Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu

“ Many, indeed, felt anxious lest the introduction of modern civilization into a country so deliciously quaint and fascinating as Japan might destroy the charm of a population of artists, and, moreover, do irreparable damage to that exquisite art for which it is so justly celebrated. For many, Japan ought to have remained the land of lovely china, of rich lacquers, of kakimonos, musmes and chrysanthemums. ”

“ Sometimes you can trace upon their tiny persons an entire landscape, and at others enormous bunches of flowers dashed upon a background of scarlet China crape, which decorate their exceedingly small figures. Their heads are generally close-shaven when they are infants, but as they grow older the dignity of age is marked by that funny zone of stiff black hair which adds so much to the comical appearance of a Japanese doll. ”

“ On either side rise veritable walls of gigantic Siberian pines, with red trunks, sombre verdure, interspersed by magnificent larches of a lighter shade of green and of more regular shape, and by fir-trees and cedars, whose cones contain those little seeds which the Siberians are so fond of chewing. On the banks of the more important rivers, and at every ten to twenty miles’ distance, the traveller now passes numbers of little towns and villages, surrounded by arable land, which form, however, but very insignificant oases in the midst of these interminable forests. ”

“ Unfortunately, an imbecile Government, as corrupt as it is absurdly exclusive, impedes the progress of China with far greater obstinacy than do the prejudices of her people. So long as the illusion lasted as to the power of this unwieldy Empire, no one ventured to tear from it by force what it was imagined could be obtained by persuasion, and the nations resigned themselves to permit the immense resources of the interior to remain untouched, contenting themselves merely with the opening of a few ports to commerce. ”

“ But for her prompt and unselfish action in China, and the large force which her first-rate military system enabled her to despatch without delay, Europe and America would to-day be mourning the most horrible massacre of modern history. At this moment Japan and Great Britain are the only nations striving, and, if necessary, probably ready to fight, to keep China independent and undivided, open to the trade of all the world on equal terms, without selfish reservations on the one hand, and without trembling before party recriminations on the other. ”

“ A Japanese gentleman recently said to me: ‘In Japan we never dream of asking a person the first time we see him to what class he belongs.’ I dare say some time-honoured privileges still linger in their inner circle, and that a few old-fashioned noblemen do consider themselves superior to the heimin, but they take great care not to display any such feeling. One meets members of the Japanese aristocracy in every public resort and place of amusement, and they mingle without the least hesitation with the rest of the public. ”

“ Japan cannot be compared for a moment with China; for, much younger than her Celestial neighbour—since she received her civilization at her hands at a period contemporary with the fall of the Roman Empire, when the annals of China reached as far back into the night of time as those of Egypt—she has not had time to fossilize herself in sterile admiration of the past, and she has never adopted that mandarinate which China considers one of her chief glories, but which is in reality slowly ruining her. ”

“ The difficulties encountered by Europeans in every country imbued with Chinese ideas—those of the English in Burmah, the French in Tongking, and the Japanese at Formosa—prove, if proof were needed, how great is the resisting power and the risks any European nation would have to encounter which attempted to govern even a fragment of the vast Chinese Empire.
On the other hand, each Power, whilst dreading the consequences of a partition, is equally unwilling to behold a rival carry off the lion’s share. ”

“ The ‘child of the world’s old age,’ Japan, has grown to manhood. It is exactly eighteen years—the age at which Sovereigns attain their majority—since Count Inouye first proposed to the sixteen treaty Powers—including Peru and Hawaii!—that Japan, in return for certain concessions to foreigners, should be endowed with a measure of judicial autonomy. Great Britain, to her honour be it ever remembered, led the way in this, and Japan is now a nation as independent as ourselves—the first Oriental people to be placed absolutely on a par with the conquering and jealous West. ”

“ These Siberian peasants are, moreover, astonishingly lazy and apathetic. Their only pleasure in life consists in dreaming away the time whilst smoking their pipes, and in drinking vodka, not to enliven themselves, but simply to get dead-drunk. Whilst the men are at the public-house the women stand by their open doors, listless and gossiping, indolently watching their fair-haired children, who, with only a red shirt on, fabricate the time-honoured dirt-pies of universal childhood in the mud or else roll about in the dust. ”

