The Religions of Japan Part 8

Thereupon, j.a.pan once more presented to the world, unity.

Practically, therefore, the period of the prevalence of the Confucian ethics and their universal acceptance by the people of j.a.pan nearly coincides with the period of j.a.panese feudalism or the dominance of the military cla.s.ses.

Although the same ideograph, or rather logogram, was used to designate the Chinese scholar and the j.a.panese warrior as well, yet the former was man of the pen only, while the latter was man of the pen and of two swords. This historical fact, more than any other, accounts for the striking differences between Chinese and j.a.panese Confucianism. Under this state of things the ethical system of the sage of China suffered a change, as does almost everything that is imported into j.a.pan and borrowed by the islanders, but whether for the better or for the worse we shall not inquire too carefully. The point upon which we now lay emphasis is this: that, although the Chinese teacher had made filial piety the basis of his system, the j.a.panese gradually but surely made loyalty (Kun-Shin), that is, the allied relations of sovereign and minister, of lord and retainer, and of master and servant, not only first in order but the chief of all. They also infused into this term ideas and a.s.sociations which are foreign to the Chinese mind. In the place of filial piety was Kun-shin, that new growth in the garden of j.a.panese ethics, out of which arose the white flower of loyalty that blooms perennial in history.

In j.a.pan, Loyalty Displaces Filial Piety.

This slow but sure adaptation of the exotic to its new environment, took place during the centuries previous to the seventeenth of the Christian era. The completed product presented a growth so strikingly different from the original as to compel the wonder of those Chinese refugee scholars, who, at Mito[9] and Yedo, taught the later dogmas which are orthodox but not historically Confucian.

Herein lies the difference between Chinese and j.a.panese ethical philosophy. In old j.a.pan, loyalty was above filial obedience, and the man who deserted parents, wife and children for the feudal lord, received unstinted praise. The corner-stone of the j.a.panese edifice of personal righteousness and public weal, is loyalty. On the other hand, filial piety is the basis of Chinese order and the secret of the amazing national longevity, which is one of the moral wonders of the world, and sure proof of the fulfilment of that promise which was made on Sinai and wrapped up in the fourth commandment.

This master pa.s.sion of the typical Samurai of old j.a.pan made him regard life as infinitely less than nothing, whenever duty demanded a display of the virtue of loyalty. "The doctrines of Koshi and Moshi" (Confucius and Mencius) formed, and possibly even yet form, the gospel and the quintessence of all wordly wisdom to the j.a.panese gentleman; they became the basis of his education and the ideal which inspired his conceptions of duty and honor; but, crowning all his doctrines and aspirations was his desire to be loyal. There might abide loyal, marital, filial, fraternal and various other relations, but the greatest of all these was loyalty. Hence the j.a.panese calendar of saints is not filled with reformers, alms-givers and founders of hospitals or orphanages, but is over-crowded with canonized suicides and committers of _hara-kiri_. Even today, no man more quickly wins the popular regard during his life or more surely draws homage to his tomb, securing even apotheosis, than the suicide, though he may have committed a crime. In this era of Meiji or enlightened peace, most appalling is the list of a.s.sa.s.sinations beginning with the murder in Ki[=o]to of Yokoi Heishiro, who was slain for recommending the toleration of Christianity, down to the last cabinet minister who has been knifed or dynamited. Yet in every case the murderers considered themselves consecrated men and ministers of Heaven's righteous vengeance.[10] For centuries, and until const.i.tutional times, the government of j.a.pan was "despotism tempered by a.s.sa.s.sination." The old-fashioned way of moving a vote of censure upon the king's ministers was to take off their heads. Now, however, election by ballot has been subst.i.tuted for this, and two million swords have become bric-a-brac.

A thousand years of training in the ethics of Confucius--which always admirably lends itself to the possessors of absolute power, whether emperors, feudal lords, masters, fathers, or older brothers--have so tinged and colored every conception of the j.a.panese mind, so dominated their avenues of understanding and shaped their modes of thought, that to-day, notwithstanding the recent marvellous development of their language, which within the last two decades has made it almost a new tongue,[11] it is impossible with perfect accuracy to translate into English the ordinary j.a.panese terms which are congregated under the general idea of Kun-shin.

Herein may be seen the great benefit of carefully studying the minds of those whom we seek to convert. The Christian preacher in j.a.pan who uses our terms "heaven," "home," "mother," "father," "family," "wife,"

"people," "love," "reverence," "virtue," "chast.i.ty," etc., will find that his hearers may indeed receive them, but not at all with the same mental images and a.s.sociations, nor with the same proportion and depth, that these words command in western thought and hearing. One must be exceedingly careful, not only in translating terms which have been used by Confucius in the Chinese texts, but also in selecting and rendering the current expressions of the j.a.panese teachers and philosophers. In order to understand each other, Orientals and Occidentals need a great deal of mutual intellectual drilling, without which there will be waste of money, of time, of brains and of life.

