# Japanese Plays and Playfellows/Chapter 1

BEHIND THE SCENES
A foreign country for most travellers is very like a theatre. They arrive in holiday mood, resolving to be pleased, since otherwise their judgment in choosing that country rather than another, their faculty of appreciating what so many have proclaimed delectable, might seem at fault. Should their choice have fallen on Japan, be sure that eulogistic notices from the pens of Sir Edwin Arnold and M. Pierre Loti have prepared them to enjoy the daintiest of comediettas. They reach the enchanted shore. They pass swiftly from one aspect of fairyland to another. Nothing happens to shake their preconceived conviction that in the Land of the Rising Sun Nature began and Art completed a yellow paradise. They do not heed the jeremiads of resident aliens, nor the bitter cry of outcast professors, who gather thorns where the tourist is dazzled by cherry-blossom. The picturesque unreality of common things abets illusion. Surely these dolls' houses of wood and paper, these canopies of rosy bloom and curtains of purple wistaria, the gigantic cryptomeria, the tentacular pines, the azure inland sea and snow-streaked Fuji—itself surely all these compose a superb mise en scène for poetic ​comedy! And when "the crowd" enters, a smiling crowd of straw-sandalled rickshaw-runners, of kneeling tea-house girls, and shaven babies, arrayed like bright-winged butterflies, churlish indeed were the spectator who should refuse to smile back and cheer with the best. Then consider the privileges which he may enjoy in that admirably arranged theatre. Were he in his own country, the footlights divide him for a few hours at most from actors whose privacy, however coveted, he may seldom hope to invade. But on Japanese soil he may often obtain, by fee or favour, like the stage-struck noble of Molière's and Shakespeare's time, familiar acquaintance with performance and performers. The latter are, on the stage, his puppets; off the stage, his friends. Indeed, he confounds the two, and ends by treating them with affectionate condescension. This attitude, which he half-involuntarily assumes from an ever-present consciousness of superior civilisation (as he considers it), deceives only himself. The polite but thoughtful patriot, perceiving that his temples are regarded as bric-à-brac, his race as a race of ingenious marionettes, protests in vain against the unwelcome flattery of surprised admirers. "To this kind of people," wrote Mr. Fukai, one of the ablest journalists in Tōkyō, "our country is simply a play-ground for globe-trotters, our people a band of cheerful, merry playfellows. Painstaking inquiries are made about Japanese curios and objects of art—sometimes important, no doubt, but sometimes ridiculously trivial—while the investigation of such subjects as the ethical life, the social and political institutions, are far too much neglected. The history of the nation is ignored, and our recent progress is supposed to be ​wholly owing to a miraculous touch of Western civilisation." But who is to remedy this unfornate susceptibility on the part of foreigners? The foreign employé has his work to do—diplomatic, professional, or commercial; the native is in no particular hurry to court the esteem of outsiders, being quite contented with his own high estimate of himself. Must it always be an officer "on short leave," or a journalist in a hurry, who undertakes to record superficial impressions of a passing spectacle? At least, it is no use reporting from the stalls what the casual playgoer imagines he has seen, unless his report be confirmed and controlled by those who move in the mysterious world "behind the scenes," where the drama of popular existence is more adequately observed and to a great extent directed. Happily, the judicious inquirer has only to choose between competent guides, whose eyes are no longer confused by the glimmer of dancing lanterns. Let us pass behind the scenes, and discover, if we can, what sort of piece is being rehearsed—what mode of action the performers affect. If we lose some illusions, we may gain a profitable glimpse of decorously veiled truths.
The foreign resident is rarely cast for an important part, never for a permanent one. It is notorious that he lacks aesthetic charm. His wife and children, his club and counting-house, his racecourse and cricket-field, are standing tokens of unassimilative exile. In England he would be a good citizen and an excellent fellow, sure of his seat on the School Board or County Council, if not in Parliament, supposing that his ambitions included that of service to the community. But in Kōbe or Yokohama he lives as isolated from the fascinating "native-born" as any Jew in a ​mediæval ghetto. And he does not feel the spell which takes the bookmaker captive. It will not do to dismiss him as a Philistine, a coarse barbarian, whose only aim is to exploit the country for his own benefit, since, on closer acquaintance, you find him, more often than not, cultured, kindly, and just. What, then, can be the cause of his extraordinary antipathy to the land, ideally perfect as it appears to us, in which his lines are cast? For every blessing you pronounce he replies with a malediction, and, since his life behind the scenes is at least nearer actuality than your own, you borrow his eyes, with which the better to contemplate a Japanese Janus, whose smiling visage fills you with delight, though at him is levelled a forbidding frown.
The root of his discomfort and your enchantment is a profoundly narrow patriotism. Viewed from without, this brave and alert nation, courteous to strangers and glad to excite admiration, retaining so much that is picturesque and unique, yet capable of appropriating the external panoply of Western civilisation, might seem more companionable than any other; viewed from within, it is evidently a close corporation, intolerant of rivalry, diligent to protect itself, and determined to restrict at all costs "Japan to the Japanese." It is futile to blame this trait, which springs inevitably from the forced seclusion of two centuries, during which period the barbarian was rigorously excluded until he obtained readmission at the cannon's mouth. Nor is such hostile feeling confined to the ignorant. On the contrary, the farther you go from the great centres, where the mixture of races might be expected to produce a better mutual understanding, the more amiable is your reception. The mercantile classes ​dread and dislike the invading trader, while imitating his methods, so far as they can grasp them, with the intention of ousting him as much as possible from their markets. Even the intellectual classes, quick to appreciate the value of Western science, arms, and government, are none the nearer spiritually through their acquisition. Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, whose passionate devotion to his adopted country has inspired many pæans of tender praise, yet writes: "Between the most elevated class of thoroughly modernised Japanese and the Western thinker anything akin to intellectual sympathy is non-existent: it is replaced on the native side by a cold and faultless politeness. Finally, a Tōkyō critic, whose language is as vigorous as his disillusion is genuine, complains thus bitterly in The Orient (April 1899) of "The Rest of the World":
"From first to last our foreign records have shown almost insatiable greed on the part of our treaty-allies. We have, it is true, asked for no favours; and it is equally certain that we have not received any. There never has been any real feeling of fraternal amity between us and our allies; and this not because we were not willing, indeed eager, to take the initiative, but because our treaty-allies have held superciliously aloof and grudged us an entrance into the comity of nations. All things considered, we do not find the debt of gratitude we owe to foreign lands beyond power of bearing. Civilisation? We had that before ever Commodore Perry came to Uraga and Mississippi Bay. Schools? Well, text-books are to be bought in the open market, and our students have always paid their way at Western universities. Railways? Yes, but look at the absurd price we had to pay for ​the first line between Tōkyō and Yokohama! And so on with the whole list. We have paid the highest market price for our experience, with a thumping big commission for the privilege of buying it even at that rate. Yes, we have profited, but largely lost our own self-respect in the profiting."
