Part 10

Vice-admirals draw £35 per month ordinary and £30 extra sea pay. In Japan this is equivalent to over £2000 a year in comparison with life on the English scale.

_Admirals._

The pay of admirals is fixed at £52 per month and £30 sea allowance.

In addition to these sources of pay, all officers on the active list in the senior ranks are eligible for extra pay—a species of good-service pensions. Meritorious conduct and medals are qualifications.

Engineers, doctors, and paymasters draw identical pay with the corresponding naval ranks, and extra pay for special duties.

Constructors are on the same footing.

The equivalents in the different branches are:—

-----------------+------------------+---------------------+ Military. | Engineer. | Doctor. | -----------------+------------------+---------------------+ Cadet. | Cadet | | Midshipman | Assist.-Engineer | Assist.-Surgeon | | (junior) | (junior) | Sub-lieutenant | Assist.-Engineer | Assist.-Surgeon | | (senior) | (senior) | Lieutenant | Engineer | Surgeon | Lieut.-Commander | | | Commander | Staff-Engineer | Staff-Surgeon Staff | Captain | Fleet-Engineer | Fleet-Surgeon Fleet | {| Inspector of | Deputy Inspector | {| Machinery | of Hospitals | Rear-Admiral {| Chief Inspector | Inspector of | Vice-Admiral {| of Machinery | Hospitals and | {| | Fleets | {| Inspector of | Inspector-General | {| Machinery | | {| General | | Admiral | | | | | | -----------------+------------------+---------------------+ --------------------+---------------------+ Paymaster. | Constructor. | --------------------+---------------------+ Clerk | | Assist.-Paymaster | | (junior) | | Assist.-Paymaster | Assist.-Constructor | (senior) | | Paymaster | Constructor | | | Staff-Paymaster | | Fleet-Paymaster | Chief-Constructor | Paymaster-in-Chief | Inspector | | | Paymaster-General | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | --------------------+---------------------+

MEN.

Ordinary seamen get 7_s_. a month. In addition, they have a varying sea allowance. The pay of seamen ranges up to 30_s_. a month, plus sea allowance. Altogether the average Japanese sailor, while in England, gets about 3_s_. a day.

_Petty Officers._

The normal pay of petty officers, according to class and length of service, runs from 17_s_. to £2 a month, with allowances extra.

_Warrant Officers._

Warrant officers draw from £3 to £5 a month, with numerous allowances.

Allowances to the men include clothing, or money for clothing, etc.

Altogether the Japanese sailor is very well paid. In our naval ports he is looked on as something of a Crœsus. He spends his money freely, as all sailors do, and his purchases run to practically everything, from top-hats to trinkets, and heavy technical books to musical instruments. Many of them talk English, and still more are able to read it, and these are prone to buy books. It is quite a common thing for them to tender five-pound notes in payment; but further particulars of this sort will be found under the head of Personal Characteristics.

RETIREMENTS, PENSIONS, ETC.

As already stated, the retiring age (nominally) of a sub-lieutenant is 42. Other officers are retired _pro rata_ up to 65 years of age for vice-admirals.

Officers of good conduct are promoted on retirement as a rule. Pensions vary from a minimum of £20 to £76 per annum upward in each case. In the admirals’ ranks, the minimum ranges from £105 to £150 per annum. There is no exact maximum.

Intentionally or otherwise, there is one excellent thing that obtains in the Japanese Navy. By the system of selection of captains to be admirals the “duffer officer” has little chance of blocking the way of better men. He, however, as a rule is ready to recognise his own shortcomings, and it is not at all uncommon for such officers to exhibit their patriotism by retiring to make room for those who are likely to do better than they. It is only in the Japanese Navy that this happens: and it is in very marked contrast to certain other navies.

[Illustration: JAPANESE FLAGS.]