“ Arthur H. Smith, an American missionary who has lived twenty-two years in China, in his admirable book ‘Chinese Characteristics,’ is their remarkable manner of ‘facing’ a thing. To save appearances, or to ‘face’ a difficulty cunningly rather than boldly, is the endeavour of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of the Son of Heaven, and is the key, moreover, to a great many other matters that might otherwise appear incomprehensible. Every Chinaman considers himself an actor, whose public words, acts, and deeds have nothing in common with reality. ”

“ The Chinese people, who are essentially practical and positive, and less given, perhaps, than any other in the world to study general questions and lofty ideals, soon deteriorated under so retrogressive a system, and eventually lost all sight of the origin of many of their most important institutions. Religion and morals were reduced to mere rites and ceremonies that only conceal the emptiness of Chinese civilization, and so the nation came to the conclusion that the one thing in this world worth the doing was to save appearances, and conceal corruption beneath a flimsy mask. ”

“ Presently we see rising in the background a tall chimney with its streaming cloud of smoke, and the noise of machinery in motion grating upon our ears reminds us somewhat unpleasantly that modern civilization has at length penetrated into Japan, and the better to emphasize this fact, our steamer is presently surrounded by a fleet of ugly coal-barges, and a sudden turn brings us face to face with the ships and flags of all nations—British, French, German, Russian, and American. ”

“ Must we, therefore, draw a line of degree between peoples beyond which the transmission of the civilization of the one cannot penetrate to the other, even as the French law fixes a limit to the transmission of inheritance? Nothing short of experience can solve the question. For the matter of that, the phenomenon is constantly taking place before our eyes, and if there be a people who might attempt it with hope of success, it is surely the Japanese, who to exceptional intelligence and remarkable powers of assimilation add a great spirit of enterprise and an uncommon energy. ”

“ Unquestionably the Government is not the only thing that needs reforming in China. There is the secular habit of always looking to the past for a type of perfection, which produces a certain atrophy of the Chinese intelligence, depriving it of all elasticity, originality and power of invention, and making it only capable of servile imitation, lacking even discernment—a fact which is admirably illustrated in the well-known story of the tailor to whom a European sent an old pair of breeches in order that he might copy them. ”

“ Does there exist, beyond this intense love of old customs and of an immutable civilization, any bond of union among the three or four hundred millions of human beings who constitute the population of China? ”

“ Unless, indeed, from time to time the new civilization which has been imported in Japan is refreshed at its primary source, it will soon run a risk of losing strength, and, for the matter of that, any people, even European, that isolated itself too much and became absorbed in self-admiration, would inevitably deteriorate. It is not belittling the extraordinary progress so rapidly accomplished by the Empire of the Rising Sun to say that it can only be perfected if the people of that wonderful country remain in contact with the inhabitants of Europe and America. ”

“ No sooner had Russia shaken off the yoke of the Tatars which weighed upon her for three centuries, and left its mark so deeply impressed as to be still visible, than, reformed and united, she began to expand beyond her natural confines. ”

“ Siberia resembles Russia not only in the matter of its immensity, its loneliness, the duration of its winters, monotonous expanse of its plains and enormous forest lands, but also in the leading characteristics of its peasantry; but in Asia and Russia these seem accentuated, possibly by reason of the peculiarity of the surroundings among which they are compelled to live. Even more than in Russia is this class of the people essentially rural; the exploitation of the gold-mines is the only other industry of any importance, and it employs relatively few people in comparison with its yield. ”

“ Therefore, at the end of the nineteenth century—when the material wealth of a country is of far greater importance than its historical memories, and men are more eager to discover fresh openings for enterprise, new lands to cultivate, or mines to exploit than relics to preserve or peoples to liberate—Europe abandons the bedside of the Grand Turk to occupy herself with her chances of inheriting far greater riches from the Son of Heaven. ”

“ The doctrine of filial piety as it is understood by the Chinese, and the worship of ancestors, which is its highest expression, have their good as well as their bad side. It forms the principal mainstay of that useless system of admiration of an irrevocable past in which everything is supposed to have been better than it can possibly be to-day, and which of necessity turns the people of the Celestial Empire from all desire for progress, because to do so would be an outrage to an ancestry whose wisdom can never be surpassed. ”

“ Here and there rise from the water curious little fishing-sheds, the delight of the amateur photographer, which add considerably to a landscape which looks for all the world like an animated picture off a Japanese screen. One can scarcely believe that it is all real, and certainly not that it was at one time the scene of a terrible tragedy: yet such it was, for from one of the neighbouring islands in 1638—yclept Pappenberg—several hundred Christians were cast into the sea. ”

