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# Where Half The World Is Waking Up: The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions ### By Poe, Clarence Hamilton

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Produced by Don Kostuch

[Transcriber's note:

Page numbers are enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They are located where page breaks occurred in the original book. Paragraphs are not broken.

When a paragraph flows around illustrations the "next" page immediately preceding or following the illustrations jumps to account for the pages occupied by the illustrations. The location of the paragraph following the illustration group is indicated as {52 continued}. The material following {10}, up to the next {}, is on page 10, even if the next page number is not 11.

Italic are enclosed in underscores: _this is italicized_.

End Transcriber's note]

WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP

[Illustration: COUNT SHIGE-NOBU OKUMA OF JAPAN] (From a photograph and autograph given the author)

Count Okuma, one of the Genro or Elder Statesmen of Japan and ex-Premier of the Empire, is an opponent of his country's high protective tariff and an earnest advocate of international arbitration.

WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN JAPAN, CHINA, THE PHILIPPINES, AND INDIA, REPORTED WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO AMERICAN CONDITIONS

BY CLARENCE POE

Author of "A Southerner in Europe," "Cotton: Its Cultivation and Manufacture," Editor "The Progressive Farmer," Sec'y North Carolina Historical Association, etc., etc.

Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1911

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

THE RIGHT HONORABLE JAMES BRYCE

IN WHOM ACHIEVEMENT, CHARACTER AND PERSONAL CHARM MEET IN RARE SYMMETRY; WHO HAS WON THE WISDOM OF AGE WITHOUT LOSING THE DEW OP YOUTH; AND WHOSE GENEROUS FRIENDSHIP HAD MADE ME HIS DEBTOR BEFORE IT AIDED ME ANEW IN PLANNING AND EXECUTING MY ORIENTAL TOUR

{vii}

PREFACE

"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong," as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton begins one of his books by saying, has half its members in Asia. That Americans should know something about so considerable a portion of our human race is manifestly worth while. And really to know them at all we must know them as they are to-day.

Vast changes are in progress, and even as I write this, the revolution in China, foreshadowed in the chapters written by me from that country, is remaking the political life of earth's oldest empire. From Japan to India there is industrial, educational, political ferment. The old order changes, yielding place to the new.

"Where Half the World is Waking Up" is not inappropriate therefore as the title of the book now offered to the public. The reader will kindly observe here that I have written of where half the world is waking up and not merely of the waking-up itself. My purpose has been to set forth the old and the new in due proportion; to present the play of new forces against and upon the ancient, the amazingly ancient, forces that have dominated whole races for centuries. In most places, in fact, the ancient force is still clearly the dominant one. Observe, too, therefore, that I have written not of where half the world has waked up, but only of where it is waking up. The significant thing is that the waking is really taking place at all, and of this there can be no doubt.

It was, in short, with the hope of securing for myself and presenting to others a photograph of the Orient as it is to-day that I made my long trip through Japan, Korea, Manchuria, {viii} China, the Philippines, and India during the past year. It was not a pleasure trip nor yet a hurried "seaport trip." I travelled either entirely across or well into the interior of each country visited, and all my time was given to study and research to fit me for the preparation of these articles.

That despite of the care exercised the book contains some errors, is doubtless true. The sources of information in the Orient are not always easy to find, nor always in accord after one finds them. Consider, for example, the population of Manchuria: it seems a simple enough matter, yet it required the help of consuls of two or three nations to enable me to sift out the truth from the conflicting representations of several writers and so-called authorities.

For my part I can only claim a laborious and painstaking effort to get the facts. Letters of introduction to eminent Englishmen kindly furnished me by Ambassador Bryce opened the doors of British officialdom for me, and the friendship of Mr. Roosevelt and letters from Mr. Bryan and our Department of State proved helpful in other ways. I thus had the good fortune not only to get the ready fraternal assistance of my brother newspaper men (of all races) everywhere, and the help of English, German, and American consuls, but I was aided by some of the most eminent authorities in each country visited--in China, by H. E. Tang Shao-yi, Wu Ting Fang, Sir Robert Bredon, Dr. C. D. Tenney, Dr. Timothy Richard; in Japan, by ex-Premier Okuma, Viscount Kaneko, Baron Shibusawa, Dr. Juichi Soyeda; in Hong Kong, by Governor-General Sir Frederick Lugard; in Manila by Governor-General Forbes, Vice-Governor Gilbert; in India, the members of the Viceroy's Cabinet, Hon. Krishnaswami Iyer, Dr. J. P. Jones, etc, etc. To all of these and to scores of others, my grateful acknowledgments are tendered. They helped me get information, but of course are in no case to be held responsible for any opinions that I have expressed.

