Japan From Within

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

11 STORY OP THE NATIONS'*
SERIES

JAPAN

By DAVID MURRAY
PhJ>., LLiD^

With a New Chapter by Joseph
H. Longford, and 35 Illustra¬
tions and Maps,

Large Crown 8vo, Cloth • 7/6 net .

T, Fishes Unwin, Ltd., London, W.C.a

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

An Inquiry into the Political , Industrial\
Commercial , Financial , Agricultural ,
Armammtal and Educational Conditions of
Modern Japan *By J. INGRAM BRYAN,

M.Ao M.Litt., Ph.D., Sixteen years 4 Professor in "Japanese
Colleges and Universities ; Order of the Sacred Treasure ; Member
of the Japan Society ; Cambridge University Extension Lecturer
in Japanese History and Civilization ofi upa

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

First published in 1924

{All rights reserved)

PREFACE

E VERY new book on Japan claims to compensate
for the deficiencies of its numerous predecessors
by solving the mystery of why Japan is so much
misunderstood. And still the mystery remains. After
sixteen years in Japan, studying the people, their institutions
and civilization, from every point of view at close range,
my only solution of the mystery is to deny its existence.
It is undoubtedly true that Japan is very much misunder¬
stood, but the cause can be ascribed to nothing more
mysterious than mere ignorance of Japan. If we take the
same trouble to know all about Japan that would be neces¬
sary in the case of any other nation, Japan is quite as easily
understood.

The European War came as a bolt from the blue, because
the respective belligerent nations were culpably ignorant
of each other’s ideals and conditions. If European nations^
know only too little of one another, how much less must
they know of Japan, and the peoples of Asia generally!
An£ Asia represents the larger portion of mankind. This
volume is a modest attempt at supplying in some measure
that knowledge which is so essential to the world’s peace.

In bringing to the notice of the English-speaking people
a plain and authoritative statement of the development,
condition and resources of present-day Japan, the author
can acknowledge only iSTl general way the extent of his
indebtedness to the many Japanese gentlemen who have
collaborated with him in collecting information from original
sources: especially to the officials of the various depart¬
ments of State on Tokyo, and to the distinguished Japanese

5

6

PREFACE

statesmen, scholars and financiers whose contributions to
the pages of the Japan Magazine enabled him during his
editorship to make Japan more accurately and widely
known. Where so «many have been so courteous and
helpful it might seem invidious to single out any for mention
by name.

And if specific authorities are deprived of the usual
footnotes and references to which they are entitled in a
volume like this, the author’s only excuse is the loss of his
entire library and notes in the great earthquake. A useful
bibliography will be found at the end of the volume.

J. INGRAM BRYAN,

Cambridge,

October 1924.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER i

Japan and Asia.

PAGE

• 9

CHAPTER II

Government ..

■ 23

CHAPTER III
Manufacturing Industries *

• 39

CHAPTER IV

Commerce and Trade ....

. 53

CHAPTER V

Communications . . . . •

. 67

*

CHAPTER VI

Banking and Finance < •

00

CHAPTER VII

Mines and Minerals .....

•

1-1

O

CHAPTER VIII

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries . .

. ii5

CHAPTER IX

Labour and Wages .....

. 134

7

8 CONTENTS

CHAPTER X

Military Organization

CHAPTER XI

Imperial Navy ....

Chapter xii

Japanese Education .

CHAPTER XIII

Arts and Crafts

CHAPTER XIV

Literature and the Press .

CHAPTER XV

Religion.

CHAPTER XVI

The Future of Japan.

Bibliography ....

PA68

. 149

. 168

. 183

. 203

. 228

. 248

. 264

. 282
*

. 285

Index .

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

CHAPTER I

JAPAN AND ASIA

J APAN is the most modern and progressive of the Asiatic
nations, and, in her own opinion at least, the greatest
of them, looking forward with an exalted ambition to
the day when she will become the leader of Asia’s millions.
A nation that expects to lead the nine hundred million
people of Asia, and, moreover, has some prospect of being
able to realize that ambition, must be a very important
nation from every point of view.

i. Significance of Ideals

The destinies of nations lie in the character of their
leaders. Character is determined by ideals. What is the
dominating ideal of Japan, and how far is it in harmony
with that of Asia as a whole i There could be no greater
menace to civilization than the possibility of the'larger
portion of mankind becoming dominated by pagan ideals.
The future of Japan, no less than the future of Asia, depends
dn how far an altruistic ideal will be adopted and prevail.

It is a fashion of the present to impugn ideals and
regard idealism as “ sloppy sentimentalism,” but time can
never change the fact that the crop always depends on the
seed. The ideals of paganism > are as real and as effective
as those of Christianity. Nor can the ideals of these two

9

10 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

systems of thought be in any sense identified or reconciled.
They stand for principles eternally diverse. The only
question is as to which system is best calculated to promote
the common interests of humanity.

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss whether
the ideals of Japan are more pagan than those of Europe.
It is sufficient to affijm that the character and the future
of nations, as well as of the world, are dependent on the
nature of the ideals now in process of realization.

Before the outbreak of the European conflict the ideals
of the war-lords of Germany, as evinced in the writings
of men like von Bernhardi, von Treitschke and Nietzsche
were frankly pagan. The world has seen the murderous
decimation of humanity and civilization which attempts
at realization of such ideals have perpetrated. “ By their
fruits ye shall know them.” In spite of such disastrous
results, exponents of pagan ideals still not only survive
but thrive.

If the European cataclysm was not a fancy but a fact,
not a mere nightmare but a horrible reality, it is well to
be assured that the cause of it was no less real and no less
horrible than the effect. Though the war has, at least
.temporarily, ceased, the ideals that engendered it still go
on poisoning the well-springs of civilization. It is surely
the duty of sane humanity to be intelligently aware of
this fact, and to be ready to recognize where the geril
lies, and avert it. If the teaching of history and experience
is that all war is caused by paganism, and that paganism
always causes war, any nation, or coterie within a nation,
that stands for such principles becomes a subject of world-
significance.

What, it will be asked, has this to do with Japan, and how
does it contribute to the purpose of this book in presenting
a survey of the modern development of Japan ? Much in
every way, not only in relation to Japan, but in relation to
the Occident in its dealings with Japan.

JAPAN AND ASIA
2. Reason versus Ignorance

ii

It is obvious that the hope of the world for peace lies
in elimination of the ideals that cauSfe war. The ideals that
eventually result in war are always an inimical element in
the social, political, industrial or commercial life of nations
before they logically end in bloodshed. The virus of
inhumane competition cannot be removed by military
force, nor by international contract, but only by enlighten¬
ment and general education. It is mostly ignorance that
is the mother of conflict. It is difficult to like those we do
not know. In the older civilizations the stranger was
always the enemy. Paganism is a wrong spirit that thrives
upon ignorance. And nothing can more conduce to a
better knowledge of the moral and material potentiality
of Asia than a first-hand study of the evolution and resources
of Japan.

But we cannot afford to contemplate the material might
of Japan without asking the character of the ideals that are
to determine the use of it. If pagan principles, gaining con¬
trol of the war-lords of Europe, can so overwhelm govern¬
ments as to set even Christian peoples at one another’s throats
in the bloodiest of conflicts, what is to happen should the nine
hundred million people of Asia come under the inspiration
and control of such ideas, fully equipped with a modem
education and modern scientific instruments of war ? The
prevention of such an eventuality, as well as the recurrence
of the recent European outrage on humanity, depends on
education, on the diffusion of knowledge and good-will;
and good-will depends on knowledge.

Science, we know, is characterless and neutral. Whether
it be used for constructive or destructive purposes depends
altogether on the ideals of those who utilize it. Without
having first made sure of the worthiness of its own ideals,
it may seem somewhat impertinent for Europe to inquire
into the ideals of Asia. But evasion of so vital a factor

I2 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

in determining the relations of East and West is fatal to
world-peace. In Asia will centre very largely the problem
of human destiny for some time to come. At the heart
of this problem is Japan, the prospective leader of the
brown and yellow races.

3., Japan’s Position

Japan is potentially already the leader of Asia. Her
voice is louder, more far-reaching, insistent and effective
than that of any other Asiatic nation. And it is a voice
more in harmony with that of Asia than that of any occi¬
dental Power in Asia. This fact was freely admitted when
Japan took her seat as an equal at the Peace Conference of
Versailles, at the Supreme Council of the League of Nations
and especially at the Washington Conference of 1921 ,
where Japan spoke in the name of Asia, and entered into
an agreement with England and America guaranteeing
peace on the Pacific for the ensuing ten years. The very
fact that such an agreement was considered necessary is
in itself sufficient to prove the importance of Japan hi
relation to world-peace.

4. Rapid Rise to Power and Competition

A country of some seventy-seven millions of people,
including Korea, with an Imperial dynasty extending back
beyond that of any reigning house in Europe, a defensive
equipment and ‘personnel second to none, Japan to-day
commands greater political, military and economic power
than the rest of Asia together. In the international
deliberations of the future, Japan must not only maintain
her present prestige, but take an even more important
place, and so continue to be reckoned with as a vital factor
in world-politics. Never again will she be ignored as
an arbiter in the destiny of nations.

What Japan is already in international affairs, she is

JAPAN AND ASIA 13

fast coming to be also in commercial and industrial com¬
petition. Even now Western nations are finding Japan
the most serious trade rival in Asi^. Japan can import
in her own bottoms some of the most important of staple
raw materials, manufacture them and export them to the
countries of origin and undersell producers of the same
goods in these countries. This rapidly ascending empire
stands at the very focus of the new industrial and political
ambitions of the world, which now centre in the Pacific.
The spirit and resources of Japan are now paramount
factors in the new world-order. If, as has often been said,
England stands or falls in relation to the coloured races
that comprise the majority of her subjects, it is essential
that she should know all about the most important of the
independent Asiatic empires. As an attempt to appraise
the material significance of Japan, especially in its bearing on
the future of Western nations, this book, based on long
first-hand study, is sent forth.

Seventy years ago the doors of Japan were locked and
barred against the entrance of the Western world. After
a hundred years of intercourse with Europe, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries (1542-1638), Japan expelled the
European, exterminated the Church after the martyrdom*
of over 200,000 members, and isolated herself from foreign
nations for over 200 years.

After this long seclusion, during which the West advanced
to modern civilization, the portals of Japan were effectually
opened by Commodore Perry in 1853-4. At that time
Japan was no more than a geographical name in the Euro¬
pean mind, known only as an archipelago on the confines
of China. Without adequate defensive forces, without a
modem government, Japan was helpless before Western
intrusion; she had to accept all that was imposed, and to
bide her time; yet within fifty years she had codified her
laws, instituted a modern judiciary, e limin ated extra¬
territoriality, revised the foreign treaties in her own favour,

i 4 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

secured national autonomy, defeated China, Russia and
Germany, and taken her seat among her aggressors as an
equal in the supreme* councils of the world.

5. Secret of Japan’s Progress

What is the secrel, of so remarkable an achievement ?
It detracts in no way from Japan’s magnificent valour,
initiative and intelligence to venture the opinion that the
country could not have attained its present distinction in
so many ways without the sympathy and practical aid of
the English-speaking peoples. From the first England
and America were the friends of Japan, as indeed they are
still. This is not to say that they have singled out Japan
from the rest of Asia for special favours. But for these
friends the Asiatic nations would in all probability by this
time have been divided up among the Powers, as Africa is
to-day. No one familiar with the inner history of inter¬
national rivalry in the Far East during the last half-century
will be disposed to dispute the truth of this statement.
When Russia, France and Germany conspired to oust
Japan from the rewards of her victory over China in 1895,
driving Japan out of Port Arthur only to have Russia take
ter place, Japan was helpless in their hands. The situation
aroused the interest of the English-speaking world, created
profound sympathy for Japan, and led to the Anglo-
Japanese Agreement and finally the Anglo-Japanese Alli¬
ance which maintained peace in the Far East for more
than twenty years. What would have happened had not
England and America stood on either side of the portals
of the Far East, signalling ‘ hands off Japan,’ is obviously
beyond the province of this work to discuss.

6 . Asiatic Unrest

And yet the people of Asia do not appear to understand
how very much they are indebted to the altruistic policy of

JAPAN AND ASIA 15

the Anglo-Saxon peoples. To them occidental aggression
has compromised purity of motive and obscured our most
disinterested aims. A great part of ^ia to-day is a mass of
seething tfnrest and growing animosity against the white
races.

The thought of Asia is of vital importance to world-
peace, and yet how few Occidentals inow, or even care,
what Asia thinks ? Even many Occidentals resident in the
very heart of Asia are so intent on other matters as to be
oblivious to the underlying thought of the civilization
about them. To the Asiatic’ mind the white man is an
intruder if not a usurper on that continent. These millions
of brown and yellow men, in effect; say that from the dawn
of human civilization down to the fall of the Roman Empire
the whole world was ruled by the brown and the yellow
man, for Asia regards the Roman as not only of its colour
but of its kin. Only in comparatively recent years has
the white man begun to gain the ascendancy. But it
cannot be within the will of the gods that 900,000,000
brown and yellow men shall come under the domination
of 200,000,000 white men. If the majority insist on
self-determination, the brown and yellow man will
come to his own again some day and resume rule of
the world.

But for centuries Asia’s nightmare has been a sore
^realization of hopeless absence of leadership, to counteract
occidental intrusion. In all the far-flung lines of advance¬
ment Western nations led the way, and Asia could only
remain to them as a hewer of wood and drawer of water.
India was a congeries of conflicting tribes and religions until
forcibly unified by Britain; and China remained, as she
still does, hard in the grip of her occidental creditors, while
Japan was obliged to follow them in order to retain her
freedom. The only nation that showed any possibility
of leadership in Asia was England because of her presence
in India and Hongkong, while America in the Philippines

16 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

was but a second voice to England’s; and Asia does not
desire to be led by any white race.

In the midst of tjjis racial hopelessness a great thing
suddenly happened. On May 27, 1905, Japan defeated
Russia. It was the first time that a brown and yellow race
had defeated what was then thought to be one of the
greatest of the white«races, more than twice as big as Japan
in population. From that moment a thrill of hope shot
through the heart of Asia’s millions, a hope that has gone
on gathering strength ever since, until to-day all Asia
is convulsed with a spirit of self-determination and
autonomy. In this struggle to get out of the grip of
the white races Asia regards Japan as the more than
potential leader.

7. Mutual Suspicion

It is true that the 327,000,000 of India and the 400,000,000
of China do not yet quite trust Japan; for one oriental
nation never seems wholly to trust another, due perhaps to
the habit of doing to your neighbour what you think he
would do to you. But any time something may happen
to allay distrust and precipitate unity for mutual protection.
Should Asia’s countless multitudes once become con¬
vinced, through the mistakes of Western aggressors, or the
persuasion of Japan, or both, that occidental policy was
mere material exploitation, rather than the uplift*and
redemption of Asia, they might be driven in sheer self-
defence to align themselves under the leadership of some
capable oriental Power, than which none is more suitable or
probable than Japan. This has been a dominant trend of
thought in the vernacular press of Japan for many years,
until the nation by this time must believe it; and echoes of
sympathy from time to time are heard from China and
India. Japan is certainly quite convinced of her capacity to
act as the medium between East and West; and why not ?

JAPAN AND ASIA 17

Nor does the present world-situation preclude such an
eventuality in Asia, and at no distant date. Not only is
there this growing and insistent suspicion o£ Western
nations, but there is the obvious incapacity of Western
nations either to understand Asia or to deal with the situa¬
tion ; which only goes to increase the distrust. There
must be something seriously defective in our diplomatic
officialdom if it cannot do more than it is doing to disarm
suspicion in Asia. Japan may be said to know more of
occidental civilization than any other Asiatic country;
and if Japan finds our diplomacy suspicious, what will the
rest of Asia think of it ? The question whether, in their
diplomacy, the executives of occidental governments
really represent their several nations, especially in relation
to Asia, to say nothing of Europe, is one imperatively de¬
manding an answer. Is it, or is it not a fact that in all
the leading occidental countries the people are morally
and internationally ahead of their governments i Having
lived and travelled widely in England, Canada and the
United States, and knowing the feeling of these people
toward Asia, I believe that if Asia knew and understood the
convictions of the West, sincere friendship would soon
displace suspicion. How is it then that our representa¬
tives in Asia have failed to convey to the Asiatic mind what
the West thinks and intends to do ?

The failure may appear more pardonable if one thinks
$f the difficulty England finds in making herself understood
in Europe or even In Ireland. Indeed, our experience in
relation to making ourselves properly understood among our
neighbours should prove a wholesome warning not to be
too sure as to the wisdom of our methods in dealing with
India, China and Japan. If we do not understand the Celt,
it is quite certain that we understand the Oriental less.
If an overbearing temper sometimes appears in our official¬
dom' at home, it is likely to be still more common abroad,
as our nationals are often prone to testify. Officials
2

18 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

responsible for our relations with oriental countries should
be most carefully selected and trained. The inexperience
of a merely insular ijiind is fatal in oriental diplomacy; it
is scarcely less dangerous at home. To the Anglo-Saxon
what is right is right, and there is nothing more to be said.
He forgets that his notion of what is right is the result of
education and environment, and that what may seem right,
and even imperative, to an Englishman or an American,
may not appear so at all to an Asiatic.

8. Evil of Compromise

This is not to say that the West, in dealing with the
East, should do evil that good may come. With Asia
in digna nt at the white races, something should be done to
abate the indignation, but this requires no more than to
make dear our policy and purpose in Asia. This has to
be done in deeds as well as in words. Deference to the
religion of the sword does no more to lessen Mohammedan
suspicion in India than it does in Turkey, for everybody
knows that no country that respects Christian principles
can approve of the principles of Mohammedan civilization,
and Asia believes that all such compromise on the part of
Western representatives is mere hypocrisy. Japan speak
for Asia when she avows her appreciation of sincerity. A
firm stand for humane principles, fair play and equality
of treatment will do more to create faith in Western nations
than anything else. The policy of the English-speaking
nations towards Asia,, as towards all men, is that of the
Golden Rule. If our representatives in Asia have failed to
act upon this policy they have lamentably failed to justify
our confidence in them. But the habit of putting on green
spectades in order to make sure of seeing green fields may
be too ingrained in our diplomacy to allow it to take sug¬
gestions for improvement with the equanimity essential to

JAPAN AND ASIA 19

a cure. Yet Asia’s interpretation of history is based on the
attitude of occidental officialdom in Asia.

9. Occidental Policy

The older generation in Japan seemed more ready to
admit the nation’s indebtedness to the good-will of the
English-speaking peoples than the present generation.
This is seen in expression of the conviction that the victory
of the Allies in the recent war implies a still greater ascend¬
ancy of the white races, to the disadvantage of other colours.
This mistake must arise either out of a misunderstanding
of our history and civilization or a change in our diplomatic
methods. Neither Great Britain nor the United States
has ever shown any positive prejudice against Japan as
' inimical to their interests. This is clear from their whole¬
hearted support of Japan through all the stages that have
brought her to the position of a first-class Power. Had
these Powers lacked confidence in Japan they could, during
the last fifty years, have very seriously checked her ambitions
and interests in the Far East as well as in international
affairs. Why has our policy not done more to disarm
suspicion in modern Japan ? Before the war Japan was
occasionally suspected of playing off Russia and Germany
against the tightness of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and
to that extent revealing mistrust of the Anglo-Saxon
TiatiCns; but now Russia and Germany are scarcely avail¬
able in this rdle, and young Japan at times evinces irritation
at being wholly in the hands of what some would call the
Anglo-Saxon coalition. But if Japan could trust the
English-speaking nations not to take undue advantage
of her when she was weak, why should there be room for
suspicion now that Japan is strong i If they so warmly
helped Japan through the trying and anxious years of her
novitiate in the comity of nations, she may well trust
them for the future. Nothing short of Japan’s adopting a

zo JAPAN FROM WITHIN

policy of Prussian Kultur could undermine Anglo-Saxon
friendship for Japan.

io. Great Britain or Asia

Among the younger generation of Japan one frequently
hears expression of an ambition to make Japan the Great
Britain of Asia : to be to Asia what England has been to
Europe. That is an ideal with which no Englishman can
find fault. But can Japan hope to consummate this ideal
without some of England’s education and experience ?
Japan has problems of internal government, social and
industrial amelioration, as well as problems in relation to
China and the world, that will occupy her best minds for
some time to come. If Japan continues to command the
sympathy of the leading nations that can do most to help
her, and maintains her present policy of modernization, the
future for her is bright with hope.

At the same time it is the duty of the West to dq every¬
thing possible to remove all ground for suspicion on the
part of Japan and her neighbours. It is only fair play that
we should try to view the situation from an oriental point
of view. It is true that Occidental aggression in Asia has
been intensive, and Asia regards it as for purposes of material
gain. No doubt a good many Engl is h-speaking people
now comfortably residing in India, China and Japan, or
retired on a competence at home, could not have done
so were they not able to make more money abroad than at
home. But this fact does not necessarily imply the enrich¬
ment of the West at the expense of the East. There is
always a mutual exchange of values in service, else such
relation would cease. There are hundreds of English^
speaking people living in India, China and Japan for purely
moral and spiritual purposes. Whether the relations of
the Anglo-Saxon nations with Asia have always been in¬
spired by a policy of mutual help and uplift is a question

21

JAPAN AND ASIA

that may be answered according to one’s point of view.
No nation can afford to look too minutely into its past.
Provided the present motive and policy are right, the
future should be secure.

ii. A Further Menace

But there is a more disturbing factor still that mars
relations with Asia, and which does more to create distrust
than all other grievances combined. Asia charges the
West with a spirit of racial discrimination. British
dominions overseas have raised an impassable barrier against
immigration of Asiatics. The United States pursues a
similar policy. And over this, all Asia is angry. We are
said to send our missionaries to Asia preaching the father¬
hood of God and the brotherhood of man, teaching justice
and humanity, and even reading from the Bible that God
has “ made of one blood all nations for to dwell on the
face- of the earth.” And yet the people of Asia are
ostracized from so-called Christian countries as a menace
to Western civilization. This is taken as but one more
proof of occidental hypocrisy.

It is quite true that the English-speaking nations cannot
welcome unlimited immigration from Asia. This is not
due to race or colour, but to moral and economic reasons.
It is^the conviction of the West that the way to meet the
East on even terms is not to bring down Western standards
of labour and wages to those of the East, but to have the
East rise to the level of the West. Otherwise the West
would be seriously handicapped in the race for progress.
As it is diversity of ideals that creates diversity of wages
and needs, can the East ever meet the demand of the West
as to terms of association ? It is difficult to see how the
East can rise to Western standards, except by assimilation
with Western civilization.

At all events it is a question too vitally related to the

22 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

peace of mankind to be left where it is at present. It is
fraught with as dangerous possibilities as the problem
that created the Eifropean War; and yet the English-
speaking nations are as blissfully indifferent to it as they
were to conditions in Europe before the war. Some day
we shall be compelled to hear the voice of Asia. It is a
great thing to win a war, but a much greater thing to prevent
it. Relations with Asia will test our character and capacity
as peacemakers for some considerable time. We are faced
with one of the most baffling problems in history; and the
most fatal thing we can be guilty of is to ignore or evade it.
The agreement for a ten-year peace on the Pacific is a
mere temporary expedient to hold the surging passions
of an angry continent in leash. But it does nothing to
settle the question at issue; and when the leash snaps,
what is to be the result ? The forces of suppressed race-
spirit and oppressed colour are everywhere fermenting
towards self-determination. The only solution of the
problem lies in both sides resolving to pursue the principle
of the Golden Rule. Warnings in the press and on public
platforms against the so-called “ yellow peril ” are of no
avail; and still less international contracts and the creation
of defensive bases on the Pacific. Such convulsive efforts
are not only futile, but in bad taste. Co-operation in a
truly Christian sense is essential to fulfilment of the duty
which mankind has entrusted to East and West.

CHAPTER II

GOVERNMENT

ACCORDING to Japanese history, as interpreted
JL\ by native authority, the empire has maintained
•*- -^-perfect independence since its foundation more
than 2,500 years ago ; and the present Emperor, Yoshihito,
is the one hundred and twenty-second sovereign in un¬
broken succession to the Throne since its establishment.
It must be remembered, however, that competent scholars
cannot carry the authentic annals of Japan back further
than about half-way over this period, since no reliance
can be placed on any date prior to the fifth century a.d.
Archaeological discoveries and other considerations, however,
form a substantial basis for belief in the great antiquity
of the empire, so that national tradition was not due
wholly to mythological inference, though glimpses of
Japanese history, obtained through contemporary Korean
and Chinese records, more authentic than those of early
Yamato, disclose, not an ordered and peaceful state of
"■society at the dawn of empire, but numerous segregated
clans at strife and practically illiterate and barbarous,
the southern migrations from the Asiatic continent finally
prevailing over the northern and ultimately attaining the
sovereignty, under Jimmu Tenno, some time not long
before the Christian era.

1, Japan a Theocracy

The first emperor, Jimmu, was a direct descendant of the
gods who created Japan, and composed the rest of the world

24 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

out o£ what was left over. This ruler was a divine person,
as have been all his successors ever since. According to the
Japanese system of government the Emperor is the centre
and head of the organization of the empire. The distinc¬
tion between ruler and subject is vital and permanent.
The sovereign is sacrosanct, infallible and inviolable, and
obedience to him and his government is implicit. To him is
due the same worship and obedience as to his ancestors, the
gods of the nation, who formed the heavens and the earth.
That the Emperor rules by virtue of his divine descent in
unbroken succession from the Creator is the foundation of
Japanese government and national polity. And this pro¬
position is maintained notwithstanding that in Japanese
history emperors are represented as being seized, murdered
or banished and left to die in exile. But perhaps in its
basis and practice no faith is found wholly consistent.
Generally speaking, faith in the sanctity and infallibility
of the sovereign has been honoured by the Japanese :
obedience to him has been, and is, absolute, as to an in¬
carnate god, representing on earth the divine ancestors.

The Emperor of Japan rules, not in his own individual
right, but as the incarnate representative of the imperial
ancestors. These ancestors are worshipped and obeyed,
not because they are the ancestors of the reigning sovereign,
but because they are the rulers and the ancestors of the
Japanese people. This is why the Japanese regard them¬
selves as the most truly democratic people in the world;
for the Emperor is father, the nation his family, and the
ruler is, therefore, the incarnation of the race. To some
minds such a system may look like mere self-worship, as
all democracy must in some measure prove to be; and
when one looks at a Shinto altar, the only visible object of
devotion is a mirror which reflects the divinest image the
suppliant can see j all of which tends to confirm the assump¬
tion as to Shinto being the essence of self-worship.

But the whole thing, in its working out, is very human*

GOVERNMENT

25

Man naturally turns with awe and reverence to Kis Creator,
whose Being, by the logic of reason and religion, must
extend back to the original father qjf mankind. In Japan
there has been no dead space between the original father
and the children of to-day. Just as the Hebrew theory of
religion made God a Jew and all Jews his chosen people,
so the Japanese theory makes the Creator a Japanese, and
all Japanese his family, of whom the Emperor is head;
since in Japan there can be no family without a head, and
the family is the unit of society. Whether such .a theory
has any scientific or historical basis is not the question:
the fact that the millions of Japan believe and act on this
faith makes it true to them for all practical purposes.

2. The Divine Rule*

It is, of course, very difficult for the occidental mind
to appreciate fully the sanctity and significance of this
unique relation between the Japanese people and the
Imperial House. Without sufficient grasp of it, neverthe¬
less, no one can understand Japan. It is doubtless the
most intimate relation possible for a human mind to con¬
ceive. The Japanese are a people ready to die for points
of honour so delicate and minute that the Occident has
no lens of sufficient power to reveal them. To say that the
Japa nese believe in the divine right of the ruler is to put
their theory of religion and government only in the mildest
form. Charles I of England suffered for insisting on the
divine right of kings, but what would have happened had
he claimed to be God incarnate f

To convey clearly to the modern mind any adequate
conception of the place occupied by the Emperor of Japan
in the hearts of his subjects, and the degree of reverential
awe with which he continues to be investedeven in these days
of -doubt and materialism, is a task that can hardly be
attempted in words. The most convincing proof of faith is

2 6

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

conduct. One has to live in the midst of this mystic loyalty
and breathe its esoteric atmosphere for years, to realize
what it means. Think what it means to the sovereign
himself to realize that he is not only the vicegerent of the
ancestral gods, but is himself a god by virtue of his descent :
a god who rules, guides, guards and keeps his people with
unbounded compassion and infallible wisdom, a task
possible only to one who has inherited it, as well as the
attributes of omnipotent and benevolent ancestors in
heaven. Certainly there is no other potentate on earth
that receives such veneration and service as the ruler of
Japan.

It is this faith that renders acceptance of Western ideas
of religion so difficult in Japan. The Emperor is the
nation’s actual heavenly father, present in the flesh to share
his people’s joys and sorrows, and to whose sympathy and
support all achievement is due. Such a view of deity comes
as a shock, if it does not seem wholly preposterous, to the
pious-minded yet more rationalizing Occidental. But to
the Japanese the ruler is more of a heavenly father than
Jehovah is to the Jew or to any Western mind. He does
for his people as much as the gods of other lands do for
• theirs.

3. The Priest-king in Histort

History shows that nations pass through four stages in
their evolution before they can be sure of survival", the last
being the crucial stage. Each of these stages may be
regarded as a revolution. At first the ruler is priest as well
as king. Then comes the delegation of the ruler’s power
to an executive, leaving the king only religious authority.
This usually takes place early in the evolution of nations,
but in Japan it did not begin until the rise of the shogunate,
and was not complete until a little over half a century ago.
Next comes the breaking up of the clans and the abolition

GOVERNMENT

27

of feudalism, with realization of respect for freedom.
This began in Japan with the reconstruction of society in
1871. A third revolution is experienced when the religious
and military aristocracy gives way before democracy, the
dominance of the commercial and industrial classes. This
began in Japan some twenty years ago, and is still in process.
The final revolution, in which capital and labour attempt
an adjustment of mutual rights and duties, now under way
in the West, has scarcely yet begun in Japan, though it is
in obvious preparation.

It will at once be seen that the results of the revolutions
common to the evolution of nations have been less effective
and in other ways different in Japan, as compared with
the development of Western nations. There the power
of the priest-king persists to a degree not known in other
lands. To realize what this means in matters of ceremony,
to say nothing of its influence in practical politics, one
would have to fancy the King of Great Britain taking the
place of the Archbishop of Canterbury and celebrating
the sacred mysteries at the altar as the high-priest of the
nation on all great State occasions, as does the Emperor
of Japan before the altar of the Imperial shrine.

In ancient times the emperors of Japan, as descendants
of the ancestral gods, themselves administered the affairs
of State, and displayed their prowess on the field of battle,
as d id the mediaeval rulers of Europe, a privilege now only
open to the rulers of republics. As time went on and
government became more highly organized and complex,
the divine ruler of Japan exercised power more and more
through his executive. This afforded temptations to
political and military egotism that great families proved
unable to resist. From the seventh to the tenth century
the power of the executive was practically in the hands of
the Fujiwara family, the emperors scarcely more than
puppets, always obliged to choose the Imperial consorts
from the dominant family. Sanctity of precedent and

28

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

conservatism in Japan is seen in the fact that the Empresses
of Japan have been almost invariably selected from the same
family. The next empress will be one of the few exceptions.
With the increasing effeminacy of the Fujiwara despotism,
power passed to the great military families in the eleventh
century, the Minamoto family finally exterminating the
Taira and establishing the shogunate which continued
down to 1868. But though the Fujiwara and the military
dictators and the shoguns usurped Imperial prerogatives,
they never claimed any authority save as direct representa¬
tives of the Emperor. -The time arrived, however, when
the shogunate, having proved itself incompetent to deal with
intruding foreign nations, was abolished, and the nation re¬
turned to the rule of the divine sovereign, known in Japanese
history as the Imperial Restoration. The shogunate was
to the Japanese theocracy very much what the Papacy was
to the Church in England of mediaeval times; and the
Imperial Restoration was to Japan what the Reformation
was to England, a reversion to direct relations with the
source of authority.

4. Compiling the Constitution

With the restoration of direct relations between sovereign
and people after the fall of the shogunate in 1868, an
Imperial Constitution was granted, not creating any new
principle or policy, but stating and defining the divine
principles that originally regulated relations between ruler
and ruled. Moreover, since Japan had formally entered
the comity of nations, it was essential that a modern system
of government should be established. The Imperial
Restoration having been safely and effectively accomplished,
the Emperor made his first approach to his people with the
edict promising a constitution, with a fully organised
legislature to enforce it, after the manner of Western na tio ns.
The edict of 1881 announced that the first parliament

GOVERNMENT

29

would meet in 1890, giving the country a decade to prepare
for so great a change in national administration. Before
setting about his task of compiling l^ie national Constitu¬
tion, with which the Emperor had entrusted him, Ito,
later Prince Ito, was sent to Europe to study the political
institutions of the world ; and he selected, as a model for
Japan, the constitution of Prussia, with some reference to
that of Bavaria, as best calculated to crystallize all power in
the ruler and his executive. When the Constitution was
promulgated the people were supposed to have got what
they wanted, though some affirmed that the people
had been left out. But in that case they were left just
where they had always been, and so had no grounds for
complaint, seeing they had not asked for a change. In
any case the Constitution was a gracious gift from the
Emperor, and the nation could not but accept it in the
spirit in which it was offered. Its main effect was simply
to confirm the traditionary power of the sovereign and his
representatives, already inherent in every Japanese mind.

Those who were prone to criticize Ito for the terms of
the Constitution, and his less ambiguous and prolix
commentary on it, had to remember that no constitution
that really represented Japan could have been different.
It is Japan’s habit to boast that Tomato Damasiii is un¬
changeable and eternal: it can be lived, stated, explained,
but not improved. The task of the Imperial Constitution
■Was to state what always had been and always would be ;
and this it effectively did. As the national history was
affirmed to afford no instance of imperial tyranny or oppres¬
sion of the people, no safeguards were necessary on that side,
and so the portion of the Constitution relating to the
Imperial House was framed on a basis of great elasticity,
while all that referred to the rights and duties of the people
was embodied in coded laws. Unlike the constitutions of
other countries, that of Japan is a divine covenant, not the
result of coercion, nor yet accorded as a right, but simply

3 o JAPAN FROM WITHIN

as a gift of grace and a divine blessing, from the Emperor,
much the same as the covenant God made with Israel
through Moses and *the Law. While the Constitution
did not change the prerogative of the ruler, but rather
strengthened it, there is no doubt that it defined more
specifically the rights and duties of the people, formally
conferring on them rights of honour, life, liberty, property
and freedom of religion. The Emperor exercises his
administrative power through the two estates of the realm,
the Peers and Commoners, both of which houses must
ever bow to the Imperial will, however much among them¬
selves they may be given to division and disputation.

5. How far Government is Constitutional

If the Imperial Constitution of Japan seems to the
Western mind in some measure an anachronism, it is well
to remember that a nation under feudal regime till com¬
paratively recent times could not be expected to modernize
its political institutions all at once. Reputation for such
an achievement is easier to gain than to live up to. Nations
cannot be remade by official fiat. If Japan’s constitution
is modern in form, it is only natural that it should be feudal
in spirit and practice. The shogun resigned in 1867,
and the 270 feudal lords later on followed his example
and yielded up their respective fiefs to the Emperor because
they supposed that a modern government had been formSSr
The principal change, however, consisted only in the clans
of Tosa, Hizen, Satsuma and Choshu, long suppressed by
the rigid exclusiveness and autocracy of the Tokoguawa
family, now displacing their oppressors, and finally all
power became concentrated in the hands of Satsuma and
Choshu, as it is down to the present. The change did not
mean, and could not mean, that representative government
was any more actual, or even possible, than under the old
regime.

GOVERNMENT

3i

And so, even to-day, after more than thirty years of
legislation, the Japanese parliament that represents
57,000,000 of people, is elected bj| less than 3,000,000
voters, themselves by no means a representative class.
There is, indeed, no other modern state, except, perhaps,
Russia, where the people have less control, both in theory
and practice, over taxation and the distribution of revenue.
It is difficult for constitutional government to make much
progress in Japan so long as such government means the
downfall of the clan system. The main policy of the clans
is to retain power while nominally yielding it to the people.
The bureaucrats recognize a popular will, but they alone
are competent to interpret that will. The interests of
dans and their social, political and economic connexions,
dominate Japanese politics; and this will continue until
the rise of great national leaders representing the masses.
Poverty of leadership is a weakness of all countries, so that
in this Japan is not singular, but only suffers more from it,
since wise and efficient leadership is more imperative in a
country without much modern political experience. One of
Japan’s greatestthinkers, the lateDr. Hiroyuki Kato,declared
that “ public opinion is not necessarily a wise or a correct
opinion, and that it could not be otherwise so long as there
are not more than sixty or seventy men of distinguished
ability in the whole of Japan.” Under these circumstances
it is but natural to condude that a constitution that did
not give full power to dan interests would not be acceptable
to Japan. The Constitution places the Throne at the head
of the Executive and Legislative functions of the State,
with power of absolute veto. The Throne can legislate
without parliament, and has complete control over all dvil
and military officials.

6. The Imperial Diet

The Imperial Diet consists of two chambers, the House
of Pears and the House of Commons. The Diet meets

32 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

once a year for ninety days, but maybe convened any time
for special business. The House is usually opened by His
Majesty, the Emperor, in person on December 25, when
a speech is read from the Throne. Both houses may
initiate legislation, or petition the Throne, but the annual
Budget must be introduced by the Lower House. Every
act of the Diet is subject to Imperial veto, and its measures
to non-promulgation, if expediency so decides. In this
way legislation is often enacted apparently for the purpose
of the credit of having it on the statute boots without
suffering the inconvenience of putting it into practice.
In theory the legislature controls all national finance and
expenditure, but in practice it does not, because disburse¬
ment is based on the sovereign power of the Throne.
If a Diet so far fails in sympathy with the cabinet as to refuse
to pass the Budget, that of the previous year automatically
comes into force. Thus, under the Constitution, the
Throne and the Executive possess all the power, and the
people none. Lest the Lower House should at any time
show a disposition to get out of hand, there is the House of
Peers to “check the evil tendencies of irresponsible dis¬
cussion,” as Prince Ito said.

The Emperor, though supreme, is believed to take no
personal share in the government. But the tendency of
officialdom, when forcing an unpopular measure, to shield
itself behind the skirts of the Throne, has become a feature
of recent years, which is greatly deprecated in JapaJT.
Ordinarily the operation of government is in the hands of
the Cabinet, which must consult with the Privy Council
>in case of doubt, and the Privy Council again must consult
with the Genro , or Elder Statesmen, in matters fundamental
to the interests of the empire. As the Privy Council acts
in the capacity of adviser to the Cabinet, so the Genro is
supposed to serve the sovereign personally. The Genro
consists of retired statesmen of mature experience who have
weathered the difficulties and solved the problems of the past,

GOVERNMENT

33

and who stand next to the Throne, though the position is
wholly unofficial. The Genro really represent the clans of
Satsuma and Choshu, the former shoving its influence in
all matters pertaining to the navy, and the latter mainly
in the army. All the higher officials of the government
are in alliance, by historic relation and patronage or by
position, or even by marriage, to keep the government of
the nation a close corporation.

The Genro is a unique institution and peculiar to Japan.
As a body it appeared after a few years of modem govern¬
ment, when the veterans who created modern Japan began
to retire, and the late Emperor Meiji desired to retain them
as valuable advisers. Men like Prince Sanjo, Prince Iwakura,
Prince Matsukata, Kido, Okubo, Inouye, Saionji, Yamagata,
Okuma, Kiyoura had much to do, not only with making
the new Japan, but with determining its destiny in modem
times. Of the great names mentioned only Prince Saionji
and Viscount Kiyoura survive. The power of the Genro
has been dwindling with their numbers through death.
As things now look, new members may not be added,
and the institution may disappear. This may be a
questionable advantage to Japan, because, although the
Elder Statesmen seemed an anachronism in modem
government, and were jealous of clan interests as against
those of the common people, opponents of representative
government and savouring of narrow nationalism, they
nevertheless were a strong conservative force that con¬
trolled in a wholesome way the militarists and the new
aristocracy of wealth created by commerce; which future
cabinets may not always be able to do.

The House of Peers is composed of the nobles: which
include princes of the Blood, princes by Imperial creation,
and peers in hereditary right, or by elevation to that rank
by the Emperor, as well as counts, viscounts and barons
who have been elected to the Upper House by their respec¬
tive orders. The Emperor permits new peers to be selected
3

34 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

from among the highest taxpayers of the nation, one from
each province, a less objectionable purchase of rank than
contributions to the party purse. The term for elected
members of the House of Peers is seven years, and the
House has a membership of some four hundred.

The House of Commons is elected by some 2,800,000
voters who have attained the franchise out of a total popula¬
tion of 57,000,000. The right to vote for candidates
nominated by constituencies for membership in the
Imperial Diet is possessed by males of the age of twenty-
five years who have paid a national tax of not less than 3 yen
(about 7 shillings) in the current year. That less than
3,000,000 out of a total male population of 30,000,000
are able to qualify for the franchise, on even this slender
basis, indicates in some degree the general poverty of the
people. Incorporated cities of not less than 30,000 people
form independent electoral districts, entitled to one
member each; but when the population is over 100,000
the number of members increases, one for every 130,000
inhabitants. The rural constituencies also send one member
for every 130,000 in population. Election to the national
legislature takes place every four years, and the vote is by
secret ballot. The members of the Lower House are mainly
farmers, bankers, barristers, journalists and a few of inde¬
pendent means, comprising a total membership of 464.
Whether the fact that the government of the day seldom
loses an election indicates some degree of political corrup¬
tion must be left to individual opinion. The use of
soshi} to intimidate political rivals has been a custom of
long standing in Japan, and resort to it still is frequently
reported in the vernacular press. At present there is an
increasing degree of dissatisfaction over the question of
franchise, the demand being for universal manhood suffrage.
During the session of the Imperial Diet, when the an mi a T
franchise discussion is going on, noisy processions crowd

1 Soshi are hired ruffians sent to intimidate an opponent.

GOVERNMENT

35

the streets, ending with a demonstration before the parlia¬
ment buildings, when sometimes bombs are thrown at
the gates, and the capacity of the police to control the
crowd is severely tested. Votes for women is not a live
question in Japan, though it is on the way.

7. Political Parties

The party system in Japanese politics has been of some¬
what slow development, and party names have little signifi¬
cance, the main difference between one party and another
being, not in their platforms, but in the fact that one is
in office and the others not. As members of the Diet
receive a salary of £200 a year, a considerable income
to the average citizen of the country, it is of no small
advantage to get into parliament; but that is nothing
to what one may do by commanding influence after
election to parliament. It is also of immense import¬
ance to the clans whether the party in power represent
Satsuma or Choshu, for it must always stand for the one
or the other.

Some thirty years ago party strife was more intense than
it is to-day ; for then there was a strong liberal section in
national politics, led by the late Count Itagaki who through
years of struggle barely escaped assassination. With his
retirement the liberal cause fell upon evil days. It was the
late Prince Ito that started the idea of the party system
in order to make Japan look modern, but mainly to play off
one party against another in clan interest; and the system
was enthusiastically taken up by those who saw in it a
means of preventing the Bureaucracy retaining full control
of national affairs. But in recent years the party system
has weakened by playing into the hands of the Executive,
which is, like the House of the Peers, supposed to be inde¬
pendent of party politics, but which. in later times has
always in some degree represented a party.

36 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

There is no Conservative, Liberal, Labour or Socialist
party in Japanese politics. The present political parties
are the Seiyukai, fir Constitutionalists, which had been
dominant for some years until the election of May, 1924,
when the Keitseikai came into office. The Kenseikai, or
Progressives, led by Viscount Takaaki Kato, is a party
supposed to be militarist in sympathy, and responsible for
the notorious twenty-one demands on China ; the Seiyu-
bonto, or True Constitutionalists, is a new party split off
from the Seiyukai. Then comes the Kokuminto, or Nation¬
alist party, now changed to the Kakusbin Club , which,
though weak in numbers, has exercised a great influence
through its veteran leader, Mr. Inukai; the Jitsugyo
Doshikai is another new party; and, last, there is the
Independent party which represents but a small section of
the nation’s political forces, but which is, nevertheless,
actually more representative of the masses, who do not
really believe in party politics, affirming that such a system
diverts patriotism in the direction of party and toward
individual rather than toward national interests. In the

present Lower House of Japan the
sented as follows:

above parties are repre>

Kenseikai .

. 155

Seiyuhonto .

. '. 1x9

Seiyukai . . • •

. . IOX

Kakushin Club

. 29

Jitsugyo Doshikai . . •

. . 8

Independents

. 52

46+

8. Local Self-government

Local self-government has made great progress in modern
Japan, though it is not wholly free from political party
interest and the influence of the central government at

GOVERNMENT

37

Tokyo. The country is divided into forty-six prefectures
containing 636 kun, or counties. For each prefecture there
is a governor selected by the national'government, and he
usually represents the political party in the ascendant for
the time. The prefectural government is under the
direction of two bodies, known as the Assembly and the
Council, both elected by those entitled to the franchise in
the national elections, the term being four years. The
various counties comprising the prefectures have similar
bodies similarly appointed, the chairman of the councils
receiving appointment from the Tokyo authorities. It will
thus be seen that the heads of prefectural governments
and county councils are all selected by the national govern¬
ment, and are changed or dismissed at will by the same
authority.

Municipalities have independent local government, like
prefectures, and towns and villages have councils like
counties. The cities have mayors who preside over the
aldermen and councils, and the towns and villages have
their headmen who preside over the councils; which
officials are locally nominated but the nomination must be
confirmed by the central government. In all Japan there
are at present 57 cities, 1,400 towns and 11,000 villages.
General conditions in the towns and cities of Japan would
require a more extended description than is here possible,
but the subject would prove very interesting and instructive
to occidental readers from a comparative point of view.
Only in the larger cities and towns has modernization gone
on to any appreciable extent. In Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe,
Osaka and a few other larger centres of population pavement
of streets has begun, but will take long to be completed;
nor is any attempt at modern sewage systems much more
advanced. The local governments enforce regulations
with regard to the erection of buildings and matters erf
sanitation, but conditions in this respect are comparatively
, backward. As Japan is a land of earthquakes, experiencing

38 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

an average of 1,460 shocks annually, the unprecedented
disaster in Tokyo and Yokohama, leading to such appalling
destruction of life land property, mainly by fire, must
surely prove to the nation the necessity for wider and more
modern streets, as well as a greater extension of quake-proof
building in steel and concrete or stone.

CHAPTER III

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

T HE progress of Japanese industry forms one of the
romances of modern enterprise. At the beg innin g
of the Meiji era, in 1868, there was in the country
but one infant factory in the modern sense ; and the only
articles of domestic industry and commerce were woven
goods, earthenware, copperware and lacquer. Industry was
wholly manual, and satisfied if it met the demands of the
local community. During the more than half a century
since then the progress of native enterprise has been nothing
short of phenomenal. Even as late as 1872 all industry was
still domestic, carried on by families in individual households.
But by 1883 as many as 84 factories had appeared, with
machinery aggregating 1,382 h.p. in steam and 365 h.p.
in water. Ten years later the number of factories had
grown to 1,163, the steam h.p. totalling 31,165, and the
water h.p. 4,122. By the year 1909, a period of rapid
industrial and commercial expansion, all the factories of
Japan, including those in homes, numbered 33,000 with
a total h.p. in steam, water and electricity amounting to
419,657. As far back as 1872 there were no imports of
raw materials for manufacture. In 1895 the imports of
raw materials were valued at more than 40,000,000 yenj
and in 1910 the imports of raw cotton alone exceeded
158,000,000 yen in value. During the European War
there was naturally an enormous expansion of industry
and trade, with a corresponding increase in factories, but
with the slump that followed the cessation of war many
factories went out of operation. Omitting Government

39

40 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

undertakings and insignificant domestic industries, the
number of legitima^jfe factories is now about 21,000, repre¬
senting 23,000 engines or motors, with 1,163,000 h.p.,
and some 1,300,000 employees, of which about 800,000 are
women, some of them under fourteen years of age.

1. Industry in Old Japan

Prior to the opening of Japan to the modern world there
was no system of technical education. Industry, as far as
it existed, was local, not national, the various daimyo
keeping their hereditary craftsmen and mechanics who
transferred their knowledge to apprentices from one
generation to another. These craftsmen or artisans made
utensils, arms,cloth or objects of art for the livelihood offered
by their masters, and were usually held in contempt by their
military superiors. Nevertheless, many of them developed
remarkable skill in handicraft as well as in fine art, and
showed an intuitive love of beauty and achievement,
leaving behind them names that are still worthily and
highly honoured in the annals of art and industry.

The arrival of Portuguese and Spanish merchants and
missionaries in the sixteenth century, with manufactures
fresh from Europe, lent some measure of impetus to pro¬
motion of new industries in Japan, to say nothing of the
influence on science and civilization; but owing to the
barren rigidity of feudalism and the crippling suspicion of
foreign nations,no great progress was made until after the fall
of the shogunate in 1868, when the establishment of modern
schools began the work of technical education in chemistry,
physics, engineering, mining and metallurgy. Having
finished the courses afforded at home, many Japanese
students were sent abroad to acquire the rudiments of a
more modern system of industry. To a policy of putting
all the knowledge that can be acquired abroad to practical
application at home the Japanese Government has devoted
untiring attention, with the result that Japan is at present

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

4i

able to supply all her more pressing domestic needs, and
make almost everything as well as it <$n be made elsewhere.
Mechanical engineering, cotton and silk spinning and
weaving, shipbuilding, cement manufacture, glass, matches,
chemicals, gas works, electric development, brickmaking,
none of these large and profitable undertakings could have
attained their present development had it not been for
official assistance. Indeed the Government itself started
many of the present national industries, which, after
reaching a paying basis, were handed over to private enter¬
prise. The only ones still remaining in official hands are
the Government woollen mills, the Iwata Steel Works, the
tobacco factories, the Government Printing Works and
the Imperial Mint.

It is important to note that in the new Japan enterprise
and industry are almost wholly utilitarian, in contrast to
old Japan, where the aesthetic element was always prominent
if not uppermost. Japan is richer to-day in money, and
material interests generally, but poorer in art and the
enjoyment of life. So long as Japan was content to be
noted for the creation of a high and distinctive quality of
art, the nation had no difficulty in holding its own against
the generally cruder aesthetic productions of the West.
But Japan can hardly hope to increase her fame, or even
retain it, by attempting to compete with the West in
'shipbuilding and shoemaking. Japan is doing, however,
what seems to her of greater importance: turning out
goods that can undersell all rivals in the limitless markets
of the Far East. In the course of her rise as an industrial
nation, bent on successfully meeting occidental competi¬
tion, Japan discovered that the profits from her minor arts
and crafts, for which she was so justly celebrated, could not
support an army and navy adequate to national defence
and to maintain her position as the leading Power of
Eastern Asia. Only by ma n ufa cturing staple commodities
on a large scale at cheap prices could Japan expect to become.

42 JAPAN PROM WITHIN

and remain, a first-class power. Consequently the anti¬
quated industrial sy^em of old Japan has been almost
completely transformed after the occidental manner.
While the result is a deterioration of native arts and crafts,
it means a wonderful expansion of modern industry.

2. Division and Character of Industry

Broadly speaking, Japanese industry is divided into
factory operations conducted according to the occidental
system, though at much less cost and efficiency,- and
numerous domestic industries long indigenous to the
country, carried on in the homes of the people. The
factories simply aim at supplying the manufactures formerly
imported from abroad, or those demanded by the markets
of Eastern Asia. China is Japan’s greatest market for
cottons, and America for silk and tea. One reason why,
in certain lines of industry, efficiency is so difficult to attain,
is because the operatives are engaged in making what they
do not know the use of, and in which thay can take no
intelligent interest. It stands to reason that the artisan
cannot do so well on materials or objects he has not seen
in use, as he can on articles with which he is familiar in
life about him. Not only is the output of manufactures
not uniform in quality, but it is irregular in quantity.
Lack of uniform quality is usually due to the fact that a
small factory accepts an order for more than it can turn out
in the time specified, and so some of the order has to be
sublet to still smaller establishments, none of which are
likely to manufacture exactly the same quality. Over
factories and their output the Government has to exercise
careful supervision in the matter of goods for export, in
order to save the country’s reputation and retain markets;
but in spite of such attention the results are still not always
satisfactory to the foreign consumer. The silk industry
is especially in a transition stage from manual weaving to
machine goods; but most of the spinning in both cotton

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 43

and silk is now done on modern machines. Native cloth
in both cotton and silk is woven only'i foot wide in pieces
of 30 feet or so, while the fabrics for export have to be about
a yard wide. This difference between home and foreign
requirements is only one example of what puzzles the
worker. The most rapid expansion of industry in recent
years has been in cotton spinning and weaving, as well as
in chemical industries. The making of machinery has not
made such rapid progress, but parts are made in increasing
quantities.

3. Operatives

Something has already been said as to the inefficiency
of the oriental as contrasted with the occidental factory
operative. This is due mostly to the absence of any great
number of skilled artisans in Japanese industry. Another
feature in which the Eastern and Western systems appear in
striking contrast is in the predominance of female operatives
in Japan. With so rapid an expansion of industry the lack
of skilled labour is not to be wondered at. Even in Govern¬
ment arsenals, steel mills and shipyards, where skilled
labour is at its best, all work is more or less characterized
by inefficiency, especially in quantity of output, which is
much less, man for man, than is the case with the occidental
artisan. Female operatives, on the other hand, are usually
more deft in factory work than the women of Western
countries ; which contributes materially to the success of
many important Japanese industries, like cotton, tea and
silk. In silk-reeling women do go per cent of the work ;
in cigarette-making, network, cord-making, they do 80 per
cent; while in drawn work, mat-making and straw-plaiting
they do 70 per cent. Over 60 per cent of the cotton-mill
hands are women; and a similar percentage of females
obtains in such industries as paper-making, meat-packing
and tinning and fruit-canning. Thus Japanese industry
is seen still to be largely in the hands of women, who form,

44 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

moreover, the majority of the labourers, in contrast with
Western industry wtych is much more largely a man’s job.

