A TRAVELLER IN THE FAR EAST.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15823, 23 July 1913, Page 6

A TRAVELLER IN THE FAR EAST.

THE POWER AND V PATHOS OF JAPAN. ■ By the Rev. William Hay. Specially written for the Otago Daily Times. In the short period of about 46 years Japan has advanced by centuries, to become one of the "Great towers" of the world.

She has demonstrated _ tremendous power as a nation in attaining in so short a tune the position she lias Teached as the Queen Empire of the Orient. To analyse and define the power of a nation is often a less difficult task than with regard to Japan, for Japan is undoubtedly lacking in some of the qualities that have been regarded as making for national strength. ,And yet one can learn fairly well to lay one's finger, as it were, upon the mam elements and factors of her power. It is well to recognise that important circumstances have greatly favoured Japan, and her progress has been in some Considerable measure due to those favourable circumstances. But if it had not been for the fact that she was prepared and equipped to take advantage of these circumstances they would probably have proved unfavourable to her in a corresponding degree. Circumstance becomes favourable when we are fitted and ready to make it so, and rise to the occasion when it comes. After the War of Restoration, when the | country settled down once more to peaceful progress, and the great task of building up a modern united State became grasped by the meet enlightened, as the one great task that J#pan must give herself to with every bit of thought and nerve and strength to achieve, there were those who realised that the first need was the need of strong and trained and fitted leadership. They did not know the greatest Leader that ever trod this earth; but they, like Him, realised the essential need of qualified leadership to make a cause triumphant. Those who went to America to learn the secret of her wonderful progress discovered that it was chiefly—leadership. And this they sought, with a patriotic passion, to make the first secret of the power of their nation._ They needed leadership in statesmanship, in national defence, in finance, in commerce, and in the development of the resources of the land, and among the mothers of the generations that were then unborn. And so the. most promising spirits of young Japan were trained abroad and at home for that leadership that has ever since been such a successful factor in the power of modern Japan. PASSIONATE LOYALTY.

Another great factor in the modern power of Japan is the passionate patriotic unity that has undoubtedly been the secret of her success in recent years in conflict with her formidable foes. This is very largely due to the training and discipline of centuries in the duty of loyalty, which was the keystone of a symmetrical arch of feudal virtues. Loyalty with the Japanese has had no vagueness about it; it has been a very specific and personal thing, liritish patriotic loyalty js mainly impersonal, even though there is a common loyalty t'o the reigning Sovereign. The occupant, of the throne, as in the case of the late beloved Victoria, has sometimes won great personal devotion by the qualities of life and character that always do win homage and v love; but British patriotic toyalty is more than devotion, especially in the oversea dominions, where the personal element has far less influence, and our loyalty to the Throne is really a loyalty Ur the representative emblrai of our Empire. With the Japanese it is intensely personal, not merely in relation to any preisent 'occupant of the throne, but to every preceding occupant, ,and to every preceding patriot. ,A univer-

sity teacher of 20 years' experience assures us tliat he has found, this spirit of personal patriotic loyalty as strong amongst the young men preparing themselves for business life as amongst the cadets and officers of the Naval Academy.

The Shinto, belief in "The Rule of the Dead" is a tremendous constraining factor in this personal patriotic loyalty. When Admiral Togo', at the conclusion of : the war with Russia, was returning to Tokio with his ships to be present at the great naval review, and to receive the ovations of the citizens and the thanks of his Sovereign, he landed first in the Peninsula of Ise, and there offered his' thanks at the shrine which all Japan reveres as the most holy place in all the country. In the Valley of Ise, flowing close to the Imperial shrines, is a small perennial stream called the. Isuzu. It never'dries in the hottest summer, and is therefore taken as the symliol of the Imperial House which, issuing forth from the gods that are worshipped at the shnne of Ise, shall endure to the end of time. The late Emperor wrote a poem on this stream

Go to tlio wild sea beach, and gathering there A handful of smooth pebbles, build therewith