XVII FLAGS

Till comparatively quite recent times the Japanese naval ensign was the same as the present jack and mercantile flag. The first battleships flew this white flag with the red ball, and the now well-known Japanese naval ensign only dates from the Itsukushima. It is very rarely correctly represented. The accompanying illustration shows it as it actually is; usually the sun is put in the centre instead of in its proper place.

Admirals’ flags are remarkable in that they follow the Russian system of marking by bands at the edges, instead of the almost universal balls or stars which other nations employ.

The other flags illustrated do not call for comment to any extent, as they follow existing custom in all navies.

The device on the Imperial Standard is the national chrysanthemum. It is the personal flag of the Emperor. This badge, by the way, is found upon the device on the caps of all officers.

XVIII UNIFORMS, ETC.

(1) OFFICERS

Japanese officers’ full-dress uniform is very like full-dress English. The difference lies in the sword, which is a dirk, and the cap, which is rather Russian in shape, and has a gold band round it.

The reefer jacket does not exist. In place of it they wear a dark blue military undress tunic, buttoning at the neck with stand-up collar, and black braid down the front. There are no gold insignia of rank; these are of black braid, with a loop for the military branch, just like the gold ones. Engineers, paymasters, and doctors have their stripes in black; but, being without the mauve, white, or red distinguishing badge between the stripes with their undress, it is impossible to distinguish. Cocked hats and frockcoats are identical with ours. Owing to the extra number of ranks, the stripes vary slightly from ours. They are:—

Sub-lieutenant or equivalent 1 1st class sub-lieutenant or equivalent 1½ Lieutenant 2 Senior lieutenant 2½ Lieutenant-commander 3 Commander 3½ Captain 4

These are the usual gold stripes.

Admirals have stripes just like ours. No special illustrations of these various stripes are given, as the photographs of officers of different ranks throughout the book show them clearly.

There is no dress uniform in the Japanese Navy, but the national kimino is often worn at dinner.

Constructors wear a uniform identical with that of paymasters in undress.

Warrant officers wear a uniform closely akin to that of commissioned officers. Ordinary warrant officers have no stripes. Chief warrant officers wear a half stripe.

(2) MEN.

The uniform of Japanese seamen is identical with that of British seamen, save that the cap is a little flatter and nearer the French shape. The cap ribbon is just like ours—the name of the depôt instead of ship is on it in Chinese characters.

XIX PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

OFFICERS.

Japanese naval officers, like as they are to European ones in many characteristics, are yet of a more distinct class by themselves than any other body of men in the world. The likeness to European officers is superficial, a first impression; the real Japanese officer is not to be known or understood at a casual glance; he needs knowing.

Whether the Western brain can ever get to truly comprehend the Oriental is a favourite question, usually answered in the negative. But, true as the negative may be in a general way, it is only true to that extent. Sea service marks all its votaries as a class apart; and additionally apart as the Japanese may be by race, they are not more so than Russians or Frenchmen. It is just as easy or just as impossible to “bottom” a Japanese as a Russian. Still, Japanese officers as a class are, as before stated, a unique class.

Their primary and principal characteristic is that they are utterly different to the Japanese that we read about in books. Art books tell us of Japanese art instinct, of their feeling for decorative art, and so forth. Japanese artists may possess, or have possessed, this feeling, but it is conspicuous for its absence in Japanese naval officers, who are as “Philistine” as British officers—if possible, more so. The decorative art that their nation is supposed to live for they cordially despise. I have never heard one admire a picture for its colour, but light and shade (that decorative art knows not) appeals to many. Effects, action, motion, sentiment they will understand, but abstract art, never. They are truly and healthily “Philistines.”

So much for art, which I have touched on because it is said to be, over here, the keynote of Japanese character. Illustrated as a good deal of this work is with Japanese drawings and photographs, selected for the book by Japanese officers, this matter deserves mention apart from the question of artistic influence on national life. We may note, therefore, that “art-instinct” was the first thing flung behind him by the Japanese when he “advanced.” If the so-called taking to civilisation of the Japanese means anything, it means having abandoned art for something more utilitarian and more forceful.