4. Cotton Industry

No department of Japanese enterprise has made more
phenomenal progress than that of cotton. The first
cotton mill appeared in 1862. By 1889 no less than 215,000
spindles were registered, and in 1900 these had arisen to
over 1,000,000, the mills centring chiefly in Osaka. The
present number of spindles is well over 3,500,000, in
170 mills owned by 41 companies investing each a capital
of over 1,000,000 yen. The annual value of woven fabric
is ten times above what it was ten years ago. Of the
600,000,000 yards annually produced, about one-third is
exported. The secret of this progress lies in the demand
for cotton not only in Japan, but throughout Eastern Asia,
where it is the chief clothing. The particulars of Japan’s
progress in the cotton industry must be taken as in some
degree indicating her general industrial advance in recent
years, because it was largely on account of her success in
cotton manufactures that Japan was emboldened to launch
out in so many other lines. Japan is not in any important
sense a cotton-growing country, since she harvests no more
than some 10,000 bales a year, and that a short fibre like
Chinese cotton, used only for inferior fabric. In Korea,
however, more serious efforts are being made to cultivate
a superior grade of raw cotton from American seed, but
production is not yet of marketable quantity. Japan
gets 60 per cent of her raw cotton from India, 25 per cent
from America, 8 per cent from China and 2 per cent from
Egypt, of an annual value of some 300,000,000 yen.

Owing to the demand for coarser counts the raw cottons
are mixed, especially for the hand looms. But the Japanese
are turning more and more to finer qualities, and, by
combing, are producing yarns up to 6o’s on ring frames,
though, of course, most of the work is still confined to thick

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

45

numbers. The average seems to be growing finer, for the
annual consumption of bales per ^housand spindles is
decreasing, though still much higher than in India and
England. Japanese mills suffer from inability to produce
uniformity in size of filament, more especially in mills em¬
ploying unskilled operatives and over-worked machinery
under unhygienic conditions. In yarn Japan’s annual
output for some time has been about 2,000,000 bundles,
of which more than half is consumed at home, the rest going
mostly to China.

Cotton weaving is of a somewhat later development
than spinning in Japanese industry, but it is now almost as
important, since at least 30 out of the 41 companies produce
fabric. In 1910 the cotton looms in operation numbered
only 17,000 ; by 1916 they had increased to 30,000, and
the present number in operation is well over 45,000, which,
of course, is yet small compared with the 800,000 of Lan¬
cashire. So far, in yarns, it has been possible for Japan to
compete mainly in the markets demanding coarser goods,
and her rivals in this line are oriental rather than occidental.
Even the finer goods that Japan is sending to India are
inferior to those produced in Lancashire, which they would
fain emulate.

The most significant feature of the present situation
is that Japan is able to meet the domestic demand for
cotton yarns and cotton piece goods. The nation’s main
cotton imports in recent years have been satins, italians,
umbrella cloths, cotton velvets, victoria lawns and others
similarly difficult to make at home ; while her exports are
chiefly coarser qualities like jeans, T-cloths, shirtings,
sheetings and flannelette of low grade, going for the most
part to India, China, Australia and the South Seas.

5. Silk

Japan’s natural advantage in having a climate favourable
both to the mulberry tree and the silk-worm marks her out

46 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

as one of the. great silk-producing countries of the world;
while her long expedience in sericulture and silk spinning
and weaving, together with an unusual degree of native
deftness in the industry, leave her without serious rivals
in this line of enterprise. Having pursued this industry
for over 1,400 years, Japan has made it her largest and most
important undertaking. Japan is the largest exporter of
raw silk in the world. By raw silk is meant the fibre un¬
wound from the cocoons and reeled into hanks. While
the Japanese are experts in reeling, they have made slow
progress in thrown silk; consequently most of the export
is raw silk. Spun silk, in contrast with thrown silk, is made
from silk waste, much as yarn is from wool, and this spun
silk is exported to weavers in America and Europe. In
waste silk Japan turns out about 20,000,000 pounds annually,
the greater part going abroad. China is Japan’s only
serious rival in waste silk, producing about 18,000,000
pounds a year. Silk weaving, however, is one of Japan’s
most artistic specialties, the annual value of output in silk
piece goods amounting to over 200,000,000 yen. Of these
the most important item is the beautiful and delicate fabric
known as habutee , a thin undyed material in great demand
by occidental women. Among the still more lovely silk
productions of Japan are silk brocade and tapestry, in the
making of which the Japanese are unrivalled. More than
a million persons, mostly women, are occupied in the silk
industry. There is also a large output of silk-cotton goods,
used chiefly at home for clothing, the annual value being
about 50,000,000 yen.

6. Woollens

The woollen industry, unlike silk, is not indigenous to
Japan ; and, therefore, the quality and quantity are not
yet equal to successful competition in foreign markets.
The first woollen mills were started by the Government
in 1877 to make army cloth, and various other kinds of cloth
. were attempted ; but, even with this start, wool would

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

47

have remained more or less of an exotic, were it not for
conversion into mousseline-de-laine, a light fabric which the
Japanese have now made a distinct specialty and incorpor¬
ated into their national dress. The manufacture of this
wool-muslin is at present the main woollen industry, apart
from the production of cloth for army and navy, with also
a considerable output of serges and thin piece-goods. The
annual production of wool-muslin is about 50,000,000 yards
valued at some 20,000,000 yen, by far the larger part being
consumed at home. In recent years the use of Western
clothing for men has greatly increased, especially in banks,
business offices and among Government officials; so that
the local woollen mills have now begun to make union
worsted suitings, but the best suitings used in Japan still
come from British mills. During the European War there
was a great increase in the demand for woollen cloth in
Japan, the demand subsequently declining. Before the
war Japanese looms were dependent mostly on Germany,
England and Australia for woollen tops; but when supplies
were cut off by the war, they began installing more machine
combs, and are now better able to handle raw wool, most
of which comes from Australia and South Africa. Wool¬
raising to any great extent is impracticable in Japan for
want of sheep pasturage, the native bamboo grass being fatal
to sheep, though the Government is trying to obviate the
difficulty by promoting sheep ranches where European
grass seed is sown. But for many years to come Japan must
continue to look abroad for her wool supplies. There is
always in Japan a big demand for woollen blankets and
rugs. Other weaving industries are in hemp and jute,
supplying the usual materials, especially sackcloth,canvas and
a thin materialfor summer wear,as well as netting of all kinds.

7. Ceramics and Porcelain

The making of ceramic and all kinds of porcelain has been
a specialty of Japan for many centuries, and this ware is still

48 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

among the most artistic productions of the country. The
art originally came frpm China and Korea, the first potters
settling at Arita where some of the most delicate china is
still made. Seto and Kutani wares are also universally
admired. Nagoya and Gifu have recently been making
most of the gaudy ware so greatly in demand abroad. The
old-fashioned wood-baking process is still used for the best
porcelain, though modern methods have been introduced
for the production of hurried cheap work. Printing, for
hand-painting, is cheapening the art of porcelain decoration,
though beautiful specimens of hand-painted work, as well
as matchless, pieces of faience, can still be had. Porcelain
forms the bulk of Japan’s production, but faience, stone-
china and terra-cotta are finding increased output. In
addition to the usual table and kitchen ware, fancy pieces
and toys, attention is now being given to the production
of sanitary and scientific appliances, as well as medical and
other apparatus, in this ware. Enamel-ware, as well as
bricks and tiles, also has an increasing production.

8. Lacquer

On account of its high excellence of form, design, colour
and execution Japanese lacquer holds an important place
among the art industries of the nation. The industry has
recently suffered from excess of output and decrease of
exports, the latter due chiefly to use of cheap Chinese
lacquer and imperfect preparation of the wood, which is
fatal when the goods reach a drier climate. Papier-
mache imitations from Germany and elsewhere have
come into competition abroad where taste is not sufficiently
developed to recognize the difference. About two-thirds
of the lacquer juice used in Japan comes from China;
and, being obtained from wild trees, and crudely refined,
it is always inferior to Japanese lacquer. There are some
thirty kinds of plain, metallic and coloured lacquers, each
with a different name and slightly differing in appearance,

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

49

but gold, red, brown and plain are the most popular. The
beautiful deep red of the Luchu lacquer is inimitable.
Lacquer is also coming into use for the finishing of cars and
carriages, as well as for the coating of ship-bottoms. The
annual output of lacquer is valued at some 13,000,000 yen,
of which about 1,000,000 yen is exported.

9. Brewing and Distilling

The making of sake, shoyu (soy) and beer now represents
big investment and good dividends in Japan. Wine
making is still in its infancy, and whisky has hardly begun,
except perhaps the famous, or infamous, Osaka Scotch.
Cheap spirits from prohibition countries at present render
domestic competition almost impossible. Sake, the native
wine, distilled from rice, and shoyu, used as a sauce on
food, have been native industries for centuries, and for
which certain districts have long been famous both as to
quality and quantity of output. The annual production
of sake alone is valued at some 200,000,000 yen, yielding
the State about 1,000,000 yen in tax. The export of
sake, which is not large, goes chiefly to Japanese settlements
abroad. Of shoyu the annual production is about
100,000,000 gallons, which has to pay a tax of some
5,000,000 yen. The brewing of beer, started in 1871 by
German experts, has made phenomenal progress in recent
years, under native supervision. The barley is grown from
imported seed, mostly in Hokkaido. The annual production
of the five breweries is valued at some 400,000,000 yen.
Beer is of excellent quality and finds increasing consumption
in Japan, as the breweries have public beer-halls and saloons
in $0 many places; and there is a large export of the beverage
to countries on the Pacific.

10. Miscellaneous Industries

Japan’s chemical industry, long in a desultory condition,
received a tremendous impetus during the war, especially
4

So JAPAN FROM WITHIN

in coal-tar, alkaline and electro-chemical enterprise, as well
as to some extent in metal refining, particularly zinc. The
manufacture of saltpetre with nitrogen from the air by
electrical process, of phosphorus in large quantities, of
chlorate of potash, glycerine from fish oil, commercial
oxygen, sulphate of ammonia and carbide, now bids fair
to meet domestic requirements. Practically all kinds of
drugs, chemicals and serums are made in Japan, with ex¬
ports to Asiatic countries. The Government is providing
free laboratories for technical training of chemical experts,
and wealthy public-spirited citizens are promoting the
policy.

Machine-making has been a slow industry in Japan, owing
to lack of skilled labour, rendering importation cheaper
than manufacture ; and, though this is changing, the
heavier machines are still imported, especially a certain
proportion of the locomotives and engines, and most of
the turbines, electric generators and heavy railway machines,
as well as weaving, spinning and printing machines.
Japanese machine shops are confined mainly to turning
out small machine tools, boilers, lathes, railway carriages
and trucks, cranes, electric and telephone apparatus.
Many establishments import bicycles and motor cars in
parts and assemble them in their own names. The demand
for steel in Japan is about 2,000,000 tons a year, of which
the home foundries can supply no more than one-half.
The war gave enormous impetus to the machine industry,
the annual value of output jumping from 100,000,000 yen
in 1916 to over 300,000,000 yen at the end of the war.
Imports of all kinds of machinery still total 111,000,000
yen in value. Exports, which include clocks and watches,
scientific instruments, organs and ships’ parts, are valued
at 150,000,000 yen a year.

Matches, which took the place of the old flint and steel
in 1875, have now an annual export value, of 50,000,000
yen, destinations being chiefly China, India, the South Seas

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

5i

and the United States. Paper-making is another important
industry, chiefly from pulp obtained in Hokkaido or Sag-
halien or imported from Scandinavia, the annual production
being some 500,000,000 pounds valued at 40,000,000 yen.
A good deal of the finer kinds of business paper is still
imported, however. The matchless fibre of the native
Japanese paper made from native wood is well known, and
this quality finds much exportation. Soap is now made in
Japan in enormous quantities, of which the annual output
is valued at 20,000,000 yen, and annual exports to the
amount of some 4,000,000 yen, mostly to China. Lever
Brothers of England have now joined in this enterprise
on Japanese soil. Celluloid manufacture began in 1908
and the annual production has now reached a value of
7,000,000 yen. The manufacture of artificial fertilizers
occupies an important place in the national economy.
For centuries the land was manured with ordure from the
towns and cities, and this is still practised almost universally;
but, besides fish manure, artificial manure is now used, made
from chemicals and otherwise, with a total annual value of
some 60,000,000 yen. Fish oil , taken from the herring,
sardine and whale, is a big industry, as the oil is in much
demand for cookery purposes abroad, the Japanese them¬
selves always using vegetable oil for such purposes. The
manufacture of all kinds of glass is now a well-established
enterprise in Japan, of which the yearly output is valued
at 28,000,000 yen, with exports to China and India. The
making of shell-buttons is also a profitable business with an
annual value of 10,000,000 yen, exports going almost
everywhere. All sorts of watches and clocks are turned out,
to the value of more than 1,000,000 yen a year. Since the
introduction of electricity so universally, the .gas industry
has suffered, but is still going on. Electrical enterprise is
advancing rapidly, used, as the current is, for lighting and
motive power almost everywhere. Owing to the almost
limitless facilities for hydro-electric operation and produc-

52 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

tion, the current is cheap. Sugar is another thriving
industry, production coming mainly from the cane-fields
of Formosa, though some is grown in Japan proper.
Japanese flour mills produce about 20,000,000 sacks a year,
but there is a large importation from Canada, the United
States and Australia. The manufacture of rubber tyres ,
peppermint, vegetable wax, vegetable oil, vegetable indigo,
braids of straw, hemp and chip, figured and fancy matting,
leather, furs, hosiery, tinned foods, isinglass, umbrellas,
toys, brushes of all kinds, may be regarded as important in
Japanese industry.

The above is but a rapid and superficial survey of the
enormous industrial enterprise under way in Japan ; but it
is sufficient to fulfil the purpose of this book in showing
Japan’s potentiality for expansion in industry. On this
depends the realization of Japan’s hope to find employment
for her population at home rather than to undertake the
unpleasanter task of finding a vent for emigration abroad.
Other big industries of a somewhat different nature, such
as mining, shipbuilding, agriculture and fisheries, will be
found treated separately in this volume.

CHAPTER IV

COMMERCE AND TRADE

T HE story of Japan’s abnormal trade development,
and her appearance as a rival of more advanced na¬
tions in the great trade-fields of the world, is no less
interesting and remarkable than the nation’s phenomenal ex¬
pansion of industry already described. As Japanese history
runs back till lost in the mythic age, it is impossible to say
just when the country’s foreign commerce began ; but, in
all probability, the immigrants from the continent who col¬
onized the coast of Izumo tried to keep up some measure of
communication with the ancestral mainland, and to bring
over, to whatever extent possible, the available necessities of
civilization. In the most ancient records there is mention of
iron for spears, and of earthenware utensils, as well as of silk
and hemp, all of which must at first have been imported from
Korea. In ancient Yamato imports must have formed a
more practical commodity than exports. With the dawn
of authentic history in the sixth century a.d., we read of
horses, cotton cloth, musical instruments and jewels, as
well as of bronze mirrors, coming from the continent.
It is safe to assume that with increasing intercourse between
Yamato and China in the seventh century, and still more in
the eighth, went on a corresponding development of trade,
though the year’s turnover was probably insufficient
. seriously to affect the finances of the infant empire much
one way or the other, since it apparently was much more
concerned with extracting tribute from Korea than with
pushing commercial enterprise. At any rate, trade was

54 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

sufficient to enable the superior intelligence and civilization
of the early settlers to overcome the savage aborigines who
were left to defend themselves with their more primitive
weapons and implements of war. The very remarkable
development of civilization and culture that characterized
the Heian era (800-1100) implied an unusual degree of
commercial intercourse with Korea and China, if not also
with India, promoted, as commerce not infrequently is,
by religion.

1. First Commerce with Europe

With the advent of Europeans in the sixteenth century,
Japanese commerce entered on a new phase. The long
period of civil strife which the Tokugawa regime ended
must have given prominence to trade in weapons and
munitions of war. Just when the land was seething with
blood and anarchy, a Chinese junk was blown ashore on the
coasts of Japan, with a Portuguese merchant adventurer
on the look-out for new fields of trade. He and his two
companions were not slow to see that Japan was com¬
mercially virgin soil well worth exploitation; and the
castaways in time returned to their colony with a tale that
brought more Portuguese traders eager to enter the new
market. The foreign merchants were welcomed by the
iaimyo of the various fiefs, and these feudatories were soon
in competition with one another, offering facilities for
foreign trade.

For half a century or so the Portuguese merchants had
things all their own way; but, having taken into their
service and confidence a Dutchman named Linschoten,
they gave away the secret j and when the Dutch shook off
the domination of Spain, which at that time held Portugal,
they resolved to send ships of their own to the Far East,
since they were no longer allowed to share in oriental trade
at Lisbon. On finding their hated rivals in possession of
the Japanese market, the Dutch naturally did all in their

COMMERCE AND TRADE

55

power to drive them out, by fair means or foul; and when
they finally succeeded in doing this by arousing the sus¬
picions of the Japanese authorities against the political and
religious motives of the Portuguese and Spanish traders
and friars, then the English arrived in Japan, whom the
Dutch in turn hated and tried to hinder in trade with the
country. From these bickerings and animosities between
people of the same religion, the Japanese got a very poor
impression of Western merchants who were willing to betray
one another for the sake of gold; and, consequently in
1639 all the Portuguese and Spanish were banished the
country, the foreign religion exterminated, and the Dutch
exiled to Deshima, a tiny island now part of the mainland
at Nagasaki, the English having retired from Japan of their
own accord before the edict of banishment.

But the foreigners did a roaring trade while it lasted,
amounting to over £660,000 annually; and during their
century of exploitation carried out of Japan no less than
100,000,000 yen in almost pure gold, until the shogun had
at last to place restriction on the export of the precious
metal. The Dutch were accustomed to make a clear gain
of 100 per cent on each voyage, while the English gave up
after losses amounting to £40,000 in ten years. But the
foreigners had succeeded in opening trade between Japan
and the Occident, bringing into the country mainly fire¬
arms, gunpowder, woollens and various utensils, while
taking in exchange silk, lacquer and, above all, gold.

There are indications that the Japanese did not under¬
stand the foreign methods of barter and trade. The pre¬
dominance of the military spirit which always takes rather
than gives, and despises the mere bargainer, placed the
mer chant at a disadvantage; and it is, therefore, all the
more remarkable that the foreign traders did so well.
But the Japanese did not, of course, realize the value of
their gold coinage from a Western point of view. • Trade in
Japan was carried on mainly by the lowest classes of the

56 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

people who won a reputation as tricksters and barter-
mongers ; and when the country, after more than zoo
years of seclusion, opened up to foreign trade in 1858,
the status of the merchants had not changed.

2. Dawn of Modern Trade

After Commodore Perry’s opening of Japan in 1854, fol¬
lowed by treaties of commerce with all the leading nations
in 1858-9, the foreign merchant began to appear in all the
ports open to trade, and in a short time laid the foundations
of that enormous expansion of commerce that has been
‘subsequently built up. From 1868 Japan’s commercial
history has been a story of unbroken progress. The first
essays at foreign trade were overcast by the gloom of the
brief wars of the Restoration, and the Satsuma rebellion
a decade later; and some of the earliest imports were
munitions for the respective belligerents. Foreigners and
Japanese were alike ignorant of each other’s ways and
customs, and consequently of the proper values of what
either had to sell. During the early years of the Meiji
era trade had to struggle against a depreciated irredeemable
paper money, liable to fluctuations of value from day to
day, as in Germany after the European War ; while a total
want of credit, and a low productive capacity on the part
of the people, added further complications to commerce.
The nation, as We have seen, had practically no modem
manufacturing industries. Exports were confined for the
most part to agricultural products, such as silk, tea and rice,
the only manufactures being objects like porcelains, fans
and lacquer. Other difficulties arose from the fact that
although Japan was a bi-metallic country, silver had
practically displaced gold ; and as the silver market depred¬
ated throughout the world, the reaction on Japanese credit
and foreign trade was unfavourable. With the revision
.of the monetary system in 1871, introducing a uniform

COMMERCE AND TRADE

57

currency, and the establishment of a legal system of weights
and measures in 1875, together with needed improvements
in communications and media of exchange, commerce
entered on a newer and more progressive stage wherein
modern methods became possible.

The general commercial awakening of the nation must
in a large measure be ascribed to the efficient assistance
of the Government in aiming definitely at improvement
of commercial institutions, the establishment of banks,
educational facilities and means of communication, based
on Western systems. The result was a marked growth
in the expansion of trade, together with greatly improved
methods in commercial intercourse. By the year 1878
the total trade of the country had arisen to twice what
it was at the beginning of the Restoration period in 1868,
and ten years later it was nearly three times that of the
previous decade. Capital invested in Japanese commercial
companies in 1908 was twice that of the ten years before,
amounting to about 120,000,000 yen, a sum that had
swollen to 2,700,000,000 yen in 1916. In 1908 the bills
exchanged at the national clearing-houses amounted to
6,370,000,000 yen, while at present it is in the vicinity
of 56,000,000,000 yen. The total foreign trade of Japan
which was valued at about 27,000,000 yen in 1868 has
to-day increased to some 3,700,000,000 yen.

3. Causes of Rapid Trade Expansion

Two great landmarks in the history of Japan’s foreign
trade are the war with China in 1895 and that with Russia
in 1905. The indemnity of 350,000,000 yen, which Japan
received from China, was largely applied to reform of
national currency; and in 1897 the gold standard was
adopted, when trade, freed from speculative risks insepar¬
able from fluctuating exchanges in silver currency, rapidly
advanced, lending impetus to manufacturing industries as

58 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

well. Indeed, a tide of commercial prosperity seemed to
overflow Japan after the war with China; and in 1899
the new customs tariff increased import duties to from
5 to 15 per cent; so that from this period the value of
goods imported must be taken to represent the cost of the
goods as landed in Japan, instead of, as before, the cost
at the place of production.

But a brief glance at the figures is sufficient to show the
remarkable expansion of Japanese trade in recent years,
especially, as has been suggested, since the wars with China
and Russia respectively. At the beginning of the Meiji
era the total trade of the country was something over
26,000,000 yen. Ten years later the foreign trade had
more than doubled, amounting to some 56,000,000 yen;
while during the succeeding decade it increased five-fold.
In 1887, some ten years before the war with China, the
value of Japan’s total foreign trade annually was about
97,000,000 yen, but two years after the war it had jumped
to 382,440,000 yen, or about four times the total of a decade
earlier. The successful termination of the Sino-Japanese
war gave a tremendous impetus to industrial expansion on
account of influx of capital for indemnity; and this ratio
of increase was steadily maintained up to the outbreak of
war with Russia, one year after the termination of which
the foreign trade of Japan arose to 926,000,000 yen, or
more than nine times that of 1887. It may be questioned
whether any other country has shown in its foreign trade
such a high ratio of progress in a similar space of time.
With the outbreak of the war in Europe the foreign trade
of Japan grew to a volume and value still more unprece¬
dented, totalling over 1,833,000,000 yen for 1916, and
reaching 5,512,000,000 by the end of the war.

The causes of this phenomenal expansion must be
ascribed mainly to the increasing demand for Japanese
goods abroad, the rapid increase of industrial enterprise
within the country, and especially to the exigencies of the

COMMERCE AND TRADE 59

European War when Japan so largely gained the markets
from which the belligerents had to withdraw while pre¬
occupied with Europe. Of course the increase of 112
per cent shown by the war years cannot be taken as normal,
so that the normal ratio of increase must here be deducted
from the actual, and a careful examination of the figures
from this point of view would bring the increase down to
about 62 per cent as due to the war alone. And at the
same time it should be borne in mind that such calcula¬
tions deal with values only and not with volume; and
since the prices of almost all commodities advanced enor¬
mously in the war years, the actual quantities of imports
and exports should also be examined in order to arrive at
an accurate estimate of the ratio of increase in trade.
During the war Japan for the first time in her history
steadily maintained a favourable balance of trade, but
afterwards an adverse balance set in and has continued,
amounting to over 300,000,000 yen annually. The fol¬
lowing table presents the situation of imports and exports
for four recent years :

1920

1921

1922

1923

Exports »
Imports .

2.277.672.000

3.234,6x9,000

1,156,804,000

*.598,080,000

1 >47 I .954.ooo

3,201.366,000

1.427.776.000

2,2x5,4x2,000

Total .

5,512,582,000

3/>43.*88 f OOO

4. Survey of Markets

A survey of the general position indicates that the
United States of America stands foremost in Japan’s export
trade, China coming next, followed by England, France,
Russia, British India and Italy. Germany and Austria
were eliminated by the war, but have since returned and
are regaining their trade with Japan. Asia continues to
be Japan’s best customer, America coming second as a
purchaser, and Europe third, though the whole of Europe

6o

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

does not buy as much as America or China from Japan.
The war years saw an extraordinary increase in Japan’s
trade with Russia, the Dutch East Indies, the South Sea
Islands and South America, with a considerable extension
in Egypt and South Africa and Australia, but this has
declined with the return of the belligerent countries to
these markets. In regard to imports, Japan still draws
most of her stock from British India, England, the United
States, after which come China, the Dutch East Indies
and French China.

The main volume of Japanese exports to Europe con¬
sists of foodstuffs, raw materials and indigenous manufac¬
tures in the way of luxuries, while to America go chiefly
tea and raw silk, India and China taking mainly cotton
yarns and textiles, with recent extension of these exports
to the South Seas. With the exception of cotton hosiery,
Japan’s latest applications of mechanical science play, as
yet, an exceedingly small part in Western markets where
her exports would have shown but slight increase had it
not been for the war in Europe ; but a beginning has been
made,, and the future will see increasing competition.
Most of Japan’s manufactures go,for the present, to Eastern
markets, in which direction the ratio of increase is more
pronounced. In the matter of imports, however, Japan
gets from Europe chiefly manufactured goods, while de¬
riving her provisions mostly from oriental countries. With
her rapid development of domestic industry, Japan will
probably continue to import less manufactures from the
West, and continue to depend on Eastern countries for her
raw materials.

i

5. Proportion of Raw Materials to Finished
4 Articles

Enough has been said to show that Japan, in a remarkably
brief period, has developed from a purely agricultural to
an important industrial and commercial nation. During

COMMERCE AND TRADE

61

the enforcement of the Tokugawa policy of isolation trade
depended almost wholly on agriculture ; and when the
country was again opened to foreign trade there was an
immediate influx of Western manufactures, and a return
trade was at once established. In 1868 trade consisted
chiefly of imports of cotton and woollen cloth, and exports
of tea and raw silk, the latter covering at least two-thirds
of the total value of exports. As time went on and Wes¬
tern manufacturing processes were introduced, output
developed to a point where the dofnestic demand was
being met and a surplus left over for exportation. This
was particularly the case with cotton goods, sheetings,
watches, beer and groceries, which had changed from
being the largest figures among imports to being important
exports. This tendency is emphasized by the fact that
while the total value of Japanese imports to-day is about
forty times greater than the figures for 1868, the importa¬
tion of cotton is only five times as great, and of other
textiles and manufactured clothing only some thirteen
times as great.

The nature of a country’s imports and exports is always
an accurate reflection of its industrial and tradal conditions;
for, no matter how great its increase of foreign trade may
be, the circumstances cannot be taken as proof of per¬
manent progress if imports are mainly manufactures, and
exports mostly raw materials. It has already been shown
that most of Japan’s exports up to 1877 were raw materials,
while her machine-made products were all imported, a
condition that during the last decade or so has been com¬
pletely reversed. Thus it has come about that the class of
commodities formerly supplied to Japan from abroad has
now in turn become the chief item in Japan’s exports,
which accounts for the wonderful development already
shown in the country’s foreign trade. This steady decline
in the importation of manufactured articles, simultaneously
with an increasing domestic demand for such goods, proves

62

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

the reality of Japan’s industrial progress, fostered largely
by her protective tariff. As time goes on Japan will doubt¬
less become still more independent of foreign nations as
regards all manufactures, except, perhaps, machinery; and
she will, therefore, pursue a policy of importing mostly
raw materials and exporting finished articles. How far
Japan will be able to maintain this policy in competition
with the usually superior manufactures of Western coun¬
tries is an interesting question. Complaints in regard to
the quantity and quality of Japanese manufactures con¬
tinue, though less frequently, to be made by foreign buyers.

Notwithstanding the great extension of trade experi¬
enced by Japan in recent years, the value of her trade per
head of the population is still only some 30 yen, compared
with over 260 yen per head in Great Britain, a contrast
very striking, especially as the per capita ratio of Japanese
trade is even lower than that of Spain and Italy. More¬
over, in such articles as high-grade woollens, iron, machinery,
dyes and paper, Japan will be more or less dependent on
foreign countries for some time to come, though in chemical
dyes and cheap paper there has been rapid development
since the European War. Yet as regards all the very
highest classes of goods, except silk, Japan still depends on
other countries. In 1913, for example, Japan imported
iron, machinery, woollen stuffs, fine cotton fabrics and
paper to the value of 29,000,000 yen; but in 1916, in spite
of the decline of imports on account of the war, Japan
managed to import these goods to the value of 110,000,000
yen, and the figure is much larger to-day.

6. Principal Exports and Imports

Japan’s principal exports at present are raw silk, cotton
yarns and fabrics, silk goods, copper, coal, sugar, matches,
knitted goods, waste silk, tea, hemp plaits, timber, fish
both salted and dried, earthenware, straw plait, chip plait,

COMMERCE AND TRADE

63

hats, handkerchiefs, rice, figured matting, camphpr, menthol
crystal, peppermint oil, fish oil, whale oil, canned and
bottled foods, glass and glassware, buttons, paper, towels,
machinery and accessories, toys, pulse, brushes, fruits, sake,
edible seaweed, sulphur, bamboo ware, umbrellas, isinglass,
ships, boats, patent medicines, soaps, vegetables and others ;
of which silk, copper, camphor, braids and fish oil go
chiefly to America and Europe, while cottons, knitted
goods and marine products as well as sugar go for the
most part to oriental countries. Porcelain and timber go
to America, Australia and Mexico.

The principal imports are raw cotton, ginned cotton,
rice, fertilizers, sugar, machinery, wool, crude sulphuric
acid, ammonia, woollen goods, wheat, petroleum, woollen
yarns, finer cottons, mineral phosphates, flax, hemp, vege¬
table fibres, paper pulp, aniline dyes, railway equipment,
coal, ships, boats, india-rubber, gutta-percha, zinc, artificial
indigo, bicycles and accessories, motor cars and accessories,
iron goods, drugs and chemicals; of which most of the
iron, machinery and woollens come from Great Britain,
raw cotton from the United States, India, Egypt and China ;
wool from Australia, Germany and South Africa; sugar
. and cereals from India and oriental lands; paper from
England, Germany and Austria ; petroleum from America;
and fertilizers from South America.

7. Japan’s Trade Policy

It is not too much to say that the entire population of
Japan is now absorbed in the ambition to become supreme
in the political and commercial world of Eastern Asia.
With Japan’s enormous expansion of industry, trade and
shipping since the European War, and her close, accurate
investigation of trade conditions everywhere, the com¬
merce <xf the country may be expected to find permanent
, extension in fields formerly held by - Western countries,

64 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

more especially in India, South. America, South Africa, the
South Sea Islands, Australia and China ; while a high tariff
protects the nation’s nascent industries from competition
in the way of foreign imports. Though Japan has still to
show that she can hold her own against the superior manu¬
factures of countries like England and the United States,
yet owing to her cheaper labour, longer working hours,
and better knowledge of oriental markets, Japan cherishes
every hope of success, and has already driven some of her
Western rivals from the cotton and tobacco markets of
the Far East. Japan’s invasion of the Indian market is
pronounced, though her chances there may be problematical.
Japan has, moreover, to remember that her phenomenal
expansion in industry and trade has been in no small mea¬
sure due to satisfactory relations with the nations she now
hopes to rival, and even outdistance, in the illimitable
trade fields of Asia.

The question of direct trade is one of increasing interest
to foreigners and Japanese alike. The foundations of
Japan’s foreign trade were laid by foreign middlemen from
Europe and America, who established branches or agencies
in the open ports at a time when Japan had practically no
commercial intercourse with the outside world. During
the first years of Japan’s foreign trade these intermediaries
were essential to a proper facilitation of trade ; but with
the increasing expansion of commerce in recent years, the
Japanese have been taking a corresponding share of the
trade, and efforts are being made to get rid of the foreign
middleman and bring the volume of trade as far as pos¬
sible into native hands. This movement is known as
‘ direct trade.’ The policy is regarded by foreign mer¬
chants as a mistaken one, since the foreign merchant,
resident in Japan, knows the needs of the foreign market
best, and is more trusted by occidental purchasers in
promoting transactions with Japan. That the policy of
eliminating the foreign middleman is not wholly successful

COMMERCE AND TRADE 65

may be seen from the large foreignl firms still doing a
profitable business in Japan, as well as from the fact that
about 60 per cent of the country’s export trade still passes
through their hands.

It has already been shown that by the introduction of
a high protective tariff and promotion of rapid industrial
development Japan has succeeded in reducing imports, but
their volume is still large, and a favourable balance of trade
cannot be maintained. While Japan commands the Orien¬
tal market in the bare necessities of life, she can never
afford to be defiant towards her competitors, with whom
in any tariff war she must inevitably suffer. Apart from
silk, tea, copper, camphor and coal Japan has no staple
commodities for which the Western world has absolutely
to depend on her. She must always remain more beholden
to her friends than they to her. Japan’s markets cannot
be compared to those of the countries she most desires
to rival. In both England and the United States the
consuming power of the individual is ten times what it
is in Japan, to say nothing of greater purchasing power.
Ignoring these facts, Japan has gone on increasing her
tariff until in some items it is now almost prohibitive.
Not over 5 per cent in 1896, it jumped to over 8 per cent
in 1900, and is now over 17 per cent, though reputedly re¬
duced ; it brings in an annual revenue < 5 f over 65,000,000 yen. 1

8. Commercial Institutions

In old Japan commercial institutions pertained to local
diamiates, but after the opening of the country to foreign
trade, chambers of commerce began to appear, of which
there are now over sixty in the empire, with about 2,000
members and an income of some 400,000 yen a year. The

1 Owing to losses from the great earthquake there has been an enormous
expansion of imports and a vastly increased adverse trade balance, to
offset which the import duties again have been greatly increased.

5

66

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

chambers of commerce are conducted entirely on Euro¬
pean lines, and are self-governing bodies whose chief
functions are to investigate industrial and commercial
affairs, engage in arbitration, act as commercial consulta¬
tive bodies for the Government, and to carry on trade
propaganda. Japan has also numerous ancient and flour¬
ishing trade guilds which exercise an important influence
on commerce. These guilds represent the various indus¬
tries and manufactures ; and their main purpose is to
promote the interests of the members generally, the recti¬
fying of bad business customs, as well as the improvement
of production and the opening of new markets. The
guilds act in conjunction with one another toward the at¬
tainment of common ends and the exchange of mutual
information helpful to trade and industry. The various
local guilds are united under one central authority, the
officers of which are appointed by the Government. The
total number of these guilds is well over 1,000, with
numerous allied associations, and a membership of con¬
siderably over 1,000,000 and an annual expenditure of
over 3,000,000 yen. The total capital represented by the
industrial guilds of Japan is estimated at about 750,000,000
yen. The Central Association of Trade Guilds assists the
Government in regulating the quantity and quality of
output in all the more important lines of industry,
especially in the inspection of articles for export. By
a careful conditioning of exports it aims to prevent the
sending abroad of inferior goods that prejudice the repu¬
tation of Japan’s manufactures.

CHAPTER V

COMMUNICATIONS

U NDER the caption of communications are included
such public utilities as post-offices, telegraphs,
telephones, roads, bridges, harbours, shipping and
railways. The Department of Communications was
organized in 1885 to take over the supervision of post-
offices, telegraphs, lighthouses and shipping, up to that
time under the Department of Agriculture and Com¬
merce, and the Department of Engineering subsequently
abolished. In 1891 telephones and electrical industries
came under the supervision of this department, to which
in 1892 was added the management of railways, and a
year later the general supervision of land and sea trans¬
portation. The Department of Communications had now
become so expanded and complex as to have grown un¬
wieldy, and, after the nationalization of private railways
in 1906, a Railway Bureau was created to which the
management of railways has been committed.

I. POST-OFFICES

I. Courier System of Old Japan

Japan claims to have had a postal service of rudimentary
character from a.d. 202, when the Empress Jingo invaded
Korea j but little is known of either its mode or efficiency,
save that after some 400 years it was improved under the
influence of ideas borrowed from the relay system of
China. The service was further reformed by the military

67

68 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

government of Yoritomo at Kamakura in the twelfth cen¬
tury, when couriers took the place of riders; but, during
the civil strife of the Ashikaga period, all means of com¬
munication fell into abeyance. The Tokugawa shoguns
had their own system of couriers, which was inaugurated
in 1696 to convey official communications from the Cen¬
tral Government to the various district officials, the letters
and documents being placed in boxes and carried from
station to station, and the stations paid in rice. The various
feudal lords and their district officials maintained a mes¬
senger service too, the most notable of which was that of
Kii province, by which communications were carried to
post-stations 15 miles apart, though the service was strictly
limited to official use. During the last two centuries of
the Tokugawa era, however, the merchants of Osaka,
Kyoto and Yedo had a regular system of private letter-
carriers ; and for sharing in this convenience the public
were glad to pay high rates. This system continued down
to the opening of Japan to Western intercourse in 1868.

2. Advent of Modern Postal System

With the Restoration of Imperial Government and the
rapid modernization of the country the people of Japan
were ready to have the old relay courier system, with all
its abuses, give way to a new system modelled after that
of occidental countries. In December, 1868, a regular
postal service was inaugurated between Tokyo and Kyoto,
and extended to Osaka and Yokohama the following year.
Stamps were now used for the first time to mark the pay¬
ment of postage on letters. The new postal service made
remarkable progress, soon opening up connexions with
Nagasaki in the south and Niigata in the west, as well as
with Hadodate, in the north; while the kinds of matter
carried in the mails increased greatly in bulk and variety,
charges being calculated according to distance. In March,

COMMUNICATIONS

69

1873, new regulations were issued by which private indi¬
viduals were forbidden to engage in letter-carrying, and
uniform rates of postage were fixed for all places within
the Empire. In June, 1877, Japan joined the Universal
Postal Union and at once organized a system of domestic
and foreign mail service that has since continued and
shown unusual development and efficiency. In 1879 the
post-offices maintained by the various European Powers
in the treaty ports of Japan were withdrawn, the British
Government taking the lead, after which time Japan
enjoyed complete postal autonomy.

According to the existing system there are three grades
of post-offices in Japan, known as first-, second- and third-
class offices. First-class post-offices are in the larger cities,
like Tokyo and Osaka, and have the supervision of sub¬
ordinate post-offices, as well as over maritime affairs in
their respective districts. The principal first-class post-offices
are Tokyo, Osaka, Kumamoto, Sendai and Sapporo. The
vast majority of the national post-offices are of the third-class
grade, and are conducted on a contract system, an expedient
which the department finds highly economical.

3. Development op Postal Business

The postal system of Japan has not only shown remarkable
development, but has branched out into an extraordinary
number of activities not usually undertaken by post-offices
in other countries, such as the carrying of every sort of
freight, with, of course, limits as to size and weight; the
collection of taxes and bills, the distribution of advertise¬
ments, and the paying of pensions and annuities on behalf
of the national treasury. Mails are delivered twelve times
a day in Tokyo, ten times in Osaka and Kyoto, the average
for first-class post-offices being eight times a day; for
second-class offices six times daily, and for third-class
offices three times a day. There are special delivery

70 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

services at reduced rates for various forms of mail matter.
The regular letter postage inland is 3 sen, with 5 sen for
special delivery and 7 sen extra for registration, while the
charge for parcels is remarkably low. No money is allowed
to be sent through the mails, though beefsteak has been
known to pass. Consequently there is a tremendous
business in money-orders which, nevertheless, have to be
registered and so add 7 sen extra to the commission on the
postal-order. The savings-bank department of the post-
office is very popular and prosperous.

The Japanese postal official is usually a courteous and
faithful servant of the public, though one occasionally
experiences eccentricities of service and interpretations of
regulations, that astonish the foreigner ; and, as for post¬
men, considering the meagre wages they receive, they are on
the whole efficient and honest, though now and then arrests
are reported for pilfering or throwing away mail when
distance proved inconvenient for delivery. The custom
of receiving postage stamps in the postal savings bank for
deposit encourages the removal of stamps from mail matter,
if dropped in the pillar-box. The postal department main¬
tains a rural delivery that is probably unsurpassed by any
other country, extending to far mountain regions where
postmen have to face the risk of being waylaid by robbers
and killed.

The growth of Japan’s postal business may be seen from
the fact that in 1905 there were only 4,228 post-offices,
which had increased to 6,932 by 1910, while the present
number is 8,014, or one f° r about every 7,410 of the popula¬
tion. The annual route covers about 55,000 miles; the
number of letters and post-cards annually carried is
3,816,942,000; and of parcels, 44,473,929; foreign letters
and parcels, 31,245,000. The number of domestic postal-
orders issued annually averages about 23,341,000 with a value
of 372,862,000 yen ; and the foreign money-orders issued,
are about x5,000 with a value of 504,000 yen. The amount

COMMUNICATIONS

7 i

on deposit in the postal savings banks is about 1,130,000,000
yen in the name of some 30,000,000 depositors, or some
27 yen per capita of population.

II. TELEGRAPHS AND TELEPHONES
i. Early Development

The electric telegraph instrument was first brought to
Japan by Commodore Perry as an example of the progress of
invention in the United States, and the first telegraphic
apparatus in Japan was set up in the palace of the Prince of
Satsuma in 1858, as a curiosity and not for use. The first
telegraph service was opened in Tokyo in 1872, the engineer
being an Englishman; and to him and others of his race
the Japanese system owes its initial success. So rapid was
the development that Japan was ready to join the Inter¬
national Telegraph Convention seven years later, and in
1883 she became a member of the International Union for
the Protection of Submarine Cables. At the end of 1915
there were in Japan 108,470 miles of overhead wire, 2,223
miles of underground, and 14,688 miles of submarine cable ;
and these figures have now increased to larger proportions.
Morse instruments are everywhere in use throughout
Japanese circuits. The number of ordinary messages sent
annually averages about 35,000,000, and by wireless 40,000;
and the number of telegrams delivered annually is about
70,000,000.

As to submarine cables, it may be said that the service
has shown unusual development in recent years. A cable
was laid to Korea in 1882, the points of connexion being
Nagasaki and Fusan by way of the island of Tsushima,
and the service under the auspices of the Great Northern
Telegraph Company, which was granted a charter for
thirty years ; but after the annexation of Korea in 1910
it was deemed inexpedient to have the service in foreign
hands and the rights were amicably transferred to Japan,

72 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

for a consideration of 160,000 yen, though the section
between Nagasaki and Hizen had been previously trans¬
ferred for 85,000 yen. About the same time additional
cables were laid between Japan and Formosa, and opened
for service in 1910. According to Japan’s agreement with
the Great Northern Company of Denmark, that company
has the exclusive right of landing on Japanese soil in connex¬
ion with international cable service; and under these
terms the Danish company laid cables between Nagasaki
and Shanghai, Vladivostock and Fusan ; but the cable
which Japan laid to the continent during the war with
Russia had rendered her independent of foreign service,
and, as has been shown, led to her taking over the rights
of the Danish company in Korea. The charter of the
company, which expired in 1912, was renewed for the service
to Shanghai, and further negotiations were opened with the
Great Eastern Telegraph Company as well as with the
Danish Company and China and Russia, for an improved
service in Siberia, and the results of this agreement are still
indefinite.

In wireless telegraphy also Japan has shown rapid develop¬
ment. At first the service was confined to the army and
navy; but in 1906 Japan despatched her first delegeates to
the International Wireless Convention at Berlin, and in
1908 she became a member of the International Wireless
Union, which act was ratified and promulgated by Imperial
ordinance in June of the same year. By March, 1916, Japan
had sixty-four Government and nine private wireless
installations aboard steamers, with nine stations on shore.
The shore stations have the latest equipment, some of
them capable of long-distance transmission up to 1,800
miles by day and 3,000 at night.

2. Rates and Revenue

Domestic telegrams are sent in the kana syllabary, the
rate being 20 sen for the first 15 syllables, and 5 sen for

COMMUNICATIONS

73

every 5 syllables, or less, over that number ; but for tele¬
grams within the same city or postal area the rate is reduced
to io sen and 3 sen respectively, for the same number of
syllables, the address in either case being free, except that
of the sender ; and a reply may be prepaid accordingly.
Telegraphic messages may be also sent in roman letters at the
rate of 25 sen for the first 5 words or less, and 5 sen for
each additional word; but telegrams within the city
cost 15 sen for the first 5 words and 3 sen for each word
added, the word limit being fixed at 15 letters, and excess
reckoned as one word up to another 15 letters. In groups
of arabic figures, 5 or less count as one word; and in
codes the maximum for words is 10 letters. Urgent
telegrams, which take precedence to ordinary messages,
may be sent at three times the ordinary rate. Express
telegrams may be sent to be forwarded from the last post-
office by post or special courier at the rate of 7 sen
for postage and 20 sen for the messenger, within a
radius of 8 miles, and 25 sen for each additional
miles. The rate for telegrams to Formosa or any
of the Japanese colonies, in native syllabary, is 30 sen
for the first 15 syllables, and 5 sen for each additional
syllable or less, while messages in roman letters are 40
sen for the first 5 words, and 5 sen for each additional
word.

The first telephone service was opened in Japan in and
between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1890, and a long-distance
service was inaugurated seven years later, extending to
Osaka, 350 miles away. At first development was slow,
as the Japanese did not appear to appreciate the conveni¬
ence of such means of communication, and special pains
had to be taken by the authorities to invite the interest of
subscribers. It was not long, however, before the demand
for telephones was much greater than the Government
could supply, and even still the number of applications for
installations is many thousands more than the officials can

74 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

overtake. At the end of March, 1915, the demand in
excess of supply was 140,000, while the present number of
outstanding applicants is about 220,000. As each applicant
has to deposit with his application the sum of 15 yen, the
Government is enabled to have the use of over 3,000,000
yen annually without interest, while telephone brokers do
a large and questionable business by buying up potential
installations and securing premiums from applicants willing
to pay from 1,000 to 2,000 yen for transfer of privilege or
something less for prior installation. The Government
itself in 1909 started the custom of giving precedence to
those willing to pay premiums of from 150 to 285 yen
according to place. This aspect of the telephone business
in Japan amounts to a public scandal, made possible only
because the business is a government monopoly; as any
private company would fill the applications in short order.
The annual charge for telephone connexion is 36 yen as a
minimum and 66 yen as a maximum, the price varying
according to place. Automatic stations are situated at
convenient points along the streets in cities, where messages
may be sent by dropping 5 sen in the slot. The exchanges
are served by girls, as in other countries, and the wages are
scarcely sufficient for the support of the operator. But
the telephone in Japan, like the post-office, is a money¬
making institution, and every interest has to be subservient
to that end.

Consequently the revenue from posts and telegraphs
is larger and the profits greater than in the case of such
public utilities in Western countries. Out of a total
revenue of some 60,000,000 yen annually from posts,
telegraphs, telephones and savings banks, Japan has to
spend only about 27,000,000 yen in expenses, leaving
more than half the returns as clear profit. This revenue
includes about 15,000,000 yen from telephones alone,
paid by 321,000 subscribers and others sending messages
to the number of 1,545,500,000 a year.

COMMUNICATIONS

75

III. ROADS, RIVERS AND BRIDGES

In old Japan the building of roads and bridges was not
encouraged, particularly in the vicinity of boundaries
between the dominions of feudal lords, where access was
blocked, or rendered uninviting, by barriers for the strict
examination of travellers. With the opening of the
country to modern ways the new Government undertook
the promotion of road construction as far as possible,
though, as yet, this side of Japan’s development has not
kept pace with her progress in other directions, and the
roads of the nation are in a poor way compared with those
of most other countries, being, for the greater part, rather
ill-made and too narrow for modern vehicular traffic.

The roads of Japan are divided into three classes:
national, provincial and village roads. The national roads
are those leading from the capital to the open ports, the
Grand Shrine at Ise, the headquarters of the army di¬
visions, naval stations and prefectural offices, including
connecting roads. The width of the national roads must
be 18 feet, or 42 feet between banks or fences. Provincial
roads are those leading from the prefectural office to the
district offices, or those connecting towns and busy ports.
Such highways must be from 24 to 30 feet wide between
bank and bank. The village roads connect the minor
sections of districts or lead to local shrines or temples;
there is no regulation as to width, and many of these roads
are mere' paths. Expenses for the upkeep of national
and provincial roads have to be borne by the prefectural
treasury, while the various towns and villages are responsible
for the roads and paths concerning them. The total
mileage of national roads is about 6,500; provincial roads,
23,000; and village roads have a mileage of some 270,000.

Owing to the enormous number of streams in Japan,
bridges and culverts exceed in number those of most other
countries. On the above mileage of roads are no less than

76 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

346,144 bridges, of which 518 are of iron, 71,268 stone, and
136,860 wooden bridges, the rest being of earth or are
pontoon bridges. The average annual expenditure on
roads in Japan is about 18,000,000 yen, and on bridges about
5,000,000 yen, the total, including sundry engineering
outlay, coming to over 25,000,000 yen annually. The
amount spent on riparian and other engineering work on
roads and bridges aggregates some 43,000,000 yen a year.

The rivers of Japan require a great deal of expensive
attention, owing to frequency of floods. During the last
1,300 years there have been some 426 destructive inunda~
tions, or one every three years, with consequent entailment
of enormous outlay on dredging of waterways and repairing
of embankments. One of the most destructive of these
floods occurred in 1896, causing damage to the extent of
138,000,000 yen, though the flood of 1910 was scarcely
less destructive and costly. Losses of human life through
floods during the past thirty-five years have totalled
23,700 persons.

By the River-control Law of 1896 the Government
attempted to make a determined effort to provide still
greater safeguards against destructive floods by a system of
hydraulic engineering, each local government being made
responsible for the streams under its jurisdiction, the State
to assist in cases manifestly too expensive for local finance.
Since then twenty-five rivers and thirty-six tributaries have
received attention, at an average annual outlay of about
3,000,000 yen by the Government, and some 10,000,000 yen
by prefectures, the average expenditure on thisspecial scheme
having amounted to about 13,000,000 yen annually for
some years. Shortly after the great earthquake of 1923
there was a fearfully destructive flood in the Tottori
district with much loss of life and property. The national
authorities are pushing their riparian schemes to completion
with great intelligence and energy. At present sixty-five
rivers are included in the Government’s plans, of which

COMMUNICATIONS

77

twenty are to be finished in the next few years, at a cost
of 180,000,000 yen, for which 10,000,000 yen is to be set
apart annually, with an equal amount for prevention of
landslides.

IV. HARBOURS AND SHIPPING
i. Harbours

Although there are now over 1,000 harbours visited
by merchantmen, before the opening of the country
to foreign trade, the number of harbours able to accommo¬
date modern ships was negligible, as they remained in their
natural state. It was not until 1878 that any serious
attempt was made at reclamation and improvement of
harbours, since when many roadsteads capable of accommo¬
dating ships of considerable size have been completed.
The most important harbours in Japan are Kobe, Yoko¬
hama, Moji, Osaka, Nagasaki, Yokkaichi, Otaru, Aomori,
Hakkodate, Kagoshima, Ujina, on which some 1,300,000,000
yen have been expended, and the end is not yet, for some
of the most important, like Osaka and Kobe are by no
means completed. Some 800,000 yen has been expended
on making Tsuruga a harbour fit for communication with
Vladivostock. Tokyo harbour, which now cannot accommo¬
date ships above 3,000 tons, is to be rebuilt and rendered
able to accommodate ocean liners, and though the surveys
have been completed, it is likely that the recent earthquake
losses will postpone plans. The greater portion of the funds
for harbour improvement have been drawn from local
taxation, or from public-works funds, but in exceptional
cases of national importance, like Kobe, and Yokohama,
outlay for the most part has been met from the national
treasury. The fine harbour at Miik6 was constructed
at the expense of the Mitsui Company whose great coal
mines are in the vicinity. At present there are thirty-six
open ports with fair harbours, and some 53 ° P or * s which

78 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

enjoy regular steamship communication. Yokohama har¬
bour, with its magnificent new quay walls and warehouses,
and more than 2 miles of breakwater enclosing some
1,300 acres, was greatly injured in the earthquake disaster,
but the authorities immediately set about repair and
restoration.

2. Shipping

The Japanese have always displayed the maritime in¬
stinct ; and the position and conformation of their country
naturally encouraged sea connexions and communications.
It was, indeed, a seafaring people that first conquered and
colonized the isles of Nippon; and there is evidence that
navigation developed rapidly with the growth of the
empire. During the Middle Ages Japanese seamen were
found all along the coasts of China, and even as far west
as India and Siam. The seclusion policy of the Tokugawa
shoguns after 1637* however, put a stop to all oversea
ambitions on the part of the native navigators for over
200 years, and delayed further development of ocean
intercourse until the ban was removed with the opening
of the country to foreign trade in 1858. Since then
Japanese shipping has made steady progress in all directions j
and to-day Japan has secured the supremacy of her flag
in oriental waters, while her merchant ships traverse all the
great ocean highways of the world.

In 1897 Japanese vessels carried only one-fifth of the
nation’s imports, and no more than one-seventh of its
exports, but to-day most of the country’s trade is borne in
Japanese bottoms. In 1915 the total value of imports and
exports carried to and from Japan in Japanese ships was
876,668,198 yen, and that has since been very materially
increased, the next largest share in the shipping returns
being given to British vessels. In 1871 Japan’s merchant
marine numbered only forty-six ships with a total tonnage
of over 17,948. After the war with China, during which the

COMMUNICATIONS 79

country purchased many new ships, the gross tonnage had
increased to 709,000; and after the war with Russia the
total tonnage of the nation’s merchant marine had grown to
1,527,000; and at present the aggregate gross tonnage of
Japan, representing 2,931 steamers, is not less than 3,000,000,
of which some 700,000 tons represents sailing vessels. And
the increase in carrying capacity has been quite in pro¬
portion to the growth in tonnage, the use of steel ships
and the number of licensed mariners. In 1874 the seventy-
four licensed mariners in the service of Japan included only
four Japanese, but the number of licensed seamen is now
well over 25,000, while the number of foreigners so employed
is almost negligible. The Imperial Government maintains
a nautical school in Tokyo for the training of officers for
merchant ships, while private companies contemplate the
establishment of similar schools to meet the increasing
demand for certificated mariners. The gross tonnage
above given does not include some 300,000 tons registered
at Dairen to avoid dues collected on ships registered in
Japan proper, nor native boats of less than 20 tons, of which
there is a formidable number.