The Five Relations.

Let us now glance at the fundamentals of the Confucian ethics--the Five Relations--as they were taught in the comparatively simple system which prevailed before the new orthodoxy was proclaimed by Sung schoolmen.

First. Although each of the Chinese and j.a.panese emperors is supposed to be, and is called, "father of the people," yet it would be entirely wrong to imagine that the phrase implies any such relation, as that of William the Silent to the Dutch, or of Washington to the American nation. In order to see how far the emperor was removed from the people during a thousand years, one needs but to look upon a brilliant painting of the Yamato-Tosa school, in which the Mikado is represented as sitting behind a cloud of gold or a thick curtain of fine bamboo, with no one before the matting-throne but his prime ministers or the empress and his concubines. For centuries, it was supposed that the Mikado did not touch the ground with his feet. He went abroad in a curtained car; and he was not only as mysterious and invisible to the public eye as a dragon, but he was called such. The attributes of that monster with many powers and functions, were applied to him, with an amazing wealth of rhetoric and vocabulary. As well might the common folks to-day presume to pray unto one of the transcendent Buddhas, between whom and the needy suppliant there may be hosts upon hosts of interlopers or mediators, as for an ordinary subject to pet.i.tion the emperor or even to gaze upon his dragon countenance. The change in the const.i.tutional j.a.pan of our day is seen in the fact that the term "Mikado" is now obsolete. This description of the relation of sovereign and minister (inaccurately characterised by some writers on Confucianism as that of "King and subject," a phrase which might almost fit the const.i.tutional monarchy of to-day) shows the relation, as it did exist for nearly a thousand years of j.a.panese history. We find the same imitation of procedure, even when imperialism became only a shadow in the government and the great Sh[=o]gun who called himself "Tyc.o.o.n," the ruler in Yedo, aping the majesty of Ki[=o]to, became so powerful as to be also a dragon. Between the Yedo Sh[=o]gun and the people rose a great staircase of numberless subordinates, and should a subject attempt to offer a pet.i.tion in person he must pay for it by crucifixion.[12]

As, under the emperor there were court ministers, heads of departments, governors and functionaries of all kinds before the people were reached, so, under the Sh[=o]gun in the feudal days, there were the Daimi[=o]s or great lords and the Shomi[=o]s or small lords with their retainers in graduated subordination, and below these were the servants and general humanity. Even after the status of man was reached, there were gradations and degradations through fractions down to ciphers and indeed to minus quant.i.ties, for there existed in the Country of Brave Warriors some tens of thousands of human beings bearing the names of _eta_ (pariah) and _h[=i]-nin_ (non-human), who were far below the pale of humanity.

The Paramount Idea of Loyalty.

The one idea which dominated all of these cla.s.ses,[13]--in Old j.a.pan there were no ma.s.ses but only many cla.s.ses--was that of loyalty. As the j.a.panese language shows, every faculty of man was subordinated to this idea. Confucianism even conditioned the development of j.a.panese grammar, as it also did that of the Koreans, by multiplying honorary prefixes and suffixes and building up all sociable and polite speech on perpendicular lines. Personality was next to nothing and individuality was in a certain sense unknown. In European languages, the p.r.o.noun shows how clearly the ideas of personality and of individuality have been developed; but in the j.a.panese language there really are no p.r.o.nouns, in the sense of the word as used by the Germanic nations, at least, although there are hundreds of impersonal and topographical subst.i.tutes for them.[14] The mirror, of the language itself, reflects more truth upon this point of inquiry than do patriotic a.s.sertions, or the protests of those who in the days of this Meiji era so handsomely employ the j.a.panese language as the medium of thought. Strictly speaking, the ego disappears in ordinary conversation and action, and instead, it is the servant speaking reverently to his master; or it is the master condescending to the object which is "before his hand" or "to the side"

or "below" where his inferior kneels; or it is the "honorable right"

addressing the "esteemed left."

All the terms which a foreigner might use in speaking of the duties of sovereign and minister, of lord and retainer and of master and servant, are comprehended in the j.a.panese word, Kun-shin, in which is crystallized but one thought, though it may relate to three grades of society. The testimony of history and of the language shows, that the feelings which we call loyalty and reverence are always directed upward, while those which we term benevolence and love invariably look downward.