Some slight recapitulation is now necessary. When Japan, as the saying goes, “adopted Western civilisation,” she did little but adopt Western methods of war and business, and, in the strictly ethical sense, discarded a good deal of civilisation rather than adopted it; she abandoned all those forms of civilisation that have a decadent tendency. Her advance was not the birth of a new empire with a new civilisation, but the awakening of an old nation that for centuries had been sleeping, steeped in ultra-civilisation. In this fact lies her strength and her weakness.

A forgotten history was studied, and with that study slumbering ambitions were revived. The man of action, relegated to the background by ultra-civilisations,[30] again began to loom upon the stage. Disputes with foreigners called him on to it; Japan awoke determined to be again a nation. “Let us have intercourse with foreigners, learn their drill and tactics, and ... we shall be able to go abroad and give lands in foreign countries to those who have distinguished themselves in battle,”—this sentiment every Japanese officer has imbibed with his mother’s milk. The introduction of Western social institutions, such as newspapers, railways, telegraphs, the new criminal code, the abolition of torture as a punishment, all these things are side issues. They have contributed to build commercial Japan; but they have had small part in making her Navy; the Navy, indeed, would perhaps have been stronger without them. The mechanical arts and _the food_[31] of the West, not its social institutions, have made the new Japan an empire.

[30] The drift of ultra-civilisation is towards peace and the arts. The man of action must embody something of the savage, and the seeker after universal peace draws his chief recruits from the ranks of those who supply those luxuries of life that civilisation makes into necessaries.

[31] See p. 310, where the food question is fully gone into.

Now, having decided to adopt Western methods, the Japanese sought Western instructors. The British being the premier navy, they sought naval instruction from us, and were chiefly supplied with officers of what even then was the “old school.” In one of Major Drury’s books of naval stories[32] there is a British admiral who always read his Bible in his shirt-sleeves, because the sight of his uniform made it difficult for him to realise the existence of a Higher Power! Absurd, no doubt; but this seemingly far-fetched yarn exactly represents the “old-school” sentiment, and the sentiment upon which every Japanese officer has been dry-nursed. Even to-day a British admiral is encircled with a halo of pomp, formula, and etiquette equal to that of any Court; in the old days the reverence was greater still. The young Japanese officers’ first lessons in “sea-power” were in reverence to its chief practitioners. With their reverential loyalty to their Emperor, they proved apt pupils. As the seat of power the quarter-deck is revered in the British service; lesson number two taught this to the Japanese, and included the bridge and a few other places. Practical work they were taught on our model; the theoretical they more or less taught themselves. Japanese naval strategy and tactics are much less the result of European tuition than we suppose. What they learnt from the West was after the Nelson model.

[32] “The Tadpole of an Archangel,” by Major Drury, R.M.L.I.

To understand a Japanese naval officer at all, we must fully realise that he has been brought up with the things mentioned above as his religion—indeed, it is the only religion he knows. Whether a professed atheist, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, the only semblance of reality in his creed is this religion of “Sea-Power,” and the worship of its visible embodiment. Such god as he has is the navy to which he belongs.

We are more or less given to understand nowadays that Japan has adopted Christianity. A Japanese told me that, to a certain extent, they have. “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,” struck him as an excellent text for the common people—Cæsar being translated Emperor of Japan. He preferred Christianity too, he said, “because it was more modern and general.” Had the leading Powers been Mahomedan, I have no doubt that official Japan would revere Mecca. It was, I think, this same officer who told me that some friends of his who had become Christians were anxious that he should do the same. He agreed, therefore, to go and be baptised on a certain date _if it were fine_. The day was wet, so he did not go. Some other friends were anxious that he should embrace Buddhism. “As their temple was much nearer, I went there,” he said; “so I am a Buddhist. But, of course, I do not believe in any religion really.”