A mimic" rockery. Tho' those few stones Should grow into a mountain, scarred and steep, And overgrown with moss, that sacred stream Shall never , cease its soft perennial flow. At this shrine, then, Togo offered his thanksgiving to the gods who are considered to be the divine ancestors of the reigning Sovereign, and the success which crowned his arms was regarded as being due, not only to the valour of the army and navy, but mainly to the invisible aid of til 3 <livine ancestors of the Imperial House, to the long line of Sovereigns who ruled once as gods on the plains of Heaven, and who descended upon Japan in the person of tho first earthly Emperor, from whom all the other Emperors are descended. On account of this belief the occupant of the throne is ofton looked upon as the intermediary between the nation and the gods. Many Japanese to-day hold this lightly, many have abandoned it, but a superstition dies haird, and this will, and even after its funeral will exert a powerful influence, especially if the life and character of the reigning Sovereign are in themselves such as to command any personal devotion. Tliat it still lives with tremendous hold is seen at the present time. While lam writing this, the shops in Tokio are closed, though it is a Thursday, and the people are praying in the streets for the life of the present Emperor to be spared. Dr Nitobe, referring to Herbert Spencer's view that political" obedience is accredited with only a transitional function, and that political subordination will give place to loyalty to the dictates of conscience, savs"Suppose his induction is realised —will loyalty and its consomitant instinct of reverence disappear for ever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to another without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a ruler that wields the temporal sceptre, we become servants of the monarch who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart." The great majority of Japanese believe that they are perpetually surrounded and permeated with the myriad life of the infinite past. Hovering unseen, too, in the glow of the shrine lamp, the stirring of whose flame is but the motion of them, those who once were present in the flesh, guard the home a,nd "watch over the domestic welfare. Disloyalty to them is disloyalty to the gods, for they, having passed into the unseen, have become gods in the sense of having acquired superhuman power. They are tlve givers of life and health, and all that the living achieve is through their blessing and their aid. This belief enters into everything the nation does, and but for it many a great deed would "never be done. If, while in the flesh, a Japanese failfi, he can succeed by joining the ranks of the gods. Even a person of no importance—the humblest one in the rank and file, may through death come into possession of superhuman power, and become capable of conferring benefit or inflicting injury by supernatural means. The Japanese soldier, in consequence, will never surrender in the face of .apparent defeat-; to do so would be throwing away -his greatest of -victory j he will passionately offer himself in the name of his Emperor, that, as a god. he may not only be the victorious avenger of his country, but the object of his people's unceasing worship and veneration, Unin, this wonderful pos-

sibility inspires the warror of Dai Nippon with a bravery and a patrotism unsurpassed in the aunals of warfare. Those who fall in battle are not "losses," they are really gains, because they liave gone to join forces with the myriads of kindred warriors, " the spirits of the. power of the air." Any nation that comes into conflict with Japan has to reckon with that mighty faitb —and faitli is a tremendous power! Add to this the indomitable resoluteness- that I referred to in a previous article—a refusal to accept failure — an. ambition and belief is almost the impossible, which are all inspired by such a faith, and one realises something of the unity and sweep and momentum that are behind the will and activity and passion of such a nation. There are modifying influences at work, which I must refer to in a lateT contribution ; but what I have stated here is a fact that applies very generally and very definitely.

JAPAN'S POWER. In thinking oi Japa,n as a fighting Power there are two other important factors to consider—first, that service in the torees is compulsory upon every son, of Japan, except under certain special circumstances; and, secondly, that there is plenty of young life in Japan to draw from. There are so many youths and young men about everywhere to-day that one can hardly realise that, in the war with Russia, so many were sacrificed that the last recruits were merely boys. But, then, wherever one goes there is a baby on almost every other woman's back. There is a great prospective army to-day on the backs of the women of Japan. Fortunately Japanese statesmen and leaders in various departments of social life are realising that Japan can be a power for peace as well a-s a power for war, a power that can make, for the highest advancement of the Orient, a,ud for an .amicable and honourable solution of the problems of the Pacific, and for the adjustment of the conflicting interests of East and' West. She has acquired fame for the use oi her sWOrd, may she acquire the nobler fame of wielding the jewel-lit sceptae of peace. She has shown the world how heroically she can sacrifice for the victories of war, may she demonstrate, as heroically, that she can sacrifice for a noble and honourable harnvony!