To Mr. G. D. Adams, of Akron, Ohio, and Dr. Arthur {ix} Mez, of Mannheim, Germany, two generous fellow-travellers, my thanks are due for the use of many of their photographs, and I am also indebted to _The World's Work_ and _The Review of Reviews_ for permission to republish articles that have already appeared in these magazines. The larger number of chapters included in this volume, however, were originally prepared with a view to their use in my own paper, The Progressive Farmer. They are, therefore, often more elementary in character, let me say in the outset, than if they had been written exclusively for bookbuyers, but it is my hope that their journalistic flavor, even if it has this disadvantage, will also be found to have certain compensating qualities.

Perhaps just one other thing ought to be said: that practically every article about any country was written while I was still in the country described. In this way I hoped not only to write with greater freshness and vividness, but I was enabled to have my articles revised and criticised by friends well informed concerning the subjects discussed. The reader will please bear in mind, therefore, that a letter about Tokyo is also a letter from Tokyo, a letter about Korea is a letter from Korea, etc., and shift his viewpoint accordingly. I have also thought it best to be frank with the reader and let the chapters on China remain exactly as they were written--presenting a pen picture of the Dragon Empire as it appeared on the eve of the outbreak, while the revolution was indeed definitely in prospect but not yet a reality.

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"Give us as many anecdotes as you can," was old Samuel Johnson's advice to Boswell, when that worthy proposed to write of Corsica; and this wise suggestion I have sought to keep in mind in all my travel. Moreover, another saying of the great lexicographer's comes quaintly into my memory as I conclude this Foreword: "There are two things which I am confident I could do very well," he once remarked to Sir Joshua Reynolds; "one is an introduction to any literary work stating {x} what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner: the other is a conclusion, showing from various causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to himself and to the publick!"

C. P. Raleigh, N. C. December 1, 1911.

{xi}

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Japan: The Land of Upside Down 3

A Land of Contradictions Music as an Example Marriage and the Home Life Patriarchal Ideas Still Dominant.

II. Snapshots of Japanese Life and Philosophy 9

What a Japanese City Is Like Strange Clothing of the Japanese Who Ever Saw So Many Babies? Alphonse and Gaston Outdone The Grace of the Little Women How the Old Japan and the Old South Were Alike A "Moral Distinction" Between Producers and Non-Producers.

III. Japanese Farming and Farmer Folk 17

Japanese Farm Children Getting More Schooling than American Farm Children No Illiteracy in the New Japan Where Five Acres Is a Large Farm How Iowa Might Feed the Whole United States Farming Without Horses or Oxen What the Japanese Farmers Raise The Crime of Soil-waste All Work Done by Hand Cooperative Credit Societies a Success Farm Houses Grouped in Villages "A Seller of the Ancestral Land" The Japanese Love of the Beautiful a Suggestion for America.

IV. "Welfare Work" in Japanese Factories 29

Manufacturing Bound to Increase Tariff Legislation Unfair to Agriculture A Visit to a Progressive Japanese Factory How the Factory Operatives Are Looked After Stricter Factory Legislation Coming.

V. Does Japanese Competition Menace the White Man's Trade 34

A Study of Japanese Industrial Conditions Japanese Labor Cheap but Inefficient Actual Cost of Output Little Cheaper than in America Laborers in a State {xii} of Deplorable Inexperience Illustrations of Japanese Inefficiency Some Current Misconceptions Corrected Labor Wage Has Increased 40 Per Cent, in Eight Years The Burden of Taxation High Tariff Will Decrease Japan's Export Trade Subsidy Policy Destroying Individual Initiative Japanese Competition Not a Serious Menace to the White Man.

VI. Buddhism, Shintoism, and Christianity in Japan 48

The Artistic Touch of the Japanese Religion Without Morals Buddhism in Fact vs. Buddhism Idealized by Arnold Official Notices Prohibiting Christianity Christianity "Puts Too High an Estimate on Woman" The Worth of the Individual Not Recognized The Elemental Significance of Japan's Awakening A New Type of Civilization.

