The Religions of Japan Part 9

Friendship and Humanity.

The Fifth Relation--Friends. Here, again, a mistake is often made by those who import ideas of Christendom into the terms used in Chinese Asia, and who strive to make exact equivalent in exchanging the coins of speech. Occidental writers are p.r.o.ne to translate the term for the fifth relation into the English phrase "man to man," which leads the Western reader to suppose that Confucius taught that universal love for man, as man, which was instilled and exemplified by Jesus Christ. In translating Confucius they often make the same mistake that some have done who read in Terence's "Self-Tormentor" the line, "I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me,"[29] and imagine that this is the sentiment of an enlightened Christian, although the context shows that it is only the boast of a busybody and parasite. What Confucius taught under the fifth relation is not universality, and, as compared to the teachings of Jesus, is moonlight, not sunlight. The doctrine of the sage is clearly expressed in the a.n.a.lects, and amounts only to courtesy and propriety.

He taught, indeed, that the stranger is to be treated as a friend; and although in both Chinese and j.a.panese history there are ill.u.s.trious proofs that Confucius had interpreters n.o.bler than himself, yet it is probable that the doctrine of the stranger's receiving treatment as a friend, does not extend to the foreigner. Confucius framed something like the Golden Rule--though it were better called a Silver Rule, or possibly a Gilded Rule, since it is in the negative instead of being definitely placed in the positive and indicative form. One may search his writings in vain for anything approaching the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the words of Him who commended Elijah for replenishing the cruse and barrel of the widow of Sarepta, and Elisha for healing Naaman the Syrian leper, and Jonah for preaching the good news of G.o.d to the a.s.syrians who had been aliens and oppressors. Lao Tsze, however, went so far as to teach "return good for evil." When one of the pupils of Confucius interrogated his Master concerning this, the sage answered; "What then will you return for good? Recompense injury with justice, and return good for good."

But if we do good only to those who do good to us, what thanks have we?

Do not the publicans the same? Behold how the Heavenly Father does good alike unto all, sending rain upon the just and unjust!

How Old j.a.pan treated the foreigner is seen in the repeated repulse, with powder and ball, of the relief ships which, under the friendly stars and stripes, attempted to bring back to her sh.o.r.es the shipwrecked natives of Nippon.[30] Granted that this action may have been purely political and the Government alone responsible for it--just as our un-Christian anti-Chinese legislation is similarly explained--yet it is certain that the sentiment of the only men in j.a.pan who made public opinion,--the Samurai of that day,--was in favor of this method of meeting the alien.

In 1852 the American expedition was despatched to j.a.pan for the purpose of opening a lucrative trade and of extending American influence and glory, but also unquestionably with the idea of restoring shipwrecked j.a.panese as well as securing kind treatment for shipwrecked American sailors, thereby promoting the cause of humanity and international courtesy; in short, with motives that were manifestly mixed.[31] In the treaty pavilion there ensued an interesting discussion between Commodore Perry and Professor Hayashi upon this very subject.

Perry truthfully complained that the dictates of humanity had not been followed by the j.a.panese, that unnecessary cruelty had been used against shipwrecked men, and that j.a.pan's att.i.tude toward her neighbors and the whole world was that of an enemy and not of a friend.

Hayashi, who was then probably the leading Confucianist in j.a.pan, warmly defended his countrymen and superiors against the charge of intentional cruelty, and denounced the lawless character of many of the foreign sailors. Like most j.a.panese of his school and age, he wound up with panegyrics on the pre-eminence in virtue and humanity, above all nations, of the Country Ruled by a Theocratic Dynasty, and on the glory and goodness of the great Tokugawa family, which had given peace to the land during two centuries or more.[32]

It is manifest, however, that so far as this hostility to foreigners, and this blind bigotry of "patriotism" were based on Chinese codes of morals, as officially taught in Yedo, they belonged as much to the old Confucianism as to the new. Wherever the narrow philosophy of the sage has dominated, it has made Asia Chinese and nations hermits. As a rule, the only way in which foreigners could come peacefully into China or the countries which she intellectually dominated was as va.s.sals, tribute-bearers, or "barbarians." The mental att.i.tude of China, Korea, Annam and j.a.pan has for ages been that of the Jews in Herodian times, who set up, between the Court of Israel and the Court of the Gentiles, their graven stones of warning which read:[33]

"No foreigner to proceed within the part.i.tion wall and enclosure around the sanctuary; whoever is caught in the same will on that account be liable to incur death."