Innocently unaware of storms in the beautiful Satsuma tea-pot, the globe-trotter goes his way, playing and paying to the satisfaction of all. But the business man, whose presence is an affront and not a compliment, has to bear the brunt of them. The difficulties which beset his calling are not to be paralleled elsewhere. There was a time when the native merchant would try to intimidate his rival into concluding a bargain by employing sōshi, importunate bravoes, to lay siege at all hours to the private and official door of their victim, until he capitulated or demanded police protection. But this somewhat naïf procedure did not command general approval. More easy and more usual is the device of ordering goods and refusing to take delivery except at a much reduced rate. The perpetually quoted case of Cornes v. Kimura (Yokohama, 1894), which the reader will find described at length in Mr. Chamberlain's "Things Japanese" (under the heading "Trade"), is more eloquent than pages of second-hand rhetoric. Briefly, the British importer, in spite of a verdict given in his favour by a Japanese judge, was compelled to retain some of the ordered goods, at a loss of 2500 yen, on pain of being boycotted by the Yarn Traders' Guild. If this case stood alone, one would be loath to revive recollection of it, but there remains so many a slip between the signing of similar contracts and their fulfilments, that the warehouses at the treaty-ports are never without ​incriminating bales, which lower Japanese credit and testify to the slow growth of commercial honesty. To eliminate the foreign importer altogether is, of course, better than to boycott him, and this, with Government aid, is gradually being accomplished. First, a law was passed that Government contracts for plant and material were to be given only to Japanese subjects. Then, when it was found that a foreign firm would try to evade this by employing a Japanese man of straw, an enactment was issued for the re-inspection of all plant on arrival in Japan. Mr. Stafford Ransome, in an article contributed to The Engineer on the subject of this official re-inspection, quotes the case of 16,000 tons of cast-iron pipes supplied by one Belgian and two British firms for the Tōkyō waterworks. Of the 10,000 tons of Belgian pipes only 2700 were accepted, and of the English 4000 out of 6000 tons. Yet in his opinion the rejected pipes were perfectly good for the purpose. That experience will correct short-sighted dishonesty, that the native merchant will gradually master the principles of international trade and become as respected as he was in feudal days despised, nobody doubts; and if for the moment the stranger within his gates must suffer, the gates are not yet stripped of all their gold. Already the Chambers of Commerce have realised that capital is cosmopolitan, and that excess of chauvinism spells bankruptcy for local enterprise. So long as the laws forbid the foreigner to own land, to hold shares in native companies or to assist in their management, he is naturally shy of responding to invitations to invest. But at first such invitations were not frequent. Ten years ago the craze for joint-stock companies, though widespread, was yet hedged ​in by patriotic precaution. The promoters had no desire to share with outsiders the golden fruit which seemed to beckon from speculative boughs. Moreover, the Government, always paternal from sentiment and tradition, would often pledge its support in liberal subsidies. The defeat of China redoubled the victor's confidence in his capacity to develop his own possessions with his own resources. But events have not kept pace with his hopes. The greater portion of the indemnity was diverted, after all, into British pockets in return for unproductive ironclads: prices went up, dividends went down; the shining fruit was turned to ashes through inexpert gardening, for the art of industrial horticulture is not to be learned in a day, especially by amateurs, who sometimes drew an erratic line between private and public consumption of the crop. Whatever the causes, those very Chambers of Commerce, which had strongly opposed the introduction of foreign capital, passed in 1898-99 one resolution after another to the effect that aliens be permitted and solicited to contribute where the funds of indigenous subscribers required to be supplemented. It does not, however, seem probable that foreign investors will be in any hurry to unloose their purse-strings, unless and until the over-cautious patriot can be persuaded to modify the laws in such a way as will give his coadjutor the right to share in the management and responsibility of any scheme towards the success of which his money may be largely, even preponderantly, instrumental.
It must not be supposed that apprehension and mistrust are monopolised by one party to this subterranean war. For five years it has been impossible to open an English journal published in the ​treaty-ports without finding in it some dismal prophecy of the time (it began on June 18, 1899) when the treaties concluded by Lord Rosebery's Government should be put into operation, when the walls of the ghetto should be razed, when the British lion and the Japanese lamb must lie down together in unity. The right to travel in the interior without passports, and to reside in any district whatsoever without special permission, are the only advantages conferred by the treaties on resident aliens—advantages which he would enjoy as a matter of course in any civilised country. The disadvantages, of which he fears the inconvenience, to use no stronger term, are numerous. Extra-territoriality being abolished, he becomes subject to Japanese law, which is incompletely codified and must be administered by men whose patriotic bias and sense of justice may be subjected at times to a severe strain. Still, the right to exercise jurisdiction on all within her borders cannot be refused, without insult, to a civilised Power. The right to impose duty on imports (hitherto limited to five per cent.) up to thirty or forty per cent, is not only undeniable, but absolutely desirable in the interests of Japanese trade. It is suggested, however, that such high duties might be levied on objects which are indispensable to foreigners and of little utility to natives, as to form a lever for the gradual ejection of aliens. There is no guarantee that the freedom of the Press and the freedom of public meeting will be exempt from those restrictions, which are daily and legally imposed on the Japanese themselves. The coasting trade, the right of doctors and lawyers to practise without a Japanese diploma, the conditions of holding and selling leases—on these most vital points the utmost uncertainty exists. ​No wonder that Mr. B. H. Chamberlain asked, "Could any one imagine such terms having ever been agreed to except as the result of a disastrous war?"