The marvellous development of Japanese shipping has
been due largely to the liberal subsidies from the Imperial
Government and the extension of ample official encourage¬
ment in every way. The navigation law of 1896 granted
general subsidies to all steamers operating in conformity
with the provisions of the law; but in 1910 the regulations
were amended replacing the general subsidy by special
grants to steamers navigating special routes; that is, the
assistance was for the encouragement of routes as well as
steamers. These routes are known as (r) the European,
(2) the North American, (3) the South American, (4) the
Australian, and (5) the Java route, the latter more recently
added, together with certain minor routes to China and the
South Seas. To be entitled to full rate of subsidy a steamer
must be of at least 3,000 gross tons, built in Japan, nor

8o

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

more than 15 years old, and with, a speed of not less than
12 knots an hour. The rate is 50 sen per gross ton for every
1,000 knots covered on the prescribed route, with an
extra 10 per cent for every knot of increase per hour in
speed; and for ships over 5 years old the rate decreases
5 per cent per annum until the 15-year limit is reached,
when all aid ceases. Foreign-built ships, if put on the route
by permission of the Government, receive only one-half
of the regular rate; while ships built in Japanese yards,
according to special plans approved by the Government,
may receive an extra subsidy of 25 per cent. The subsidies
are arranged for periods of 5 years, the allotments for the
current period amounting to about 18,000,000 yen in round
numbers, less than for the previous period.

The leading steamship company of Japan is the Nippon
Yusen Kaisha, which has a fleet of 11 vessels of between
7,500 and 12,000 tons on the European route, all having a
speed of over 15 knots, and making 26 voyages a year ;
and on the American route the same company has 6 steamers,
2 of which are subsidized, with a tonnage of 5,500 to
9,700, a speed of over 15 knots and making z6 trips annually.
On the Australian route the N.Y.K. has 3 ships of from
5,000 to 7,500 tons, making over 15 knots an hour and 12
trips a year. The N.Y.K. has in all a fleet of 100 ships,
aggregating 460,000 tons. The Osaka Shosen Kaisha has
a fleet of 47 steamers running between Japan and South
America, the South Seas, India and Europe, as well as all
the Chinese waters and America. The total tonnage of the
company is about 150,000. The Toyo Kisen Kaisha,
though a younger sister of the others, has made remarkable
development, and now has a fleet of 9 ships aggregating
90,000 tons, running between Hongkong, Japan and San
Francisco, the vessels being from 12,500 to 13,500 tons,
making 18 knots an hour, and some 14 trips a year.
This company has 3 boats on the South American route
also, making 12 voyages annually. Nisshin Keen Kaisha

COMMUNICATIONS 81

has a fleet of 15 vessels, reaching a total tonnage of only
36,000 tons, engaged mostly in the coasting service between
Japan and China. There are other smaller companies of
which space does not afford mention.

The Japanese shipping companies experienced unpre¬
cedented prosperity and expansion during the European
War, when all foreign competition was more or less with¬
drawn, leaving Japan a free hand on the Pacific. Some
of the companies for a time were able to pay dividends of
over 200 per cent. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha declared one
half-yearly dividend of 70 per cent. New services have
been established between Japan and New York by way of
the Panama Canal route.

On account of the subsidies Japanese merchants have
the first claim on space for freight, which foreign shippers
find an inconvenience. There is no official recognition of
this custom, of course, but foreign merchants insist that it
prevails in practice. Foreign ships are not permitted by
the navigation laws to share in the coastwise trade of Japan,
and so cannot carry passengers or freight between Japanese
ports, except on a continuous voyage originating abroad;
a rather one-sided situation so far as British shipping goes,
since Japanese vessels are free to engage in the coastal trade
of Great Britain. At present the annual tonnage of
British ships paying dues in Japanese harbours is about
4,000,000 compared with the 14,000,000 tons of Japan.

Further encouragement is extended to Japanese shipping
by the granting of shipbuilding bounties from the Imperial
treasury, a plan that has given marked impetus to the
industry. The rate is from 11 to 22 yen per ton, according
to class and grade, amounting in all to more than 3,000,000
yen a year. The first large steamer constructed in Japan
was the Hitachi Mam , 6,000 tons, built at the Mitsu Bishi
yard, Nagasaki, in 1898; since which time the nation’s
dockyards have gone on increasing in number and capacity
until now it is nothing to .them to turn out ships of 10,000
6

82

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

and up to 30,000 tons, the latter for the navy, though 3
of 27,000 tons have been launched for mercantile service,

1 of which was wrecked. Before the war the annual
capacity of Japanese yards was not above 60,000 tons, but
to-day the dockyards are capable of turning out nearly
600,000 tons a year. There are 18 slips at Osaka, 6 at
Nagasaki and Kawasaki, 3 at both Kobe and Yokohama,

2 each at Ishikawa, Uraga, Matsuno, Ono, Fujingata,
Harima, Niigata and Tsurumi. Progress, however, is
always liable to be seriously retarded for lack of construction
material, especially steel plates. Before the war the cost
of ship construction in Japan for ordinary cargo boats was
from 130 to 140 yen per ton, or go yen dead-weight; during
the war the cost went up to 150 or 160 yen, or no dead¬
weight, and for some time it has been 190 yen a ton or 125
yen dead-weight. Cost is declining however, and may
become normal. As to labour, Japan has only about 40,000
mechanics who have any practical experience in dockyards,
of which some 10,000 are at Nagasaki, 9,000 at Osaka and
the rest distributed among other centres.

The matter of lighthouses is always one of great import¬
ance to Japanese shipping, as the coast is rather a dangerous
one. In ancient Japan, even as far back as a.d. 664, those
who had vessels at sea kept beacpn fires burning at night,
especially along the coasts of Iki, Tsushima and Kyushu,
in order to ensure the safety of navigation ; and up to the
year 1868 the duty of lighting the coasts was mainly in
private hands, there being 105 lighthouses at the time.
The first modern lighthouse was completed in 1868, that
at Kwannonzaki in Tokyo Bay, and opened to service on
New Year’s Day the next year. This structure, together
with those at Jogashima, Shinagawa and Nojimazaki, was
built under the supervision of a French engineer in the
service of the Yokosuka navy yard. Mr. Brunton, an
English engineer, and the experts he brought out with him,
were subsequently placed in charge of the service with

COMMUNICATIONS

83

headquarters at Yokohama ; and from 1869 onwards, until
the withdrawal of the British experts in 1881, some 43
lighthouses were erected, and 26 marks set up for the aid
of navigation. Since that time the service has been in
Japanese hands, whose plans include the addition of 300
more lighthouses; but for want of funds it may be some
time before these plans are fully realized. There are at
present 162 lighthouses along the Japanese coast, with
numerous other usual aids to safety of navigation in the way
of lights, buoys, daymarks, fog-signals and signal stations,
to the number of 409 in all. Shipping accidents and ship¬
wrecks are common however, the number of ships lost
averaging over 100 a year, and those damaged about 300,
with an annual loss of life to the extent of 285. The
efficiency of Japanese seamen is, nevertheless, high and
is always improving.

V. RAILWAYS
1. Development

The first railway in Japan, between Tokyo and Yokohama,
a distance of some 18 miles, was begun in 1870, and opened
for traffic in 1872. The work was done under the super¬
vision of British engineers, and with the aid of British
workmen. It was not long, however, before other lines
were constructed, linking up the larger centres of popula¬
tion, all under private enterprise. The Government,
having found its monopoly of salt, tobacco and camphor
an easy means of increasing national revenue, now resolved
on the nationalization of private railways for the same
purpose; and this scheme was carried out in 1906-7,
forming a united system of rail transportation for the empire.
The mileage of private railways at that time was 3,248,
of which the State took over 2,824 miles at an outlay of
481,981,000 yen. Since then the national railway lines
have been extended, until the mileage is now in the vicinity

84 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of 6,500, representing an investment of about 1,500,000,000
yen, on which the net profits during the past few years have
ranged between 6 and 8 per cent. It is the policy of the
Railway Bureau to devote most of the profits to interest'
on loans, and improvement and extension of track.

2. Efficiency

Notwithstanding the amount of local criticism attracted
by the Government’s nationalization of the railways, the
system under State auspices has been on the whole satis¬
factory, though often quite unable to cope with the ever-
increasing volume of traffic, which only additional electric
railways can hope to relieve. Fares are low, about 2
farthings per mile, and for freight about 3 farthings per ton
per mile. The trains are usually crowded, as the Japanese
are great travellers; and every station has piles of freight
awaiting transportation.

The railways of Japan are all a narrow gauge of 3 feet
6 inches on steel rails of from 60 to 75 lb. per foot. For
some years there has been a project for straightening curves
and widening the gauge, as well as doubling the track to
allow of greater speed, and more expedition in ha ndling
freight, but for lack of funds this has been indefinitely
postponed. With the exception of some long runs between
Tokyo and Kyoto on the Tokaido, most of the track is still
single. Both in carrying capacity and speed the railways
of Japan are much behind those of England and America.
The highest speed is that maintained on the line between
Tokyo and Yokohama, which averages 18 miles in 28
minutes. The longest non-stop run is 55 miles. The
maximum gradient on Japanese lines is 10 in 40 with a
minimum radios of 15 chains, except in the Usui pass,
where the line passes through 26 tunnels at a gradient of
1 in 15 for 7 miles from Yokogawa to Karuizawa,
revealing between the tunnels views of the most entrancing

COMMUNICATIONS

85

scenery. The tunnels cover a penetration of 14,645 feet;
and in them electric locomotives are used on rails after the
Abt system. As more than three-quarters of Japan is
covered by mountains, with deep ravines and innumerable
streams, railway construction and maintenance are costly.
The longest tunnel in Japan is that near Shojiri, 15,260 feet.
Bridge work, too, is a serious problem. Some of the finest
steel bridges are those spanning the Tenryu River, 3,967
feet; and the Oi River, 3,332 feet, and the Banyu River,
2,126 feet, all on the Tokaido line.

3. Rolling Stock

Japanese passenger carriages are fairly comfortable,
though not altogether from an occidental point of view.
Trains are usually punctual, yet time occasionally seems of
no value. On express trains there are dining-cars and
sleeping-cars. As to rolling stock, the number of passenger
carriages on State railways is about 7,000, and the passengers
carried annually total 445,000,000 in round numbers.
Passenger service is of three classes, and out of every thousand
passengers, 15 travel first-class, i52second-classand829third-
class, the latter being generally as comfortable as the others,
unless there be a crowd. The number of freight trucks
on the State lines is about 47,000, with a carrying capacity
of 470,000 tons. Tons of freight carried annually total
about 57,000,000. The gross yearly income of the State
railways is about 423,000,000 yen, and the annual expendi¬
ture about 370,000,000 yen. There are some 2,500 loco¬
motives, of which 950 were built in England, 1,200 in •
America, 256 in Germany and the rest in Japan.

Private railway lines have a length of only 242 miles,
representing a capital of about 40,000,000 yen; and there
are about 2,000 miles of light railway. In the larger towns
electric tramways have been introduced, representing
73 companies, with a mileage of 1,368 and a capital of over

86

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

200,000,000 yen, paying profitable dividends. Some of
the local tramways are municipal, as in Tokyo.

The Tokyo central station on the State railways is one
of the finest structures of the kind in Asia. It is constructed
in steel and brick with much use of granite, 1,100 feet long,
135 feet wide, finished in 1914 at a cost of over 3,000,000
yen. Owing to its steel frame, this building withstood the
great earthquake.

With the extension of Japan’s territorial and com¬
mercial interests in Korea and China her railways there have
correspondingly extended, until now she owns in Korea
a mileage of 1,189 out of a total of 1,522, and the great South
Manchuria Railway, a wide-gauge track, with American-
built rolling stock for the most part. These lines are
linked up with the railway lines of Russia and China.

CHAPTER VI

BANKING AND FINANCE

H OW revenue and expenditure were adjusted in
ancient Japan we have now no means of knowing.
It is clear, however, that coins were early used as
media of exchange, the custom probably coming from
China, though exchange was chiefly in the form of
barter. There were no devices for accumulating
precious metal, or combining capital in enterprise,
except the treasuries of the feudal lords in later times,
each clan having a separate system of finance. Taxes
were collected in kind, the gatherers being individuals or
families that had displayed some talent in finance. And
there is reason to believe that the tax-gatherer of ancient
Japan was no less stern and unscrupulous than his pro¬
verbial contemporary in Europe. As a system of finance
developed, the taxes collected in kind were converted into
money and paid to the feudatories, or to the central govern¬
ment, as the case might be. These financial families, some
of whom were great rice merchants, often made loans to
officials, did some exchange business between the different
fiefs, and occasionally extended accommodation to private
individuals.

Before the opening of Japan to Western civilization there
were no banks in any occidental sense of the term; for
the financial concerns already mentioned neither collected
funds by receiving deposits nor distributed capital in loans
to the public. The various fiefs were so isolated from each
other that neither social nor financial intercourse was

87

88

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

possible. Indeed, any attempt at it would have been viewed
with grave suspicion by the central government. In any
case, all who engaged in mercantile or manufacturing pur¬
suits for purposes of gain were despised as money-grubbers
by the upper classes. And this condition continued until
after the first Europeans visited the country in the middle
of the sixteenth century. The foreigners found gold
plentiful in some places, and the coinage more than 80 per
cent pure. As the Japanese did not realize the value of
the precious metal, they allowed gold to be exported in
ever-increasing quantities for some years. But when
Hideyoshi learned from the visitors that the financial policy
of Spain, the wealthiest of European nations at that time,
was to hoard precious metal, he made up his mind to do
likewise. By that time the supply in Japan had become so
depleted that his embargo on gold export was insufficient
to meet the demand and he had to reopen the Sado mines
to replenish his treasury. At the time of Hideyoshi’s
death in 1597 enormous quantities of gold were found stored
in Osaka castle, which Hideyori inherited; and Ieyasu
was obliged to curb the power of his rival by imposing on
him expensive undertakings.

i. Tokugawa Policy

The financial policy of the Tokugawa shoguns, who
governed Japan in the name of the Emperor from 1603 to
1868, was not unlike that of their modern successors in the
Department of Finance, namely, one of temporization. In
fact the underlying policy of all Japanese governments has
been that inaugurated by Hideyoshi and carried on by the
Tokugawa authorities, to increase at all costs the specie
holdings of the nation. Modern governments in Japan
have tried to do this by discouraging imports and encourag¬
ing exports, as well as by raising loans to cover deficits.
To the Tokugawa authorities loans were impossible, and

BANKING AND FINANCE

89

constantly recurring deficits had to be balanced by an
habitual debasement of coinage, causing abnormal increase
of currency, a corresponding rise in prices and a serious
instability of national finance.

At the beginning of the Tokugawa era the standard gold
coin, the Keicho koban, was just over 80 per cent pure, the
remaining ingredient being silver; while the subsidiary
coinage in silver and copper was proportionately pure.
Thus the currency of the Keicho period enjoyed the confi¬
dence of both foreigners and Japanese alike. Owing to the
amount of gold carried out of the country by foreigners,
already alluded to, reminting of coinage was done again and
again, until it was only 56 per cent pure gold, and the sub¬
sidiary coinage 23 per cent silver. To secure a sufficient
supply of gold for reminting, the bakyfu ordered all taxes to
be paid in gold. Crucial financial situations were so often
tided over by debasement of coinage that currency was
inflated and imposts so increased that Arai Hakuseki, the
finance minister, had to limit commercial imports to the
\alue of copper held by the nation, in order to prevent
outflow of specie. Such was the financial situation in
Japan at the beginning of the eighteenth century. By the
effort and ingenuity of Arai the national coinage was ulti¬
mately restored to the volume and value of the Keicho era ;
but by the middle of the eighteenth century an abnormal
depreciation in prices and a consequent fall in rice, creating
dangerous speculation, obliged a reversion to the pernicious
policy of debased coinage to restore equilibrium. Various
new and onerous taxes were also imposed, and rice merchants
became bankers to the impoverished feudal lords. To
meet the expense of preparing defences against foreign
intrusion at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
coinage was once more reminted, and revenue further
increased by finding wealthy husbands among feudal lords
for the daughters of the shogun, as well as by descending
to the sale of permission to wear the shogun’s crest and other

9 o JAPAN FROM WITHIN

marks of rank or privilege. By this remarkable system
of temporization the shogunate was enabled to meet its
financial obligations and put off the evil day until its down¬
fall in 1868, when an empty treasury was the only economic
inheritance of the new regime.

2. Early Meiji Finance

The story of Japan’s financial rehabilitation in the Meiji
era is one of the most sensational in the history of national
economy. It is mainly a tale of remarkable individualities
dealing with striking incidents and crises in economic
situations. But everywhere on its pages will stand out
conspicuously the names of Inouye, Ito, Matsukata, Okuma,
and above all, Shibusawa, the father of modern Japanese
finance. When the financial affairs of Japan fell into the
hands of these men after the abolition of the shogunate,
the country was not only without money, but had no means
of obtaining any, as the fiefs and their taxes were still in
the hands of the feudal barons; and, in the absence of
anything like organized finance or commerce, it is very
wonderful how they were able successfully to extricate
their country from so impossible a situation with compara¬
tive rapidity, reforming the apparently hopeless and chaotic
monetary system and placing it on a sound basis. Debase¬
ment had left the coinage of little more value than tokens,
while the country was flooded with surreptitious paper
money issued by feudal lords; and, as these lords numbered
some 270, the confusion caused by their issue of script of
1,600 different types may be imagined.

After some easy natural mistakes arising from inexperience,
the work of regeneration was commenced in 1871, when
gold was adopted as the national currency; in 1878 it
became a system of gold and silver bimetallism; in 1879 it
was equal to only a system of inconvertible paper money;
in 1886 the paper had been redeemed by silver coins, and

BANKING AND FINANCE 91

at the end of 1897 a gold standard had been adopted to
replace the silver standard.

To avoid the bankruptcy threatened by the wars and
rebellion of the Restoration period, the new Imperial
Government was obliged to issue, as an emergency measure
in 1868, a large amount of paper money, at first convertible
into specie, but in 1871 declared inconvertible. This policy
failed to command public confidence, and in 1873 the
Government was forced to make this paper exchangeable
for gold notes, or inconvertible exchange bonds bearing
6 per cent interest, with the hope of destroying the paper
money thus brought in, and promoting the establishment
of banks which should issue convertible notes on security of
Government bonds.

Japan’s evolution from the economic chaos that obtained
at the beginning of the Meiji era may be seen more in detail
by noting carefully the various step in the process. Accord¬
ing to the monometallic system prevailing in 1868 the i-yen
gold piece was the unit. To facilitate foreign trade i-yen
silver pieces were issued for circulation in treaty ports,
equal in weight and fineness to the Mexican dollar, then the
universal medium of exchange in the Far East. The rela¬
tive value of the gold and silver pieces was fixed at the rate
of 16*174 silver to I of gold. In 1873 when Germany
adopted the gold standard and began to dump her silver,
the price of the white metal fell in 1876 as low as 20 of
silver to I of gold, and the value of Japan’s gold coins was
seriously affected. To encourage circulation of silver the
use of the silver yen was extended to silver-standard coun¬
tries and became legal tender side by side with gold, thereby
creating the gold and silver bimetallic system already re¬
ferred to. The Government’s scheme for preventing
the outflow of specie, meanwhile, had been more or less
successful, and sufficient was accumulating to resume specie
payments. In 1883 the Government announced that from
the beginning of the following year it would be in a position

92 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

to exchange silver for notes, thus placing silver on a par with
gold, and changing from a bimetallic to a silver standard.
The result was an immense amount of dangerous speculation
in the financial and commercial world, and the Government
began to see the necessity of establishing a gold standard.
The opportunity came after the war with China when the
Minister of Finance asked that the indemnity, amounting
to 360,000,000 yen, be paid in British money, making a
big addition to Japan’s specie. Thus in 1896 Japan was
ready for the adoption of the gold standard, and 76,000,000
yen in coin was immediately minted, the i-yen silver coin
being discontinued, ceasing to be legal tender after 1908.
The silver called in was disposed of by recoinage into sub¬
sidiary money to the value of about 30,000,000 yen, and
the rest sold to Hongkong and Shanghai, or distributed for
circulation in Formosa and Korea. The new gold standard
made the unit of coinage *75 of pure gold, as it still is.

3. The First Banks

Although, simultaneously with the first steps in economic
reform, special organs, such as exchange companies, had
been appointed to take charge of the national revenue,
encourage industry and promote trade by lending money
at low rates, no such organs as banks yet existed in Japan.
First there was brought into being a Business Bureau, then
a Trade Bureau, and afterwards the above-mentioned com¬
mercial companies which developed into exchange companies
in the principal cities, their personnel consisting mainly of
great families like the Mitsui, the Shimada and the Ono, of
ancient repute in the world of Japanese finance. Such
companies were partnerships of a strictly joint-stock kind,
but they could receive deposits or lend money to merchants
and manufacturers, as well as issue notes, and, therefore,
they constituted the nucleus of future banks. Neither the
notes of these concerns nor of the Government were secured

BANKING AND FINANCE

93

by any fixed holdings in specie, and consequently they had
soon to give way to the establishment of regular banks
after a modern system. An American model was adopted
on advice of Ito, who had been sent to the United States to
study banking institutions, and who returned to submit to
the Government the results of his investigations. He made
three cardinal proposals: the adoption of the gold standard,
the granting of interest-bearing bonds for the Treasury
notes already in circulation, and the establishment of banks
as the media for issuing paper money. These proposals
were adopted in 1873 ; and in a short time national banks
were established on a system that combined some features
of English banking on a general basis of American practice.
Each bank had to pay into the Treasury 60 per cent of its
capital in Government notes, and was credited in turn with
interest-bearing bonds to be retained in the Treasury as
security for the issue of bank-notes to an equal amount,
the banks being required to keep in gold the remaining
40 per cent of their capital as a fund for converting the
notes, which conversion was always to be effected on
application.

The Government’s desire to replace the paper money
in circulation by convertible notes was not realized how¬
ever ; and, with an increasing unfavourable balance of
trade, gold flowed out of the country until sharp deprecia¬
tion ensued in Government paper, giving rise to the
fitianrtal panic of 1874. Various circumstances had com¬
bined to deepen the sense of insecurity. For years before
the opening of Japan to modern intercourse the Dutch had
been draining the country of its gold, and the process con¬
tinued more or less down to the resumption of foreign trade.
During the centuries of isolation gold had come to bear to
silver, in Japanese coinage, a ratio of I to 8 ; so that the
yellow metal cost, in terms of the white, only one-half of
what it cost in occidental countries. Moreover, the new
treaties had given foreigners the right to exchange their

94 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

own. silver coins against Japanese coins, weight for weight,
until a foreigner going to Japan with a quantity of Mexican
dollars could buy with them twice as much gold as they had
cost in Mexico. Thus Japan lost heavily; and between
1872 and 1874 the balance of trade swayed heavily in the
wrong direction, creating in financial circles consternation,
and causing bank-notes to be speedily returned for con¬
version. No deposits came to the aid of the banks and the
circulation of money almost ceased.

The Imperial Government was obliged, therefore, to
issue a revised code of banking regulations which dispensed
altogether with hard money and substituted Treasury notes.
Each bank was now required to invest 80 per cent of its
capital in 6 per cent State bonds; and these being lodged
with the Treasury, the bank became competent to issue an
equal quantity of its own notes, forming, with the remainder
of its capital, a reserve of Treasury notes for purposes of
redemption. It was, indeed, a complete subversion of the
Government’s original scheme; but there was nothing
else to be done, and it worked well at a time when the
Government had to commute the hereditary pensions of
the feudatories by issuing bonds aggregating 174,000,000
yen, which, if placed all at once on the market, would
suffer depreciation; while the holders,'unaccustomed to
business, might easily be led to dispose of their securities
and invest the proceeds in hazardous ventures? The new
regulations, therefore, offered an excellent opportunity for
these bond-holders to combine and form banks, continuing
to draw from the Treasury 6 per cent on their bonds, while
at jfe e same time acquiring competence to issue a corre¬
sponding amount of notes which could be lent out at profit¬
able rates. The scheme was a success. The number of
banking institutions in a brief period grew to 153; the
aggregate capital of the banks in three years increased from
2,000,000 to 40,000,000 yen, and the note issue from
1,000,000 to 34,000,000 yen. It was a great and rapidly

BANKING AND FINANCE

95

growing system based wholly on State credit, without
special reference to specie. The rage for establishing
banks finally became such a mania that the Government
had to limit their number and the aggregate of their note
issue, which was set at 34,000,000 yen.

4. Improvement of Monetary Organs

Owing to the great expense of suppressing the unrest
of the early years of the Meiji period, and the difficulty
of reforming the complicated taxation system of the various
feudatories, the outlay of the Government increased so
enormously that further note issues were necessary, so that
in 1878, the time of the Satsuma Rebellion, the volume of
paper money rose from 120,000,000 to 164,000,000, with
a corresponding rise in prices and depreciation in the value
of paper. By practising the utmost economy the Govern¬
ment managed to produce a surplus which was added to
the fund for reducing paper money and to swell the specie
reserve, the latter need being especially imperative in face
of the insistent demand for resumption of specie payments.
It was clear, however, even to the most inexperienced
economist, that to amass notes for the redemption of notes
could never prove a successful expedient. Consequently
the great financiers of the day, Ito, Inouye and Matsukata,
hit upon the plan of accumulating metal by buying up
exporters’ bills with notes and receiving the proceeds
abroad in specie ; which, together with the imposition of
new taxes and the increase of old ones, helped Japan over
the crisis. The outcome of this official incursion into
export trade brokerage was the establishment of the Yoko¬
hama Specie Bank, which, from a struggling organ of
exporters’ finance, has grown to be one of the greatest
financial institutions of the nation. Furthermore, in its
efforts to accumulate specie and resume payments in gold,
the Government organized a central national bank, the
Nippon Ginko , or Bank of Japan, in 1882, with a capital

96 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of 4,000,000 yen, while the numerous national bants were
dissolved and turned into joint-stock concerns for the
redemption of their notes in circulation. Each of these
banks was required to deposit with the Treasury the
Government paper kept in its strong-room as security
for its own notes, and from its annual profits to hand to
the Treasury a sum equal to 2-J per cent of its notes in
circulation. With these funds the State bank was to
purchase State bonds, devoting the interest accrued from
them to redeeming the notes of the national banks.
The result was a rise in the price of bonds, which were soon
in demand at a premium; and, since the Government
had begun converting its 6 per cents to 5 per cents,
they no longer produced sufficient interest to redeem the
notes of the national banks in accordance with the scheme
agreed upon, causing a tremendous outcry against the
Government by these banks. The dispute lasted until
1896 when a bill was passed providing for the dissolution
of the national banks at the end of their charter terms and
their conversion, as already indicated, into joint-stock
companies without note-issuing competence. Out of the
total of 153 banks only 132 continued under the new regu¬
lations, the rest being absorbed or liquidated, their notes
remaining legal tender till 1899. In 1890, and again in
1893, more minute regulations were issued for bringing all
banks, except certain special ones, within a system of official
accounting and auditing ; while savings banks had to lodge
security with the Treasury for the protection of their
depositors.

Under the reforms in banking, economic progress ad¬
vanced apace. The producing power of the people was
growing, capital was accumulating, foreign trade was fast
developing and bank deposits were experiencing unpre¬
cedented increases. In 1903 the number of banks had
increased to 2,307, representing 377,000,000 yen in capital
and 755,000,000 yen in deposits, with 577,000,000 yen in

BANKING AND FINANCE

97

loans, and discounting bills to the value of 3,587,000,000
yen annually. In recent years the number of Japanese
banks has slightly decreased, and now stands at 2,113, with
3,891 branches, representing an aggregate paid-up capital
of about 1,577,000,000 yen, with reserve funds amounting
to 455,000,000 yen. The average annual earnings amount
to some 245,000,000 yen, or about 7.7 per cent.

The banks of Japan are divided into ordinary and special,
the former for the general circulation of capital and the
latter for specific functions. Ordinary banks are under
control of the Minister of Finance whose licence is required
for their establishment, or for the amalgamation of existing
institutions. He is empowered to investigate the condition
of a bank at any time ; and all banks must submit to him
semi-annually a balance sheet and publish the same in the
press. Special banks, like the Bank of Japan, the Yokohama
Specie Bank, the Hypothec Bank and others, have special
privileges for particular purposes, enabling them to make
more profit, but at the same time bringing them more
under Government control.

The Bank of Japan, created in 1882, as a necessary means
of replacing paper currency by metal, and bringing private
banks into uniformity with national regulations, is the only
institution authorized to issue notes. The bank started
with a capital of 10,000,000 yen, which has since been three
times increased, and now stands at 60,000,000 yen, of which
37,500,000 yen is paid up. The Bank of Japan is privileged
to issue notes against gold and silver coins and bullion, and,
further, to issue notes on security of Government bonds or
Treasury bills, or other bonds and bills of a reliable nature,
the maximum of issue, in the latter case, to be 120,000,000.
In case of necessity the maximum may be exceeded, pro¬
vided the bank pap a tax of at least 5 per cent on the
excess per annum. The main business of the Bank of Japan
is to discount or purchase Government bills, bills of exchange
or other commercial paper, to buy or sell bullion, to make
7

98 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

loans on security of gold or silver coin or bullion, to collect
bills for banks, companies, or merchants, who are regular
customers; to receive deposits and accept custody of
articles of value in precious metals or documents, to make
advances for fixed periods on security of Government paper
or documents guaranteed by the Government. The Bank
of Japan is also entrusted with the management of Treasury
receipts and disbursements.

The Yokohama Specie Bank was founded in 1880 for the
special purpose of facilitating foreign trade and the official
scheme of buying up exporters’ bills to increase the national
specie holdings. Starting with a capital of only 4,000,000
yen, the bank has since increased it to 42,000,000 and
recently to 100,000,000, all paid up. Assisted by State
aid through some years of adverse experience, this bank is
now one of the strongest and foremost financial institutions
in the empire, with branches in all the chief commercial
centres of the world. It enjoys the privilege of having its
foreign bills discounted by the Bank of Japan at the rate of
2 per cent to the amount of 20,000,000 per annum. It is
usually entrusted with foreign loans and the management
of international accounts; and in China can issue notes
convertible into silver. Other special organs are the Hypo¬
thec Bank for extending long-term loans at low rates to
agriculture, industry and shipping, working through Agri¬
cultural Banks in the various prefectures; the Industrial
Bank, acting as sort of credit mobilier\ the Hokkaido
Colonial Bank to promote colonization in that territory ;
the Bank of Taiwan for Formosa, and the Bank of Chosen
for Korea. Besides banks, there are loan associations for the
purpose of affording financial accommodation to the poorer
classes. Among the most prosperous foreign banks doing
business in Japan are the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation, the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and
China, the International Banking Corporation of New
York and the Park-Union Bank of Canada.

BANKING AND TINANCE

99

5. Taxation and Revenue

The confusion that so long existed in the national economic
system and in the circulating medium of the early Meiji
period, reacted unfavourably, not only on finance generally,
but on the collection of national revenue in particular.
Under the feudal system the daimyo had some 2,000 different
kinds of taxes which the new Japanese Government had to
straighten out and place on a modern basis. The principal
revenue of the feudal barons had been land-tax paid in rice,
while the shogunate had a small revenue from the nation’s
trifling foreign trade with China and Holland, besides
something from monopolies, imposts and private estates.
The aim of the new regime was a uniform system of
taxation covering the whole empire, reducing the burden¬
some land-tax and making up the deficiency by indirect
taxation, so as to encourage agriculture. By 1872 a com¬
plete survey of the country had been made, and titles to
land-ownership decided, the lands being assessed on a basis
of the money value of their produce for the previous five
years. The new land-tax was levied at the rate of 3 per
cent on this assessment, and payable in coin of the realm;
while the hitherto onerous duties and imposts of feudal
origin were abolished. As the demand for revenue in¬
creased with the nation’s naval and military expansion new
taxes were levied especially an income-tax, and imposts on
soy, tobacco, confectionery and stamps. The results
were so satisfactory that the Government was able to
reduce the land-tax again in 1886. After the war with
China requirements of revenue became still more pressing,
and it was found necessary to establish occupation and
registration taxes, as well as to increase the taxes on sake
and tobacco, while abolishing at the same time the taxes
on confectionery and vehicles, which had added little to
the nation’s income. By this means some 35,000,000 yen
were added to the National Treasury. Taxation was

100

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

further increased in 1896, and again in 1900 after the Boxer
uprising in China, which entailed in Japan an outlay of
some 22,000,000 yen. Another substantial increase came
with the Russo-Japanese war to help in meeting loans to the
extent of 1,500,000,000 yen; and new taxes to the extent
of 145,000,000 yen annually were imposed, to which the
tax-bearing capacity of the people was not quite equal.
Eventually the burden had to be readjusted to allay increas¬
ing disaffection. In 1876 Japan’s revenue amounted to
only about 70,000,000 yen, against a slightly less expenditure.
By 1916 the annual revenue had increased to 602,000,000
yen, with 2,000,000 less expenditure. To-day the annual
revenue of Japan is about 1,400,000,000 yen, of which much
more than half comes from taxation. How revenue and
expenditure are made to balance in Japanese official account¬
ing is a mystery one cannot pretend to solve.

While Japan has increased her taxation to meet the outlay
entailed by her wars, it is noticeable that after these
campaigns, taxes remained practically at war level. To
allay unrest and maintain revenue the taxes have been
moved from one basis to another in order to relieve the
strain. It has been very difficult to keep the incidence of
taxes from becoming uneven. Economic changes have
necessitated the abolition of some taxes and the revision of
others. In 19x0 all taxes underwent a readjustment that
resulted in increase of revenue to the extent of 15,000,000
yen; and in 1913 another transference of strain led to a
decrease of 7,000,000 in revenue. As the burden was still
more than the farmers could bear, they were relieved of
11,000,000 yen of taxation in 1914. Land-tax is assessed
on the annual rental value of the land. Income-tax is
levied on business corporations and juridical persons, on
public bonds and company debentures, on earned income,
the rate varying according to the size of the income, amount¬
ing to 22 per cent on incomes of 100,000 yen. Imperial
Government bonds are usually exempt from tax, and also

BANKING AND FINANCE ioi

the incomes of men in the army and navy. The business
tax falls on all descriptions of commerce and industry;
other taxes that bring in considerable revenue are the
liquor tax, soy tax, mining tax, transit tax, death duties,
tax on bourses, textile consumption tax, sugar excise,
tonnage dues, stamp receipts, monopolies, railways, and
geisha, as well as customs duties.

6. National Wealth and Obligations

The national specie holdings, which amounted to no more
than 341,000,000 yen before the European War, on account
of the enormous favourable balance of trade obtaining
during the war years, had increased to over 2,000,000,000 yen
by 1921, though the adverse trade balance of the last three
years has reduced the total to something in the vicinity of
1,600,000,000 yen, about one-quarter of the gold being
abroad. The total national wealth of Japan is estimated at
87,000,000,000 yen.

Japan’s national indebtedness is a matter of increasing
importance in any economic survey of the country. In old
Japan people of means were usually under obligation to
lend money to the feudal lords under whom they lived,
the lords entering into contracts without specifying any
security. The rights of creditors being thus unrecognized,
it was frequently the case that they were forced to provide
further contributions or lose what they had already loaned.
When the Meiji government assumed responsibility for
the estates of the daimyo, investigations were made as to
debts so contracted, and the amounts due to creditors were
settled by public loan bonds, the people at the same time
being freed from all further obligations to lend money,
except voluntarily under a public loan system as in occi¬
dental countries.

In 1877 Japan’s, national debt, incurred mostly for
liquidating the obligations of feudal governments and .the

102

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

capitalization of hereditary pensions, and the reorganization
of the country generally, amounted to 230,000,000 yen.
The wars with China and Russia increased the national
debt still further, and the total has been gradually swelling
in recent years, until now it stands at something like
3,800,000,000 yen, of which about 2,600,000,000 is domestic
loans, and 1,200,000,000 foreign debt. At the same time
it must be remembered that Japan has loans to foreign
countries aggregating some 600,000,000 yen. There are,
moreover, local domestic loans outstanding to the amount
of over 500,000,000 yen. At any rate the situation now
represents a per capita indebtedness of over 65 yen, as com¬
pared with Britain’s per capita indebtedness of about
1,800 yen, but this leaves a larger margin of unpledged
private wealth than in Japan, since the average of private
wealth in England is about 3,500 yen as against 1,539 yen
in Japan. Consequently Japan’s fiscal obligations and debts
generally are comparatively large in proportion to the
resources of the country.

CHAPTER VII

MINES AND MINERALS

T HERE are authentic records to show that mining
is one of the oldest of Japanese industries. The
enterprise reached considerable development even
as early as the sixth century a.d., when the demand for
metals to make war weapons lent impetus to the winning
of ore. With the advent of Chinese customs and the
Buddhist religion in the seventh century metal became
still more important for coinage, and for the casting of
sacred images, as well as for the decoration of temples and
shrines. By the fifteenth century the mining of iron and
copper had become specially active, as the Chinese had
begun to look to Japan for a portion of their copper used
in minting. An era of still greater prosperity in mining
began with the rise to power of the famous warrior, Hide-
yoshi, in 1583, as the unremitting strife between feudal
lords created increased demand for metals, while the
prisoners of war were kept in safe custody by being put to
work in the mines. The export of copper and sulphur
which began in the fifteenth century continued down to
the seventeenth, when gold and silver were added to the
list of metals in great demand abroad. The opening of
trade with Europe through the Portuguese, Spanish and
Dutch undoubtedly gave great impetus to the export of
metals, the foreigners taking large quantities of gold, silver
and copper in every cargo. In the chapter on “ Trade” it
has been pointed out that during the 153 years between
1611 and 1764 exports of gold amounted to 3,763,572
ounces; and of silver 135,768,918 ounces; while the exports

103

104 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of copper during the Tokugawa shogunate, 1603 to 1868,
amounted to 389,250 tons. At the beginning of the eigh¬
teenth century the export of copper to Holland and China
was three times that of the quantity consumed in Japan.
Such activity indicates that the metal veins of the country
must have been extraordinarily rich and very easily worked
in those days.

Of course the mining industry was conducted according
to the traditional methods, which were no doubt somewhat
primitive. The usual method in Japanese copper mines,
before the introduction of the Bessemer process, was mat¬
smelting, which was suitable only for small works, a process
still used in the less-developed mines of Japan. The mat¬
smelting process was invented in the Tada mine, by a
metallurgist of the sixteenth century. It is a simple form
of the Bessemer process, and can be operated at small cost.
The process adopted in the Tada mine spread to others.
In the gold mines of Sado Island a pump on the principle of
the Archimedean screw was used, and plans of the mines were
drawn with specially prepared instruments, after surveys
were, taken. The method of selection was not unlike that
of the dolly-tubs employed in the Cornish mines for
separating tin. In the old records reference is also made to
methods of separating gold and essaying gold and silver.
But in the absence of any full application of scientific
principles the industry suffered a tremendous handicap, an
immense amount of manual labour being required to per¬
form merely superficial work. Consequently as the upper
veins became exhausted, and excavation, transportation and
ventilation grew more difficult, the industry declined and
many mines were abandoned.

1. New Era in Mining

During the process of reconstruction and reform that
began in the Meiji Restoration, it was soon seen that with-
put the use of proper machinery and modern chemical

MINES AND MINERALS

105

methods the mining industry of Japan could not hope to
make any substantial progress. In 1868 the majority of
mines were worked in shallow bonanzas and ore-shoots; and
they were generally filled with water and foul air, while the
unevenness of the mine beds caused considerable loss.
At the same time the general depression in trade during the
closing years of the Tokugawa shogunate reacted ag ains t
the mining industry. Then with the opening of the
country to Western civilization came the study and ultimate
adoption of occidental mining methods, the Government
of the day laying on itself the responsibility of recovering
the mining industry, and promoting its development to the
utmost. In 1873 special mining regulations were drawn up
by the Privy Council, according to which obligations of
mine owners were defined, and a system of inspection
instituted. The extension of mining rights to individuals
was liberally accorded and the industry no longer regarded
as a government monopoly. The mining regulations thus
issued for the promotion and encouragement of the industry
became laws of the nation on the opening of the Imperial
Diet in 1890 j and after subsequent revisions a new law
was enacted in 1905. The Bureau of Mines was placed
under the Department of Agriculture and Commerce;
and for administrative purposes the country was divided
into five districts, each having its own supervision office.
In 1878 a Bureau of Geology was founded, which in time
organized an institute for carrying on geological surveys
and duly publishing maps of the country. Mining engineers
from Europe and America were engaged for the diffusing of
scientific knowledge ; and the old secret methods, so far
as they were of any value, found a new basis with Western
mining machinery to make them practical, and mechanical
power was applied wherever possible.

To describe all that the seventy or eighty mining experts
did for the mining industry of Japan is beyond the limits
of the space at our disposal. Suffice it to say that inside

106 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of ten years ten of the most important mines that had been
closed for want of proper means of working were reopened,
■yielding gold, silver, copper, iron and coal in paying quanti¬
ties. The mines were then all worked under expert foreign
guidance, and were used as training schools for miners who
later opened other mines. After the desired results had
been effected under Western training, official action was
discontinued, though the Government still retains control
of a few mines of iron and coal. The Engineering College
established by the Government, in connexion with the
Imperial University, with the assistance of professors from
England, has done a great deal for the promotion of educa¬
tion in mining. Such courses are now conducted at all the
national universities and technical high schools, as well as
at some private institutions.

2. Rapid Development

The total mineral output of Japan in 1875 did not
amount in value to more than 2,500,000 yen annually. In
1880 the total value was 6,700,000 yen; and by 1890 it
had grown to 15,500,000 yen. Ten years later it reached
a value of 49,000,000 yen ; in 1905 it was 106,900,000 yen ;
in 1913 146,000,000 yen, or three times that of the previous
decade ; while to-day the total value of the principal
minerals produced annually is about 635,000,000 yen. The
total area of the more than 11,000 mines in operation is
2,362,777 acres, and the number of employees is about
465,000. The mines possess 1,236 miles of railway and over
100 miles of cable tramway, while such as produce oil have
160 miles of piping. The annual value of Japan’s principal
minerals in detail is as follows : gold about 10,000,000 yen ;
silver, 12,000,000 yen; copper, 49,000,000 yen; lead,
1,500,000 yen ; iron and steel 95,000,000 yen; iron pyrites,
2,500,000 yen; antimony, 3,000,000 yen; manganese,
1,400,000 yen ; coal, 418,000,000 yen ; sulphur, 3,000,000
yen ; petroleum, 35,000,000 yen.

MINES AND MINERALS 107

A considerable portion of Japan’s mineral output finds
its way abroad; and during the European War there was a
remarkable increase in this direction, especially as regards
copper. In 1905 mineral exports amounted in value to
34,000,000 yen, and in 1910 they increased to 44,000,000
yen ; while now they total as much as 283,000,000 yen,
against a value of 570,000,000 yen in imports. As to the
amount of capital invested in mining operations there is
no very reliable information, but the registered mining
companies, which represent about 75 per cent of the total,
show a paid-up capital of 447,000,000 yen, among which
there are forty-seven companies each with a capital of over
1,000,000 yen.

3. Mineral Resources

The most important of Japan’s minerals at present is
coal, which is of a non-metal variety, and found chiefly in
Kyushu, Hokkaido and Honshu. The oldest deposits are
found in the Mesozoic formation, but the greater seams are
all in Tertiary strata, especially in Kyushu and Hokkaido.
Kyushu supplies about 75 per cent of the total output,
Honshu 15 per cent, with 10 per cent from Hokkaido.
The coal resources of the country have not been fully
explored, but the Mining Bureau estimates 1,738,000,000
tons in sight, out of a total estimate of 3,762,000,000 tons
not yet surveyed. Of this quantity about 1,000,000,000
tons are in Kyushu, 568,000,000 in Hokkaido and
170,000,000 in Honshu. The anthracite of Kyushu is of
excellent quality, and more is found in Kii and Choshu in
the main island. The predominant type is a brown bitumin¬
ous coal of which there are heavy deposits in both Kyushu
and Hokkaido. The great Miike Colliery in Kyushu works
two main seams, one 20 feet thick in parts, and produces
over 1,000,000 tons annually. In the Fukuoka district of
Kyushu there are over 20 mines. The coal-field of Hok¬
kaido at Iahikari is about 12 miles broad by 50 long. The

io8 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

best coal in Japan conies from the Takashima mine near
Nagasaki. In Honshu the chief mines are in Iwaki, Ibaraki
and Nagato. The quality is inferior to that from Kyushu
and Hokkaido. Japan has also valuable coal resources in
the big Fushun Yentai mines in Manchuria, from
which some 2,000,000 tons a year are taken. There
are valuable coal deposits also in Saghalien, recently
opened up.

Copper comes next in importance as a mineral product.
It occurs in deposits of two kinds. The first and richest
is a vein in tuff or other volcanic rock, the ore sometimes
containing as much as 30 per cent of copper. Then there
is the ordinary copper deposit. Most of the ore is found
both on the outer and inner sides of the southern and
northern arcs of Japan proper. In the southern the contact
metamorphic type is much in evidence, while in the
northern arc the metasomatic type prevails, the vein type
predominating on the inner arc on the Japan-sea side of
the country. In the latter are found the greater number of
mines. Of 53 principal mines, veins supply 44 per cent;
in 11 mines beds supply 20 per cent; in 3 mines meta¬
somatic deposits supply 18 per cent; in 7 mines contact
metamorphic deposits yield 3 per cent of the output.
Deposits of the vein type are worked in such mines as the
Ashio in Tochigi, the Kosaka in Akita and in Niigata and
Fukushima. Where the deposits are found in crystalline
cysts, the percentage obtained is not above 10, and often
as low as 2. The largest and richest copper mines in the
empire are those of the Fujita Company in Akita, the
Ashio mines owned by the Furukawa Company, and the
Besshi mines of the Sumitomo Company, as well as those
of the Kuhara Company of Ibaraki. The Ikuno mine,
another good producer, yields a large percentage of silver,
and the Hitachi mine gold as well. There is no doubt
that the copper industry in Japan is destined to experience
still greater development, especially as the export now

MINES AND MINERALS

109

represents some 60 per cent of the total output, whereas the
export of coal is only about 20 per cent of production.

In recent years petroleum has become one of the most
important products of Japan’s mineral kingdom, the
petroliferous strata apparently extending from the northern
to the southern limits of the empire, chiefly in a narrow
vein following the western coast of the islands, occurring
in Tertiary rocks of the same geological epoch as that of
Galicia, California and Baku. The chief oil wells are in
Echigo and Akita ; but there are five oil-fields in all, whose
depth ranges from 180 to 2,880 feet. Echigo alone has over
300 producing wells; and there are about 900 wells in all.
Some remarkable gushes have been tapped, yielding over
400,000 gallons of crude oil a day, though the average
yield of wells is comparatively modest, the specific gravity
varying not only in each field, but according to depth.
Japan still imports petroleum, however, to the value of
some 9,000,000 yen per annum, while exporting to the value
of 5,000,000 yen.

Gold is found in almost every part of Japan, though not
in any great quantities, the chief producing districts being
Kagoshima, Niigata and Hokkaido. But Japan has gold
mines also in Korea and Formosa. Placer mining is
practised to some extent, but over 90 per cent of the metal
is obtained from lode mining. The precious metal occurs
in three types of deposit, the most important of which is
contained in quartz veins in volcanic rocks, such as that
found in North Formosa, Niigata and Sado Island near
by. The greater number of the veins are found in Tertiary
rocks, especially in sedimentary and eruptive strata. The
output of gold is constantly increasing, as, on account of
the recent development in the smelting of copper ore and
the invention of the cyanide process, gold is being extracted
from ores that were formerly difficult to treat. At the
principal mines, notably at Sado and Yamagano and Seri-
gano, modern plants have been put up, complete in some

no JAPAN FROM WITHIN

cases, not only with cyaniding machinery, but with slimos
plant. At Sado there is a battery with a capacity for
treating. 650 tons of ore per day, the ore averaging *0071
per cent. Alluvial gold is found chiefly in Hokkaido, and
to a lesser extent at Ishikawa in north Honshu. Some of
the deposits in Korea are being worked by American
interests, but the Japanese are developing other mines,
and the total annual output there is about 5,000,000 yen
in value.

In Japan silver is found in much the same geological
formation as gold, the chief mines being in Kyushu, Honshu
and Hokkaido. The metal occurs for the most part in
the form of sulphides in tuff and other volcanic rocks,
especially in association with copper, lead, gold and zinc,
the Kosaka mine being particularly rich in silver. In
Honshu, where the best silver-producing mines are found,
the largest is the Tsubaki. The ore there is argentiferous
galena and blende, and the silver content of the dressed ore
averages *078 per cent, without gold or copper. At the
Innai mine dressed ore yields 1 per cent pure metal, with
a small gold content. Over 60 per cent of the silver pro¬
duced is from argentiferous lead ores. The annual silver
output is something over 5,000,000 ounces.

Japan is not rich in iron deposits, and what does exist
is magnetite, haematite and limonite, the first being the
principal oxide widely distributed, but with few mines yet
in operation. Wakamatsu in Kyushu, where the Govern¬
ment steel works are, yields the largest supply, but other
important deposits are found at Kamaishi in Honshu, where
a considerable quantity of magnetite is smelted. Haematite
is also found in north Honshu at Akadani and Kamo, while
limonite or hydrated oxide is found in many places. ' Iron
pyrites occurs in Akita, Gumma and Ibaraki, as well as in
south Honshu. Japan is obliged, however, to bring a great
deal of her iron ore from China and Korea. The annual
demand in Japan for pig-iron is about 750,000 tons, and

MINES AND MINERALS

in

for over 2,000,000 tons of steel; and to meet this the
country’s mines can supply only 400,000 tons of pig-iron
and the mills about 1,000,000 tons of steel. Annual
imports of iron and steel total over 200,000,000 yen in
value. The Imperial Steel Works at Wakamatsu has
modern equipment with several blast furnaces of a capacity
up to 150 tons, together with steel converters of the
Bessemer type, and an open-hearth plant. But the works
have been run at a loss, and of course do not meet the
nation’s demand for iron and steel.

In point of value sulphur is the next on the list. It is
but natural that in so volcanic a country as Japan large
deposits of sulphur should be found. Only high-grade
deposits, yielding not less than 40 per cent, are worked.
About 70 per cent of the total yield comes from Hokkaido ;
but there are other sulphur mines in Fukushima and through
the north of the main island generally. Kyushu also has
sulphur near Kagoshima and Oita. Zinc blende occurs in
numerous veins with other sulphides. This ore had
formerly to be shipped abroad for refining, but recently
refining plants have been established in Japan, and imports
of this metal may be expected to diminish. Lead occurs
as sulphides in paying quantities near Gifu, the annual out¬
put equalling about 1,000,000 yen in value. The only
district producing tin to any extent is Kagoshima, though
some is produced in Gifu andlbaraki, and the output has an
annual value of some 400,000 yen. Antimony is mined
chiefly in Shikoku, but also in Kyushu and other places, and
has a large output. Manganese occurs in many places,
mostly in Hokkaido and north Honshu, much coming from
Aomori. Other minerals occurring in meagre deposits are
asphalt, graphite, phosphate ore, tungsten in very promising,
quantities, especially in Korea, and chrome iron ore.

The present preponderance of output in coal and copper
does not at all indicate that Japan is poor in other minerals,
except iron, for almost every part of the country is minera-

ii2 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

logically rich. The figures indicating production do not
as yet begin to represent the potential actual resources of
the country. Owing to lack of proper facilities of trans¬
portation, and the absence of modern methods of extraction
still in many mines, the mining industry has not kept pace
with the development of other industries. As soon as
sufficient capital is attracted, no doubt a vast increase of
output in all directions may be expected. The present
rapid development of metal manufacturing industries will
make mining more imperative. The recent increase in
such rare metals as tungsten and molybdenum, owing to
the demand created by the European War, is only one
example of what can be done. The vital problem, however,
is iron, on which the future of Japan’s industry and national
defences so much depend. The situation makes it abso¬
lutely essential that Japan shall at all times have access to
the iron mines of China; and occidental nations should
remember this when they are puzzled as to the persistence
of Japanese interest in that country. Every means are at
present devised to see that the nation’s independence in
the matter of iron supply is duly safeguarded.

4. Condition of Miners

As Japan does not tolerate labour unions of the occidental
type, the rights and conditions of miners in that country is
a question of great interest. Compared with the status of
the miner in countries like England and the United States
the Japanese miner represents rather primitive conditions.
Yet strikes, though tending to increase, are not so frequent
as one might expect; but the miner in Japan, especially
the underground, miner, is satisfied with his wages, even
though he works from 8 to 11 hours a day, usually 27 days
a month; and his wages are no more than from 40 to 70 sen
a day, while women get from 23 to 50 sen, though these
rates vary considerably according to time and circumstance.

MINES AND MINERALS

ii 3

These wages apply to metal mines, but in coal mines the
wage rises to 78 sen for men and 60 sen for women. Children
get from 13 to 38 sen a day. We have already indicated
that the number of mine workers is about 465,000, of which
342,240 are in coal mines. Of this total some 95,000 are
women, of whom 68,000 are underground ; with 4,000
children, many of whom are underground. The average
number of hours per day is 12; and the average yearly
accidents number 190,000, with 764 deaths. The Japanese
miner is proverbially careless, and accidents from explosives
are common.

Most of the miners are natives of the districts where they
work, or of the adjoining prefecture. They bring their
wives and families and lodge in the little thatched huts
provided by the company, while the unmarried live in
large common rooms. Food is supplied by the mine-
owners at less than the usual cost ; and the miner is gener¬
ally satisfied if he has enough to eat. The average Japanese,
however, does not care for the life of a miner, and the
companies have agents for recruiting, whose placards one
often sees posted, calling for men.

