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JAPAN AND KOREA

AH Protestant Mission Stations in Japan,
Korea, and Formosa are included.

COMPILED BY S. W, BOGGS

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IN THE HEART OF RURAL JAPAN. MT. ASAMA, A LIVING VOLCANO, IN

THE BACKGROUND

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in Japan

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Galen M. Fisher

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA

New York

and

THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED
STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS

West Medford, Mass.

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MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE

UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Printed in the United States of America

672363

This book, unworthy though it be, is reverently
dedicated to the memory of three great Jap-
anese personalities, each of whom enriched
my own life, as well as rendered distinguished
service to the Kingdom of God in Japan.

To DOCTOR NIISIMA Jo, known to history as a
dauntless pioneer in both education and evan-
gelism, but to me his name recalls the shy
stranger who stayed at our home when I was
a lad and left on my mind an indelible impres-
sion of a soul yearning for the redemption of

his own people.

To BISHOP HONDA YOITSU, a great shepherd of
souls, a wise master-builder, and to me a
spiritual father during my inexperienced
years in Japan.

I'o THE HONORABLE EBARA SOROKU, eminent as
an educator, a publicist, and an international-
ist, but humble withal, and always accessible
to disciples like myself who sought his
counsel and aid.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword vi

I. ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE

PEOPLE i

II. MILITARISM,, REACTION/ AND LIBERALISM 31

III. SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND CHRISTIAN SOLU-

TIONS 66.

IV. RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS. . 107

V. EPOCHS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE

CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 142

VI. THE CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 178
APPENDIX I (Supplemental Material) . . 223
APPENDIX II (Bibliography) . . . .241
INDEX 246

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

A Glimpse of Rural Japan . . Frontispiece

'A Textile Mill 24

Christian Helpfulness for Factory Workers . 25
Toyohiko Kagawa and His Little Friends . 56

A Christian Social Settlement 57

A Buddhist Temple Ceremony 88

A Buddhist "Sunday School" 89

Dr. Uemura and Dr. Ibuka 120

Pastor Hatanaka and His Family . . . .121

Preaching at a Temple Festival 152

A Sewing Class of Bible Women . . . .153

A Church in Osaka 184

New Building at Aoyama Jo Gakuin . . . 185
Christian Leaders of the Younger Generation . 216
Christian Leaders of the Younger Generation . 217

FOREWORD

The Japanese people rather than the Japanese gov-
ernment form the central interest of this book. Writ-
ten as it is at the request of the missionary education
agencies of North America and Great Britain, it natu-
rally focusses attention on those forces which most
vitally affect the moral and religious welfare of the
people and which therefore concern the Christian mis-
sionary enterprise. The ruling purpose is not to de-
scribe political, industrial, or even religious conditions
for their intrinsic interest, but rather to present suffi-
cient facts to enable occidental readers to draw sound
conclusions regarding the relation of Christianity to
the life of the Japanese people. Because the work is so
brief and is intended primarily for Christian readers,
the author has not attempted to maintain a purely
scientific attitude, but has frequently stated convictions
which are based on a wider range of knowledge and
experience than could here be given. He believes,
however, that enough evidence is adduced to demon-
strate that the strongest hope for counteracting the
germs of decay and for fulfilling the high potentialities
in the social heritage of Japan, lies in implanting more
widely the spirit and principles of Christ.

Gigantic forces are in conflict in New Japan. People
and government alike appear to be swept along by
tides beyond their control. Yet the facts herein re-
corded tend to show that in the welter there are dis-
cernible great directive and creative forces. Some of

them are ideals and traditions preserved from Old
Japan, and they are precious and powerful. But even
more precious, more indispensable is the quiet but
penetrating- and transforming power which Christ
has begun to exert in the life of Japan. He is the
supreme source of those creative forces which alone
offer hope for either East or West. He is the veritable
fulfilment of the visions of Japan's noblest prophets
and sages.

The author spent twenty happy years in Japan. He
believes in the people as a whole, and numbers among
them many trusted friends. But friendship has not
prevented a frank statement of the weak and menacing
as well as the strong and promising aspects of Japanese
character and institutions. To compare small things
with great, the attempt has been made to emulate the
appreciative but honest kind of criticism exemplified
in Lord Bryce's "American Commonwealth." Al-
though this book was written for occidental students
of Japan, the writer has said nothing which he would
not gladly say to a Japanese friend.

G. M. F.

VII

NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

The vowels in Japanese are pronounced nearly
like the vowels in the musical scale, a as in fa,
e as in re, i as in mi, o as in do, and u like oo
in boot. In the dipthongs ci and ai both vowels
are pronounced, but very rapidly as one sound.

There is no accent, each syllable having prac-
tically the same value, except where certain
vowels are prolonged. Long and short vowels
in Japanese mean simply the length of time given
to them, not a difference in sound. For instance,
in Osaka, the O has about twice the length of
each of the other syllables.

An important point is that each syllable ends
with a vowel, except when the letter n ends a
word, or when there is a double consonant, as in
"Hok-kaido." Double consonants are always both
given their full value.

Consonants have nearly the same sounds as in
English. Ch as in child. G is always hard. L
and v are lacking.

Vlll

Creative Forces in Japan

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE

The heroes of any people are perhaps the surest
index of their character. So long and so crowded
with notable characters is the history of Japan that
the modern Japanese youth has, in consequence, a
superabundance of heroes to emulate. Our plan is
to choose just enough of them to show what qualities
the Japanese people most admire and themselves
exemplify.

I. THE ROLL OF JAPAN'S HEROES

The old-school Japanese historian and most of the
school textbooks represent the Empire as having been
founded in 660 B. c. by Jimmu Tenno, direct descen-
dant of the Sun Goddess. The tales which recount
the exploits of Jimmu and his successors are about
as historical as the myths and legends of Greece and
Rome. Not till the fourth century of our era does
legend give place to the solid ground of history. Then
appears Emperor Nintoku, revered for his fatherly
benevolence toward his people, as illustrated in this
well-known story: One day when Nintoku looked
from his palace tower far and wide over the country,
he saw no smoke, arising from the houses and at once
inferred that his subjects were too poor even to cook

2 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

rice. Accordingly, he intermitted for three years the
customary forced labor of the people. During that
period the palace fell into such disrepair that the rain
entered the cracks and soaked the coverlets. But when
Nintoku again surveyed the land from his tower, he
beheld wreaths of smoke rising from every cottage,
and he rejoiced exceedingly, saying, "My people's
poverty is none other than Our poverty; but my
people's prosperity is verily Our prosperity." This
tradition of the fatherly solicitude of the Throne for
the people has happily been true of many of the
emperors, and today, when revolutionary ideas of
popular rights are abroad in the land, the Throne
still remains inviolate in the reverent affection of
the people.

With equal veneration do the Japanese honor Prince
Shotoku, who lived three centuries after Nintoku.
He has been called "the Constantine of Japanese
Buddhism," for when the foreign faith was struggling
to gain a foothold, he gave it his powerful support.
Some y^ears ago I saw at Tennoji, Osaka, the largest
bell in the country, weighing, perhaps, ten tons, being
hung in honor of Shotoku's thirteen hundredth anni-
versary. It is a good sign that the Japanese today
delight to do honor to one who was indeed a prince,
an enlightened statesman, advocating close intercourse
with China, a believer in religion, and a patron of art
and letters. It is to the laws drawn up by Shotoku
about 610 A. D. that the Japanese attribute the trans-
formation of their government from the patriarchal
system, when the sovereign was only the head of a

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 3

group of tribal chiefs, to the imperial system of auto-
cratic authority, which lasted until 1159 when the
Shoguns, or military regents, eclipsed the Throne and
feudalism began.

Buddhism has played so mighty a part in Japanese
culture that one is not surprised to find that several
of the popular heroes were founders of Buddhist sects.
Three of them stand preeminent : Kobo Daishi in the
eighth century, founder of the Shingon (True Word)
Sect, who may be compared with the mystics of Chris-
tian history; Shinran in the early thirteenth century,
a Buddhist Luther, founder of the Shin Sect, who de-
nounced reliance on good works and celibacy and
exalted heart-belief in the merits of Amida; and
Nichiren, in the late thirteenth century, who revolted
against the older sects and may be compared in his
bigotry, patriotism, and missionary zeal with St. Paul
before his conversion.

Kobo Daishi is equally honored for his genius in in-
venting the running script form of the forty-seven
syllables. Without this simple syllabary all books .
would have continued to be written in the complicated
Chinese ideographs, which even today are "Greek" to
the common folk.

The appeal of the passive virtues to the Japanese
heart is illustrated by the fact that three of the most
venerated men of recent centuries were scholars and
saints, all of them bred on Confucian rather than
Buddhist teachings. The most famous of them all was
Nakae Toju, the Sage of Omi, whose sincere and lofty
! teachings and character so impressed the peasants that

4 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

the whole countryside became noted for its honesty.
When I visited his humble cottage, preserved as when
he lived in it, with the gnarled old wisteria vine (toju)
that he loved still growing beside it, I gladly removed
my shoes in reverence as well as in accord with custom.

Toju's disciple Banzan is likewise numbered among
the sages, though he was a conservancy engineer and
economist as well as a saintly teacher. But it was his
heroic willingness to endure persecution and exile
rather than to betray his convictions which has won
for him the homage of later generations.

Coming to the nineteenth century we find the
"farmer saint," Ninomiya Sontoku, who preached the
gospel of industry, thrift, and gratitude toward the
gods of the fruitful earth. His homely wisdom
breathes in these words, so like certain verses in the
Sermon on the Mount : "We Japanese think that when
we die we become gods or Buddhas. But I am sure it
is impossible for a man to become a god or a Buddha
when he dies if he is not one when he is living. It
is just as impossible for a mackerel to become a dried
flounder when it is dead, or for a cedar tree to become
a pine tree when it is cut down, as it is for a man to
become a god or a Buddha when he dies, if he is not
one when he is living."

More stirring is the character of another peasant
saint, Sakura Sogoro, who unflinchingly suffered cru-
cifixion because he had dared to appeal in behalf of his
fellow-peasants to the Shogun against the oppression
of the local feudal baron.