A Christian Jap, on the other hand, once asked me whether Santa Klaus was one of our gods—the combination of monotheism and pantheism of the Doctrine of the Trinity being altogether outside their philosophy.

Actually the Japanese are members of that “Agnostic Creed” which some of our greater materialists have preached, plagiarising both Christianity and Buddhism. “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.” And in a great measure they live up to it. Where they seem not to, the difference between ideals of the Orient and the West explains the omission. Our particular type of hypocrite is not known in Japan. But, as I have said before, the only “Power” that they recognise and worship is their fleet. To grasp the true inwardness of this is not over and above easy to our mental processes, but it is the keynote.

One might imagine that a far-seeing administrative brain had evolved this most utilitarian religion, but I have never detected evidences of purpose. The seed was planted by our “old-school” naval officers; it fell on fruitful soil, and grew of its own accord into a weapon of almost indescribable potency. It is not on the lines of fanaticism exactly—the case of the Mahomedan is not altogether analogous. Rather, it is on all fours with Calvinism.

“If people don’t like being killed, why do they fight?” a Japanese officer remarked when discussing war. Individually and physically, a Japanese officer is not at all brave, if we define “bravery” in our sense of the word, but he will fight harder and die harder than any Westerner. To him a wound taken in action is on a par with a toothache or more serious ailment in ordinary everyday life; death in battle he views as we view ordinary death in our beds. The risk of death in action is an idea that moves him about as much as an actuary’s table affects us. Unlike the Mahomedan warrior, death in battle entails no Paradise with beautiful Houris as a reward; nor does _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_ seem to weigh much. Death is an incident, nothing more. “If people do not like being killed, why do they fight?” is the beginning and end of their ideas on the subject.

In every navy there are men who work at their profession and men who do not. The Japanese Navy is no exception to the rule, but the proportion of those who are casual is very small.

“Working at their profession” has, however, a very liberal meaning in the Japanese Navy. It means the absolute ignoring of everything else. I once inquired of a Japanese naval officer over here what the Japanese military attaché was called. “I cannot tell you,” was the answer, “_because I work at my profession_.”

And, judging by his expression, my friend was proud of this little bit of evidence that he wasted no time on extraneous matters. This, too, was in England. His ship was then in an elementary stage at Elswick; he was at Portsmouth on leave.

The “working at his profession” in this particular case, of an officer with his ship a mere skeleton on the building slip, consisted in spending the day poring over naval books. I generally found him deep in Mahan, with halma-pieces on sheets of paper to work out the tactics.

Speaking generally, a Japanese naval officer’s (in England) idea of a holiday appears to be to come to Portsmouth, spend the day going over the dockyard, with a visit to my house to play naval war-game into the small hours as a kind of subsequent dissipation and relaxation! Whatever naval Kriegspiel may or may not be, it takes a Japanese to regard it as a dissipation.

In person, Japanese officers are very short, but the generality of them are far more “physically fit” than popular opinion imagines. The narrow-chested, sloping-shoulder variety is the exception, not the rule. Many are very well proportioned indeed. Height averages about five feet, or an inch or two over. In type of feature there is an immense variety; though black hair, high cheek-bones, and narrow eyes are common to all, general resemblance ends there. Colour varies much. Some have the same pale, yellow complexion that one often meets with in Russians; others have the more olive Italian tint. The former type have the _nez retroussé_, usually small; the latter have a more or less hooked nose. Features vary much according to the province or island from which the owner hails.[33] Occasionally one encounters a swarthy officer, hailing from the Northern islands, while here and there one meets a face almost typically European.

[33] Those who come from the South are usually nicknamed “Russians.”