CHAPTER V - CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM

"After a thousand years the pine decays; the flower has its glory in blooming for a day."--Hakkyoi, Chinese Poet of the Tang Dynasty.

"The morning-glory of an hour differs not in heart from the pine-tree of a thousand years."--Matsunaga of j.a.pan.

"The pine's heart is not of a thousand years, nor the morning-glory's of an hour, but only that they may fulfil their destiny."

"Since Iyeyasu, his hair brushed by the wind, his body anointed with rain, with lifelong labor caused confusion to cease and order to prevail, for more than a hundred years there has been no war. The waves of the four seas have been unruffled and no one has failed of the blessing of peace. The common folk must speak with reverence, yet it is the duty of scholars to celebrate the virtue of the Government."--Ky[=u]so of Yedo.

"A ruler must have faithful ministers. He who sees the error of his lord and remonstrates, not fearing his wrath, is braver than he who bears the foremost spear in battle."--Iyeyasu.

"The choice of the Chinese philosophy and the rejection of Buddhism was not because of any inherent quality in the j.a.panese mind. It was not the rejection of supernaturalism or the miraculous. The Chinese philosophy is as supernaturalistic as some forms of Buddhism. The distinction is not between the natural and the supernatural in either system, but between the seen and the unseen."

"The Chinese philosophy is as religious as the original teaching of Gautama. Neither Shushi nor Gautama believed in a Creator, but both believed in G.o.ds and demons.... It has little place for prayer, but has a vivid sense of the Infinite and the Unseen, and fervently believes that right conduct is in accord with the 'eternal verities.'"--George William Knox.

"In him is the yea."--Paul.

CHAPTER V - CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM

j.a.pan's Millennium of Simple Confucianism.

Having seen the practical working of the ethics of Confucianism, especially in the old and simple system, let us now glance at the developed and philosophical forms, which, by giving the educated man of j.a.pan a creed, made him break away from Buddhism and despise it, while becoming often fanatically Confucian.

For a thousand years (from 600 to 1600 A.D.) the Buddhist religious teachers a.s.sisted in promulgating the ethics of Confucius; for during all this time there was harmony between the various Buddhisms imported from India, Tibet, China and Korea, and the simple undeveloped system of Chinese Confucianism. Slight modifications were made by individual teachers, and emphasis was laid upon this or that feature, while out of the soil of j.a.panese feudalism were growths of certain virtues as phases of loyalty, phenomenal beyond those in China. Nevertheless, during all this time, the j.a.panese teachers of the Chinese ethic were as students who did but recite what they learned. They simply transmitted, without attempting to expand or improve.

Though the apparatus of distribution was early known, block printing having been borrowed from the Chinese after the ninth century, and movable types learned from the Koreans and made use of in the sixteenth century,[1] the Chinese cla.s.sics were not printed as a body until after the great peace of Genna (1615). Nor during this period were translations made of the cla.s.sics or commentaries, into the j.a.panese vernacular. Indeed, between the tenth and sixteenth centuries there was little direct intercourse, commercial, diplomatic or intellectual, between j.a.pan and China, as compared with the previous eras, or the decades since 1870.

Suddenly in the seventeenth century the intellect of j.a.pan, all ready for new surprises in the profound peace inaugurated by Iyeyas[)u], received, as it were, an electric thrill. The great warrior, becoming first a unifier by arms and statecraft, determined also to become the architect of the national culture. Gathering up, from all parts of the country, books, ma.n.u.scripts, and the appliances of intellectual discipline, he encouraged scholars and stimulated education. Under his supervision the Chinese cla.s.sics were printed, and were soon widely circulated. A college was established in Yedo, and immediately there began a critical study of the texts and princ.i.p.al commentaries. The fall of the Ming dynasty in China, and the accession of the Manchiu Tartars, became the signal for a great exodus of learned Chinese, who fled to j.a.pan. These received a warm welcome, both at the capital and in Yedo, as well as in some of the castle towns of the Daimi[=o]s, among whom stand ill.u.s.trious those of the province of Mito.[2]

These men from the west brought not only ethics but philosophy; and the fertilizing influences of these scholars of the Dispersion, may be likened to those of the exodus of the Greek learned men after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. Confucian schools were established in most of the chief provincial cities. For over two hundred years this discipline in the Chinese ethics, literature and history const.i.tuted the education of the boys and men of j.a.pan. Almost every member of the Samurai cla.s.ses was thoroughly drilled in this curriculum.