But the most ardent enthusiasm of the people has

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 5

always gone out, not toward the saints or the states-
men, but toward the red-blooded fighters and knights
errant whose deeds blaze forth on every page of me-
dieval Japanese history. There is no one key to the
interpretation of Japanese character, but the nearest
approach to it is the samurai, or knight, with his ideals
of courage and self-control and selfless loyalty. How
the blood of every Japanese lad leaps as he hears some
story-teller depict the matchless loyalty of Masashige,
or as he beholds the drama of the Forty-seven Ronin
(lordless samurai), who, after plotting patiently for
many years, avenged the murder of their lord and
then committed suicide by hara-kiri, or disembowel-
ling, in the glad consciousness of a supreme duty nobly
accomplished.

The modern beau ideal of Japanese youths is either
the giant soldier Saigo Takamori, who headed the
futile rebellion of 1878, or General Nogi, the hero of
Port Arthur, who lost his two sons in the siege,
and finally, in 1912, committed hara-kiri, partly from
remorse over the thirty thousand lives his conduct of
the siege had cost and partly as a protest against the
luxury and corruption among army officers. Both
Saigo and Nogi were incorruptible patriots, unspar-
ing in self-discipline, haters of sham.

Several Christians have won a place in the roll of
heroes far beyond the Christian circle. Chief among
them is Joseph Hardy Neesima,* who, at a time when
to leave Japan was to invite the death penalty, ran

* This is the spelling familiar to American readers, but a more
accurate rendering of the Japanese name is "Niisima."

6 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

away to America in search of the true God, and re-
turned to become the founder of Doshisha University
and a leader of the infant Protestant Church. It was
he who said: "Let us advance upon our knees," and
who during his lingering last illness prayed for each
of his hundreds of students.

Our gallery of heroes would be very incomplete if
we did not add a few of the occidental characters
whom the Japanese most revere. The list is not unlike
one which an American or British youth might make,
yet there are differences. Besides Socrates and Col-
umbus, Bismarck, Gladstone, Washington, Lincoln,
and Roosevelt, many educated Japanese would place
St. Francis, Tolstoy, Mazzini, Karl Marx, and Dar-
win. Jesus they would nearly all put in the foremost
place, even though they knew only fragments of his
life. But Caesar and Napoleon and modern captains
of industry would also have numerous admirers.

Thus far we have only hinted at the character
of present-day Japanese by describing some of their
heroes. No doubt the resulting impression is too favor-
able. In honesty we should examine both sides of the
shield, for it is our purpose to gain a faithful concep-
tion of the liabilities no less than the assets of the Jap-
anese people. It would, of course, be more congenial
to focus attention only on their strong points, but to
do that would not enable us to forecast the kind of
influence they are likely to exert on other nations
or to discover the places where the power of Christ
is especially needed.

It is well to disabuse our minds at the outset of the

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 7

notion that the Japanese are either super-men or mys-
tery-men. A Japanese thinker thus exploded this no-
tion for me : "It makes me smile to hear Westerners
talk about the uncanny sublety and ability of us
Japanese as though we were demigods. The fact
is we are very ordinary, fallible folk, eager to be
in the front rank, but with little besides ambi-
tion and grit and a fear of Western nations to put
us there."

Differences of language, religion, and custom do
set up a barrier, but it is no harder for us to under-
stand the Japanese than for them to understand us.
It is hard, but not at all impossible either way for
any person who will pay the price in sympathy, im-
agination, and effort, instead of being satisfied with
the hearsay deck-chair opinions of casual travelers
and sensational writers. The Japanese are admitted
by everyone who is well acquainted with them and
their history to have developed a brilliant culture and
to possess today capacities of a high order. Ap-
proaching the subject, then, with a fair mind, we shall
attempt first to see the Japanese as they are, which re-
quires sympathy as well as knowledge, and later we
shall djscuss how they are being made better.

II. MENTAL CAPACITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

In mental ability the Japanese rank high. Like the
Chinese, they have, until recently, been brought up to
learn by rote, but with surprising speed they have in-
troduced Western education and scientific method.
The mental ability of the Japanese has recently been

8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

strikingly confirmed by the investigations of Professor
Terman of Stanford University.*

The philosophical ability of the Japanese has been
over-rated. It is true that the more advanced stu-
dents read Western philosophers and enjoy abstract
discussion, but the bent of the people as a whole is
decidedly practical and concrete. The rank and file,
even more than in occidental countries, are appealed
to through sentiment, story, and immediate practical
advantage. Yet, in the field of scientific research not
a few Japanese have attained eminence. The best
known instances are Dr. Kitasato and Dr. Noguchi,
whose brilliant work in bacteriology culminated in the
discovery of the bacilli of plague and yellow fever and
the remedy for beri-beri.

Intellectual capacity of a large creative sort has been
exhibited most notably by the Japanese in the realm of
government and statesmanship. The organization of
Japan by lyeyasu, the Charlemagne of seventeenth
century Japan, was a masterpiece of political genius,
for the structure he devised functioned successfully for
over two hundred years. The world knows what saga-
city and foresight certain Japanese statesmen have ex-
hibited in modern times. Mr. Tyler Dennett in his
\4mericans in Eastern Asia has shown how the Japa-
nese policy towards Korea, which was formulated
thirty-five years ago, was steadfastly adhered to until
it resulted logically in the annexation of Korea in 1910.

It is customary to speak of the Japanese as strong
in imitation but weak in invention, and there is some

* See page 60.

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 9

truth in this assumption. But while they cannot lay
claim to many great inventions or creative achieve-
ments, they have never adopted ideas or institutions
from other countries without so modifying and adding
to them as to create something new. Even in pottery
and weaving designs Japanese craftsmen have been
accustomed to give an original shade or twist to each
new piece, as foreign buyers often discover when the)''
wish to match a color or a pattern. Their power of
selective discrimination in gathering the best in all
realms from other nations has been brilliantly illus-
trated during the last fifty years. They may be said to
have skimmed the cream from both East and West.
One factor in their capacity to assimilate ideas from
all quarters is their marked inquisitiveness, always the
sign of a growing mind.

Another prominent trait, lying at the base of most
of the nation's recent progress, is the passion for ed-
ucation. The common school system was founded by
Viscount Mori, an early Minister to the United
States and a Christian. He was aided by foreign
advisers. The school enrolment now is as high as
in any but the most advanced European nations, being-
over ninety-eight per cent of both boys and girls. One
result is that nearly every Japanese under thirty years
of age can read and write, and it is common to see the
jinrikisha pullers and navvies reading newspapers and
novels. It is a very poor school that is not filled
to overflowing. Five or even ten times as many men
as can be admitted take the stiff entrance examinations
for the higher schools. Apprentices and artisans who

io CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

rise at daybreak and work ten or twelve hours are
enroled by the thousands in evening schools. One of
the schools teaching English only, in Kanda Ward,
that hive of students in Tokyo, numbers from five to
eight thousand pupils. Correspondence schools flour-
ish. Girls have sold their virtue in order to earn
money wherewith to educate their brothers or them-
selves.

But there are defects in the educational system
which reflect weaknesses in the people. As in every
bureaucratic country, uniformity and system have be-
come a fetish. The private schools, especially those
conducted by Christians, have rendered a great service
by standing for variation and freedom for individual
initiative, but they have found it exceedingly hard to
resist the steam-roller of State regulation. Of late,
however, the government authorities seem to be
awakening to the need of just the elements which the
private schools can supply, including the character-
building power of Christ. Another weakness is the
tendency to over-value examinations, lecture-notes,
and degrees. Many a student crams, drinks coffee,
and manages to get by the dreaded examination ogre,
but he may have crippled his health in the bargain.
Superficiality is not peculiar to Japanese students, but
the very fact that Japan is as full of new ideas and
books as a switchboard is of wires tempts some eager
students to dip into one after the other only long
enough to acquire the catch- words.

If it be suggested that fickleness is a Japanese trait,
I would reply that it is rash to make the assertion.

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 11

Only fifty years ago the entire menu of Western civ-
ilization was served in one promiscuous course to the
Japanese people. They forthwith tried to eat it all, but
finding that impossible, began to dip into this and that
and the other dish like tea-tasters. Any student of
old Japan would be more likely to accuse the people
of being set and stolidly slow and conservative than
of being fickle. It will require another generation for
the new molds of custom and thought to harden. The
momentary fickleness, if it be such, means plasticity,
a trait most welcome to all who would like to see the
people recast in a Christian mold.

The Japanese are a nation of artists. Their aes-
thetic sensibility and the delicate physique of their cul-
tivated classes sometimes make them appear feminine
to an occidental observer. There is some truth in
this, and it is rather in their favor than otherwise. As
Dr. Nitobe has happily put it, "A Japanese gentleman
feels like a woman and acts like a man." Artistically
the only modern people who approach them are the
Italians. In what other land do peasants uncover in
reverent delight before a beautiful landscape or a full-
orbed moon? And the color-prints now so eagerly
sought by connoisseurs the world over were created,
not by cultured aristocrats, but by plebeian artisans,
who found in such works, inimitably beautiful and
whimsical by turn, an outlet for their pent-up humor
and love of beauty. The unfailing harmony of soft
colors and the simplicity of line are revelations of the
moral as well as of the intellectual traits of the people.
In the weird No dramas, also, are depicted with almost

12 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Grecian beauty and force, the mystery and the pathos
of life. The No is original with the Japanese. But
Japan has given to the world no works either in
literature or in art unless it be the giant bronze
statues of Buddha which can compare in grandeur of
conception or masculine vigor of treatment with the
masterpieces of Europe.

How shall one reconcile aesthetic taste with the
atrocious architecture of so many Western-styled
structures in Japan? By the same principle that one
accounts for the bad manners of some Japanese trav-
elers in railway coaches. If the imported forms were
not so radically different from anything in their old
system, they could readily incorporate them, but as it
is, they try to imitate the foreign style in toto and
make a botch of it.

The artistic genius of the Japanese is manifestly
related to the rich and picturesque scenery that greets
them on every hand. They love the outdoors and
drink in the beauties of nature in all her changing
moods. They revel in festivals and even in hard out-
door work; country girls at school in the city are often
seen to grow restless and to pine at the rice planting
time when they long to be at home with all their family
and neighbors, wading in mud to their knees and
chanting old ditties while they set out the tender rice
shoots.

