Part 19
A son is not a legal son unless he is so registered, while an illegitimate child is recognized as a true son if so registered. A man may be the legal son of his grandmother, or of his sister, if so registered. Although a family may have no children, it does not die out unless there has been a failure to adopt a son or daughter, and an extinct family may be revived by the legal appointment of someone to take the family name and worship at the family shrine. The family pedigree, therefore, does not describe the actual ancestry, but only the nominal, the fictitious. There is no deception in this. It is a well-recognized custom of Old Japan. Its origin, moreover, is not difficult to explain. Nor is this kind of family peculiar to Japan. It is none the less a capital illustration of the "yumei-mujitsu" characteristic permeating the feudal civilization, and still exerting a powerful influence. Even Christians are not free from "nominalism," as we have frequently found in our missionary work.
A case in mind is of an evangelist employed by our mission station. He was to receive a definite proportion of his salary from the church for which he worked and the rest from the station. On inquiry I learned that he was receiving only that provided by the station, and on questioning him further he said that probably the sum promised by the church was being kept as his monthly contribution to the expenses of the church! Instances of this kind are not infrequent. While in Kyushu I more than once discovered that a body of Christians, whose evangelists we were helping to support proportionately, were actually raising not a cent of their proportion. On inquiry, I would be told that the evangelists themselves contributed out of their salary the sums needed, and that, therefore, the Christians did not need to raise it.
The mission, at one time, adopted the plan of throwing upon the local churches the responsibility of deciding as to the fitness of young men for mission aid in securing a theological education. It was agreed by representatives of the churches and the mission that each candidate should secure the approval of the deacons of the church of which he was a member, and that the church should pay a certain proportion of the candidate's school expenses. It was thought that by this method the leading Christians of the young man's acquaintance would become his sponsors, and that they would be unwilling to take this responsibility except for men in whom they had personal confidence, and for whom they would be willing to make personal contributions. In course of time the mission discovered that the plan was not working as expected. The young men could secure the approval of the deacons of their church without any difficulty; and as for the financial aid from the church, that could be very easily arranged for by the student's making a monthly contribution to the church of the sum which the church should contribute toward his expenses. Although this method seems to the average Occidental decidedly deceptive, it seemed to the Japanese perfectly proper. The arrangement, it is needless to state, was not long continued. I am persuaded that the correct explanation of these cases is "yumei-mujitsu."
Not long since express trains were put on between Kobe and Tokyo. One morning at Osaka I planned to take the early express to Kyoto, distant about thirty miles. These are the second and third cities of Japan, and the travel between them is heavy. On applying for a ticket I was refused and told there was no train for Kyoto. But as multitudes were buying tickets, and going out upon the platform, I asked an official what the trouble was, and received the explanation that for this express train no tickets could be sold for less than forty miles; but if I would buy a ticket for the next station beyond Kyoto, it would be all right; I could get off at Kyoto. I was assured that I would be allowed to land and leave the station at Kyoto. This I did then, and have repeatedly done since. The same absurd rule is applied, I am told, between Yokohama and Tokyo.
But our interest in these illustrations is the light they shed on Japanese character. They indicate the intellectual angle from which the people have looked out on life. What is the origin of the characteristic? Is it due to deep-lying race nature, to the quality of the race brain? Even more clearly than in the case of "roundaboutness," it seems to me that "nominality" is due to the nature of the old social order. Feudalism has always exhibited more or less of these same features. To Anglo-Saxons, reared in a land blessed by direct government of the people, by the people, and for the people, such methods were not only needless but obnoxious. Nominal responsibility without real power has been seen to breed numberless evils. We have learned to hate all nominalism, all fiction in government, in business and, above all, in personal character. But this is due to the Anglo-Saxon social order, the product in large measure of centuries of Christian instruction.
Through contact with Westerners and the ideas they stand for, directness and reality are being assimilated and developed by the Japanese. This would be impossible were the characteristic in question due to inherent race nature necessarily bequeathed from generation to generation by intrinsic heredity.
XIX
INTELLECTUALITY
Some writers hold that the Japanese are inherently deficient in the higher mental faculties. They consider mediocre mentality to be an inborn characteristic of Japan and assert that it lies at the root of the civilizational differences distinguishing the East from the West. The puerility of Oriental science in all its departments, the prevalence of superstition even among the cultivated, the lack of historical insight and interpretation of history are adduced as conclusive evidences of this view.
