Lawrence Dundas

“ I was dressed after the manner of the West, and was therefore an object of respect. You ask why? Because the Japanese are the most sensitive people in the world; because the day has already dawned when much that is artistic and characteristic of real Japan must be sacrificed at the altar of progress; because Europeanisation is the fetich of the day; and because European clothes are the hall-mark of progress and modernity in the gentlemen of New Japan. Is it not forbidden to the ladies of Japan to present themselves at Court in Japanese dress? ”

“ The position which China must inevitably acquire some day will not be won with the same startling rapidity with which Japan pressed home her claims to the title of a first-class Power. There are too many factors which will war against the reconstruction of Chinese society and the Chinese State, and which will act as clogs upon the wheels of Chinese progress. Loyalty to and adoration of the Sovereign, which bind the people of Japan into a united whole, is wanting in the case of China, for the scion of an alien race sits upon the throne of the Mings. ”

“ A force of incalculable potentiality for influencing the destinies of the world has been given birth, and it is no longer possible to ignore the immense significance of the movement which, beginning in the extreme East, is sweeping back over Asia and leaving an indelible mark upon every country in its flight. Japan has already emancipated herself from the fetters of Oriental fatalism and inaction—with what startling results we already know. China stirs uneasily with the child national assertion in her womb. ”

“ There is another, a powerful—perhaps a sinister—influence eating slowly but surely into the old communal life of the people,—the influence of modern industrial requirement. Already thousands of women and children are toiling wearily in factory and workshop, attending mechanically to the great steam-driven spindles and looms which are slowly but inexorably crushing the life out of the old family hand–machines on which were made the exquisite fabrics embodying the artistic soul of Japan. ”

“ Forced in the teeth of their own determined and strenuous opposition to open their doors to the world and to enter into the comity of Western nations, they came to a momentous decision, and having decided, picked up the gauntlet which had been thrown down with a rapidity which astonished the world, and plunged headlong, and with altogether unlooked-for success, into the arena of international rivalry and competition. ”

“ Two nations are engaged in rough-hewing the destiny of Asia. Japan, a conquering and colonising nation, is engaged in a grim endeavour to become an industrial and commercial Power: China, the home of a peace-loving, trading people, is groping blindly after proficiency in arms. If the Japanese are successful in cultivating in the fighting classes a love and aptitude for commerce, without at the same time impairing their fighting qualities, then it may be predicted that, despite the comparative poverty of their natural resources, they will become a great people ”

“ What may be the psychic effect of such volcanic change upon the mind and thought of an Eastern people lies hidden from Western eyes deep down in the inscrutable soul of the race: this only may be affirmed without question or hesitation, that no one who has had the opportunity of coming into close contact with Government or people can fail to be deeply impressed with a sense of the growing ambitions of the people, or of the inflexible determination of those in high places to do everything in their power to assist them in bringing such ambitions to fruition. ”

“ The worship of ancestors has been the keystone of the religion of the races of the Far East, and throughout the Asiatic Continent the highest expression of the genius and art of her children is to be found in monuments raised to the memory of her illustrious dead—the Taj Mahal at Agra, the tomb of Tamerlane at Samarkand, the beautiful mausolea of the Shoguns at Tokyo and Nikko. ”

“ It may well be doubted whether as a race they have the same aptitude for bearing aloft the flag of trade as they have for wielding the sword of war. Just as in China the military profession was despised and looked down upon by the people,—with what dire results the battlefields of 1894 soon showed,—so in feudal Japan the merchant classes were rated the lowest of the community. It is true that many of the best men in Japan are now entering or have already entered the commercial lists, and are showing themselves worthy of the best traditions of the West ”

“ When those who are responsible for the course and direction of Japanese progress succeed in inculcating in all classes a due sense of the immense value of an unimpeachable honesty in every branch of commercial intercourse, they will have succeeded in removing a serious stumbling-stone from the path which the nation is striving to pursue, and will have placed their country immeasurably nearer the attainment of the goal which they keep steadfastly in view.
Japan, then, has, with an astonishing rapidity, become a powerful force in the world's economy ”

“ Unguarded and uncared for by a kindly legislation, their lot is far from being an enviable one. No factory acts grace the statute-book of Japan. "We have our duty before us," say the manufacturers, "to establish ourselves firmly upon the world's markets. Let us get our hold of them before we are tied and handicapped by Government interference." ”

“ A NEW ORDER IN THE FAR EAST.
The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been marked by many events of immense importance to the human race. Many years hence historians will no doubt give their decision as to the relative importance of the various movements which have characterised the past decade, and which have provided the outward and visible signs of the mysterious onward flowing current—call it evolution or what you will—which is for ever sweeping peoples and kingdoms along the road to an unknown goal. ”

“ Again, if the traveller in Persia or Turkestan is brought into perpetual contact with an unyielding and irritating resistance to hurry, the wanderer in Far Eastern lands becomes early conscious of the fact that he is moving in a world where all thought and action are characterised chiefly by a profound and imperturbable deliberation. ”

“ Schools presented a conspicuous feature in every corner of the country—not the schools dear to the literati of China or the mullahs of Islam, but modern, up-to-date, twentieth-century schools, where the knowledge and learning of the West is fast being imparted to the children of the East. ”

