Japanese feudalism

“ And in this point feudalism in Japan was finer and more sensitive, if it was less grandiose, than feudalism in Europe. There is nothing in Japan to compare with the churches and cathedrals of the West, for there is no stone architecture at all. But there is nothing in the West to compare with the living-rooms of Japan. Suites of these dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are to be seen in Kyoto and elsewhere. And till I saw them I had no idea how exquisite human life might be made. The Japanese, as is well known, discovered the secret of emptiness. ”

“ In this part of the world, a lost cause does not simply fall:—it ceases to exist.
The practice of most modern writers on Japanese subjects—foreigners as well as natives—is to treat the Shōguns as usurpers. But surely this is a highly unphilosophical way of reading history. It is not even formally correct, seeing that the Shōguns obtained investiture from the Court of Kyōto as regularly as ministers of state have obtained their commissions in later times. We cannot undertake here to go into the causes that produced Japanese feudalism, with the Shōguns at its head. ”

“ A particular school of Confucian ethics was adopted and taught as the state religion. Feudalism was systematically established and intentionally developed. Each and every man had his assigned and recognized place in the social fabric, and change was not easy. It is doubtful if any European country has ever given feudalism so long and thorough a trial. Never has feudalism attained so complete a development as it did in Japan under the Tokugawa régime of over 250 years. ”

“ I refer to their sensitiveness to environment. More quickly than most races do the Japanese seem to perceive and adapt themselves to changed conditions.
The history of the past thirty years is a prolonged illustration of this characteristic. The desire to imitate foreign nations was not a real reason for the overthrow of feudalism, but there was, rather, a more or less conscious feeling, rapidly pervading the whole people, that the feudal system would be unable to maintain the national integrity. ”

“ Meanwhile the Japanese go their own way. Who could expect that either their social conditions or their arts should remain unaltered when all the causes which produced the Old Japan of our dreams have vanished? Feudalism has gone, isolation has gone, beliefs have been shattered, new idols have been set up, new and pressing needs have arisen. In the place of chivalry there is industrialism, in the place of a small class of aristocratic native connoisseurs there is a huge and hugely ignorant foreign public to satisfy. ”

“ In short, like his feverish patriotism, the almost delirious loyalty of the modern Japanese, though its roots may be planted in the soil of a very ancient creed, never showed any signs of vigorous growth until the profound fealty of the bushi towards their liege lords was transferred, after the abolition of feudalism, to the only figure that had survived all vicissitudes, the sovereign. It is not intended to deny that loyalty to the Throne partakes of the character of a religion in modern Japan, and that the people's reverence for the Sovereign amounts almost to worship. ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn, in A Conservative, has sketched for us, with a sympathy truly clairvoyant, the impression made by the cities of the West upon the consciousness of a young Japanese samurai educated under a feudalism not unlike that of the Middle Ages, wherein was worship, reverence, poetry, loyalty—however strangely compounded with the more sinister products of the feudal state. ”

“ After the failure of the Satsuma rebellion had extinguished the last smouldering embers of military feudalism, the only question that disturbed Japan's domestic politics was the manner of distributing the administrative power. One of the lessons taught by Japanese history is that representative institutions are in the genius of the nation. At a very early era the sovereign ceased to be autocratic, or to retain any prerogative which might be exercised without the concurrence of his principal subjects. ”

“ All possible means were taken to thwart the shogun and bring him into complications with the ambassadors at his court. Every attack on a foreigner brought fresh trouble upon the Yeddo government and hastened its collapse. Long before foreigners arrived, the seeds of revolution had sprouted and their growth was showing above the soil. It is to the state of political parties and of feudalism at this epoch in Japanese history, and not to mere ill will against foreigners, that this policy of intrigue and assassination must be ascribed. ”

“ Establishment of Feudalism and Duarchy—The Shōgunate and the Throne—Early Foreign Relations—Christian Persecution and Closure of Country. The fortunes of the first line of Kamakura Shōguns, so called from the seat of government being at that place, gave no indication of the permanence of duarchy, though it may have encouraged belief in the truth of the Japanese proverb that great men have no heirs. ”

“ In 1869, Mutsuhito, the one hundred and twenty-third mikado in lineal descent, resumed the imperial power which had so long been lost. Unlike China, over which so many dynasties have ruled, Japan has been governed by a single dynasty, according to the native records, for more than twenty-five hundred years.
The fall of the shogun was followed by the fall of [Pg 141] feudalism. The emperor, for the first time for many centuries, came from behind his screen and showed himself openly to his people. Yedo was made the eastern capital of the realm, its name being changed to Tokio. ”

“ The constitutional movement of Japan began in a spontaneous agitation of the whole body politic when the nation was irritated by the sudden contact with foreigners. The sense of national weakness added a force to this agitation. Had not the foreigners come, the Restoration might have been effected, feudalism might have been abolished, but the new Japanese constitution would hardly have seen the day. ”

“ But Yoritomo was too strong to be defied. The Court agreed, and from that moment military feudalism may be said to have been established in Japan.
It has been shown that the land system fixed by the Daiho-ryo had fallen into confusion. Private manors existed everywhere, yielding incomes to all classes from princes to soldiers. In the days of the Fujiwara and the Taira more than one-half of the arable land throughout the empire was absorbed into such estates, which paid no taxes to anyone except their direct owners. ”

“ Thereafter, greed for domains acquired strength every year. Again, when Yoritomo became so-tsuihoshi (commander-in-chief) and so-jito (general steward) of the whole country, and his meritorious vassals were appointed shugo and jito in each province, local authority passed from the Throne to the military families, and when, after the Shokyu struggle, the shugo and the jito came into actual possession of the estates they had previously administered, military feudalism was practically established. ”