One of the most attractive features of the school
life in Japan is the scheme of excursions by which
each year hundreds of thousands of boys and girls go
off under the leadership of their teachers to visit spots

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 13

noted for their beauty or historic interest. If they are
primary school children, they generally go only to near-
by places. Each child will have his frugal luncheon of
rice, pickle, and beans or stiff curds wrapped in a col-
ored bandanna (furoshiki) and tied to his belt. They
are more restrained and docile than occidental school-
boys and rarely cause trouble either to their teacher-
guides or to the farmers and townspeople whose prop-
erty they pass. If they are high school boys, they
may go on a trip of two or three hundred miles, their
impedimenta limited to a tooth-brush, an extra pair of
rice-straw sandals, a towel that serves also as a hand-
kerchief and a diary that is religiously kept. A de-
cade ago the boys and girls alike acted with the de-
corum of adults, but with the influx of ideas like "self-
determination" and "feminism," they are evincing
more of the freedom and self-assertion which charac-
terize youth in the Occident. But even yet they retain
a pronounced love of nature. On their excursions or
at social gatherings it is not unusual for them to pen
delicate little poems of the standard thirty-one syl-
lables which they may tie, without a blush, to the
branch of a cherry tree in bloom.

This love of nature is intimately intertwined with
religious sentiment. They have retained in a refined
form the animism of a primitive age, which sees a god
or spirit in every wondrous or powerful object. Hence
polytheism and pantheism many gods, or all is god
cling more tenaciously to the Japanese than to most
modern peoples. In this sense, assuredly, the Japa-
nese are very religious. The sacred rapes and fringes

14 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

of paper with which they deck every grand tree or rock
or waterfall are instinct with a sense of the mystery
and wonder of creation. It may be all vague and
mingled with superstition, but it nourishes reverence
and a sense of dependence on the higher powers.

The Japanese are both emotional and self-controlled.
Their soubriquet "the Frenchmen of the East" does
not seem appropriate to the typical samurai or even
to the Japanese traveler whom strangers find so un-
communicative. Yet intimate acquaintance with the
people or even casual observation of their public gath-
erings reveals a strong strain of feeling, only awaiting
the right touch of oratory or exciting event to express
itself. The immobile features and the stiff, restrained
demeanor are the social heritage of centuries of a
stoical samurai tradition. Underneath the crust the
volcanic fires are burning hot. Where logical appeals
will move a small group of intellectuals, sentiment
will sway the multitudes and the intellectuals alike.

III. SOME MORAL QUALITIES

As to the chief moral qualities of the Japanese peo-
jple, if one asked any school-boy what they were, he
Jwould promptly answer, "Loyalty and filial piety."
And he would be right. From ancient times they have
been the twin pillars of society. In every feudal order,
loyalty was the cardinal virtue, for life depended upon
it. And the persistence of feudalism, up to 1868, has
left loyalty still in the first place. In olden times loy-
alty meant chiefly devotion to a near-by feudal clan
chieftain who protected his vassals, for the people had

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 15

but little thought of the far-away Emperor. But when, u-
in the struggle between two groups of clans, the roy-
alist clans, in 1868, restored the Emperor to full power
and ended the Shogunate or military regency, the
sagacious leaders in the new regime encouraged the
people to concentrate upon the Emperor the loyalties
which they had formerly shown toward their lords.
So vehement has been the emphasis upon loyalty to
the Emperor and its correlative, national patriotism,
that other more homely virtues have been overshad-
owed, and in man}'- cases a blind nationalism has been
generated which tends to be anti-foreign and jingo-
istic. Yet despite such perversions, the spirit of loyal-*
ty remains a great asset of the Japanese people. In
superiors and heroes, but increasingly it is being shown
the past, "it has been too much confined ioJudrvicLual
toward .causes anrl prinriplps The devotion which
many a struggling church or school or labor union
has called forth, is big with promise. Christianity, byj
its appeal to loyalty toward a Person who embodiesj
in Himself both the heroic ideal and the principles of \
right and truth, builds upon and raises to a higher \
plane the old-time loyalties.

Filial piety toward parents and ancestors has also,^
survived in remarkable vigor in Japan, because the
family system still maintains a central place. To a
Westerner, the notion of the dictation of the family
council to every individual member savors of tyranny.
The preferences of the individual as to marriage or oc-
cupation or residence or faith have, until recently,
counted but little in comparison with the interests of

16 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

the "house" and the opinions of the elders. The most
tragic situations in Japanese life have always arisen
from the conflict between individual and family will,
or between the two loyalties to the family and to
the liege lord or Emperor. Here again the Christian
revelation of the Heavenly Father, and of the all-in-
clusive family, finds a prepared soil, and it tends to
relieve the individual of the tyrannical dictation of the
family council and put him under the liberating direc-
tion of a conscience sensitive to the Father's will.

With the supremacy of the family and the impor-
tance of sons to perpetuate it has gone the tendency to
consider women as means rather than ends, persons
not in their own right, but by virtue of bearing and
rearing children. The urgency of keeping up the
family line has encouraged concubinage, divorce, and
adoption. Filial duty has required many a daughter
to give herself uncomplainingly to a life of shame in
order to> earn money to support misguided parents.
Yet the emancipation of woman and the loosening of
the grip of family authority are both taking place
rapidly nowadays, almost too rapidly. Christian in-
fluence has had much to do with hastening these
changes, but the trouble is that the Christian principles
of self-control and of glad bondage to the service of
family, self, and society for Christ's sake are spreading
too slowly.

Propriety, or doing the appropriate thing in the
right way, is one of the leading virtues. It roots
back in the Chinese teaching on "universal harmony,"
embracing the proper conduct toward superiors and

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 17

inferiors. Hence, etiquette is an elaborate system',
with prescriptions for all manner of situations. To a
Japanese, propriety is a fine art ; to an American, it is
the expression of a good heart. To the one, form
is inseparable from morality; to the other, right mo-
tive covers a multitude of breaches of good form.
To "save one's face" takes rank with defending one's
integrity. Hence, great pains must be taken to admin-
ister a rebuke or a punishment with proper regard to
the "face" of the person affected. But if the humil-
iation of the person is sought, the surest way is to
expose him to ridicule. In the Japanese home and
school-room ridicule is the most potent form of dis-
cipline, whereas corporal punishment is almost never
inflicted. In some parts of the Orient it is not unusual
for an irate foreigner to use his cane on the shoulders
of a jinrikisha puller or a coolie who has offended
him, but in Japan such conduct would land the for-
eigner in a police station.

Are the Japanese truthful and honest? In other
words, are they dependable ? Yes and no. Propriety
in the large and ethical sense just described still takes
precedence with many Japanese over what we know
as the abstract principles of right and wrong. An
offense against the. wishes of a superior is likely to
seem more heinous than an offense against impersonal
right or law. It is another vestige of the loyalty so
deeply ingrained by feudalism. Hence, in everyday
life a servant or a tradesman may prevaricate rather
than displease you. Honesty in commercial affairs
is, in every nation, a slow outgrowth of a commercial

i8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

order, such as the Chinese have had for many genera-
tions, and is not deemed an important virtue in a
feudal age, such as that from which the Japanese have
but barely emerged. The merchant used to be tol-
erated by the two-sworded samurai much as the
Jewish money-lender was tolerated in the time of
"Ivanhoe." He ranked lowest in the social scale, below
the fanner and the artisan, and only just above the
outcast. Naturally he had to live by his wits and knew
no law but self-preservation. But with the modern
rise of trade and industry, the merchant has risen in
society, and a long list of merchant princes have been
created barons and viscounts.

But someone asks, "How about the necessity of
employing Chinese tellers in Japanese banks?" The
simple answer is it is a lie made out of whole cloth,
but it has astounding vitality. There never has been
a Chinese employed in any bank in Japan except in the
British and other foreign banks, most of which have
their main offices in China or India.

In feudal times the samurai lived by their swords
and scorned money, and one reason for the compara-
tive honesty of the public services is that they are so
largely officered by men of samurai ancestry. The
emphasis laid upon loyalty has also done much to
prevent cheating the government. Yet, even in the
army and navy there have been shocking scandals
through bribery and theft during the last decade, for
it takes more than a proud ancestry to keep a man
straight when he sees men all around him getting

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 19

rich by speculation and graft while he slaves away on
meager pay.

In unnumbered journeys in nearly every province
of the Empire I have never lost a penny by theft,
though I have lodged in inns where the noiseless
sliding inner doors and partitions without locks made
sneak-thievery by fellow-guests quite easy. Similar
testimony would be borne by hundreds of other mis-
sionaries. The peasants and the officials, as a whole,
are remarkably punctilious a^out other people's prop-
erty, and the domestics in foreigners' homes most
of whom come from the country are rarely guilty
of anything worse than taking small "squeezes" or
commissions from tradesmen. In the hotels and the
houses of foreign merchants in port cities I have
heard of not a few dishonest servants, but among
scores of missionary families that I have known,
there have been only two or three cases.

The trickery and rascality of many contractors and
small merchants have doubtless done much to give
Japan a bad name. They have notoriously easy con-
sciences, and even Jarge merchants have canceled or-
ders and stolen trademarks and shipped goods far be-
low sample ; but, speaking broadly, the Japanese people
are trustworthy, especially where they feel account-
able to some person who is himself just and straight.

Self-confidence is a marked trait, even though the
samurai code requires that it be veiled behind a dig-
nified reserve.. And who shall deny that the achieve-
ments of the nation and of countless individuals have

20 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

given good warrant for the feeling? The quiet assur-
ance with which an artisan will tackle the job of imitat-
ing some foreign device on the basis of a woodcut in a
mail-order catalog, or the readiness of any town poli-
tician to step up higher even to taking a place in the
cabinet, has its amusing as well as admirable side. It
is all so much like the pluck and self-reliance and "self-
made man" doctrine so popular in 'America, that
Americans with a sense of humor would smile to see
the mirror held up to themselves by their Japanese
cousins. Many a Japanese sophomore has assured me,
in all seriousness, that he felt impelled to carve out a
great career in politics and save the Empire. And some
of them are making their dreams come true. I know
of more than one case like that of the lad who walked
three hundred miles to enter high school, worked his
way through, and is now a national force.

But conceit lurks at the heels of self-confidence. It
is probably the bumptious self-assertiveness of many
of the Japanese in China and Siberia which has gone
far to make them anathema to other nationalities.
One can make allowances for the unlimited patriotic
pride of some Japanese when the primary school teach-
ing about the Land of the Gods is taken into account,
but it is none the less irritating to foreigners, especially
if, like Americans, they are gifted with a blind eye
for their own country's faults.

