Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  Along with these political developments went a new system of law (1881), based largely upon the Napoleonic Code, and representing a courageous advance on the medieval legislation of the feudal age. Civil rights were liberally granted—freedom of speech, press, assembly and worship, inviolability of correspondence and domicile, and security from arrest or punishment except by due process of law.† Torture and ordeal were abolished, the Eta were freed from their caste disabilities, and all classes were made theoretically equal before the law. Prisons were improved, prisoners were paid for their work, and on their liberation they were equipped with some modest capital to set them up in agriculture or trade. Despite the lenience of the code, crime remained rare;7 and if an orderly acceptance of law is a mark of civilization, Japan (allowing for a few assassinations) must stand in the first rank of modern states.

  Perhaps the most significant feature of the new Constitution was the exemption of the army and the navy from any superior except the Emperor. Never forgetting the humiliation of 1853, Japan resolved to build an armed force that would make her master of her own destiny, and ultimately lord of the East. Not only did she establish conscription; she made every school in the land a military training camp and a nursery of nationalist ardor. With an amazing aptitude for organization and discipline, she soon brought her armed power to a point where she could speak to the “foreign barbarians” on equal terms, and might undertake that gradual absorption of China which Europe had contemplated but never achieved. In 1894, resenting the despatch of Chinese troops to put down an insurrection in Korea, and China’s persistent reference to Korea as a tributary state under Chinese suzerainty, Japan declared war upon her ancient tutor, surprised the world with the speed of her victory, and exacted from China the acknowledgment of Korea’s independence, the cession of Formosa and Port Arthur (at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula), and an indemnity of 200,000,000 taels. Germany and France supported Russia in “advising” Japan to withdraw from Port Arthur on condition of receiving an additional indemnity of 30,000,000 taels (from China). Japan yielded, but kept the rebuff in bitter memory while she waited for revenge.

  From that hour Japan prepared herself grimly for that conflict with Russia which imperialistic expansion in both empires made apparently inevitable. Availing herself of England’s fear that Russia might advance into India, Japan concluded with the mistress of the seas an alliance (1902-22) by which each party contracted to come to the aid of its ally in case either should go to war with a third power, and another power should intervene. Seldom had England’s diplomats signed away so much of England’s liberty. When, in 1904, the war with Russia began, English and American bankers lent Japan huge sums to finance her victories against the Tsar.8 Nogi captured Port Arthur, and moved his army north in time to turn the scales in the slaughter of Mukden—the bloodiest battle in history before our own incomparable Great War. Germany and France seem to have contemplated coming to the aid of Russia by diplomacy or arms; but President Roosevelt made it known that in such case he would “promptly side with Japan.”9 Meanwhile a Russian squadron of twenty-nine ships had gallantly sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, in the longest war-voyage ever made by a modern fleet, to face the Japanese in their own waters. Admiral Togo, making the first known naval use of radio, kept himself informed of the Russian flotilla’s course, and pounced upon it in the Straits of Tsushima on May 27, 1905. To all his commanders Togo flashed a characteristic message: “The rise or fall of the Empire depends on this battle.”10 The Japanese lost 116 killed and 538 wounded; the Russians lost 4000 dead and 7000 prisoners, and all but three of their ships were captured or sunk.

  The “Battle of the Sea of Japan” was a turning point in modern history. Not only did it end the expansion of Russia into Chinese territory; it ended also the rule of Europe in the East, and began that resurrection of Asia which promises to be the central political process of our century. All Asia took heart at the sight of the little island empire defeating the most populous power in Europe; China plotted her revolution, and India began to dream of freedom. As for Japan, it thought not of extending liberty but of capturing power. It secured from Russsia an acknowledgment of Japan’s paramount position in Korea, and then, in 1910, formally annexed that ancient and once highly civilized kingdom. When the Emperor Meiji died, in 1912, after a long and benevolent career as ruler, artist and poet, he could take to the progenitor gods of Japan the message that the nation which they had created, and which at the outset of his reign had been a plaything in the hands of the impious West, was now supreme in the Orient, and was well on its way to becoming the pivot of history.