The miners usually work in three relays per day, every
few men being under a boss, who gets a much higher wage
than those he oversees. The Japanese miner is apt to be
superstitious, and has a conviction that the spirits of all
killed in the mines still haunt their dark chambers. If his
lamp suddenly goes out, he believes a spirit has extinguished
it. Seeing phosphoric light along mine floors he says,
“There is where the bones of the killed have crumbled
into dust.” Like all Japanese labourers, the miners sing
as they work, keeping time to manual action. Without this
some would make less movement than others. Mine-
owners bear the expense of hospital treatment in case of
accident, of pay during disablement, and compensation in
case of permanent disablement or death. In the larger
mines the workers have mutual aid associations, to the funds
8

114 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of which the mine-owners contribute ; the miners’ children
are educated either at schools established by the mine-
owners or at schools subsidized by them, thus reducing the
fees paid by the children. Though there is little dis¬
affection among the miners of Japan on the score of wages,
it often appears on the score of what is regarded as injustice,
such as the dismissal of a popular employee or the ill-
treatment of a worker ; and the usual method of retaliation
is to attack the house of the manager. The gang boss
wields absolute authority; his orders must be obeyed right
or wrong, and if one boss has a quarrel with another, their
respective men take it up and soon there is a fight.

The five mining inspection offices exercise due control
over such matters as ventilation, construction in mines and
the use of explosives. The mine-owners have to submit to
these official inspection officers the rules and regulations
adopted for the workers. The chief inspection offices of
the Government are at Sapporo, Sendai, Osaka, Tokyo and
Fukuoka. While foreigners are not permitted to own
property in Japan, they are allowed to work mines in part¬
nership with'Japanese subjects. The mining law of 1905
authorizes the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce to
grant, cancel or suspend mining rights. The area for coal
mines must be not less than 40 acres; for other mines
it may be less; but in no case to exceed 820 acres. A
limited time is allowed for the development of concessions
registered; and all mines in operation must pay a tax of
1 per cent on value of products, except in the case of gold,
silver and iron mines, which need special encouragement.
According to Japanese law, the owner of land is not de
facto the owner of the minerals it may contain; he has to
make application for prospecting rights the same as any
other man, in default of which another applicant may
secure the right to work a. mine on his property.

CHAPTER VIII

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES
I. AGRICULTURE

D ESPITE the mountainous nature of Japan, and
the consequently limited area of arable land,
amounting to little more than one-quarter of the
total, agriculture is, and always has been, the nation’s
most important industry, occupying, as it does, more than
70 per cent of the people. The possession of a moderate
and humid climate enhances the natural productivity of the
alluvial, volcanic soil of the plains and valleys to an extent
that largely compensates for restriction of arable area ; and
although storms are expected in early summer and autumn,
of a severity frequently destructive to the rice crops, the
remainder of the year is free from such dangers, and growth
is everywhere rapid and luxuriant, accounting for rich
harvests and the verdant appearance of the country.

Agriculture has always played an important part in the
policies of successive governments, and been steadily pro¬
moted as the foundation of national prosperity, even from
the remotest times. It has proved as important a factor in
the social structure of the country as it has in the economic
situation, for in Japan the rural parts show a much lower
death-rate than the cities, and Japan’s best physique has
always been recruited from the country population. The
sons of sturdy farmers form the backbone of the national
army and navy, while the ranks of commerce and industry
constantly depend on the agricultural districts for a supply ,
of muscle, health, steadiness and probity.

n 6 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

The remarkable extension of the Japanese empire north
and south affords every variety of climate and a resultant
variety of crops. The greater portion of the country
produces two harvests a year, with a large average yield.
The annual yield is usually sufficient to meet nearly the
whole demand for provisions at home, as well as the require¬
ments of various industries, and thus contributes immensely
to the national welfare. Thus the commercial and in¬
dustrial prosperity of Japan is largely bound up with the
nation’s agricultural progress, and the Government is
always doing what it can to promote a more intensive as
well as more extensive cultivation of the soil by intro¬
ducing more scientific methods and facilitating financial
accommodation.

i. Intensive Cultivation

The steady .'and enormous increase of population, and
the small area of arable land already mentioned, necessitate
an intensive system of cultivation. With the number of
inhabitants to the square mile ten times greater than that
of the United States, and with a smaller cultivable area than
Great Britain against a much greater population, and with
no adequate outlet for surplus population, Japan is forced
to till every foot of the soil, even to terracing her steep and
numerous hillsides; all of which is done for the most part
by manual labour, using rude and simple implements.
Horses and oxen are used to some extent, more than
2,000,000 of these animals being now so employed; and a
few farmers have introduced foreign implements and
machinery as far as possible ; but the processes of agri¬
culture in Japan are not adapted to the use of occidental
farming machinery, owing to the muddy nature of the
paddy-fields and the very uneven surface of the uplands.
Consequently most of the work has to be done by number¬
less hands.

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 117

Out of a population of some 57,000,000 in Japan proper,
over 34,000,000, or 6 out of every 10, are living on the land,
cultivating about 15,000,000 acres, as only I acre out of
every 6 is arable. Of this total acreage 7,400,000 are in
paddy-fields, and 7,200,000 in upland, with a few plains
and pastures. The average holding is about half an
acre for each person, or about 2£ acres per family; but
in the north, where the population is less dense, the average
per family rises to over 7 acres. Over 70 per cent of the
total number of families are living on less than 2 acres of
land, while those cultivating more than 7 acres do not
constitute more than 4 per cent of the agricultural popula¬
tion. It is only by fostering double crops and by resorting
to subsidiary occupations, such as sericulture, tea growing,
poultry, fishing, straw and wood work, that the average
Japanese farmer can hope to make ends meet. Owing to
such devices poverty and destitution are found to be very
rare among the farming portion of the community.

Japanese farmers may be divided into five groups : those
who are actual landowners; those who are landowners
working a portion of their land themselves and renting the
rest; those who cultivate all their own land and rent more;
and lastly those who are simply tenant farmers. Some
34 per cent of the farmers are landowners; about 40 per
cent are owners and tenants; and about 28 per cent
tenants only. The number of landlords renting all their
land and having no connexion with agriculture themselves
is very small. It is obvious that the land is fairly evenly
distributed. But an unwholesome feature of recent years
is that the number of landowners is decreasing, while the
number of tenants is fast increasing. In 1919, for example,
there were 30,500 fewer landowners and 25,163 more
tenants than in 1914. There is thus going on a gradual
transference from ownership to tenancy; so that while
many have lost their land, others have added field to field
and become independent landlords, a class prone to be more

ii8 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

parasitic in Japan than in Western!countries. If the process
continues it will very adversely affect the situation, for
extension of tenancy always deprives the Japanese farmer
of independence and incentive.

2. The Farmer’s Lot

The lot of the Japanese farmer is not generally regarded
as a desirable one, and there is a constant drift from rural
to urban population. This tendency is especially marked
among the younger portion of the tenant farmers. The
reason may lie in the fact that from 40 to 60 per cent of
their crops have to go to the landlord in rent, while out of
the balance they have to pay heavily for the indispensable
fertilizer. Of what is then left, even when helped out
by the meagre proceeds of subsidiary labour, a life of priva¬
tion is their only outlook. The peasant proprietors are
usually better off. In addition to their own holdings they
may cultivate a portion of land for larger proprietors and
make a fair living. The majority of these peasant pro¬
prietors, however, own only from 2 $ to 5 acres per family,
which they till with the assistance of the entire household,
being seldom able to afford hired help. Taxes, too, take
about 16 per cent of the proceeds ; expenses of cultivation
some 23 per cent more; so that the margin of profit is
uncertain. But, as has been indicated above, owing to the
increasing prominence of the narikin (nouveaux riches) land
is now being bought up and let out to tenants, supplanting
the ordinary farmer by the tenant farmer, and the country
gentry of the good old days by a class not so considerate
of their tenants.

When feudalism came to an end in 1872 the feudal lords
and the samurai landowners were compelled to relinquish
their domains to the Imperial Government. No allotment
of land could be given, as in former times; and in redistribu¬
tion of lands, the Government resolved to give the title

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 119

to the farmers that happened to be in possession. Thus
while the nobility and the samurai lost their lands, the
farmer retained his and became a proprietor ; and after an
official survey of the land, the farmers in possession were
granted title deeds. In this redistribution of farm lands
there were many who came into possession of from 25 to
75 acres, though the majority were nearer the lower than
the higher figure ; and when this acreage is compared with
the average of to-day, it will be seen what a degree of re¬
distribution has taken place since by private treaty.

The Japanese tenant farmer pays the landlord in rice;
and the average rate for good paddy-fields is about 57 per
cent of the total yield ; while the rate for uplands is about
40 per cent, usually paid in cash. The taxes are paid by
the landlord; and, as these usually amount to about
33 per cent of the rent, the actual income to owners is not
large. Japan has no special legislation with regard to agri¬
cultural holdings, as England has. In the civil code a long
lease of agrarian land is defined as running from -20 to 50
years, though most of the tenants hold the land only from
10 to 12 years on verbal contract. Now that the agrarian
population is turning towards the cities, tenants are more
difficult to get, and something will have to be done to
improve further the prospects of the poorer farmers.
The present policy is to increase the acreage of holdings
without decreasing intensity of cultivation, and so maintain
the average yield per acre.

Another increasing feature of the agrarian problem is
the Japanese economy of human waste in the cultivation
of the soil, which supplies the greater portion of the vast
amount of fertilizer required to keep the constantly depleted
soil up to the utmost possible limit of productivity. The
annual consumption of all sorts of fertilizer in Japan is
about 250,000,000 yen in value. Besides ordure, the
principal fertilizers are stable manure, vegetable ash, fish
guano, oil cake, rice bran, fish and bone manure, with large

120

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

imports of phosphate, sulphate of ammonia and Chilean
nitrate. Nitrogen derived by electrical process from the
atmosphere is coming on the market.

The Japanese farmer’s lot is not infrequently made worse
by the usurer who preys unmercifully on his victim, by
extracting from io to 20 per cent, and often more, on loans ;
and as such loans total over 900,000,000 yen, the extent
of the extortion may be imagined. The Government,
however, is coming to the rescue with agricultural banks in
almost every prefecture, affording accommodation at low
rates.

3. Agricultural Productivity

Of the total area of Japan only some 15 per cent is under
cultivation; and of this by far the most valuable portion is
covered by rice-fields, which take up more than one half
of the arable area. Rice land, being more productive and
profitable than that used for dry crops, commands a pro¬
portionately higher rental, as has been shown, but for
which its higher rate of production compensates. The
average yield of rice per acre is about 33 bushels, which by
intensive cultivation may be increased to 40 ; and in the
south where two crops a year are possible, the yield may be
increased to 60 bushels per acre. On dry land barley may
be grown at 20 bushels to the acre. Rye, wheat, millet,
rape, soy beans, tea, tobacco and sugar-cane are grown in
large quantities. The annual yield of rice amounts to
some 250,000,000 bushels, which is about 40,000,000
bushels less than the domestic demand, the balance being
imported from India, Siam and China. The annual crop
of cereals is valued at about 1,300,000,000 yen; and for
such products as tea, rape, tobacco and sugar about
70,000,000 yen.

Though most of the arable land of the empire seems to
be under cultivation, it is said that at least 8/>oo,ooo
acres more might be reclaimed for agricultural purposes,

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 121

had the Japanese command of the proper machinery for
such reclamation. This process is to some extent going on,
while in many places single crops are giving way to two
a year by irrigation and additional fertilizer. The system
established by the Imperial Government for the readjust¬
ment of land, and the granting of further facilities to
farmers, has met with deserved success under able adminis¬
tration, having already increased harvests by about 20 per
cent, and decreasing unnecessary labour to a proportionate
extent. Most of the readjustments have consisted in
bringing together scattered plots, and reshaping the paddies
by reforming boundaries, lessening the space occupied by
dykes and paths, as well as increasing the area of the average
field. Nearly 1,000,000 acres have thus been improved at
a cost of over 50,000,000 yen. The irrigation system of the
rice-fields is ingenious, most of the water coming from
mountain streams, rivers and reservoirs.

Other important products of the land that should be
mentioned are fruits and vegetables, with an annual value
of some 200,000,000 yen; and silkworms and cocoons
170,000,000 yen more ; while live-stock and poultry add a
further important item of 50,000,000 yen. The total
value of annual output from the land in Japan is about
1,800,000,000 yen.

The three greatest agricultural staples of Japan are rice,
tea and silk. As barley is usually only about half the price
of rice, it is much used as food among the poor, by
being mixed with rice. As flour is being increasingly used
as food, wheat is now an important crop, grown on the up¬
lands or as a winter crop in the paddies. It is made into
flour, a good deal of which is used for macaroni and ver¬
micelli. The soy bean is used not only for human con¬
sumption but to make soy, soup and tofu, the latter a bean
curd which has the look, but not the taste, of cream cheese,
and forms a popular and important article of diet. The
country produces an immense yield and variety of beans,

122 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

yet not enough, to supply the demand, and imports come
from China. Many kinds of cakes, and to a large extent
confectionery, are made of bean paste and sugar. Buck¬
wheat is grown to make soba, a kind of macaroni; while the
sweet potato and the ordinary potato form large crops.
Japan grows a very fine quality of indigo, but owing to
the recent development of artificial indigo abroad, the
demand has declined. The growing of cotton, hemp and
flax has begun, but has not yet greatly developed. Tobacco,
however, finds increasing cultivation, now covering about
loo,ooo acres, yielding some 120,000,000 lb. annually.
Sugar-cane is grown chiefly in the Luchu Islands and in
Formosa. Rushes for matting, and peppermint, are also
increasing products; and mulberry trees for feeding silk¬
worms and making strong paper.

The growing demand for horses and oxen as draught
animals makes stock-breeding of increasing importance.
The Government has much assisted this industry by the
establishment of stock farms, especially in Hokkaido. The
new demand for a meat diet is also influencing the breeding
of beef cattle. Owing to lack of pasturage Japan, up to the
present, has not been a great stock-breeding country. After
the Russo-Japanese War the need of horses for army pur¬
poses was seen to be imperative, and a horse-breeding
bureau was established in 1906, though before this horses
were bred on the Government stock farm in Hokkaido.
At present some 1,500 foreign-bred stallions are mating
with native mares, and the army purchases about 5,000 of
the progeny annually. The breeds imported are mainly
from Australia and England. The number of cross-breeds
in the country is about 600,000, against about 1,000,000
native breeds. In much the same way horned cattle of
the native breed are fast disappearing before imported or
cross-breeds. In some respects this is to be regretted, for
the native ox of Japan is a magnificent animal. The first
imported cattle were Devon, Ayrshire and Shorthorn, but

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 123

recently strains like the Holstein and Simmenthal are being
introduced as more suitable. There has been of late an
immense increase in demand for dairy products in Japan,
and cows are now imported or bred with a view to supplying
this requirement. There are in the country about 500,000
cross-breeds against some 900,000 native cattle. As for
sheep, Japan has none except those tenderly cared for on
some Government stock farms, but steps are being taken
to introduce them more extensively. Swine are reared in
increasing numbers however, owing to the demand for
bacon.

II. FORESTRY

The topographical formation of Japan, with its numerous
mountains, hills and ravines, with the mild and humid
climate of the country, goes to favour forest growth, and
consequently the greater portion of the land area is so
occupied. The verdant beauty of Japan’s wooded plains
and uplands has doubtless left its distinctive aesthetic mark
on the people, for the native mind has a keen apprecia¬
tion of all forms of sylvan beauty, especially an innate
love of trees and shrubs, seen among all classes of the
people.

Commercially Japan’s forests have not yet bulked very
largely in the national economy, chiefly for the reason that
the Government exercises a jealous protection over them,
not only by preservation as far as possible intact, but by
adding appreciably to their original extent by afforestation.
Japan regards her forests as a trust inherited from the past,
and the entail is profoundly respected. The result is that
there is still a large and valuable area of forest land, while
neighbouring countries are almost denuded of trees.
The system of forest management pursued in Japan aims at
continuity and increase of the most valuable timber-
producing trees as a national asset. Though it is only a
few years since forestry and dendrological research have’

I2 4 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

been placed on a scientific basis in Japan, very creditable
progress has been made in all directions.

The Forestry Bureau, established in 1897, aims at a
thorough working of the forests, disposing of those not
needed as State lands, supervising the survey of forests,
regulating the procedure and operations of forest officers,
seeing to the afforestation of bare lands, the improvement
of transportation facilities for timber, the purchase of forests
required by the State and the promotion of improvement
works. The expenses of the work are met from the pro¬
ceeds of the forests themselves. The afforestation scheme
especially has been vigorously developed, trees being
regularly planted on hillsides and denuded areas, as well as
upon uncultivable mountain districts. This work has not
only added to the beauty of the landscape, but has greatly
protected the hills from landslides, fed the springs and
rivers, improved the public health and created a forest
heritage for posterity. In Japan forests are planted and
harvested with the same care and regularity as any other
crop. The people are taught to show the same attention
to a crop of decades or centuries as to one of annual yield.
In 1910 Forest Plantation Regulations were issued granting
subsidies to towns and villages undertaking afforestation.
Japan is at present expending some 16,000,000 yen on
readjustment of watercourses in connexion with afforesta¬
tion, and the area of prohibited exploitation is being
extended.

1. Nature and Distribution

In Japan forests clothe the slopes of most of the mountains
and lower highlands, abounding more particularly in the
central portion of Honshu, all Hokkaido and Saghalien, as
well as in Formosa. The lack of uniformity in distribution
is due for the most part to peculiarities of soil. Since
density of population renders paramount the claims of
agriculture, the soil favourable to cereal production had

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 125

naturally to be cleared, and forests gave way to cultivated
lands.

Broadly speaking, there are four zones of forest distribution
in Japan. The tropical zone extends through Formosa
and the southern islands generally, where such trees as the
bamboo and the banyan attain their most luxuriant growth.
The subtropical zone covers north Formosa, Kyushu and
Shikoku and the lower portion of Honshu, where broad¬
leaved evergreens, conifers and deciduous trees pre¬
dominate . Here the camphor, the oak and the pine flourish,
with also box and ilex, some bamboo and edible fungus.
The temperate zone runs through the north part of Honshu
and the south-west region of Hokkaido, where the forests
most economically important are found, such as the sttgi
or cryptomeria, the binoki , the black and red pine, as well
as the oak, chestnut and maple, and several valuable woods
peculiar to Japan. Among the more than sixty species
available for use, the peculiarly scented fir known as binoki
is perhaps the most valuable, its tough, strong, close-
grained fibre being excellent for house construction, ship¬
building and bridge and mine work. The sugi, which
resembles the great sequoia of California in appearance and
texture, is one of Japan’s noblest trees, thriving well on
most soils in sunny places, some specimens measuring 6 feet
in diameter and attaining a height of 130 feet. The wood
is light yellow with a tinge of red, and is used largely for
house construction and finishing, as well as for manufacture
of tubs and other vessels. Another valuable wood is the
keyaki , found in mixed woods all through Honshu, Shikoku
and Kyushu; the tree grows slowly, but its wood is strong,
hard and lustrous, with a beautiful grain, and is in great
demand for furniture. The buna, a widely distributed
species, attains a great size, and was used by the aborigines
for making their dug-out canoes. In the frigid zone of the
highlands the black and the white pine attain their best
growth and supply a great demand for house-building

126 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

timber. In the Kurile Islands there is little timber, save
some stunted larch and birch.

The most primitive forests still intact are at Kiso near
Nagano, at Nagasawa in Akita and Tsugaru in Aomori.
The beautiful forests at Yoshino in Yamato, Tenryu at
Shidzuoka and Osowashi in Kii are of artificial origin.
Almost the whole island of Saghalien, except a small sandy
area along the coast, is covered with virgin forests of large
and valuable growth. The forests of Korea have been
greatly depleted, but under Japan’s administration re¬
afforestation is making great headway. Japan has control
of fine timber forests on the Yalu River, whence valuable
shipments constantly come to Tokyo in logs and balks.

2. Forest Acreage and Revenue

The forest areas of Japan are classified according to
ownership as follows: those belonging to the State; the
Crown; to communal bodies; to shrines and temples ;
and to private individuals. These are again divided by the
Government into forests under official protection, forests
open to exploitation and forests under the control of
villages or towns which are entitled to a percentage of
the forest proceeds. The total area of forest and wild
land in Japan is about 52,000,000 acres, of which nearly
3,000,000 acres are under State protection, 43,000,000 acres
open to exploitation, and of these the State owns 1,500,000
acres of protected forest and some 18,000,000 acres of
exploited forest; and the Crown 27,000 acres of protected
and 5,000,000 acres of exploited forest. The State means
the National Government, and the Crown means the
Imperial House. The State forests are those that the
feudal lords at the time of the Restoration surrendered to
the Government, some of which were taken as Crown
lands for the benefit of the Imperial Household, and are
now under administration of the Minister of the Imperial

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND. FISHERIES 127

Household ; while the purely State forests, under exploita¬
tion of the Government, are under the administration of
the Forestry Bureau in the Department of Agriculture and
Commerce. In early times shrines and temples were often
erected in forests to protect the latter from molestation,
and the titles of these properties have now been recognized
by the Government. The forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien,
Formosa and Korea are under the governors-general of
these territories.

Forestry as a source of revenue has not yet attained an
importance in Japan consistent with the possibilities; yet
there is evidence of some progress in this direction. The
revenue of State forests is about 13,000,000 yen annually,
and of Crown forests some 4,000,000 yen; and the total
annual forest revenue is about 146,000,000 yen. Exports
of Japanese timber are valued at about 48,000,000 yen, and
imports of foreign timber at some 8,000,000 yen. Of the
total value of forest products mentioned above, about
91,000,000 yen represents timber and some 55,000,000 yen
fuel and charcoal.

Forest growths that usually go to waste in other countries
the Japanese make profitable use of to an enormous extent.
The forests of the country are rich in long grasses and under-
growths of great variety, which are much used as fuel and
fertilizer. Seeds, acorns and walnuts are also a great item
of produce, and wax and oil are extracted from various trees
for industrial uses. The barks of certain species of oaks,
alders and chestnuts are utilized for tanning and dyeing;
while the stone quarries of the wooded districts are of great
utility and value. Up to a few years ago all timber in Japan
was sawn by hand, but now, with the increasing industrial
utilization of wood, there are numerous private saw-mills
representing an invested capital of about 7,000,000 yen,
with ten Government mills for the conversion of timber in
Aomori, Akita, Kumamoto, Oita and Kochi. The annual
amount of timber converted by all the mills of Japan is

128

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

about 230,000,000'cubit feet, valued at some 35,000,000 yen.
The cost of transportation from forests to mills is very high,
particularly when roads are few and rough, with torrential
streams to be crossed.

It may be mentioned that the principal exports of
Japanese timber are to China, Great Britain and the United
States, consisting of wood for tea-chests and matches ;
while wooden manufactures, such as bentwood chairs and.
toys, are finding increasing export. Japan’s imports of
timber are chiefly teat for ships, and Oregon pine and
Douglas fir for flooring, the teat coming principally from
Siam.

Camphor is by far the most important item of subsidiary
forest product in Japan. The world’s output of camphor
amounts to about 12,000,000 lb. annually; and the bult
of this is supplied by Japan, mostly from Formosa, whefe
there are still vast camphor forests. Camphor is a Govern¬
ment monopoly; and the State has for some time been
spending about 50,000 yen annually on planting out new
camphor trees, some 3,000 acres being already set out,
while about 2,000 acres have been planted in Japan proper.
The annual output of camphor is valued at 4,000,000 yen.

III. FISHERIES

With a coast-line of over 18,000 miles, exclusive of Korea,
and a geographical extension from the torrid to the frigid
zone, with innumerable bays, gulfs and river mouths, it is
but natural that the densely populated islands of Japan
should represent one of the greatest fishing countries in
the world. As the daily fare of rice and vegetables needs
to be supplemented by a more invigorating food, the
Japanese must, to a very great extent, resort to the sea for
sustenance; and the habit has long been confirmed by
Buddhist aversion to a meat diet.

The importance of the fishing industry to Japan is indi-

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 129

cated by the fact that almost 1,500,000 persons are engaged
in it, of whom over 1,000,000 are men and the rest women
and children. The number of boats on the Japanese fishing
grounds is over 400,000, mostly small open craft about
30 feet in length, though foreign-built boats and steam
trawlers are gradually coming into use, when the people
can afford them. When the annual catch, excluding
colonies, valued at 125,000,000 yen, is divided among the
fishing boats, it amounts to an average of no more than 350
yen or so for each crew of five, a very small return for such
hard and perilous toil. The per capita catch reaches an
average of 70 yen annually, as compared with fifteen times
as much in England and ten times as much in Canada. The
unprofitable and dangerous aspect of the industry accounts
for the gradual decrease in the number of fishing boats
witnessed for some years, though recently there has been a
slight increase. Owing to the frequent and treacherous
storms of the Japanese waters, the lives of sea toilers are
seldom without imminent peril, and more than 1,800
boats with their crews suffer shipwreck annually, with the
loss of more than 1,000 lives.

1. Annual Catches

Japanese waters afford an enormous number and variety of
fish, though intensive methods of fishing have reduced the
species in some cases. The Marine Biological Bureau at
Tajima has classified over 400 species of marine products that
may be utilized either as food or fertilizer, or as providing
material for various industries. K the necessary capital
were forthcoming, and better equipment provided, the sea
harvest of Japan could be made infinitely more economically
popular. There is already evidence that capital is becoming
interested, and certain ventures have been made. In
accordance with the fishery agreement which Japan made
with Russia in 1907, Japan’s fishing rights along the coast
9

i jo JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of Saghalien and Siberia were confirmed, and now extend
as far north as Kamchatka ; but since the Bolshevik revolu¬
tion in Russia a dispute has arisen, advantage of which has
been taken by the Japanese to extend their rights in Russian
waters. The value of the annual catches in these northern
waters is about 8,000,000 yen, while the fish taken in the
waters of Korea, Kwantung and Formosa is worth 11,000,000
yen more, which brings the total value of the national
fisheries up to about 144,000,000 yen annually.

The principal fish taken are sardine, herring, bonito,
anchovy, cuttlefish, squid, prawns, mackerel, tunny, tai,
yellow-tail, lobster, sea-ear, salmon and mullet. The
herring fishery is chiefly carried on along the western shore
of Hokkaido and the north of Honshu, March and May
being the best months. The fish are taken with pound-nets
and gill-nets; and only the parts along the backbone
are used for food, the rest being turned into fertilizer.
Salmon and salmon-trout are also taken on inshore grounds,
for which gill-nets and drag-nets are used. Sardine and
anchovy are caught along all the coasts, seines and purse-
seines being chiefly used. Formerly such fish were used
only as fertilizer, but recently they have been tinned and
find increasing sale abroad. The bonito, a favourite fish
with the Japanese, is taken mostly in the warmer waters,
caught with a hook with live sardine for bait. Tai, or
sea-bream, is the principal fish of spring and summer, the
best, in Japanese opinion, coming from the inland-sea
waters. The fish are coralled by drive-nets and then taken
with the seine, but sometimes they are taken with long
lines. This fish is seldom salted, as it is regarded the best
product of the sea and is wanted always fresh. The sawara
also comes mostly from the inland sea; and, as it swims in
shoals, it many be taken with drift-nets. The tunny,
found everywhere, is taken, in the same manner. The
mackerel is a ubiquitous fish, caught with spread-nets and
seines, and usually preserved in salt. Cod is taken with

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 131

lines and nets, and there is some business done in cod-liver
oil. The Japanese salmon is a very fine fish; it ascends
the rivers flowing into the Japan sea and into the Pacific
towards the north, especially in Hokkaido and North
Honshu, where it is taken with river seines and traps, but
at sea it is caught with pound-nets. Most of the catch is
salted and dried or tinned. Salmon trout is another
delicious product of Japanese waters, taken and preserved
in the same manner as salmon, though all these fish may be
had fresh anywhere.

The sea-ear is one of Japan’s important small fish, being
valuable both for its flesh and for the mother-of-pearl
found in its shell. The flesh is exported to China and brings
in a considerable income. There is a growing demand for
oysters at present, and the culture of this bivalve is
extensively carried on. At Tabashima in the bay of Ago
Mr. Mikimoto has the unique monopoly of hatching pearl
oysters, the method being to have the oysters in the usual
bed and to introduce grains of mother-of-pearl between the
shells of three-year-old oysters, the irritation thus set up
causing the fish to put forth the secretion which produces
the pearl; and in four years a pearl of considerable size
and beauty is found. Lobsters may be taken anywhere
along the coast, nets being used. The fish called a lobster
in Japan, though not a real lobster, is without claws. The
prawn, which it resembles, abounds in the inland-sea waters
and warmer inlets, and is taken with trawl-nets, and exported
largely to China. The cuttlefish, squid and octopus also
find increasing consumption both at home and in China.
Sea-cucumber, or beche-de-mer, is found mostly along the
coasts of Honshu and in Hokkaido, and, together with shark’s
fin, finds export to China. There is in Japan an immense
harvest of seaweeds and plants, mostly along the shores
of Hokkaido and south-east Honshu. The various weeds
and plants are taken and dried and then pressed into bundles
for the market, where they are sold as a relish for soup.

132 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

fish or rice. Seaweed is also turned into a sort of jelly,
and is also used to make isinglass.

For a people not reputedly inventive the Japanese have
displayed striking ingenuity in the diversity of methods and
implements used in fishing their inshore waters, until these
regions have now been so depleted that fishermen are obtain¬
ing better and more extensive equipment for deep-sea
fishing. Some 2,000 steamers and motor-boats are now
engaged in this service, with crews totalling about 53,000
men, and the catch is valued at about 16,000,000 yen
annually. The fish taken are mostly cod, mackerel, bonito,
shark and whale, the meat of the latter being much in
demand as food. The Government assists deep-sea enter¬
prise to the extent of 200,000 yen per annum, under which
impetus the deep-sea fisheries have made remarkable progress
in recent years. Intensive methods have rather exhausted
the seal fisheries of Japan, and the Government has entered
into an agreement with Great Britain and the United States
for their protection for a period of ten years. The whaling
grounds of Japan have likewise become so depleted that
official protection is now given to this industry.

2. Marine Manufactured Products

With the rapid development of transportation facilities,
and the increasing demand for prepared marine products,
this aspect of Japan’s industry has witnessed marked expan¬
sion in the.last few years. In 1900 the total income from
this source was only 33,000,000 yen; in 1910 it had grown
to 43,000,000 yen, and it is now about 60,000,000 yen
annually. A great part of the industry is in dried fish,
especially bonito, cuttlefish, tunny and sardine, but there
is an immense business in tinned fish, particularly crab,
salmon and sardine, to say nothing of lobster and other
shellfish. Another industry of great antiquity in Japan
is that of salt refining from sea-water, which is a Govern-

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES 133

ment monopoly, the annual output of which is about
1,500,000,000 lb., valued at some 15,000,000 yen.

The manufacture of by-products from marine industries
has now greatly developed, and Japan finds it no longer
necessary to import such items as iodine, iodide of potash,
isinglass and shell buttons, as these commodities have
become important exports. This progress is due largely
to effective encouragement from the Government Bureau
of Marine Products. The shell-button industry has so
increased that Japan cannot supply all the raw material
required, and shells are imported from Singapore, Aus¬
tralia and the South Seas. The demand for Japanese
tinned crab and salmon has also much increased. Japan’s
annual export of marine manufactured products is valued
at some 12,000,000 yen.

Among the various means promoted by the Government
for the encouragement of marine products is the establish¬
ment of a fishery experimental station and fishery schools,
of which there are now twenty-nine of the former and five
of the latter. At the same time there are 3,669 fishery
guilds for protecting the interests of fishermen, with a
membership of some 468,000 ; while the Marine Products
Guild has 212 associations with 310,000 members. The
artificial breeding of important fish like salmon, trout, carp,
eel and snapping turtle is carried on at various places at an
expense of about 3,000,000 yen a year.

CHAPTER IX

LABOUR AND WAGES

T HE process by which such countries as England,
Germany and Italy have been transformed from
an agricultural to an industrial basis is now going
on in Japan, but at a rate so rapid that the country is un¬
prepared to deal with it, resulting in serious evils to labour
and industry. The more extensive and alluring markets
opened up to Japan in recent years have greatly expanded
the nation’s industries, shifting them from the home to
the factory, and creating crowded centres of activity with
their questions of labour and wages. Notwithstanding
that Japan is primarily an agricultural country, the nation
is now forced to lay increasing stress on commerce and
industry, to the comparative neglect of agrarian interests,
in order to supply the revenue necessary to maintain an
ambitious armament programme ; and the result is an
abnormal rush of population to the cities, creating condi¬
tions anything but favourable to health and efficiency.
Thus the changes that took a hundred years to be accom¬
plished in Europe, Japan has undergone in the memory
of people now living; and the phenomenal celerity of the
revolution has naturally given rise to problems still more
intensive and acute, commanding a foremost place in the
councils of her statesmen and all who are interested in the
future of the country.

i. Rapid Growth of Cities

As. in other countries, so in Japan, the dominant char¬
acteristic of the new industrialism is the trend of popula-

*34

LABOUR AND WAGES

i3S

tion from rural to urban districts, for the city is the main
sphere of industrial activity. This abnormal expansion of
urban population is almost revolutionary in its effect on
Japanese society. In the case of Tokyo, the capital, popula¬
tion during the last twenty-five years has increased from
900,000 to nearly 3,000,000; while Osaka, the greatest
industrial centre in the empire, during the same period has
grown from 500,000 to 1,750,000 ; Nagoya from 200,000 to
450,000; and Yokohama and Kobe have increased about
five-fold. The five largest industrial centres above mentioned
have thus increased about 325 per cent, or some 300 per cent
more than the nation as a whole. For Tokyo alone the
growth of industrial population has been about 415 per cent
in the last decade or more. The great earthquake in 1923,
which destroyed two-thirds of the capital, reduced the
nation’s industrial output by 20 per cent. The transforma¬
tion of Tokyo from an official capital to a great industrial
centre has been nothing short of marvellous. Great areas,
which ten years ago were taken up with rice-fields or marshes,
are now reclaimed and covered with factories or labour
tenements, and property values at the same time have gone
up over 1,000 per cent. Osaka, Kobe and Yokohama •
have had much the same experience. The five cities
named above may be fairly taken as focal points to reveal
the metamorphosis of Japan from an agricultural age to an
age of steam, electricity and steel.

2. Japan Necessarily Industrial

The extraordinary development of industrialism in Japan
is neither accidental nor temporary. Situated like Great
Britain on the shoulders of a continent, Japan occupies a
position of unique commercial advantage. In her own
ships she can move the products of her own factories to
any port along the extensive coast-line of China and far up
that country’s endless waterways, at lower rates and with

136 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

greater expedition than any of her competitors. Without
sufficient resources of her own in iron, cotton and other
raw materials essential to national progress, Japan early
realized, in her contact with Western nations, that to keep
up a balance of trade, and husband specie, she must vastly
improve and increase her industrial capacity and lay hold
upon the markets of China, where the unlimited iron re¬
sources of Eastern Asia lie still unexploited; and now
Japan has been drawn so far into the race for industrial
supremacy in the Far East that her system has invaded every
country, and her merchant marine are placing her products
in every market, on the Pacific. Japan believes that her
future as a World Power depends on her ability to hold and
extend the markets she has won. Having entered on the
path of empire, Japan cannot draw back. To her the expan¬
sion of commerce and industry is not an academic but the
most vital of all questions. The future of Japan depends
not on her bushido, her statesmen or her financial magnates,
nor even on her naval and military strength, but on her
factory workers. .

3. Some Serious Aspects

Japan’s sudden leap from feudalism to free labour, and
from a rural to an urban population, has created contrasts
that gravely menace each other. The transformed, over¬
grown cities and towns are like separate nations in the
midst of a rural people who have not changed with the
times at all. There is a great gulf between the life and
environment of the peasant villager and the denizen of a
congested commercial and industrial centre. The thousands
of peasants that pour into the great industrial centres every
year find themselves in a wholly new world. In the space
of one day the old restraints of family, religion and society,
that hitherto moulded and steadied the life of the villager,
are removed, and the individual finds himself up against

LABOUR AND WAGES

137

a huge, soulless machine where the forces of capital and
greed hold the whip hand. Into this machine, more
merciless than the same sort of thing in occidental lands,
the worker must merge or be crushed. And, to make the
situation worse, the power of the Japanese peasant to under¬
stand his new environment, or to adjust himself to his new
social order, is extremely limited. But whether he under¬
stands or not, he must be prepared to have himself treated
as a unit of less value and importance than the material
product on which he works.

4. Labour Conditions

Under the temptation to criticize the only too-primi-
tive labour conditions prevailing in Japan, it is well to
remember that time may allow the new population now
flowing into Japanese cities to find itself socially and
economically; and, further, to allow the wealthier classes of
Japan to realize their responsibility for the conditions and
needs of their expanding cities. But as yet there is small
evidence of any public conscience able to perceive the close
connexion between uplift and conservation of labour and
the permanence and efficiency of the nation’s industrial
power. Even factory owners in Japan, as a rule, fail to
see that there is a direct relation between the care accorded
the human machine and its working output. Young men
and women, suddenly removed from the fresh air and
healthful surroundings of country life to the usually foul
atmosphere of factories, and the low, damp beds and poor
food of the industrial centres, soon undergo physical and
mental deterioration. Long hours of toil amid unsanitary
conditions lead to contagion and disease. Few constitu¬
tions are able to endure the strain of standing from iz to
16 hours a day at high-powered machines. The un¬
hygienic conditions under which so many Japanese factory
girls have to work are especially bad, while the over-

138 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

crowding of dormitories and the use of child labour but
increase the danger. Nearly 500,000 workers, recruited
from the healthiest blood of the country, annually pour
themselves into the polluted conditions of factory life,
many of whom never return.

The results are particularly disastrous to women and
children. The predominance of women is a striking
feature of Japanese labour, most of them surprisingly young
and immature. There are 28,000,000 women in Japan, and
of these more than half are employed at either whole- or
part-timework. Eight millions are engaged in agriculture,
and 1,250,000 in factories. Indeed 60 per cent of all
factory workers are women, and in some lines of industry
the proportion to men runs much higher ; as, for example,
in cotton mills, where women form 80 per cent of the opera¬
tives ; and 70 per cent of the labour in the raw silk in¬
dustry, and the same percentage in the tobacco factories.
And of the children employed in Japanese factories 80 per
cent are little girls. Of all these women employed in
factories more than 300,000 are under 20 years of age.
In raw silk mills the work averages between 13 and 14
hours a day, and in the weaving mills from 14 to 18 hours
a'day. The hands in the spinning mills have to take night
work every other week. The week ending the night-shift
always shows a loss of weight in the girls, and ultimately
wrecks their health. Few can go on longer than a year, when
desertion, illness or death affords relief. The statistics
show that some 80 per cent of the workers leave the mills
annually, their places being taken by new recruits. These
are collected to the number of 300,000 annually by agents
going through the country and bargaining for them with
poor parents. The girls on the night-shift sleep in
the same beds as those on day work; beds thus never
getting a chance to be aired or cleaned, and consequently
are nests of bacteria. The most prevalent disease is
tuberculosis.

LABOUR AND WAGES

139

5. Moral Dangers

Nor are the moral dangers of the Japanese worker less
than those menacing his physical condition. Housing is
congestive in the extreme, leading to moral no less than
bodily deterioration. As for factory girls, they are usually
housed in such compounds as have already been mentioned,
where they are exposed not only to physical but to moral
deterioration. In the industrial centres the houses are
usually too small, and the smallest often contains more than
one family of five or more persons each, all jumbled
together in one room where decency of life is almost
impossible. Many of the poor families take lodgers, who
sleep with the family on the same floor. A Japanese
factory expert has affirmed that in some factories it is not
uncommon for more than half the girls to lose their virtue
in a year. The long hours leave the workers so weary
that any sort of excitement is welcome, and consequently
vicious pleasures and pastimes are encouraged and common.
The most usual amusements are drinking, gambling
and sensuality. Thus the youths and maidens from
wholesome country homes are suddenly separated from
the moral restrictions of innocency and childhood and
plunged into immoral conditions, where they lose self-
respect and health, and where death is often a happy
relief.

Something might also be said of the moral effect of
turning away from hand-made products to machinery,
from art to artificiality, from conscience and idealism to
expediency and wages, with a consequent stunting of
individuality and ideals. Moreover, the constant shifting
of hands, on account of illness or injustice or breach of
contract, renders maintenance of highly skilled labour
difficult. In some factories when a worker becomes too
familiar with skilled processes he is considered dangerous
and removed to another department.

140

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

6. Rights of Labour

The Japanese labourer enjoys no political rights, and of
others he possesses but few. He has no vote, because his
wages are too low, as a rule, to call for the 3-yen tax neces¬
sary to the franchise, and so he has no way of controlling
or improving the conditions under which he has to work,
save by agitation. He has to accept the decision of his
employers as to hours, safety devices, health provision,
wages and all the usual details of labour, without question,
though a Factory Act of recent operation may slightly
modify this statement in respect to hours and safety.
Owing to the influence of the Labour Bureau in connexion
with the League of Nations the Japanese have agreed to
modernize their labour system with regard to hours of
labour, especially for women, and recently those in a delicate
condition, as well as children, have been prohibited
employment between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

At present no more than 10 per cent of the men of Japan
are entitled to the franchise ; and of this proportion,
numbering in'all about 2,800,000, only. 153,000 live in cities
and have any chance to experience or influence industrial
life. As labour unions after occidental models are pro¬
hibited by law, and the labourer has no way of appealing to
public opinion, except by strikes, which also are prohibited
and severely dealt with, labour is placed almost wholly
at the mercy of capital, and often has to submit to increased
cost of living without a corresponding rise in wages. All
who induce, or even incite, strikes are put in prison for six
months, with a heavy fine.

Conditions seem all the harsher, seeing that the Japanese
worker is usually not illiterate, more than 80 per cent being
able to read and write ; and over 90 per cent of the children
of labourers are at school. The Japanese toiler not only
reads the newspapers, but takes considerable interest in
the public questions of the day. The sources of knowledge

LABOUR AND WAGES

141

being thus open to him, he is not likely to submit much
longer to the contrasts between his lot and that of his fellow
workmen in occidental countries. It is, therefore, quite
improbable that the labourers of Japan will remain content
to create the nation’s wealth without receiving a larger
share of the opportunities of life and the benefits of civiliza¬
tion. Education without rights, knowledge without oppor¬
tunity, is like generation of steam in a flask, a dangerous
experiment.

For what interest has been created in the rights of labour
in Japan the labourer is largely indebted to occidental
organizations. In the past Japan has not figured as a very
important factor in the labour movement, from a Western
point of view. To the average economist as well as worker
in occidental lands Japanese labour has seemed a thing apart,
deserving, perhaps, a degree of consideration, but un-
appreciably affecting the great labour world as a whole.
Cheapness and inefficiency were supposed to preclude the
output of Japanese labour from seriously competing with
the products of foreign labour. But the recent progress
of Japanese industry, having begun to affect the world’s
supply and demand, is at last arousing interest abroad,
and already representatives of Japanese labour have been
conferring with labour organizations in America and
England.

7. Labour Unions Prohibited

It is Japan’s unique if questionable distinction to have no
labour or trade unions in the occidental sense; but, from
what has already been said, it is clear that this is not because
labour in Japan needs no amelioration. While labour
unions are prohibited by the authorities, a society known as
the Tuaikai , or Labourers’ Friendly Society, has been
tolerated, and is doing what it can to create an intelligent
interest in labour as well as to improve the conditions of the

142 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

working man. Founded in 1912 the Society already has a
membership o£ some 40,000, mostly in Tokyo. For a
monthly fee of 10 sen members receive legal and medicinal
advice, may hear lectures on social and personal hygiene,
domestic economy, and secure participation in a co-operative
supply union, and also find an authorized medium to ven¬
tilate grievances. Speaking generally, Japan has no social
settlements for the improvement of conditions among the
poorer classes of the city, but a few under Christian mis¬
sionary auspices have been started and are doing good work.
What the Japanese labourer wants, however, is not charity,
but his rights, such as are enjoyed in all free and progressive
countries. Given these, he is as well able to take care of
himself as the worker of any other country.

It must be admitted with disappointment that, so far,
the labour movement in Japan has not met with much
public sympathy or encouragement, and none from
officialdom. With the diffusion of liberal and philan¬
thropic ideas, following the introduction of Western civiliza¬
tion and intercourse with occidental nations, it was hoped
that labour would receive due attention and be accorded
its rights. Leaders like Count Itagaki endeavoured to
circulate newer ideas of freedom, but his propaganda was
checked by his attempted assassination. Later the labour
movement in England and the United States began to find
echoes in Japan under the leadership of Sen Katayama,
Professor Abe and others who had studied abroad, and on
their return started a movement for the reform of labour
conditions at home. Books like Bellamy’s Looking Backward
and Henry George’s Progress and Poverty and General
Booth’s Darkest England were eagerly read and labour
unions after the Western type were talked of; but in
their zeal the leaders made the mistake of attempting to
graft occidental institutions unmodified into the radically
different social body of Japan. As time went on the move¬
ment divided into what might be called an evolutionary

LABOUR AND WAGES

H 3

and revolutionary trend that proved fatal ; for the evolu¬
tionist sided with socialism, and the revolutionist with
anarchy. Through books, papers and public speeches
Katayama Jed an aggressive propaganda for aggressive
socialism, while the other wing, under guise of a coterie
called the social democrats led by Kotoku, urged the most
radical and alarming measures. On his return from abroad
Kotoku finally became an advocate of anarchist doctrines,
and in 1910 he, with twenty-six others, was involved in a
conspiracy against the Emperor, when the whole lot were
condemned to death. Of the conspirators thirteen had their
sentences commuted to imprisonment for life, and Kotoku,
his wife and the remaining eleven were executed. This
was a tremendous blow to the labour movement, as sub¬
sequently it became associated in the public mind with
disloyalty and principles dangerous to the nation j which
was just what its opponents desired for its overthrow.
Suspicion of the labour movement has since continued,
and, during the suspension of law and order during the
recent earthquake in Japan, occasion was seized by rabid
patriots to assassinate the leaders of socialism and labour.

At present the regulations in reference to socialism and
anarchic doctrines are unprecedentedly rigorous. All the
authorities have to do, in order to destroy any new move¬
ment, is to brand it with the feared and hated name of
socialism. Even a hint in this direction is sufficient to
make most Japanese fly from it in terror. Labour unions
are included in the regulations affecting socialism and
anarchy, which is sufficient to give them the quietus.
Nevertheless, there are many socialists still in Japan, some
of them in labour circles, as well as among some young men
of the middle class, but they can find no vent for expression.
Thus, all the preparation that Katayama made for organiza¬
tion of labour unions among the iron workers, typographers,
street-car men, shipbuilders, miners and railway men
seems to have melted into nothing. And the severe

144 JAPAN from within

attitude displayed after the earthquake disaster toward
socialists and labour leaders is some indication of popular
sentiment.

The general attitude of State authority, as well as of
capitalism in Japan, is opposed to labour unions. The
majority of employers of labour in Japan hold tenaciously
to the old feudal conception of the master’s right to force
his will on the labourer without consent or conference.
To recognize the rights of labour, as understood abroad,
is regarded in Japan as both inconvenient and uneconomic.
There are a few capitalists, however, who realize that the
rights of labour must ultimately be considered and recog¬
nized, as such a day cannot be warded off by compromise.
Some employers of labour in Japan already show an interest
in promoting the comfort and welfare of workers, as good
for industry no less than for labour. Not all the cotton
mills are as indifferent to the interests of their operatives
as those mentioned in the previous section of this chapter.
The Kanegafuchi Spinning Company is an example of
capital making due provision for the health and recreation
of operatives.

But the Japanese capitalists, as a class, are indifferent
to labour interests and even labour questions; while the
universities are more concerned with the economic than the
human aspect of labour.

Frequency of Strikes

Meanwhile strikes, and labour disputes generally, are
remarkably on the increase. Though strikes are illegal,
they are yet the only resource labour distress has : hence
their frequency. Unlike strikes in occidental countries,
such an episode in Japan usually means riot and violence.
In recent years the unrest of labour has become acutely
serious. Intimidation is no longer able to suppress in¬
dustrial agitation, and it is apparent that the struggle be-

LABOUR AND WAGES

145

tween capital and labour has at last begun. In the last few
years the most serious strikes have occurred in such indus¬
tries as steel, iron, dockyards, weaving and spinning. In
some instances the situation was so menacing as to require
the calling out of the troops to restore order. Very few
strikes, however, have won the object for which the strike
was brought about.

Between 1897 and 1902 Japan had 127 strikes, involving
more than 20,000 workers, of which 57, representing some
8,000 labourers, were partially successful. Between 1908
and 1911 there were 68 strikes more or less futile. Between
1912 and 1915 as many as 146 strikes occurred, involving
some 20,000 men, but to no satisfactory end. In 1916
there were 108 strikes, affecting some 9,000 men, while
in 1918 as many as 2,000 -strikes took place, owing to
conditions created by the European War. The main
cause of most of these strikes was the refusal of a demand for
higher wages and better treatment of workers, which is
doubtless an echo of the.recent increased cost of living
without a corresponding rise in wages. It is the general
belief in economic circles that strikes will remain a feature
of Japanese labour until it receives due recognition.

9. Wages

To arrive at any degree of accuracy as to wages in Japan
is not easy, as wages are usually secret, and are in constant
fluctuation. On the whole it may safely be said that the
wage scale is far below that of Western countries. Taking
cotton mills as an example, the wage per 1,000 spindles
managed by one operative in the United States is twice
the amount paid to five operatives for the same work in
Japan. In England a bricklayer gets a wage three times
as high as he gets in Japan; a carpenter also three times;
a printer six times ; a smith four times and a compositor
five times as much as in Japan. It is calculated that the
10

146 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

average Japanese family cannot live on less than 30 yen a
month ; but since many families get much less than that
it is difficult to see how some subsist, but often wife and
children add something to the monthly income. As the
majority of Japanese live on rice three times a day the year
round, the fare is fairly cheap, but they must be more or
less underfed. The average annual income of the Japanese
labourer is four times less than in England ; and women
always get less than men by about one-quarter. In
factories the average male operative gets about 60 sen a
day (15^.), and the average female gets about 40 sen
(io^.)j while the day labourer of Japan gets about 70 sen
(i8d.), which is some 13 sen more than was paid five
years ago.

So long as female labour constitutes the principle of
factory economy in Japan, it is difficult to expect much
improvement in conditions or wages. It has already been
mentioned that over 80 per cent of the factory labour is
done by women, which include 100,000 girls under 15
years old, and over 2,000 less than 12 years of age. The
predominance of female labour in the factory life of Japan
tends to retard organization and improvement of labour,
for the Japanese woman worker is practically non-assertive
under a master ; and capital has its own way. Further¬
more, in spite of the rapid increase of urban population,
Japan is still for the most part a land of small factories,
concentration of industry being yet in the nascent stage.
Of more than 1,000,000 hands employed, the vast* majority
are in factories where .only from five to ten operatives are
employed. Nearly all the silk mills are run on a small scale,
cotton mills being practically the only ones employing
large numbers of workers in one place. Domestic industries
and small manufactures predominate. So long, therefore,
as female labour continues to dominate the situation, and
industry remains distributed in small factories, labour
will fail to exercise any potent influence on public opinion.

LABOUR AND WAGES

H7

As has already been shown, where labour has begun to
concentrate to any extent disaffection is pronounced and
labour disturbances are common.

The rapid development now going on in all spheres o£
economic activity in Japan, especially in manufacturing
industries, must soon cause a still greater concentration of
industry, as well as a more menacing condition of social
life in industrial centres. As conflicts between capital and
labour acquire greater frequency and intensity, organization
for the mutual adjustment of differences will be admitted,
and labour will attain greater freedom and better treatment.
But the forces in the opposite direction are strong and
stubborn. The relatively large number of hands employed
by the Government in its monopoly system, its offices and
bureaux, its railways, post, telegraph and telephone offices,
further militates against the organization of labour, while
the persistence of the apprentice system in trades still
further restricts the freedom of the worker. Owing to the
fear of trade unionism being forced on the country, in
view of the increasing number of strikes, an organization
was promoted by capitalists known as the Kyochokai, or
Harmonization Society, for arbitrating disputes between
capital and labour, but it cannot be said to have done much
towards the object of its existence.

In speaking of the attitude of the Government toward
labour, a leading Japanese professor has said: “ The

Government is stupidly shortsighted in keeping the labourers
crippled "by refusing to let them organize, and trying to
make amends by giving them crutches in the form of
insurance and factory laws.” Owing to the aggressive
unrest of Japanese labour in recent years the authorities
have been forced to adopt a few measures of remedial
legislation, which, though late and decidedly defective,
are yet better than nothing. The Factory Act passed in
1911 was not enforced until the authorities were compelled
by menacing conditions to do so in 1916. The Act is

148 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

palpably imperfect and will doubtless be improved, as it
seems to favour the employer at the expense of the worker.
As it applies only to factories of fifteen hands or over,
the majority of establishments will escape its remedial pro¬
visions. In principle the Act prohibits the employment of
children under 12 years of age in factories, but exceptions
are easy. Persons under 12 years of age, and women in a
delicate condition, are regarded as protected workers,
and not allowed to work over 12 hours a day, nor between
10 p.m. and 4 a.m., but this provision has, as has been said
above, not been enforced until recently under the influence
of the Labour Section of the League of Nations. As the
enforcement of such provisions is left wholly to mutual
agreement' between factory inspectors and employers, it
is doubtful how far enforcement will be carried out. The
Act obliges factory owners to assist the families of those
killed in factory accidents, and provides for the proper
dismissal of employees and apprentices and for the appoint¬
ment of factory superintendents. Responsibility for en¬
forcement of the Factory Act rests with the governors
of the various prefectures, and some twenty-one inspectors
have been appointed to assist them in this duty. Labour
at Government factories is under better conditions than in
private establishments. An insurance scheme for operatives
at Government factories is proving beneficial, but is hardly
comprehensive enough. On the whole it may be said that
the Japanese labourer has yet to fight the battle that has
been fought and won in occidental countries.

