THE JAP AS HIS SIES HIMSELF

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14416, 5 July 1907, Page 10

THE JAP AS HIS SIES HIMSELF

(By DOUGLAS SLADEN.) Author of "The Japs at Home," etc. Modern books on Japan, inspired by tie'. Japanese themselves, say nothing to 6how that the Japanese is not born in' the ordinary way, though the remainder of his existence, i 6 phenomenal. The Japanese girl of my acquaintance used to begin carrying the last baby almost as soon as she was weaned herself, and at this age her brother was entrusted with binding books and decorating Satsuma china intended for the Western market. This must have interfered with education, but nowadays the Japanese is nothing if he is not educated. Every kind of knowledge is put before him: he devours it with the. same, avidity that the American child •hows for candies. But knowledge, wo are told, is not considered the important, part of bis education, it is the ethical side which signifies. The Japanese schoolboy is brought up on the Imperial Rescript, the keynote to which is that "in Japan all virtues are mainly viewed as a point of duty of those upon whom the conduct of those virtues l is incumbent." This is a platitude worthy of Plato. (I do not mean that platitude is derived from Plato, though it ought to.be.) The Japanese loves platitudes; but it does ncit signify, because he tries to live up to them. His glowing heroism can vivify even platitudes. DEATH HAS NO STING.

"To be loyal to the Emperor is the chrEy of a subject; to',be> patriotic to iis country is the duty of a citizen; truthfulness is the duty of a friend, and reverence is the duty of a child to its parent," says the imperial Rescript. We have read and;, written much the same in Darnell's; copy books, but we never regarded these; as rules for the keeping of our England great and free; we thought they were part v of a sermon. The Japanese took them to mean that his life and his fortune and his family ties were to be cut off, as we cut the blossoms off a flower, if his country needed them.* It is thus thathe crossed the trenches of 203 Metre Hill on the piled-up'bodies of his comrades, and saw Port. Arthur and Russia at his feet. ■ The Baron is free to say what he likes, for' the five-foot-high Japanese man who has taught the world rn her old age that she had never quite known the true stuff of heroes. Cromwell s Ironsides'and the Fuzzy-Wuzzies of the Mahdi did not go to their doom like these Japanese Tommies. The one had visions of a heaven of, harps and the other a heaven of houris, but the heroes of Port Arthur had no religious convictions like these to buoy them up m the supreme moment. They died as no other troops have ever died, because they, thought it would be disgraceful to do otherwise. • If: I'have killed the Japanese off before finishing with his religion or even marrying .him, it is in order to consider his- attitude ' with regard to the immortality, of the dead. When Togo got back to Tokio he went to make a solemn sacrifice to the spirits of his fallen men. When Nogi had taken .Port' Arthur he went to the highest ■point. and thanked the dead for winning his victory. We axe told that "it is no.honour to the dead 'if one makes an offering and reasons in his mind at the same time that the dead is' nothing more than dust, or that its spirit could .not be in existence, or at all events, far away from us in an unknown .region. When a foreigner 6ees the"shrine erected in Tokio where men, generals and soldiers alike, who died fpr,their country, are consecrated ae a •ort-i of deity, he is apt to think it a peculiar custom. But what difference is there between our observance of the illustrious dead and that of burying a distinguished Btatesm.au ox soldier in tie.Pantheoh or Westminster Abbey." .' • A SECULAR RELIGION.

I Religion should come before marriage, and in religion, the; Japanese are the most modern nation outside Mars. Jiist as" the Italian has invented a civil" Sunday j\ the' Jap has invented a fcecular •• religion and he has gone far with it. He has even made it a success in board schools, which, considering the" ill-success that has (attended all efforts to make education free, secular and compulsory in Great Britain and hsr- colonies, is even more surprising than the part it played in the capture of Port Arthur. No people have ever taught the world so much in a year as the Japanese; and the most extraordinary thing they have taught it, is how to have a secular religion. It is time that we had professors from Japan. (as they used to have professors from üb), to teach us how to have a secular education, that retains the merits of a religious one. For their secular education taught them to defy death in a way that must have been a refreshing novelty to the devourer of all men. I give the moral ■teaching of -the Japanese National religion, which, they call Shinto, the "Way of the Gods, in three lines.' The" ceremonial side will not take much more. It consists chieflyl in putting fresh cakes and a sprig of green in the little family shrine called the God shelf, each morning. There are priests and temples, but the priests have hardly anything to do except bury people, and they <lo not have much of that, because most .Japanese are Buddhists as well »e Shintoiste, and having lived as. good' Shintoists for the sake of tibeiir Emperor and their country, prefer to die good Buddhists. There would be more Christians in Japan if the missionaries would allow the converts to retain their other religions. The Japanese might not object to giving new religious beliefs a ferial if he was not asked to abandon those which he knows are safe. Even the morkl side of Buddhism cannot be eunrmetl up in three lines. One must take that as read, as they say at Board meetings, and proofed to marriage. MARRIAGE. . The Japanese marriage has become a proverb, and it is sometimes of the most temporary nature, but he says " Christian countries have their temporary marriages too." This is not a nound tu-quoque, for in Japan you can get in and out of a legal marriage tlmost as easily a« you can get in and out of a cab, and we can only : get out <)f a legal marriage by a very bad accident. ■lt was Mrs Grundy's firm belief that if a man and woman wish to get married in Japan all they have to do is to drink nine cups of Sake out of the same cup. She never troubled herself about the antecedent details of taking the wife out of her own house, dressed in white like a corpse i.nd lighting fires of purification the moment she was out of it, nor was she aware that the really binding part of the ceremony was the going to the police station to register the wife as your property instead of her father's.