Cheerfulness and pessimism have both been at-
tributed to the Japanese. But my experience is that,
while Buddhism has given a fatalistic and pessimistic
tone to literature and thought, yet the ordinary people

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 21

take life as it comes with equanimity and a smile. To
be sure, the smile is often a matter of etiquette, an evi-
dence of that samurai control over the emotions which
has become ingrained in all classes. But I have been
struck by the imperturbable good nature and cheerful
conversation of the average Japanese, of the jinrikisha
man who pulls you over hard country roads, of the
farmer resting on his mattock to pass the time of day,
of the clerks and hotel servants, and even of the
statuesque policeman, if .you accost them graciously
in their own tongue.

Energy is the last characteristic to be mentioned.
It finds outlet in unflagging industry among the farm-
ers and artisans. To be sure, the pressure of necessity
does not allow much loafing, but even the well-to-do
classes exhibit an energy and a zest for life which
impress the traveler fresh from easy-going tropical
lands. No one would speak of "laziness" in the same
breath with "Japanese." In old Japan, industry was
often a by-product of the accepted ethical code, but in
new Japan a powerful new force supplies much of the
drive the ambition to excel, the thirst for progress,
both individually and nationally. Everyone who lias
tried to enlist the Japanese in a new enterprise, like
the Christian movement, has probably at some time
been dismayed to have them dash off and set to work
before they had half mastered the idea, but on second
thought one has laughed and thanked God that they
had so much energy and ambition; for you can steer
a moving ship, but there is small hope for a scow
stuck in the mud.

22 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

IV. PHYSICAL STAMINA

But what of the physical framework which supports
the mental and moral qualities of the Japanese people?
The phrase "a sound mind in a sound body" may not
inappropriately be applied to them, for physical
stamina they possess in good measure.

Their racial stock has the advantage of combining
the rugged brawn of the northern Mongols and abor-
iginal hairy Ainu with the temperamental plasticity
and sensitiveness of the Malays.* They have always
produced good fighters as well as good artists. Count-
less deeds of superhuman endurance and dash are re-
counted in the old Japanese romances. And in our
day, the build of the soldiers, drafted from every
corner of the Empire, and the achievements of the
school athletes in the Far Eastern Olympic Games give
evidence that the race is holding its own. American
tennis stars can testify that in Kumagae and Shimizu
they have found foemen worthy of their best racquets.

Japanese soldiers average five or six inches shorter
than the American doughboy. But the difference is two
thirds in length of leg, whereas, if seated they would
appear nearly of a height. The infantry are rated
among the best in the world, partly because their
stocky, short-legged build makes them splendid march-
ers. Just as in England the modern man often finds
himself too large to get into the suit of mail worn by

*The ancient legends which tell of the coming to Japan of
demi-god conquerors from the northwest and from the south
are confirmed by critical history. There are even some traces of
an infusion of Aryan blood via the steppes of Siberia.

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 23

a famous mediaeval ancestor, so, in Japan, the ancient
armor shows that on the average the race has not
grown smaller. As a matter of fact, the army meas-
urements indicate that the average height has increased
at least half an inch during the last generation. This
may be due to better food and sanitation or to giving
the blood freer circulation by the wider use of chairs
instead of squatting. The outdoor pursuits of the bulk
of the people for seventy-five per cent of them are
still farmers or fishermen and the temperate and
fairly bracing climate account in large degree for the
rugged physique of peasant Japanese. Vegetarians
may find comfort in the fact that the Japanese have,
for ages, eaten practically no meat except fish, and
even today beef and milk are only slowy passing out
of the category of luxuries.

Japanese physicians are numerous and well trained,
but the construction of dwellings and the habits of the
people make proper sanitation and ventilation difficult.
There are no underground sewers, and night-soil
stands in cesspools and is removed now and then in
tubs. The loose construction of the dwellings allows
some ventilation in the daytime, but at night and in
stormy weather when the wooden shutters are all
closed, hardly a crevice is left open. The carbonic
acid gas generated by the charcoal braziers used to
heat houses in winter undoubtedly makes the people
more susceptible to pulmonary diseases. Indeed, tuber-
culosis is a serious menace, claiming more victims in
Japan than in America or in any European nation.
One of the causes of good-natured altercations be-

24 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

tween American guests and hotel managers is the strict
rule against leaving even a crack open between the
sliding outer doors which encase every hotel. Beside
dreading night air, the people are afraid that thieves
may take advantage of such cracks.

Certain institutions and ideals have tended to lower
physical vigor. Prolonged practice of concubinage
by the upper classes has inevitably impoverished some
of the ancient family lines, necessitating the ingrafting
by adoption or marriage of virile middle-class stock.
Then, too, the vacant, shut-in lives to which many
of the upper-class women are condemned, even today,
cannot but tend to physical as well as mental deteriora-
tion. But a still more dangerous foe is disease caused
by sexual vices, victims of which are said to fill at least
a third of the hospital beds and temple graves. In-
junctions to self-control and purity are not lacking
in the Confucian and Shinto teachings, but the domi-
nant influence of Buddhism, with its low estimate
of woman and its easy compromise with sin in ex-
change for penance and pilgrimage, has offered little
barrier to prostitution, impurity, and self-indulgence.
The pest-holes of illicit vice in the cities of America
and Great Britain are a reproach, but is it not vastly
better for the morals and health of a people to main-
tain a ceaseless warfare against immorality and put
it under the ban of both law and public opinion than
to give it, as in Japan, the guise of respectability by
state license and protection, and the gloss of safety
by an admittedly ineffective medical inspection?.

A-Jap

H
td

W
O
O

!z;

24 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Certain institutions and ideals have tended to lower
physical vigor. Prolonged practice of concubinage
by the upper classes has inevitably impoverished some
of the ancient family lines, necessitating the ingrafting
by adoption or marriage of virile middle-class stock.
Then, too. the vacant, shut-in lives to which many
of the upper-class women are condemned, even today,
cannot but tend to physical as well as mental deteriora-
tion. But a still more dangerous foe is disease caused
by sexual vices, victims of which are said to fill at least
a third of the hospital beds and temple graves. In-
junctions to self-control and purity are not lacking
in the Confucian and Shinto teachings, but the domi-
nant influence of Buddhism, with its low estimate
of woman and its easy compromise with sin in ex-
change for penance and pilgrimage, has offered little
barrier to prostitution, impurity, and self-indulgence.
The pest-holes of illicit vice in the cities of America
and Great Britain are a reproach, but is it not vastly
better for the morals and health of a people to main-
tain a ceaseless warfare against immorality and put
it under the ban of both law and public opinion than
to give it, as in Japan, the guise of respectability by
state license and protection, and the gloss of safety
by an admittedly ineffective medical inspection?

A.-.Iap

H
X

fcj

A KNITTING CLASS OF WORKING WOMEN, SINGING AT A CHRISTMAS
ENTERTAINMENT HELD AT MISS MACDONALD's HOME AND ATTENDED
BY FOUR HUNDRED WORKMEN AND EX-PRISONERS AND THEIR FAMI-
LIES. BELOW, THE LABOR NIGHT SCHOOL OF THE OSAKA Y. M. C. A.

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 25

Equally menacing to physical stamina are the un-
healthy conditions of life due to the growth of cities
and the concomitant crowding of a growing proportion
of the people into factories and offices and unwhole-
some living quarters. Factory life is especially hard
on women. The effect of mill work on the fertility
of women has been proved to be bad, notably in Great
Britain, for the birth-rate in textile areas where women
work in the mills is only twenty-two per thousand, in
contrast' with forty in the Rhondda Valley, a mining
area, where the women do not work in the mines.

v. JAPAN'S PIVOTAL LOCATION

It is natural for us to turn now to the stage on'whicn
the Japanese people, with the endowments we have
described, are called upon to play their part. We shall
find that in Japan's natural location and economic re-
sources there are both assets and liabilities to be taken
into account in forecasting the development and
influence of the nation.

The isolated location of the Island Empire, sur-
rounded on all sides by stormy seas, has been a strong
defense. Conquerors on the mainland have cast cove-
tous eyes upon the Islands, but the only serious attempt
at conquest ended in ignominious failure. No less a
conqueror than Kublai Khan sent an armada to subdue
them in the thirteenth century; but the valor of the
Japanese defense and the timely breaking of a severe
storm wrecked the fleet and sent the survivors home
in disgrace. It is partly to this immunity to outside

B-'Jap

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 25

v. JAPAN'S PIVOTAL LOCATION

B-'Jap

26 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

attack that the Japanese owe the fact that their royal
line has continued unbroken for at least fifteen hundred
years.

Commercially and strategically, the location of
Japan is unique. She stands like a door-keeper to all
eastern Asia, where one third of the world's inhabitants
live, a population equaling that of all Europe and
North America. In that same area are the world's
largest untapped stores of iron, coal, and precious
minerals, timber, fish, furs, rubber, and lumber ; besides
wheat fields and pastures in Siberia and Mongolia
comparable with those of Canada and the Mississippi
Valley. A glance at the map shows the vantage point
occupied by Japan : she is on the shortest, or great circle
route, from the Pacific Coast of the United States
and Canada to the ports of Asia, an inevitable coaling
and watering station; her ice-free harbors are almost
equidistant from China, Manila, Siberia, and Alaska.

The Japanese feel flattered to have their country
called the "England of the Orient," and there are
manifest resemblances: picturesque islands in a tem-
perate climate, immune from conquest, yet command-
ing the trade routes to a rich continent; blessed with
the coal and harbors and sea-loving men required for
a great shipping industry. Like England, too, Japan
has a long start of her continental neighbors in the
development of machine industry and of capitalistic
enterprise.

It might even be argued that greatness has been
thrust upon Japan by virtue of her location as the
middle term between two continents. Given peace and

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 27

reasonable enterprise, Japan's prosperity should con-
tinue indefinitely as a by-product of the growth of the
commerce and industry of her neighbors on both sides
of the Pacific.

No longer do the prophetic sentences uttered by
Theodore Roosevelt twenty years ago sound like
rhetoric: "The Mediterranean era died with the dis-
covery of America. The Atlantic era is now at the.
height of its development and must soon exhaust the
resources at its command. The Pacific era, destined
to be the greatest of all, is just at its dawn." The
economic aftermath of the World War has made this
prophecy regarding the Pacific Basin seem more credi-
ble. Continental Europe, chaotic and impoverished,
may recover a measure of prosperity within a genera-
tion, but her erstwhile preeminence in industry and
trade is apparently being lost to America and Japan,
who will, in time, be powerfully reinforced by China.
They command an unparalleled combination of ad-
vantages : easy access to raw materials and vast unde-
veloped markets, technical skill, cheap labor, and
abundant capital. A poet might call this combination
the triumphal arch of economic supremacy, and in that
arch, by virtue of her very location, Japan is destined
to be an important stone.