CHAPTER X

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

T HE Japanese must be accounted warriors from the
days of their first appearance as conquerors of the
isles of Nippon ; and consistently the first thousand
years of their history, in settlement of the archipelago,
seems to have been mainly a period of strife, either with
the opposing aborigines or with succeeding migrations
from the continent. That the early Yamato race was
highly skilled in the art of war there is no doubt, since it
had no great difficulty in enforcing occupation of the land,
the southerners under Jimmu Tenno proving the more
dauntless of the various tribes.

It must be assumed that most of the military tactics
and weapons of old Japan had their origin in China, whence
the nation derived its other arts. In the national records of
ancient matters one reads that in the year a.d. 760 soldiers
were sent to Kyushu to study the science of warfare under
a military instructor named Kibi Makibi, who in turn had
made a study of Chinese tactics, the lessons learned being
taken chiefly from books prepared by Chinese strategists.
The Imperial Court usually kept a teacher of Chinese
strategy j and there is mention of the custom of ascertaining
the whereabouts of enemy troops by the behaviour of birds,
especially wild geese, by means of which enemies in the past
had been detected and defeated. This scrap of history is
quite in harmony with Japanese tradition that the race
descended from warriors who became the ancestors of great

military families, most prominent among which was the

149

150 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

Imperial Family itself. Tradition asserts that the Empress
Jingo in a.d. 200 led an expedition in person to Korea to
subdue refractory kingdoms there, which had been stirring
up insurrection in Yamato. During the sixth and seventh
centuries there appears to have been much attention
devoted to the question of national defence, and guards of
the Court and of the national frontiers were established.
In a.d. 661 the Emperor Tenshi issued instructions for
regulating the national army, in preparation for an encounter
with China. In 701 it seems that the Imperial forces were
divided into corps, each consisting of 1,000 soldiers;
and at the same time a cavalry section was organized, and
all the Court families were obliged to lend themselves to
the movement. Under the Emperor Konin in 780 con¬
scription took a definite form, when every able-bodied man
was compelled to fight, the incompetents being left to
work the land. From this time began that military class
distinction based on fighting qualities, which has ever since
characterized the Japanese. The military power thus
created brought about a long period of peace, which in turn
resulted in luxury and effeminacy that reacted unfavourably
on the nation. In many places finally the spirit of mere
defence gave way to a spirit of plunder and rebellion, and
the integrity of the nation could only be restored and
upheld by a military class. With the consequent rise of
great feudal families the army became decentralized; and
for a time military power continued to be associated with
the Taira and the Minamoto families. The long dissension
between these great military clans and their vassals, during
the Middle Ages of Japan, kept the country in intermittent
strife for centuries; and ultimately with the triumph of the
Minamoto clan, and its establishment of a military dictator¬
ship at Kamakura in 1192, the indomitable fighting spirit
was conserved and handed on to future generations.

These extended periods of ancient warfare in Japan were
for the most part under the inspiration of Chinese methods

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

151

of fighting, though we may be sure such sturdy warriors
as the Japanese had early begun to develop their own devices.
Up to the ninth century it was a principle of native tactics
to attack always at night or early in the morning; which
well suited the national disposition and temperament.
This practice was undoubtedly continued all through the
civil wars of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
It was indeed seldom that forces of any considerable strength
met on the open plains or even in valleys, as the Japanese
warrior never acquitted himself so well under such circum¬
stances. In the warfare of ancient times battles were some¬
times decided by contest of individual prowess, not unlike
what one sees traces of in Britain during the age of chivalry.
Somewhat after the manner of Goliath facing young David,
a Japanese general would stalk out in front of his forces
and challenge a representative of the enemy to single
combat. The challenging hero stood erect between the
opposing hosts, and in stentorian tones recited his lineage and
military achievements : it was the only moment in a
samurai’s life when he was free to boast, demanding a man
of equal family and martial attainments on the enemy’s
side to be pitted against him. As a rule the challenge was
promptly accepted. In a similar manner a hero from the
enemy ranks would step forward and proclaim his family
history and his own deeds of prowess in former battles.
There stood the two warriors face to face amid the intense
silence and suspense of the assembled troops. At once the
duel began. It was nothing if not fierce, a battle to the
death. One of the combatants fallen, another was ready
to step in; and after two or three of such contests, the
spirit of the spectators was up, and one side or the other
refused to wait longer, and so the ranks closed in on one
another with fearful carnage. It was seldom, however,
that the entire forces on both sides participated, as the
strategists preferred to depend on a.night attack for the
final result.

152

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

i. Medieval Tactics

Through the Middle Ages two schools of tacticians
developed in Japan, chiefly under the impetus of the civil
wars already mentioned. The one was known as the
Echigo system, of which the celebrated warrior Uyesugi
Kenshin was the exponent ; and the other was called the
Koshu tactics, elaborated by one of the most famous
enemies of Kenshin, named Tadeda Shingen. The Echigo
tactics involved a.rapid movement of troops and the spring¬
ing of disconcerting surprises on the enemy, as may be seen
from a careful study of the plan adopted at the noted battle
of Kawanakajima. The Koshu tacticians, on the other
hand, aimed at placing their troops in strategic positions,
and insisted on pressing a steady frontal attack with a fight
to the finish. The latter way came to be regarded by the
majority of soldiers as the more scientific, and for a con¬
siderable time it prevailed among the leading clansmen at
arms. Succeeding warriors of renown further elaborated
■the Koshu system, each giving the new development his
own name ; and so we have mention of the Obata tactics,
the Kagemori tactics, the Honjo Ujimasa method, and the
popular tactics , of Yamaga Soko.

Of course the introduction of guns and modern weapons
completely changed the army system of old Japan. The
bowman and the lancer had small chance before Western
musket and cannon. The introduction of occidental
methods obliged the complete rearrangement of the line
of battle. The musketeers were now placed in front,
with the archers behind and the spearmen in the rear,
each under a special officer j the muskets were discharged,
the bowmen delivered their shafts and emptied their quivers,
and the spearmen then closed in on the struggling forces,
while the musketeers and archers prepared for a second on¬
slaught. Thus the arrival of Portuguese and Spanish, with
European arms and ammunition, in the middle of the

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

I S3

sixteenth century, completely revolutionized the military
tactics of Japan.

The first firearm ever seen in Japan was a musket pre¬
sented to the daimyo of Higo by a Portuguese merchant
in the year 1551. Thence onwards the making of ordnance
in Japan became common. It was not, however, until
1660 that the various feudal lords seriously determined
to use foreign firearms, and the foreign instructors were
engaged. In that year Honjo Masafusa, a celebrated
soldier of the day, took lessons in military tactics, and the
use of occidental war weapons, from a Dutch officer, special
emphasis being laid on the use of cannon. Some time later
the governor of Nagasaki brought with him another Dutch¬
man to Osaka and Yedo to teach European military science.

The way in which the military authorities became
interested in the use of European ordnance is picturesquely
related by the native historians of the Japanese army. When
a Dutch officer, who had come to Japan with a ship of the
Dutch East India Company, was shown the walls of Osaka
castle, he was expected to be much impressed by their im¬
pregnable appearance. But to the amazement of the
Japanese he only laughed and said “ bom-bom, bom-bom.”
The governor of the castle finally was able to understand that
the Dutchman meant to say that such walls would soon
crumble to pieces before European cannon. After this the
Japanese set about a careful study of ordnance, and soon
equipped themselves with big guns of their own. The
authorities at Nagasaki, being more in touch with the
Dutch, knew more of Western defences, and in 1818
memorialized the central government to secure modem
military equipment, and especially that the existing castles
should be replaced by more invincible fortresses. Shuhan
Takashima, the leader in this movement, was thrown into
prison for his presumption in thus daring to instruct the
shogunate ; but the invasion of the Kurile Islands by Russia,
and the increasing appearance of foreign warships in

154 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

Japanese waters soon showed the authorities that something
should be done to ensure national defence. Some time
later a young officer named Enomoto Buyo, afterwards
destined to play an important part in the nation’s history,
went to Holland to study naval and military science, while
Count Katsu took lessons from Dutch officers at Nagasaki.
Such was about the sum-total of Japan’s knowledge of
modern war at the beginning of the Meiji period, though
no doubt there had been more experiment and progress
than is recorded. In Nagasaki there is set up on a pedestal
on the water front a large iron ball, more than 2 feet in
diameter. It is said by some that this is the sole remainder
of shots that were used in ancient times. Some military
genius of old Japan conceived the idea of defending the
port of Nagasaki from the intrusion of foreign ships by
excavating a deep hole in the side of a lofty hill, the hole
lined with heavy timber to form a sort of howitzer gun,
which could be charged with powder and then loaded with
the heavy ball. The enemy would be driven to a certain
spot in the harbour where the angle of the gun would drop
the huge shot, thus penetrating the ship’s deck and perhaps
its bottom by sheer weight.

As to recruiting, it may be said that after the army
decentralization caused by the rise of the feudal system,
every daimyo had his own military organization ; but
among most of them it was the rule to take one-fourth of
all the men between the ages of 20 and 40 for training as
soldiers, while the other three-quarters of .this class were
obliged to provide themselves with armour and weapons so
as to be in readiness for war when called up in emergency.
As the army was then constituted, 50 men formed a band,
and 500 men a company, either infantry or cavalry, each
with its captain. Two such companies were a corps; and
the troops numbering 20,000 had 1 general, 1 lieutenant-
general and 2 commissioned officers. This system was kept
up until the tenth century; but as the daimyo had become

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

155

more and more independent they often followed their
own devices, until ultimately all semblance of military
uniformity was lost. The chief weapons used in war up
to the time of modernization were the bow and arrow,
the spear and halberd, with shields of two sizes, a small
one for fighting and a large one for protection in camp.
These large shields were used to form a wall between an
army encampment and a sneaking enemy.

2. The Army To-day

With the abdication of the shogun in 1868 the supreme
command over all the naval and military forces of the
empire reverted to the Emperor. The expeditious manner
in which the men of Satsuma and Choshu overthrew the
opponents of the new regime showed that, even at that
time, Japan possessed warriors of no mean skill and prowess.
The Naval and Military Bureau organized in the first year
of Meiji soon evolved into the Bureau of National Defence,
which in time became the War Office. As the new national
army consisted of the various heterogeneous forces formerly
under command of the feudal lords, it represented anything
but a mobile unit of defence ; and so the French military
system was at first adopted, with the hope of producing
some show of uniformity and cohesion. Regular bodies
of infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineering corps were
organized, including an Imperial bodyguard. A garrison
was stationed in Tokyo for the protection of the northern
provinces, another in Osaka for the security of the western
provinces, while other garrison detachments were posted
at certain strategic points. Thus in a remarkably short
time great improvements were brought about in the military
system of the country.

With the abolition of feudalism, the disappearance of
dan troop and the introduction of a national conscription
system in 1871, a most drastic transformation was accom-

i56 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

plished. The military profession, which for centuries
had been a monopoly of the samurai, was flung open to
every male citizen of the empire, irrespective of class or
clan. In 1873 the nation was divided into six military
districts, with centres at Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka,
Hiroshima and Kumamoto, at all of which garrisons were
stationed. The men recruited by conscription went into
battle with the clan troops for the first time in the Satsuma
rebellion in 1877; and they proved themselves equal in
every way to the veteran soldiers of the feudal days, beside
whom many of them now fought. In 1878 the War Office
was reorganized with the aim of further improving the
military system of the country, and a General Staff was
appointed for the supervision of national defence as well
as strategy, and a superintending inspector’s office was
established for general military inspection and improvement
of ordnance.

From the year 1882 onward Japan began to realize more
and more the necessity of stronger armaments if a balance
of power was to be maintained in Eastern Asia ; and from
that time her military forces have been augmented year by
year. The nation’s system of military command, her
military schools, army organization, training, accounts,
sanitation and all other essential functions, were completely
remodelled, chiefly after the German system, as that
country had, in Japan’s opinion, proved superior to France
in the war of 1870. In 1884 Generals Oyama, Kakwakami
and Katsura went to Europe to make a thorough study of
the Prussian military system, and brought back with
them a German officer, General Mickel, who put
the Japanese army through its Prussian drill, and was
the tutor of most of the leading Japanese army officers
of to-day.

As time passed it became increasingly evident to Japan that
■ she must concentrate expenditure on means of national
defence and offence. Indeed, everything was directed

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

iS7

towards that great military effort which culminated in the
war with China in 1894. For the previous ten years army
reorganization had been steadily and thoroughly proceeding
under the direction of German instruction. A military
staff college had been established, the military academies
were extended and the army medical college was improved.
Non-commissioned officers were trained to qualify for com¬
missions, and the whole system of army uniform and drill
was revised. Even as far back as 1888 garrisons had been
organized as units complete with infantry, cavalry, artillery,
railway corps and colonial militia, ready for service overseas.
And by 1893 Japan had established sixteen military schools,
attended by 2,602 students with hundreds of thousands
of young recruits under drill ; and so in 1894 she was
ready to oppose China with an army of more than 240,000
trained men, with 6,495 irregulars and 100,000 coolies.
Further reforms were, introduced during the war with a
view to making the army more mobile, and to defend more
efficiently the outposts of the empire. Moreover, Japan’s
association with the European troops during the Boxer
trouble in China in 1900 gave her many new ideas concern¬
ing a mmuni tion and armaments; and improvements and
expansion of the Imperial Army went on steadily up till
the war with Russia, the results of which we know.

After the Russo-Japanese War the military leaders of
Japan became deeply impressed with the- need of further
army expansion; and Prince Yamagata memorialized the
Throne suggesting that the armed forces of the nation should
be increased by 25 divisions, and the navy to 2 squadrons
of 8 dreadnaughts and 4 battle-cruisers each, with cruiser
squadrons and ample flotillas to match. . The Emperor
quite agreed with the suggestion, and the military authori¬
ties had only to await the necessary funds to carry the new
programme into effect. The army that opposed and
triumphed over Russia consisted of 13 divisions, 4 other
divisions having been provisionally organized during the

158 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

war; but in 1907, two years after the restoration of peace,
we find the Japanese army with 6 new divisions fully
organized, making a total army strength of 19 divisions,
or 100,000 more men than before. At the time of Japan’s
conflict with Russia her available military forces were
600,000 fighting men; two years after the war these had
expanded to some 2,000,000 men. In 1914 the Govern¬
ment sanctioned the addition of two more army divisions,
to be stationed in Korea, one of which was promptly
organized; and at present the army of Japan is equal to
32 army divisions, with about 1,000,000 men on a war¬
footing, and many more than that in reserve. Japan
believes the greatest preventive of war is ample and thorough
preparation.

Here the question naturally arises as to why Japan is
so intent on military expansion. Before the European
War the hypothetical objective was undoubtedly Russia, as
Japan had the conviction that the Northern Power was some
day sure to return and try to retrieve her losses and
humiliation suffered in Manchuria, and the Japanese Army
should be of sufficient strength to discourage this. Japan’s
interests in Manchuria and China, being vital to her destiny^
must be preserved and guarded at all costs. During the
European War, however, Japan and Russia arrived at a
special understanding as to mutual spheres of interest in
China, and now Japan’s potential objective is supposed
to be elsewhere, as Russia has in the meantime collapsed as
an international force, though still capable of creating some
concern in Eastern Asia. There is no doubt that any force,
no matter whence it proceeds, that interferes with Japan’s
progress in China will have to face the displeasure of Japan.
The naval expansion of Japan has been somewhat retarded
by the reduction of armaments agreed upon at the Wash¬
ington Conference of 1921 ; but army expansion and
perfection is promoted to the full limit of Japan’s financial
capacity.

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

159

3. Recruiting

In Japan military service is personal, universal and obli¬
gatory upon every citizen between the ages of 17 and 40.
Out of a population of some 57,000,000 in Japan proper,
the number of youths who annually reach the age of con¬
scription is about 450,000 ; but since no more than about
270,000 of these are found physically fit for army service
the task of increasing the military forces of the nation to
the 32 divisions aimed at is not so easy. The most common
causes of failure to qualify for army service are venereal
diseases and the eye affection known as trachoma, the
next most common defects being low stature and general
debility. Defective physique proved most common in the
years when those born during the years of the wars with
China and Russia came of age. The number of Japanese
recruits above 5 feet 6 inches in stature does not reach more
than 11,000 a year, while more than 50,000 are less than
5 feet. The number of recruits above 5-3 feet in stature
is about 323 per thousand. The military authorities report
the eagerness with which recruits enter the army; but
desertions number about 1,000 a year, mostly privates,
38 per cent of which are said to be due to dislike of military
service, and the rest to cruelty. The penalties for desertion
are so severe, however, that it would be a mistake to estimate
the popularity of the service by the number remaining loyal
to it. One frequently hears of cases where the body has
been mutilated so as to prevent being conscripted, and
many soldiers commit suicide rather than endure the trials
and alleged cruelties often endured. The custom of
drilling and marching men in the hottest weather results
in frequent cases of sunstroke and even death, and indicates
a desire to weed out of the army all unable to endure such
strain, however cruel the process. Of the 270,000 men
annually qualified for conscription, about 120,000 are
drafted and 150,000 left as reserves to be called up at

160 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

any time. The numbers above indicated cannot be en¬
larged at present without lowering the efficiency of the
service.

The conscript is called up during the year which follows
that in which he reaches the age of 20. Recruits are
divided into three grades after being drafted; and the
number desired is drawn by lot from the highest grade.
The only exceptions allowed under the conscription law
are for an only son where the parent is over 60 years of
age and incompetent to support himself or herself. Lads
registered as pupils at schools of certain grades may have
military service postponed until their studies at such schools
are finished, but the age of postponement must not exceed
28. There are reports of youths registering at schools
and colleges merely to escape conscription, even though they
do not attend classes there, and some schools thus get fees,
without giving instruction,from such pupils. There is also
a service of one year for scholars and upper-class people who,
after putting in the year’s military service in sections from
time to time, are registered in the reserve service with
the rank of non-commissioned officer. These have to pay
their own expenses while in barracks. Recruits drafted
into the annual contingent have to pass two whole years
with the colours in the case of infantry, and three years in
the case of other arms. They then belong to the yobi, or
reserve of the active army until the age of 27, after which
they become kobi or landwehr for ten years until reaching
the age of 37, from which time until 40 they are ranked as
kokumin or landsturm. The service is thus divided into
an active reserve of two years for infantry, three for cavalry
and engineers, a reserve service of four years, and a depot
service of ten years, covering in all a period of seventeen
years, beginning at the age of 20. The Japanese army
is further expanded by what is known as the ersatz system,
by which men are trained for a period of 90 days in the
first year, 60 in the second and third years, the candidates

MILITARY ORGANIZATION 161

serving as a reserve of recruiting and enabling the waste
in each annual draft to be made good. The ersatz belong
to the active and reserve forces until the age of 27, when
they become territorials. As for the landsturm, it includes
all youths between the ages of 17 and 20, as well as
all up to the age of 40 classed as good for service,
or excused from service for reasons other than physical
unfitness. This category, which is usually untrained,
forms a sort of reservoir of something over 3,000,000
men who can be drawn upon at any time in case of
emergency, but need not be considered in the nation’s
effective force.

The organization of the recruiting territory is based upon
that of the divisional unit. Each army division has an area of
country allotted to it, from which it draws its recruits
in peace-time and its reserves on mobilization. There are
some eighteen divisional districts, the divisions detached
in Korea and Manchuria retaining their districts in Japan.
The Imperial Guards alone are recruited from the whole
empire. In each divisional district the country is divided
up into infantry, brigade, regimental and battalion areas.
Other forces are recruited from the divisional district as a
whole or from appointed portions of it, while some troops
are allotted special or larger areas. Formosa has a special
garrison, as have also Tsushima, Saghalien and the other
colonies. The total number of troops quartered outside
of Japan are the divisions in Korea and some 40,000
other troops, including 10,000 railway guards, in Man¬
churia-.

The peace strength of the Japanese army is now some
275,000 men, including some 16,000 higher officers and
28,000 non-commissioned officers; and the first line of
defence easily musters 600,000 strong, including 260,000
reservists ; while the total fighting force at Japan’s im¬
mediate disposal in case of need is not less than 2,000,000
men.
zi

162

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

4. Army Organization

The Japanese army is at present being remodelled into
32 divisions. A division is somewhat uncertain in composi¬
tion at present, as the system is in process of reorganization.
It has been decided to reorganize the division on a 4-regi¬
ment basis and to abolish the brigade. The experiences of
the European War and the results of army manoeuvres have
led to this decision. An army corps will now consist of
2 divisions totalling 6 regiments, and when completed
there will be 32 such divisions organized on a 3-regiment
basis, and equal to 16 army corps. To understand these
figures it is necessary to remember that reorganization is
turning the old 22 divisions into 32 on the new basis.
Under the new system the division will consist of 3 regiments
of infantry, 1 regiment of cavalry, 1 regiment of artillery
and 1 battalion of engineers and army service corps, Each
regiment of infantry consists of 4 battalions of 600 men each,
while a regiment of cavalry has 4 squadrons of loo sabres
each. A regiment of field artillery is made up of 6 batteries
of 4 guns and 24 machine-guns; and a battalion of engineers
has 3 companies of 200 men each, while the usual army
service corps has 300 men, including a bridging train,
telegraph section, medical corps, 9 munition columns, 4
supply columns, 4 to 6 field hospitals and a mobile remount
depot.

The Japanese army at present is laying special emphasis
on the development of such particular services as siege
artillery, field and mountain guns, machine-gun batteries,
communication corps and aviation. After the war with
Russia the 6-gun battery was abandoned for one of 4 guns,
as it was found impossible to carry more than 289 shells for
each gun, a supply quite insufficient for a hot artillery duel
when guns often discharge 500 rounds a day; so that 4
guns were really all that could be handled with advantage.
An infantry company usually numbers 156 all ranis, a

MILITARY ORGANIZATION 163

squadron 140 with. 135 horses, and a field battery 128 with
62 horses ; an engineer company from 175 to ,200. Thus
the Japanese army division remains as before the largest
unit of war organization, and on active duty represents
about 18,875 naen, with 4,938 horses and 1,765 carriages.

In addition to the compact divisions enumerated above,
the Japanese army has troops numbering 4 brigades of
cavalry, each having 3 regiments of 5 squadrons; 2 batteries
of horse artillery; 3 independent brigades of field artillery,
forming 6 regiments with 216 guns; 3 independent
mountain batteries with 54 guns ; 4 regiments of heavy

field artillery; railway troops, wireless units, a balloon
company, searchlight detachments and a field gendarmerie.
There are also 24 batteries of heavy artillery for coast de¬
fence. It has been the practice of Japan to add a brigade
of reservists to each division on active service, but the use
of these reserve troops is a secret of the higher command ;
but probably the trend is toward the German custom of
depending chiefly on highly trained troops and not to
hamper them with inferior elements.

The Emperor is the supreme head of the army ; and in
time of war he directs the combined operations of army
and navy through the headquarters staff, assisted by the
Field-Marshal, the supreme military council of army and
navy officers and others. The army in time of peace is
governed by the Minister of War, the Chief of the General
Staff and the Director of Military Education and Training.
The chiefs of these departments are independent of one
another and directly responsible to the Emperor only.

5. Mobilization and Equipment

During mobilization in Japan, as in Europe, the
reserves are called out, depots are formed and reserve
formations prepared on the required scale and in the ortho¬
dox manner. Usually the first divisions mobilized are

164 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

allowed 10 days for preparation, this time in the past
having proved ample. Reservists set out for their destina¬
tions on the second day of mobilization. The first troops
are generally ready to entrain or embark on the seventh day
of mobilization ; and the entire first line is ready in between
12 and 20 days, and the reservists in between 20 and 25
days. Japan has nearly 7,000 miles of railways, reaching
all the vital points of the country, with over 2,500 locomo¬
tives, plenty of rolling stock and ships for the transportation
of troops. Embarkation drill is frequently practised in
harbours and on open beaches. The regulations provide
for I ton of shipping per man for the transport of troops
overseas, and 4-f tons per horse. In case of war Japan
would have no difficulty in moving her forces to the con¬
tinent or the southern islands in two Echelons, and the
first one would be ready for sea as soon as the troops were
in readiness to embark.

In equipment the Japanese army is undergoing a process
of reorganization and extension, based on the experiences
of the European War. Up to the present the army has
been using the Murata rifle, a strong and serviceable weapon
rather than a delicate and highly finished arm. The field
artillery has guns made at the Osaka arsenal from Krupp
patterns of the 1898 type, with quick-firing guns of the same
type and date. The calibre is 2*95 inches, weight 3,450
lb. behind the teams, and it fires a shell of 13^ lb. and has
a range of 6,783 yards with existing fuses and ammunition.
With fixed ammunition the extreme range is 9,295 yards,
and the fuse is believed to burn to a range of 8,749 ya-rcLs.
The shield is of steel *118 inches thick. It extends over the
wheels and has a hinged portion under the axle-tree. The
mountain gun takes the same ammunition as the field gun,
and has a range of 5,500 yards. New heavy guns of the
howitzer type, 10c and 12c, are in use for coast defence, the
former gun having a weight of 52 cwt. behind horses, and '
an initial velocity of 1,770 f.s. and a range of 10,396 yards*

MILITARY ORGANIZATION

165

It fires a 40-lb. projectile and has a shield similar to that of
the field gun. The Japanese also use a Hotchkiss gun,
taking the same ammunition as the infantry rifle. This
gun is sighted up to 2,187 yards. It has an all-round
traverse and tripod mounting. Its defect is that the
weight is from 70 to 100 lb. including tripod.

As to mounts, Japanese cavalry has been importing large
numbers of Australian horses since the war with Russia,
but not enough for all the requirements of the army,
and consequently the supply has been supplemented by
half-breed animals known as zashu, bred from foreign sires
and raised for the most part on the Government stock-
farms in Hokkaido. These are preferred to foreign-bred
horses by most Japanese officers, as they stand the climate
better and are more amenable to native ways of handling
and treatment. The Japanese army requires about 130,000
horses, while the whole country possesses not more than
1,600,000, of which not more than 14,000 are imported, and
of the total some 530,000 are half-breeds. But horses are
not of paramount importance in the Japanese army system.

The field service dress of the whole army is khaki, woollen
in winter and linen in summer, with a cap somewhat after
the Russian pattern. This cap is gravely defective as a
protection against the torrid sun of the Japanese summer,
when many soldiers succumb to heat on the march.

The chief military arsenals are at Tokyo and Osaka, the
first manufacturing small arms with ammunition therefor,
and the Osaka works turning out field-guns and their
ammunition.

For the education of army officers a thorough system of
schools is provided : district preparatory schools, a central
preparatory school, officers’ school, military staff college,
a tactical school, cavalry school and schools for military
and engineering science. At all these schools the training
is efficient and the discipline strict. The limit of promo¬
tion for army officers, which is reduced one-half in time of

166

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

war, is as follows: two years each from sub-lieutenant
to lieutenant, and to a captaincy two years more, with an
additional four years for a major, three more for a lieutenant-
colonel, three more for a colonel, and three more to the
rank of major-general, the higher ranks being left to the
Emperor as Commander-in-Chief. The age limit for officers
on active service is 45 for the lower ranks and up to 65
for the highest rank.

Aviation was not introduced into the Japanese army until
1911; and though at first it made very slow progress, with
numerous accidents, it has made more rapid progress in
recent years, especially since the European War, after
which 70 flying officers were brought from France and a
thorough system of training instituted. The army at
present has some 600 flying machines of the latest type,
with four flying battalions, one each at Tokorozawa, Kaga-
migahara, Yokkaichi and Tachiarai, and about 6,000,000
yen annually is expended on aviation development in the
army. Aviation works are being constructed at consider¬
able outlay, and in future Japan will build her own military
machines, the motors to be imported from France. Naval
aviation is quite a separate service and will be considered
under that head. Civilian aviation has been left so much
to private enterprise that very slow development is experi¬
enced, though individuals are making a brave effort to
overcome this handicap.

Japan is a country where army expenditure centres on
equipment rather than on personnel. The soldier gets very
small emoluments. His ration is a quart of rice per day,
with from 7 to 11 sen a day for relishes to meet the insi¬
pidity of the rice. In war time he gets some foreign food.
His money allowance is from 2*34 yen per month for
privates, up to 7 yen for a corporal, 12 yen for sergeant, and
22 yen for a sergeant-major. The pay of higher officers is
much below that obtaining in Western countries. The
army is costing Japan now about 150,000,000 yen annually.

MILITARY ORGANIZATION 167

which is three times the outlay of 20 years ago, and a
third more than 10 years ago. The general outlay on army
and navy usually reaches about one-half the annual revenue.
In weight of numbers, excellence of organization, adequacy
of armament, skill of personnel, knowledge of war science,
and splendour of fighting spirit, Japan ranks with the best
that any nation can command. Thus does Japan hope to
ensure for herself the hegemony of the Far East and avert
the congestion of over-population.

CHAPTER XI

IMPERIAL NAVY

I N the science of navigation, and maritime prowess
generally, the races who conquered the islands of
the Rising Sun seem to have been remarkably well
advanced for so remote a period. Allowing that the
Yamato people arrived in the archipelago six centuries before
the Christian era, they must have arrived there in ships
capable of traversing the high seas and resisting the attacks
of the savages that probably opposed the landing of the
invaders; and thus it is clear that, from the very first,
the art of navigation and sea-warfare was sufficiently
developed to enable transportation of troops from the
continent, and their forcing an occupation of the neigh¬
bouring islands.

According to the most ancient records of Japan, naviga¬
tion showed considerable progress as early as 97 to 30 B.c.,
when troops were despatched to Korea to resist those
attacking the Korean kingdoms friendly to Japan; and,
like the Saxon warriors, Hengist and Horsa, who came to
the assistance of the Britons after the Roman evacuation,
the Yamato thus regained an interest in their ancestral
fatherland which they never abandoned, and which led
to claims of a protectorate over Korea later. During the
various incipient insurrections among the savage tribes
whom the Yamato brought under their sway, especially
the virile Kumaso who caused an uprising in Kyushu in
a.d. 71, warships were used with telling effect; and in a
subsequent rebellion about the year a.d. 200, the Emperor

IMPERIAL NAVY

169

Chuai led .a naval expedition to Chikuzen. The Emperor
died during the campaign ; and the Empress Jingo, having
discovered that the rebels received incitement from Korea,
went herself on an expedition to that country to cut off
assistance to the rebels in Yamato, and to carry out punitive
operations.

In the year a.d. 310 it appears that the art of navigation
had so far developed that in the empire of Yamato it was
found necessary to appoint maritime officials in various
centres, and Japanese sails were to be seen in all the waters
of the Far East. It is recorded that a naval expedition
subdued the savages of Osfiima Island in a.d. 655. During
the prolonged internecine wars of the Middle Ages, between
the Taira and the Minamoto clans, naval engagements
were frequent, the most notable being the famous battle
at Dannoura in 1185, when the Taira clan was exterminated.
The military government set up by Yoritomo at Kamakura
in 1192 had a powerful navy at its command, and the
various feudal lords were not slow to emulate the shogun
in their prowess at sea. When Kublai Khan, the Mongol
Napoleon, invaded Japan with his great armada in the
thirteenth century, he found a resistless naval force waiting
to oppose his landing, and he was driven back to sea by the
Japanese, where a furious gale completed his destruction.
The sea-power of Japan thenceforward expanded rapidly,
both internally and externally, until its development was
checked and finally arrested by the exclusion of foreigners
from Japan in 1637, when Japanese ships were prohibited
from going on the high seas. But there is no doubt that
the internal consolidation of the empire at the beginning,
and for centuries afterwards, was largely the work of an
efficient sea-power.

With the opening of a route from Europe by way of the
Cape of Good Hope foreign navigators began to reach the
shores of Japan, encouraged by opportunities of trade;
and from these Japan learned something of the seamanship

170 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

and naval development o£ the outside world. Under
impetus from the Spanish and Portuguese traders, Japanese
shipping so developed in the sixteenth century that junks
of three masts, were built, a special government department
was organized for the regulation of merchant marine, and
vessels engaged in foreign trade were given a special licence.
In the days of Hideyoshi, at the end of the sixtenth century,
Japanese vessels were seen in the ports of China, Siam, India
and even in Mexico. The records show that between the
years 1604-16 the number of licences issued to ships trading
abroad was over zoo. Then, owing to suspicions of
foreigners, in the year 1637 the Shogun Iyemitsu placed
an embargo on all further communication with foreign
lands, and even the building of sea-going ships was pro¬
hibited. From this time Japan’s naval power began to
decline, and remained quiescent until the reopening of
Japan to intercourse with occidental nations in 1853-4. ’

1. Birth of the Imperial Navy

When foreign ships began to appear off the coasts of
Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, the command
of adequate naval defences was soon realized to be the
nation’s greatest need. The apparent ease with which the
fleet of Commodore Perry forced open the gates of Japan
and accomplished America’s mission, in spite of the hovering
and helpless native war-junks, showed the Japanese that the
shogunate was now the victim of its own policy, and that
so incompetent a government should be replaced by one
more able to meet the needs and relations of the empire.
Japan did not require any persuasion as to the necessity of
a strong navy. It was soon seen that the seamanship sup¬
pressed by the shogunate was not dead, but only sleeping.
The Dutch Government, whose subjects had been per¬
mitted to retain communication with Japan during the
years of seclusion, advised Japan to establish a navy on a

IMPERIAL NAVY

171

European model. A naval school was opened at Nagasaki
in 1855, the year after the American visit, with Dutch
instructors in charge ; and not long afterwards a shipyard
and iron works were opened in the same port, the beginning
of the present Mistubishi works, the greatest dockyard in
the empire. Another naval school was established at the
shogun’s capital in Yedo, now Tokyo, where graduates of
the Nagasaki institution were brought for higher courses
and further naval training. The Kanko Mam , a gift from
Holland, was Japan’s first naval training-ship. The
nucleus of a navy was created by gifts from various coun¬
tries, and by purchases from the United States and Europe.
One of the most prized of gifts was a beautiful steam yacht
from Queen Victoria. The Yedo authorities now began
to send students abroad to pursue naval studies, and the
feudal lords adopted the same policy. A naval dockyard was
opened at Yokosuka for the promotion of an Imperial navy.

It must soon have become evident to the shogun’s
Government, however, that its efforts were rather belated;
for, when a British squadron was obliged to force redress
for the murder of an Englishman by bombardment of
Kagoshima in 1863, and when the combined fleets of
England, America, France and Holland had to reduce the
forts at Shimonoseki in the following year, for attacks on
foreign ships, there was in Japan no naval force capable of
offering practical resistance. In the years immediately
following these episodes naval preparations were hastened
with great expedition. Officers were invited from Europe
to advise and instruct the infant navy of Japan. Among
them was the late Admiral Sir Richard Tracey, who though,
as a young commander, had taken part in the operations
at Kagoshima, was subsequently thus called upon to lay
the foundations of the new Japanese navy. When the
shogunate was finally abolished in 1867 the young navy of
Japan came under the Emperor as supreme commander of
all the forces of the empire.

172 JAPAN FROM WITHIN '

The restoration of Imperial power was not accomplished
without the aid of the navy, when the tiny force had a first
chance to show something of its mettle. In the various
conflicts that ensued, leading eventually to the triumph of
the Imperial cause, the bulk of the feudal navy sided with
the feudal lords who supported the shogunate party ; and
under Commander Enemoto, one of the young officers
trained in Holland, it made a gallant but vain resistance
against the superior forces of the empire. Baffled in the
south, the rebel ships retired with Enemoto to the north,
where they held out for a time at Hakodate. At last
it was forced to surrender to the Imperial fleet and the new¬
born navy had its first triumph. The feudal navy was at
once incorporated with the Imperial navy. Enemoto and
his men, after some hardships, were pardoned and ultim¬
ately absorbed into the Imperial service. Enemoto himself
became Admiral of the Fleet, Minister to Russia, Minister
of Foreign Affairs and finally Prime Minister of Japan.

2. Rapid Naval Development

When the wars of the Restoration were over, and the
Imperial forces acknowledged supreme on both land and
sea, a fleet of but nine vessels, mere gunboats none of which
was above 1,000 tons, represented all that the Japanese
navy possessed. The dockyards already established were
capable of turning out only wooden ships. It was not until
1887 that Japan was able to launch her first iron vessel.
Most of the fleet up to that time had been purchased
abroad. The nation devoted itself with energy and
determination to the organization and evolution of an
efficient navy. What the nascent dockyards and arsenals
could not supply in ships and armament continued to be
purchased from Europe, while with amazing application,
intelligence and insight the Japanese set themselves to learn
the best uses of their new naval equipment, such as it was.

IMPERIAL NAVY

173 •

Nor did they make the mistake in those early days of
supposing that the more important factor in naval efficiency
was materiel. They realized from the start in true samurai
spirit that warfare is mainly a matter of 'personnel, a truth
which those that have had the misfortune to challenge
Japan on land and sea never learned. Not content with
acquiring and mastering Western knowledge of the forces
of nature, Japan engaged officers of notable personality and
efficiency from England, to put her budding naval personnel
into fighting trim. In addition to the services of Admiral
Tracey, Admiral Douglas was selected to lead a naval
mission to Japan, consisting chiefly of naval officers, to
instruct the Japanese; and the leader of the mission was
director of the Imperial Naval College from 1873 to 1875.
Later Rear-Admiral Ingles came as naval adviser to the
authorities, while Dr. William Anderson laid the foundations
of naval medical education in Japan.

It is interesting to note what rapid development charac¬
terized the Japanese navy during the period of British
advisement. Between the years 1870 and 1880 various
uprisings marked the political progress of Japan: notably,
the Saga rebellion of 1874, the attack on a Japanese gunboat
by Korea in 1875, the Hagi disaffection and the Satsuma
rebellion 1876-8, in all of which the Imperial navy had to
carry out protective or punitive operations of some sort,
and this it did with a degree of efficiency that proved solid
progress. The warship Jungei was launched from the
Yokosuka navy yard in 1876. It was only 1,450 tons,
but considerably larger than the Seiki of the previous year,
which was only 897 tons. The latter was the first Japanese-
built ship to visit Europe, making the trip in 1878. In
1876 Japanese yards were capable of repairing their own
ships without foreign assistance. To promote a more
rapid development three ships were ordered from England
in 1878—the old Fuso, 3,777 tons; the old Kongo and
fftyei, 2,248 tons each. In 1880 the Admiralty station was

174 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

removed to Yokosuka ; and two more were established,
one at Kure and one at Sasebo in 1889.

The Government issued a new naval programme in 1892,
formulated under Imperial Rescript, to which the Emperor
contributed from the privy purse a sum of 300,000 yen for
six years. Government officers and all the higher officials
followed the Imperial example by giving to the navy 10 per
cent of their salaries, and there were liberal private contribu¬
tions as well. Thus grew up and flourished the infant navy
of Japan until the time of its first test, in the war with
China in 1894-5, when the aggregate tonnage was only
57,600, representing 28 ships and 24 torpedo-boats. The
total outlay in naval construction, equipment and repletion
up to that time had been no more than 240,000,000 yen.

3. The New Navy in War

In the war with China, Japan’s first naval engagement of
any great' importance in modern times, the nation showed
that in the space of forty years it had been able to develop
a navy capable of effectively performing every duty devolv¬
ing upon it. Japan proved to the world, not only the
superb prowess and endurance of her fighting men, but also
how thoroughly her leaders had understood and assimilated
the unchanging principles that make for sea-power. Japan
seems to have seen from the beginning that the success of
her entire operations against China depended on keeping
the sea clear for transportation of her troops, a point China
failed to observe, if she saw it at all, until it was too late.
With Japan’s destruction of the Chinese fleet the command
of the sea was thenceforth hers, and she was able to keep
sufficient forces at her command to carry everything before
her in Manchuria. Japan came out of that conflict with
seventeen more ships added to her navy.

The terms of peace with China contained the germs of
her next war, for they gave Japan a position in Korea and

IMPERIAL NAVY

175

China that Russia was certain to challenge. Japan clearly
saw this; and, after her compulsory withdrawal from Port
Arthur through the interference of Germany, France and
Russia, Japan at once set about acquiring a navy that even
any Western naval force might well hesitate to provoke.
New naval stations were established, new arsenals opened,
new ordnance works constructed, new powder factories
built, powerful fighting units were gradually added to
the fleet, many of which were launched from Japanese
yards. The whole navy system was reorganized on a
greatly improved and extended scale, and stricter attention
was devoted to education and personnel. A squadron of
first-class battleships was added to the fleet of armoured
cruisers that had beaten China. When the anticipated
crisis came in February 1904, Japan found herself facing
Russia with a total tonnage of 258,000, of which at least
233,876 tons represented ships above the destroyer class.
And Japan came out of the war with Russia, notwithstanding
important losses, with a total tonnage of 410,000, having
taken 12 battleships and cruisers, besides numerous small
craft, from her big opponent. In that war, too, Russia
was wholly outwitted by Japanese strategy; for she divided
her naval force between Port Arthur and Vladivostock,
making no intelligent effort to prevent Japan’s command of
the sea. Thus Japan was l'eft with her fleet intact to meet
the main naval force of Russia.

4. Japan’s Navy To-day

Since the war with Russia, Japan has relaxed none of
her efforts for the evolution of a navy adequate to the
nation’s needs, and worthy of the empire. Although the
conference on naval armament reduction at Washington
has obliged retrenchment in heavy ships, freedom in regard
to cruisers will enable Japan to maintain her naval strength
for all practical purposes. Hie twelve battleships and
cruisers captured from Russia were in themselves a valuable

i 7 6 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

addition of over 100,000 tons to the fleet, though these are
now for the most part out of date. Three of these cruisers
were returned to Russia during the European War for a
consideration of 14,500,000 yen. After the Russo-Japanese
War great improvements yrere made in Japanese dockyards,
especially in enlargement of shipbuilding capacity, and
Japan was soon able to construct and equip all sizes and
kinds of warships at home. Japan’s naval policy is to ensure
competence to encounter successfully any force that a
foreign country may send against her in oriental waters;
and this policy is based on the results of the American
round-the-world naval cruise, showing the possibility of a
foreign Power sending its total naval armament into Japanese
waters. Japan aims to have at least 3 1 5 i 000 tons of the
heaviest fighting ships that her agreements with the
Washington Conference will permit.

Before the Washington Conference it was Japan’s policy
to develop what was known as the eight-four programme :
which meant 3 squadrons consisting of 8 dreadnaughts
and 4 battle-cruisers each, with attendant flotilla, the whole
to cost some 310,000,000 yen. The retrenchment policy
in heavy ships to which Japan has agreed reduces the heavy
ships, but not to any serious extent the cruisers. It may
here be noted with interest that the great battleship
Hyuga is of entirely Japanese design, unlike anything of the
class in other fleets, the most important features being
extreme steadiness for gunnery, and an original axial
emplacement for her 10 10-inch guns, as well as increased
capacity for storage of oil side by side with coal. This
fighting monster, like her sister ships the Fuso, Tamashiro
and Ise, has a displacement of 30,600 tons, length 680 feet,
water-line 630 feet, beam 94 f ee ^» draught 28 feet, speed
23 knots, main armament 10 14-iHch guns, secondary
armament 20 6-inch guns.

Even after Japan has reduced her naval armament in
agreement with the Washington Conference she remains

IMPERIAL NAVY

177

the third greatest naval Power in the world, with a replace¬
ment tonnage fixed at 315,000 in capital ships, which is
markedly superior to that allowed to France and Italy.
On the new basis the Japanese fleet will consist of 10
dreadnaughts, 3 armoured cruisers, 15 light cruisers, 4
torpedo boats with guns, 125 destroyers, 19 ordinary tor¬
pedo boats, and 45 submarines, but 35 more submarines
will be added by 1927. In addition to the three powerful
dreadnaughts named above, the fleet includes two more,
the Nagato and the Mutsu , of 33,800 tons and 46,000 h.p.
each. Then there are the four great battle-cruisers:
the Kongo , Kirisbima, Haruna and Hiyei, 27,500 tons and
64,000 h.p. each. In Japan’s fleet of light cruisers are the
Tone, 4,100 tons; the Chikuma, Hirado and Tabagi,
4,950 tons each; the Tatsuta and Temryu, 3,500 tons each ;
the Kiso, Kitakami, Kuma , Nagara, Isudzu, Natori, Obi
and Tama, 5,570 tons each. Under construction are the
following light cruisers of 5,570 tons each : the Naka,
Abukama, Sendai, Jinten, and Tubari. The formidable
battle-cruisers Kaga and Tosa are to be converted into
aircraft carriers ; and the armoured cruisers Ikoma, Kurama
and Ibuki are to be scrapped, together with all the older
ships not named above.

The Imperial fleet is usually divided into three sections,
the first stationed at Yokosuka, the second at Kure and
the third at Sasebo, the firstfleet consisting of four squadrons,
the second of three and the third of three, each squadron
having its flagship and from three to four line-of-battle
ships with attendant flotillas. In addition, there is a naval
training squadron, and naval detachments in neighbouring
and foreign waters.

Tlie Japanese navy did not begin to take up aviation until
1912, when some bfficers returned from a study of the
science in France, after which a training station was opened
at Oppama near the Yokosuka naval base. A naval aviation
corps was organized in 1916, and a sum of 630,000 voted
rz

178 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

for equipment. Since then a sum of 1,580,000 yen has
been expended on establishing two more naval aviation
corps at Kure and Sasebo respectively. Since the close
of the European War Japan has appropriated the sum of
12,000,000 yen for improvement and extension of aviation
in both army and navy. French flying officers have been
used to train the army in this science ; and British flying
officers to train the navy, as the Japanese naval authorities
have always continued to make the British navy their model.
A large number of British flying officers who won distinction
in the war have been in Japan in recent years up to 1923,
under command of the Master of Semphill ; and under
them much progress has been made. Japan is now supposed
to have a fleet of 140 naval aeroplanes, some purchased
abroad, chiefly in England, and some constructed at home,
partly under British supervision. Mr. K. Yamashita, a
wealthy shipowner of Tokyo, has recently made a donation
of 1,000,000 yen to the State for the development of aviation
in army and navy. With a subscription of 500,000 yen
from the Emperor and large sums from wealthy civilians,
a fund of some 3,000,000 yen has been created for the
promotion of civilian aviation, which as yet has made but
slow progress in Japan. Accidents are only too common
in Japanese aviation, the death-rate in peace time being
higher than in war, amounting to over 20 per cent.

Japan’s outlay on naval armament has been steadily on
the rise for many years. In 1893 it amounted to only
9,000,000 yen; in 1903 it had increased to over 36,000,000;
in 1913 to over 94,000,000; while the naval budget to-day
is in the vicinity of 510,000,000 yen, a reduction of some
200,000,000 yen through the Washington Conference
agreement.

t ^

5., Education and Personnel

For the training of her naval officers Japan has an excel¬
lent array of schools, even to a Paymasters’ College, the work

IMPERIAL NAVY

179

of which other navies usually leave to extraneous institu¬
tions. The chief educational institutions for the navy are
the Naval Staff College in Tokyo for the training of
specialists; the Naval Engineering College at Yokosuka,
the Naval Cadets’ School at Etajima, the Naval Paymasters’
College and the Naval Medical College, both in Tokyo.
There are torpedo and gunnery schools also at Yokosuka, as
well as a school for the training of naval mechanics and
machinists. The highest institution is the Naval Staff
College where men are trained for staff officers and future
commanders. The entrants must be either lieutenants
who have finished their course at the Gunnery, Torpedo or
Navigation School, or officers who have served two whole
years at sea. The entrants to the Naval Medical College
are graduates of some recognized medical college, and their
special training for the navy lasts six months. Senior
surgeons are selected from the naval medical staff for a
year’s research work at this college after having served some
years afloat. The Paymasters’ College admits by examina¬
tion from secondary schools, and the training lasts three
years and four months. Graduates of high schools or
universities may be admitted for a six months’ course
at this college. Senior officers in the accounting department
of the navy are selected for a year’s special training at the
Paymasters’ College in preparation for staff officers and
specialists.

The Japanese navy always has many more officers in
proportion to strength than any other navy in the world.
When the Japanese navy was but half the size of the British,
it had about the same number of officers as the British
navy. Japan aims to have on hand always a sufficient
number of trained jnen to meet any emergency. And so
while the British navy usually has about 1 ‘35 officers per
ton, the Japanese navy has 3*42 officers per ton. The
Japanese practice of employing so many officers onfactive
service for shore duty and routine work might be supposed

180 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

not to make for efficiency at sea. In practice the Japanese
subordinate officer rarely remains at sea longer than two
years when he is transferred to shore service. Sometimes
one hears of admirals and rear-admirals whose service
at sea has not been above a few years on training ships or
as deck officers.

In the navy of Japan promotion is always by selection,
and never by mere seniority in service. Promotions are
decided at the conference of the Admirals’ Council, the
time-limit being reduced one-half in time of war. Mid¬
shipmen, after finishing at the Cadets’ School, have six
months on a training-ship, and are then assigned to various
warships. A year’s practical service completed, they may
become second-lieutenants; and in four months more of
special study they rise to the rank of sub-lieutenants, and
after two full years of active service to lieutenants. A
lieutenant-commander must have had five full years of
active service; and two years after promotion he may
become a commander ; another two years can make
him a captain, if the Admirals’ Council selects him
for promotion. A rear-admiral must have had two
years’ experience as captain, and in three years after
such promotion he may be advanced to the rank of vice-
admiral. Admirals are all men of long experience, as a
rule, and must be appointed only by Imperial order.
The age-limit for admirals is 65, vice-admirals 60, rear-
admirals 56, captains 53, warrant officers or engineer
commanders 50, commanders 47, lieutenant-commanders
45, lieutenants 44, sub-lieutenants 40, and other ranks
according to competency.

The rank and file of the Japanese navy is recruited from
both conscripts and volunteers, conscription being only a
supplementary source of supply. But the authorities find
it no easy task to obtain a sufficient number of men for the
navy, and in most years the number of conscripts is scarcely
less than that of volunteers.

IMPERIAL NAVY

181

6. Imperial Dockyards

The Imperial navy yards at present number four : Yoko¬
suka, Kure, Sasebo and Maidzuru, with three repair
yards of less importance at three other places, one of which
is Port Arthur. All the four principal yards possess dry-
docks for the accommodation of large warships; and the
first two have cradles for the construction of dreadnaughts,
the latter two having accommodation for the building
of only light cruisers and destroyers. The Yokosuka yard,
in equipment, efficiency and speed of execution, is equal to
any of its size in the world. In the great earthquake it
received serious damage, which, however, was not irre¬
parable. Yokosuka has two slip for the largest ship,
and three others for destroyers and torpedo boats, with
four graving docks, one of which is capble of taking any
ship afloat. The dockyard employs about 11,000 men in
peace-time, and in war-time up to 16,000 men. Beginning
with 18 acres the yard now covers an area of 116 acres.
Great ships like the Hiyei and Tamasbiro were launched
from the Yokosuka yard, as I had the pleasure of witnessing
by invitation of the Naval Department. The yard provided
for these large warships all the propelling machinery,
castings, forgings and most of the auxiliary machinery.
The Kure yard can also build the largest ships; and of
its three graving docks one can accommodate the largest
warship. The warship Ibuki, 14,600 tons, was launched
from the Kure yard in six months from the laying down
of the keel. The Settsu and the Fuso also were built at
Kure. The ordnance deprtment at Kur6 is equipped
for constructing guns and mountings of the largest size.
Most of the fighting armament of warship built by Japan
in recent years wag made at this navy yard. The Kure
armour plate is reputed in Japan to be more irresistible
to modern gunnery than that imported. The average
number of hands employed at Kure is about 17,000. Sasebo

182 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

has five docks, with ample accommodation for the con¬
struction of cruisers; while cruisers of a formidable type
can also be constructed at Maidzuru as well as every kind of
smaller craft. The naval dockyards of Japan give constant
employment to about 40,000 hands. Japan commands
further great facilities for the construction of warships of
the greatest fighting strength in such well-equipped private
yards as the Kawasaki at Kobe and the Mitsubishi at
Nagasaki.

Japan’s greatest inconvenience in regard to ship con¬
struction is usually lack of material. This was keenly felt
during the European War, when supplies of steel plate were
cut off, owing to the preoccupation of British and American
steel works with war orders. The supply of steel annually
turned out b7 the national mills is inadequate to the
demand. The new steel works at Muroran, a joint under¬
taking of the Hokkaido Colliery and S.S. Company and
Messrs. Armstrong and Vickers of England, opened in 1908,
is of great assistance in providing big guns. For her decks
Japan brings teak from Siam and pine from Oregon and
uses native woods generally for interiors and decorations.

CHAPTER XII

JAPANESE EDUCATION

B EFORE the opening of Japan to the modern
world the nation was without any regular system
of secular education. Pre-Restoration Japan had
witnessed no such steady evolution of great centres of
learning as had marked the progress of pre-Reformation
Europe. Indeed education can scarcely be said to have
attained a degree of development either so effective or so
general as that of the later schools of Greece, to say nothing
of its inferiority to Rome’s improvement on her heritage
of Hellenic culture.

As among the ancient nations of Europe a youth, bent
upon satisfying his thirst for knowledge and intellectual
achievement, had to fit himself for a realization of his
ambitions by what he could gain from the wandering sage or
the ‘ schools of the prophets,’ or only from the stern realities
of life itself, so was it with the men of old Japan. Education,
in so far as it had ceased to be a mere dabbling in Chinese
classics or a mental abstraction of the idle and the pre¬
tentious, centred, as in early Greece, around a few great
names; but these, unlike the sophists of old, founded no
schools, left no successors, and the pupils scattered with
the decease of the master.

In the realm of arts, crafts and industry it was in some
measure otherwise ; for here education and the secrets of
artificial creation often passed from master to pupil until
craft became hereditary: which means that the education
cf early Japan was for the most part utilitarian, and there¬
fore primitive, both in spirit and practice.

i8 4 japan from within

In the same way that Rome drew her intellectual and
aesthetic inspiration from Greece and Egypt, so did Japan
from Korea and China. But Confucius and Mencius,
who might have been to Japan what Socrates and Plato
were to the pre-Christian world, produced only a sort of
stoicism that appealed to none but the stem dictators of
unreasoning loyalty and convention, leaving the masses
to the crude superstitions of Shinto; and thus the nation
was thrown back on Buddhism for its ‘ Moses and the
prophets,’ the schools that the alien religion brought with
it from India and China. This may have been better
than no change at all, but it turned the Japanese mind to
contemplation of aesthetic vagaries tending too largely to
the petty and the grotesque, with a mistaken depreciation
of the practical world, and a failure to produce much
character of the heroic mould. Buddhism, by a shrewd
system of compromise, ultimately blended sufficiently
with Shinto to enslave still further the national mind with
humiliating superstitions, until men emulated the goblins
of primitive fancy, and felt themselves bound every way
about by guardian semi-human deities of a wild ancestral
type. Here and there appeared a brilliant scholar, a popular
poet or minstrel, a Buddhist saint of high degree, but the
masses remained untouched and dense.