“ As far as the Chinese are concerned, it will probably prove sufficient for their purpose if they are successful in organising a fighting machine sufficiently powerful, in reputation and in fact, to make it unworth the while of other nations to attack them. With the advent of the present century the partition of China among the Powers has passed from the realm of practical politics, and formal record of her policy of preserving the integrity of the Chinese Empire has been registered by Great Britain in her latest treaty of alliance with Japan. ”

“ In Egypt the cry of nationality trembles in the air, while in Turkey the passage from autocracy to representative government has been effected with such bewildering rapidity, and with such an astonishing absence of friction, that it is difficult to grasp the fact that so unexampled and so unlooked-for a change has in very truth been brought about. ”

“ The Japanese, in short, are a fighting race who have scorned the haggle of the market and sworn fealty to the god of war. The character of the Chinese is in this respect the antithesis of the character of the people of Japan. ”

“ At first it only charms, and it is only at a later day when one has observed the same smile under extraordinary circumstances—in moments of pain, shame, disappointment—that one becomes suspicious of it. ”

“ The presence of a new force makes itself felt,—a disturbing force, perhaps a dangerous force, but in any case a force fraught with fateful possibilities,—the force of national assertion, fostered by a growing desire among Eastern peoples for the liberty, the equality, the democratisation of the West, and rendered formidable by the acquisition of the applied sciences of Europe. ”

“ Yet despite such dissimilarity of creed and setting, there is among the peoples of Asia a certain affinity of thought, certain kindred characteristics, observing which the stranger from across the seas may say, "This is the East." ”

“ In India agitation seethes and bubbles and takes feverish hold of any weakness which the ruling Power displays. Persia, until recent years the home of the luxury and splendour, the pomp and pageantry, the unfettered and illimitable egoism of an irresponsible and unchallenged absolutism, is even now in travail, with every prospect of giving birth to a deformed caricature of constitutional government. ”

“ Pedlary in itself may be an honourable trade, but pedlary fraught with petty fraud and supported by devices which debauch the commercial standards of the West, brings little but obloquy upon the country's name and fame, and provides an only too obvious cause for the enemy to blaspheme. "The barrier of a low morality," to make use of the words of Baron Shibusawa once more, "is by far stronger than that of bad laws" ”

“ There are few villages in China, or in Japan at the season for manuring the crops, which do not recall the supreme efforts in this direction of Baghdad or Bokhara. Finally, East and West Asia alike vie with one another in proclaiming the existence of that strange and mysterious law by which it appears to have been decreed that among the peoples of the West alone shall the sanctity of truth meet with respect or recognition. ”

“ The high standard of commercial morality attaining in China is admitted on all hands, and their reputation for integrity in all matters appertaining to trade is in strong contrast to the ill odour in which Japanese traders are held among European merchants carrying on their business in the Far East. ”

“ The vast extent of Chinese territory is in itself a sufficient bar to rapid consolidation, either of interests or of aims; still more must the variety of race and of language war against the rapid evolution of a national movement towards a single goal. ”

“ The practical man, then, while he does not lose sight of the possibilities of the future, will recognise that he has yet to deal with the present, and in those chapters in which I have attempted to deal with the trade and industry of China I have been careful to restrict myself to an examination of the facts as they are to-day, and to refrain from indulging in what can only be a speculative analysis of a more or less remote future. ”

“ But the chains that bind her to the dead are being loosened; with the spread of modern education are rising new thoughts and new ideals, her gaze is slowly being directed away from the immutability of the past to the possibilities of the future. ”

“ The unabashed indecency of the bazaars of Western and Central Asia finds its counterpart in the frank disregard of convention displayed in the country districts of Japan, where life and social intercourse proceed innocently, if immodestly according to Western canons, upon the assumption that though the serpent tempted, the woman did not eat of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. ”

“ In the matter of natural resources there is no comparison between the two countries, as may be seen from a glance at the opening pages of the following chapter, in which I have given, in faint outline, some suggestion of the almost incalculable wealth of China in this respect. Moreover, just as the aptitude of the Japanese as a people is for war rather than for commerce, so the philosophy of the Chinese has condemned and despised the profession of arms and applauded the pursuit of more peaceful avocations. The Samurai is the archetype of the Japanese gentleman ”

“ That the condition of woman has been vastly improved by the spread of Buddhist ideas is admitted even by members of the Christian missionary community, as instance the case of Father Bigaudet in Siam, who found in the Buddhist teaching a meritorious disapproval of polygamy, though he deprecated its culpable tolerance of divorce, in which respect he declared the habits of the people to be of "a damnable laxity." ”

“ Nor will it be long before old memories are revived with a vigour and force which surprise, until it be remembered that "memory, imagination, old sentiments and associations, are more readily reached through the sense of smell than by almost any other channel." ”

“ Who will venture to assign a limit to the influence of a reorganised China, with free play given to the commercial and industrial instinct of the race, upon the position of the trading and manufacturing nations of the world? ”

“ That they have learned all that the West can teach them in the conduct of modern war few will be found to deny; but that they are capable of rising to the same heights in the war of commerce has yet to be revealed. ”

“ The end, indeed, which the Japanese keep steadfastly in view is a far higher one than mere proficiency in arms, and does not stop short of political, diplomatic, commercial, industrial, and colonial equality with the first Powers of the Western world. ”