Happily, between the discontented British and the ultra-patriotic Japanese lies a barrier of prudent statesmanship, which has proved itself equal to solving harder problems than any with which the Western world is confronted. No other Eastern nation has known how to transform its polity in accordance with Occidental ideas without provoking internal disruption or external conquest. It is not yet realised that the credit of the achievement is due to a very small band of men—to the Marquess Ito and his associates on the one hand and the foreign instructors on the other, whose names are too soon forgotten, while their works live after them. Though all their compatriots now reap in advancing prestige and prosperity the benefits of the work performed by the "Clan Statesmen," it must not be forgotten that much of that work was accomplished in the face of every obstacle which prejudice and short-sightedness could interpose. Popular dissatisfaction was adroitly diverted by declaring war on China at the moment when factious opposition was bringing discredit on the four-years-old parliamentary Government, and Ministers were strong enough to hold an indignant nation in hand when the fruits of war were so unscrupulously torn from their grasp by Muscovite intrigue. Indications are not wanting that the spirit of tactful sense which has steered Japan through so many tempests is competent to allay those prognosticated by the Cassandras of Kōbe and Yokohama. Those journalistic beldames, who predicted sickness and death for the European inmate of a Japanese prison unless ​he should be granted a special diet and a particular régime, have been already conciliated by the construction of an expensive gaol, which it is hoped they will never be called upon to occupy. This building, situated at Sugamo, covers an area of about 28,000 square yards. It is provided with tables and chairs, and the cells will be lighted with electricity. Thus the grievance is redressed before it can even occur; murder is averted; ab uno disce omnes.
Before dismissing from consideration the prevalent hostility to foreign residents, more noticeable in the ports than elsewhere, and most pronounced in relation to mercantile rivals, a word should be said as to its effects on mission work. Between 1878 and 1888 Christianity appeared to be carrying all before it. The land was honeycombed with evangelists of every sect, from the resplendent deacons of the Orthodox Russian cathedral, which so insolently dominates the capital from the summit of Suruga-dai, to the dingy crowd of Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, Universalists, and others, none of whom were without a hopeful following of more or less sincere converts. In fact, so fashionable did the once-persecuted faith become that Mr. Fukuzawa, "the Jowett of Japan," the intellectual father of her most progressive pioneers, advocated for a time that it should be adopted as the national religion, by no means on account of its intrinsic merits, but rather as a certificate of spiritual respectability and a passport to more intimate relationship with the Powers which call themselves Christian. This success is easily explained. Not only were many of the missionaries men of high principle and attractive personality, but they had the wisdom to minimise doctrinal differences and the opportunity of ​conferring no small material benefit on their disciples by teaching them the English tongue. The commercial value of an English education stood high, and the army of native Christians had a better chance than most of obtaining posts in governmental or other offices. I may mention in passing that the first professed Christian to hold ministerial rank was the Minister of Education in the short-lived Okuma-Itagaki Government of 1898.
Of course, I would not insinuate that cases of genuine conversion were not numerous and productive of moral regeneration, or that the creed of Christendom has failed to strike root among the simple and warm-hearted peasantry. But it is certain that among the educated classes it is now viewed with rationalistic indifference.
Mr. G. W. Aston, towards the close of his "History of Japanese Literature," makes a very significant admission:
"The process of absorbing new ideas, which has mainly occupied the Japanese nation during the last thirty years, is incomplete in one very important particular. Although much in European thought which is inseparable from Christianity has been freely adopted by Japan, the Christian religion itself has made comparatively little progress. The writings of the Kamakura and two subsequent periods are penetrated with Buddhism, and those of the Yedo age with moral and religious ideas derived from China. Christianity has still to put its stamp on the literature of the Tōkyō period."
Shintō Temple at Miyajima.
​revolution which its adoption would entail in the position of women, need not be discussed at present. Let the following facts speak for themselves. The latest available statistics show that the number of converts is decreasing. Even within the ranks of Japanese Christianity is a strongly marked tendency to replace foreign by native teachers, and to nationalise that religion by robbing it of many dogmas which are elsewhere regarded as essential. The case of the Dōshisha, which has been of late years a burning question among Japanese and American Christians, is one with which all who take an interest in mission work should certainly be well acquainted, for it furnishes a striking illustration of the appropriative and, to our ideas, somewhat unscrupulous proclivities of Nipponean patriots. The Dōshisha is a Christian university founded at Kyōto in 1875 under the auspices of the American Board Mission. So liberal were the contributions of foreign believers to this very flourishing institution, that at last it came to include, besides a special theological department, a girls' school, a science school, a hospital, and a nurses' training school. Needless to say, the Presbyterian donors inserted a clause in the constitution to the effect that their form of faith should be perpetually and obligatorily taught. Religious schools, however, cannot claim the same privileges as civil schools from the Home Department, which, on the plea of neutrality, only grants to undenominational ones special concessions with regard to military conscription. Realising that this disability acted unfavourably on the number of pupils and retarded the expansion of their work, the governing body of the Dōshisha proceeded to increase the number of native subscribers, ​and with their connivance to dechristianise the college, in order to escape the disadvantage already mentioned. That is, the Christian instruction was made optional instead of obligatory, but the buildings and appliances, bought with American money, were of course retained. The Board, representing the original subscribers, protested against what they did not hesitate to characterise as a flagrant breach of faith: the governing body pleaded expediency, and were prepared to redefine Christianity in accordance with their own conceptions of an undeniably vague term. There the matter rests. It might seem unfair to lay stress on this matter, were it not that this action of the Dōshisha authorities is typical of the attitude of native educationalists at the present time to foreign teaching: it forms, in fact, part of the patriotic movement, which I desire to indicate without praise or blame, more especially as that movement is so little known outside Japan. Of course, there has been for years a very natural and proper tendency to replace foreign by native officials as soon as the latter seemed capable of discharging the functions primarily entrusted to the former. But this is very different from denying to foreigners the right of founding schools at their own risk—a right which they would enjoy as a matter of course in any but reactionary States. Such, however, is the policy urged on the Government by the Higher Educational Council (composed of professors in the chief schools and colleges), which on April 17, 1899, passed the following resolution:
"Foreigners who are not conversant with Japanese shall not be allowed to become teachers in other courses than those of foreign languages or special courses in special schools and of schools exclusively intended for ​foreigners. Foreigners who are licensed as teachers in the above-mentioned capacities shall not be allowed to found schools other than those exclusively intended for foreigners."