  II. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

  Industrialization—Factories—Wages—Strikes—Poverty—The Japanese point of view

  Meanwhile, in the course of half a century, Japan had changed every aspect of its life. The peasant, though poor, was free; he could own a modest parcel of land by paying an annual tax or rental to the state; and no lord could hinder him if he chose to leave the fields and seek his fortune in the cities. For there were great cities now along the coast: Tokyo (i.e., the “Eastern Capital”), with its royal and aristocratic palaces, its spacious parks and crowded baths, and a population second only to that of London and New York; Osaka, once a fishing village and a castle, now a dark abyss of hovels, factories and skyscrapers, the center of the industries of Japan; and Yokohama and Kobe, from whose gigantic wharves, equipped with every modern mechanism, those industries despatched to a thousand ports the second largest merchant marine in the world.*

  The leap from feudalism to capitalism was eased by an unprecedented use of every aid. Foreign experts were brought in, and Japanese assistants obeyed their instructions eagerly; within fifteen years the clever learners had made such progress that the foreign specialists were paid off and courteously sent home. Following the lead of Germany the Government took over posts, railroads, telegraphs and telephones; but at the same time it made generous loans to private industries, and protected them with high tariffs from the competition of factories abroad. The indemnity paid by the Chinese after the war of 1894 financed and stimulated the industrialization of Japan precisely as the French indemnity of 1871 had accelerated the industrialization of Germany. Japan, like the Germany of a generation before, was able to begin with modern equipment and feudal discipline, while their long-established competitors struggled with obsolescent machinery and rebellious workingmen. Power was cheap in Japan, and wages were low; laborers were loyally submissive to their chiefs; factory laws came late, and were leniently enforced.12 In 1933 the new Osaka spindles needed one girl for twenty-five machines; the old Lancashire spindles required one man for six.13

  The number of factories doubled from 1908 to 1918, and again from 1918 to 1924; by 1931 they had increased by fifty per cent more,14 while industry in the West plumbed the depths of depression. In 1933 Japan took first place as an exporter of textile products, sending out two of the five-and-a-half billion yards of cotton goods consumed in that year by the world.15 By abandoning the gold standard in 1931, and allowing the yen to fall to forty per cent of its former value in international exchange, Japan increased her foreign sales fifty per cent from 1932 to 1933.16 Domestic as well as foreign commerce flourished, and great merchant families, like the Mitsui and the Mitsubishi, amassed such fortunes that the military joined the wage-earning classes in meditating governmental absorption or control of industry and trade.†

  While the growth of commerce generated a new and prosperous middle class, the manual workers bore the brunt of the low production costs through which Japan undersold her competitors in the markets of the world. The average wage of the men in 1931 was $1.17 a day; of the women, 48 cents a day; 51 per cent of the industrial workers were women, and twelve per cent were under sixteen years of age.19* Strikes were frequent and communism was growing when the war spirit of 1931 turned the nation to patriotic cooperation and conformity; “dangerous thoughts” were made illegal, and labor unions, never strong in Japan, w
ere subjected to severe restrictions.20 Great slums developed in Osaka, Kobe and Tokyo; in those of Tokyo a family of five occupied an average room space of from eight to ten feet square—a trifle more than the area covered by a double bed; in those of Kobe twenty thousand paupers, criminals, defectives and prostitutes lived in such filth that each year epidemics decimated them, and infant mortality rose to four times its average for the remainder of Japan.21 Communists like Katayama and Christian Socialists like Kagawa fought violently or peaceably against these conditions, until at last the Government undertook the greatest slum-clearing project in history.