All j.a.panese social, official, intellectual and literary life was permeated with the new spirit. Their "world" was that of the Chinese, and all outside of it belonged to "barbarians." The matrices of thought became so fixed and the j.a.panese language has been so moulded, that even now, despite the intense and prolonged efforts of thirty years of acute and laborious scholarship, it is impossible, as we have said, to find English equivalents for terms which were used for a century or two past in every-day j.a.panese speech. Those who know most about these facts, are most modest in attempting with English words to do justice to j.a.panese thought; while those who know the least seem to be most glib, fluent and voluminous in showing to their own satisfaction, that there is little difference between the ethics of Chinese Asia and those of Christendom.

Survey of the Intellectual History of China.

The Confucianism of the last quarter-millennium in j.a.pan is not that of her early centuries. While the j.a.panese for a thousand years only repeated and recited--merely talking aloud in their intellectual sleep but not reflecting--China was awake and thinking hard. j.a.pan's continued civil wars, which caused the almost total destruction of books and ma.n.u.scripts, secured also the triumph of Buddhism which meant the atrophy of the national intellect. When, after the long feuds and battles of the middle ages, Confucianism stepped the second time into the Land of _Brave_ Scholars, it was no longer with the simple rules of conduct and ceremonial of the ancient days, nor was it as the ally of Buddhism. It came like an armed man in full panoply of harness and weapons. It entered to drive Buddhism out, and to defend the intellect of the educated against the wiles of priestcraft. It was a full-blown system of pantheistic rationalism, with a scheme of philosophy that to the far-Oriental mind seemed perfect as a rule both of faith and practice. It came in a form that was received as religion, for it was not only morality "touched" but infused with motion. Nor were the emotions kindled, those of the partisan only, but rather also those of the devotee and the martyr. Henceforth Buddhism, with its inventions, its fables, and its endless dogmatism, was for the common people, for women and children, but not for the Samurai. The new Confucianism came to j.a.pan as the system of Chu Hi. For three centuries this system had already held sway over the intellect of China. For two centuries and a half it has dominated the minds of the Samurai so that the majority of them to-day, even with the new name Shizoku, are Confucianists so far as they are anything.

To understand the origin of Buddhism we must know something of the history and the previous religious and philosophical systems of India, and so, if we are to appreciate modern "orthodox" Confucianism, we must review the history of China, and see, in outline, at least, its literature, politics and philosophy during the middle ages.

"Four great stages of literary and national development may be pointed to as intervening (in the fifteen hundred years) between the great sage and the age called that of the Sung-Ju,"[3] from the tenth to the fourteenth century, in which the Confucian system received its modern form. Each of them embraced the course of three or four centuries.

I. From the sixth to the third century before Christ the struggle was for Confucian and orthodox doctrine, led by Mencius against various speculators in morals and politics, with Taoist doctrine continually increasing in acceptance.

II. The Han age (from B.C. 206 to A.D. 190) was rich in critical expositors and commentators of the cla.s.sics, but "the tone of speculation was predominantly Taoist."

III. The period of the Six Dynasties (from A.D. 221 to A.D. 618) was the golden age of Buddhism, when the science and philosophy of India enriched the Chinese mind, and the wealth of the country was lavished on Buddhist temples and monasteries. The faith of Shaka became nearly universal and the Buddhists led in philosophy and literature, founding a native school of Indian philosophy.

IV. The Tang period (from A.D. 618 to 905) marked by luxury and poetry, was an age of mental inaction and enervating prosperity.

V. The fifth epoch, beginning with the Sung Dynasty (from A.D. 960 to 1333) and lasting to our own time, was ushered in by a period of intense mental energy. Strange to say (and most interesting is the fact to Americans of this generation), the immediate occasion of the recension and expansion of the old Confucianism was a Populist movement.[4] During the Tang era of national prosperity, Chinese socialists questioned the foundations of society and of government, and there grew up a new school of interpreters as well as of politicians. In the tenth century the contest between the old Confucianism and the new notions, broke out with a violence that threatened anarchy to the whole empire.

One set of politicians, led by w.a.n.g (1021-1086), urged an extension of administrative functions, including agricultural loans, while the brothers Cheng (1032-1085, 1033-1107) reaffirmed, with fresh intellectual power, the old orthodoxy.

The school of writers and party agitators, led by Szma Kwaug (1009-1086)[5] the historian, contended that the ancient principles of the sages should be put in force. Others, the Populists of that age and land, demanded the entire overthrow of existing inst.i.tutions.

In the bitter contest which ensued, the Radicals and Reformers temporarily won the day and held power. For a decade the experiment of innovation was tried. Men turned things social and political upside down to see how they looked in that position. So these stood or oscillated for thirteen years, when the people demanded the old order again. The Conservatives rose to power. There was no civil war, but the Radicals were banished beyond the frontier, and the country returned to normal government.

