern Confucianism is wholly pantheistic. There is in it no such thing or being as G.o.d. The orthodox pantheism of Old j.a.pan means that everything in general is G.o.d, but nothing in particular is G.o.d; that All is G.o.d, but not that G.o.d is all. It is a "pantheistic medley."[15]

Chu Hi and his j.a.panese successors, especially Ky[=u]-so, argue finely and discourse volubly about _Ki_[16] or spirit; but it is not Spirit, or spiritual in the sense of Him who taught even a woman at the well-curb at Sychar. It is in the air. It is in the earth, the trees, the flowers.

It comes to consciousness in man. His _Ri_ is the Tao of Lao Tsze, the Way, Reason, Law. It is formless, invisible.

"Ri is not separate from Ki, for then it were an empty abstract thing. It is joined to Ki, and may be called, by nature, one decreed, changeless Norm. It is the rule of Ki, the very centre, the reason why Ki is Ki."

Ten or Heaven is not G.o.d or the abode of G.o.d, but an abstraction, a sort of Unknowable, or Primordial Necessity.

"The doctrine of the Sages knows and worships Heaven, and without faith in it there is no truth. For men and things, the universe, are born and nourished by Heaven, and the 'Way,' the 'ri,' that is in all, is the 'Way,' the 'ri' of Heaven.

Distinguishing root and branch, the heart is the root of Heaven and the appearance, the revolution of the sun and moon, the order of the stars, is the branch. The books of the sages teach us to conform to the heart of Heaven and deal not with appearances."

"The teaching of the sages is the original truth and, given to men, it forms both their nature and their relationships. With it complete, naught else is needed for the perfect following of the 'Way.' Let then the child make its parents Heaven, the retainer, his Lord, the wife her husband, and let each give up life for righteousness. Thus will each serve for Heaven. But if we exalt Heaven above parent or Lord, we shall come to think we can serve it though they be disobeyed and like tiger or wolf shall rejoice to kill them. To such fearful end does the Western learning lead.... Let each one die for duty, there is naught else we can do."

Thus wrote Ohashi Junzo, as late as 1857 A.D., the same year in which Townsend Harris entered Yedo to teach the practical philosophy of Christendom, and the brotherhood of man as expressed in diplomacy.

Ohashi Junzo bitterly opposed the opening of j.a.pan to modern civilization and the ideas of Christendom. His book was the swan-song of the dying j.a.panese Confucianism. Slow as is the dying, and hard as its death may be, the mind of new j.a.pan has laid away to dust and oblivion the Tei-shu philosophy. "At present they (the Chinese cla.s.sics) have fallen into almost total neglect, though phrases and allusions borrowed from them still pa.s.s current in literature, and even to some extent in the language of every-day life." Seido, the great temple of Confucius in Tokyo, is now utilized as an educational Museum.[17]

A study of this subject and of comparative religion, is of immediate practical benefit to the Christian teacher. The preacher, addressing an audience made up of educated j.a.panese, who speaks of G.o.d without describing his personality, character, or attributes as ill.u.s.trated in Revelation, will find that his hearers receive his term as the expression for a bundle of abstract principles, or a system of laws, or some kind of regulated force. They do, indeed, make some reference to a "creator" by using a rare word. Occasionally, their language seems to touch the boundary line on the other side of which is conscious intelligence, but nothing approaching the clearness and definiteness of the early Chinese monotheism of the pre-Confucian cla.s.sics is to be distinguished.[18] The modern j.a.panese long ago heard joyfully the words, "Honor the G.o.ds, but keep them far from you," and he has done it.

To love G.o.d would no more occur to a j.a.panese gentleman than to have his child embrace and kiss him. Whether the source and fountain of life of which they speak has any Divine Spirit, is very uncertain, but whether it has, or has not, man need not obey, much less worship him. The universe is one, the essence is the same. Man must seek to know his place in the universe; he is but one in an endless chain; let him find his part and fulfil that part; all else is vanity. One need not inquire into the origins or the ultimates. Man is moved by a power greater than himself; he has no real independence of his own; everything has its rank and place; indeed, its rank and place is its sole t.i.tle to a separate existence. If a man mistakes his place he is a fool, he deserves punishment.

The Ideals of a Samurai.

Out of his place, man is not man. Duty is more important than being.

Nearly everything in our life is fixed by fate; there may seem to be exceptions, because some wicked men are prosperous and some righteous men are wretched, but these are not real exceptions to the general rule that we are made for our environment and fitted to it. And then, again, it may be that our judgments are not correct. Let the heart be right and all is well. Let man be obedient and his outward circ.u.mstance is nothing, having no relation to his joy or happiness. Even when as to his earthly body man pa.s.ses away, he is not destroyed; the drop again becomes part of the sea, the spark re-enters the flame, and his life continues, though it be not a conscious life. In this way man is in harmony with the original principle of all things. He outlasts the universe itself.