“ Here you see men in light-blue blouses, with long pigtails; Chinese ladies with their hair dragged back magpie-tail fashion, who balance themselves painfully as they go along on their tiny deformed feet; Tatar women, whose hair is puffed out on each side of their faces, and who, like their Chinese sisters, stick a big flower behind their ears. Not being crippled by bound feet, like their less fortunate Chinese sisters, these women strut along with as firm a step as their high-heeled clogs will permit. Their faces are bedaubed with rice-flour, and their cheeks painted an alarmingly bright red. ”

“ Some people say that it could easily be settled by not attempting to govern them at all, in other words, to let things go their way; but no European Power would, or could, do otherwise than rule them methodically, according to our modern ideas of government. To-day, if a band of brigands exists in any obscure corner of China, nobody troubles about it, but once that corner belongs to a European Power, the irresistible desire of attempting to establish order would assuredly lead to an insurrection. ”

“ Although just at present it were best not to count too much on the wisdom and coolness of the British, nevertheless, their statesmen seem to appreciate the dangers of so beautiful a dream. They, at least, understand that the peril of the British Empire lies in its enormous extent. The majority of the British would, no doubt, be satisfied if they were allowed to place their capital and their commerce on a footing of equality with that of other countries in the Celestial Empire, if the territorial encroachments of the Powers did not justify the fear of the creation of a protectionist tariff. ”

“ For the past twenty-five years Europe has trembled at the bare thought of war, and we must not be surprised if she dreads the mere mention of the disruption of China, which would be even more dreadful, since it means universal war, in which the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, as well as the Continental Powers, would each take a share. ”

“ To one who has studied Japan on the spot, a very serious question presents itself for solution, one of vast importance, not only to the inhabitants of that island Empire, but to the entire human family, i.e., Will the evolution which this country has undergone prove permanent and not likely to collapse at a given moment, bringing with it the ruin of the State? In a word, the question is, whether it be possible for a people so suddenly to assimilate the old-established and elaborate civilization of another race. ”

“ Before it produces its full effects upon the race it will doubtless do so upon the land of China itself, if permission can only be obtained to exploit the great natural wealth which lies undisturbed beneath the soil of this enormous Empire, and is thus lost to humanity. If the work of developing the economic resources of China be undertaken in a spirit of selfish interest, it will nevertheless very considerably ameliorate the lot of the Chinese people, if only by extending their field of activity, which is now limited to agriculture and small industries. ”

“ It is true that occasionally there are local agitations, whose chiefs go so far as to pounce upon offending representatives of authority and convey them to the capital of the district, or province, to demand their degradation, which is more often than not accorded—a fact which inspired an English paper at Shanghai to descant on the ‘democratic manner in which the Chinese participate in their government.’ Oppression tempered by revolt is the rule which prevails in the Celestial Empire, but there is no fear of a general revolution against so degenerate a system. ”

“ This happy spirit of resignation explains why the Chinese, notwithstanding their poverty, are one of the most contented people in the world, and, consequently, one of the happiest; but, unfortunately, they are exposed from time to time to dreadful calamities: an inundation, an epidemic, or a bad harvest, which brings about inevitable misery and famine to the entire population, who are left without any resources because their work has not been sufficiently remunerative to enable them to put anything by for a rainy day. ”

“ From the moment, however, when she found herself face to face with near and powerful neighbors, rejuvenated nations, from whose eyes her incurable weaknesses were not screened by the illusion of distance, she was destined, if she did not yield with a good grace, to be swept along by the torrent of innovation which she has so long and so vainly sought to resist. Japan, by her victories in a war which was in reality a war of Western Science versus Chinese Routine, a war of Progress against Stagnation, in 1895 forced open the gates of China. ”

“ The Chinese are not, therefore, unappreciative of our civilization, and since we afflict them with our presence, they think it wise to profit by the material advantages which we have introduced among them; but, with few exceptions, doubtless they would prefer the loss of these advantages to our company, and they never cease to despise us. From the moment that they can read they go to their old books as to a fountain-head, whence they drink intoxicating draughts of pride and vanity, and of profound contempt for all that is not of the wisdom of Confucius. ”