Foreign teachers in Japanese employ have told me that Japanese students, as compared with those of the West, manifest deficient powers of analysis and of generalization. Some even assert that the Japanese have no generalizing ability whatever, their progress in civilization being entirely due to their remarkable power of clever imitation. Mr. W.G. Aston, in ascribing the characteristic features of Japanese literature to the fundamental nature of the race, says they are "hardly capable of high intellectual achievement."[AL]
While we may admit that the Japanese do not seem to have at present the same power of scientific generalization as Occidentals, we naturally ask ourselves whether the difference is due to natal deficiency, or whether it may not be due to difference in early training. We must not forget that the youth who come under the observation of foreign teachers in Japanese schools are already products of the Japanese system of education, home and school, and necessarily are as defective as it is.
In a previous chapter a few instances of recent invention and important scientific discovery were given.
These could not have been made without genuine powers of analysis and generalization. We need not linger to elaborate this point.
Another set of facts throwing light on our problem is the success of so many Japanese students, at home and in foreign lands, in mastering modern thought. Great numbers have come back from Europe and America with diplomas and titles; not a few have taken high rank in their classes. The Japanese student abroad is usually a hard worker, like his brother at home. I doubt if any students in the new or the old world study more hours in a year than do these of Japan. It has often amazed me to learn how much they are required to do. This is one fair sign of intellectuality. The ease too with which young Japan, educated in Occidental schools and introduced to Occidental systems of thought, acquires abstruse speculations, searching analyses, and generalized abstractions proves conclusively Japanese possession of the higher mental faculties, in spite of the long survival in their civilization of primitive puerility and superstitions and the lack of science, properly so called.
Japanese youths, furthermore, have a fluency in public speech decidedly above anything I have met with in the United States. Young men of eighteen or twenty years of age deliver long discourses on religion or history or politics, with an apparent ease that their uncouth appearance would not lead one to expect. In the little school of less than 150 boys in Kumamoto there were more individuals who could talk intelligibly and forcefully on important themes of national policy, the relation of religion and politics, the relation of Japan to the Occident and the Orient, than could be found in either of the two colleges in the United States with which I was connected. I do not say that they could bring forth original ideas on these topics. But they could at least remember what they had heard and read and could reproduce the ideas with amazing fluency.
A recent public meeting in Tokyo in which Christian students of the University spoke to fellow-students on the great problems of religion, revealed a power of no mean order in handling the peculiar difficulties encountered by educated young men. A competent listener, recently graduated from an American university and widely acquainted with American students, declared that those Japanese speakers revealed greater powers of mind and speech than would be found under similar circumstances in the United States.
The fluency with which timid girls pray in public has often surprised me. Once started, they never seem to hesitate for ideas or words. The same girls would hardly be able to utter an intelligible sentence in reply to questions put to them by the pastor or the missionary, so faint would be their voices and so hesitating their manner.
The question as to whether the Japanese have powers of generalization receives some light from a study of the language of the people. An examination of primitive Japanese proves that the race, prior to receiving even the slightest influence from China, had developed highly generalized terms. It is worth while to call attention here to a simple fact which most writers seem to ignore, namely, that all language denotes and indeed rests on generalization. Consider the word "uma," "horse"; this is a name for a whole class of objects, and is therefore the product of a mind that can generalize and express its generalization in a concept which no act of the imagination can picture; the imagination can represent only individuals; the mind that has concepts of classes of things, as, for instance, of horses, houses, men, women, trees, has already a genuine power of generalization. Let me also call attention to such words as "wake," "reason"; "mono," "thing"; "koto," "fact"; "aru," "is"; "oro," "lives"; "aru koto," "is fact," or "existence"; "ugoku koto," "movement"; "omoi," "thought"; this list might be indefinitely extended. Let the reader consider whether these words are not highly generalized; yet these are all pure Japanese words, and reveal the development of the Japanese mind before it was in the least influenced by Chinese thought. Evidently it will not do to assert the entire lack of the power of generalization to the Japanese mind.
Still further evidence proving Japanese possession of the higher mental faculties may be found in the wide prevalence and use of the most highly generalized philosophical terms. Consider for instance, "Ri" and "Ki," "In" and "Yo." No complete translation can be found for them in English; "Ri" and "Ki" may be best translated as the rational and the formative principles in the universe, while "In" and "Yo" signify the active and the passive, the male and the female, the light and the darkness; in a word, the poles of a positive and negative. It is true that these terms are of Chinese origin as well as the thoughts themselves, but they are to-day in universal use in Japan. Similar abstract terms of Buddhistic origin are the possession of the common people.