  A generation ago Lafcadio Hearn expressed a bitter judgment upon the modern regime in Japan:

  Under the new order of things forms of social misery never before known in the history of the race are being developed. Some idea of this misery may be obtained from the fact that the number of poor people in Tokyo unable to pay their residence tax is upward of 50,000; yet the amount of the tax is only about twenty sen, or ten cents in American money. Prior to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the minority there was never any such want in any part of Japan—except, of course, as a temporary consequence of war.22

  The “accumulation of wealth in the hands of the minority” is, no doubt, a universal and apparently unfailing concomitant of civilization. Japanese employers believe that the wages which they pay are not too low in relation to the comparative inefficiency of Japanese labor, and the low cost of living in Japan.23 Low wages, thinks Japan, are necessary for low costs; low costs are necessary for the capture of foreign markets; foreign markets are necessary for an industry dependent upon imported fuels and minerals; industry is necessary for the support of a growing population in islands only twelve per cent of whose soil permits cultivation; and industry is necessary to that wealth and armament without which Japan could not defend herself against the rapacious West.

  III. THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

  Changes in dress—In manners—The Japanese character—Morals and marriage in transition—Religion—Science—Japanese medicine—Art and taste—Language and education—Naturalistic fiction—New forms of poetry

  Have the people themselves been changed by their Industrial Revolution? Certain external innovations catch the eye: the lugubrious bifurcate costume of the European man has captured and enclosed most urban males; but the women continue to clothe themselves in loose and colorful robes, bound at the waist with brocaded bands that meet in a spacious bow at the back.* Shoes are replacing wooden clogs as roads improve; but a large proportion of both sexes still move about in bare and undeformed feet. In the greater cities one may find every variation and combination of native and European dress, as if to symbolize a transformation hurried and incomplete.

  Manners are still a model of diplomatic courtesy, though men adhere to their ancient custom of preceding women in entering or leaving a room or in walking along the street. Language is deviously polite, and rarely profane; a formal humility clothes a fierce self-respect, and etiquette graces the most sincere hostility. The Japanese character, like that of man everywhere, is a mosaic of contradictions; for life offers us diverse situations at divers times, and demands of us alternately force and gentleness, levity and gravity, patience and courage, modesty and pride. Therefore we must not be prejudiced against the Japanese because they are sentimental and realistic, sensitive and stoical, expressive and reticent, excitable and restrained; aboundingly cheerful, humorous and pleasure-loving, and inclined to picturesque suicide; lovingly kind—often to animals, sometimes to women—and occasionally cruel to animals and men.* The typical Japanese has all the qualities of the warrior—pugnacity and courage, and an unrivaled readiness to die; and yet, very often, he has the soul of an artist—sensuous, impressionable, and almost instinctively possessed of taste. He is sober and unostentatious, frugal and industrious, curious and studious, loyal and patient, with an heroic capacity for details; he is cunning and supple, like most physically small persons; he has a nimble intelligence, not highly creative in the field of thought, but capable of quick comprehension, adaptation, and practical achievement. The spirit and vanity of a Frenchman, the courage and narrowness of a Briton, the hot temper and artistry of an Italian, the energy and commercialism of an American, the sensitiveness and shrewdness of a Jew—all these have come together to make the Japanese.

  Contact and conflict with the West have altered in some ways the moral life of Japan. The traditional honesty of its people† largely continues; but the extension of the franchise and the keen competition of modern trade have brought to Japan a proportionate share of democratic venality, industrial ruthlessness and financial legerdemain. Bushido survives here and there among the higher soldiery, and offers a mild aristocratic check to commercial and political deviltry. Despite the law-abiding patience of the common people assassination is frequent—not as a corrective of reactionary despotism but usually as an encouragement to aggressive patriotism. The Black Dragon Society, led by the apparently untouchable Toyama, has dedicated itself for over forty years to promoting among Japanese officials a policy of conquest in Korea and Manchuria;‡ and in the pursuit of this purpose it has given assassination a popular rôle in the political machinery of Japan.26