As the founder of a school should legally be a licensed teacher, the foregoing clauses practically prohibit foreigners from establishing schools for Japanese. Besides, there is a clause prohibiting religious education and ceremonies in privileged schools. In other words, the nationalists wish education to be not only in their own hands, but also entirely secular; and those who desire to introduce from abroad theological tenets may no longer do so, if the Government should follow this advice, except from the pulpit or as private individuals. Whether such a restriction be or be not in violation of existing treaties with foreign Powers, I cannot say.
Sufficient proof has perhaps been already adduced of anti-foreign feeling to convince an impartial reader that an Anglo-Saxon exile has some reason for feeling ill at ease in the tourists' paradise. It might be added, however, that even the victim of patriotic manœuvres is hardly ever exposed to personal malevolence. The politest nation in the world would certainly not be guilty of any overt discourtesy. The accident of foreign birth may place you outside the pale of those secure and intimate relations which you might form with colleagues in other lands (the divergence of social and domestic habits by itself almost necessitates this), but, if the collision of financial interests should result in your ejection from a post of vantage, you cannot justly blame an individual, only those centripetal forces that give solidarity and cohesion to a race which remains, the more it changes, the more indissolubly ​the same. And though the patriot might think, he would never say to your face, "L'étranger, voilà l'ennemi." On the contrary, if he had not the racial interest to consider, if he were not born in a maze of reciprocal duties which to us are inconceivable, so charming is his natural disposition that I am not a all sure that he would not, now and then, sacrifice himself to oblige an alien!
I have used the phrase "charming natural disposition" deliberately, though it may seem incongruous, or even incompatible with dislike of strangers. What traveller has not felt and described this charm? Will Adams in the beginning of the seventeenth century found "the people of this Iland good of nature, curteous aboue measure," and Sir Rutherford Alcock in the middle of the nineteenth reports them "as kindly and well-disposed people as any in the world." Has their nature, then, suffered any deterioration? Has contact with Europeans and Americans brought material gain at the cost of ethical loss? Many observers, both native and foreign, declare this to be the case: a little reflection will show that it cannot, for the present, be otherwise.
"Old Japan," in the opinion of Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, "was quite as much in advance of the nineteenth century morally as she was behind materially. She had made morality instinctive." This verdict is not yet of purely historic interest; it may be tested by all who care to travel beyond the radius of photographs and railways. In remote districts, where the innkeeper charges a minimum price, relying for profit on the generosity of his guest, whose present is acknowledged by the bestowal of a fan or an embroidered towel, even such fugitive relations rest on a benevolent rather than ​a wholly commercial basis. Patriarchal manners—contented submission, fidelity, courtesy—yield a rich return of domestic happiness. The struggle for life and for wealth is tempered by self-sacrificing customs and amenities. If the apprentice be willing to work for no other wage than his master's approval and satisfaction through long probationary years, the master, on his side, will resign his charge into the hands of a younger generation before decrepitude has come to rob "honourable retirement" of its grace. If the young wife devote her summer to unquestioning service of her husband and his parents, she has her reward when her sons' wives repay her with the same filial homage. Similar ties, imposing restraint on egoism and sanctified by public esteem, have had their full share in developing those amiable qualities which every observer has acknowledged. But the break-up of feudal society cannot fail to react on the manners which reflected feudal discipline. The Western ideals of liberty, equality, and self-assertion, the decay of religious belief, the necessity of fighting on even terms in the great competitive mêlée to the tune of "The devil take the hindmost, oh!" and, it must be added, the example set by the rest of the world, which does not practise altruism, whatever its representatives may preach, all these factors tend to harden and sharpen the modernised Japanese.