VII. Korea: "The Land of the Morning Calm" 60

I Have Become a Contemporary of David The Fascination of a Primitive City Some Odd Korean Customs-A True Romance and an Odd One Many Faces Marked by Smallpox A Typical Monarchy of Ancient Asia-The Honorable Mr. Yang-ban Six Men to Carry Fifty Dollars' Worth of Money Japanese Annexation Splendid Work of Foreign Missionaries.

VIII. Manchuria: Fair and Fertile 70

Some First-hand Stories of the Russo-Japanese War A Bit of History with a Lesson The Site of the World's Next Great War Manchuria: Fair and Fertile Fat Harvests of Food, Feed, and Fuel A Land Where Everybody "Knows Beans" Golden Opportunities for Stock-raising Better Plows and Level Culture Graves as Thick as Corn Shocks

IX. Where Japan Is Absorbing an Empire 78

Manchuria the One Great Oriental Empire Not Yet Developed Its Strategic Importance Why the "Open Door" Concerns Us All Japan's Shrewd Policies {xiii} Contempt of Chinese Authority Japan at Home vs. Japan in Manchuria How the Open Door Policy Was Violated Will Manchuria Go the Way of Korea? A Bit of Chinese Wit and Wisdom Truth Is in the Interest of Peace.

X. Light from China on Problems at Home 93

A Chinese Martyr-Hero The Most Tremendous Moral Achievement of Recent Times A Lesson for America Putting Officials on Salaries Money Changers and Title Changers Making Education Practical The Parcels Post and Tariff Reform.

XI. The New China: Awake and at Work 102

The Coming National Parliament The Successful War Against Opium China's Right-about-face in Education Building Up an Army Attacking the Graft System Railroads, Posts, and Telegraphs America's Relations with China.

XII. A Trip into Rural China 116

The Camels from Mongolia Strange Traffic and Travel in Nankou Pass The Great Wall of China Surprisingly Progressive Farming Methods.

XIII. From Peking to the Yangtze-Kiang 123

Street Life in Peking History That Is History Martyrdoms That Have Enriched the World Average Wages 15 to 18 Cents a Day Homes Without Firesides All China a Vast Cemetery Keeping on Good Terms with Dragons The Blessings of Our Alphabet Confucius as a Moral Teacher My Friendship with a Descendant of Confucius.

XIV. Sidelights on Chinese Character and Industry 132

Healthy Public Sentiment Slavery and Foot-binding Still Practised "Big Feet No B'long Pretty" The Popularity of a No. 2 Wife The Virtue That Is Next to Godliness Largely Disregarded Some Discredited Americans Discovered Abroad A 600-Mile Trip on the Yangtze {xiv} River An Interview with Wu Ting Fang Farming on the Yangtze Shanghai Factory Laborers Paid 12 Cents a Day.

XV. Farewell to China 142

A City of 2,000,000 People Without a Vehicle A Dead Chinaman More Important and Respected Than a Live One Queer Features of Chinese Funerals Cruelty of Chinese Punishments A Sample of Chinese Humor: The Story of the Magic Jar Amusing Trials of a Land Buyer "Pidgin English" Everything Is Saved The Influence That Is Remaking China.

XVI. What I Saw in the Philippines 153

In Manila A Trip Through Five Provinces What the Philippine Country Looks Like Every Filipino Has Cigarette and a Clean Suit A Mania for Cock-fighting Snapshots of Philippine Life Labor the One Thing Lacking.

XVII. What the United States Is Doing in the Philippines 163

Thirty Thousand White People and 7,000,000 Filipinos Rich Resources and Varied Products Millions in Lumber How the Islands Are Governed Restricting the Suffrage Education: Achievements of the American Government Postal Savings Banks and the Torrens System Public Health Work Building Roads And Then Keeping Them Up "A George Junior Republic."

XVIII. Asia's Greatest Lesson foe America . . 173

Where 10 Cents a Day Is a Laborer's Wage The Savage Struggle for Existence in the East Tasks Heart-sickening in Their Heaviness Where Women Are Burden-bearers $12 a Year for a Farm Hand An Overcrowded Population Not the Chief Cause of Asia's Poverty A Defective Organization of Industry Responsible Foolish Opposition to Labor-saving Tools Our Debt to Machinery Knowledge Itself a Productive Agency Ineffectiveness of Oriental Labor Tools and Knowledge the Secret of Wealth Importance of Our Racial Heritage The Final Lesson.