  The Far East has paralleled the West in that moral disturbance which accompanies every profound change in the economic basis of life. The eternal war of the generations—the revolt of over-eager youth against over-cautious age—has been intensified by the growth of individualist industry, and the weakening of religious faith. The transit from country to city, and the replacement of the family by the individual as the legal and responsible unit of economic and political society, has undermined parental authority, and subjected the customs and morals of centuries to the hasty judgment of adolescence. In the larger centers the young rebel against marriages parentally arranged; and the new couples, instead of taking up their residence in the establishment of the bridegroom’s father, tend increasingly to set up separate and independent homes—or apartments. The rapid industrialization of women has necessitated a loosening of the bonds that held them to domestic subserviency. Divorce is as common as in America, and more convenient; it may be had by signing a registration book and paying a fee of ten cents.27 Concubinage has been made illegal, but in practice it is still permitted to those who can afford to ignore the law.28

  In Japan as elsewhere the machine is the enemy of the priest. Spencer and Stuart Mill were imported along with English technology, and the reign of Confucius in Japanese philosophy came to a sudden end. “The generation now at school,” said Chamberlain in 1905, “is distinctly Voltairean.”29 By the same token—through its modern alliance with the machine—science prospered, and won a characteristic devotion, in Japan, from some of the most brilliant investigators of our time.* Japanese medicine, though dependent in most stages upon China or Korea, has made swift progress under European—especially German—example and stimulus. The work of Takamine in the discovery of adrenalin and the study of vitamins; of Kitasato in tetanus and pneumonia, and in the development of an anti-toxin for diphtheria; and, most famous and brilliant of all, of Noguchi in syphilis and yellow fever—these achievements indicate the rapidity with which the Japanese have ceased to be pupils, and have become teachers, of the world.

  Hideyo Noguchi was born in 1876 in one of the lesser islands, and in a family so poor that his father deserted on learning that another child was due. The neglected boy fell into a brazier; his left hand was burned to a stump, and his right hand was injured almost to the point of uselessness. Shunned at school because of his scars and deformities, he was planning to kill himself when a surgeon came to the village, treated the right hand successfully, and so won Noguchi’s gratitude that the lad there and then dedicated himself to medicine. “I will be a Napoleon to save instead of to kill,” he announced; “I can already get along on four hours of sleep at night.”30 Penniless, he worked in a pharmacy until he had persuaded its owner to advance him funds for the study of med
icine. After graduating he came to the United States, and offered his services to the Medical Corps of the Army at Washington in return for his expenses. The Rockefeller Foundation for Medical Research gave him a laboratory, and Noguchi, literally single-handed, entered upon a fruitful career of experiment and research. He produced the first pure culture of the syphilitic germ, discovered the syphilitic nature of general paralysis and locomotor ataxia, and finally (1918) isolated the yellow fever parasite. Made famous and momentarily affluent, he went back to Japan, honored his old mother, and knelt in gratitude to the kindly pharmacist who had paid for his medical education. Then he went to Africa to study the yellow fever that was raging along the Gold Coast, was himself infected with it, and died (1928) at the pitifully early age of fifty-two.

  The development of science, in Japan as in the West, has been accompanied by a decay of the traditional arts. The overthrow of the old aristocracy destroyed a nursery of taste, and left each generation to develop its own norms of excellence anew. The influx of foreign money seeking native wares led to rapid quantitative production, and debased the standards of Japanese design. When the buyers turned to the quest for ancient works, the artisans became forgers, and the manufacture of antiques became in Japan, as in China, one of the most flourishing of modern arts. Cloisonné is probably the only branch of ceramics that has progressed in Japan since the coming of the West. The chaotic passage from handicraft to machinery, and the sudden irruption of foreign tastes and ways clothed in the gaudy prestige of victory and wealth, have unsettled the esthetic sense of Japan, and weakened the sureness of her taste. Perhaps, now that Japan has chosen the sword, she is destined to repeat the history of Rome—imitative in art, but masterly in administration and war.*