VI. LIMITED RAW MATERIALS

But Japan has certain serious limitations. While
she has easy access to raw materials, she is notably
deficient in coal, iron, and cotton in her own territory.
As Eckel points out, this will inevitably handicap the

28 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Japanese in the industrial race.* Japan's known coal
reserves are only eight billion tons, slightly less than
Spain's, and only one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of
America's, or one twenty-fourth of Great Britain's.
"Though sufficient for current Japanese uses, it does
not seem to justify either in quality or quantity any
hope that it will be the basis of a very extensive export
trade, either in coal itself or in heavy manufactured
commodities." The small supply of iron ore in Japan
is another handicap.

In the light of these facts the strenuous efforts made
by the Japanese to gain control of the large coal and
iron deposits in Manchuria, Shantung, and Siberia are
perfectly intelligible. In South Manchuria, the Fushun
colliery is especially rich. On the Yangtse River the
Japanese, in partnership with the Chinese, control the
important H'anyehping Iron Mills. In 1921, raw
cotton had to be imported from America and India to
the value of $220,000,000, which was twenty-seven
per cent of all imports. It has rightly been observed
that Japan's dependence on America for raw cotton
and machinery would make even extreme militarists
hesitate long before urging a war against America.

The wealth of Japan increased fabulously during
and just after the World War. In place of adding
$90,000,000 a year to her debt, as she had been doing
even in normal times, her sudden profits on foreign
trade enabled her to redeem a large portion of her
foreign loans and to increase her gold holdings to one
billion dollars, a six-fold increase in six years. Her
* Eckel, E. C. : Coal, Iron and War, p. 341. Henry Holt, 1920.

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE JAPANESE 29

national wealth swelled from sixteen to forty-three
billions between 1913 and 1921, while the national
debt increased only about one billion a striking con-
trast to the trend in most Western nations.*

The wide distribution of wealth is indicated by the
Postal Savings Bank depositors, twenty-four million
persons, with deposits aggregating nearly $500,000,-
ooo in 1921, as compared with $96,000,000 in 1915.
In 1920 the capitalization of new companies was
$2,492,000,000, fourteen times greater than in 1913.
But it is important to add that since April, 1920, Japan
has been passing through a severe depression, due to
a market glutted with goods turned out by manufac-
turers who blindly ignored the fact that the wartime
shortage in the Occident was being supplied by the
Occident itself and that occidental manufacturers were
again prepared to compete for the Chinese and South
Asian markets. In 1917 her excess of exports over
imports was $284,000,000, but in 1920 and 1921 the
exports were less than imports by $180,000,000. The
doubled cost of living caused wide distress, for wages
lagged behind and all the efforts of the authorities
were powerless to effect much improvement. Banks
and companies failed by the score, and speculators who
had become millionaire spendthrifts overnight went
bankrupt with equal speed. The only thing that saved
the big silk industry from utter disaster was the
Government's loan of a large sum to a general holding
company which limited output and kept up prices.
Meanwhile the cotton goods trade also had slumped,

* From Japan 'Advertiser, Feb. 23, 1922.

30 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

and in the opinion of Japanese capitalists like Baron
Dan, the Japanese mills cannot hope much longer to
compete, in the cheaper grades, with Chinese and
British mills.

Even so brief a survey of the economic resources of
the Japanese people shows that their grave handicaps
are not counterbalanced solely by virtue of nearness to
the raw materials and markets of Asia. Hard work,
skill, honest workmanship in other words, stamina,
technique, and character will be indispensable. Some
discerning Japanese publicists and industrialists, real-
izing that character will be the deciding factor, have
advocated the Christian faith as a last resort. They
acknowledge that the old faiths have been proved inad-
equate and that many of the Christians whom they
know have the character-assets which the situation
demands.

In this first chapter we have confined our attention
to the simplest factors in the Japanese ensemble, the
characteristics of the people and their natural and
economic resources. These may be called the elemental
"raw materials." Whether they shall provide the
foundations of a powerful nation and whether they
shall be used for worthy ends or not depends on those
group purposes and activities which are to be described
in the following chapters.

NOTE See Appendix I, for supplemental material to accompany
each chapter of the book. Appendix II contains a brief bibliog-
raphy of the more recent and the more readily obtainable books
on Japan. Those books that might well be secured for a limited
reference library are placed first in the respective lists.

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM

"Japan is a second Prussia" is the verdict which
trips from the tongue of the average Occidental who
likes ready-made, clean-cut opinions. And if he is
reminded of Burke's remark that it is preposterous
to indict an entire nation, he will refer to the ex-
Kaiser's vision of Japan at the head of the "yellow
peril" hordes of Asia or to shallow works like The
Rising Tide of Color and The Flo-wer of Asia. Such
books arrogantly assume that the white races were
born to have and to hold dominion over all lesser
breeds, and that it is presumptuous for Japan to build
up an army and resist the Caucasian with his own
weapons. A good case can be made out to prove that
militarism has been supreme in Japan in both ancient
and recent times. But the point at issue is this : Is
Japan becoming more militaristic or less militaristic
and reactionary? 'In answering this question, full
account must be taken of the steady thrust of the
common people upward into the seats of power.

In the first chapter we tried to take a cross-section
of certain characteristics of the Japanese people ; in
this chapter we shall depict forces in action and show
how old characteristics and groupings and institutions
are being, not only modified, but transformed as a
result of the new conceptions of individual worth
and obligation implanted by Christian and occidental
thought. In Japan as in Western lands has broken
out the struggle between the governing and dominant

32 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

few and the mass of the people, the governed but no
longer submissive many, the long, hard fight to depose
military ideals and enthrone liberal and humane ideals.

I. THE BREAK WITH FEUDALISM AND ISOLATION

Japan came into the family of nations fifty years
ago with a -big handicap. For ages she had been
brought up by the rod and the strait- jacket of feudal-
ism, and she has had a. hard time learning how to
behave in a family where self-government is the rule.
Under feudalism the samurai, or knights, held all the
power and the common people did all the work,
although they outnumbered the samurai nineteen to
one. The common folk were very common indeed, for a
samurai could with impunity abuse them and even cut
them down with his broadsword for a fancied offence.
There were no newspapers, no representative assem-
blies, no schools for the common people except as
some of the priests taught a fraction of the children
in intermittent temple schools. Christianity was pro-
scribed, and only one school of Confucianism could
be publicly taught that which justified the Tokugawa
Shogunate* and frowned on revolution. Yet even
such an autocracy had its merits : for two hundred
and sixty years peace and security were maintained
and justice was administered with an iron hand.

*The Shoguns were originally generalissimos under the Em-
peror, but gradually they usurped the actual functions of
government and made the Emperor a figure-head. The Toku-
gawa Shogunate (1600-1867) developed the system to such an
extent that the early foreign representatives, like Commodore
Perry, supposed the Shogun to be in fact the Emperor.

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 33

Such was the situation when the Tokugawa regime
and feudalism were overthrown and the Emperor was
restored to actual power and the modernization of the
nation was set about as impetuously as if to make up
for the two centuries of marking time. The greatness
of the task can be better realized if we try to imagine
what England would have faced if she had been tight-
sealed from the time of King James I to Queen
Victoria, or what the United States would have be-
come if America had been cut off from all contact
with Europe from the landing at Plymouth Rock
to the Civil War.

But, nothing daunted, the Japanese girded up their
loins and attempted the impossible, and the measure
of their success is the most impressive evidence of
their caliber and of their large potentialities for weal
or woe.

The most surprising thing about the comparatively
bloodless Revolution or Restoration of 1867-8 was
the sudden emergence of a group of young statesmen
to guide the Empire into the new day. In place of the
cautious, precedent-mongering aristocrats who had but
lately predominated in the councils of the Tokugawa
Regency, a band of unknown youths, most of them
of lower samurai rank, sprang forth, and, having
solidified the royalist clans behind them, boldly began
to modernize and liberalize a fossilized autocracy.
Fortunately, the Emperor was young, inexperienced,
and tractable, and the nobles around him, like Iwakura,
Sanjo, and Kido, were either progressives themselves
or shrewd enough to fall in line with the ruling party.

34 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Ito and Inouye, among the younger leaders, had drunk
deep of English liberalism, for they had run away to
England in the early sixties, even though leaving
Japan was prohibited on pain of death ; and still others
had studied the Bible with the first missionaries at
Nagasaki, or had read Grotius, the Christian interna-
tional jurist of Holland. Accordingly, they decided
early in 1869 that the first step towards a liberal state
was an Imperial Proclamation or Oath announcing
that Japan had resolved to seek progress and pursue it.
The chief articles of this "Charter Oath" were these :

i. A representative deliberative assembly shall be
formed and all measures decided by public opinion.

4. All the absurd customs of former days shall be
disregarded and the impartiality and justice mani-
fested in the workings of nature shall be adopted as
the basis of action.

5. Knowledge and ability shall be sought in all
quarters of the world to the end that the foundations
of the Empire may be more firmly established.

The die was cast. The hermit nation, ruled by
autocrats and their minions, had taken the first momen-
tous step toward liberal political institutions at home
and partnership with the progressive peoples of the
earth abroad. Another formal step was taken with
the promulgation of the constitution in 1889 and the
actual opening of the first "deliberative assembly 1 '
in 1890.

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 35

II. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN LIBERALISM
AND REACTION

But for us, as we seek evidence that liberalism will
ultimately prevail in Japan, the most significant facts
are not the edicts of the government, but the voluntary
activities of the people the development of the press,
the gradual creation of an intelligent public opinion,
and the tireless fight for freedom of speech and for
party government. It is easy for the tourist who visits
a session of parliament to pronounce it "a plaything,"
"a soothing-syrup to quiet popular demands," but the
careful student of the facts finds abundant reason

V - . . -

for confidence. The test of progress is the difference
between today and forty or fifty years ago: then, no
provincial or national representative assemblies r-
now, both; then, but a handful of newspapers and
magazines liable to suspension for any utterance dis-
pleasing to the government now, over two thousand
newspapers and periodicals, which constitute an ever-
swelling organ of public opinion, a veritable fourth
estate ; then, no political parties now, and for twenty
years past, national parties which with all their insta-
bility, corruption, and poverty of principle yet can
humble cabinets and make the bureaucrats tremble.