A curious sign of the independent spirit, nourished on new ideas and strangely at variance with the old, is the organised indiscipline of schoolboys. During the six months which the writer spent in the country two flagrant cases occurred of defiance of authority, by no means unusual, it would appear, in scholastic experience, if one might judge by the comments of the local Press. ​In one case the majority of the scholars absented themselves for a fortnight as a protest against the alleged incapacity of the teacher, and maltreated a more docile minority who endeavoured to resume their lessons. In another the upper forms refused to recognise the authority of a headmaster appointed by the Government, on the ground that his talents and attainments fell below the standard which they deemed desirable in the director of their studies. In consequence, the unfortunate nominee of the Minister of Education was completely boycotted; his class-room was deserted, his suggestions ignored; and, on the occasion of the annual prize-giving, he was publicly insulted, for, whereas the whole school rose and remained standing as a mark of respect during the speeches of distinguished visitors, when their unfortunate chief began his address they resumed their seats and engaged in loud conversation, after the manner of our own House of Commons when the suppression of an unwelcome orator is desired. The most surprising feature in both these instances was that a section of the Japanese Press, instead of regarding the incidents as deplorable, indeed, but as domestic matters, which it concerned only the governing body to regulate, made them the subject of a long polemic, sided with or against the malcontents, and, in short, exalted the revolting schoolboys into fellow-citizens "rightly struggling to be free." The college Hampden does not shrink from his rôle, and is prepared in the interests of curiosity and "the higher education" to cross-examine a newly-appointed professor, insufficiently protected by a Harvard or Oxford reputation, on his knowledge of Shakespeare, his theological beliefs, his preference for "the open door" or the ​gradual partition of China. If this precocious independence conflict with our old-fashioned notions of modesty and reverence on the part of adolescence towards its seniors, it should make life more amusing for the professor, who, after all, is better off with inquisitive than with incurious pupils. I am confirmed in my supposition that the autonomous schoolboy is not at all abnormal by a schoolmaster of nearly ten years' standing, who writes: "In the Occident the master expels the pupil. In Japan it happens quite as often that the pupil expels the master. Each public school is an earnest, spirited little republic." One thing is certain. The taught are as eager to absorb knowledge as the teacher to impart it; idleness is rare; without extraordinary application but little progress can be made. For it should not be forgotten that four or five years must be devoted to the sole acquisition of a working stock of Chinese ideographs, the scholar's needlessly complicated alphabet, before he attacks Western science, law, language, or medicine, themselves supplementary to subjects of native growth. Demands so various can only be met by the most systematic precision, and in effect no country has more carefully organised popular education. To organise comes naturally to the Japanese, and this capacity explains the apparent contradiction of co-existent order and revolt. The revolt is always corporate, one organisation within another. Whether the disaffected body consist of waiters, or workmen, or schoolboys, it has to be treated as a collective unit. The objects pursued—higher wages, more liberty, more privileges—may bear the impress of democratic ambition, but the spirit in which they are fought for is that of feudal obedience to a common call.
​It cannot be said that the Japanese Press has degenerated through contact with foreigners, since it is a plant, imported from abroad nearly thirty years ago, which has thriven and multiplied exceedingly on favourable soil. As might have been expected, no modern novelty is more popular than the newspaper in a land where gossip and laughter and criticism are as the breath of life to a sharp-witted, good-tempered race. More than a thousand newspapers—several illustrated, some wholly or partly in English—cater at very low prices to the public appetite. It is natural that the right to speak and print freely should be liable to abuse when first exercised. Nor could the wary group of reformers, whose task of nursing democratic institutions among hereditary partisans of a rigid caste system was no less delicate than difficult, be blamed for setting legal limits to editorial indiscretion. In India and in Egypt the British authorities are often compelled for reasons of State to quench the sacred torch of incendiary invective. But as public opinion grows better educated, it is less liable to be led astray by journalistic tirades. Moreover, the journalist soon acquires a hold, direct or indirect, on the Legislature, wherever Parliament and Press become interdependent. The Press laws of Japan have, in consequence, lost much of their severity, and the "prison-editor" (whose position corresponds to that of the Sitz-Redaktör in Prussia) finds his fate of vicarious imprisonment, when the actual editor sins, grow daily less onerous. It was, indeed, urged as a reproach by opposition sheets against the Okuma-Itagaki Ministry of 1898 that five or six of the Ministers had been at some time or other inmates of his Imperial Majesty's gaols; but the gravity of ​the reproach is much diminished by the explanation that in nearly every case incarceration had been inflicted for unguarded liberty of expression in the Press or on the platform. Political offences, all the world over, are merely political offences. For the Irish Nationalist Kilmainham is more sacred than Westminster. Such prisoners are no more than naughty children, locked in a dark room by a paternal Government.
But, in truth, it is not the political columns which have most influence on the circulation of Tōkyō journals. If the typical leading article seem to English taste wanting in force and directness, abounding in vague sonorities, that is a fault shared by European editors, who are bound to veil an oracle with traditional obscurity. This trait is, of course, intensified by the impersonal periphrases of the language. Where the director of the journal is most to blame is in allowing his organ to become the medium of worse than American personalities. The newspaper which enjoys the largest circulation among the middle and lower classes of the capital devotes much attention to maintaining the prestige of its chronique scandaleuse. The Prime Minister, the foreign merchant or professor, the Buddhist high-priest, will discover that his amours, embellished with corroborative detail and treated with more regard to artistic effect than the facts warrant, command the most flattering and embarrassing popularity. What would be thought of a London newspaper which should record so minutely the movements of a visiting prince as to chronicle the names of professional beauties visited by him, as well as the price paid for their transitory favours? The aggrieved hero or villain has no doubt legal remedy, should he choose ​to prosecute the offending reporter; but the remedy would be worse than the disease, since not only is it dilatory and expensive, but the protracted advertisement would tend to circulate rather than to kill the slander. Besides, in the eyes of an indulgent public gallantry, as our French neighbours call it, excites more amusement then reprobation. At any rate, libellous paragraphs, with their inevitable accompaniment of blackmail, are at present sufficiently numerous to detract from the high reputation deservedly enjoyed by more scrupulous journals such as the Nihon, the Nichi Nichi, and the Jiji Shimpo. The feuilleton flourishes. When illustrated by woodcuts, representing a Japanese woman tied naked to a tree and assaulted by Russian sailors, it makes good fuel for chauvinistic flame; but such outrages on taste are rare, and in general the reader prefers adventurous romance, with a spice of unreality, in the vein of Jules Verne or the elder Dumas.
Proximity to the continent where manners count for less than dollars has, in the opinion of many, made the present generation less polite and more mercenary than its predecessors. One certainly misses the exquisite courtesy still in vogue in outlying districts, when one has occasion to remark the rudeness or familiarity of certain classes in or near Tōkyō. But this declining courtesy, which cannot be called general, is not to be attributed solely to ignorant dislike of strangers. As soon as the sensitive native discovers that ceremonious attention is apt to be mistaken for obsequiousness, his pride intervenes and his bearing becomes less affable. The example of ill-mannered tourists has, it is true, demoralized the service of certain hotels, where the visitor persists in regarding ​the attendant musumé as a plaything, but the incivility of the rickshaw-man when his invariable attempt to overcharge is frustrated rests on no other basis than the presumption, not confined to one country, that since the traveller has arrived to spend money, he should be encouraged to spend it as freely as possible. Sometimes, too, an amusing reciprocal patronage is to be observed. If the tourist be inclined to regard the peasant as a living toy invented for his diversion, the peasant not infrequently will see in the tourist a helpless, rather childish creature, pleased by infantile things and unable to speak a word of Japanese. He therefore pities, protects, and fleeces him. None but the incapable rich, whom vanity or idleness compels to become dependent on inferiors, should dream of employing a professional guide. He probably is less well informed than "Murray"; he seeks on every pretext to prolong his services; he exacts a commission on every purchase made, both from his employer and the shopkeeper, for if the latter refuse he will conduct the customer elsewhere. Notwithstanding these peculiarities, he is perhaps worth his price to hurried visitors.