Of course the possession of these Chinese terms is not offered as evidence of independent generalizing ability. But wide use proves conclusively the possession of the higher mental faculties, for, without such faculties, the above terms would be incomprehensible to the people and would find no place in common speech. We must be careful not to give too much weight to the foreign origin of these terms. Chinese is to Japanese what Latin and Greek are to modern European languages. The fact that a term is of Chinese origin proves nothing as to the nature of the modern Japanese mind. The developing Japanese civilization demanded new terms for her new instruments and increasing concepts. These for over fifteen centuries have been borrowed from, or constructed out of, Chinese in the same way that all our modern scientific terms are constructed out of Latin and Greek. It is doubtful if any of the Chinese terms, even those borrowed bodily, have in Japan the same significance as in China. If this is true, then the originating feature of Japanese power of generalization becomes manifest.
Indeed from this standpoint, the fact that the Japanese have made such extensive use of the Chinese language shows the degree to which the Japanese mind has outgrown its primitive development, demanding new terms for the expression of its expanding life. But mental growth implies energy of acquisition. The adoption of Chinese terms is not a passive but an active process.
Acquisition of generalized terms can only take place with the development of a generalizing mind. Foreign terms may help, but they do not cause that development.
In a study of the question whether or not the Japanese possess independent powers of analysis and generalization, we must ever remember the unique character of the social environment to which they have been subjected. Always more or less of an isolated nation, they have been twice or thrice suddenly confronted with a civilization much superior to that which they in their isolation had developed. Under such circumstances, adoption and modification of ideas and language as well as of methods and machinery were the most rational and natural courses.
The explanation usually given for the puerilities of Oriental science, history, and religion has been short and simple, namely, the inherent nature of the Oriental races, as if this were the final fact, needing and admitting no further explanation. That the Orient has not developed history or science is doubtless true, but the correct explanation of this fact is, in my opinion, that the educational method of the entire Orient has rested on mechanical memorization; during the formative period of the mind the exclusive effort of education has been to develop a memory which acts by arbitrary or fanciful connections and relations. A Japanese boy of Old Japan, for instance, began his education at from seven to eight years of age and spent three or four years in memorizing the thousands of Chinese hieroglyphic characters contained in the Shisho and Gokyo, nine of the Chinese classics. This completed, his teacher would begin to explain to him the meaning of the characters and sentences. The entire educational effort was to develop the powers of observing and memorizing accidental, superficial, or even purely artificial relations. This double faculty of observing trifling and irrelevant details, and of remembering them, became phenomenally and abnormally developed.
Recent works on the psychology of education, however, have made plain how an excessive development of a child's lower mental faculties may arrest its later growth in all the higher departments of its intellectual nature; the development of a mechanical memory is well known as a serious obstacle to the higher activities of reason. Now Japanese education for centuries, like Chinese, has developed such memory. It trained the lower and ignored the higher. Much of the Japanese education of to-day, although it includes mathematics, science, and history, is based on the mechanical memory method. The Orient is thus a mammoth illustration of the effects of over-development of the mechanical memory, and the consequent arrest of the development of the remaining powers of the mind.
Encumbered by this educational ideal and system, how could the ancient Chinese and Japanese men of education make a critical study of history, or develop any science worthy of the name? The childish physics and astronomy, the brutal therapeutics and the magical and superstitious religions of the Orient, are a necessary consequence of its educational system, not of its inherent lack of the higher mental powers.
If Japanese children brought up from infancy in American homes, and sent to American schools from kindergarten days onward, should still manifest marked deficiencies in powers of analysis and generalization, as compared with American children, we should then be compelled to conclude that this difference is due to diverse natal psychic endowment. Generalizations as to the inherent intellectual deficiencies of the Oriental are based on observations of individuals already developed in the Oriental civilization, whose psychic defects they accordingly necessarily inherit through the laws of social heredity. Such observations have no relevancy to our main problem. We freely admit that Oriental civilization manifests striking deficiencies of development of the higher mental faculties, although it is not nearly so great as many assert; but we contend that these deficiencies are due to something else than the inherent psychic nature of the Oriental individual. Innumerable causes have combined to produce the Oriental social order and to determine its slow development. These cannot be stated in a sentence, nor in a paragraph.