Education in old Japan, so far as it can be said to have
existed at all, clung to the skirts of princes and potentates
-associated with the changing capitals of the empire, until,
in the twelfth century, with the rapid decline of Imperial
power and central government, the dictatorship passed
into the hands of the military families, and education had
to take refuge where it began, with the teachers of religion.
It was therefore a thing of temples and monasteries, as in
Mediaeval Europe, but with little of, the intellectual
eminence displayed by the monastic schools of the West.
Names like Prince Shotoku, Honen and Nichiren stand out
in almost solitary splendour amid the darkness of the age.

JAPANESE EDUCATION 185

With the ascendancy of the Tokugawa shoguns education
began to receive more active support from the authorities,
and schools of a kind, under the auspices of daimyo, com¬
menced to flourish, notably those at the Courts of
Satsuma, Mito, Owari and Hizen. The present Imperial
universities germinated from these feudal academies of
old Japan.

Thus in Japan, as in all other lands, education began only
when the nation had passed through the struggle that
resulted in the birth of a real empire, and the people had
begun to realize that they had done something worthy of
thought. Adversity is as much the mother of intellectual
and moral achievement as it is reputed to be of invention.
Japan had now reached a stage where her heroes were
sufficiently impressive to be easily separated from their
deeds, and set up as ideals for the race. The nation was
slowly beginning to break way from the fatal prepossession
that man can only be what his ancestors have made him,
and that the gods do not allow him to have anything to
do with his own destiny. But a great part of the Japanese
people still incline to this fatalism.

Discovering, with the birth of knowledge, that men and
nations are entrusted with the shaping of their own destiny,
the leaders of Japan were no longer content to have life
regulated by ancestral custom and traditional convention,
but by thought, truth and action. When education ceased
to be a thing of family interests, social convention and
religious superstition, and became a definite necessity of
choice and service, the citizen for the first time was given
an opportunity to regulate his life by reason and con¬
science rather than by rigid ancestral rule. Education
was no longer regarded as an ornament of the few, but
an inalienable right # of the many. Such indeed ms the
ideal with which the department of education in Japan set
ont. How far this ideal has been lived up to we shall now
endeavour to examine.

186 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

i. Worship of the Past a Retarding Obsession

The greatest handicap to the progress of Japanese educa¬
tion has been an unreasoning devotion to the past, and a
faith that is more concerned with material than moral
ideals. The Japanese, any more than other races, could
not have sprung from the barbarism at a bound : their
evolution has been longer and slower than most races.
They still retain in a large measure the nascent propensity
to be concerned gfavely with family and racial customs,
and to recognize no social tie save that of blood. When the
main conception of education for endless generations has
beenfor youthblindlyto imitate age,as age does its ancestors,
and regard life as being always what it has been, it is difficult
to bring about a radical change in a brief period. Custom
becomes the rule of living, and individual development
receives little encouragement. Even ethical doctrines,
so far as they exist, become prudential and sordid, and
precept fails to appeal to the inner light in man. Where
education is mainly a sheer effort of memory it does little
for mental and moral development. These considerations
it is necessary to keep in mind, if one is to understand the
incubus of the past in modern Japanese education.

When Russia decided to become more modem in
medieval times she went to Constantinople rather than to
Rome for her ideals of education and religion, and has never
been able to overcome this mistake. Japan had no model
to follow but that of China, and finds the spirit thus
imbibed still the greatest obstacle to progress. Apart
from touches of occidental veneer in treaty ports and official
circles Chinese civilization has not changed a whit in three
thousand years, Confucius, tile greatest teacher of China,
declared that the whole duty of man jvas to follow nature
—by which he meant custom, or devotion to imitation of
the past. Of course if virtue is knowledge, and knowledge
is mere observance of fixed ideas and customs, education

JAPANESE EDUCATION 187

is necessarily unprogressive. Under such a system the people
do not think for themselves, and only official utterance
and authority are of any importance.

It may be true, as the Chinese and Japanese are wont
to believe if not to affirm, that they were clothed in silks,
and sipping tea from the most delicate porcelain cups,
when Europe was clad in skins and roaming in tribes through
the forest fastnesses westward; but in this active and
progressive age the question is not what people were, but
what they are. Our main interest in the past is to note
the secret of the progress we have made and to observe the
principles on which progress depends. With the beginning
of authentic history in the Japan of the sixth century, there
is mention of schools; and Japanese historians are prone
to insist that the educational edicts of the Emperor Mommu
in a.d. 701 antedate the Ordinance of Charlemagne by a
hundred years, and Oxford University by nearly two
centuries; but if the inference has any significance at all,
it is only to emphasize the contrast between the results
of the two systems of education on the respective peoples.
The boast of antiquity becomes futile sentimentality if the
fruit is inferior. Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne,
as well as many other great educational institutions of
Europe, still function, with ever-increasing fruition, while
in Japan and China education in the modem sense is only
just beginning.

Certain unique achievements must, however, be ad¬
mitted : the invention of the mariner’s compass, of gun¬
powder, and printing from wooden type, which have been
left to more modern nations to improve and make the most
of. The Chinese have officially been devoted to classical
literature and to fine art, but history shows that these
things do not save from national decay in Asia any more
than they did in Greece and Rome. Education, to be
effective and lasting and continuous, must be based on
ideals that are universal in their appeal and significance.

188 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

Education in old China, as in old Japan, was not real educa¬
tion, because it was for the privileged and not for the people.
The masses were left in ignorance and squalor. And for
women education in any true sense did not exist at all.
In court circles some women of brilliant literary talents
appeared in the Nara period, and then women vanished
from Japanese intellectual achievement for a thousand
years. How much both Japan and China have lost by so
complete a suppression or neglect of womanhood!

The education from which modern Japan is endeavouring
to break away, therefore, was stilted, barren and without
inspiration or outlook. It demanded a knowledge of
Chinese and native classics possible only to the few, and had
little or nothing to do with real life and the development of
manhood. Only in one way was education effective : it
made loyalty supreme in all relations between inferiors
and superiors, but it was a loyalty that had nothing to do
with ethics. Education in the later years of the shogunate
no more escaped from the influence of Chinese ideals than
it did in previous ages ; and modem education has inherited
this incubus, so that Confucianism still remains the founda¬
tion of morality and education in Japan.

2. Modern Education Begins

Although Japan had no proper system of education before
1868, we have seen how some degree of preparation had
been made for the change to better things. The influence
of European ideas brought in by the Spanish and Dutch
traders and the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries opened
the eyes of many in Japan to a world of thought and achieve¬
ment until then beyond oriental ken. With the Meiji era,
the era of enlightenment, Japan set abogit transformation to
modem ways. How was it that a people so averse from
occidental ideals and customs came so suddenly to change
their policy ? There are those who suppose that the idea

JAPANESE EDUCATION 189

was born with the arrival of Commodore Perry, who opened
up. Japan to foreign intercourse in 1854. far back as
1582, however, a Japanese embassy had traversed Spain and
Italy, and returned with an account of the barbarian world.
From the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle
of the nineteenth century occidental influence had been
percolating through Japan; and Japan became gradually
conscious of the greatness and the necessity of a world of
knowledge as yet unacquired by her. Her officials listened
with amazement to the tales of emprise and achievement
retailed to them by such men as Kaempfer and von Siebold
of the Dutch factory at Nagasaki, until curiosity and
suspicion leapt the barriers of conservatism and prejudice,
and Japan was ready to learn all that the strangers could
teach.

In this way a considerable knowledge of occidental arts
and crafts, mathematics and medicine, began to circulate
in Japan; and the sacrifices made by the youth of the
country to obtain what information the foreigners had to
impart was unprecedented in the experience of the teachers.
The circumstances only go to show what an apt pupil
Japan would have proved, had she not been forcibly isolated
from Europe for over two hundred years. Indeed, by this
time she might have surpassed the Europe of to-day.

Between the arrival of Commodore Perry and the fall
of the shogunate a commission was sent abroad to investigate
the secrets of occidental progress and report on Japan’s
requirements for successful competition with the outside
world. Among the more important recommendations
which the commission made on its return was that for the
establishment of a modem system of education. In 1869
an ordinance relating to schools and universities was issued,
and in 1871 the first ^Department of Education was organized
for the supervision of the schools to be set up throughout
the empire. One of the most significant articles in the five
sections of the Imperial Oath, sworn on April 6,1868,

i 9 o JAPAN FROM WITHIN

before the Imperial princes and other high personages of
State at Kyoto, was: “ Knowledge shall be sought for
throughout the world, so that the welfare of the empire
may be promoted. 15 This gave the keynote to the great
educational change that so rapidly followed and supplied
Japan with a carefully devised school system. The code
on education, published in 1872, dealt fully with everything
pertaining to the new school system. Education was to
be so universally diffused in Japan that there was not to be
anywhere an ignorant family, nor a family with one ignorant
member. The first system put into force was based on a
French model. The whole country was divided into eight
educational districts, each to have one university, thirty-two
secondary schools and 6,720 elementary schools, or one for
every 600 of the population. Superintendents were duly ap¬
pointed to see to the establishment and maintenance of
these institutions.

This hastily prepared, imported system of education
proved immature however, and later, since education was
to be made universal, as in the United States, it was thought
better to bring over educational experts from that country;
and Dr. David Murray, of the Massachusetts State Board
of Education, was invited to come and reorganize the whole
system. This he did with excellent effect, establishing
schools all over the country. But as time went on the
authorities, fearing that the radical changes being brought
about by the rapid modernization of Japan might be made
too precipitate under the influence of a system which
stood for the development of individuality, eventually
had German educators modify the American system with
Prussian ideals.

From the beginning the Japanese insisted on having a
system that was purely utilitarian, unassociated with religion,
except that of devotion to the Imperial House and the
ancestral gods. No distinction was drawn between moral
and intellectual training, as in Confucianism. Moral

JAPANESE EDUCATION 191

codes are for people who need them, but not for the children
of the gods, who are inherently moral. Though in Japan
all religions are free, and religion is supposed to be excluded
from education, the pupils of the national schools are taken
to worship at the national shrines; which the authorities
insist is not associating religion with education.

It is clear that the educational authorities of Japan were
from the first, if not suspicious of foreign ideas, yet very
restless under foreign guidance, as they always are; and
consequently students were early sent abroad to familiarize
themselves with American and European methods of
education, that they might return and adopt these methods
to Japanese ideas without introducing foreign ideas incon¬
sistent with Japanese ideals and traditions.

Japan’s attempt to adopt Western methods and ways
without accepting the ideals that created them often leads
to a tendency that, to occidental eyes at least, looks like an
attempt to Japanize the truth; but with occidental con¬
ceptions of education constantly filtering into the country,
and Christian missions already in Japan exercising an
intensive and extensive influence on civilization, the general
attitude to science, religion and human freedom is neces¬
sarily changing, and Japan to-day is passing through a social
revolution. Indifference or opposition to the old ideas
of native cosmogony and Government is viewed by official¬
dom as dangerous thought, and regulations with regard
to the discipline of schools become more rigorous, without,
however, the desired effect,for school strikes are an increasing
feature of education.

The many Japanese teachers educated in America and
England do not return to their own country prepared to
accept Prussian ideals in education, though most of them
are but silent opponents of it. An educational policy that
regards the pupil as a mere lump of dough to be modelled
into whatever shape the system decides, independently of
will and individual fitness, is not likely to succeed in the

192 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

modern world. In the Japanese system all pupils are
turned into the same machine, and in a prescribed time are
all turned out after the same pattern, models of absolute
subservience to authority, recognizing no other duty, and
claiming none but conferred rights, yet grossly ignorant of
the first principles of citizenship and good government, as
understood in occidental countries. Hope of improvement
lies in the fact that these defects of national education are
being pointed out by leading thinkers of Japan, and in time
the spirit of Japanese education may be expected to become
as modern as the form.

To correct the mistakes and avoid the dangers arising
from occidental ideas of education, and form a statement
or oracle fully authoritative on Japanese ideals of education
and progress, the following Imperial Rescript was issued in
1890:

“ Know Ye, Our Subjects :

“ Our Imperial Ancestors have founded our empire
on a basis broad and everlasting, and have deeply and firmly
implanted virtue, the beauty of which our subjects, ever
united in loyalty and filial piety, have, from generation to
generation, illustrated. This is the glory of the fundamental
character of our empire, and herein lies the source of our
education. Ye, our subjects, be filial to your parents,
affectionate to your brothers and sisters ; as husbands and
wives be harmonious; as friends, true. Bear yourselves
in modesty and moderation. Extend your benevolence to
all. Pursue learning and cultivate the arts, and thereby
develop the intellectual faculties, and perfect the moral
powers. Furthermore, advance public good and promote
common interests. Always respect the Constitution and
observe the laws. Should emergency arise, offer yourselves
courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain
Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth. So

JAPANESE EDUCATION 193

shall ye be our good and faithful subjects, and render
illustrious the best traditions of your ancestors.

“ The way here set forth is indeed the teaching handed
down by our Imperial Ancestors, to be observed alike by
Their Descendants and Their subjects, infallible for all ages
and true in all places. It is Our wish to lay it to heart
in all reverence, in common with you Our subjects, that
we may all attain to the same virtue.”

A copy of the above rescript, beautifully written, is
distributed by the Department of Education to all schools
in the empire, and is kept in a sacred place, with portraits
of the Imperial Family. On all important occasions when the
whole school is assembled, the Imperial Rescript is brought
out and read to the school as the pupils stand at attention
before the Imperial portraits, to which profound obeisance
is made, the ceremony being regarded as the most solemn
and significant that can take place. Every school guards
these priceless possessions with the most vigilant care.
Cases are frequently recorded where teachers or 'school
officials have deliberately walked into the flames and given
their lives to save these sacred treasures from destruction,
the victim being accorded the rank of a hero whose spirit
is worshipped for ever.

Education in Japan is regarded as one of the most im¬
portant functions of the State, and is, therefore, entirely
under Government control. The department charged
with supervision of education is under a Minister of
the cabinet who directs the whole system. It should
be noted that in Japan education is not based on laws
passed by the national legislature, but on ordinances
issued, by the Emperor on recommendation of the cabinet
after approval by the Privy Council. The people have
no voice whatever in how their children, are to be
educated.

13

19 +

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

3. The System in Detail

The educational system of Japan, as it stands at present,
may be said to have its basis in a patriotic and aggressive
materialism. Its philosophy is distinctly utilitarian, rather
than concerned with improvement of morals or the acquire¬
ment of culture. The most obvious weakness is its failure to
develop the more admirable of the natural faculties at the
expense of the least admirable. It crams the minds of the
rising generation with a vast collection of all sorts of unrelated
facts about the science of the modern world and the affairs
of occidental civilization, too often interpreted in such a
spirit as to excite envy rather than emulation. The
Japanese have yet scarcely reached that stage of national
evolution where the mind is more concerned with man’s
potentialities and his place in the universe, than with their
own destiny and the best means of ensuring it. Thus
education is not influenced by any profound philosophy
of life, nor by religion in a moral sense.

This is not to say, as has been suggested, that there
are no signs of better things. Japan’s two great wars,
with China and again with Russia, rather tended to increase
the nation’s confidence in its own convictions. But the
European War has had quite a different effect, the least
of which is that it has created doubts and left the public
mind much confused. Japan is beginning to realize that
certain principles always lead to war, whether their expo¬
nents be Shinto, Confucianist or Christian. Japan’s victory
over Russia was ascribed to the superiority of the Japanese
spirit, invincible under impetus from the spirits cff the
Imperial Ancestors; but the war in Europe showed that
the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon was in no sense inferior to
that of Japan, and in some ways more excellent. This
may lead the more intelligent of Japanese educationists
to lay greater stress on the moral side of human culture ;
while the European War itself must lead Japan to see that

JAPANESE EDUCATION 195

real education implies application as much as theory in
the acquirement of facts. > After all, the only proof of
true knowledge is action.

Criticism apart, the educational system of Japan is
fairly fulfilling the aim of its founders and its directors.
It aims at a general education of the masses in an elementary
way, a special education of the professions and of officialdom
and a technical education of industry and trade. Each
of these branches of education is divided into three grades:
primary, secondary and higher education, with schools
accordingly. Primary education, committed to the primary
schools, is concerned only with the elements that every
citizen must know, without regard to trade or profession.
The secondary schools are only the elementary schools
carried to a higher grade. Higher education provides
specialists in law, politics, medicine, science, literature,
music, art and pedagogy. Technical education is con¬
cerned with turning out farmers, mechanics, artisans,
merchants, and all that require a particular training for
production. In addition to the schools under the Depart¬
ment of Education there are schools in connexion with the
Imperial Household Department for the education of
peers and peeresses; schools for the army and navy; for
the Department of Internal Affairs; the Department of
Communications; to say nothing of numerous private
schools corresponding in purpose and grade to the various
national schools already mentioned.

The national primary, secondary and high schools,
together with the five Imperial universities and various
special and technical schools, form the main educational
force under direct control of the Government. All private
schools, of course, are more or less under official inspection.
Without this they Cannot enjoy official approval, and this
they must have else their graduates would stand little
chance of .Government appointments. For the more
careful control of national education the Government has

196 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

three bureaux, known as the Bureau o£ General Education,
the Bureau of Special Education and the Bureau of Religion,
the latter an anomaly in a land where religion is supposed
to be separate from education.

The school age in Japan is from six to fourteen, the
pupil entering the primary school in its sixth year. Attend¬
ance there is compulsory for the next six years of life,
during which time the child must apply its mind five hours
a day six days in the week, with rest on Sundays and national
holidays and about one month in summer. The Japanese
regard holidays in schools as a sign of physical and mental
inferiority, and endeavour to make them as few and as
brief as possible. Some schools insist on lessons even
during the unbearable heat of summer, when pupils are
permitted to attend naked ; and one hears of schools
where pupils are made to come, now and then, naked in
winter, to test physical endurance.

Before entering the primary school pupils may attend
the kindergartens, if there be any in their neighbourhood,
but in Japan such schools are as yet few and in a nascent
stage. In the whole empire the number of kindergartens
is not more than 600, with 60,000 pupils and about 2,000
teachers. Elementary schools are of two kinds, known as
the ordinary and the higher; in many instances both are
in the same building. Those pupils that put in the necessary
six years at the ordinary primary school may enter the
higher department, if they do not enter a secondary school.
As a rule the children of all classes attend the same school,
though there is a distinct movement toward providing
private schools for children of the upper classes, especially
in female education, for in many or most of the primary
schools the sexes are not segregated.

Though every locality is bound to «nake provision for
all the primary school children within its jurisdiction, the
Government does not meet the expenses. Arrangements
are often made whereby several small communities may

JAPANESE EDUCATION 197

combine in a school union, spreading the cost of primary
education over several villages. Sometimes school grants
are afforded to poor communities by the county authorities.
The course at the higher elementary school extends from
two to three years, as the local authorities decree. All
pupils who are able pay a small fee, paupers being exempt.
About 65 per cent of primary education in Japan is repre¬
sented by the lower elementary schools. The number of
elementary schools in Japan at present is 25,650, with 178,500
teachers and about 8,500,000 pupils. The curriculum
embraces instruction in Japanese ethics, Japanese language,
Japanese history, geography, mathematics, science, drawing,
singing, gymnastics, and sewing for girls, with manual training
for boys; and during the last three years of the primary
course agriculture, commerce and the English language
may be added. Though the teaching hours must number
from twenty-one to thirty-two per week, exceptions may be
permitted as circumstances require, and very young children
may be allowed no more than twelve hours a week. All
textbooks are provided by the Board of Education at the
expense of the pupils, the subjects being treated strictly
from a national point of view. Attendance is regular as a
rule, over 98 per cent of the children of school age being
at school.

While Japan provides sufficient accommodation in the
primary grade, in secondary education there is accommoda¬
tion for scarcely more than half the applicants for admis¬
sion. From and including the secondary school upwards
the education of the sexes is strictly separate; and even
a different standard is set for girls’ schools. At present
there are 345 secondary schools for boys, with 7,219 teachers
and 167,000 pupils, indicating very inadequate accommoda¬
tion for a population of 57,000,000 of people increasing
at the rate of 700,000 a year. Lack of sufficient accommo¬
dation is all the more serious in a country where the system
is like a machine, and anyone failing to secure secondary

198 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

education is excluded from higher and university educa¬
tion. Unsuccessful applicants for admission to higher
education are found among the numerous suicides of every
year. Without higher education young men cannot hope
to secure employment in schools, banks, government
offices, commercial houses, nor in the more executive
positions in industry. And yet Japan’s annual outlay on
education by the Government Treasury is little more
than 12,000,000 yen, about half the cost of one battleship.
If armamental retrenchment in Japan should result in an
increase of secondary schools, the outlook for higher educa¬
tion would be more promising. Over against the Govern¬
ment’s small appropriation for education, we have an
annual outlay of 85,000,000 yen spent by the people them¬
selves, paid not out of their plenty but out of their very
limited means.

The Japanese boy has to spend five years at the secondary
school, should he be so fortunate as to find room for admis¬
sion, after which he may take a supplementary course of
one year. While it is very difficult to enter a secondary
school, there is no difficulty in leaving it; for everyone
must grade and graduate at the appointed time, else some
of the long list waiting for admission would be excluded.
The result is that many young men possess secondary-
school diplomas who are not really entitled to them, having
only put in the time but not made the progress implied.

The middle-school curriculum, which covers thirty hours
a week, includes Japanese ethics, Japanese language, Chinese
classics, the English, French or German language, geography,
arithmetic, mathematics, natural history, physics, chemistry,
drawing, singing, gymnastics and military drill. Most
stress is laid on the Japanese language, and on Chinese
classics, the one being essential to (practical education,
and the other to a proper understanding of Confucian
ethics. Next in importance come mathematics and
modern languages, the chief of which is English, for instruc-

JAPANESE EDUCATION 199

tion in which the more important centres employ an
English or American to assist the native staff, especially in
pronunciation and conversation. Owing to scarcity of
middle schools great encouragement is given to private
enterprise in this direction, which gives the schools of the
Christian missions an excellent opportunity.

Graduates of secondary schools who wish to enter the
teaching profession must enter a normal training college
and take a course of five years. This education is provided
free to those intending to serve seven years in the national
schools. There are also higher normal schools for training
those who expect to become instructors in high schools.
The number of ordinary normal schools is 97 with 1,958
teachers and 28,000 students. Notwithstanding the years
of training afforded, the native teacher is often criticized
as inefficient, due probably to the methods pursued in
Japanese education generally. The Japanese now regard
themselves as equal to Western nations in pedagogical
attainment, and no longer employ foreigners in this depart¬
ment of science, except as instructors in language only.
To compensate for the loss thus sustained a number of
graduates are sent abroad every year at Government
expense to specialize in certain subjects and then return
to give some years of service in schools at home.

’Japanese high schools are established for the purpose
of preparing graduates of secondary schools for entrance to
the various colleges of the Imperial universities. Of these
high schools there are now twelve, with four more in
preparation. There is the same difficulty in finding
admissi on to high schools as there is to middle schools, so
that thousands of young men are thus excluded from the
chances of a university education. In all the high schools
foreign instructor are employed in English, French and
German. In addition to the national high schools there
are five commercial high schools, the one in Tokyo having
recently been advanced to the position of a. commercial.

200

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

university. At the twelve national high schools there are
456 instructors and about 7,500 students. Girls’ high
schools are slightly above the grade of middle schools,
which accounts for their number, which is now 462, with
5,795 teachers and 131,800 pupils.

The five Imperial universities are at Tokyo, Kyoto,
Kyushu, Tohotu and Hokkaido. The Tokyo University
has faculties of law, medicine, literature, science, engineer¬
ing and agriculture, with 377 instructors and 5,233 under¬
graduates. The university at Kyoto lacks the department
of agriculture, and has 172 instructors and over 2,000
students. Tohoku University has colleges of science,
agriculture, medicine and engineering only, with 187
instructors and 1,800 students. Hokkaido has a similar
institution, with over 900 students. The new university
of Kyushu at Fukuoka has 80 instructors and 650 students.
Thus all the state universities of Japan have no more than
1,047 instructors and some 9,500 students, a great contrast
with the progress of higher education in Canada, for example,
where some 8,000,000 of people have greater facilities for
higher education and more university students than
Japan. But the private universities of Japan are doing
much to meet the demands of the public for higher educa¬
tion. The Keio University, in Tokyo, has as many students
almost as the Imperial University; while Wiaseda, founded
by the late Prince Okuma, has twice as many; and the
Meiji and other smaller institutions are also full. Christian
universities, like St. Paul’s College, the Aoyama Gakuin,
•the Meiji Gakuin and the Doshisha, are crowded with
undergraduates. The two women’s universities in Tokyo
are also full. Most of the private universities, however,
have fewer faculties than the national institutions, though
the quality of the work done is about equal.

Besides the schools of medicine connected with the
State and private universities there are various prefectural
paedicaj schools, though the education in them js scarcely

JAPANESE EDUCATION 201

up to State standard. The Government also provides a
College o£ Foreign Languages in Tokyo, where all the
chief languages of the world are taught by experts both
native and foreign. The number of technical schools is
ever increasing, with instruction in mechanics, weaving,
dyeing, chemistry, architecture, mining and metallurgy,
commerce and so on, the total number of such schools
now reaching 13,977, with 9,816 teachers and 1,037,000
pupils.

A unique handicap under which Japanese education
labours is the necessity of the child devoting the earlier
years of school life to the drudgery of memorizing the
thousands of ideographs, a command of which is essential
to reading, and to acquirement of knowledge. The
difficulty might be obviated by substituting the Roman
alphabet for the native characters, but as yet prejudice
against such a change is too strong. The enslavement of
the young mind to this memorizing of word-pictures
develop’s memory at the expense of reasoning power, and
stunts rational growth. For international reasons, too, it
is very desirable that Japan should adopt a universal
alphabet, since the ideographs are a positive deterrent to
acquirement of the Japanese language by Western nations.

4. Expenditure on Education

In Japan education is not absolutely free, except to the
very poor and indigent. Most of the schools charge a
small fee, which, in elementary schools, amounts to about
Xo sen (2id.) a month in rural districts and as much as
20 sen in urban districts. The fee for higher grades is
30 sen for country and 60 sen for city schools. But of
the more than 8^00,000 children at school not more
than 25,000 are wholly exempt from fees, and not above
100,000 partially exempt.

The salaries paid to the teachers of elementary schools

202

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

are much too low to secure efficiency or even ability,
averaging, as they do, a little over 18 yen a month, or less
than £z. Many of the female teachers get even less than
that. For secondary schools the salary averages about
50 yen a month, or less than £5. In secondary schools
pupils pay a fee of some 2 yen a month. In high schools
the fees range from 30 to 40 yen a year, while the salaries
of teachers range from 70 to 120 yen a month. In universi¬
ties fees and salaries are slightly higher than in high schools.
Since the European War, which much raised the cost of
living in Japan, all teachers’ salaries have been slightly
increased.

The cost of education in Japan is borne mainly by the
provinces, the national treasury rendering aid where it
seems necessary, especially in the way of constructing
buildings and increasing the salary of teachers. It has
already been pointed out that the Government spends a
meagre 12,000,000 yen or so, against about 85,000,000
given by the provinces. The situation may appear more
hopeful from the fact that in recent years, with the increase
of individual wealth, private munificence has begun to do
something toward the endowment of education. Families
like the Sumitomo, Okura, Furukawa and others have set
a noble example in this way, which others are expected
to follow. Perhaps when it is remembered that no nation
has yet fully realized the absolute necessity of efficient
education to national permanence and progress, the advance
that Japan has made in spite of handicaps is all the more
to be admired. But until national education receives
the same attention and devotion as military and naval
education, the progress of the country must continue to
be seriously retarded.

CHAPTER XIII

ARTS AND CRAFTS

T HIS chapter embraces a brief survey of that aspect
of modern Japanese development that could not
be so conveniently treated under the caption of
industries—the field of applied art.

In the realm of arts and crafts Japan has reached a very
high degree of attainment, the origin of which extends
back to remote ages. The mythological period of Japanese
tradition reveals some traces of the beginnings of art, not
unlike those found in the prehistoric remains of European
nations. The earliest examples of the idea of art in Japan
are figures of men and animals found in dolmens, and
other places of ancient sepulture. Although very primitive
in both conception and execution, these figures must be
regarded as considerably later developments of the race’s
earliest essays in art. The contents of these ancient
tombs show that in prehistoric times the artisans of Japan
could forge iron into swords, spear-heads, armour and horse-
trappings ; and that they could use gold and silver for
decorative purposes, as well as cast bronze, and manufacture
wheel-turned pottery. There is abundant evidence that
in the remoter periods of Japanese history the arts and
crafts were highly honoured.

Naturally the first metal-worker on record, a personage
descended from prehistoric ages, receives the highest
honour and is accorded the rank of deity, being canonized
with the warriors of the mythic era. It is clear that the
hammerer preceded the sculptor and the painter in Japanese
art, and thus prepared the way for the great glyptic artists

204 JAPAN FR0M WITHIN

o£ a later period. Another evidence of the early inception
of native arts and crafts is seen in the hereditary corpora¬
tions mentioned in the most ancient chronicles of the
nation; there are associations of guilds of priests, metal¬
workers, weavers and potters. Such institutions appear
to have been peculiar to Japan. They make their appear¬
ance at the very dawn of the nation’s existence ; and it is
obvious that, whatever country the Yamato came from,
they brought these art associations with them.

Not until the introduction of Buddhism, however, does
the real history of Japan’s arts and crafts begin. Whatever
art instinct the Yamato race possessed, it seems to have
found no appreciable expression until the stirring inspira¬
tion and gorgeous paraphernalia of the Indian faith became
a part of the national life. In Japan, as in Europe, religion
was the mother of art. Naturally so, for true art is always
an attempt to suggest, imitate or develop some divine idea
luminous in the visible world—the universal expressing
itself in the particular. Hence art has ever been regarded
as the handmaid of religion. Yet art in itself is not religion,
else nations capable of great art could not have so easily
perished. A religion like Buddhism, wherein images and
pictures find an important place, naturally lent impetus to
sculptural as well' as pictorial art, to say nothing of its
influence on applied as distinguished from decorative art.

At a very early stage, therefore, the arts and crafts of
Japan came under exotic influence, as they were con¬
stantly in the keeping of the Korean and the Chinese
Buddhist missionaries and others who were brought over
from the continent to teach art. It speaks well for the
catholicity of the Japanese mind in so distant a period that
these foreign artists should have found so cordial a welcome
in the country. Indeed, Japan seems to have offered great
attractions to the most aesthetically minded of her con¬
tinental neighbours. In the eighth and ninth centuries
a.b. Japan was not so convulsed by dynastic changes as

ARTS AND CRAFTS 205

China, and so pursued a policy of receiving with open arms.,
from that country all who could add to her knowledge or'
capacity, a spirit still at work in the modernization of
Japan.

And Japan set up no narrow racial distinctions between
men’s claims to the gratitude of the State. In one of the
nation’s oldest historical records, a list of peers compiled
in a.d. 814, out of a total of 1,1:17 noble families enumerated
as representing the aristocracy, no fewer than 381 traced
their descent from Chinese or Korean ancestors. To this
stream of immigration, with its fresher brain and blood,
Japan owed much of the rapid art development of the
Heian era. Even after national art started on an inde¬
pendent career, it constantly refreshed its inspiration by a
careful study and imitation of Chinese models: and even
down to the present day Chinese subjects may be said to
preponderate in the classical art of Japan. It must not
be forgotten, however, that Japan’s earliest arts were
practical or applied rather than aesthetic and creative;
and to this aspect of development our attention here must
be particularly directed.

1. The Cradle of Yamato Art

While it has to be admitted that the beginnings of art
in the ancient Yamato empire came from India and China,
it was nevertheless the case that in the old capital at Nara,
the Florence of Japan, the new artistic impulse found its
cradle of nurture and development. In the first Buddhist
images and pictures brought to Japan it is easy to trace
resemblances to the contemporary Gandhara period in
India; while the wall pictures of the Horyuji temple in
Yamato, one of the* oldest sacred edifices in Japan, suggest
the frescoes of the caves of Ajunta. Numerous relics of
metal and lacquer work, ceramics, and textile fabrics,
indicate that in this period Japan was not only in com-

20 6 JAPANJFROM WITHIN

munication with China and Korea, but with India, if not
even with the regions beyond. In the capital at Nara,
where the Imperial Court resided from a.d. 709 to 784,
four sovereigns reigned in succession ; during which period
the art of the nation began to lay serious claim to high
achievement. In previous periods, when the capital moved
with .each new occupant of the Throne, art had no settled
home. With the permanent settlement of the Imperial
Court at Nara, art found a safe abiding place, beautiful
temples were erected, with highly wrought designs in wood
and metal to decorate them, and enshrining images and
other objects indicating a remarkable degree of attainment.

There is still at Nara a wooden museum called the
sboso-in , which for eleven centuries or more has been kept
intact to store the most ancient art relics of the nation,
including domestic utensils and ornaments, most of them
associated with the names of emperors who ruled at Nara.
This building is quite unique in the history of art. There
is some difficulty in determining, and even distinguishing,
the origin of some of the art objects in the shoso-in, but a
catalogue dating back to a.d. 756 indicates what is of
Korean and Chinese origin, the inference being that all
not so enumerated are of Japanese creation. It is probably
going too far, however, to assume that so many of the
undesignated art objects could have been produced in
Japan at a period when decorative designs had not yet
developed their distinctive character. The problem here
is that of how to know when one is dealing with the work
of the Chinese teacher and when with that of the Japanese
pupil. If the objects indicated are really the work of
native artists, then it must be concluded that the workers
of the eighth century could sculpture delicately and
minutely; could inlay metal with sheik and amber; could
apply cloisonne decorations to objects of gold, using silver
doisons ; could work skilfully in lacquer, black or golden;
could encrust gold with jewels, chisel metal in designs

ARTS AND CRAFTS 207

a jour or in the round; could cast bronze by the cira-
fardue process; could overlay wood with ivory or inlay
it with mother-of-pearl, gold or silver; could weave rich
brocades, and paint decorative designs on wood, over¬
laying them with translucent varnish. That such a degree
of artistic and technical skill could have been attained by
the Japanese at so remote a period seems to some very
doubtful. But how, again, is one to get over the difficulty
of attributing to China and Korea art work that is also
undoubtedly above the level of these countries at that
period i

Of course it is a fact that in such fields as painting,
porcelain, bronze-casting, cloisonne enamel, cameo-glass
making, weaving and embroidery, China excelled anything
to be found in contemporary Japan, but in sculpture the
pupils were able, under the inspiration of the new religion,
to carry conception and execution far beyond the precepts
of their Chinese and Korean instructors. This is especially
true in the matter of beU-making. The great bell in the
Todaiji temple at Nara was cast in a.d. 732 : it is 12 feet
high, 9 inches thick and weighs 49 tons. The colossal
statue of Buddha at Nara, 53 feet in height, is another
example of the art of this period. The great bell-caster
of that day was Kunio; and in wood-carving and sculpture
such names as Gyoki and Bunkei have come down to us as
supreme in their art. In terra-cotta and lacquer, too,
evidence of high attainment is seen.

z. The Bronze Workers

The marvellous artistic achievements of the Nara period
show how early Japan attained high skill in all kinds of metal¬
work, more particularly in bronze. But since it is a skill
for heavy work mainly, it would be an error to assign
Japan the palm in bronze-casting skill. Her wood-carvings
are generally superior to those of China and Korea, and

2o 8 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

in bronze, too, Japanese artists produced some castings of
matchless art, like the immortal statue of Amida at Kama¬
kura, but for excellency of design and accuracy of technique
China was supreme, while the Koreans were superior in
relief decorations. Nowhere in the Orient, however, has
there been any approach to Ancient Greece as an inter¬
preter of form. The oriental artist in bronze was unable
to appreciate the contour of the human body, or to mould
a form after the divine model of the Greeks. China has
produced a few models in bronze whose graceful lines
compel admiration, but in Japan there is seldom excellence
of this sort except at the cost of originality. It has to be
admitted, however, that in giant statuary superiority
rested with the East. The Spartans had to hammer out
on a model the bronze plates for the statue of Zeus ; but
the Chinese learned the art of hollow casting in remote
antiquity, and handed it on to Japan.

During the Heian era, from 794 to 1183, there is evidence
of continued excellence in Japanese metal-work of all
kinds, due mainly to the demand for armour and its acces¬
sories by the warrior class. And all through the Kamakura
period, from 1183 to 1332, chiselling, casting and hammered
work advanced in the direction of greater elaboration and
finer technique. Bronzes having decoration in relief did
not make such marked progress. Although the Japanese,
early in the fourteenth century, had received matchless
examples of bronze work from China, with the peony
scroll in relief, it was not until the close of the sixteenth
century that fine specimens of Korean work brought over
by the predatory troops of Hideyoshi gave any determining
impulse to the adoption of similar decorations in Japan.
Thereafter we find Japanese artists in bronze making
stupahs, lamps, vases, pricket-candlesticks, censers, pagodas,
gates, pillar-caps and all the other ornaments of the Budd¬
hist faith, which one sees in such profusion at the Tokugawa
mausolea in Tokyo, where there is abundance of native

ARTS AND CRAFTS 209

skill in great variety. The process went on till Chinese
shapes were covered with Korean decorations, heralding a
new departure in bronze-work. The movement soon
became apparent in household ornaments, such as flower
vases and censers, which up to this time had been made
in other metals only. It was not until the seventeenth
century, therefore, that in Japan the art of casting bronze
became so delicate and refined that its products could
rank with the choicest specimens of glyptic art. Among
the names that stand out most prominently in this branch
of Japanese art are those of Kame, Seinin, Jouin, Masatsume,
Teijo, Sonin, Keisei, Gido and Takusai, in the older period ;
while in modern times Suzuki, Okazaki, Hasegawa, Jomi
and Jouin have produced work equal to anything done by
the old masters.

3. Other Metals

Japan is a country of contrasts, and nowhere is this
more obvious than in the nation’s art. The difference
between the colossal statues of Buddha in bronze, at
Kamakura and Nara, and the exquisite temple and parlour
ornaments in bronze of a later period is assuredly vast;
and in the same way one may note the contrast between
the cyclopean mediaeval castles of Japan and the tiny
metal-work ornaments that may be said to constitute the
nation’s jewellery. As time' went on the Japanese artist
turned from giant forms to small, from bronze to other
metals, and thereafter in all lines of diminutive metal¬
work the glyptic artists of Japan stand unrivalled ; especi¬
ally when it is remembered that here they owe nothing to
foreign inspiration.

As an example of forging, the Japanese sword was unique ;
but it was not really more original than the metal orna¬
ments it carried. In all forms of sword furniture the
Japanese artist in metal displayed remarkable excellence.
Unlike Western weapons of this class, the Japanese sword
14

aio JAPAN FROM WITHIN

had nine adjuncts, in every one of which the native artists
produced peerless specimens of sculpture and metallurgic
processes. Some of these pieces are idyls of pictorial art,
equal to the tiny scenes on Greek pottery. The artist in
this sort of work apparently loved to expend the most
patient effort on the least conspicuous parts of the object
so decorated, partly because loyalty to his art demanded
it, and partly because he wished to protest against any
striving after ostentation, content that the eyes of the gods
could see.

Representing exquisite achievements in metal-work there
are thirteen generations of the Goto family, extending
from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, each of
which excelled in some specialty of technique or decorative
design : as, for example, the Yokoya experts who invented
katakmbori in which every line has its own value in the
pictorial scheme; the Nagoya masters famous for their
wood-grained grounds on metal; the Myochin family
in whose hands iron was as tractable as wood; the Naga-
yoshi who were renowned for inlaying; the Kisai artists
associated with fine carving it jour; and there are numerous
other names almost equally celebrated.

In this kind of art must be included netsuke also, those
minute but none the less delightful objects revealing as
much the art of the metal-worker as the skill of the sculptor.
The art which India had learned from Persia in the carving
of ivory and wood, and which China had developed in
carving the tusks of the elephant and the horns of the
rhinoceros, attained its full range of conception only in
Japan where it reveals a wealth of fancy, realistic, conven¬
tional, grave, humorous and grotesque, in the making of
netsuke , that has no equal anywhere. With the passing
of the old-time pipe-case and tobacco-pouch, on which
these tiny ornaments were used as fobs or buttons, the
day of the netsuke ended; and then the glyptic artists
found other fields for skill in the sculpturing of ivory

ARTS AND CRAFTS 211

statuettes and the production of various utensils and
ornaments of impressive beauty. In silver salvers, tea and
coffee services, fruit dishes, napkin rings, spoons and other
table furniture, the work of the Japanese artist has a beauty
of its own, all made by the hand of a master and not cast,
as much of such work is abroad. The demand for cheap
art, however, is forcing the Japanese metal-worker down
to the level of his customers, resulting only too often in
mere decorative effect more than artistic merit.

4. Ivory and Wood

It has been shown how Buddhism from the first lent
great impetus to wood sculpture ,* for when metal could
not be had, or was too expensive, wood could always afford
material for imposing images of gods and saints, as well
as to adorn, in fine carvings, the temple friezes and gates.
Few examples of the wood-carver’s art now remain, as,
unlike bronze work, wood was subject to destruction-by
fire. A wooden statue by the famous Shiba Tori, a.d. 623,
is still preserved in the Horyuji temple. Later centuries
fail to show carvers of great talent and skill. In the ninth
and tenth centuries the names of Kosho and his son Jocho
were noted, and Unkei of the Kamakura period. The
art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in wood,
was confined to exterior embellishment of temples, fine
examples of which are seen at Nikko in pillars, panels,
beams, brackets, animals, birds and flowers. The greatest
names of this period were those of Kawachi and Jingoro.

With the development of the lyric drama, the No and
the rise of pnppet theatres, there was a new employment
for carvers in the making of masks, in which certain artists
attained to great f£me, notably Kodama and Matsumoto,
the work of the latter finding its way abroad. Among
modern wood-carvers and sculptors the names of Takamura
Koun and Takenouchi Kyuchi are prominent. In both

212 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

ivory and wood the art is suffering at present from want
of patronage. Most of the work in wood and ivory now
goes abroad, about 90 per cent of it finding export, chiefly
to the United States. The old carvers in ivory were forced
to work on small bits of tusk, big enough to produce netsuke ,
but the modern carver may have a whole tusk to himself,
and has an unlimited field, if he so desires; but most of
the artists in ivory prefer to work in decorative objects
for foreign customers, a task more lucrative than inspiring,
compelled, as they are, to think of time and contract,
unlike the old days when the artist was moved by genius
and ideal conception. That there appears to be no great
appreciation of ivory-carving among the Japanese them¬
selves may be due to its high cost and the unsuitability of
Japanese houses for such objects. Progress in the art of
ivory-carving, however, is more marked at present than in
wood-carving. The wood-sculptor has fallen on evil days
in Japan. The successors of those inimitable artists who
produced the wonderful friezes of the Nikko temples must
now descend to the carving of table-legs and table-tops,
trays and screen frames, and even to the making of toys.
In this work of cabinet-making, or sasbimono , as the Japanese
call it, there is some opportunity for the display of fine
artistic skill in carving, and in such objects as tansu (chests
of drawers), brazier boxes, tea-trays, some really beautiful
work is being done. Here the skill of the joiner combines
with that of the sculptor and painter to produce caskets
and cabinets worthy of all admiration.

5. Ceramics

The making of porcelain and pottery generally is, of
course, one of the oldest and most highly developed of
Japanese arts. Introduced originally from China and
Korea, and improved under the steady tutelage of con¬
tinental teachers, the ceramic art of Japan early attained

ARTS AND CRAFTS 213

a great degree of excellence, especially under patronage of
the leading feudal lords who encouraged the craft of the
potter to meet the needs of the people as well as to vie
with other daimyo in possessing the finest specimens of
the art. With the decline of feudalism pottery suffered a
relapse, and the number of districts engaged in it con¬
siderably lessened. With the opening of Japan to occidental
commerce pottery became more a craft than an art. The
Meiji Government imported experts from abroad to
introduce new methods of manufacture and the use of
foreign pigments in decoration; after which the greater
centres, like Mino, Kyoto, Aichi and Arita, began to
emulate one another in the new movement, a sad departure
from the art of the old masters.

Although collectors generally speak of Japanese porcelain
in accents of enthusiasm, it must be admitted that the
Japanese artist in porcelain, as distinguished from faience,
never rose quite to the level of his Chinese teacher. The
pottery of Imari, called in Europe Old Japan Ware, with
its deep-toned fields and crowded designs ; the Nabeshima
porcelain, which stood for a more aristocratic type of
ceramic art; the Kutani ware with its brilliant, richly
massed enamels; and the Hirado pottery in delicate blue
sous couverte: all these go to testify to the aesthetic sobriety
of Japanese taste, and may be regarded as forming the
four great divisions of porcelain on which the fame of the
Japanese ceramists must rest. Yet, in the opinion of
experts, Japanese porcelains, on the whole, are considered
inferior to the masterpieces of China with their wonderful
monochromes, in indescribably delicate clair-de-lune or
faultless liquid-dawn; or the Chinese hawthorns, soft paste
blue and white, bean blossom, transmutation glaze, eggshell,
femille-rose and other incomparable creations. But if
the masterpieces of Japanese porcelain must pale before
this galaxy of brilliant varieties from China, it is not so in
faience, which the Chinese artist was prone to regard with

214 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

contempt, but in which the Japanese potter most excelled.
The choicest specimens of old Satsuma and Kyoto ware
hold undisputed prominence in the realm of faience.

While the ceramists of modern Japan do not seek to
build their fame on reproducing the masterpieces of the
past, they really do turn out work equally fine, and in
much greater variety, at the same time adapting their
art to the needs of current markets at home and abroad.
This is not to deny that foreign influence has forced
deterioration.

Instinctively the Japanese artist in porcelain still turns
to China for models; he knows that the Kanghsi, Yung-
cheng and Chienlung masters stand on a pedestal to which
he must climb before essaying independent flight. Though
the Japanese ceramist has produced many notable pieces
of beautiful porcelain, the liquid-dawn monochrome of
his Chinese master still eludes him. In ivory-white,
c&adon, blue sous converter enamelled painting over glaze,
translucid decoration and various sub-glaze colours, such
as red-green, yellow-black, the Japanese potter has admirably
succeeded.

At present there are some fifteen places in Japan noted
as centres for the production of artistic pottery, among
which the more distinguished are Kyoto, Hizen, Seto,
Mino, Kaga, Satsuma, Arita, Imari and Tokyo. In
porcelain, as in many other arts, the difficulty is to find
patronage for the patience and application of genius
necessary to the production of masterpieces. In the
United States, where there is a growing demand for
Japanese pottery, there has been an improvement in taste
during recent years, but generally speaking, the chief
demand there, as elsewhere, is for hasty production and
gaudy decoration. The call for inartistic products, turned
out in cargoes like brick, has reacted unfavourably on
ceramic art in Japan. There is at last a move being made
to eliminate at least the most vulgar mixtures of Japanese

ARTS AND CRAFTS 215

and foreign elements in form and decoration. Some of
the modern porcelains, produced for patrons willing to
pay for them, are exquisitely beautiful, and not unworthy
of the past. Even the common table-ware of the poorest
Japanese is infinitely more artistic than that of the wealthier
classes in Western countries. This makes it clear that it
is lack of taste on the part of occidentals rather than high
cost that results in the enormity of decoration made for
foreign export.

6. Cloisonne Enamel

This is another of the delightful arts that Japan acquired
from China. In no craft have they made more rapid
development in recent years. In old Japan the process
of enclosing vitrifiable enamels in designs traced with
cloisons was employed solely for the decoration of sword
furniture and other subordinate purposes; but Kaji
Tsunekichi, in the nineteenth century, extended its use
to the manufacture of vases, censers and bowls. At first
the Japanese did not approach the Chinese in grandeur of
colour and perfection of technique, their shades being
always sombre and often impure; but this period of
inferiority soon gave way to work of high skill, showing
specimens with remarkable richness of decoration and
purity of design, as well as admirable harmony of colour.
New departures were made by the introduction of cloison-
less enamel, known as musen-jippo , and translucent enamel.
In this connexion the names of the two Namikawas, and
of Ando and Hattori, deserve special honour. The use of
silver, instead of copper, as a base, and the setting of
designs on the surface in greater relief by the ishime process,
indicate still more the recent progress of the art, Ando
successfully imitated the French process of translucent
designs, and Ota is producing the red monochrome that is
the ambition of all workers in this beautiful craft.

216

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

7. Lacquer

On account of the high excellence it has attained in
form, design and execution, as well as on account of the
remarkable patience and skill required in its successful
manufacture, tn&kiye, or lacquer work, must rank among
the nobler efforts of aesthetic ambition. The designs in
lacquer range from great simplicity to elaborate decoration,
while the wonderful glow and sheen of the gold, silver and
other variously coloured lacquers represent something
that is a joy for ever. Like other Japanese arts, lacquer
first came from China, and that very early, as it is men¬
tioned in the oldest chronicles of Japan. Articles in this
craft are preserved in museums and temples that date as
far back as the sixth century of our era.

The earlier work appears to have been in black, often
inlaid with mother-of-pearl; and mother-of-pearl on a
gold ground is evident in the tenth century, while boxes
with light gold, with fence work, flower petals and birds,
have come down from the twelfth century. By the
fifteenth century decoration expanded into floral and con¬
ventional landscapes, as well as figures and architectural
themes. In the process of time the Japanese artist in
lacquer seems to have surpassed his Chinese masters,
especially after the fourteenth century. The carved
cinnabar lacquer of China, of course, has no equal any¬
where ; but in other forms the Japanese artist showed
unapproachable excellence. In the second half of the
fifteenth century the dilettanti shogun, Yoshimasa, estab¬
lished tea-dubs which demanded various artistic utensils
in lacquer, when the craftsmen of Japan soon began to
produce the beautiful gold lacquer with decorated designs
in relief, known as taka^-makiye, as well as xasbiji) or lacquer
with adventurine ground, resulting in a long succession of
exquisite specimens, and culminating in the elaborate
decorations applied to the interior of the Tokugawa mausolea

ARTS AND CRAFTS

217

in Tokyo and Nikko. The summit of development was
reached in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when
the output was as artistic as it was extensive.

In the eighteenth century the names of Sonsen-sai,
Chohei, Jokasai, Tayo, Kokyo, Hirose and Eki were among
the most notable artists in lacquer, and in the nineteenth
century the craft was considerably improved by Zeshin
and his pupils Hobi and Jaishin. In modern times Uyematsu
Honin and Shirayama Shosai have no equals. Indeed, the
work of the lacquer artist to-day is quite up to that of any
of his predecessors. All the finest pieces of the past were
made to order, just as it must be with the best work now.
It is impossible to form any adequate conception of the
wonderful variety of designs and the endless combination
of colours and materials over which the modern craftsman
holds magic command.

While conventional forms and stereotyped designs,
excellent in their way, continued to fascinate foreign
admirers of the art, the craftsmen were bent on breaking
away from such monotony, and in recent years have been
endeavouring to produce objects in bolder and more
animated designs, based on nature. The Japanese, as a
rule, reveal simple taste in lacquer, such as the plain severe
black, or nashijt, of the seventeenth century, with, perhaps,
a spray of plum or cherry blossom, or a bird soaring toward
'the rising moon or rising sun. Foreign patrons, however,
usually prefer the more elaborate and overcrowded work
of the Genroku period, inlays of mother-of-pearl or coral,
various metals with special use of gold. But no Western
mind has a full appreciation of this art in the same sense
as the Japanese; and consequently lacquer has always
been more valued in Japan than abroad, though the demand
for better work in occidental countries is increasing. Even
in Japan the best pieces have always been purchased by
the Imperial Family, to be used as gifts for'great personages
and foreign potentates.

2i 8 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

8. Weaving and Embroidery

As one of the earliest industries of the nation, weaving
gradually began to reveal the development and originality
of an art. In the oldest annals of Japan it is mentioned
as an avocation of goddesses, in the mythology of the
country; and corporations of figured-cloth weavers are
mentioned as existing in a.d. io. From this it appears
that the art of weaving was practised in Japan from imme¬
morial time, and China and Korea contributed materially
to its development. Embroidery, too, must have been
an ancient art of Japan; for embroidered representations
of Buddha, 16 feet long, are mentioned in the sixth
century a.d., and the older temples of Japan have specimens
of this art dating from remote antiquity. Both weaving
and embroidery received marked impetus from certain
schools of actors whose theatres required elaborately woven
and embroidered robes lending spectacular effect to the
drama. In connexion with the no-kyogen, or lyrical drama,
Japan in time became the possessor of such stores of textile
fabrics as have never been excelled anywhere in point of
richness of quality, beauty of design and delicacy of tech¬
nique. Many of these famous collections have been dis¬
persed abroad, where they serve to denote the achievements
of old Japan; but the present-day exponents of these
arts and crafts are in no way behind their predecessors.
The modern brocades of Japan are, perhaps, not always
superior to those of the old masters, but on the whole
they afford very favourable comparison with the best of
the past. Especially in tzuzwe-nishiki , or tapestry, the
manufacturer of to-day has far out-distanced his ancestors
in the art; while in embroidery the present masterpieces,
in their wonderful chiaroscuro effects and aerial perspective,
are away beyond anything that the past has produced;
and the remarkable cut-velvets of the Kyoto artists have
made an entirely new addition to the list of art fabrics.

ARTS AND CRAFTS

219

In silk brocade the Japanese artist can produce any
scene from nature, or any pattern selected, with his tiny
loom and threads of silk and gold. This is now the m o st
highly prized of all Japan’s textiles, but such products
can be afforded only by great personages, and even these
wear them only on important occasions. During the last
fifty years the art of weaving silk brocade has made marvellous
progress under Kawashima Jimbei of Kyoto, who received
much encouragement from the late Emperor Meiji. It
was he who undertook the matchless creations in this art
which the late Emperor presented to the Palace of Peace
at the Hague. One of the finest pieces of silk tapestry in
the world is in the Imperial Palace at Tokyo, a magnificent
creation, 18 feet by 25 feet, which took several years to com¬
plete. Only a genius of great originality and inspiration
could have produced the masterpieces in this art to be
seen only in Japan.