Note herein the difference between the teachings of Christ and those of the Chinese sage. According to the latter, if there be love in the relation of the master and servant, it is the master who loves, and not the servant who may only reverence. It would be inharmonious for the j.a.panese servant to love his master; he never even talks of it. And in family life, while the parent may love the child, the child is not expected to love the parent but rather to reverence him. So also the j.a.panese wife, as in our old scriptural versions, is to "see that she _reverence_ her husband." Love (not _agape_, but _eros_) is indeed a theme of the poets and of that part of life and of literature which is, strictly speaking, outside of the marriage relation, but the thought that dominates in marital life, is reverence from the wife and benevolence from the husband. The Christian conception, which requires that a woman should love her husband, does not strictly accord with the Confucian idea.

Christianity has taught us that when a man loves a woman purely and makes her his wife, he should also have reverence for her, and that this element should be an integral part of his love. Christianity also teaches a reverence for children; and Wordsworth has but followed the spirit of his great master, Christ, when expressing this beautiful sentiment in his melodious numbers. Such ideas as these, however, are discords in j.a.panese social life of the old order. So also the Christian preaching of love to G.o.d, sounds outlandish to the men of Chinese mind in the middle or the pupil kingdom, who seem to think that it can only come from the lips of those who have not been properly trained. To "love G.o.d" appears to them as being an unwarrantable patronage of, and familiarity with "Heaven," or the King of Kings. The same difficulty, which to-day troubles Christian preachers and translators, existed among the Roman Catholic missionaries three centuries ago.[15] The moulds of thought were not then, nor are they even now, entirely ready for the full truth of Christian revelation.

Suicide Made Honorable.

In the long story of the Honorable Country, there are to be found many shining examples of loyalty, which is the one theme oftenest ill.u.s.trated in popular fiction and romance. Its well-attested instances on the crimson thread of j.a.panese history are more numerous than the beads on many rosaries. The most famous of all, perhaps, is the episode of the Forty-Seven R[=o]nins, which is a constant favorite in the theatres, and has been so graphically narrated or pictured by scores of native poets, authors, artists, sculptors and dramatists, and told in English by Mitford, d.i.c.kens and Grecy.[16]

These forty-seven men hated wife, child, society, name, fame, food and comfort for the sake of avenging the death of their master. In a certain sense, they ceased to be persons in order to become the impersonal instruments of Heaven's retribution. They gave up every thing--houses, lands, kinsmen--that they might have in this life the hundred-fold reward of vengeance, and in the world-life of humanity throughout the centuries, fame and honor. Feeding the hunger of their hearts upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of their victim, they waited long years. When once their swords had drunk the consecrated blood, they laid the severed head upon their master's tomb and then gladly, even rapturously, delivered themselves up, and ripping open their bowels they died by that judicially ordered seppuku which cleansed their memory from every stain, and gave to them the martyr's fame and crown forever. The tombs of these men, on the hillside overlooking the Bay of Yedo, are to this day ever fragrant with fresh flowers, and to the cemetery where their ashes lie and their memorials stand, thousands of pilgrims annually wend their way. No dramas are more permanently popular on the stage than those which display the virtues of these heroes, who are commonly spoken of as "The righteous Samurai." Their tombs have stood for two centuries, as mighty magnets drawing others to self-impalement on the sword--as multipliers of suicides.

Yet this alphabetic number, this _i-ro-ha_ of self-murder, is but one of a thousand instances in the Land of n.o.ble Suicides. From the pre-historic days when the custom of _Jun-shi_, or dying with the master, required the interment of the living retainers with the dead lord, down through all the ages to the Revolution of 1868, when at Sendai and Aidzu scores of men and boys opened their bowels, and mothers slew their infant sons and cut their own throats, there has been flowing through j.a.panese history a river of suicides' blood[17] having its springs in the devotion of retainers to masters, and of soldiers to a lost cause as represented by the feudal superior. Shigemori, the son of the prime minister Kiyomori, who protected the emperor even against his own father, is a model of that j.a.panese kun-shin which placed fidelity to the sovereign above filial obedience; though even yet Shigemori's name is the synonym of both virtues. Kusunoki Masashige,[18] the white flower of j.a.panese chivalry, is but one, typical not only of a thousand but of thousands of thousands of soldiers, who hated parents, wife, child, friend in order to be disciple to the supreme loyalty. He sealed his creed by emptying his own veins. Kiyomori,[19] like King David of Israel, on his dying bed ordered the a.s.sa.s.sination of his personal enemy.