This controversy raised a landmark in the intellectual history of China.[6] The thoughts of men were turned toward deep and acute inquiry into the nature and use of things in general. This thinking resulted in a literature which to-day is the basis of the opinions of the educated men in all Chinese Asia. Instead of a sapling we now have a mighty tree.

The chief of the Chinese writers, the Calvin of Asiatic orthodoxy, who may be said to have wrought Confucianism into a developed philosophy, and who may be called the greatest teacher of the mind, of modern China, Korea and j.a.pan, is Chu Hi, who reverently adopted the criticisms on the Chinese cla.s.sics of the brothers Cheng.[7] It is evident that in Chu Hi's system, we have a body of thought which may be called the result of Chinese reflection during a millennium and a half. It is the ethics of Confucius transfused with the mystical elements of Taoism and the speculations of Buddhism. As the common people of China made an amalgam of the three religions and consider them one, so the philosophers have out of these three systems made one, calling that one Confucianism. The dominant philosophy in j.a.pan to-day is based upon the writings of Chu Hi (in j.a.panese, Shu Shi) and called the system of Tei-Shu, which is the j.a.panese p.r.o.nunciation of the names of the Cheng brothers and of Chu (Hi). It is a medley which the ancient sage could no more recognize than would Jesus know much of the Christianity that casts out devils in his name.

Contrast between the Chinese and j.a.panese Intellect.

Here we must draw a contrast between the Chinese and j.a.panese intellect to the credit of the former; China made, j.a.pan borrowed. While history shows that the Chinese mind, once at least, possessed mental initiative, and the power of thinking out a system of philosophy which to-day satisfies largely, if not wholly, the needs of the educated Chinaman, there has been in the j.a.panese mind, as shown by its history, apparently no such vigor or fruitfulness. From the literary and philosophical points of view, Confucianism, as it entered j.a.pan, in the sixth century, remained practically stationary for a thousand years. Modifications, indeed, were made upon the Chinese system, and these were striking and profound, but they were less developments of the intellect than necessities of the case. The modifications were made, as molten metal poured into a mould shaped by other hands than the artist's own, rather than as clay made plastic under the hand of a designer. Buddhism, being the dominant force in the thoughts of the j.a.panese for at least eight hundred years, furnished the food for the requirements of man on his intellectual and religious side.

Broadly speaking, it may be said that the j.a.panese, receiving pa.s.sively the Chinese cla.s.sics, were content simply to copy and to recite what they had learned. As compared with their audacity in not only going beyond the teachings of Buddha, but in inventing systems of Buddhism which neither Gautama nor his first disciples could recognize, the docile and almost slavish adherence to ancient Confucianism is one of the astonishing things in the history of religions in j.a.pan. In the field of Buddhism we have a luxuriant growth of new and strange species of colossal weeds that overtower and seem to have choked out whatever furze of original Buddhism there was in j.a.pan, while in the domain of Confucianism there is a barren heath. Whereas, in China, the voluminous literature created by commentators on Confucius and the commentaries on the commentators suggests the hyperbole used by the author of John's Gospel,[8] yet there is probably nothing on Confucianism from the j.a.panese pen in the thousand years under our review which is worth the reading or the translation.[9] In this respect the j.a.panese genius showed its vast capabilities of imitation, adoption and a.s.similation.

As of old, Confucianism again furnished a Chinese wall, within which the j.a.panese could move, and wherein they might find food for the mind in all the relations of life and along all the lines of achievement permitted them. The philosophy imported from China, as shown again and again in that land of oft-changing dynasties, harmonizing with arbitrary government, accorded perfectly with the despotism of the Tokugawas, the "Tyc.o.o.ns" who in Yedo ruled from 1603 to 1868. Nothing new was permitted, and any attempt at modification, enlargement, or improvement was not only frowned and hissed down as impious innovation, but usually brought upon the daring innovator the ban of the censor, imprisonment, banishment, or death by enforced suicide.[10] In Yedo, the centre of Chinese learning, and in other parts of the country, there were, indeed, thinkers whose philosophy did not always tally with what was taught by the orthodox,[11] but as a rule even when these men escaped the ban of the censor, or the sword of the executioner, they were but us voices crying in the wilderness. The great ma.s.s of the gentry was orthodox, according to the standards of the Seido College, while the common people remained faithful to Buddhism. In the conduct of daily life they followed the precepts which had for centuries been taught them by their fathers.