9. Pictorial Art

In the past foreigners have been prone to treat
Japanese art as for the most part decorative art, quite'
satisfied if they have taken a scant review of the nation’s
porcelain, pottery, lacquer, carving and colour prints,
without making any study of its creative or pictorial art at
all. This was in some measure due to the fact that the
masterpieces of Japanese painting were hidden away as
treasures, and the world was ignorant of the existence of
such works as Japan can show. In recent years, however,
these have been brought from their hiding-places and put
on view in the great museums and galleries of the nation,
and the wealth of Japan’s artistic achievements have become
better known. After all, it must be admitted that a nation’s
applied or industrial arts and crafts are but the overflow
of the shaping and inventing energy as well as the inspira¬
tion of her creative or free arts. The decoration of things

220

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

o£ use and luxury is but the reflection of designs emanating
from the mind of the great masters of the brush and the
chisel.

Pictorial art is one of Japan’s oldest creations, intro¬
duced, like other and kindred arts, from Korea and China.
In the hands of Kanaoka in the ninth century the national
pictorial art began to show some signs of breaking away
from slavish imitation of the Chinese masters; but the
painting of Japan did not completely find itself until the
eleventh century when the Tosa school appeared at Nara.
Before this there had been the Yamato school, established
by Motomitsu, which contained in itself most of the
peculiarities that have characterized Japanese painting
ever since, such as neglect of perspective, impossible
mountains, quaint dissection of roofless interiors, and
devotion to insects and hobgoblins. This school finally
evolved into the Tosa school of painters, and thenceforward
devoted itself more to classical subjects. The Tosa painters
were intent on the national manners and customs of the
past, and included a long line of brilliant names down to
Mitsuoki of the seventeenth century, who painted the
thirty-six poets for the Toshogu at Nibko. From the
Tosa school arose another line of artists with Kosin at
their head, producing richly decorated pieces in coloured
ink, depicting scenes and things in nature. In more modem
times the honours of the Tosa school have been worthily
upheld by Kobori.

The Kano school of painters, an imitation of the northern
school of China, arose in the fourteenth century, producing
an extended list of great names like Shoku, Suten and
finally Masanobu, whose works are still to be seen in various
temples. The fifteenth century is generally regarded as
the most glorious period of painting in*Japan, as indeed,
by strange coincidence, it was in Italy. In Japan Chodenzu,
Josetsu and others achieved great fame in the depiction
of Buddhist subjects, Mitsunobu of the Tosa school,

221

ARTS AND CRAFTS

and Sesshu, Shubun and Masanobu of the Kano school,
also added glory to the art. The Kano school, even down
to the present day, has continued to be the stronghold of
classicism in Japanese painting, by which is meant a close
adherence to Chinese models and subjects at second-hand.
The quiet, harmonious colouring and the bold caligraphic
drawing of the old masters have justly excited the emulation
of succeeding generations, though the circle of ideas in
which the old masters moved was too restricted to com¬
mand universal admiration. It was under the influence of
the caligraphic art of the southern school of China that
the Bunjinja school arose in Japan, a school noted for the
elegance and beauty of its brush-work, and of which Kazan
was a master.

One of the great names of the Kano school, Maruyama
Okyo, founded a school bearing his name in the eighteenth
century, its leading feature being a faithful adherence to
nature. Keibun, Tokochiko, Gyokusho, and Bunkyo who
died some time ago, were all brilliant pupils of Okyo.
The Shi jo school of pinters, notably Takenouchi, showed
admirable indepndence in the direction of a pure Japnese
style, practising a graceful naturalism; while the school of
everyday life, known as the XJkiyo-e, devoted itself to the
manners and customs of the common people of the streets.
The beginning of this popular movement in Japanese art
may be traced back to the droll sketches of Iwasa Matahei
in the sixteenth century, and the idea was later developed
by Moronobu and Hanabusa, who illustrated books in
popular style in colour. The influence of Okyo, who
made a sincere attemp to paint with the eye on nature,
did something to turn the public mind to things natural
and real, and a whole host of artists arose portraying life
aroupd them, releasing art from the cold conventionalities
of Chinese taste and bringing it down to the society of
living men and women. One of the greatest names in
t hfa artisan school was that of Hokusai, who from 1780 to

222 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

1849 poured forth a continuous stream of novel and vigorous
creations covering the whole range of Japanese motives,
and resulting in those wonderful colour-prints for which
Japan has become justly famous. Other noted names of the
genre school were those of Toyokuni, Kunisada, Shigenobu,
Hiroshige and Kyonobu. Utamaro and Hokusai were also
important in this connexion. The last of the masters of
this school was Kyosai,who survived until 1889, his main
themes, with grim appropriateness, being the ghosts and
skeletons of the past.

After the opening of Japan to Western civilization and
art, the painters had serious difficulties with which to
contend, just as their ancestors before them had when
Japan came into contact with the influence of China;
with this difference*however, that when Japan came under
the tutelage of China, in art as in other things, she had
no traditions and nothing to unlearn, but everything to
learn; but when she came face to face with the Occident,
Japan had an immense tradition to overcome, and a long
line of artists to demand her loyalty. Art, like religion, is
something inseparable from the soul of a race; and the
result will wholly depend on the attitude of mind to the
world. In that attitude the religion and the mind of
Japan differed profoundly from Europe. At first it was
supposed that everything foreign, including art, was
superior ; and native masters, like Hogai and Kyosai,
were neglected, the pupils flocking to the new art teachers
imported from Europe by the Government. But even the
foreigners themselves, led by Professor Fenollosa, opposed
the aversion from the old masters and did something to
stay the wild rush to escape the past, and so evade all
pretence to originality. Thus when the national school of
fine art was founded in 1886 Hogai and <!fetho were its chief
teachers. A brave attempt was made to preclude the
old, native artistic individuality, from being lost during the
absorbing interest in the art of the West.

ARTS AND CRAFTS 223

Devoted as some Japanese artists have been to the
Western style of painting, Japan has not yet produced her
Turners or Tintorets; nor at the same time has she given
the world anything in native style worthy of universal
appeal.

It is a grave question with some whether the pictorial
art of Japan has made much progress since the days of
Okyo and Motonobu, while others even doubt whether
at any time Japan has risen above the level of her Chinese
masters, especially in the delineation of landscape with
noble breadth of design, subtle relation of tones, splendid
caligraphy, force and all-pervading sense of poetry, such
as one sees in the materpieces of the Tang, Sung and Yuan
epochs, and which have been at once the ideal and the
inspiration of the artists of Japan. But just as the glyptic
art of Japan won triumphs of its own in such spheres as
netsuke and sword furniture, the pictorial art of the nation
has revealed its special genius in the Tosa and the Ukiyo-e
painters and their successors in modern times. Though the
nation seems at the parting of the ways in art at present,
at a loss whether to follow the West or to rely on the
Inspiration and example of its own past, there is no doubt
that the artist of Japan will eventually find himself, however
difficult it may be for him to get away from convention,
Occidental or Oriental. Even as the Tosa painters had no
peers in China in the way of historical illustrators, com¬
bining the realistic and the decorative in admirable manner,
so the modern painters of Japan will ultimately contradict
the contention that they are degenerating into hybrid
schools with the virtues of neither East nor West.

The Tosa school found its inspiration in the camp, the
castle and the battlefield; and the Ukiyo-e in the voluptuous
aestheticism and the refined sensuality of the boudoir and
the bagnio; but*the painters of new Japan will not fall
into the austerities resulting from war on the one hand,
nor the vices resulting from idle peace on the other. They

224 japan from within

live an an age of transition without any traits sufficiently
marked to arouse enthusiasm or inspire ideals. The age
is indeed too materialistic for real inspiration. Burikyo
and Imao have explored the naturalistic held; Kawabata
and Watanabe have been groping in the ajsthetic realm;
Kuroda and Miyake have boldly adopted occidental canons
of art: all these have produced pictures and arc still pro¬
ducing them, none of which, perhaps, are quite worthy to
hang with the old masters. But as the noise and con¬
fusion of the transition period cease and the era of doubt
passes, the era of achievement approaches. When achieve¬
ment arrives will it reveal more of what is Japanese or more
of what is foreign ?

There are those who wisely hope that the artists of
Japan will aim at maintaining the nation’s reputation in
the field of art after the native rather than after the foreign
manner; as in the old ways they are more likely to succeed.
K Japan’s fame is not to suffer she must aspire to achieve¬
ment in lines that do not come closely into competition
with Western art.

Japanese painting is distinguished by directness, facility
and strength of line, revealing a bold dash that is probably
due to the habit of writing and drawing from the elbow
rather than from the wrist. The merest sketch has, there¬
fore, a caligraphic quality that gives it merit. Though it
may be faultlessly accurate in natural details, it scorns to
be tied down to any rules. The bird may be perfect, but
the tree only a conventional, shorthand symbol; the
bamboo .lifelike, but part of it blurred by an artificial
atmosphere that never was on sea or land. The Japanese
artist is a poet and not a photographer; he is painting
memories and feelings, not scenes or objects. Had he
breadth of view and great genius he might produce some¬
thing grand; but he aims at condensation, not expansion.
He is intensive rather than extensive, believing that the
divine begins where the visibility ends.

ARTS AND CRAFTS

225

Perhaps it is because Japanese art has been used so
much in decoration that its peculiarities have been over¬
emphasized ; for who would look on the side of a teapot
for a rigid observance of perspective ? And so, while in
broad surfaces Japanese art has won no great place, as
decoration for smaller surfaces it has already conquered
the world. In this way Japanese art has discovered the
truth that mechanical symmetry does not make for beauty.
Western art aims at the complete realization of a scene,
whether observed or imagined, while the Japanese artist
is concerned only with abstracting the reality by reproducing
for the spectator the emotion evoked in the artist; and
all not tending toward this end is omitted. Occidental
artists are to-day devoting more attention to this spiritual
presentation of life than to the pursuit of realism for its
own sake ; and thus they are more closely approaching the
Japanese ideal. This the Japanese artist is himself beginning
to realize in some measure ; and the more he does so the
less likely he is to abandon the native for the foreign
tradition. While adopting occidental superiority in know¬
ledge of perspective, anatomy, light and shadow, the
Japanese artist will preserve his own ideals and have more
regard to motive and nature and man than to the mere
crust of society and civilization. It would indeed be a
misfortune if the new Japan should allow its ideas to be
clogged or its ideals to be swamped with Western
materialism, or that her artists should surrender their
delicacy, suggestiveness and reticence of power for mere
Ttni tatinn of some occidental ideal, losing touch with the
life of Japan. Many of the foremost artists of the country
have already come to the conclusion that greatness can
never lie in a combination of qualities that do not har¬
moniously blend. The distinctive virtues of Japanese and
art can never be united without losing something
of individuality and charm. Art, however, must always
be a criticism of life, or nothing; and the future of Japanese
15

226 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

art depends on the moral and spiritual ideals of Japan
herself. The present confusion prevailing in this respect
accounts for the corresponding confusion in the world of
national art.

io. Sculpture, Colour Prints and Illustrations

Sculpture, which used to be one of Japan’s fine arts,
has not been so now for centuries. While stone gods and
saints were doubtless more durable than those in wood,
the latter material was preferred as more amenable to the
tools available. But the static poses of Buddhist statuary
have chilled the native ideal and resulted in a decline of
aspiration and skill, that no effort appears able to overcome.
Serious attempts are, nevertheless, being made toward
revival; but most of the recent essays in marble and
plaster are too close an imitation of occidental art, and too
trivial, or lacking in force of conception, to claim the
attribute of genius, or even kinship with Western masters.

In art processes, on the other hand, Japan is more highly
distinguishing herself. If she cannot paint modern master¬
pieces, or carve or cast great statues, she can at least print
them as nearly like the originals as any copy can well be.
In nishikiye , the art of colour-printing, marvellous progress
has been made in recent years. The magnificent repro¬
ductions of ancient masterpieces, by the Sbimbei Sboin t
place the vast treasury of the nation’s pictorial art at the
disposal of the public. The introduction of aniline dyes
has created a revolution in colour-printing. The divorce
between creative and decorative art still persists, and is
much to be deplored, influenced as it is by mere commer¬
cialism. To a large extent modern lithography is driving
the old art of xylography from the field, while photography
is displacing the old art of the illustrator in bools and
periodicals. Some of the colour-prints to-day are pro¬
duced by the photographic process. But as the print is a

ARTS AND CRAFTS 227

more exact copy of the original than the old processes
produced, no one can complain. Under the old process
not more than ten colours were employed, while under
the new process as many as a hundred tints are common.

Officially everything possible is being done to encourage
devotion to art in Japan. The art of the architect we have
not discussed because its development has been almost
wholly in an occidental direction. The best examples of
native architecture, as seen in ancient temples, the Govern¬
ment is doing everything to preserve. An Academy of
Fine Art in Tokyo is supported by the Government, and
annual exhibitions are held to show the work of the year.
Care is taken to see that none of the old masterpieces
leave the country, and funds are supported to buy back
those that have left Japan. The art treasures of Tokyo
suffered seriously in the earthquake and fire of September,
1923, especially those in the Imperial Museum. At present
the appearance of an old master on the market creates
universal attention. Pictures by Korin have been knocked
down at over 100,000 yen, as well as masterpieces by Okyo.
At the annual exhibition of present-day masters more
than 3,000 pictures are offered, but seldom more than
300 selected to be placed in the gallery.

CHAPTER XIV

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

J APAN has an extensive literature, but it is not of a
nature and content that appeals to the occidental mind.
As writing was not introduced for a thousand years
after the foundation of the Empire, there was, of course,
no literature until then, the first traces of which begin
with.the establishment of the capital at Nara at the
beginning of the eighth century. Japanese historians
claim that the ancient records of the nation were
committed to writing as early as the fourth century of
our era, but it is improbable that writing was introduced
long before the advent of Buddhism, about the middle of
the sixth century, when Chinese influence gained increasing
power. It was under the inspiration of Buddhist scholars
that Japanese literature began to dawn.

It is well to bear in mind, however, that literature in
Japan and Japanese literature are two very different things,
as unlike indeed as the Latin writings of medieval Europe
and the native languages where classical compositions
flourished. As medieval scholars wrote in Latin, so did
Japanese scholars long continue to write in Chinese, the
ideographs being the only means of writing known to the
Japanese. The higher officials of State and the priests
had a monopoly of learning; and up to the eighth century
all writing was Chinese in form and dfction. As the^masa
of the people could neither remember nor understand
the Chinese ideographs, a native syllabary of forty-seven

sounds was invented about the eighth century, known as

228

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS 229

the kana. This syllabary came to be constantly mixed
with the ideographs to express the pronunciation for the
unlearned, or to form the suffix used as inflection. By
this means the Japanese were at last able to express in
writing the vernacular speech of the country, but it retained
sufficient of Chinese influence to remain a literary language
quite distinct from the spoken language. In all languages
the colloquial is not quite the same as the written language,
but in Japanese the difference is so great as to imply two
different languages.

The earliest literary product of Japan is that marvellous
summary of sacred tradition known as the Kojiki, or
Record of Ancient Things, compiled by Imperial command
about a.d. 712. Like the book of Genesis, it is composed
of traditions giving an account of creation, the origin of
the Imperial Family, the history of the Japanese people,
and the general status of the country down to the era
immediately preceding the book itself. The volume is
valuable to the student of literature, as it reveals the
nature of Japan’s earliest literary impulse. The Bible
shows what that impulse was among the Jews; and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle what it was among our own
ancestors. Japan is represented as a theocracy, passing
through an age of song and poetry before reaching the age
of prose.

Nine years after the Kojiki, appeared another compila¬
tion entitled the Nihongi , bringing the national story down
to the end of the seventh century, but as the volume was
chiefly in Chinese its only literary value in this connexion
is that it preserves some examples of the earliest Japanese
verse. The chief depository of Japanese literature in its
beginnings is that remarkable anthology of the Nara
period called the* Manyoshu, or Collection of Myriad
Leaves, wherein the choicest utterances in existing verse
were garnered, and which still remains the most valuable
memorial of the intellectual awakening that followed'

230 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

Japan’s first intercourse with China. Poets and scholars
now began to flock around the Imperial Court, and a real
national literature was beginning to appear. The native
syllabary soon became so improved as to lend itself to a
more natural expression of native speech and intelligently
to supplant the foreign ideographs in literature.

When the next anthology, the Kokinshu, was published
in a.d. 900 by order of the Emperor Daigo, it proved to
be a collection of songs and poems evidencing a fuller
fruition of poetic excellence. The capital of the empire
had moved from Nara to Kyoto, where it became fixed j
and during the succeeding four centuries there was a rapid
development in literature. The nation had done something
worth writing about, but not such as to lend an epic
impulse to poetry. These were centuries of serene evolu¬
tion, when the ruling classes entered on a period of intel¬
lectual and social development, culture, refinement and
elegance of life, that eventually degenerated into luxury,
effeminacy and dissipation. The nation was more interested
in poetry than in prose ; but the theme of the muses was
petty and restricted, for the most part given to love,
pleasure and admiration for nature. The culture of litera¬
ture in the Chinese language never wholly ceased, especially
in history and theology, but the poetry of this time was
wholly native and natural.

Among the prose writings of this period none is more
interesting and artistic than the fesa Nikki, a diary of
travel from the pen of the most distinguished poet of the
day, Tsurayuki, governor of the province of Tosa. The
diary gives a leisurely but none the less vivid account of
his journey from Tosa to the capital at Kyoto, written in
the purest of native speech. The poet was one of the
editors of the Kokiiuhu anthology already mentioned;
and the account which ho gives of his tastes and experiences
•in the 7 osa Nikki is a charming study of the life of old
Japan, written in 935. Among other choice tenth-century

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS 231

classics may be mentioned the Taketori Monogatari, or
Tales of a Bamboo Cutter ; the Ise Monogatari , or Story
of Ise; and the Famamoto Monogatari. None of these,
however, excel the Genji Monogatari from the graceful
and idyllic pen of Murasaki Shikibu, a Court lady; and the
Makura-no-sosbi, written by Sei Shonagon, another lady
of the Imperial Court. Why no lady of Japan has ever
since attained to such a high degree of literary excellence
would prove an interesting question. These works mark
the close of Japan’s greatest literary epoch.

From the twelfth century the country became a battle¬
field for over two centuries, to the discomfiture of literature,
which, like religion, was banished to temples and monas¬
teries. The Imperial Court now ceased to be a political
factor in the life of the nation; and, with this decline of
prestige, literature further suffered. During the succeeding
five centuries, which we can but briefly notice, most of the
works written were on politics and history, like the Heike
Monogatari , the story of Japan’s Wars of the Roses. The
Hojoki by Chomei and the fzure-zure Gusa by Kenko are
excellent examples of a forcible and vivacious prose style,
opening the way for the literary art that came to higher de¬
velopment in the seventeenth century, and has ever since
remained the language of literature in Japan. Here for
the first time we find Chinese words blended into Japanese
forms and phrases without doing violence to native modes
of expression. Nor was the voice of poetry quite extinct,
for in the last half of the thirteenth century another
anthology was compiled, known as the Hyaku-nin-isshu ,
or Single Poems of a Hundred Men, which is still one
of the most popular volumes of Japanese poetry.

The only form of literary art that naturally much
appealed to the ages of anarchy was drama; and so, in
this period, dramatic impulse found vent in the old religious
dances, and drama now assumed a secular form and motive,
especially in the lyrical drama known as the No. These

232 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

strange plays are mostly dateless, but they probably came
from the hand of priests who may have used them as
miracle and morality plays were used in Europe, to interest
the uninterested in religion. Comedies, called kyogen,
were also composed as interludes in the more severe and
less-interesting sacred drama, and written in the ordinary
colloquial of the day.

After the age of strife had passed and the Tokugawa
shogunate became established, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, there came a revival of the study of
ancient records and the writings of the classic age. Led
by the example of Ieyasu, the first shogun of the new
line, the various feudal lords set up schools for the revival
of learning. Mitsukuni, lord of Mito, had a history of
Japan compiled, called the NihonsM; and later came
another important volume entitled the Nibongwaishi , or
history of the shogunate. Both these works had an im¬
portant influence in preparing the way for the restoration
of Imperial government. The elaborate critical commen¬
taries of such writers as Keichyu (1640-1741), Mabuchi
(1700-1769), MotoSri (1730-1800), elucidated the ancient
annals of the nation as well as its religion and literature.
Novelists like Bakin (1767-1840) and Ikkyu (1763-1831)
wrote popular stories displaying new literary skill. Nor
must we fail to mention the Shakespeare of Japan, Chika-
matsu (1652-1724), whose plays left a permanent impression
on national drama. Most of the fiction of the period was
full of offensive elements, but the otogi-banashi , or fairy¬
tales, many of which have been translated into English,
were charmingly innocent and humorous.

1. Modern Literature

With the fall of the shogunate and the restoration of
Imperial rule in 1868 Japanese literature underwent a
change, and during the last fifty years quite a new school

2 33

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

of writers has arisen. The change in literature that came
about with the modern period was in itself largely due to
the extraneous ideas introduced in the modernization of
Japan, and in turn had a powerful influence in helping to
bring about the new Japan. Japan’s leading writers were
the pioneers of liberty, individual rights and constitutional
government. It is remarkable, too, that the peculiar
history of their language had prepared it for expressing
in the best way the foreign ideas after a native manner.
Used for over a thousand years almost exclusively as a
medium for expressing Chinese ideas, the Japanese language
nevertheless turned quite naturally to expressing the
thought of Europe with which it had but little natural
affinity. It is astonishing how well this task has been
accomplished. Much of the success, however, must be
attributed to the marvellous capacity of the Chinese
ideographs in lending themselves to any combination neces¬
sary to express all kinds of ideas native or alien. It is
almost inconceivable that Western thought could have
made such rapid progress in Japan had it not been for
this long period of training in expressing native thought
through a foreign medium offering facility for every turn
of expression and definition.

The history of modern Japanese literature, which is
much too long and full for transcription here, indicates
clearly the various stages through which the thought of
the nation has passed in the modernization of the country.
For more than half a century now three distinct influences,
marked by as many periods, have been at work on the
mind of Japan, and conspicuously represented in the
national literature. There was first a strong occidentalizing
tendency, seen in the first fifteen years following 1870.
This had a sequel of some ten years of reaction, when the
tide'set strongly towards ultra-nationalism, owing to the
sudden and radical changes taking place. The attitude
uppermost was that Japan had nothing to learn from the

334 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

Occident in morals, religion, refinement and modes of life
generally—the only tolerable change was to be in a material
sense. The third period began with the fear that Japan
was about to revert to feudalism, an eventuality that all
knew would prove fatal; and so there was an attempt to
introduce the individualism, if not the paganism, of
Nietzsche, led by men like Dr. Takayama.

One of the most effective influences in keeping the
balance at this time was the study of the English language,
which had become universal in higher education. More¬
over, most of the standard English writers were either read
or translated into Japanese. At first Mill, Macaulay,
Herbert Spencer, Scott, Dickens and Carlyle were most
in demand, but the taste soon became more general, as it
is to-day. Owing to the Prussianization of the army and
the medical schools, the German language came into use
also, and German scientists and philosophers were widely
read and translated, as well as the work of Russian writers
like Tolstoi. The effect of English studies was seen on
the Japanese language itself, for many native authors now
began to imitate British models. Mozume issued a history
of Japanese civilization after the manner of Greene’s History
of the English People. The publication of hundreds of
dictionaries, grammars and phrase-book gave evidence
of the universal attention devoted to foreign languages.
Attempts were made to supplant the complicated Chinese
ideographs with Roman letters, but Japanese minds proved
unequal to carrying on complicated trains of thought
apart from the old idea-expressing media.

In Japan spoken language does not wield half the power
that the written language does. To the oriental mind
there is a sacredness about book that an occidental may
fail to appreciate. Book are Japan’s* best teachers. A
distinguished Japanese author has said that his countrymen
are earless and tongueless, being all eyes. In spite of this,
however, the approach of the spoken to the written language

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS 235

is growing closer, as it is in England, chiefly through the
influence of the public press, the main moulder of Japanese
taste and opinion. While a few of the newspapers keep
to the literary language, they have a habit of inserting
colloquial phrases, and most of the newspapers use the
vernacular almost wholly. It may be noted here with
interest that formal public speech was never heard in
Japan until modern times. The first to try it was the late
Mr. Fukuzawa, founder of the Keio University, but while
delivering the oration he sat on the floor in native fashion.
Great changes have taken place since then, and talk is
plentiful enough in modern Japan. In the press and
periodical literature of Japan some of the greatest minds
of the nation first made their mark.

Japan has not yet produced any great philosophic thinkers
and writers, nor any scientific writers of outstanding merit,
though there are many great scientists. The Japanese
mind dislikes metaphysical speculation, and fails to regard
exactitude with real reverence. The best writing thus far
is in the sphere of commerce, finance and fiction. Japan
has no veteran novelists, such as are to be found in England,
France and the United States. Public taste is so fickle
that the lion of the day is soon forgotten, and the career
of the greatest is but short-lived. The novelist has no
incentive to essay anything worth while. He usually tries
to meet the taste of the moment, and make what hit he
can in the time available. This may be due to the fact
that the majority of those who read fiction are poor students
and leisure-loving housewives, and the intellectual classes
do not yet show much appreciation of the novel. Formerly
it was the same in regard to drama and the theatre, but
histrionic art is be ginnin g to command more attention as
a recreation from the boredom of business.

With so restricted a constituency the Japanese novelist
is obliged to move in a narrow circle of love, and the
hackneyed tales of toxin and vendetta. Few writers cam

236 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

live from the small proceeds of their craft, and have to
make up the deficiency by hack work for the press and
the periodicals. The most successful of recent novelists
have been Soseki Natsume, now deceased, the George
Meredith of Japan, in his psychological interests; Roka
Tokutomi, a disciple of Tolstoi: his Namiko has been
translated into English. Katai Toyama has carried
naturalism to the extreme, and some of his works have
been officially suppressed. Koda Rohan is an idealist
whose writings are charged with Buddhist, aesthetic and
philosophic sentiment in a sober and grave style ; while
the work of Ogai Mori has done much not only to introduce
German and Scandinavian influence but to set an admirable
literary style. Dr. Tsubouchi is not only a novelist but
a playwright of some note. These men have won fame
amidst a host of lesser lights who died poor and mostly
unremembered. Yet the greater writers have stuck to
their pens with a true literary spirit and persisted in their
art with a genuine aesthetic zeal. Indeed, the art of fiction
has done more to mark the break between the old and
the new Japan than any other factor in the change.
Tsubouchi’s Principles of Fiction , published in 1885
denounced the dull and conventional methods of the past,
and insisted on the novel being an interpretation of life:
the novelist was advised to depict, not what should be,
but what is. The essential element in fiction is declared
to be passion, to which custom and circumstance must be
subject. This was in direct opposition to the old masters,
like Bakin, in whose works passion was always subject to
reason and conscience to a degree never seen in real life.
The motive of the old fiction was didactic and moral: the
motive of the new was truth.

Taking modem Japanese fiction as a«whole, it resolves
itself into three schools, all revealing the effect of corre¬
sponding influences in European literature : the classicists,
the realists and the naturalists. In the classic school Ogai

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS 237

was the leader; all his wort is carefully wrought and
highly polished, revealing the ease and charm that come of
forgotten toil. The realistic school of fiction became
intense after the war with China through the awakening
of a new national consciousness and a deeper sensitiveness
to the tragic aspects of life. Many of these writers took
Tolstoi, Zola, Maupassant or Ibsen for their models.
Names like Oguri Tayo, Kosugi Tagai, Yanagawa Shunyo
and Ozaki Koyo may be mentioned in this connexion.
These writers were by no means all alike, but they combined
to bring literature into closer relation to life, though as yet
no separation was made between the individual and society.
Realists like Koda Rohan had a fine streak of idealism.
The naturalists were represented by novelists like Kunikida
Doppo, who died in 1908, and by Toson, Masamune,
Shimamura, Shimazaki, Iwano and Tokuda, who produced
stories in a bold and fascinating style, with unconventional
treatment, which charmed the young and unsophisticated,
while causing the sober to frown. Most of these writers,
like their masters in France and Russia, were bom in the
provinces, gave up unfinished the dull routine of school
life and took to Bohemian ways as aspirants to fame, con¬
necting themselves with one journal or another. Writers
like Mushakoji, Axishima, Shiga, Nagayo, Mrs. Nogami
and Miss Nakajo branched off into a sort of humanitarianism,
while Tanisaki and others tended towards romanticism and
art for art’s sake.

Besides those mentioned above there are numerous
writers representing the political novel, the historical,
domestic, chivalrous, social or psychological novel, or
novel of the gay quarters and the lower social strata gener¬
ally. In fact, every side of national and social life is set
forth in the popular fiction of the day, a good deal of
which is a mere reflection of European literature of the
same type. But its most significant feature is its break
with the past and its intense interest in the present, with

338 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

a consequent greater breadth of range and a deeper serious¬
ness in art.

It must not be imagined, however, that the change has
been brought about without sacrifice. Some of the
realism is too base and the naturalism too gross to be quite
wholesome. The artificial marvels of the old fiction have
not been replaced by the normal and the ordinary: too
often the fabulous has been merely supplanted by the
hideous and the gruesome, while sensuality has taken the
place of mystery. The recognition of natural passion in
Japanese fiction has not solved the problem of its reinstate¬
ment. The cosmic force of love is recognized, but the
legitimate form of its self-expression is not yet found to
be an inspiration to service and a source of joy in harmony
with the spirit of the universe.

Japanese prose literature as a whole cannot be said to
abound in any content of living interest to occidental
readers. It springs from customs, events, personages,
places and traditions so utterly different, and from motives
of action, praise and censure so widely at variance from
those dominating Western civilization, that on reading
it the occidental mind finds little in common and a
consequent marked absence of appeal. It thus seems to
us strange and alien, dwelling painstakingly on minute
details that the occidental mind would pass over as too
trivial, indulging in the most prolix verbosity, dealing
freely with matters forbidden by the more delicate taste
of our civilization. It nevertheless records the social,
religious and political evolution of the Japanese people;
and for this reason it may be studied with profit, though
the student will look in vain for great intellectual creative¬
ness or invention.

z. Poetry and Drama

Japanese poetry remains the most original and interesting
of the nation’s literary efforts. Much Chinese poetry has

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS 239

been written by the Japanese, in the same way that much
Latin verse has been composed by English scholars, but
Chinese poetry has never affected Japanese verse in the
same way that the ancient classics have affected Fn gl^h
poetry. In this way Japanese verse escaped the limitations
of thought and expression that Chinese has imposed on
Japanese prose. With but little variation the oldest
Japanese song on record is still the model for the versi¬
fication of her poets; for poetry was invented by the gods,
and can no more be improved in form than the human form.

The first characteristic of Japanese verse is its extreme
brevity. The whole range of poetic literature includes
nothing in the way of epic or even of narrative poetry.
When the Japanese speak of poetry they always mean the
tiny verse known as the tanka, or waka, of five lines, con¬
taining in all thirty-one syllables, the first and third lines
each making five syllables, and the others seven syllables
each, as a-b-a-b-b, but no rhyme or accent. In spite of
its brevity, it has the divisions of a sonnet, the first three
lines forming the upper, and the last two the lower, a slight
break occurring in the sequence, and a slight pause mar king
it in the reading. In expression it is most compact and
limited. The waka poem is a mere suggestion, a gem of
thought from which a world of meaning is to be inferred.
Ability to produce a gram of radium from tons of experience
is the test as to whether the author is a poet or a poetaster.

The subject-matter of Japanese poetry is usually some
simple and serene emotion in reference to man or nature.
It always has a dainty quality and a meditative mood. And
it is marked by a lyric character that is often charmingly
idyllic, like a vignette on a Greek vase: conventional,
impressionistic, like the nation’s pictorial art. Though
the waka verse cannot expand, it can contract to the
bokku, a verse of seventeen syllables, used mainly in epigrams
or farewell poems.

Various attempts have been made to modernize Japanese

240 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

poetry by making translations from occidental poets in a
sort of sonnet sequence, but none of these attempts have
been considered successful.

The Bureau of Poetry maintained by the Imperial
Court in Tokyo holds a poetry symposium annually at the
beginning of the year, when the Emperor honours those
who have been successful in having their poems chosen as
good examples of the art, by hearing the poems read.
The subject of the poems for each year is announced by
the Emperor some months before the New Year. The
late Emperor Meiji was himself one of the greatest Japanese
poets of modern times.

The works of all the more famous poets of Japan are
included in the three anthologies mentioned in the earlier
part of this chapter. The editor of the anthology known
as the Kokinshu, Tsurayuki, was perhaps the most dis¬
tinguished poet of old Japan, and one of the gems from his
pen reads as follows :

Sakura chiru
Sono shita kaze wa

Samukara de
Sora ni shirarenu
Yuki zo furikeru!

The white flakes fall:

Yet ’ncath the trees
Unchilled the breeze;

For over all

A snow that never knew the sky—

Fair cherry petals—fall and die.

The following is a good example of the poetry of the
late Emperor Meiji:

Fuyu fukaki
Hcya no fusuma wo
Kasanete mo
Omou wa shizu ga
Yosameru nari keri! ^

On winter nights when chill winds blow,

And double care keeps out the cold,

I think of those exposed to snow:

Hie narodess, homeless poor and old.

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

241

Scarcely less distinguished as a poet was the late Empress
Shoken, who honoured a girls’ school by sending the
following poem to be read at the closing exercises:

Midaru beki
Ori wo ba okite
Hana-zakura
Mazu emu hodo wo
Naraiteshi gama!

Flowers have their smiling time.

And then their time of wilding;

Girls should have their smiling time.

But never a time for wilding!

It will thus be seen that Japanese poetry cannot be
regarded as echoing or recording any profound spiritual
experience. But no poetry lends itself less easily to transla¬
tion, and it can only be judged by those able to read and
appreciate it in the original. Without being ranked among
the great achievements of the human intellect, Japanese
poetry represents an art and an ideal that are truly pleasing,
and has left its mark on the nation’s life.

Japanese drama is much too extensive a subject for
treatment here. Reference is made to it in the same way
as to other aspects of modern Japan, to show what bearing
it has on the life of the new civilization. Japanese drama
originated, as drama did in other countries, in the per¬
formance of the ancient folk-dances and folk-songs known
as the kabuki , which go back beyond the dawn of history,
probably having a religious origin, as in Greece. At what
period the kabuki separated from the kagura, or sacred
dance, is not known. The first Japanese theatre is said to
have appeared in the land of Izuxno where many immi¬
grants from north China first settled. The earliest public
performances of a theatrical nature appear to have been
puppet shows. And when the puppets evolved into living
marionettes they still held to their stereotyped and stilted
method of action, as may be seen in Japanese theatres to-day*
*6

242 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

The Japanese theatre is usually a plain wooden building,
with pit and galleries, in which the audience is seated not
on chairs but on mats. There is generally a revolving
stage, and the accessories in the way of scenery are not far
removed from the simplicity that marked the unimaginative
stage of Elizabethan England. The No, or classical drama
of Japan, is in many ways like the old miracle and morality
plays of medieval England, but the English plays were
much more infused with human passion and natural action.
What the Japanese lyrical drama lacks in dramatic action
is compensated for by grave and graceful motion and
sober, pleasing drapery.

Theatre-going in old Japan was a long-drawn-out affair,
the play lasting from two o’clock in the afternoon till ten
at night, but such hours are going out of fashion, with
the rise of theatres and plays after the European fashion.
Until recent years the upper classes regarded the kabuki , or
ordinary theatre, as not a respectable place to go, but after
certain European princes visited it during their sojourn in
Japan, the attitude changed, and now all classes attend the
theatre. The nobles and their families are still devoted
to the old classical drama, however, and often give private
exhibitions of the No at their mansions.

As to the plays of the modern Japanese theatre they are
legion, and represent every side of life in ancient and
modern times. As has been suggested, the most aristo¬
cratic drama is the No, a kind of operetta consisting of
singing and dancing, no doubt a descendant of the ancient
kagura or temple dance. There are hundreds of these
lyrical plays in existence, most of them written by priestly
authors before the sixteenth century. With practically no
scenery, a chorus sits bn the floor to one side, with a simple
orchestra at the back, under a painting of a large pme
tree. But the robes worn in the No are elaborate triumphs
of artistic skill, and some of them come down through
centuries in great families. To relieve the tedium there is

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

243

sometimes an interlude introduced, known as the kyogen,
a kind of farce. The common' people, who have little
appreciation of these plays, prefer the ayatsuri (marionette
plays) or the kabuki , the popular drama, of which there are
endless varieties both ancient and modern.

Two types of plays predominate, however : the jidai or
historical dramas, and the sewamono or comedies of con¬
temporary life. There is hardly any important incident
of national history that has not been dramatized, and in
the most realistic manner, like the Chushin-gura, or League
of the Forty-seven Ronin ; the Soga Kyodai or Soga
Brothers, a vendetta. The Sendai Hagi is based on an
attempt to poison a child of the lord of Sendai; and the
Kokusenya on the expulsion of the Dutch from Formosa
by Koxinga in the seventeenth century. Among modern
playwrights the most noted is Dr. Tsubouchi, a professor
of literature at Waseda University. His Maki-no-kaia is a
historical drama based on the efforts of the Hojo family to
obtain the shogunate, and regarded as one of cleverest
presentations of female intrigue.

Shakespeare’s plays, such as Othello and Hamlet, have
been translated and acted on the Japanese stage, but with
indifferent success. Japanese forms of Ibsen’s and Sunder-
mann’s plays have been tried with more interest, but the
police keep a close censorship on the theatre and 4 dangerous
thoughts ’ are promptly suppressed. The Japanese mind
in the mass is still devoted to worship of the past, and
leans to conservatism in reaction against the rapid tendency
of some to abandon oriental for occidental ideas if not
ideals. But between the pull of the dead past and the
pull of the living present there is an odds which no devotion
to the past can ultimately overcome. Japan is destined
to break away f{om antiquated notions of drama as
surely as she is abandoning her old modes of commerce
and industry. If, in the process, she can bring with her
the imperishable good, to the rest she may say farewell with

244 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

a will. When Japan becomes more imbued with world¬
consciousness of culture, there will come a movement
forward in literature and drama that will easily outshine
the past.

3. Press and Periodical Literature

As the Japanese are mainly readers of ephemeral litera¬
ture, and the influence of the press is potent and universal,
some space, however brief, must be found for this subject.
Japan is as well supplied with newspapers and periodicals
of all kinds as any country in the Occident. In the capital
more than 50 daily papers are published, while the number
printed daily throughout the empire is over 900, with
some 2,000 weekly and monthly publications, making a
total of well over 3,000. There is scarcely a town of any
size anywhere in the empire without its local journal ;
and the larger centres of population usually have a number
of newspapers in proportion to the commercial and indus¬
trial interests of the place. The number of daily and
weekly sheets dealing with finance, commerce, naval and
military matters, science, literature or religion is large, to
say nothing of the usual monthly magazines and reviews
covering a great variety of themes. There are also illus¬
trated comic papers; and papers for women and children,
some of which attain a high standard of merit, but many
of them, like some of the dailies, are filled with shameless
scandal and gossip.

But on the whole it may be said that the Japanese press
has kept pace with the general progress of the country.
Up to the time of the war with China the vernacular press
of Japan was anything but prosperous j its readers were
confined chiefly to the more intellectual classes. But with
the rapid spread of elementary education, and the growing
activity of social, industrial and commercial enterprise,
and increased interest in public affairs generally, even the

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

245

poorest Japanese is to-day a regular reader of the daily
press. Thus the rapid expansion of newspaper interest
has taken place within the present generation; and the
dailies are constantly improving, certainly in the enterprise
they display in news-gathering if not in the character and
accuracy of their contents. Journals that twenty-five
years ago were profitless ventures are now enjoying a
large and lucrative circulation, and exercising a corre¬
sponding influence. It is probable that the daily paper in
Japan has wider and more effective influence than in any
other country, for in no other country is it depended upon
to the same degree as the source of knowledge and opinion
by the vast majority of the population.

The Japanese possess a natural instinct for journalism,
both in their inherent love of gossip of every description,
and in their picturesque way of putting things ; while
the service of the journal is usually pushed to the utmost
by all connected with its issue. In politics and inter¬
national affairs the influence of the vernacular press is
singularly powerful, as officialdom well understands; and
the profession of journalism is not infrequently the pre¬
liminary to a political career. It attracts many brilliant
intellects, including university graduates and leading
statesmen, though the pecuniary rewards are meagre, even
from a native point of view, while the social status of the
journalist is hardly on a par with that of leading newspaper
men in Europe. The Japanese press is now beginning to
elicit the service of women, whose talents are marked even
in dealing with politics as well as social affairs.

The leading Tokyo dailies are the Jiji, the Asahi, the
Nicbinichi, the Kokumin , the Hochi, the Yorozu, the
Yomiuri and the Yamato. At Osaka the chief dailies are
the Asahi, the Mainicbi , Jiji and Nicbinichi. These
papers are equipped with the latest modern machinery,
sell at higher prices than the others, and have regular
correspondents in the foreign capitals of the world. Most

246 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

of the dailies serve some political party, except the Jiji,
which claims to be independent. The make-up of the
Japanese daily is somewhat like that of English news¬
papers, in which respect the Tokyo Nichinichi may be
taken as an example. It devotes its first page to advertise¬
ments ; the second to foreign telegrams; page three to
leading articles, Court and political news; page four to
what may be regarded as the more serious news of the day,
with speeches and gleanings „of reporters ; page five to
things notorious, such as crimes, catastrophes and sensa¬
tions ; pages six and seven are given to serial stories,
literary articles and dramatic criticisms, while page eight
contains columns of financial and stock exchange intelli¬
gence. Rut there is no sporting page, though some space
is devoted to reports of chess and games. For the sake of
promoting more accurate knowledge of Japan among
foreigners some Japanese papers are printed in English,
like the Jafan Times and Mail , a daily; and the Herald
of Asia, a weekly. Several financial and art papers are also
published in English. Then there are journals owned
and edited by English and American subjects, such as the
Jafan Chronicle, of Kobe, a British journal; and the
Jafan Advertiser , of Tokyo, an American paper. Each
of the great Japanese dailies has strong individual features
that distinguish it from its contemporaries, but the majority
adopt the questionable if popular device of a page devoted
to scandal, which is eagerly scanned by the average reader.
Some of this matter would be regarded as libellous in
occidental countries, but it seems to pass in Japan, and the
more important the victim is the less notice he takes of it.

The vernacular press of Japan is under strict official
censorship. Warnings are issued by the censor as to what
must not be mentioned, as occasion demands, and viol^ion
of the order is punished by fine. Every journal on its
establishment must deposit (with the authorities) a sum
varying from 2,000 yen downwards, according to place

LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

247

and frequency of issue, and a fine is deducted from the
deposit for every offence. When the deposit is thus
exhausted it must be renewed. As this is a tremendous
handicap to speculation in scoops of important news, there
is a tendency to defiance of the censorship, and consequently
most newspapers keep a dummy editor to go to prison for
the real editor in case of summons or arrest by the police.
Many of the editors are ingenious enough to get in their
shafts by means of allegory or even ambiguity, so that the
censor has a difficult task, very often, to interpret the
offending item. The censor is frequently accused of not
informing all newspapers simultaneously when the embargo
on news is lifted, and so some dailies are suspected of being
thus favoured by the authorities as they are enabled to
get the news before the public prior to their less fortunate
contemporaries. The average number of summonses for
violation of ban on news each year is about 250, and the
number of issues forbidden sale or suspended is about 175.
The same censorship is exercised over publication of books,
the number thus prohibited annually being about 500 out
of a total publication of over 20,000 volumes, 37 of these
prohibitions being in reference to books imported from
abroad. Japan has numerous agencies for the distribution
of news, and a national agency, like Reuters in Europe,
known as the Kokusai Tsusbin , which supplies the outside
world with news of Japan.

CHAPTER XV

RELIGION

T HERE are those who think the Japanese are not a
religious people, but since no country has more
religions, sects and cults to the square acre, the
very reverse would seem to be the truth. And almost
every year sees new religions, or more sects of old ones,
emerging into prominence and claiming official recognition.
In Japan every religious society must gain the official
consent of the Government before it can lay claim to legal
status and hope to be successful in its propaganda. Religion
is free, according to the national constitution, but not to
the extent of setting forth doctrines or practices considered
inimical to public order or the safety of the State. *
Since all religions cannot be equally true, nor equally
worthy of confidence, one might be disposed to assume
that a people who welcome so many faiths, really believe
in none. But the Japanese are instinctively pantheists,
and to them every religion has in it more or less of divine
truth : all religions are different ways of reaching the same
end. The value set upon religion, however, seems not to
be for its moral but for its patriotic effect. Thus religion
has more to do with public than with private life; and
one may live as one likes so long as one is ready to honour
the precepts and traditions of one’s ancestors and die for
one’s country when occasion demands.

Though the more-educated classes of •modem Japan are
inclined to be cynical if not sceptical with regard to the
supernatural, they yet hold that r eligio n supplies a strong
motive to order and patriotism, especially among the

RELIGION

249

ignorant, fanatical and superstitious. This utilitarian
theory of religion found an exponent in the late Mr.
Fukuzawa, the sage of Mita, who contended that religion
was chiefly valuable as a moral force among the more
ignorant masses of the population. .But just here lies a
grave danger to. Japanese polity and civilization. The
Imperial Constitution is based on belief in the deity of
the Emperor and worship of the Imperial ancestors:
though this is not directly asserted, it is implied. If the
masses come to believe that the ruling classes do not them¬
selves believe in religion except as a ' scarecrow ’ to keep
the common people in subservience, the latter will doubt
the sincerity of the alleged faith of their rulers in the
Imperial ancestors, and such doubt must create revolution.
Certainly the vast mass of the Japanese people believe in
religion; and should the ruling class ever be open to the
accusation of not believing in religion, the end of the
present polity would be imminent.

i. Historical Outlines

What the religion of the Yamato race was when it first
settled in the islands of Nippon can only be surmised
from archaeological remains, and from what is found in
practice at the beginning of the sixth century a.d. when
the dawn of authentic history commences. It is quite
dear that the race had a definite religion then; and it
was characterized by three main elements : nature worship,
which may have been imbibed from the native inhabitants ;
ancestor worship, involving deification of progenitors, a
cult the conquering race donbtless had brought with them
from the continent; and Confucianism, which had early
found its way to* Japan with the original immigrants.
With the advent of Buddhism about a.d. 535 the three
elements combined to oppose the alien faith, and Buddhist
propaganda was at first marred by civil strife.

250 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

Buddhist pessimism was inconsistent with Japanese faith
in Shinto which taught that the ancestors of the nation
were gods, and every Japanese destined to similar godhood.
The literary monuments of the struggle for preservation
of the national ideals against Buddhism are to be found
in the oldest records of the nation, the Kojiki and the
Nihongi, the Hebrew Bible of Shinto. But Buddhism
waged an incessant battle ; and by a system of compromise,
admitting the Shinto deities to the Buddhist pantheon,
and by the help of Korean and Chinese influence the new
religion finally conquered. In its long journey across the
plains of Asia the Indian religion had learned to believe
that Buddhas and Bodhissatvas could be incarnated many
times for the benefit of suffering humanity; and so it was
prepared to admit that the deities of Shinto might be
Buddhist incarnations. Thus the two religions became
practically identical in Japan. After the new faith was
accepted by the Imperial Family,the entire State came under
the domination of priests and monks. At first Buddhist
aversion to the taking of life and the waging of war had
a beneficial effect on Japanese barbarism, but the warrior
spirit of Japan could not be thus easily subdued; and so
among the monks arose an order known as the busbi, or
knights, which the warriors adopted, and were known as
samurai, proud descendants of the ancient warriors who
had conquered Nippon. They held a position not unlike,
that usurped by the Anglo-Norman knights of medieval
England. But the blending of religion and the military
spirit was greatly prejudicial to truth and faith. Having
failed to subdue the military spirit. Buddhism now under¬
took to discipline and control it. With the rise of the Zen
sect in the thirteenth century we find the religion making
little of forms and ceremonies and doctrines and very much
of strict intellectual and moral discipline. But Buddhism
has no more been able to control the spirit of the busbi
than Christianity has been able to ennoble kultur. When

RELIGION

251

Christianity arrived in Japan with the Jesuits and friars of
the sixteenth century it was mercilessly opposed by Budd¬
hism ; and after a hundred years of fairly successful propa¬
ganda, the Church was exterminated and over 200,000 of
its members martyred.

2. Shinto

Shinto, ‘ the way of the gods,’ is the original faith of the
Japanese. To maintain consistency in declaring religion
free and all religions on a level, the Japanese Government
affirms that Shinto is not a religion, and that when Shinto
is officially favoured the authorities are not discriminating
in the interests of any religion; but a cult that believes
in gods and encourages prayer to them must be included
in the category of religions. Shinto is primarily a system
of ancestor worship. The spirits of the dead are all kami,
beings of god-like rank and power, entitled to the reverence
and devotion of the living. The cult is supposed to have
originated in the fear of ghosts, that characterizes the
beliefs of primitive races. Shinto is used as a motive to
filial piety and national patriotism. The Shintoist believes
that his ancestors are living, that they know all about him
and perceive as well as endeavour to guide his every action,
and that he should always be governed by their example
and counsel. In every Japanese home there is a kami-dana,
an altar-shelf, with its that, or tablet, in which are enshrined
the spirits of his ancestors, and offerings are made and
worship performed before the shrine usually twice a day.
All the good and ill of life comes from the ancestors, who
require constant humouring and appeasement.

The Shinto pantheon is sufficient to stagger conception.
K yop ask how maffy gods it includes, the answer is * eight
hundred myriad,’ a vague enumeration equal to a bacterio¬
logical calculation. And the Japanese conception of the
manifoldness of deity is better Represented by bacteriology

252 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

than theology. There are three prevailing types of deity,
however, that require more than passing notice : the
national gods, the communal gods and the family gods
already noticed. The national gods comprise the spirits
of departed emperors, the central shrine of which is at
Ise, with a branch in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. These
are honoured on certain national occasions, and are informed
of all important national events. Every official of State
appointed by the Emperor has to proceed to Ise and
inform the Imperial ancestors of his appointment. Since
the victories over China and Russia greater attention has
been shown to the ancestral shrines, for the Emperor
declared that all was due to the ancestral gods. Shinto
speaks of the Ogami, or great gods, but whether this implies
belief in any one supreme deity above the Imperial ancestors
it is impossible to say.

The communal gods are the spirits of great personages,
such as princes or warriors or daimyo who have been
benefactors of the province or community. Every com¬
munity, down to the smallest hamlet, has its communical
shrine to the ujigami , while cities have as many such shrines
as there are parishes in an English city. On appointed
occasions, especially anniversaries, offerings are made and
festivals celebrated before the shrines for consolation and
appeasement of the deity, that the community may be
blest. Some of these shrines have their foundation in
remote antiquity, and the older they claim to be the more
they are reverenced with gifts. All gods must be Japanese.
When the nation began to acquire colonies, it had to bring
over Japanese gods, since there were none in Korea and
Formosa. Fortunately a Japanese prince happened to die
during a visit to Formosa, and so a guardian deity was
provided for the shrine of that possession, relieving the
communal deities of Japan proper from responsibility foi
the outlying parts of the empire. Korea is being provided
with gods in a similar manner. The communal gods ar?

RELIGION

253

tafon out of their shrines on great festivals and carried in
procession on elaborate mikoshi , or god-cars, to inspect
the' communities over which they rule, and see that they
have paid their temple taxes and are properly decorated
for the festival.

As to the family gods sufficient, perhaps, has been said
above. As one passes along the street in the early morning
affecting acts of worship may be seen through open windows
before these simple family shrines, performed usually by
the most aged member of the household, a grandmother
very often, for women have to do deputy for men in
religion in Japan, as in some other countries. If the
family be Shinto the ancestral tablet will be plain un¬
varnished wood, but if Buddhist it will be a painted tablet
with the ancestral names elaborately inscribed. Lamps
of pure vegetable oil are lighted in the evening on either
side of the tablet before the act of worship begins. Clapping
the hands and holding them together, the head is bent
towards the that and the ancestral guardians thanked for
all their august benefits. The Japanese worship their more
immediate ancestors and do not trouble themselves with
questions of the missing-link.

In addition to the three species of gods noted, there
are innumerable others of various ranks, whose duty is to
oversee every act and aspect of life. Existence is bound
every way about with gods, from the performance of some
elaborate State ceremony to that of the simplest toilet,
from the selecting of a site for a new house to the marrying
of a wife. There are gods of wind and fire and pestilence j
of war, of food, of the cooking pot, of the kitchen and the
door and the gate.

In spite of its avowed independence of moral codes,
and of dogmatics in general, Shinto has a priesthood and
a cofhplicated ritual which requires a special education to
understand and perform, with numerous ceremonies of
purification from wrong-doing and bodily defile ment*

254 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

It is a religion, however, which has no heaven and no hell,
and no morals except manners and national customs, and
loyalty and filial piety. The Shinto summary of ethics is
seen in the Imperial Rescript on education quoted in the
chapter on that subject. That this code is insufficient
to meet the needs of modern civilization is clear from the
appalling degree of immorality tolerated in Japan.

The Shinto shrine, in contrast to the gorgeous altars of
Buddhism, is very simple, and, like the temple itself, is
constructed of plain unvarnished wood, usually pine.
There is practically no decoration, and the only object
on the altar is a mirror. The aim of the architecture
seems to be to preserve the form of the primeval hut in
which the ancestors lived. The Shinto priest before the
altar wears a black robe over a longer white one, with a
girdle around the waist, and a black cap, or eboshi, of
curious form on his head. At Shinto festivals there are
intoning of prayers, recitation of incantations, and per¬
forming of dances for the pleasure of the gods. Some of
these old dances and operettas go back to the birth of
music and poetry. Shinto gods are very human; they
enjoy a joke, and do not object to chiding, or even punish¬
ment if they overlook what their devotees consider to be
their duty. On one occasion a god who failed to send
rain for the rice, when it was properly asked of him, was
carried down and dumped in a mud hole for punishment*
The gods have to play up to local ideas, or suffer the con¬
sequences. The Japanese mother takes her new-born
babe to the local shrine to invoke the protection of the
guardian deity ; and there also she was probably married.
In death, however, recourse is had to Buddhism which has
the credit of being more familiar with the secrets of the
unseen and offers more facilities for facing hades. One of
the most remarkable aspects of Shinto is its hero-wofthip.
At the great national shrine in Tokyo, known as the Tasu-
kuni Jinja , the spirits of all the soldiers and others who

RELIGION

255

have died for Japan are deified and specially honoured by
national worship at two festivals a year, by the Imperial
House and all classes of the nation.