{xv}

XIX. The Straits Settlements and Burma 186

The Amazing Industry of the Chinese Easy Money in Cocoanuts How Germany Is Capturing Oriental Trade Rangoon the City of Gorgeous Colors Burma's Buddhist Temples Rangoon's Beasts of Burden Where the Elephants Do the Work Some First-hand Jungle Stories My Lord the Elephant Good-by to Burma.

XX. Hinduism--and the Himalayas 198

Theoretical vs. Practical Hinduism The Kalighat Temple, Calcutta Human Sacrifices Two Indian Places of Worship: A Contrast A Visit to Benares Burning the Bodies of the Dead "Religion" as It Is in Benares The Himalayas: A New and Happier Subject.

XXI. "The Poor Benighted Hindus" 210

India's Enormous Population "The Wealth of the Indies" a Romance A Typical Indian Village No Chairs, Mattresses, Knives, or Forks Used Where It Is 105 at Midnight "Gunga Din" in Evidence The Lady of Banbury Cross Outdone.

XXII. Hindu Farming and Farm Life 218

Primitive Tools Used by Farmers What Crops Are Grown Where Drought Means Death Reducing the Ravages of Famine Usury and a Remedy Where America Is Behind Landowner and Farm Laborer Salaam, O Little Folk!

XXIII. The Caste System in India 226

No Man May Rise Higher, but May Fall Lower How Fatalism Sustains Caste Contamination by Touch A Bone Collector's Pride of Rank The "Thief Caste" Caste and the Banyan Tree A Maharaja's Defence of Caste Some Forces That Are Battering Down the System Foreign Travel Weakening Caste.

XXIV. The Plight of the Hindu Woman 236

"Woman Is Not to Be Trusted" Twelve-year-old Brides and Bridegrooms A Wedding Procession in Agra {xvi} 5000 Rupees for a Wedding Feast The Plight of the Child-wives Cruel Treatment of Widows The Picture Not Wholly Dark One Worthy Tribute to the Grace of Woman.

XXV. More Leaves from an India Notebook 246

Some Historic Indian Cities India No More Homogeneous than Europe English Rule: An Interview with Mr. Krishnaswami Iyer Indian Wealth in a Few Hands 16 Cents a Day an Incredibly High Wage No Horses on Indian Farms Bombay a Great Cotton Market The Story of a Man-eater A Snake Story to End With.

XXVI. What the Orient May Teach Us 261

Conservation the Keynote What Neglect of Her Forests Has Cost China Forestry Lessons from Japan and Korea Conserving Individual Wealth The Essential Immorality of Waste Avoiding the Wastes of War Preserving Our Physical Stamina and Racial Strength A Lesson from China Patriotism as a Moral Force The Coming "Conflict of Color" Oriental vs. Occidental Ideals.

{xvii}

ILLUSTRATIONS

Count Shige-Nobu Okuma of Japan Frontispiece

PAGE

The Giant Avenue of Cryptomerias at Nikko 13

Typical Japanese Costumes and Temple Architecture 14

Japanese Farming Scenes 19

Japanese School Children 20

The Great Buddha (Diabutsu) at Kamakura 53

The Degenerate Koreans at Rest and at Work 54

Like Scenes from Our Western Prairies 81

Manchurian Women (showing peculiar head-dress) 82

Chinese Waste-paper Collector 82

Pu Yi the Son of Heaven and Emperor of the Middle Kingdom 105

How China Is Dealing with Opium Intemperance 106

A Man-made Desert 117

Pumping Water for Irrigation 117

Transportation and Travel in China 118

Fashionable Chinese Dinner Party 137

How Lumber Is Sawed in the Orient 137

A Quotation from Confucius 138

The Great Wall of China 147

Chinese Woman's Ruined Feet 147

Chinese School Children 148

The American Consulate at Antung 148

A Filipino's Home 157

The Carabao, the Work-stock of the Filipinos 158

An Old Spanish Cathedral 158

Society Belles of Mindanao, Philippine Islands 181

A Street Scene in Manila 181 {xviii} Two Kinds of Workers in Burma 182

Types at Darjeeling, Northern India, and at Delhi, Central India 205

Two Rangoon Types 206

A Hindu Faquir 213

Some Fashionable Hindus 213

Hindu Children 214

The Taj Mahal from the Entrance Gate 241

Gunga Din on Dress Parade 242

Bathing in the Sacred Ganges at Benares 249

The Battle-scarred and World-famous Residency at Lucknow 250

Burning the Bodies of Dead Hindus 255

An Indian Camel Cart 255

Travel in India 256

{xix}

WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP

{3}

JAPAN: THE LAND OF UPSIDE DOWN

"I cannot help thinking," said one of my friends to me when I left home, "that when you get over on the other side of the world, in Japan and China, you will have to walk upside down like the flies on the ceiling!"