In character they are all more or less after one model. Taking them in the lump, they are the merriest lot I ever came across. No one enjoys the “At Homes” which Japanese officers invariably give before their ships leave England more than the givers of them; they make the best of hosts for that reason. These “At Homes” are a distinctive Japanese feature; no other foreign visitors in our harbours ever give them. The usual foreigner arrives, official calls are made, one or two of us may perhaps be entertained on board, and there the matter ends. With a Japanese ship, on the other hand, that is about where it begins. As an old waterman on Portsmouth Hard observed, “One Japanee is worth a dozen bloomin’ Rooshians and Eyetalians. Give me a Japper here once a month and I’ll make my bloomin’ fortune,” the fact being that the civil population, who never dare venture near a Russian, crowd on board a Japanese ship in season and out, sure that, even if they are not wanted, their invasion will be forgiven. I suppose the Japanese derive some pleasure from watching the enjoyment of these self-invited guests, though their good nature must be a trifle strained at times.

When the Shikishima was docked at Portsmouth, I happened to call, with an officer of ours in uniform. In company with several of the Shikishima’s officers, we were doing the round of the upper deck, when a tripper of the regulation type suddenly confronted us, and addressed my companion.

“One moment, sir!” he cried. “I want to see over the ship.”

My companion indicated the Japanese officers, telling the man to apply to them.

[Illustration: THE SHIKISHIMA ENTERING PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD.]

“Bother the foreigners!” returned the man. “I was told that if I went on board the officials would show me round. Can’t you send one of ’em? You can tell ’em I ain’t a spy. I don’t mind showing ’em my card—at least, no; I find I haven’t any about me. But here’s my return ticket from London; they can see that if they want to. I assure you I’m not a spy, or connected with the Press in any way.”

As all the Japanese understood and spoke English perfectly, this was not the happiest of introductions. However, one of them volunteered to show the tripper round, for which the tripper tendered thanks to _our_ officer. He then called out to a party of his friends on the jetty that he had “managed to make one of the silly foreigners understand,” after which he devoted himself to patronising his guide. He meant no harm, doubtless, but it was a good deal of a tax on Japanese politeness, and had he been kicked off the ship he would have only had himself to thank for it. There are, unhappily, a good many of these tripper-folk who, given an inch in the way of being allowed on board at all, grab a good many ells in the way of taking advantage of it. Nor is it only the tripper-folk who take undue advantage of Japanese hospitality. At the “At Homes” I have seen women, who certainly ought to know better, armed with scissors, with which they cut down any decoration that takes their fancy. The sight of the decorations does not make the Tenth Commandment easy to observe. At the close of the “At Home,” the paper flowers are always all given away to the guests. But this sort of thing would never happen on board an English ship in a Japanese harbour.

For an “At Home” the Japanese officers put all the men to work making paper flowers. Chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms are the favourites, but convolvuli and iris are also made, as well as a few others. All are singularly beautiful and realistic reproductions—very different things to the ordinary artificial flower of commerce. With these flowers the greater part of the ship is profusely decorated, numbers of lanterns are hung about, and here and there a “Welcome” is stuck up. In addition, each ship hits on some device of its own; thus the Kasagi went in for a host of Japanese and British naval ensigns, while the Shikishima turned diving-dresses into decorative uses. Generally, as in the illustration of the Kasagi’s “At Home,” some sports make a programme, fencing, single stick, conjuring tricks, and so on, with some Japanese songs in between the turns. The Shikishima, however, before she left England, capped all these things by rigging up a stage, scenery, platform, and all, upon the quarter-deck, and here old Japanese plays, with the proper costumes and everything, were performed, while the entire upper deck was transformed into a paper flower-garden. I have attempted in the illustration to give some idea of the fairyland thus created, but it needs colour to give anything like the real effect.

[Illustration: “AT HOME” ON BOARD THE KASAGI.]

I have dwelt thus upon Japanese “At Homes,” because the way in which the officers put themselves out to enjoy these, and make their guests do the same, is an index to one of their leading characteristics. It is a curious thing that no descriptions or illustrations of these gala days of the Japanese war-god ever find their way into print. The whole thing is essentially Japanese, and shows that Western drill and weapons have not killed Oriental charm.