Political liberalism has had a stormy career in
modern Japan. It might be graphically portrayed
by a double curve rising sharply between 1870 and
1888, then falling until about 1897, and then oscil-
lating until the entry of America into the World
War, when a furore for democracy broke out, the

36 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

clamor for universal manhood suffrage became in-
sistent, and even woman suffrage began to be more
than the fad of a few radicals. During the seventies
and eighties works like Whalen's International Law,
Mill on Liberty, and Rousseau's Social Contract, and
the study of English and American history made
progressive Japanese youth ambitious to carry their
country at one bound from feudalism to democracy.
Count Itagaki, inflamed by French Revolutionary
ideals, led a host of brave spirits in the struggle to
graft liberty and equality upon the stubborn stock
of an ancient conservatism, and when the inevitable
reaction came, they gladly went to prison for their
faith.

Among those imprisoned was Kenkichi Kataoka,
a fellow-provincial of Itagaki. While Kataoka was
in prison, a missionary gave him a New Testament,
with the result that he became a Christian. Years
later, when he was Speaker of the House of Repre-
sentatives, he was accustomed to open each session
in silent but unaffected prayer and to invite the ten or
fifteen Christians in the House to* meet at his home
for prayer and conference. It is not strange that, in
his latter years, while President of Doshisha Univer-
sity, his combination of fearless loyalty to conviction
with saintly humility made an impression upon stu-
dents and teachers comparable with that made years
before by the similar character of the famous founder
of Doshisha, Dr. Joseph Neesima.

A point often overlooked, and indispensable in ex-
plaining the slow and fitful progress of liberalism, is

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 37

the influence upon Japanese policy of occidental na-
tional policy. After the first flush of enthusiasm for
everything- occidental, the discerning Japanese leaders
became convinced that unless the nation were armed
and prepared to defend its rights, it was doomed to
be pillaged like China, and sooner or later over-
whelmed by the high-handed European powers. Ac-
cordingly, with characteristic thoroughness they set
about creating an army, a navy, and a subsidized mer-
cantile marine, and developing the industries which
would make the nation strong and respected. Imper-
ceptibly, the group of young leaders who engineered
the Restoration and held the helm of state for thirty
years thereafter grew more conservative, the well-
worn grooves of the ancient bureaucracy were used
once more, only perfected along German lines, and the
public school system became the pliable instrument
for instilling an almost fanatical nationalism based on
loyalty to the Imperial House. Two foreign wars
against China in 1894 and against Russia in 1904
riveted more and more tightly the grip of the new
military and bureaucratic machine in place of the
painfully evicted Tokugawa regime. The process
threatened to be carried still further by the World War.
It was in the fall of 1914 that Japan drove the
Germans out of Shantung (without the full consent
of China) and seized and kept full control of ten times
as much territory as Germany had ever controlled.
Then in May, 1915, Marquis Okuma's cabinet thrust
the infamous Twenty-one Demands down China's
throat, though the worst of them were withdrawn

38" CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

when the Chinese Government was stiffened by the
indignant protests of its own people and of American
and British sympathizers. The irony of the situation
was that Premier Okuma, a lifelong exponent of liber-
alism, had felt forced either to resign or to eat his
words and yield to the tightening ring of military
imperialistic influences around and above him. Then
with the entry of America into the war, a veritable
tidal wave of enthusiasm for democracy swept over
Japan and compelled even reactionaries either to keep
silent for the moment or to pay lip homage to the
popular watchword. But it is no secret that up to
the summer of 1918 the military clique in Japan felt
sure Germany was invincible. Army officers openly
proclaimed it in lectures given in public high schools.
A revealing incident occurred in April, 1918. The
Cabinet entertained the members of Parliament at a
garden party, and one of the speeches, by the Vice-
Minister of War, avowed the belief of the Minister of
War and the General Staff in a German triumph. The
substance of the speech was reported to me later by a
Peer who heard and openly controverted its arguments.
Such sentiments in the Cabinet explain the harsh
repression of free speech which seemed so strangely
inconsistent with Japan's alliance with England and
with her official protestations of devotion to the liberal
aims of America in the War.

The moment that Germany had been defeated to
the surprise and chagrin of many Japanese mili-
tarists the glamour of the military career began to
fade. Army officers could no longer count on having

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 39

upper class parents offer their daughters in marriage.
Soldiers returning home after completing the period
of compulsory service were welcomed by banners
reading, "Congratulations on Release from Prison/'
and the perpetrators were sometimes arrested. The
Imperial Military Academy which before the War
had picked its students from among thousands of
applicants, in 1919 could muster only no for the
entering class, though the number sought was 200.
For a generation the Army has been able to attract
the brainiest youths, but today they pass it by and turn
to business and the professions. The quick response
of the Japanese militaristic barometer to foreign ex-
ample and pressure was once more clearly shown in
1920, after the European powers had themselves be-
trayed liberalism at Versailles, and America had eaten
her words and imposed an inquisition on freedom of
speech and assemblage. The reactionaries in Japan
taunted the liberals with pinning their faith to painted
gods, the screws of repression were again tightened,
and the militarists were given a new lease of life.

What desperate measures some of the extremists
were willing to employ during 1920 and 1921 in order
to recover their grip and stamp out liberalism can be
judged from these remarks attributed to a liberal and
labor leader, who, though a Christian and a pacifist,
had incurred the suspicion of the police: "Some day
I shall be assassinated. In my slums there are seven
hundred gamblers who belong to the ancient Gamblers'
Guild of old Japan. Hounded and abused by the police
in the past, the government has now organized these

40 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

gamblers into a recognized fraternity, humorously
called 'The Flower of the Nation/ with the sole pur-
pose of using them to combat the fight for democracy.
Working now with the police, they are used to choke
down unrest and check the growing power of the
millions. The Old Order is desperate in Japan today."
Such methods as these may be winked at by the
"higher-ups," but they are generally resorted to by
over-zealous lieutenants.

III. THE MISCHIEVOUS "DUAL GOVERNMENT*'

In order to realize the enormous obstacles that
block the progress of liberalism, it is important to make
clear just how firmly entrenched behind political power
the reactionaries and militarists have been until very
lately. Their power has not been built up in a day.
Nor has it been all evil, by any means. Ever since the
Restoration of 1868 the masterful pilots of the ship
of state have been the Elder Statesmen, a small group
of brilliant, patriotic men who distrusted popular gov-
ernment and labored incessantly to buttress the Throne
behind an omnipresent bureaucracy on the one side and
an omnipotent army on the other. No premier could
be appointed or kept in power against their will. If
the Parliament became obstreperous, it was dissolved
by the Emperor at their behest. If popular protests
against a minister or a government bill became over-
whelming, they would advise a concession here or
there, but never did they yield on the "grand strategy"
of Imperial policy. Cabinets came and went conser-

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 41

yative, liberal, and even party-controlled but the
Elder Statesmen remained.

Their power mystified the uninitiated Occidental,
and few of the Japanese themselves tried to analyze it.
But now that Prince Yamagata and the other giants
among the Elder Statesmen have died, and the only
two survivors of the original group are in their dotage,
the secret of their power has become clear. It rested
first upon their sagacity and patriotism. They served
the Empire with unswerving devotion and superb skill.
And it rested also upon their control of the General
Staff and the powerful army behind it.

The General Staff gradually became the super-
government No matter who was premier, the Min-
isters of War and the Navy, as agents of the General
Staff and the Elder Statesmen, controlled all major
policies. After the victory over Russia in 1905, the
General Staff waxed bolder than before. Its agents
abroad, supported from the Army's "Secret Fund,"
repeatedly stood for policies diametrically opposed to
the Foreign Office and its diplomatic representatives.
Thus was developed what Japanese liberals have
dubbed "the dual government" or the "super-govern-
ment." In 1909 the system was legalized by an
Imperial Ordinance, instigated by the conservatives
and militarists, providing that the Ministers of War
and the Navy in the Cabinet should be responsible
only to the Emperor and not, like the other ministers,
to the Premier. The result is that if the General
Staff sees fit it can prevent a cabinet being formed

42 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

or can cause its downfall by refusing to let any officer
become or remain Minister of War.

It seems to be emphatically clear that most of the
acts of the Japanese Government during the past
decade and more which have shocked and displeased
Japanese liberals and Japan's well-wishers in occi-
dental lands, have been due to this anomalous "dual
government." The harsh regime in Korea, the ex-
ploiting policy in China, the stupid interference in
Siberia,* the diatribes against America in the jingo-
istic press, can all be laid at its door.

This dual system has been perceptibly weakened
by various events during the last few years. But it
cannot be ended until the annulment of the Ordinance
of 1909 shall have been forced by such a growth of the
progressive forces as shall overwhelm the forces of
reaction, ultra-nationalism, and militarism. That day
is coming more rapidly than the reactionary oligarchy
thinks, for public opinion, the mind of the intelligent
middle class, is steadily gaining in power.

IV. THE PART PLAYED BY CHRISTIAN LEADERS
AND THE RESPONSE OF THE PEOPLE

In all lands the Christian movement has been the
nurse of political as well as religious prophets. Japan
is no exception. Every Christian congregation has
been a training school in equality, parliamentary pro-
cedure, and representative government.

* It cost nearly a billion yen, over 2,500 Japanese lives, and
more Russian, and hurt the foreign relations and internal morale
of Japan. The value of a yen is normally fifty cents gold.

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 43

In the creation of a liberal public opinion, a promi-
nent part has been borne by Christians or men and
women inspired by the Christian ideals of personality,
liberty, and brotherhood. It was Professor Yoshino,
elder in a Congregational Church and President of the
Tokyo Imperial University Y. M. C A., who, for
several years, denounced in the metropolitan press and
in his own monthly organ the iniquities of the Jap-
anese military regime in Korea. It was he also who
boldly exposed that tap-root of military imperialism,
the "dual government."

Still another Christian leader in the fight against
reaction is Hon. D. Tagawa, M. P., who, because of
criticisms levelled against the very undemocratic Elder
Statesmen (the unofficial advisors of the Emperor).,
was in 1918 convicted and imprisoned on a technical
charge of lese majeste. But today he is back in Par-
liament and is one of the leading spirits in the Japan
League of Nations' Association, at whose head is the
eminently respected Prince Tokugawa, a son of the last
Shogun and one of the three delegates to the Wash-
ington Conference.