By official status Shinto shrines are divided into twelve
grades, of which the Grand Shrine at Ise is the head, the
next most important in order of mention being the Izumo,
the Kashima and the Hitachi shrines, which enshrine the
ancestral spirits of historic families like the Fujiwara, the
Minamoto and others. The total number of Shinto shrines
is over 118,000, with over 15,000 priests. The Emperor
himself is the chief priest of Shinto and attends the altar
to offer prayer and sacrifice on great occasions. Like other
religions, Shinto is broken up into numerous sects, of
which thirteen are more important and are accorded
special recognition. The ‘ highs ’ lay stress on the import¬
ance of correctness in ritual; the * broads ’ on worshipping
‘ the whole divine race,’ and the * lows 5 on the importance
of meditation and ascetic rigour. As sectarianism is due
to the merely human aspect of religion, and not inherent
in real religion, the Shinto sects naturally represent all
the various anthropomorphic conceptions and tastes that
are found emphasized in the sects of occidental religion.
At any rate, if Japan fails to meet the requirements of a
modern State it will not be for want of gods to look after
her interests, nor for want of devotees to see that the gods
rise to their divine duties.

3. Confucianism

Though Confucianism cannot be said to exist as a separate
cult or religion in Japan, it is nevertheless the only rule of
life for a considerable number of individuals, especially
among the upper-classes. But, like Stoicism, Platonism
and either forms of ancient paganism in Europe, it is sq
blended with the national religion that only a Confucianist
would be able to place it. Since Confucianism, which

256 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

came from China, recognizes no god, and is concerned only
with this life, it becomes particularly adapted to that
increasing number of Japanese who, through the influence
of modern science, have broken away from the myths and
superstitions of national tradition and now observe the
ancient ceremonies only out of respect for the past and
loyalty to the present. Being more of a philosophy than
a religion, Confucianism in Japan has no more to say about
gods than it has in China. It simply avers that the chief
end of man is to follow nature, by which is meant the
customs of the ancestors whom.he worships. Confucianism
appeals to many Japanese as offering the least obligation
that religion can demand and retain its name. In its
insistence on the loyalty and obedience of subjects to ruler,
of children to parents, of wife to husband, of servants to
master, Confucianism well suits the Japanese mind which
is inclined to hold that superiors have rights but no duties :
while inferiors have duties but no rights. For the masses,
however, Confucianism has little or no appeal, as it lacks
the inspiration which faith in deity compels, and sincere
worship strengthens. A religion that offers man nothing
higher or better than himsplf as an object of veneration
can never command the confidence of a progressive miiyl.
It suits mostly those of independent means. And thus
while Confucianism in Japan, as in China, lies cold in the
brain of its teachers, and suffering humanity finds no place
in its heart, the people naturally turn to the tender and
merciful deities of Buddhism, leaving the Chinese cult to
the petty regulation of family affairs.

When Viscount Shibusawa visited the United States he
was asked by John Wanamaker what was his religion. The
answer was, ‘I am a Confucianist.’ When Wanamaker
asked him how he could believe in a rejigion which China
had followed for 3,000 years without showing any progress,
the Viscount replied that he could not answer. Nor is
there any reason why Confucianism is promoted in Japan

RELIGION

257

save for the natural service it renders to class distinctions
and the subjection of the masses. In the days of the
Tokugawa shogunate the subservience of the lower to the
’ higher became a religion, and Confucianism received an
impetus it had not before enjoyed outside of China. A
school of the cult was established but failed to accomplish
much. The practices of Confucianism could only be
enforced by law. Such scholars as Hirata and Motoori
began to expound the ancient doctrines of Shinto, showing
that Japan was the country of the gods, the ancestors
whom the Yamato race worshipped long before Buddhism
and Confucianism were ever heard of in Nippon. As the
ancient gods had created Japan and given it to then-
descendants, it was the duty of all loyal Japanese to avoid
godless religions and worship the national deities and the
Emperor who represented them on earth. Patriotism,
.loyalty and religion came thus to be looked upon as one and
the same thing to the new teachers of the old faith. The
new movement received fresh impetus with the overthrow
of feudalism, and with the Imperial Restoration it had
promoted ; and for the last fifty years Shinto has con¬
tinued to gain on the other religions in Japan.

4. Buddhism

It would require a volume in itself to treat of Japanese
Buddhism in any adequate manner, but it concerns us here
only as a vital factor in the development of modern Japan,
and may be noticed briefly from that point of view.
Buddhism in Japan is not at all what it is in India, or any
of the other countries of its adoption. The difference
may be indicated as concisely as possible thus: Indian
Buddhism offers salvation through self-perfection; grace
comes from knowledge and self-enlightenment. Japanese
Buddhism is that of the Greater Vehicle, the Mahayana
type, which leans toward the Christian doctrine of faith
17

258 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

in a saviour as the way of life, due perhaps largely to
Christian influence. Japanese Buddhism has nevertheless
not been able to divest itself of inherent pessimism, nor to
escape from pantheism in spite of its atheistical inception.
Amida is the creator and father of man, and salvation
comes through Buddha, the incarnation of Amida. But
this tendency to theism has been completely absorbed in
Shinto pantheism, and the divine Being is regarded as
identical with the universe, i.e. the Mind of the universe
represented by the five elements that go to the composition
of matter. In philosophic treatises, in hymns and in
general liturgies this teaching is certainly implied.

Those familiar with the details of early Christian history
will detect in Japanese Buddhism the same sort of pantheism
which Irenaeus describes in the God of Basilides. Between
Mahayana Buddhism and ancient Gnosticism there is
indeed a striking resemblance, showing that the long-
exploded and forgotten theories and heresies of ancient
Egypt and Syria still survive in Japan. There are a few of
us who believe that some of the ancestors of Japan came
from Egypt; and assuredly traces of similarity may be
found between Japanese Buddhism and the religion of
ancient Egypt, both having the same central deity with
his retinue of subsidiary deities and a host of minor beings,
the whole making the sum total of the Divine. There are,
moreover, the same incantations, charms and gesticulations
and genuflections. It is probable that from Egypt through
India and China this religion came, and that the Daibutsu
at Nara is identical with Osiris.

But in its appeal to the masses Buddhism lays stress on
none of these things: only on the mercy and all-abounding
love of Amida. This idea was first put forth by Zendo
of the seventh century in China, and early found its way
to Japan, stirring powerfully the hearts of such teachers
as Genshin, Honen, Shinran and others, but it was opposed
by the great reformer Nichiren,who rejected it and its

RELIGION

259

Amida as strange doctrines in Buddhism, and proclaimed
Shakyamuni as supreme, thus seeking to call the faithful
back to the tenets of the original Gautama. In this way
sect after sect arose in Japanese Buddhism, each warring
with the others, new sects often becoming political intriguers
with warrior train-bands, while pious souls in secluded
temples kept alive the lamp of religion.

We have already seen that when Christianity came to
Japan in the sixteenth century Buddhism waged relentless
war against it, and while teaching that it was a sin to eat
animal food, saw no iniquity in delivering up innocent
men, women and children to torture and death of the most
cruel and revolting kind. From this reversion to barbarism
Japanese Buddhism has never recovered, the effect being
not unlike that of the Inquisition in Spain, an arrested
moral and spiritual development. With the downfall of
the shogunate in Japan, Buddhism was disestablished and
left to its own resources. Since then the religion has
greatly bestirred itself in rivalry with Christianity, and
constrained by the whip of adversity. It now has Sunday
schools, theological colleges, private schools, mission ser¬
vices, and preaches sermons that sound almost Christian.
Some of the numerous sects are popular, for one reason or
another, like the Zen sect which is patronized by soldiers,
as it appeals to the rigour and discipline and the fighting
qualities required by this class.

Though Buddhism has a certain hold on the masses of
the people after so long a history, it cannot be said to be
making marked progress in Japan. One sees too many
temples neglected and falling into decay to believe that
the faith is universally very much alive. The popular
temples in great centres of population are well supported;
but even in them lie main concern is with the deities that
bring good luck or recovery from illness or disease. Buddhism
fates comparatively little interest in extending its tenets
abroad, even to the Japanese colonies. Temples have been

260 japan from within

erected in England and America, but no one could claim
that Buddhist propaganda in these countries has had any
appreciable effect. According to the vernacular press of
Japan the Buddhist priesthood is generally illiterate and
lax, and can never again command the confidence of the
nation. A discussion of the many sects into which Japanese
Buddhism is divided would involve more space than is
at our disposal. The total number of temples is about
72,000,with over 51,000 priests. As to the adherents of
Shinto and Buddhism, it may be said that all who are not
Christians or atheists belong to either Shinto or Buddhism
or both, most of the people to both.

5. Christianity

There is an increasing conviction among thinking minds
in Japan that the religious future of the country lies with
Christianity. But the teaching of Jesus has had a long
battle to fight, as it had in the old Roman Empire, and has
not yet quite come to its own. The opposition which
Buddhism met with as an alien religion on its advent to
Japan was nothing to what the Church, as represented
by the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, had to face when it was dis¬
covered that the new faith was less ready to compromise
for its existence. The missionaries of the Nazarene were
firm in their teaching and unyielding in their moral restric¬
tions, two features that did not fall in well with the instincts
of a people who had been taught that the way of nature
was the way of the gods.

At first Christianity was welcomed with open arms
because it was the religion of those who brought war
weapons and munitions and promoted foreign trade; and
no more strange and violent contrast can be found "than
that between the cordiality of its inception and the hatred
of it at the time of its rejection and extermination a hundred

RELIGION

261

years later. For the first time the Japanese were brought
into contact with a religion that insisted on some relation
with life and morality. Such a religion was most incon¬
venient to the sensual and harem-loving authorities that
controlled the policy of the country. In spite of the fact
that converts were drawn from all classes of the people,
noblemen, Buddhist priests, men of learning and probity,
who embraced the new faith with the same conscientious
zeal as the poor and the lowly, it was ultimately found
convenient to connect the new faith with the merciless
exploitation policy of Spain and the Inquisition, and to
insist on its expulsion. The story of the persecution of
the missions in the seventeenth century is one of the
most thrilling in the annals of martyrdom, but for
that the reader must go to the history of Japan at
that time.

After the centuries of seclusion had passed away, and
the bloody persecutions had been forgotten, Japan was
reopened to foreign intercourse, and the missionaries
returned. Descendants of the first Christians were found
still adhering to the faith, nearly 3,000 in all, in the villages
near Nagasaki. The missions carrying on Christian propa¬
ganda in the new Japan were, and have been, for the most
part representing the protestant communions of England
and the United States. The work of the Roman Catholic
Church has been under French priests and convents ; and
missions under the Russian Orthodox Church have been
very successful. Of the 400,000 or more Christians in
Japan, after scarcely 60 years of propaganda, about 300,000
have been baptized in the last 25 years, which indicates a
promising ratio of increase. Of these about 75,000 belong
to the Roman Church, and some 36,000 to the Russian
Church, and the i^st are divided among the various com¬
munions of England and America, including the Church of
England. The Anglican Churches of England, the United
States and Canada are united in one communion in Japan,

262 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

known as the Niff on Sei Kokzoai , or Holy Catholic Church
of Japan, with its own bishops, priests and deacons, its own
prayer book in Japanese, and its own canons and con¬
stitution, with ten dioceses ; the bishops of Tokyo and Osaka
being Japanese.

The religious mind of Japan, as in other lands, represents
two distinct types: that favouring elaborate ceremonial
in religion, and that preferring a more graceful simplicity.
In the national religions this aspect is represented by
Buddhism on the one side and Shinto on the other. And
the same tendencies are seen in the Christian missions.
Sectarianism in Christianity does not puzzle the Japanese
much, as they are accustomed to it in Shinto and Buddhism.
But intolerance and absence of charity in religion they do
not appreciate. Even the Salvation Army finds popular
approval because of its devotion to Christ, and to the poor,
and its love of military paraphernalia. The Young Men’s
Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian
Association are also popular and progressing. But there
are many free-lance missionaries in Japan j and the medley
of creeds is sufficiently confusing to cause hesitation and
doubt among some.

The ordinary Japanese does not regard Christianity as
less credible or more* superstitious than his own religions :
his main objection, as a rule, is that it is a foreign religion
likely to undermine national faith and polity, forgetting
that this is a revival of the old argument against Buddhism
and he also considers the moral ideals of Christianity too
elevated for the average man, especially in business and
domestic life. But the Japanese, as has been suggested,
are a tolerant people ; and one cannot say that the average
individual is more opposed to Christianity than the average
Englishman would be to Buddhist or Shinto propaganda
in England. The Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atone¬
ment are often found baffling doctrines to the average
Japanese, but the Man Christ Jesus he has no objection

RELIGION 263

to, except that he is a foreigner and regarded by His dis¬
ciples as superior to all earthly potentates.

To the Christian Japanese, on the other hand, there is
* no difficulty in reconciling the claims of Christ with those
of the Imperial House ; since the New Testament teaches
that ‘the powers that be are ordained of God,’ and so
must be honoured and obeyed as God. The only difference
between Shinto and Christianity here is that, while the
latter admits that the ruler may represent God, Shinto
insists that he is God. But the existence of so many
distinguished Japanese Christians, whose loyalty no one
doubts, goes to prove that the new faith is not inconsistent
with loyalty and filial piety, and Christianity will doubtless
in time win its way even faster than it is doing to-day. But
it will not be in any degree an Anglicized or an Americanized
Christianity; though to avoid taking a Japanese form will
be less possible. Since these national accretions of the
faith are no vital part of it, the Church need not worry
about a possible Japanization of Christianity. A nation
that has given already a host of martyrs to the Church may
be trusted to guard the faith of the future. The progress
of modern science is undermining Japan’s faith in national
cosmogony and tradition and inclining the masses to demo¬
cratic and liberal institutions; and, as Christianity is not
only consistent with such progress but its best aid, the
mind of Japan will eventually turn more seriously and
universally to the new faith. Nor will the Japanese Church
suffer so much from the stereotyped customs that retard
the progress of religion in countries with an older Christian
tradition; it will be a Church of even more modem type
than that represented by the foreign missionaries in Japan,
a Christianity unencumbered with the useless accretions
of race and history.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN

H AVING examined in detail the resources and
material development of Japan, and seen how her
rapid expansion and progress in almost every direc¬
tion have placed her among the great Powers of the world,
it is now in order to inquire how Japan proposes to use her
immense advantage and high position. The policy Japan
intends to pursue, no less than her future generally, becomes
a question of immediate and increasing interest and im¬
portance to occidental nations, especially to those whose
future depends on peaceful relations with Asia.

The motives underlying Japan’s policy, as well as the
nature of that policy itself, can be ascertained only by a
long and careful study of the nation’s history and civiliza¬
tion at first hand. To this the present writer has given
many of the best years of his life. Japan’s aim in Eastern
Asia must be inferred mainly from the general trend of
policy and procedure for the last three or more centuries.
In all that time her mind, and consequently her line of
action, have but little changed. Our deductions then are
based on the past no less than on the present attitude of
Japan; and on facts, not on visions, prejudices or suspicions.

i. Japan’s Policy in Asia

It has been the constant aim of Japan since the founda¬
tion of the Empire to hold a base on the continent* of
Asia, and have a voice in continental affairs. In all the
■centuries Japan has never been able to rid herself of the

364

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN 265

conviction that her destiny depends on commanding this
advantage. It may have originated with the national
obsession that the Creator who gave Japan her divine
emperor intended that she should rule Asia, since the gods
are the rulers o£ the world. To old Japan Asia was the
world. The early invaders of the archipelago retained a
base on the Korean peninsula, drew tribute from subsequent
kingdoms that arose there, and by successive raids and
invasions held that base until the tenth century a.d.
When the Mongols began to utilize Korea as a base for the
invasion of Japan in 1274 an ^ a g a ^ n hi 1281, the folly of
not having succeeded in retaining their base in Korea
was at last apparent to the Japanese. Japan annihilated
the Mongol Armada, but the necessity of a base on the
continent was no more forgotten. When Hideyoshi, the
Napoleon of Japan, three centuries later, had completed
the subjugation of the recalcitrant daimyo and unified
the country under a central government, he found further
occupation for his warriors by sending a great expedition
into Korea to conquer it in preparation for a still vaster
invasion of China. If the Mongols whom Japan had
defeated could overwhelm the whole of Asia, as they did
under Kublai Khan, why should the Japanese warriors,
who had proved themselves superior to the Mongols, not
do the same ? Hideyoshi’s death in 1597 prevented the
plan being fully carried to completion, though Korea
suffered a decimation from which the peninsula never
recovered.

With the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese merchants
and missionaries in Japan in the sixteenth century the
nation’s mind turned from conquest of China to the
menace of the Occident. Japan soon learned what Spain
had been to Hollaiyi, to Mexico and South America; and
now the had become Japan’s neighbour in the Philippines.
The next step would be the invasion of Japan; and Japan
had no inclination to risk sharing the fate of the Aztecs

266 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

and the Incas. Jealousy between Jesuits and Franciscans
led Japan to the conviction that the missionaries were
come to prepare the way for Spanish conquest. Japan,
thereupon expelled the foreigners, executed those who
refused to go and exterminated the Church. From 1638
to 1853 Japan remained closed to the Western world.

But Japan never abandoned the idea of securing a base
on the continent; and when her doors were forced open
by occidental nations in the nineteenth century she was
still contemplating the problem. The question of relations
with Korea had some connexion with the Satsuma rebellion
of 1877. But then, as in the sixteenth century, the question
of relations with Western countries forced all other questions
into the shade. Japan always regarded her new relations
with the occidental Powers as forced upon her!. Helpless
in the hands of the intruders, without adequate national
defences, Japan felt the humiliation of the situation
beyond words. It is no wonder that many Occidentals
fell before the sword of the samurai during the first years
of new treaties.

The nation’s first resolve was to secure national autonomy
at all costs and to concentrate all force on the creation of
adequate national defences. How to organize and support
an efficient army and navy on her slender resources was
Japan’s gravest problem, but with the economic sympathy
of the English-speaking nations it was done. The war
with China over the question of Korea in 1895 again
revived the importance of having a base on the continent j
and Japan’s victory in the struggle was about to give her
the advantage she coveted, when Germany, France and
Russia united in driving Japan out of Manchuria, only
to have her place later taken by Russia. Then came the
war with Russia in 1904-5, when Japan regained her position
in Manchuria and a hold on Korea. The Anglo-Japanese
Alliance helped to realize further her ideals toward con-
jolidation of policy in East Asia. The war with Germany

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN 267

still more strengthened Japan’s position; and as she had
already annexed Korea in 1910, the ideal of two thousand
years was fully realized.

As the fundamental motive of Japan’s policy is to prevent
concessions to Western nations in East Asia, her main
movements since the European War have been toward
the enforcement of a Monroe Doctrine for the Far East.
Japan, as the voice of East Asia, claims the same right to
immunity from occidental aggression as America does
in the name of the New World for immunity from European
aggression. In this hope Japan has the sympathy of China
and India, though these countries are not yet quite satisfied
that Japan means what America means by the Monroe
Doctrine: there is a suspicion that while America means
‘The Americas for the inhabitants of the American
continents, Japan may mean Asia for Japan.’ The Monroe
Doctrine for Asia will not be wholly realized until Britain
withdraws from Wei-hai-wei and France from Indo-China,
as well as America from the Philippines.

2. A Monroe Doctrine for Asia

Has Japan the capacity to organize and manipulate the
policy suggested, and has she the means to enforce a Monroe
Doctrine for Eastern Asia ? It is obvious from what has
been said above that this policy has already gone far toward
realization. While England, America and other nations
interested in the Far East are satisfied to seek no further
concessions in China, though demanding equal opportunity
for the commerce and trade of all nations in that country,
Japan is gradually gaining the whip-hand in China. To
some Western thinkers this looks like Japan’s version -of the
Monroe Doctrine. But Japan claims that she has taken no
advantage of China that Western nations woulc^ not take
were they in Japan’s position. She has a right to use her
superior knowledge of Chinese customs and language, and
her own proximity, to her own advantage. Sometimes

268

JAPAN FROM WITHIN

suspicion of Japan goes so far as to credit her with a sort
of magical or superhuman power in gaining her ends;
this trend of thought is especially prevalent among those
who suspect that Japan’s interests are contrary to occidental
interests.

But Japan has no such superhuman ability or power
as would make her the bogey of the so-called £ yellow peril.’
Japan’s sudden rise to a foremost position in the comity
of nations is, of course, remarkable, but it is in no sense
miraculous : it is the natural course of a virile, ambitious
and intelligent people abruptly brought into contact with
the ways and means of realizing their ambitions, and
placed on the defensive against occidental competitors of
s imilar ambitions and ability. Seeing how Western nations
have acquired so large a portion of the earth’s surface,
Japan thinks they might still also acquire her if they had
the chance ; and while she intends to give them no advan¬
tage in this direction, she will do all she can to extend her
own influence if not her territory.

Japan’s civilization, while older than that of any occidental
country, is nevertheless inferior, owing to its long isolation
from the developing world ; but the ordeal of feudalism,
through which Europe passed in preparation for present
achievement, Japan also endured, until she has quite as
fully acquired the fighting edge. When Japan expelled
the Europeans from her shores in the seventeenth century
because she considered them a menace and their civilization
inferior to her own, she showed shrewd judgment; but
during the two centuries of Japan’s seclusion the energies
of Europe ceased to be absorbed in military entertainment
and the burning of heretics, the mind turning towards
mechanical invention and industrial progress, which was
at its height when Japan was obliged t® return to inter¬
course with the outside world, to inherit all its achieve¬
ments in material advancement. It required no extra¬
ordinary intellect to see, as Japan did, the need of acquiring

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN 269

all the means of national defence and material progress
that the West had invented, nor to appropriate them as
Japan has done. Indeed, the inheritor has sometimes the
advantage over those who have exhausted themselves in
producing the inheritance. Europe laboriously wrested
the secrets from nature, and Japan has profited by these
centuries of intelligence and toil. In scarcely fifty years
Japan has mastered what it took Europe 300 years to learn
and evolve ; but, had the position been reversed, Europe
could as easily have done the same. When the 900,000,000
of Asia have mastered the methods and material of the
West even only to the same extent and degree of efficiency
as Japan has done, will the West be ready to meet the
situation of so changed a world ?

This is not in any way to minimize or depreciate Japan’s
natural ability, with which indeed she could not have
made the progress that has marked the last half-century of
her history. Nor does it imply an attempt to impugn her
pursuit of a natural policy of independence and self-defence
in East Asia. Japan’s ability as a race is no less evident
in her unrivalled capacity for organization and triumph
over poverty of resources than in her imitation of occidental
progress. The fact that Japan organized and carried to a
triumphant conclusion two of the greatest wars of modem
times is proof erf her natural ability, to say nothing of the
admirable degree in which she has been enabled to foster
and ensure a marvellous commercial and industrial develop¬
ment. But this is nothing new to Japan. The nation
was able to command and send overseas a force sufficient
to defeat China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 only because,
300 years before, Japan sent to Korea the largest fighting
force ever sent overseas down to the South African War.
Japan never lost her genius for naval and military organiza¬
tion? She now uses the same skill in industrial and com¬
mercial organization. The domestic industries of old
Japan were so highly specialized and universal before the

270 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

advent of Western civilization that all she had to do was
to change from hand work to machine work. The process
is not yet quite complete, but the transformation is hastening
apace. Thus, brought face to face with the accumulated
triumphs of two centuries of occidental inventive and
scientific genius, Japan had little to do but to appropriate
and apply. It is the rapidity and thoroughness with which
this has been done that amazes the Occident.

3. The Mailed Fist

But Japan’s policy of material expansion and accumula¬
tion of wealth has not been merely for the sake of material
enrichment: it has not been her aim to make profiteers
and millionaires, though these have been only too frequently
incidental to the process. Her fundamental policy is
always to be concerned with, wealth as a means to com¬
manding defences adequate to protect her shores and to
promote national expansion and influence. All is con¬
centrated on acquiring for Japan the hegemony of East
Asia. Japan spends about one-half of her whole annual
national revenue on army and navy alone. To-day she
commands one of the finest armies in the world and the
world’s third largest navy.

In assembling so large and efficient a fighting force, and
maintaining it at so great a cost to her poor subjects,
Japan has no particular objective apart from the policy
indicated. Before the European War Russia was an
objective, for every Japanese believed that Russia would
have her revenge for the humiliations of 1904-5 ; but now
that is postponed. Japan for the present is simply content
to insist on no more concessions in East Asia to Western
nations, no violation of thd principles of the Monroe
Doctrine, and no discrimination against her nationals
among the nations with whom .she has treaty relations*

, , Of course if. Japan is attacked she will fight; and if she
should be forced to draw tne sword, undoubtedly she will

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN 271

give a good account of herself, as she has done in former
wars. But Japan does not want war. In no war with any
equal or superior Power could Japan hope to hold out
longer than two years, owing to the inadequacy of her
economic and food resources. Her only hope of victory
would lie in swift and effective destructive action. Once
successfully blockaded, Japan’s food supply would become
exhausted, unless the crops yield better than at present.
Economically Japan must depend for some time on the
sympathy of the English-speaking nations. Though the
nation increased its specie holdings some five-fold during
the European War, the total is fast becoming depleted in
recent years owing to a steady adverse balance of trade.
In discussing the question of Japan’s economic ability in
time of war with a financier of international reputation
some time ago, the present writer was given to understand
that loss of British and American sympathy in any war
would soon cripple Japan financially, to say nothing of the
fatal loss of trade. But if the English-speaking nations
have thus a financial advantage over Japan, she will all
the more expect them to show justice in not tempting
her to face the impossible.

4. The Problem of Asia

One of the outstanding problems of Asia lies in the
possibility of an alliance between Russia, India, China and
Japan against the intrusion of occidental nations. The
idea may seem absurd at present, but in view of the increas¬
ing tendency of races to self-determination, and the progress
of modem education and armament in Asia, rapid changes
in position and power may be anticipated. Japan would
not probably favour the suggested combination at present,
even* if the other Asiatic nations trusted her, for risk of
conflict with the English-speaking nations is not included
In Japan’s policy unless driven to it as a last resort against

272 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

unscrupulous Western aggression. In pursuing her policy
for Asia’s independence of occidental dictatorship, Japan’s
method for the present is moral suasion backed by sufficient
armamental force to command respect.

The possible dangers of Japan’s policy and pretensions
England has met by the threat of a naval base at Singapore :
at least so it seems from a Japanese point of view. America’s
answer is to exclude further immigration from Japan and
from Asia generally, while steadily strengthening naval
armament. All these movements Japan regards as indica¬
tions of an unreasonable distrust of her motives, if not a
positive suggestion that the races of Asia must await
justice if they are to have it. The Washington Conference
of 1921 guaranteed the status quo on the .Pacific for the
next ten years. This will effectively preclude Japan making
any move in China without due consultation with the other
parties to the agreement.- But it has not prevented
Japanese nationals being discriminated against as undesir¬
able immigrants by the United States, Canada and Australia,
to the great humiliation and indignation of Japan.

The immigration question will prove a perennial source
of irritation in Asia for some considerable time, if indeed
it can ever be adjusted without ultimate clash between
East and West. It will always prove an excuse for Japan’s
coming vitally into contact with occidental nations when¬
ever they ignore her policy or contravene her claims. The
progress of Japan’s realization of the hegemony of East
Asia may inadvertently be overlooked by the Occident so
long as the public mind is concentrated on immigration*
By keeping up an agitation over the humiliation suffered
through the restrictions on entrance of her nationals to
English-speaking countries Japan may mesmerize the West
into giving her a more elastic hand in EasfrAsia. If England
and America had the choice of whether it were preferable
, to keep the Japanese out of their territories by force, or
to keep Japan out of China and Siberia by force, which

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN 273

would they choose ? Or would they insist on both con¬
flicts f This is a problem that seriously concerns Japan.

In the opening chapter it was suggested that before the
European War Japan was able to play off Germany and
Russia against Anglo-American interests in the Far East,
as well as to moderate restrictions on immigration, but
now Germany and Russia are scarcely practicable either as
pawns or allies of Japan, to say nothing of their lack of
sympathy with her policy and aims. At the close of the
European War the vernacular press of Japan predicted
that England and America would take advantage of the
collapse of the Central European Powers to place greater
restrictions on the Asiatic races. Now these Japanese
publicists are affirming that their prophecy is being fulfilled.
But my conviction is that the English-speaking nations are
in sympathy with Japan, and desire to see her get fair play
in the future, as they have insisted on her having in the
past, provided she plays the game, so to speak; while her
magnificent army and navy are a most valuable asset on
the part of a friend. The British Empire cannot forget
that the navy of Japan convoyed all the Anzac contingent
of nearly half a million men to the European War, and
afterwards did fine service for the allied cause in the
Mediterranean. Japan’s power and prestige with the
Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the Atlantic afford her an
opportunity of legitimately trading on their good-will and
their strong sense of justice. Hence Japan’s dependence
and steady insistence on their elimination of racial dis¬
crimination, and on equality with European races in' the
matter of immigration, or else greater freedom for expan¬
sion in Asia. Australia has proclaimed the policy of a
white continent in the south Pacific, and Japan has replied
by seizing the Marshall Islands at Australia’s back door,
which she still holds under mandate and where she, is
rapidly promoting colonization. And Japan will continue
to hold them until such time as Australia is sufficiently
18

274 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

worked up over the situation to persuade England to give
Japan a quid fro quo for withdrawal.

5. Surplus Population

In Japan, as in India and China, the question of surplus
population is one of the most pressing problems, and
with the rapid increase of population under the decreasing
death-rate due to science, the problem becomes increasingly
serious. It is a question which, as was indicated in the
opening chapter, the English-speaking nations can ignore
only at their peril. At the present moment immigration
is one of the greatest of world problems. To the nations
that are suffering from extreme density of population
immigration is essential as a relief to congestion: for
mankind must have room to breathe and grow if racial and
national deterioration and decay are to be averted; and,
if faced with the alternative of death either way, nations
prefer to die fighting for the right to live rather than
acquiesce in slow decline and extinction from congestion
of population.

Density of population in England would be much more
menacing than it is if there were no dominions and colonies
where the surplus could find vent. For many years density
of population in Europe, and to some extent in Asia, has
found relief by migration to the United States and British
territories overseas. But now Canada, Australia and
America have closed their doors against Asiatic immigra¬
tion, and greatly restricted the volume from Europe, so
that in time a danger point will be reached if relief be not
afforded. If restrictions on immigration to the United
States and Canada do not relax, before the point of con¬
gestion in Europe is reached, the future of England is
fraught with pregnant and sinister possibilities.

In this connexion, however, the largest element of
danger for the present lies in relations between East and
West ; for the West, particularly the New World, is, in a

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN 2 f S

comparative sense, very sparsely settled, while the East
is everywhere approaching congestion. Asia, especially
Japan, feels the same profound resentment that Englan d
'would if, with her present density of population, England
had no overseas dominions and all the thinly populated
spaces of the earth were closed against her people by races
that could not inhabit them themselves. The dog-in-the-
manger attitude of the English-speaking settlements is a
constant challenge to Asia.

While the oriental millions lay in their age-long slumber
the Occident was active in promotion of invention, industry
and the acquirement of territory; and now when Asia’s
millions are awaking to avoid suffocation, they find the
vent for immigration has been shut off. The 400,000,000
of China are being aroused from national inertia, and
the sullen murmur of their resentment against occi¬
dental restrictions on immigration is already heard across
the Pacific. Races of greater alertness and ambition, like
the Indians and the Japanese, representing 400,000,000
more, now keenly conscious of the rights of man, are
not so easily held in leash, and demand, not only
autonomy at home, but freedom for their nationals to go
abroad. Having studied this question carefully in Canada,
America and the Far East, at first hand, I am convinced
that our present official and national indifference to it is
as unrighteous as it is unwise. And this is particularly
true of Britain, for the majority of British subjects are
coloured people; and England, I repeat, stands or falls in
relation to the coloured races of the world.

6. A Point of Honour

The problems of immigration and racial discrimination
inevitably coalesce, in the Asiatic mind. Japan is bound
to r&ist the attitude of the English-speaking nations on
the immigration question, and all Asia is behind the
resistance. As a matter of principle alone Japan is coni-

27*6 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

pelled to oppose legislation that obviously discriminates
against her nationals in favour of immigrants from other
countries. America, Canada and Australia frankly say that
while Europeans may be admitted to their respective'
territories, Asiatics must be excluded. To Asia this is a
public announcement on the part of the white races of
their belief in the inferiority of the Asiatic races, and
conversely an unblushing proclamation of the superiority
of the white races and a gross offence to humanity. Japan
believes this principle to be false and the attitude it implies
absolutely unjust. It is in Japanese opinion an insult to
national honour and racial pride, as well as a denial of the
most-favoured-nation clause in all Japan’s international
treaties, and therefore a contravention of treaty rights,
to single out Japanese subjects for rejection by countries
with which she has treaty relations. Japan admits the right
of every nation to regulate immigration within its borders,
but not the right to enforce racial discrimination against
friendly neighbours. A leading Japanese publicist recently
wrote: ‘ To be treated as a race inferior to immigrants
from central Europe is a disgrace 'more intolerable for the
Japanese people than the loss of a colony.’

But if Japan feels obliged to protest as a matter of
justice and principle, she feels equally under obligation to
protest as a matter of policy : for her population is increasing
at the rate of about 750,000 annually, and already, with a
population of some 57,000,000, the density is over 360
to the square mile. Moreover, three-quarters of the
area is mountainous, and within twenty-five years the
present arable area will be insufficient to support the
population. Only one acre out of every six is arable,
Japan requires about 300,000,000 bushels of rice a year
to feed her present population, and of this about 40,000,000
bushels have to be imported. Unless intensity of industrial
„ development can be realized sufficient to support surplus
population Japan will be forced to find a vent for emigration*

t!he future of japan

As the voice o£ Asia, Japan asks on what basis of justice
or right the English-speaking nations can leave so large a
proportion of their territories unoccupied and waste while
Asia suffers from congestion of population f The Japanese
is a better worker than the European immigrant, as well as
a more law-abiding citizen, and yet he is excluded in
favour of the European. There is no doubt that Japanese
immigration would prove of great material benefit to some
of the territories from which it is now excluded. The
350,000 acres controlled by the Japanese in California
are the best cultivated and most highly productive in the
State, compared with what they were previous to Japanese
occupation. As market gardeners and fruit growers none
can compete with them. Thus the Japanese think that
they are being discriminated against for their virtues rather
than their vices. If allowed to go into such a State as
Louisiana the Japanese would soon make it a paradise of
cultivated prosperity compared with its present unde¬
veloped condition. And the same may be said of North
Australia, where the climate does not encourage the white
man to settle, but offers ideal inducement to the tropic-
loving Japanese. Japan is one-twentieth the size of
Australia, and has ten times its population. The Philippines
have a population of only 10,000,000 and could almost as
easily nourish 80,000,000. The Dutch East Indies, too,
are in a comparatively undeveloped condition as against
what Japan could make of them. South - America is also
very sparsely settled compared with Asia. Thus with
ample room still on the globe for human expansion, the
Japanese do not see how they can be justly excluded from
a fair share of it for natural growth.

The number of Japanese that have found settlement
abroad does not gxceed perhaps 700,000 in all. Of these
some 300,000 are in Manchuria, 32,000 in China, 30,000
in the South Pacific, 2,000 in Europe, 15,000 in Russia,
230,000 in North America, of whom about 110,000 are in

278 JAPAN FROM WITHIN

California and 15,000 in Canada. South America has
over 30,000, mostly in Peru, Brazil and the Argentine.
But in all countries, as well as in English-speaking lands,
restrictions' on Asiatic immigration have been tightening,
because of the apparent impossibility of local competition
with Asiatic patience, frugality and efficiency in labour.
It must be understood that exclusion of Japanese immi¬
grants from English-speaking countries means only the
labour class, as students, merchants and tourists are free to
enter and leave as they please ; and labourers from whatever
country are excluded from Japan itself. Therefore Japan
does understand that to a very large extent it is an economic
rather than a racial question.

7. Territorial Ambitions

In the event of Western nations endeavouring to adjust
the immigration difficulty by a quid fro quo, what will
Japan expect ? Her main hope is for expansion in some
direction to consolidate her policy of attaining the hege¬
mony of East Asia and to provide for surplus population.
The territorial expansion of Japan would have to be in a
direction that would not menace the rights of occidental
nations nor conflict with their vital interests. With regard
to expansion, there are two parties in Japan, known
respectively as the northern party and the southern
party, the one thinking that Japan’s destiny is northwards,
and the other convinced that the nation must go south..
There are a few who anticipate that expansion will be in
both directions. To those who feel that the line of least
resistance is towards the north, a way must be opened up
in Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia and Siberia. But the
opponents of this policy, led for a long time by Mr. Yosaburo
Takegoshi, are powerful, and insist that^ as the Japanese
are children of the sun, Japan must go to the unoccupied
spaces of the south, where they are at. home and where
white men cannot live.

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN a 79

How far does Japanese history lend colour to these
ambitions, and how far are they consistent with the nation’s
psychology ? We have already seen that for centuries
the trend of Japanese ambition has been toward the con¬
tinent of Asia. Japan has already succeeded in establishing
herself permanently in Korea, and probably so in Man¬
churia. But the official and the popular trend have not
been always in the same direction. For years Japan has
been using every inducement to increase her population in
Hokkaido and Saghalien, which are still but sparsely settled,
yet colonization of these regions proceeds but slowly,
because the Japanese immigrant does not care for a cold
climate. Only promise of unprecedented profits sends the
Japanese into Korea, Manchuria and Siberia. Already
Japan owns Formosa and is fast colonizing it, though this
has been retarded by the dangerous nature of the regions
occupied by the savages. If Japan could only acquire the
Philippines and the Dutch East Indies her dreams of
conquest would be realized, and the immigration question
would cease to trouble America and the British dominions
for centuries, if not for ever. Such an eventuality would
not only be in line with Japanese policy and the desire of
Japanese immigrants, but it would be in complete accord¬
ance with the principles of Japan’s defensive strategy;
for the naval authorities have long contended that control
of the Dutch East Indies, or the waters adjacent, is essential
to national defence. Had Japan been in command of
these seas during the war with Russia, the enemy’s fleet
would never have succeeded in reaching Japanese waters.
Such are the convictions of Japan’s southern party.

But could America be induced to part with the Philip¬
pines, and Holland with her East Indian colonies ? It is
not impossible tjp the Japanese mind that by international
agftement such a transformation could be brought peace¬
fully about in permanent settlement of the immigration
difficulty. American discussion of Philippine independence

ago JAPAN FROM WITHIN

lends further hope to realization of such a proposal. But
Holland would require a very big quid fro quo , if any at
all would be accepted. The expedient suggested would
not, of course, settle the very important question of*
Chinese and Indian immigration. Then again there are
those in the West who hold that Japan is dangerous enough
now, without increasing her strength by territorial expansion.

My own study of Japanese history, civilization, psychology
and general tendency, leads to the conviction that Japan
will expand both north and south, but mainly north. In
spite of many opinions to the contrary, the general move¬
ment of the nation has been northward; and deduction
must be based on facts. It has been shown that for mo re
than two thousand years the policy of the more forceful
element in Japanese civilization has insisted on gaining a
secure hold on the continent. This Japan has now accom¬
plished. Her recent attempt to occupy Siberia and
her seizure of the whole island of Saghalien, which she
still holds, is further emphasis of the national trend of
empire. This aspect of the situation is further borne out
by the fact that the Japanese are slowly becoming a white
race: some of the men and many of the women are already
white. All the agitation about migration southwards is
to impress Britain and America with the necessity of
freedom for Japan northwards in returnfor her acquiescence
in their restrictions on immigration.

History shows that British ambitions on the European
continent had to be ultimately abandoned. Whether this
has been for the good of Britain, or Europe, or both, will be
decided according to whether the student thinks it would be
better that Europe were likeEngland,or England like Europe,
to-day. The future of Japan in relation to the continent of
Asia must in great measure depend on the progress that
be induced in China and Russia in the next few years? as
well as in some degree on the attitude of the English-
speaking nations toward Japan and Asia generally. Certainly

THE FUTURE OF “JAPAN *81

the whole future of the English-speaking peoples depends
on their co-operation with the Asiatic races for the mutual
amelioration and uplift of their respective countries.

The Japanese have never suffered defeat. Retreat is a
device of occidental tactics that they have never practised.
The Japanese believe that they can accomplish anything
they set their minds upon. Their Emperor is divine,
they are the children of the gods, and the gods are on the
side of their relatives. The Japanese will not scruple to
take any means that may be necessary to defend themselves
from national deterioration and dishonour. Their mar¬
vellous expansion of commerce and industry, for the purpose
of commanding the wealth essential to adequate defences,
has been at the expense of a crushing and cruel industrialism
in which helpless labour has been exploited in a most
inhumane manner. Consequently industrial unrest is an
increasing feature of Japanese society. The demand for
universal suffrage and for improved conditions of labour
can no longer be suppressed. The only way in which the
national mind can be diverted from contemplation of its
internal grievances and sorrows and the poverty of the
people is by keeping up the agitation on immigration and
national dishonour inflicted abroad : for it is always easier
to blame the enemy abroad than the enemy at home.
This is, of course, an old expedient of nations with internal
problems, and Japan knows how to exploit it to the full.
But Japan’s international legerdemain for the purpose of
diverting the occidental mind from the steady progress of
her consolidation in Asia should not blind the eyes of the
West to the reality of the Asiatic problem for which Japan
stands, and in which she must long be the voice of Asia,
nor should the West continue indifferent to the need of
preparation to adjust the industrial and racial competition
that Asia is bound to force upon the world. The most
futile and dangerous policy is the present ostrich habit of
Ignoring the question.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A S this volume is based on a careful study of original Japanese
1 —\ authorities at first hand, during a long period of residence
JL JLi n the country, it is not possible to give reference to sources
of information, since documents in official archives are not open
to the public, and many of them have not been even catalogued.
So far as sources are available to the ordinary student, I may
express my great indebtedness to the Annual Reports of the various
Departments of State in Tokyo, especially to the Financial and
Economic Annual , and the Annual of tie Department of Agriculture
and Commerce . Other authorities that have been consulted are
printed below, and my failure always to give credit to them for
information I have derived must be ascribed to my loss of notes
and references in the great earthquake :

Asakawa, K.: Early Institutional Life of Japan, Tokyo, 1903.
Aston, W. G.: Nihongi , 2 vols., London, 1897.

- History of Japanese Literature .

Brinkley, F.: The Art of Japan , 2 vols., 1901.

- Japan and China , 12 vols.

-Article on Japan in Encyclopedia Britannica , nth ed.

Chamberlain, B. H.: The Kojiki y Transactions of Asiatic Society
of Japan.

- Things Japanese .

The Christian Movement in Japan , annual.

D’Autremer: The Japanese Empire .

Gubbins, J.: The Progress of Japan .

- The Making of New Japan .

Gulick, S.: Evolution of Japan , 1903.

Hearn, Lafcadio : Japan , An Interpretation 1907.

Harrison, E. J.: The Fighting Spirit of Japan , 2 vols., 191a,
fokuchi, Baron: Japanese Education 1909.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

*83

Latourette, K. S.: The Development of Japan , New York, 1918.
Lloyd, Arthur: The Creed of Half Japan, 1910.

Longford, Joseph; Japan of the Japanese.

- The Evolution of New Japan , Cambridge Press, 1923-.

- Japan , in the * Nations of To-Day Series,’ 1923.

McGovern, W.: Modern Japan, Fisher Unwin.

McLaren, W. W.: Political History of Japan in Meiji Era, 1916.
Murdoch, James: A History of Japan, 2 rols., 1911.

Nitobe, Inazo : The Japanese Nation , 1912.

Okakura, Y.: The Spirit of Japan, 1913.

- The Life and Thought of Japan, 1910.

Okakura, K.: The Awakening of Japan, 1904.

Okuma, Prince; Fifty Years of New Japan, z vols., 1909.

Porter, R. P.: Japan, the Rise of a Modem Power, Oxford, 1918.
Reischauer, A, K.: Studies in Japanese Buddhism .

Scott, W. J. R.: The Foundations of Japan, London, 1922.
Simmonds, D. B.: Land Tenure and Local Institutions, 1908.
Takenobu, Y.: The Japan Year Book, annual.

Vidal, P.: The Minerals of Japan, 1904.

Wilenkin, G.: The Political and Economic Organization of Japan,
1908.

On every aspect of Japanese civilization and progress the
volumes of the Japan Magazine , from 1910 to 1920, edited by
Dr. J. Ingram Bryan, will be found invaluable.

INDEX

Acts, factory, 148
Agriculture, 1x5, 120
Anarchists, 143
Anderson, Dr. W., 173
Arms, 152

Army Organization, 149; divisions,
X57; recruiting, 159; education, 165
Art: Yamato, 205 ; Heian, 208 ;
pictorial, 2x9; Chinese influence,
220; occidental influence, 222;
exhibitions, 227
Arts and Crafts, 203
Asia, 14: ideals of, 15 ; suspicions
of, x6

Bank of Japan, 97
Banking and Finance, 87
Banks, 92 ; earnings, 97
Bimetallism, 90
Blood, princes of the, 33
Bounties, shipping, 8x
Brewing, 49
Bridges, 75
Britain in Asia, 20
Brocade, 2x8
Bronze workers, 207
Buddhism, 254, 257-9
Buttons, 51

Cables, submarine, 71
Capitalists, X44
Camphor, X28
Celluloid, 51

Central Station (Tokyo), 86
Ceramics, 47, 2x2
Chambers of Commerce, 65
Chartered Bank, 9$

China, war with, 157; influence of,
2x9, 229

Christianity, 260-3
Cities, 37

Clearing houses, 57
Clocks, 51
Cloisonnd, 2x5
Coifege, 90
Colour prints, 226

Commerce, 53 ? statistics, 59; ex¬
pansion, 57

Commons, House of, 34

Communications, 67
Companies, shipping, 80
Compromise, evil of, 18
Confucianism, 225
Constitutionalists, 36
Copper, 107
Cotton industry, 44
Currency, 90

Debt, national, iox ; per capita, X02

Democracy, 24

Deposits, postal, 70

Diet, the Imperial, 31

Diplomacy, 17

Distilling, 49

Divine Ruler, 25

Divisions of labour, 42

Dockyards, 82 ; naval, 173, 181

Drama, 238 ; No, 242

Dutch, 54, 76

Earthquakes, 37

Education, national, 183; defects,
186; commercial, 198; technical,
20X ; naval, 179 ; military, 165
Elder Statesmen, 32
Electrical enterprise, 51
Embroidery, 2x8

Emperor, divine, 25 ; high priest, 27
Employment, 138
Exports, 60

Factories, 39
Factory Act, 148
Farmers, 118
Fertilizers, 51
Fiction, 235-6
Finance, 87
Finished articles, 60
Firearms, 153

Fisheries, 1x5; annual catch, 129

Floods, 76

Foreign debt, xox

Forests, 125; forestry, 115

Formosa, 72, 252

Foundries, 50

Franchise, 31

Freedom of the press, 247

Future of Japan, 265

286.

INDEX

Genro, 33

German influence, 156

Glass, 51

Gnosticism, 258

Gods, Shinto, 252

Gold standard, 57, 92, 109

Government, representative, 31;

local, 36; factories, 51
Guards, imperial, 161
Guilds, 66

Guns, army, 162, 164
Gyokusho, 221

Hamlet, 243
Hanabusa, 221
Harbours, 77
Heian art, 208
High schools, 199
History, Japanese, 23
Hokkaido Bank, 98
Hokusai, 221
Hongkong Bank, 98
Horses, 122
Hours of labour, 148
House of Commons, 34

— of Peers, 34-5

Ibsen, 243

Ideals, significance, of, 10
Immigration, 21, 272
Imperial Guards, 161

— Navy, 168

— Rescript, 192
Imports, 61-3
Independents, 36
Industrial conditions, 137
Industries, 39

Ingles, Rear-Admiral, 173
Inouye, Marquis, 33, 90
International Bank, 98
Inukai, 36
Iron and steel, hi
Itagaki, Count, 35, 142
Ito, Prince, 29, 35, 90
Ivory carvers, 211
Iwakura, Prince, 33

Japan and Asia, 9

Japan: history, 23; position, 12;
progress, 14; Constitution, 28;
Bank of, 97; ability, 268; educa¬
tion of, 183; policy of, 264;
journalism in, 244; civilization
of, 268 ; philosophy of, 235
Jitsugyo Doshikai party, 36

Kakushin Club, 36
Kanaoka, 220
K%po painters, 221
Kato, Dr. H., 31

Kato, Viscount Takaaki, 36
Keibun, 221
Kenseikai party, 36
Kido, 33

Kiyoura, Viscount, 33
Kojiki, 229, 250
Kokinshu, 230
Korea, 72, 252, 266
Korin, 227

Laboratories, 50
Labour and wages, 134

— rights of, 140 ; strikes, 144; hours
of, 148

— unions, 141
Lacquer, 48, 216
Language, Japanese, 234
Leadership, lack of, 31
League of Nations, 148
Lighthouses, 82
Literature, Japanese, 228, 232
Lithography, 226

Mabuchi, 232
Machine-making, 50
Mailed fist, 270
Manchuria, railways, 86
Manyoshu, 229

Marine accidents, 83 ; products, 132 *
Mariners, 79
Markets, 59, 65
Matches, 50

Matsukata, Prince, 33, 90
Meiji finance, 90

— era, 33

Merchant marine, 79

Metal artists, 209

Mickel, General, 156

Military organization, 149, 153;

districts, 156 ; objectives, 158
Mines and minerals, 103 ; resources,
107; output, 132
Mission schools, 198
Money, 90
Mongolia, 231
Mongols, 265
Monogatari, 231
Monroe doctrine, 266
Moral codes, 253
Moronobu, 221
Motive power, 40
Motobri, 232
Municipalities, 37

Nagasaki, 55, 154
Nara, 207

National wealth, 66; debt, 101
Nationalist party, 36
Nations, League, of, 148

INDEX

z$7

Naval development, 172 ; retrench¬
ment, 176; budget, 178 ; education,
177; tonnage, 175; officers, 180
Netsuk6, 2io
Newspapers, 244
►Nihongi, 229, 250
Nihonguaishi, 232
Nippon Ginko, 97
Nippon Sei Kokwai, 262
Nisshin Kisen Kaisha, 80
Nippon Yusen Kaisha, 8r
Nishikiyg, 226
No lyrical drama, 242
Normal schools, 199
Novelists, 232, 235-7

Occidental policy in Asia, 19
Oil, fish, 51
Okyo, 22 x
Okubo, 33

Okuma, Prince, 33. 9°

Operatives, factory, 43
Osaka Shosen Kaisha, 80
Othello, 243
Oyama, Prince, 156

Paganism, 12
Painters, schools of, 220
Paper-making, 51
Paper money, 90
Park-Union Bank, 98
Peers, House of, 33, 35
Philippine Islands, 279
Pictorial art, 2x9
Platonism, 255
Population, 34, 274
Porcelain, 47
Portuguese, 40, 54, 265
Post offices, 67
Primary education, 197
Privy Council, 32
Problem of Asia, 271
Progressive party, 36
Prose, Japanese, 238

Pace discrimination, 276

Railways, 83

Raw materials, 60

Recruits, army, 160; naval, 176

Religion, 248

Retrenchment, naval, 176

Revenue, national, 99 * forests, 126

Rice, X2X

Riparian work, 76

Roads/75

Rubber, 52

Russft, 72

Saionii, Prince, 33
San Francisco, 82

Sanitation, 37
San jo, Prince, 23
Satsuma, 35
Schools, 199
Sculpture, 226
Seclusion, Japanese, 268
Secondary schools, 198
Seiyukai party, 36
Shakespeare, 243
Shanghai, 72

Shibusawa, Viscount, 90, 256
Shimbei Shoin, 226
Shinto, 24, 251
Shipping, 77
Shoso-in, 206
Silk, 45, brocade, 218
Silver coins, 90; mines, xxo
Socialists, 143
Soshi, 84

South Manchuria Railway, 86 *

Spain, 40, 55, 265
Statistics, trade, 89
Stoicism, 235
Strikes, 144
Subsidies, shipping, 79
Sugar, 52

Tactics, military, 149
Taiwan, Bank of, 98
Takayama, Dr., 234
Takeda Shingen, 152
Taxation, 99
Tea, I2X
Teachers, 202
Technical schools, 201
Telegraphs and telephones, 71
Territorial ambition, 278
Theatres, 242
Theocracy, 23
Tokochiko, 221

Tokugawa finance, 88; shogunate,
232

Tosa Nikki, 230
Tosa painters, 220
Town councils, 37
Toyo Kisen Kaisha, 80
Tracey, Admiral, 171
Trade, foreign, 53
Trade unions, 141
Translations into Japanese, 234
Tsubouchi, Dr., 236

Ukiyo-6, 221
Unions, trade, 141
Universities, 200
Uyesugi, Kenshin, 152

Vernacular press, 244-5
Veto, Imperial, 32
Villages, 37

283

INDEX

Vladivostok, 72
Voice of Asia, 177
^Voters, number of, 34

Wages, 145

War, causes of, 10, 270
— with China, 157; with Kussia,
174

Washington Conference, 158, 176,
272

Watches, 51
Wealth, national, 66
Weaving, 218
Wireless, 82

Women, votes for, 35 ; employment
of, 138

Wood carvers, 211
Woollens, 46
Workers in bronze, 207

Xylography, 226

Yamagata, Prince, 33, 157
Yamato art, 205
Yamato Damashii, 29
Yokohama Specie Bank, 98

Zen sect, 259

Printed in Great Britain by HaxOt, Watson & Viney, Ld,.
London and Aylesbury.