The common j.a.panese novels read like records of slaughter-houses. No Moloch or Shiva has won more victims to his shrine than has this idea of j.a.panese loyalty which is so beautiful in theory and so hideous in practice. Despite the military clamps and frightful despotism of Yedo, which for two hundred and fifty years gave to the world a delusive idea of profound quiet in the Country of Peaceful Sh.o.r.es, there was in fact a chronic unrest which amounted at many times and in many places to anarchy. The calm of despotism was, indeed, rudely broken by the aliens in the "black ships" with the "flowery flag"; but, without regarding influences from the West, the indications of history as now read, pointed in 1850 toward the bloodiest of j.a.pan's many civil wars. Could the statistics of the suicides during this long period be collected, their publication would excite in Christendom the utmost incredulity.

Nevertheless, this qualifying statement should be made. A study of the origin and development of the national method of self-destruction shows that suicide by seppuku, or opening of the abdomen, was first a custom, and then a privilege. It took, among men of honor, the place of the public executions, the ma.s.sacres in battle and siege, decimation of rebels and similar means of killing at the hands of others, which so often mar the historical records of western nations. Undoubtedly, therefore, in the minds of most j.a.panese, there are many instances of _hara-kiri_ which should not be cla.s.sed as suicide, but technically as execution of judicial sentence. And yet no sentence or process of death known in western lands had such influence in glorifying the victim, as had seppuku in j.a.pan.

The Family Idea.

The Second Relation is that of father and son, thus preceding what we should suppose to be the first of human relations--husband and wife--but the arrangement entirely accords with the Oriental conception that the family, the house, is more important than the individual. In Old j.a.pan the paramount idea in marriage, was not that of love or companionship, or of mutual a.s.sistance with children, but was almost wholly that of offspring, and of maintaining the family line.[20] The individual might perish but the house must live on.

Very different from the family of Christendom, is the family in Old j.a.pan, in which we find elements that would not be recognized where monogamy prevails and children are born in the home and not in the herd.

Instead of father, mother and children, there are father, wife, concubines, and various sorts of children who are born of the wife or of the concubine, or have been adopted into the family. With us, adoption is the exception, but in j.a.pan it is the invariable rule whenever either convenience or necessity requires it of the house. Indeed it is rare to find a set of brothers bearing the same family name. Adoption and concubinage keep the house unbroken.[21] It is the house, the name, which must continue, although not necessarily by a blood line. The name, a social trade-mark, lives on for ages. The line of j.a.panese emperors, which, in the Const.i.tution of 1889, by adding mythology to history is said to rule "unbroken from ages eternal," is not one of fathers and sons, but has been made continuous by concubinage and adoption. In this view, it is possibly as old as the line of the popes.

It is very evident that our terms and usages do not have in such a home the place or meaning which one not familiar with the real life of Old j.a.pan would suppose. The father is an absolute ruler. There is in Old j.a.pan hardly any such thing as "parents," for practically there is only one parent, as the woman counts for little. The wife is honored if she becomes a mother, but if childless she is very probably neglected. Our idea of fatherhood implies that the child has rights and that he should love as well as be loved. Our customs excite not only the merriment but even the contempt of the old-school j.a.panese. The kiss and the embrace, the linking of the child's arm around its father's neck, the address on letters "My dear Wife" or "My beloved Mother" seem to them like caricatures of propriety. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly true that in reverence toward parents--or at least toward one of the parents--a j.a.panese child is apt to excel the one born even in a Christian home.

This so-called filial "piety" becomes in practice, however, a horrible outrage upon humanity and especially upon womanhood. During centuries the despotic power of the father enabled him to put an end to the life of his child, whether boy or girl.

Under this abominable despotism there is no protection for the daughter, who is bound to sell her body, while youth or beauty last or perhaps for life, to help pay her father's debts, to support an aged parent or even to gratify his mere caprice. In hundreds of j.a.panese romances the daughter, who for the sake of her parents has sold herself to shame, is made the theme of the story and an object of praise. In the minds of the people there may be indeed a feeling of pity that the girl has been obliged to give up her home life for the brothel, but no one ever thinks of questioning the right of the parent to make the sale of the girl's body, any more than he would allow the daughter to rebel against it.

This idea still lingers and the inst.i.tution remains,[22] although the system has received stunning blows from the teaching of Christian ethics, the preaching of a better gospel and the improvements in the law of the land.

The Marital Relation.