The most influential liberal in Parliament is Hon.
Yukio Qzaki, a lifelong admirer of British institutions
and of Christian social ideals. His wife is a Christian.
It was he who, when Minister of Education in 1898,
raised a storm about his head by inadvertently drop-
ping in an address words to the effect, "supposing by
way of illustration that Japan were a republic." He
had to resign, but 'his lips were not sealed. In 1918
he published in Japanese the volume since translated

44 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

under the title, The Voice of Japanese Democracy,
a bold argument on behalf of a democratized monarchy
for Japan akin to England's. In 1920 and '21 he
waged a platform campaign for disarmament which
won extraordinary popular support. The genuineness
of that support is confirmed by the action of the largest
labor union in the Empire, the Yuaikai, demanding
complete disarmament, although they were quite aware
that eighty thousand of their comrades in the ship-
yards might thereby be thrown out of work. A pic-
turesque anecdote illustrates Mr. Ozaki's courage and
his powers of persuasion: During his speaking tour
on behalf of disarmament, he was aroused from sleep
one night by a flashlight held by a desperado who
was also waving a sword above his head. He coolly
and civilly accosted the intruder, turned on the elec-
tric light, and then invited his astounded visitor to
sit down.

It seems that the desperado was a violent chauvinist
and had intended to assassinate Ozaki for his "unpa-
triotic" ideas on disarmament. After a two hours'
talk, the man left, a convert to Ozaki's views, begging
to be pardoned for his intrusion.

Another instance of the invariable response of the
common people to liberal ideas, when they are clearly
presented, occurred in 1920 at Osaka. A scholarly
advocate of Shinto as a potentially universal religion,
with the Emperor of Japan at its head, rented the
public hall for a lecture in exposition of his doctrines.
Though he was a safe and sane patriot and a professor
in Tokyo Imperial University, only a paltry two

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 45

hundred turned out to hear him. A fortnight later,
Professors Yoshino and Onodzuka, of the same Uni-
versity, rented the same hall, and, though they charged
an admission fee, were greeted by five thousand
enthusiastic auditors as they pleaded for democracy
and international cooperation.

V. THE SLOW, BUT IRRESISTIBLE, DEMOCRATIC

ADVANCE

But the men in the seats of the mighty in Japan
were little more affected by these sentiments than a
"'horse's ear by the east wind," as the Japanese adage
puts it. They felt that Japanese and American inter-
ests clashed in China and Siberia and that force might
have to decide the issue.

Up to the very opening of the Washington Confer-
ence relations between America and Japan were
growing worse. Despite the interchange of friendly
visits and the efforts of broad-minded groups in both
countries, the feeling between the two nations grew
more strained. The "bigger navy" advocates in
America were in the ascendant and American espousal
of China's part was pronounced. All this played into
the hands of the Japanese military imperialists and
neutralized the arguments and pleadings of the liberals.
In both countries whispers that "war is inevitable"
became more insistent. Then, like a giant parting
two fractious boys, Secretary Hughes made his dra-
matic, self-denying proposal to the Washington Con-
ference. The thunders died away; the clouds were
dispersed. The hands of liberals and Christians on

46 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

both sides of the Pacific were immediately strength-
ened. The good faith of Japan in carrying out the
Washington Agreement will be referred to later; but
it is significant that even while those agreements were
being debated and the outcome was in doubt, the liberal
though repressed multitudes in Japan were seizing
the occasion of Marquis Okuma's funeral, in February,
1922, to give an imposing demonstration of their real
sympathies. It is vividly described in this letter from
a foreign observer :

I want to answer the question, "Is Japan militaristic?"
Three weeks ago Marquis Okuma, the incarnation of pro-
gress, died and was buried. A week ago Prince Yamagata,
the incarnation of militarism, died and was also buried.
They were both the same age, eighty-four. They had been
young together. One kept progressive, the other turned reac-
tionary and militaristic. When Qkuma died, the papers were
full of him for a week: his achievements, his sayings, his
contribution toward education, his political career. There
was a great public funeral paid out of the people's pockets,
voluntarily, hot by the State. Vast crowds attended the
funeral which was held in Hibiya Park, and the whole city,
it seemed, turned out on the line of march.

Within three weeks, the great reactionary. Prince Yatn-
agata, was buried also. It was a State funeral this time,
and cost 80,000 yen. He was President of the Privy Council
and Field Marshal of the Army. The newspapers at best
damned him with faint praise. They spoke of what he had
done for his country in the early days, and if they spoke
of the present at all, it was to say that he was beginning to
see that his "militarism" was a mistake. The difference in
the size of the crowds at his and Marquis Okuma's funeral
was conspicuous.

Notwithstanding all the signs of the awakening of
the long suppressed common people and their respon-

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 47

siveness to the guidance of liberal intellectuals, it is
premature to expect their opinions to determine the
national policy for two reasons. First, few of the com-
mon people or the intellectuals have a vote, the total
number of voters being 3,000,000 out of 15,000,000
males of voting age. The franchise requires the pay-
ment of a direct tax of at least $1.50 a year and few
qualify. Secondly, the political parties are not yet
able to determine major national policies, but must
for the most part be content to worry and criticise the
powers that be. The fact that it was not till 1918 that
Mr. Hara formed what is termed "the first genuine
party cabinet," suggests the stubborn inertia and active
opposition against party government, for 1918 was
nearly thirty years after the establishment of the na-
tional parliament. Even the Hara cabinet fell far short
of party government and for these very vital reasons :
the cabinet still remained solely responsible legally to
the Emperor and only nominally to the dominant party
in the Lower House; the Elder Statesmen, the General
Staff, the Privy Council, and the Imperial Diplomatic
Council all exercised more decisive influence in weighty
matters than the cabinet; the Army General Staff and
the Navy General Council could break up the cabinet
at any moment by ordering the resignation of the Min-
ister of War or of the Navy and refusing to let any
officer fill his place ; and finally, the Upper House was
not controlled by the dominant party in the Lower
House, and the Upper House could seriously obstruct
the cabinet's policy. Furthermore, upon the assassina-
tion early in 1922 of Premier Hara and the fall soon

48 . CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

afterward of the cabinet he had formed, the present
non-party or "super-party cabinet," under Premier
Baron Kato, took its place, with the rather unprin-
cipled acquiescence of the dominant party in the Lower
House. Thus it will be oppressively, evident that even
after all the years of heroic struggle, only the rudiments
of responsible party government have been attained.
But the issue has been joined and will be fought
through with samurai tenacity.

VI. FORCES WHICH MAKE FOR FURTHER ADVANCE

The extension of the suffrage, the rise of a free press,
the democratizing of the Throne, and the pressure of
liberal institutions and ideas from without these four
potent influences will unite to hasten the ultimate tri-
umph of liberalism. Let us consider these influences
briefly.

i. Agitation for universal suffrage

The cry for universal manhood suffrage used to be
merely a political campaign catchword, but in recent
years it has been taken up in earnest by intellectuals
and labor leaders, so that in all probability the suffrage
will be extended within a few years by lowering the
financial qualification, thereby including many more of
the urban population, artisans, and "white-collared
poor" (clerks, professional men, and low-paid offi-
cials), the very groups upon whom liberalism has the
strongest hold. Then the admission of some of the
women to the franchise will follow in due time. A
straw showing how the wind is blowing was the

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 49

removal in 1921 of the prohibition against the attend-
ance of women upon political meetings.

2. Rising power of the press

The non-partisan press is today more potent to shape
government policy than the political parties, and on the
whole its influence is being used to promote progressive
policies.* When international problems arise it is more
narrowly patriotic than the independent press of Eng-
land and America, yet it has more than once rebuked
the chauvinists and cheered the liberal forces. This has
been true of a number of the great journals, for ex-
ample, in their criticism of interference in China and
Siberia, in their demand for reduction of the Army as
well as of the Navy, in their advocacy of appointing
civilians instead of military men to govern the
colonies, and in their (belated) denunciation of
oppression in Korea. And on domestic issues they are
practically all aligned against the reactionaries. In
Osaka, joining hands with the Christians, they op-
posed the corrupt prefectural authorities and the rich
vested interests who in 1913 were insisting upon allow-
ing the rebuilding of the licensed vice quarters inside
the city. They have agitated for the extension of the
suffrage, for the ending of police persecution of labor
unions, and for freedom of discussion even of "dan-
gerous thoughts" like socialism, syndicalism, and
democracy, which are anathema to standpatters and
militarists.

* See The Press and Politics in Japan, by Kisaburo Kawabe,
Ph. D., University of Chicago Press, 1921. An interesting and
authoritative presentation.

So CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

3. The unbending of the Mikado

The Imperial House, the incarnation of conserva-
tism, has kept pace with the people. The Prince
Regent, who is now practically Emperor, not only
permitted, but acknowledged the joyous shouts of
the people an unheard of license, and when the
Prince of Wales visited Japan, the Prince Regent
broke all the hoary precedents by accompanying him
to a public theatrical performance. When two noted
American Christian leaders were presented, the Prince
Regent and the Princess asked them eager and in-
telligent questions instead of uttering the stiff phrases
prescribed by former imperial etiquette. It is evident
that the Prince Regent was deeply affected by all that
he saw during his European tour of 1921, especially
by the simplicity and bonhomie of King George and
the Prince of Wales.

This responsiveness of the Imperial House to the
example of the English Royal Family is illustrative
of the sensitiveness of the entire nation to the pres-
sure of liberalism from without. It has at times been
positively startling to note the immediate rise or fall
of the liberal barometer in Japan according as a liberal
or a reactionary policy prevailed in America and
England.

4. Influence of occidental example

What an obligation this places on British and Amer-
ican liberals, especially upon Christians! I well re-
member how crestfallen Japanese liberals were on

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 51

several occasions when Western nations seemed bent
on a selfish imperial policy toward the Far East and
liberals in those countries seemed impotent to check
it. This was the case in 1898 when England and
America made no move to hinder Russia, Germany,
and France in their seizure of Chinese territory, just
after these three powers had hypocritically compelled
Japan to give back Liaotung Peninsula on the pious
plea of the integrity of China. On the contrary,
England then seized the harbor of Wei-Hai-Wei in
order to keep even with Russia and Germany. It
was the case again in 1920 when the bigger navy
advocates in the United States, even in the face of
"the fourteen points" and the hardly finished fight
against Prussian militarism, insisted that Japanese
aggressions on China and other perils required the
spending of hundreds of millions on battleships and
on fortifications in Hawaii, Guam, and the Philip-
pines. These policies immediately alarmed even
friendly Japanese and gave the militarists an un-
answerable argument for a bigger army and navy
and an aggressive foreign policy. On the other hand,
every victory won for liberty and the common people,
every act of international unselfishness in the Oc-
cident is immediately cabled to the Japanese press
and read by millions.