THE PATHOS OF JAPAN. Pathos! Yes! And a great deal of it. I have referred to the poetry and power of Japan, and the poetry that gets down the deepest into human memory and weaves itself most surely with the mystic fibre\ of human hearts is that which breathes the deepest pathw; and the power which is most mighty is the power that has been built up amidst the truest pathos of human life. No one with any soul can be long in a land with history and throbbing life without discovering and realising its pathos. Poetry, power, and pathos, all com"bined, are suggested in the following words that represent the voices from the highest plains of the unseen "We fought," they say, "we fought and died, By cold Liaotung'a frozen tide, On hot Liaotung's burning plain, Some on land, soino on the main, Some in the trench knee-deep in blood, Where Russians at bay, with their muskets skxjd, Wc fought, iwo fell, we would not retire; And at eve the lurid funeral pyre, Blazing gloomily through the night, Effaced the traces of each day's fight."

One feels the pathos of those words in the associations that gather about myriads of shrines to-day that represent living offerings made by myriads of mothers and myriads of homes; but a pathos that has the pqwer to kindle in the hearts of the young the same patriotic passion that distinguished those whose memories cluster about their shrines. There is> the beautiful pathos of the love that is as old as humanity, and as heroic as ever in its sacrifice and suffering, and one longs to find this in its highest and noblest form the groat theme of Japanese romantic literature and drama. There is the splendid pathos of noble service of Christian people from a homeland far' away that is often in their dreams, that through this service they may open .the gates of a greater life to those ■they love to serve. There is the pathos of the consciousness that race and colour

form a bar to many o£ the privileges to be enjoyed in the comity of nations, and this is present with japan in a very social sense and degree just notf. One wishes it wasn't there; but there is a patios that one wishes 10,0C0 times more wasn't there INDUSTRIAL AND PATHOS. When you see girls and young women, yes, and old ones too, working from morn till night, with great heavy implements that practically take the place of the horse and the plough, when you eee

them workingi like navvies and carrying burdens like beasts you wish with all your heart that that sad pathos wasn't there. But there is another pathos vastly more sad—a pathos that arises from tragedy in the moral life of Japan. I have alreadysaid so mnch that is favourable that even

Japan will bear with me now; nay, more, there are many that share one's grief. The saddest pathos of it is that the Government of the country receives a revenue from 1 it —a tax upon an awful farreaching, wide-spreading sacrifice of virtue, and the shame of womanhood, and the moral murder of girlhood, to swell- the contents of the National Treasury. One cannot write a tithe of what one knows and feels; but the administration and taxing of the worst possible form of slavetrade, and the laxness of the national conscience upon the whole matter, making it possible to exalt vice into a virtue, constituted the most tragic nathes that one can ever discover in the life of any nation. People in the Western World have made the "geisha" a popular idea, and even a magic wand. ' No one with any high ideals would do so if they knew what geisha" is in Japan. Ido not mean that it represents absolutely what js bad. There are some places where a mild form of "geisha" is too high-class and public to be im--moral; but the system and institution are bad, and reaJly the greatest of all moral dangers, for the end thereof is in most cases—the death of virtue.. One needs to be very careful in speaking of "tea houses." There are houses that are really ka'houses, but generally speaking the "tea" is wine, or other strong drink, and the "tea house" is adrinking saloon where the geisha girls go to entertain, and so often drift into other forms of social life that become their downfall. The tragically sad pathos of it! The national conscience needs qaifcikening, until that also becomes a power that shall bring _ something still more pure and beautiful into the national poetry of Japan. Such is the earnest desire of many, who, like the writer of this, love Japan and its people _ for many reasons, and would fain see it a nation strong and triumphant in all that makes for truest greatness, and, in the highest sense, regal in modern poweT.