Hence to a conscientious Samurai there is nothing in this world better than obedience, in the ideal of a true man. What he fears most and hates most is that his memory may perish, that he shall have no seed, that he shall be forgotten or die under a cloud and be thought treacherous or cowardly or base, when in reality his life was pure and his motives high. "Better," sang Yoshida Shoin, the dying martyr for his principles, "to be a crystal and to be broken, than to be a tile upon the housetop and remain."

So, indeed, on a hundred curtained execution grounds, with the dirk of the suicide firmly grasped and about to shed their own life-blood, have sung the martyrs who died willingly for their faith in their idea of Yamato Damashii.[19] In untold instances in the national history, men have died willingly and cheerfully, and women also by thousands, as brave, as unflinching as the men, so that the story of j.a.panese chivalry is almost incredible in its awful suicides. History reveals a state of society in which cool determination, desperate courage and fearlessness of death in the face of duty were quite unique, and which must have had their base in some powerful though abnormal code of ethics.

This leads us to consider again the things emphasized by j.a.panese as distinct from Chinese and Korean[20] Confucianism, and to call attention to its fruits, while at the same time we note its defects, and show wherein it failed. We shall then show how this old system has already waxed old and is pa.s.sing away. Christ has come to j.a.pan, and behold a new heaven and a new earth!

New j.a.pan Makes Revision.

First. For sovereign and minister, there are coming into vogue new interpretations. This relation, if it is to remain as the first, will become that of the ruler and the ruled. Const.i.tutional government has begun; and codes of law have been framed which are recognizing the rights of the individual and of the people. Even a woman has rights before the law, in relation to husband, parents, brothers, sisters and children. It is even beginning to be thought that children have rights.

Let us hope that as the rights are better understood the duties will be equally clear.

It is coming to pa.s.s in j.a.pan that even in government, the sovereign must consult with his people on all questions pertaining to their welfare. Although, thus far the const.i.tutional government makes the ministers responsible to the Sovereign instead of to the Diet, yet the contention of the enlightened men and the liberal parties is, that the ministers shall be responsible to the Diet. The time seems at hand when the sovereign's power over his people will not rest on traditions more or less uncertain, on history manufactured by governmental order, on mythological claims based upon the so-called "eternal ages," on prerogatives upheld by the sword, or on the supposed grace of the G.o.ds, but will be "broad-based upon the people's will." The power of the rulers will be derived from the consent of the governed. The Emperor will become the first and chief servant of the nation.

Revision and improvement of the Second Relation will make filial piety something more real than that unto which China has attained, or j.a.pan has yet seen, or which is yet universally known in Christendom. The tyranny of the father and of the older brother, and the sale of daughters to shame, will pa.s.s away; and there will arise in the j.a.panese house, the Christian home.

It would be hard to say what Confucianism has done for woman. It is probable that all civilizations, and systems of philosophy, ethics and religion, can be well tested by this criterion--the position of woman.

Confucianism virtually admits two standards of morality, one for man, another for woman.[21] In Chinese Asia adultery is indeed branded as one of the vilest of crimes, but in common idea and parlance it is a woman's crime, not man's. So, on the other hand, chast.i.ty is a female virtue, it is part of womanly duty, it has little or no relation to man personally.

Right revision and improvement of the Third Relation will abolish concubinage. It will reform divorce. It will make love the basis of marriage. It will change the state of things truthfully pictured in such books as the Genji Monogatari, or Romance of Prince Genji, with its examples of horrible l.u.s.t and incests; the Kojiki or Ethnic scripture, with its nave accounts of filthiness among the G.o.ds; the Onna Dai Gaku, Woman's Great Study, with its amazing subordination and moral slavery of wife and daughter; and The j.a.panese Bride, of yesterday--all truthful pictures of j.a.panese life, for the epoch in which each was written.

These books will become the forgotten curiosities of literature, known only to the archaeologist.

Improvement and revision of the Fourth Relation, will bring into the j.a.panese home more justice, righteousness, love and enjoyment of life.

It will make possible, also, the cheerful acceptance and glad practice of those codes of law common in Christendom, which are based upon the rights of the individual and upon the idea of the greatest good to the greatest number. It will help to abolish the evils which come from primogeniture and to release the clutch of the dead hand upon the living. It will decrease the power of the graveyard, and make thought and care for the living the rule of life. It will abolish sham and fiction, and promote the cause of truth. It will hasten the reign of righteousness and love, and beneath propriety and etiquette lay the basis of "charity toward all, malice toward none."

