A PROBLEM. THE SIMPLE LIFE IN JAPAN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 136, 5 December 1907, Page 8

A PROBLEM. THE SIMPLE LIFE IN JAPAN.

INCREASING WEALTH ANII LUXURY. THEIR TEMPTATIONS — AND POSSIBLE EFFECTS* The important problem before Japan to-day is to continue to keep its life simple, as ifc takes its place with the other great political powers of the world. Simplicity of life is a state of mind quite as much as a' condition- of environment. But it is concerned with environment as well as with the mental state. _ The simple life is the interpretation of life in terms of the spirit and 'not of the flesh or of the purse. It stands for the negation of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the .eye's. It knows not • pride, and it does know humility, quietness, gentleness. It represents simplicity, honesty; decorum. It incarnates • the cardinal 'graces quite as well as the cardinal virtues, and even these virtues it does not neglect. I Such a life of quiet and reserved and i dignified simplicity the nation and the j people of Japan have led. -Will they lie able to maintain it? •. Several causes arc working to do away with 6uch a life among the fifty, millions who form this nation. INCREASING 'WEALTH. One of the causes lie in the increasing wealth of the country, and especially in the increasing wealth of men who already are rich. In common with most peoples, the Japanese have large eyes for the rich man, in "Who's, Who in Japan" are named several 'men and families of wealth, and of large material power. One ' of these families, the Alitsui, -s.it is said, in -somewhat foreign English,) '"ls one ( of the oldest millionaire familes, and the most noted hereditary houses of 'business kings' in Japan, managing the' big families concerns'somewhat after a fashion' of constitutional monarchy, for the eleven heads of the main stock and scions of the family are individually insignificant, and only acquire importance as proprietors of different concerns.". In the same volume the president of the Tokio Steamship Company is described as laying tlie foundation of his fortune m utilising the refuse of gas and coal tar works, and he is 'commended as being "now an acknowledged power in business world." A certain bank president ib described as being "adopted into the present millionaire family as husband of its only daughter" ; and still another rich and distinguished man is called "one of the new-made millionaires." Such interpretations are intimations that wealth has already taken a no small place in the esteem of the Japanese people. Furthermore, it can, without rashness, be affirmed that the industrial and commercial development of Japan in the next decades is certain to increase both, the number of rich men and the riches of men already rich. Formerly the merchant was of the lowest social class. He" was" below • the farmer and the mechanic. The Samudai could handle the plough or the hoe, but not , the Soroban. By this method, power was divided — the power of wealth was kept apart from the power of the higher social order. All this is changed. Men of wealth receive decorations irom the hand of the Emperor. The head of the Mitsui family is a baron, - and Okuva, "one of the new-made millionaires," already referred to wears the third order of the Rising Sun. The presence of great ' wealth is in every country a menace to simplicity, and especially it is a menace when united with social rank and royal honours. - A WORLD-POWER.' A second force working against simplicity is found in vh-3 fact that Japan is taking her place with, the worldpowers. The world-powers are not, and never have been, accustomed to lay emphasis upon the simple life. The ruling classes of these powers l stand for material splendour, for impressive environment, for elegance, if nofc for greatness of architecture, r and 'for elaborateness in the daily provision of one's personal sustenance and happiness. Those classes are lavish in domestic expenditure, profuse in the- attention paid to the physically personal • forms arid forces, prodigal in getting and ' using whatever can delight the extsrior sense or intoxicate the lower elements of the imagination of man. As a world-power Japan. feels that she, too, should, imitate the material magnificence of other great nations. Royal palaces in niany parts I —some seldom occupied — courtly and splendid ceremonial, large, expenditures j which do not represent efficiency, these- ; are' intimations of temptations which beset the new empire and, in a lessening degree, its people. Such temptations the Japanese cannot avoid. • There is no escape. The condition arises from Japan taking a place among the worldpowers ; and such conditions militates mightily against the simple life. This condition is reinforced in at least two ways : by the Japanese who go abroad, and they are not a few ; and by the foreigners who come to Japan as visitors or as residents. Tho Japanese are gifted in. the art of imitation. (The Chinese call them monkeys.) Travelling •in either the United States or western Europe, or living for a time: in New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, they return honie bearing the assurance that their Tokio or Yokohama or Kioto cannot be worthy of metropolitan rank and prestige unless these cities too adopt the more' dominant customs and ceremonials of the governmental, commercial, and social capitals j of the world. HARD-WORKI N T G , NATION. Bui orher causes, ,md opposing, there are which are vigoious in maintaining the general and the pristine simplicity of this people. * The first of the six causes which the writer -(Mr. Charles F. Twing, LL.D., in an American magazine) names is industriousness. In Japan everybody works. Japan is a Holland in respect to the commonness of labour and the diligence of the labourer. I am sure the very dogs would work here, as they do in Holland, if there' were any dogs. But animals of all sorts are few. Man is tho labourer. Labour arises both from necessity and habit. Originally, of course, the- habit arose from the necessity. But now both unite in 'urging all to work. For Japan has received few of those gifts which nature gi.'es, even to squandering, to tha ti ;pics.. Tho Japanese people are of the northern zones, and, like mosfc people of these zones, have to work for what they have. Industriousness, be it said, tends to keep life simple. For, industriousness teaches the cost of things, not in dollars, but in that cost which the toil and weariness of body and of brain represent. Industriousness is the enemy of luxuriousness, extravagance, prodigality. So long as the Japanese remain a people of hard and constaiit work — and apparently the time when they can afford not to be is far off — so long will the tendency toward maintaining the simple life remain strong. The people are, furthermore, a people of self-restraint. They are free, by nature. from vaingloriousness. If their triumph within' a decade over the two most populous nations has given to a few a sense of arrogance, this sense is neither qeneraJ nor constant. Their jrglU afld cjsw^xsaUoji is ojje of quiet-

ness and humility. They are unwilling to enter the competitive, life of social rivalries. RESPECT OF THE SCHOLAIL The respect paid to the scholar, and the regard in which scholarship is held aid in securing the great result of simplicity. In the Far East the scholar is honoured as he is not in the Far West. The professor in the Imperial University at Tokio has a social standing of the order of that belonging to the members of the Supreme Court of Japan. "Teacher" is a word of the utmost respect. In Japan, as in most lands, the scholar has a small purse. His life must be made simple. Even his students would lose respect for him, if he were guilty of any attempt to make that life elaborate or splendid. There is one further condition tending toward the same conclusion. The general teaching of ethics. No subject of the whole course of study, from primary school to the university, is so commonly taught or is 60 constantly honoured in its teaching as the science of right living. The ethics of Confucius has for centuries commanded the attention of the Japanese mind and j the devotion of the Japanese heart. Its fundamental principles are taught, illustrated, impressed daily in thousands of schools. It is, too, very good ethics for teaching, learning, obeying. Of the five principles of the noble men which Confucius pointed out, benevolence, and uprightness, decorum, enlightenment, and sincerity, the Japanese have specially adopted the second and third — uprightness and decorum. The man of right character and of beautiful conduct represents the Japanese ideal. To this problem, therefore, of keeping life simple in an age which is not simple, and in a world of which the .stronger nations are giving themselves to a Roman luxuriousness, the Japanese people are addressing themselves. A great, a very great, problem, in its seriousness and fundamental relations, it is. Despite opposing forces, there are strong reasons for believing that this advancing nation of the Far East may solve this problem more satisfactorily than any world-power has yet solved it.