How far materialism has gone in replacing dutiolatry by worship of the golden calf, to what extent the old high ideals have ceased to affect the relations of the Japanese to one another such a question is difficult, perhaps impossible, to answer satisfactorily. Mr. B. H. Chamberlain declares roundly that "patriotism is the only ideal left," but on such a nice point it is better to let the native speak for himself.
From The Orient, a monthly magazine, Buddhistic in sympathy and of modern tendency, is quoted the following unequivocal indictment:
"Spiritually there is very undeniable decadence. ​Open ports, huge fleets of steamers, thousands of miles of rails, telephone and telegraph wires, a navy ranking at least seventh in the world's list, a consolidated postal system, flourishing banks, and all else of like nature, are nothing more than signs of material progress. Like our allies, we have grown worldly wise, and have come to view the almighty dollar with a feeling akin to veneration. People point, and with justice, to the tremendous social revolution of the Restoration days; but where we have got rid of daimyō and shōmyō of hatamoto and samurai, have we not plutocrats and bureaucrats as potent and unconscionable as the most tyrannical of the one-time feudal barons? 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. Nepotism is taking the place of clannish interdependence. One's fortunes are easily made if one happens to be a 'forty-second cousin ' of a favourite courtesan, a popular geisha, or a spoiled mistress."
"Irresponsible rhetoric," the reader may think, and indulged in the more freely because the writer chose to employ the English tongue, which is yet unknown to the majority of his countrymen. But these considerations do not apply to the official utterances of an ​ex-Premier (Count Okuma) and his Minister of Education. The former, who is not chary of autobiography, in a speech which created some sensation confessed that as a young man he had been too dazzled by the splendour of Western civilisation to appreciate the seamy side of material progress, but recent experience of popular movements and public affairs had convinced him that the supreme need of all classes, if their prosperity were to continue, was a return to the higher morality of the past. Mr. Hayashi, who may be thought to have interpreted his duty of directing national education too literally, put the matter in a nutshell. "Let us suppose," said he to a popular audience, "that Japan in the course of a thousand years or so were to become a republic. If the same Mammon-worship should exist then as exists now, it is certain that the Vanderbilt or Jay Gould of the day would be elected President." Few nations care to be lectured in this way, even by Ministers of Education. The result was a violent agitation, fomented in the patriotic Press, which demanded the resignation of one who could be so disloyal to his sovereign as to hint at a possible republic ten centuries ahead. The rash moralist found it expedient to resign. Assuming, however, as one is perhaps entitled to assume, that the speaker had chiefly in mind the venality of politicians, I doubt very much either the extent or the heinousness of the evil denounced. Reduced to detail, the charges amount to this: that electors and deputies have been known to sell their votes and to advocate measures from which they have made preparations to derive financial benefit. Such evils are inseparable from the infancy of representative government, and persist in veiled form in its maturity. The Unionist member of ​the Salisbury-Chamberlain party who has been called upon to vote successive bounties or remission of taxes to landed proprietors and clerical tithe-payers is guilty of somewhat similar acts, with this trifling difference: that instead of rewarding his supporters with money from his own purse, he draws upon the State treasury. It would not be surprising if Japanese politicians were more openly corrupt than our own, for most of them take American politics as the nearest and most friendly school of democracy a school where self-seeking is avowedly the first duty of a public man, and where the prizes fall to the cleverest manipulator or servitor of plutocratic trusts. But, as a matter of fact, neither Tammany nor Panama is yet transplanted to the banks of Sumida-gawa. The laws aimed at electoral bribery are stringent and frequently enforced. Accusations of corruption are invariably followed by official inquiry. It is evident, then, that if the offender be sometimes clever enough to evade discovery, at least public opinion is neither cynical nor depraved. A stronger negative argument is furnished by the fact that the Liberals and Progressives (as the two anti-ministerial parties were called until the fusion in 1898), who had been excluded until that year from office, though constituting on more than one occasion a majority in the Lower House of the Diet, did not accuse the Ministers who launched Japan on the sea of parliamentary government of either misgovernment or dishonest finance. Nepotism was the sum and substance of their complaint. The Chōshi men monopolised the chief posts in the railway department, the Satsuma men held control of army and navy: in a word, the ascendency of the pre-revolutionary clans survived the revolution. But, when their own turn came in the summer of 1898 ​to divide the spoils of office, to which they had been summoned by the astuteness of Marquess I to, prompt to cover personal chagrin at his own defeat by advocacy of his opponents' claims to Imperial recognition, the followers of Counts Okuma and Itagaki found it impossible to reconcile the claims of contending office-seekers. Indeed, so bitter did the dissensions become, that the alliance was dissolved, and the first Ministry based on a majority in the Lower House disbanded before the Diet met. Power has since reverted to the same men, whose sagacity has made Japan triumph alike over armed foes and treaty-allies. Seeing that no more than eight per cent, of the population have votes, participation in home politics is confined to a comparatively small circle; and not to all of them, since most of the merchants with whom I conversed on the subject were content to leave their interests in the hands of the authorities, and expressed great resentment at the action of the soshi or professional agitators employed by politicians to cajole or threaten a constituency. It is inevitable at present that place and power should be the goal of all parties, and that politics should present the aspect of a scramble for office. There is no dividing-line between political parties, as elsewhere. No one desires to return to the feudal régime, or to camper with the Constitution, or to limit the royal prerogative. In the face of national danger it is easy for all parties to unite, since nothing divides them but such questions as the incidence of taxation and the distribution of posts. In the course of time, should the last vestige of acquiescent docility on the part of the toilers be swept away, the industrial sphinx will pose its question to the Japanese as to all other modern communities; the rich will be ranged against the poor, ​the socialist against the conservative. But, as things are now, even the loss of diplomatic prestige occasioned by the triumph of Russia in Manchuria, of which the blame cannot justly be assigned to isolated Japan, is counterbalanced by the careful development of military and commercial resources which would seem the crowning duty of the Emperor's advisers. The increasing prosperity of the country is the best answer to malevolent critics, and, if the charge of spiritual decadence in politics is to be sustained, weightier evidence must be produced than the writer has been able to discover.