While I find that this is not true in a physical sense, it is true, as Mr. Percival Lowell has pointed out, that, with regard to the manners and customs of the people, everything is reversed, and the surest way to go right is to take pains to go dead wrong! "To speak backward, write backward, read backward, is but the A B C of Oriental contrariety."

Alice need not have gone to Wonderland; she should have come to Japan.

I cannot get used, for example, to seeing men start at what with us would be the back of a book or paper and read toward the front; and it is said that no European or American ever gets used to the construction of a Japanese sentence, considered merely from the standpoint of thought-arrangement. I had noticed that the Japanese usually ended their sentences with an emphatic upward spurt before I learned that with them the subject of a sentence usually comes last (if at all), as for example, "By a rough road yesterday came John," instead of, "John came by a rough road yesterday."

And this, of course, is but one illustration of thousands that might be given to justify my title, "The Land of Upside Down," the land of contradictions to all our Occidental ideas. That {4} Japan is a land "where the flowers have no odor and the birds no song" has passed into a proverb that is almost literally true; and similarly, the far-famed cherry blossoms bear no fruit. The typesetters I saw in the _Kokumin Shimbum_ office were singing like birds, but the field-hands I saw at Komaba were as silent as church-worshippers. The women carry children on their backs and not in their arms. The girls dance with their hands, not with their feet, and alone, not with partners. An ox is worth more than a horse. The people bathe frequently, but in dirty water. The people are exceptionally artistic, yet the stone "lions" at Nikko Temple look as much like bulldogs as lions. A man's birthday is not celebrated, but the anniversary of his death is. The people are immeasurably polite, and yet often unendurably cocky and conceited. Kissing or waltzing, even for man and wife, would be improper in public, but the exposure of the human body excites no surprise. The national government is supposed to be modern, and yet only 2 per cent, of the people--the wealthiest--can vote. Famed for kindness though the people are, war correspondents declared the brutality of Japanese soldiers to the Chinese at Port Arthur such as "would damn the fairest nation on earth." Though the nation is equally noted for simplicity of living, it is a Japanese banker, coming to New York, who breaks even America's record for extravagance, by giving a banquet costing $40 a plate. The people are supposed to be singularly contented, and yet Socialism has had a rapid growth. The Emperor is regarded as sacred and almost infallible, and yet the Crown Prince is not a legitimate son. Although the government is one of the most autocratic on earth, it has nevertheless adopted many highly "paternalistic" schemes-government ownership of railways and telegraphs, for example. The people work all the time, but they refuse to work as strenuously as Americans. The temples attract thousands of people, but usually only in a spirit of frolic: in the first Shinto temple I visited the priests offered me sake (the national liquor) {5} to drink. Labor per day is amazingly cheap, but, in actual results, little cheaper than American labor.

It is amid such a maze of contradictions and surprises that one moves in Japan. When I go into a Japanese home, for example, it is a hundred times more important to take off my shoes than it is to take off my hat--even though, as happened this week when I called on a celebrated Japanese singer, there be holes in my left sock. (But I was comforted later when I learned that on President Taft's visit to a famous Tokyo teahouse his footwear was found to be in like plight.)

Speaking of music, we run squarely against another oddity, in that native Japanese (as well as Chinese) music usually consists merely of monotonous twanging on one or two strings--so that I can now understand the old story of Li Hung Chang's musical experiences in America. His friends took him to hear grand opera singers, to listen to famous violinists, but these moved him not; the most gifted pianists failed equally to interest him. But one night the great Chinaman went early to a theatre, and all at once his face beamed with delight, and he turned to his friends in enthusiastic gratitude: "We have found it at last!" he exclaimed. "That is genuine music!" . . . And it was only the orchestra "tuning up" their instruments!