Anyhow the Japanese divorce is more complex than it was in the good old days at the end of the nineteenth century, -when on© marriage out of every three ended in a divorce. Besides such obvious reasons as leprosy, infidelity and barrenness, a wife ran tihe risk of being divorced if ehe talked too much, or saw too much of her own relations, ocr went to temples too much till she reached the age of ugliness, but the most constant reason was when her mother-in-law did not find her a good servant. A Japanese wife is always expected to devote herself more to her mother-in-law than she does to her husband, nor are her functions as a mother error so important as her mother-in-law functions, for eihe is expected to repress hear feelings as a mother, and the chief tiling she has to look forward to in life i* not having to repress her feelings an • mother-in-law. Ave have been robbed of all our old beliefs about Japan. We knew that the trolden a&o oif divorce

was passed when inen could discharge a wife because rhey had done w* her, without any alimony, arnd that only women who were earning wages \ever thought of divorcing their husbands. The divorce laws the Japanese have instead are about the best in the world. We are not even allowed to enjoy the superstition about the Jap's behaviour to his wife. We aire told she is not down-trodden, but only gentle, and that in family affairs she generally has the last word like any other woman, though she does not raise heT voice. Perhaps the ornellist blow of all is that tvo may no longer flatter ourselves that we are not as the Japanese are in commercial morality. COMMERCIAL MORALITIES.

It is easy, if disingenuous, '%o take refuge in saying " tu-quoque" to the European tradesman. For instance, we are told of a European who bought silk from various Japanese manufacturers, and finding that one ~ manufacturer's sold better than the others in Europo, put his mark on all the silks. The high-minded., Japanese tradesmen thereupon refused to sell him any more silk. I find an inherent improbability in this story. I cannot conceive the British tradesman or the British public understanding any Japanese trademark, much less buying silk by the mark. There is only one person in the South Kensington Museum who knows the signature of even Hokusai by heart. And even allowing the truth of this instance, what is it among so many? Have not we who have been to Japan seen supposititious whisky labelled "Glasgow Wine"; milk that pretended to have been condensed m Switzerland; and pens that claimed an American origin labelled " Heagler, which is the favourite Japanese way or spelling the name of the King of birds; silk handkerchiefs ascribed to Crosse and Blackwell under the impression that their name would cover any multitude of sins; and the soap which claims to have no peers being replaced by Japanese imitations which challenged its supremacy by having "Peers' written on the label.

A respectable Japanese merchant of i my acquaintance defends the morality of the forged labels. They would not take in any Englishmen, he said, because they were so badly done, and as for -tie native, since he did not know what the real Worcester Sauce taeted like, he could not be disappointed at not getting it. He would probably like the Worcester Saiice made by a native manufacturer who understood Japanese tastes better than he would like Lee and Perrins's. Aiid unconsciously he was being made to support native' industries. As the Japanese wishes to buy his whisky at Is 6d a bottle, it really is fortunate that he should be content with Glasgow wine made in Japan. THE SECRET OF GOVERNMENT.

Finally, it would seem that we have still something to learn as to the secret of the real government of Japan. Many books have tried to pierce the veil,, but it remained for the great Ito's son-in-law to lift it. There was no revolution forty years ago, it was only "the great change." The powerful Satsuma clan had never paid allegiance to the Shogun, the powerful Chosiu clan was in rebellion against him. Tosa and Hizen sympathised. The Mikado resumed his activities. In tinie a constitution was granted. Cabinets/have risen and fallen with alarming rapidity. The outside world wondered how Japan survived this rattle of Cabinete. The Japanese themselves do everything for their Emperor and in his name, and told us nothing. But rumour always held that Satcho (Satsuma and Shosiu) had their own leaders and policy, and imposed the latter on the nation. In the war it came out that above his Cabinet the Emperor depended on five elder statesman, Ito, Inouye, Yamagata, Oyama and Matsukata. In the Baron's informing pages, we see the facts reconciled, for four out of the five elder statesmen and the present Premier (Katsura), and nearly all the other ruling men of Japan, are the men of Satsuma" and Chosiu, who made "the Great Change." Japan is ruled by its greatest men. Why do not all nations entrust their national existence to their five greatest men of all political creeds?