Well, I have taken a bird's-eye view of the Japanese as they appear to the resident alien, because his protesting voice is generally drowned in the joyful ejaculations of passing travellers. I have put aside for the moment my own prepossessions, which were only strengthened by intercourse with natives of every class, in order that the dark side of the shield might not be veiled. Dishonest traders aided by tortuous enactments, and mistrustful teachers suspicious of Western propaganda, insubordinate inferiors and incompetent officials all these constitute grave stumbling-blocks to happiness. But it would not be fair to ignore the facts which promise a brighter future. There are many firms whose integrity is unquestioned, many journalists who try to stem the current of national misunderstanding by sagacious counsel. Experience and fuller knowledge are sure to prove wholesome correctives. The anti-foreign bias, though real and formidable, is based on the fear of half-understood eventualities. Closer intercourse and wider education will cause wisdom to spread down from the rulers to the ruled, who are not yet on familiar terms with our conceptions of trade and government.
​It is to be hoped, when the nation feels thoroughly at home in its new house, equipped from garret to cellar with the latest improvements and occupied by a tenant-proprietor whom no conceivable machination of jealous neighbours can dislodge, that even the foreign lodger will be permitted to exercise his calling without the slightest hindrance or disability.
So much for the world behind the scenes, of which a glimpse has been vouchsafed to the reader. It will be seen that those who sustain rôles in the daintiest of comediettas are also cast for a problem-play; that they are no more exempt from envy, hatred, and vanity than other sensitive artists; that their professional dislike to alien amateurs, who add insult to injury by expecting the deference due to higher national status while competing for the pence and plaudits of the same public, is very human and not without excuse; that, in spite of these infirmities, they may be industrious bread-winners and excellent performers. After all, the proper place for sightseers is the front of the house. Let us go there, and forget the intrigues of the green-room, in which we have happily no concern. We have come many miles to witness the play; let us give it undivided attention.
NOTE TO "BEHIND THE SCENES." CASSANDRA JUSTIFIED?
Though time and space had so muffled the protesting shrieks of Cassandra that I could no longer hear her whirling prophecies or follow her sorry fortunes from day to day in the chivalrous Press of the treaty-ports, I never lost interest or sympathy in her loudly predicted future. I would picture her borne with streaming eyes and hair from her extra-territorial temple; I would ask myself whether she had yet been borne off into bondage unspeakable by some Japanese Agamemnon. News travels slowly, and I was forced to content myself with the most meagre reports, when one day came a letter with the Yokohama postmark, in which the writer took exception to some statements made by me in a lecture to the Playgoers' Club on the subject of Japanese theatres, and improved the occasion by despatching much irrelevant information on the subject of Japanese iniquity. I owe a heavy debt of gratitude to Mr. F. Schroeder, the editor and proprietor of The Eastern World, for those letters and pamphlets. They assure me of the welcome fact that Cassandra is alive and free, and protesting more loudly than ever. I gladly give publicity to the incidents and speculations recorded in them, for, while they seem to justify honest apprehension on the part of Cassandra's friends, they also contain indications that Agamemnon is by no means so subject to Thersites as the foes of Far Eastern democracy would have us believe.
The question which raises most speculation, on account of the uncertainty of the law to be applied, is also the most important. It concerns leasehold. Hitherto foreigners had supposed themselves to hold land under a perpetual lease on payment of a lump sum to the vendor and of annual ground-rent to the Government. But, when a recent application was made to the local court in Yokohama for the registration of the transfer of property so held from one British subject to another, the Court replied that it had no power to register such a transfer, offering instead to describe the property as a perpetual superficies. The offer was refused and the point submitted to the British Minister. If it should be decided that the foreign owner is no more than a superficiary, the ground at a distance of more than thirty feet below the surface tacitly reverts to the Government, which of course would have the right to sell it for ​mining purposes, for the construction of tunnels or reservoirs or what not, provided that the surface were neither entered nor broken. A change so radical in the conditions of holding land, which the purchaser may thus have acquired under a misapprehension, is serious enough, but more serious still will be its effect on future purchasers. By the newly codified law authorisation is refused to leases of longer than twenty years' duration. What foreign firm, desirous of a permanent footing on Japanese soil, would erect buildings and establish itself on land liable to be resumed by the owner at the end of so short a period? How easy for native traders under such circumstances to strangle or arrest the business of alien competitors! Should a score of years demonstrate the growth of too successful rivalry, they have merely to bring such pressure to bear on the lessor as would prevent renewal of the lease.
