PROBLEMS OF PACIFIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 77, 1 April 1932, Page 12

PROBLEMS OF PACIFIC.

JAPAN IN WAR AND PEACE. INTERNATIONAL MORALITY. WHAT OF MANCHURIA?

(By FRED HOGUE.)

The Mikado has sent no special envoy to the Temple of Ise since the Japanese troops began the present drive against bandits and the regular troops of Chang Hsueh-liang in Manchuria, which attests that the Emperor does not consider that a state of war exists between China and Japan. Sending a special Imperial messenger to carry information of war to the Sun (Joddess ie as essential to a declaration of war by Japan as the signature of the President to a declaration of war by the United States Government.

I was in Tokyo in 1929 when the Kel-logg-Briand peace pact was ratified. I recall that the prologue did not meet with the approval of the elder statesmen, that the Government which had signed it was severely criticised, that its members were forced to resign, and that no envoy was sent to the Sun Goddess at Ise to inform her what had taken place. An envoy was sent to the Sun Goddess, however, to inform her that the wife of the Emperor would give birth within a few months to another descendant of the divine lineage. I have quoted these extracts and related these ,incidente to illustrate the immutability of the morals, traditions and customs of the Japanese people, to stress how little they have been influenced by contact with the Western world.

I have another extract from Okakura, the historian, which expresses the Japanese view of the "international morality" of Europe:—

"In the Occident international morality is of a level very inferior to that of individual morality. The nations of prey have no conscience, and all chivalrous sentiment disappears in the persecution of the more feeble races. The one that has neither the courage nor the force to defend itself is reduced to slavery, and it is painful to us to state that Our friend the most sure is always our sword.

"What signifies the strange combinations realised by Europe; the hospital and the torpedo, the Christian missionary and Imperialism, and the maintenance of armed, forces as a guarantee of peace? Such contradictions did not exist in the antique civilisation of the Orient. Such were not the ideals of the Japanese restoration. Such is not the end of her reform.

'Europe Taught Us War.' "Europe has taught us war. When will it know the benefits of peace?" These extracts were all written shortly before the World War. Okakura died in J 913. He was a graduate of an American university, and lived some years in Boston. Leaders and moulders of Japanese public opinion.of the present decade have not modified the view of the Occident held by Okakura. . .

In philosophy, education and religion Japan and China are closely allied. The .sages of India and China were the great teachers of the Orient, just as the sages of Greece were the great teachers of the Occident.

The Occident traces its course of philosophy and morals back to Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, just as modern Japan traces its philosophy, morals and psychology back to Confucius and Buddha. China is the mother of Japanese thought, just as Greece is the mother of Anglo-Saxon and Latin thought. But we must always keep in mind that there is a marked difference '.between political thought and moral and religious thought. During the period • that Rome held the cities of Greece in abject political servitude Greek sages were feted in the courts of the Caesars. The Romans, while binding Greece in political fetters, remained themselves fettered to Greek thought.

A situation somewhat analogous exists between the China of the sa,ges and modern Japan. Japanese troops have driven the last of the armed forces of Chang Hsueh-liang south of the Great Wall j but the Japanese have no thought of banishing Chinese morals, Chinese religions and Chinese traditions from Manchuria. The Japanese still build temples to Confucius and Buddha; their moral and religious precepts are taught in all the Japanese public schools; hut Japan has only contempt for Chinese civil and military government.

Conspiracy Against Brains. I recall a confidential conversation with a Chinese intellectual who had been graduated by an American university. Among other things he said: "The Occident is forming democracies based on universal suffrage. Such democracies based on universal male suffrage were formed in the Orient many centuries ago. They all failed, and it has become axiomatic in the Orient that they were conspiracies against brains. They were followed by a system of Civil Service examinations for all who aspired to civil positions under the Government. That system proved much more satisfactory and was continued until the fall of the Manchu Dynasty." A Japanese who had studied at LelandStanford University told me he was impressed by this political maxim of David Starr Jordan, "Whenever they begin to shoot I know they are wrong." Japanese forms of courtesy' have made no compromise with Western democratic informality. While, in Japan Poultney Bigelow compared the two and wrote: "We are a democracy and our manners approach those of the mob." BigeloW made his first visit to Japan in his youth. He returned after his sixtieth year. With the two following comments of Bigelow I find myself at least in partial agreement from my own observations:— "The spell of paternalism is not dissipated in Japan. The people still believe that laws are made for their good. "The Japanese faith in governmental wisdom has never yet been seriously undermined." In looking recently over some notes I made while in Japan in 1929 I found the following:— "In the United States criminal law has come to be regarded by the masses who take argument for fact as an invention for protection of the lives and property of the rich. The Japanese still believe that laws are made and enforced for the protection and the promotion of the public welfare.

Japanese Not Avaricious. Avarice is not a national trait of the Japanese, and accumulating a great personal fortune to live in luxury is not their aim and object in life. The ruling passion of the noble-minded, alike in China and Japan, is not to make money, not to win the applause of the multitude, but so to live, act and die as to win a smile of approval from a beloved ancestor beyond the stars. They seek a mystic approval, that of the spirit world; the approval of their contemporaries, least of all those of the Occident, is not regarded by the average Japanese as worth the winning. While Japan's record for the last forty years is distinctly a war record, the professions of the Japanese of their love for peace are as profuse as our own, and possibly as sincere. .The following extract from the writings of Okakura is worthy the perusal of all Occidentals who would know more concerning the ideals, the dreams and the traditions of Japan:— 1

I "The glory of Asia is something positive. It consists in that love of peace that vibrates in all hearts, in that harmony which unites the Emperor and the peasant; in that sublime intuition of unity which commands sympathy; the courtesy which caused Takakura, an Emperor of Japan, to remove his nightclothes one night of winter because the poor were freezing in their humble homes; and Taiso of the Tang era to deprive himself of nourishment because his people suffered from famine.

To What Is It Leading? "The glory of Asia resides in the dream of renouncement. It resides 'in that love of. independence which surrounds poverty with a halo of grandeur. That is the secret fore©' of the thought, the science, the poetry and the art of Asia."

Japan does not lack ideals, nor idealists; but they are the ideals and idealists of the Orient, not of the Occident. We have the right, however, to seek in Manchuria what the Japanese seek when they come here; proof, not argument. A blow struck when the opponent is singing a hymn of peace may be as deadly as that struck by one singing a hymn of hate. In the decade that preceded the World War much sympathy was expressed by Japanese writers for German idealism; but that idealism led to the Marne, to Verdun, and to the use of poison gas and submarines in warfare. To what is Oriental idealism leading in Manchuria? The Occidental world awaits the answer.— (N.A.N.A.)