“ How much more dignified and reasonable is his Oriental acceptance of the accomplished fact than the restless scheming of some Western pretenders, who are unable to see that their ancestors, whether kings or emperors, owed their power to national feeling, and persist in a futile struggle against the inevitable! The Japanese obedience to law and authority, which must, however indirectly, be an expression of the will of the people, was never better shown than in the promptness with which the sword-bearing Samurai ceased to carry their weapons. ”

“ It was the miracle of all time when those noble families responded to the necessity of the new order, forced upon Japan by the outside world, and gave up their feudal right to the land to the Emperor for a more democratic distribution. ”

“ No other set of statesmen of Japan or of any other country, ancient or modern, have witnessed within their lifetime so many social and political transformations. They saw the days when feudalism flourished — the grandeur of its rulers, its antique chivalry, its stately etiquette, its ceremonial costumes, its codes of honor, its rigid social order, formal politeness, and measured courtesies. ”

“ The patriotism of the Japanese is blind and unswerving loyalty to what is practically an absolutism. The Emperor can do no wrong, nor can the five ambitious great men who have his ear and control the destiny of Japan.
No great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no deeper foundation than material success, no higher prompting than conquest for conquest’s sake and mere race glorification. To go far and to endure, it must have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely conceived righteousness. ”

“ The outcast pariahs—the eta—no longer exist in law or name; but they exist in fact. The operatives of the Ōsaka mills, the wretched human shambles of the prostitute quarters, the sick and suffering poor—are these not social pariahs and even worse? We miss the sternly martial virtue of the days of yore; the unbending dignity of the true, the real Yamato-damashii (the spirit of Japanese chivalry) .... Never were bribery and corruption more rife: the whole machinery of the State is suffering from this dry-rot; and even those who are called upon to set the country an example have their price. ”

“ The Emperor of Japan, without the slightest exaggeration, can say, 'L'état, c'est moi.' The Japanese believe that all their happiness is bound up with the Imperial line and have no respect for any system of morality or law that fails to take cognizance of this fact."
Mr. Yamaguchi, professor of history in the Peeresses' School and lecturer in the Imperial Military College, thus writes in the Far East: "The sovereign power of the State cannot be dissociated from the Imperial Throne. It lasts forever along with the Imperial line of succession, unbroken for ages eternal. ”

“ As has been shown, they do not go as settlers because cheap continental labor makes it unprofitable. They go as business-men, as the advance-guard of the empire, as the rear-guard of the army. No one has ever raised a voice against the migration of Japanese to these unpopulated regions—with the exception, perhaps, of the natives. But ever and always one feels the hand of imperial Japan behind each little man from the empire, and that hold on her nationals is the thing that vigorous nations resent, because it threatens to impair their status. ”

“ The Chinese for ages past have had a succession of different dynasties to rule over them, but Japan has been faithful to one uninterrupted line of sovereigns. Every Chinese dynasty was founded upon rebellion and parricide. Sometimes, a powerful ruler was able to transmit his authority to his son and grandson, but they, in their turn, were inevitably deposed and murdered, and the country was in a perpetual state of civil war. A philosophy which produces such effects must be founded on a false system. ”

“ Although the vast number of well-educated men who to-day crowd the cities of Japan are fully conscious of the bizarre nature of this belief in an age which has turned its back on superstition, nothing has yet been done to modify it because—and this is the important point—the structure of Japanese society is such that without a violent upheaval which shall hurl the military clan system irremediably to the ground, it is absolutely impossible for human equality to be admitted and the man-god theory to be destroyed. ”

“ If the granting of the usufruct of a certain extent of land in exchange for military service is the essence of feudalism, it is indisputable that feudalism existed in Japan too.
Feudalism is indeed a necessity, as a Chinese servant has said in a memorable essay. It is a necessity which any nation must undergo, if that nation is to become consolidated. ”

“ He convokes and prorogues the Diet and dissolves the Lower House. He appoints and dismisses all officials, civil and military,—he has absolute command of the army and navy,—he declares war, makes peace, and concludes treaties,—he may declare a state of siege,—and he confers titles of nobility and other marks of honour. The rights of the monarch being thus defined, we come to the rights of the subject. “No Japanese subject shall be arrested, detained, tried, or punished, unless according to law. The rights of property, conditionally on the payment of taxes, are to be inviolable. ”

“ In other lands when a revolution has been brought about it usually has been only at a vast cost in human life. True, the northern and southern clans fought in Japan, but the strife was not of long duration, nor was it of a particularly sanguinary character in comparison with the terrible slaughter that has often accompanied revolution elsewhere. It left behind it no traces of animus to disturb the harmony of the future among the subjects of the Japanese Emperor. ”

“ With the assent of the Emperor Komei in 1865 to the Treaties made by the Shogun began brighter days for Japan, and if it must be owned that the benefits were at first unrecognised, and that considerable opposition was in some quarters manifested to the innovations proposed, matters had advanced so far, prior to the accession to the throne of the present sovereign, that there was hope of the total abolition of feudalism, and the inauguration of an essentially new regime. The world has never ceased to marvel at the ease with which this stupendous alteration was effected. ”

“ Two irreconcilable ideals were at stake: each side was fighting for what it held most sacred. Hence the application and the endurance on Japanese soil of tortures no less fiendish than those with which Spanish and Portuguese rulers had extinguished heresy in their own dominions. The Japanese government emerged victorious from this deadly duel; but its victory was achieved only by the cessation of intercourse with the outside world, and the all but total isolation of the Empire. ”