The Third Relation is that of husband and wife. The meaning of these words, however, is not the same with the j.a.panese as with us. In Confucius there is not only male and female, but also superior and inferior, master and servant.[23] Without any love-making or courtship by those most interested, a marriage between two young people is arranged by their parents through the medium of what is called a "go-between." The bride leaves her father's house forever--that is, when she is not to be subsequently divorced--and entering into that of her husband must be subordinate not only to him but also to his parents, and must obey them as her own father and mother. Having all her life under her father's roof reverenced her superiors, she is expected to bring reverence to her new domicile, but not love. She must always obey but never be jealous. She must not be angry, no matter whom her husband may introduce into his household. She must wait upon him at his meals and must walk behind him, but not with him. When she dies her children go to her funeral, but not her husband.

A foreigner, hearing the j.a.panese translate our word chast.i.ty by the term _teiso_ or _misao_, may imagine that the latter represents mutual obligation and personal purity for man and wife alike, but on looking into the dictionary he will find that _teiso_ means "Womanly duties." A circ.u.mlocution is needed to express the idea of a chaste man.

Jealousy is a horrible sin, but is always supposed to be a womanish fault, and so an exhibition of folly and weakness. Therefore, to apply such a term to G.o.d--to say "a jealous G.o.d"--outrages the good sense of a Confucianist,[24] almost as much as the statement that G.o.d "cannot lie"

did that of the Pundit, who wondered how G.o.d could be Omnipotent if He could not lie.

How great the need in j.a.panese social life of some purifying principle higher than Confucianism can afford, is shown in the little book ent.i.tled "The j.a.panese Bride,"[25] written by a native, and scarcely less in the storm of native criticism it called forth. Under the system which has ruled j.a.pan for a millennium and a half, divorce has been almost entirely in the hands of the husband, and the doc.u.ment of separation, ent.i.tled in common parlance the "three lines and a half,"

was invariably written by the man. A woman might indeed nominally obtain a divorce from her husband, but not actually; for the severance of the marital tie would be the work of the house or relatives, rather than the act of the wife, who was not "a person" in the case. Indeed, in the olden time a woman was not a person in the eye of the law, but rather a chattel. The case is somewhat different under the new codes,[26] but the looseness of the marriage tie is still a scandal to thinking j.a.panese.

Since the breaking up of the feudal system and the disarrangement of the old social and moral standards, the statistics made annually from the official census show that the ratio of divorce to marriage is very nearly as one to three.[27]

The Elder and the Younger Brother.

The Fourth Relation is that of Elder Brother and Younger Brother. As we have said, foreigners in translating some of the Chinese and j.a.panese terms used in the system of Confucius are often led into errors by supposing that the Christian conception of family life prevails also in Chinese Asia. By many writers this relation is translated "brother to brother;" but really in the j.a.panese language there is no term meaning simply "brother" or "sister,"[28] and a circ.u.mlocution is necessary to express the ideas which we convey by these words. It is always "older brother" or "younger brother," and "older sister" or "younger sister"--the male or female "_kiyodai_" as the case may be. With us--excepting in lands where the law of primogeniture still prevails--all the brothers are practically equal, and it would be considered a violation of Christian righteousness for a parent to show more favor to one child than to another. In this respect the "wisdom that cometh from above" is "without partiality." The Chinese ethical system, however, disregards the principle of mutual rights and duties, and builds up the family on the theory of the subordination of the younger brother to the elder brother, the predominant idea being not mutual love, but, far more than in the Christian household, that of rank and order. The att.i.tude of the heir of the family toward the other children is one of condescension, and they, as well as the widowed mother, regard the oldest son with reverence. It is as though the commandment given on Sinai should read, "Honor thy father and thy elder brother."

The mother is an instrument rather than a person in the life of the house, and the older brother is the one on whom rests the responsibility of continuing the family line. The younger brothers serve as subjects for adoption into other families, especially those where there are daughters to be married and family names to be continued. In a word, the name belongs to the house and not to the individual. The habit of naming children after relatives or friends of the parents, or ill.u.s.trious men and women, is unknown in Old j.a.pan, though an approach to this common custom among us is made by conferring or making use of part of a name, usually by the transferrence of one ideograph forming the name-word.

Such a practice lays stress upon personality, and so has no place in the country without p.r.o.nouns, where the idea of continuing the personal house or semi-personal family, is predominant. The customs prevalent in life are strong even in death, and the elder brother or sister, in some provinces, did not go to the funeral of the younger. This state of affairs is reflected in j.a.panese literature, and produces in romance as well as in history many situations and episodes which seem almost incredible to the Western mind.

In the lands ruled by Confucius the grown-up children usually live under the parental roof, and there are few independent homes as we understand them. The so-called family is composed both of the living and of the dead, and const.i.tutes the unit of society.