In the final analysis, however, the causes which produce the characteristic features of Japanese social order are the real sources of the differentiating intellectual traits now characterizing the Japanese. Introduce a new social heredity,--a new system of education,--one which relegates a mechanical memory to the background,--one which exalts powers of rational observation of the profound causal relations of the phenomena of nature, and which sets a premium on such observation, analysis, and generalization, and the results will show the inherent psychic nature of the Oriental to be not different from that of the Occidental.
XX
PHILOSOPHICAL ABILITY
We are now prepared to consider whether or not the Japanese have philosophical ability. The average educated Japanese believe such to be the case. The rapidity and ease with which the upper classes have abandoned their superstitious faiths is commonly attributed by themselves to the philosophical nature of their minds. Similarly the rapid spread of so-called rationalism and Unitarian thought and Higher Criticism among once earnest Christians, during the past decade, they themselves ascribe to their interest in philosophical questions, and to their ability in handling philosophical problems.
Foreigners, on the other hand, usually deny them the possession of philosophical ability.
Dr. Peery, in his volume entitled "The Gist of Japan," says: "By nature, I think, they are more inclined to be practical than speculative. Abstract theological ideas have little charm for them. There is a large element in Japan that simulates a taste for philosophical study. Philosophy and metaphysics are regarded by them as the profoundest of all branches of learning, and in order to be thought learned they profess great interest in these studies. Not only are the highly metaphysical philosophies of the East studied, but the various systems of the West are looked into likewise. Many of the people are capable of appreciating these philosophies, too; but they do it for a purpose." Other writers make the same general charge of philosophical incompetence. One or two quotations from Dr. Knox's writings were given on this subject, under the head of Imitation.[AM]
What, then, are the facts? Do the Japanese excel in philosophy, or are they conspicuously deficient? In either case, is the characteristic due to essential race nature or to some other cause?
We must first distinguish between interest in philosophical problems and ability in constructing original philosophical systems. In this distinction is to be found the reconciliation of many conflicting views. Many who argue for Japanese philosophical ability are impressed with the interest they show in metaphysical problems, while those who deny them this ability are impressed with the dependence of Japanese on Chinese philosophy.
The discussions of the previous chapter as to the nature of Japanese education and its tendency to develop the lower at the expense of the higher mental faculties, have prepared us not to expect any particularly brilliant history of Japanese philosophy. Such is indeed the case. Primitive Japanese cosmology does not differ in any important respect from the primitive cosmology of other races. The number of those in Old Japan who took a living interest in distinctly metaphysical problems is indisputably small. While we admit them to have manifested some independence and even originality, as Professor Inouye urges,[AN] yet it can hardly be maintained that they struck out any conspicuously original philosophical systems. There is no distinctively Japanese philosophy.
These facts, however, should not blind us to the distinction between latent ability in philosophical thought and the manifestation of that ability. The old social order, with its defective education, its habit of servile intellectual dependence on ancestors, and its social and legal condemnation of independent originality, particularly in the realm of thought, was a mighty incubus on speculative philosophy. Furthermore, crude science and distorted history could not provide the requisite material from which to construct a philosophical interpretation of the universe that would appeal to the modern Occidental.
In spite, however, of social and educational hindrances, the Japanese have given ample evidence of interest in metaphysical problems and of more or less ability in their solution. Religious constructions of the future life, conceptions as to the relations of gods and men and the universe, are in fact results of the metaphysical operations of the mind. Primitive Japan was not without these. As she developed in civilization and came in contact with Chinese and Hindu metaphysical thought, she acquired their characteristic systems. Buddhist first, and later Confucian, metaphysics dominated the thought of her educated men. In view of the highly metaphysical character of Buddhist doctrines and the interest they have produced at least among the better trained priests, the assertion that the Japanese have no ability in metaphysics cannot be maintained.
At one period in the history of Buddhism in Japan, prolonged public discussions were all the fashion. Priests traveled from temple to temple to engage in public debate. The ablest debater was the abbot, and he had to be ready to face any opponent who might appear. If a stranger won, the abbot yielded his place and his living to the victor. Many an interesting story is told of those times, and of the crowds that would gather to hear the debates. But our point is that this incident in the national life shows the appreciation of the people for philosophical questions. And although that particular fashion has long since passed away, the national interest in discussions and arguments still exists. No monks of the West ever enjoyed hair-splitting arguments more than do many of the Japanese. They are as adept at mental refinements and logical juggling as any people of the West, though possibly the Hindus excel them.