The Tamba Maru case, which originated in a somewhat ignoble squabble between the English third officer and the Japanese quartermaster of a Nippon Yusen Kwaisha steamer, assumes quite Homeric proportions in the pages of an Eastern World brochure. It certainly affords food for reflection on the methods of Oriental justice when racial prejudice intervenes, but the sequel shows that in Japan at any rate an appeal lies from prejudiced judges and partial witnesses to substantial wisdom and common-sense in high places. The facts are few and stirring. Horace Robert Kent had reported Umeseko Toyomatsu for smoking while on duty. His inexperienced eye had mistaken the glow of a jewel in the latter's ring for the glint of a cigarette. Fearful of losing his captain's good opinion and his place on board, the injured innocent invaded the mate's cabin with his cap on and flashed the exculpating jewel in that officer's face. Hand-to-hand scuffling ensued, of which contradictory accounts are naturally given, with the result that Toyomatsu received a black eye, was put in irons, and released at once to mollify his comrades, while Mr. Kent was bitten five or six times in the thigh and hidden by his prudent skipper from the vengeance of the crew. Each brought a charge of assault against the other. At the trial the evidence of eye-witnesses seems to have been entirely eclipsed by the opinions of medical gentlemen, who deserve the honours of the verdict. Dr. Sagara opined that a black eye (the organ not even being closed up) would prevent a sailor from work for more than twenty days, and would take from three to four weeks to heal completely; Dr. Fujise compared the wounds in the thigh of the third mate with the shape of the quartermaster's teeth, and found that they almost completely ​coincided, but was still unable to assert that they were caused by biting. Sentences: six months' rigorous imprisonment for the Englishman, five days' detention for the Japanese. The inequality of the punishments was quickly remedied. The Tōkyō Court of Appeal quashed the decision of the original tribunal, and reduced the sentence from six months' imprisonment to ten days' detention. I dwell at some length on this trivial case of common assault for two reasons. First, it is satisfactory to remark how promptly an excess of partial severity was corrected; secondly, I feel sure that Mr. Kent is the only foreigner on whom the evil foretold by Cassandra has fallen within six months of the coming into operation of the treaties. Otherwise I should have received other and more indignant pamphlet-homilies on the baneful fulfilment of prophecy.
Finally, my informant calls attention to recent cases of official bribery and corruption. He cites the name of Mr. Koyama Konosuke, M.P., who was charged in Parliament with receiving a bribe of 2000 yen from the Government of the day (1899), and who, so far from denying it, sued in a court of law for the remainder of the money due to him. Being called upon by his constituents to resign, he replied with a threat of exposing implicated colleagues, and apparently retained his seat. Both Houses of the Legislature would seem to be tainted by similar practices, for The Japan Mail (of April 10, 1900) has a paragraph, headed "The Peers Scandal," to the following effect:
"It is now alleged that no less than twenty-four members of the House of Peers are implicated in the bribery scandal connected with the Religious Bill affair. Some of them are alleged to be desirous of hushing up the matter, but their fellow-members insist that something must be done to clear the reputation of the House. It is impossible to tell how much truth there may be in these rumours."
It is obviously "impossible" for a foreigner to collect such proofs of corruption as would be good evidence in a court of law, nor, if possible, would it be worth his while. The cry of vendu is so freely bandied by a factionist Press, that, remembering the famous legend of a Dreyfus syndicate, one hesitates to pin faith on vague paragraphs. Moreover, whatever foundation of fact underlie the charges, it should be borne in mind that parliamentary government has only existed for ten years, and it would not be reasonable to expect in a decade those virtues which were of very slow growth in our own Mother of Parliaments. Corruption at Pretoria or St. Petersburg is no bar to " the sympathies of the civilised world " (outside ​Anglo-Saxondom, and in any case these evils may safely be left for correction to those whom they most immediately concern. The Japanese Press is conscious of them, anxious to deal with them; the laws are stringent enough, if difficult to enforce. One notes them as a factor in Japanese politics to be neither exaggerated nor ignored, and turns to consider less purely domestic matters.
Indirect confirmation of my impression that Christianity was losing ground in the country is furnished by the elaborate report of the American Board of Foreign Missions, of which the rose-coloured conclusions at first sight suggest the contrary. Stress is laid, for instance, on the fact that a prominent Christian was elected to the present Diet by a majority of five to one in Buddhist Kyōto; but there is nothing to show that the election turned on doctrinal issues. One Japanese Christian was appointed "moral teacher" in the Sugamo penitentiary, with the result that all the rest, Buddhists by faith, resigned. Political reasons probably caused this appointment, for Sugamo is the prison to which all foreign delinquents will be sent under the new régime. The Board complains of strong opposition to the teaching of the elements of the Christian religion, not only in public but also in private schools, centred in the Education Department, and attributes it to widespread agnosticism, which, so far as it desires to conserve Buddhist influence, does so for ulterior social and intellectual ends. But I find the clearest proof of simultaneous success and failure in the admission that Christianity maintains its hold by practical philanthropy. Schools for neglected and criminal children, schemes for relieving discharged prisoners, benevolent works of all kinds, are promoted and carried out by Christians. Of goodness of this sort the kind-hearted Japanese are thoroughly appreciative, but it is the works, not the faith, which they admire. Holders of all creeds, or of none, must sympathise with this aspect of missionary effort; but it results, and perhaps happily, in a closer union of hearts than of minds.
I conclude with a quotation from the Jiji, one of the most influential Tōkyō papers—a quotation which speaks for itself and accords with the sorrowful vaticinations of Cassandra:
"Decrease in the Number of Foreign Residents.—Quite contrary to expectations, there seems to be a gradual reduction in the number of foreigners residing in Yokohama, where they are more numerous than in any other part of the country. It is anticipated that the statistics will perhaps show some reduction for two or three years. The reason is supposed to be: (1) foreigners prefer Hongkong or ​Shanghai to Japan, owing to the difficulty of finding opportunities for gaining as large profits as formerly; and (2) their unfamiliarity with the Japanese law, which imposes undue restraint upon their movements. As a matter of fact, they have been surprised by the imposition of heavy taxes of various kinds, never dreamt of previously. Moreover, in consequence of the coming into operation of the new tariff, they have been deprived of their profits on certain kinds of goods, such as liquors, cigars, &c. This is shown by the circumstance that the foreign merchants who have given up or are going to give up business are mostly dealers in these goods. In future foreigners who may be induced to come to this part of the world can only be, in consequence of the operation of the new treaties, those who have other objects than business and who will take the place of the present residents, who will certainly leave in the near future."