John Harington Gubbins

“ Just as we go to Latin and Greek to coin new words when we want them, so to Chinese the Japanese have always gone on the same quest; and for the better part of a century they have been busily engaged in coining new words for all the new things that have come to them in the train of Western learning. Thus the language which served to introduce Chinese institutions and culture many centuries ago is performing the same duty to-day for institutions and culture of quite another order. In this Japan seems to have been the sport of fate. She started with Chinese as the chief factor in her culture. ”

“ The reasons for the friendly feeling of the Japanese people for America are not far to seek. It was from America that the first ideas of Western civilization came; it was her influence which was most felt in the earlier years of reopened intercourse with foreign nations; and her policy of diplomatic independence and isolation, illustrated strikingly by her behaviour in the crucial question of Treaty Revision, gave to her dealings with Japan an air of disinterested benevolence that contrasted favourably with the less complaisant attitude of other Powers. ”

“ While the feudal system had kept alive the warlike spirit of the nation in spite of a prolonged period of peace, the closing of the country to foreign intercourse, accompanied as it was by the rigid limitations imposed on the size of vessels, had stifled maritime enterprise. Japanese naval training, therefore, had to begin with the rudiments of a sailor’s education. Service at sea did not at first appeal to a people whose military class, before it disappeared with the abolition of feudalism, had been brought up mainly in traditions of land fighting. ”

“ The Dutch language became the medium of commerce, and also the medium through which all Western learning, and indeed all knowledge of the West, was received. A class of Dutch-speaking interpreters, who found employment in foreign trade, grew up; and with the enterprise, unsubdued by constant official repression, and the curiosity for what is new, which have always distinguished the Japanese people, men took to learning Dutch in order to educate themselves. ”

“ The pilgrim who has thus visited the Great Shrine at Isé, ascended one of Japan’s many sacred mountains, or worshipped at other distant shrines, not only “acquires virtue” thereby, but gains social prestige in his home circle in town, or village, much in the same way as the Mussulman hadji who has been to Mecca, or the Russian peasant who has seen the sacred places in the Holy Land. These pilgrimages also serve indirectly an educational purpose. Among the countless religious festivals which vary the monotony of daily life in Japan, the flower fairs are those which are most typically Japanese. ”

“ The war thus begun was disastrous for China. By the wide extent of her territories, her vast population, her seemingly inexhaustible resources and her traditions of conquest, not to mention her industrial and commercial activities, she had for centuries filled a big place in the world. Japan, on the other hand, was a comparatively small country, little known, that had just emerged from a long era of seclusion, and was regarded abroad with feelings which at the best, apart from the interest her art inspired, did not extend beyond sympathetic curiosity. ”

“ After the failure of local risings, and of the more formidable Satsuma rebellion, it became clear that the Government was not to be deterred from pursuing its policy of gradual reform by the open menace of armed forces. Thenceforth, beyond the isolated attacks of fanatical assassins, to one of which Ōkubo, one of the strongest of the new Ministers, fell a victim in the spring of 1878, the Government had nothing to fear from the reactionary elements in the country. There remained the weapon of political agitation, open to all who disagreed with the Government. ”

“ Adoption.—The desire to preserve the continuity of a family is usually the motive of adoption wherever the custom is found; and in countries like Japan, where ancestor-worship has survived in the practice of family rites, the anxiety to make due provision for the performance of these rites has acted as an additional incentive. But nowhere else, probably, has adoption been conducted on so large a scale, or played so important a part in the social life of the community that has practised it. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that because foreign influences enter so largely into the educational course Japan must necessarily end by becoming Europeanized. The foundation of her culture is too deeply laid for that. So long as elementary education remains, as it is now, practically untouched by Western influences, no great change of the kind in question is likely to happen. All that educational reform, as illustrated in the present system, implies is the making of education one of the chief concerns of the State and the diffusion of Western knowledge. The first has affected the whole nation ”

“ Hitherto in her relations with the Far East—with China, Japan and Korea—she had maintained a detached attitude in keeping with her traditional policy of non-interference in foreign questions. In China, where she came late into the field, she had been content to follow, at a distance, in the wake of other Powers; sharing in whatever commercial or extra-territorial privileges might be obtained, but never breaking the ice for herself, nor—to her credit, be it said—betraying any aggressive tendencies. ”

“ An idea, however, which is entertained by not a few attentive observers is that, in the event of Christianity becoming in the distant future the dominant religion of Japan, it will be Christianity in a new form evolved by the people for themselves. They will do, it is thought, with Christianity as they have done with the Buddhism imported from abroad, and mould it to suit their own taste. ”

“ Closer association with foreigners had revealed the prospect of certain benefits to be derived from foreign trade, while the fighting at Kagoshima and Shimonoséki had been an object-lesson to many, whose reading of history had given them inflated ideas of the strength of their country. There were, also, among the leaders men who were aware not only of the military weakness of Japan, as compared with foreign nations with whom treaties had been concluded, but of the importance of introducing changes on the lines of Western civilization in many branches of administration. ”

“ The maxim Mulier est finis familiæ (“The family ends with a woman”) was as true in Japan as in Rome, though the observance may have been less strict owing to the greater frequency of adoption. All this has been greatly changed. In no respect has greater progress been made than in the improvement of the position of women. Though, like those of her sex in other lands, she still labours under certain disabilities, a woman can now become the head of a family; she can inherit and own property, and manage it herself; she can exercise parental authority; if single or a widow, she can adopt ”

“ In each case the direct cause was military success, and in each the long existence of feudalism had the effect of rendering a naturally warlike people submissive to the will of its rulers and responsive to the teaching of tradition. In each loyalty to the Throne was accompanied by an exaggerated form of patriotism, which needed only opportunity to become aggressive. In each, again, autocratic instincts, the centralization of authority, and the pressure of a powerful bureaucracy, combined to exalt the State at the expense of the individual. ”

“ We must establish a steel factory to supply guns and ammunition. Our railways must be extended so that we can mobilize our troops rapidly. Our oversea shipping must be developed so that we can provide transports to carry our armies abroad. This is the programme that we have to keep always in view.... What Japan has now to do is to keep perfectly quiet, to lull the suspicions that have arisen against her, and to wait, meanwhile strengthening the foundations of her national power, watching and waiting for the opportunity which must one day surely come in the Orient. ”

“ An increase of democratic feeling was thus a logical consequence of the policy of reform on Western lines, on which the Government had embarked after the Restoration. When the Monarch and his Ministers proclaimed with one voice their intention to associate the people in the work of government, when local autonomy was by degrees introduced, when a Constitution was in operation, and a Parliament in session, it would have been strange indeed if the general stream of popular tendencies had not set in the direction of democratic ideas. ”

“ Finally, we must not overlook the immense advantage she had in the adoption of all reforms which were based on Western models. At no cost to herself, without expenditure of time, thought, labour or money, she took the fruit of generations of toil in Europe and America. She levied toll on all the Western world. Profiting, at once, by the discoveries and improvements made in the course of centuries in every field of human energy, she began in her career of constructive progress at the point which other countries had already reached. ”

“ The summoning of a council and the selection of its members rest with a court of law, but in certain cases the members may be appointed by will. The functions of family councils cover a wide field, ranging from giving consent to marriage and adoption to protecting the interests of a minor in cases where the interests of parent and child conflict. Their authority in no way diminishes the influence brought to bear upon an individual by the wide circle of relations from whom they are chosen, but rather serves to increase it ”