Revision with improvement of the Fifth Relation hastens the reign of universal brotherhood. It lifts up the fallen, the down-trodden and the outcast. It says to the slave "be free," and after having said "be free," educates, trains, and lifts up the brother once in servitude, and helps him to forget his old estate and to know his rights as well as his duties, and develops in him the image of G.o.d. It says to the hinin or not-human, "be a man, be a citizen, accept the protection of the law."

It says to the eta, "come into humanity and society, receive the protection of law, and the welcome of your fellows; let memory forget the past and charity make a new future." It will bring j.a.pan into the fraternity of nations, making her people one with the peoples of Christendom, not through the empty forms of diplomacy, or by the craft of her envoys, or by the power of her armies and navies reconstructed on modern principles, but by patient education and unflinching loyalty to high ideals. Thus will j.a.pan become worthy of all the honors, which the highest humanity on this planet can bestow.

The Ideal of Yamato Damashii Enlarged.

In this our time it is not only the alien from Christendom, with his hostile eye and mordant criticism, who is helping to undermine that system of ethics which permitted the sale of the daughter to shame, the introduction of the concubine into the family and the reduction of woman, even though wife and mother, to nearly a cipher. It is not only the foreigner who a.s.saults that philosophy which glorified the vendetta, kept alive private war, made revenge in murder the sweetest joy of the Samurai and suicide the gate to honor and fame, subordinated the family to the house, and suppressed individuality and personality. It is the native j.a.panese, no longer a hermit, a "frog in the well, that knows not the great ocean" but a student, an inquirer, and a critic, who a.s.saults the old ethical and philosophical system, and calls for a new way between heaven and earth, and a new kind of Heaven in which shall be a Creator, a Father and a Saviour. The brain and pen of New j.a.pan, as well as its heart, demand that the family shall be more than the house and that the living members shall have greater rights as well as duties, than the dead ancestors. They claim that the wife shall share responsibility with the husband, and that the relation of husband and wife shall take precedence of that of the father and son; that the mother shall possess equal authority with the father; that the wife, whether she be mother or not, shall not be compelled to share her home with the concubine; and that the child in j.a.pan shall be born in the home and not in the herd. The sudden introduction of the Christian ideas of personality and individuality has undoubtedly wrought peril to the framework of a society which is built according to the Confucian principles; but faith in G.o.d, love in the home, and absolute equality before the law will bring about a reign of righteousness such as j.a.pan has never known, but toward the realization of which Christian nations are ever advancing.

Even the old ideal of the Samurai embodied in the formula Yamato Damashii will be enlarged and improved from its narrow limits and ferocious aspects, when the tap-root of all progress is allowed to strike into deeper truth, and the Sixth Relation, or rather the first relation of all, is taught, namely, that of G.o.d to Man, and of Man to G.o.d. That this relation is understood, and that the Samurai ideal, purified and enlarged, is held by increasing numbers of j.a.pan's brightest men and n.o.blest women, is shown in that superb Christian literature which pours from the pens of the native men and women in the j.a.panese Christian churches. Under this flood of truth the old obstacles to a n.o.bler society are washed away, while out of the enriched soil rises the new j.a.pan which is to be a part of the better Christendom that is to come. Christ in j.a.pan, as everywhere, means not destruction, but fulfilment.

CHAPTER VI - THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA

"Life is a dream is what the pilgrim learns, Nor asks for more, but straightway home returns."

--j.a.panese medieval lyric drama.

"The purpose of Buddha's preaching was to bring into light the permanent truth, to reveal the root of all suffering and thus to lead all sentient beings into the perfect emanc.i.p.ation from all pa.s.sions."--Outlines of the Mahayana.

"Buddhism will stand forth as the embodiment of the eternal verity that as a man sows he will reap, a.s.sociated with the duties of mastery over self and kindness to all men, and quickened into a popular religion by the example of a n.o.ble and beautiful life."--Dharmapala of Ceylon.

"Buddhism teaches the right path of cause and effect, and nothing which can supersede the idea of cause and effect will be accepted and believed. Buddha himself cannot contradict this law which is the Buddha, of Buddhas, and no omnipotent power except this law is believed to be existent in the universe.

"Buddhism does not quarrel with other religions about the truth ... Buddhism is truth common to every religion regardless of the outside garment."--Horin Toki, of j.a.pan.

"Death we can face; but knowing, as some of us do, what is human life, which of us is it that without shuddering could (if we were summoned) face the hour of birth?" -De Quinccy.

The prayer of Buddhism, "Deliver us from existence."

The prayer of the Christian, "Deliver us from evil."