VII. LIVING UP TO THE WASHINGTON AGREEMENTS

Thank God that the Washington Conference went
far to neutralize these sinister tendencies and to give
renewed power and courage to Japanese liberalism.

52 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Like an electric storm it cleared the clouds from both
sides of the Pacific. Secretary Hughes' brave words
substituted frankness for finesse, confidence for dis-
trust. The difficulties and dangers have not all been
dispelled, by any means, but the spirit necessary for
their solution has been generated. Now it remains
for the people of good-will in both hemispheres to
see that the right spirit is maintained at all costs.

What definite steps has Japan taken toward ful-
filling the agreements signed at Washington and to-
ward a more liberal policy at home and abroad?
Favorable indications are not wanting. In the first
place, Admiral Baron Kato, the chief representative
at Washington, was made premier soon after his
return home, and being a naval man he has been
better able than a civilian premier to control the
military groups. The fidelity with which he has
insisted on living up to the Washington pacts has
surprised and gratified liberal minded men on both
sides of the Pacific. The Army as well as the Navy
has been promptly reduced. The Japanese garrisons
have been withdrawn from the Chinese interior points,
where they had stayed several years against China's
protest; the Japanese troops in Siberia were all with-
drawn on October 31, 1922, and in December the last
Japanese soldier left Shantung. On January I, 1923,
Japan turned over to China the post-offices which for
many years had given Japan points of vantage.

Japan's record in Shantung has been bad, but not
unlike the record of certain powers in Persia, Haiti,
and Africa. It has seemed worse because it gave

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 53

Japan a foothold for what bade fair to become a
system of underground control of her great neighbor's
affairs. But the signing at Washington of the Shan-
tung Agreement and the other self-denying ordinances
regarding China marked a sharp change in Japanese
policy and an opportunity for China to become master
of her own fate.

By the Shantung Agreement Japan promised to
restore territorial and administrative rights, also the
railways and mines, in return for a monetary com-
pensation equivalent to the rights acquired and the
investments made by Japan. This agreement is being
carried out. It is a signal triumph for all the parties
concerned. To be sure, valuable properties and busi-
ness advantages, some of them morally questionable,
were secured by Japanese interests during the five
years of the occupation, and the compensation de-
manded very likely was exorbitant; but China has
become ,used to such tactics by foreigners, and has
ample reason to rejoice over the main provisions of the
Shantung settlement. An article by the English naval
expert, C. Bywater, in the Atlantic Monthly* reveals
how cleverly the Japanese naval authorities in 1921
rushed to completion the fortification of outlying
islands in anticipation of the Washington Conference.
It is not at all improbable, but it is just what military
authorities would try to do in any country. That
is their business. It does indicate that militarism
has a stubborn and unregenerate heart everywhere,
but it does not disprove or weaken the fact that the

* February, 1923.

54 CREATIVE FORGES IN JAPAN

swelling volume of popular opinion in Japan is anti-
militarist and bent on maintaining peace.

VIII. REFORMS IN KOREA

In Korea, likewise, Japan has followed a more
liberal policy since 1921, when a high-minded retired
naval officer was made Governor-General. The torture
of prisoners has practically ceased, the military gen-
darmerie have been replaced by a civilian police, the
number of Korean officials has been increased and
their status raised, the spying interference with Chris-
tians and other suspects has been somewhat abated.

The Ordinance of 1915, which forbade religious
instruction and worship in all schools enjoying any
governmental privileges, was so modified in 1922 as
to allow complete religious freedom in the higher
Christian institutions. Then, as if to accentuate the
friendliness of the Government General toward Chris-
tianity and the desire to blot, out the memory of the
persecuting attitude of the preceding administration,
a Christian Japanese was made Civil Governor. Late
in 1922, an eminent American visitor summed up his
impressions of conditions in Korea in these words:

An impartial observer is struck by the outstanding
changes and substantial gains here. There is a new
security that Korea never knew under her own corrupt and
grafting emperor and officials. There is a new material
development, a new opportunity for advancement, a new
sanitation, the introduction of more scientific farming, a
new industrial development, the replanting of forests, bet-
ter courts, much needed prison reforms, more honest official
administration, and more material prosperity than Korea
had known under her own government. No unprejudiced

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 55

observer can deny that the material gains of the first decade
of Japanese rule, from 1910 to 1920, are remarkable. The
population has increased from some 13,000,000 to over 17,-
000,000. The trade has multiplied seven-fold. Over 500,000
pupils are in the over-crowded schools of all grades, while
the children in the government schools have increased three-
fold in the decade. The number of commercial companies
has increased from 152 to 544; the factories show an eight-
fold increase from 252 to some 1900. The mining of the
country has increased fourfold. The Koreans are undeni-
ably more prosperous today than they were ten years ago.
They have lost a large measure of liberty, but they have
gained a new discipline, a new patriotism, a new courage,
and a new national spirit.

The Koreans are a splendid people, hearty, courageous,
independent, with their spirit tempered by much persecution
and former injustice. The majority of the pastors and lay
leaders with whom I talked had been in prison. They
counted this a greater honor than any university diploma.
This new courage, enterprise, and patriotism were unknown
by the masses under their own government. Side by side a
new and liberal Japan and a new Korea with free and
courageous spirit are developing.

There is an increased measure of liberty of thought, of
speech, and of the press; the inauguration of local self-
government ; the participation of Koreans in the district and
national government; a creditable increase in education; the
abolition of whipping, and of the former forcible attempt to
assimilate the Koreans; concessions to the national senti-
ment of the people, and a manifest effort on the part of

Japanese officials for conciliation and friendship

Full freedom was permitted for open-air meetings which were
attended by from three to seven thousand people every night.
I talked freely of world affairs, of recent revolutions and
the new republics of Europe; of political, social, and in-
dustrial advance, and of the rising demand for democracy,
for social justice, and for liberty throughout the world.

As these paragraphs are being penned early in
1923, the reports from Japan itself indicate that the

56 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

battle for freedom of speech and association has not
yet been won. The police authorities, however, are far
more tolerant than in the years 1919 to 1921, when
several Christian friends of mine were imprisoned for
patriotic words or acts misconstrued as "radical"
or treasonable. Considering the recent hysterical
measures against freedom of speech and of press even
in the United States, one does not wonder greatly
at the juggling of the Japanese police and courts
with the much weaker guarantees of the Japanese
Constitution.

IX. DANGER POINTS STILL REMAINING

The prospects of liberalism in Japan are of vital
concern to peoples other than the Japanese themselves,
for unless liberal ideas and -policies continue to gain,
the probability of difficulties and wars with ether na-
tions is greatly heightened. Even with a powerful
liberal trend in both Japan and America, for example,
the danger of serious difference is by no means
remote. Three of the roots of misunderstanding
and possible trouble are China, Korea, and Japanese
immigration into the United States and the British
Dominions. Let us glance at each of these.

i. The Washington agreements cleared away most
of the powder trains in the Chinese situation. They
were of inestimable value for Japan, for they checked
her before she had gone beyond recovery down the
slippery path of aggression and imperialism toward
China. But it would be folly to be blind to the pos-
sible recurrence of danger in the not distant future.

W
B

i i

3 Jap.

THE NEGISHI NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE IN TOKYO. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
ARE MR. KOBAYASHI, MR. PRICE, THE SETTLEMENT DOCTOR, A TEACHER,
A RELIEF WORKER, AND THE MANAGER. BELOW, IS ONE OF THE KIN-
DERGARTENS OF THE SETTLEMENT

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 57

Japan's population is certain to increase not less than
600,000 a year; and she may not be able to develop
industries at home fast enough to absorb the surplus.
Heretofore emigration has been slight less than a
million, all told, since 1880. But it may be expected to
increase, toward China especially. The rich undevel-
oped resources of China will inevitably attract Japan-
ese capital and technical skill. Meanwhile occidental
capital and technicians will be pouring into China.
Clashes of interest may occur any time. China her-
self will require decades to evolve a strong govern-
ment and meanwhile will be poorly equipped to con-
trol those clashes of interest and assertions of rights
between foreign groups which so easily lead to war.
Manifestly, self-control, respect for international law,
and racial tolerance will all need to be strengthened
among the Japanese and the other nationalities con-
cerned if serious trouble is to be averted. These
virtues do not thrive in the soil of commercialism and
nationalism. They are engendered best by the Spirit
of Christ.

2. Turning to Korea, we find that the danger of
international trouble is negligible. The cruel meas-
ures adopted by some of the officials to crush the Inde-
pendence Uprising of 1919 rightly aroused indignation
in foreign lands, and they only fanned the flame of
Korean patriotism. But the more just and generous
attitude which marks the present administration, if
continued, will give satisfaction abroad and ensure
tranquility in Korea. The Japanese also have an
unsavory ancient record to live down in Korea, reach-

C-Jap

58 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

ing back to the invasion of 1587. The invaders are
said to have cut off the ears of thousands of Korean
captives and shipped them to Kyoto, where an "Ear
Mound" stands to this day as presumptive evidence
of the deed. To be sure, such barbarity was common
in those days. It is an augury of a new public con-
science that deputations of Kyoto citizens, led by
Christians, have in recent years repeatedly urged the
local authorities to open the "Ear Mound" and, after
proving the truth or falsity of the tradition, to raze
it level with the ground. The multitude of Americans
and Britishers who are supporting missionary work
in Korea will watch closely the trend of Japanese
policy there, but will rejoice heartily if it shall stand
for liberty and justice and shall recognize that Chris-
tianity is the best ally of every good government.

It may not be amiss to suggest that Americans and
Britishers can understand the ordinary Japanese point
of view about Korea if they will recall their own
national attitude toward the Philippines and Ireland,
for example. At the same time, it should be remem-
bered that the deputation sent by the Japanese Federa-
tion of Churches to investigate conditions during the
Uprising publicly criticised the Government, and that
scores of professors and publicists, not all of them
Christians by any means, denounced the Government.
Professor Yoshino has declared that ninety per cent
of the students of Japan would vote to give Korea
complete autonomy.

This attitude toward a conquered people is not indig-
enous to Japan. It is unquestionably the fruit, directly

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 59

and indirectly, of Christian ideals, of the triumph
of liberalism over military-imperialistic ideals. The
Japanese are not the only race who have been slow
to learn how to rule a conquered people. If, as seems
likely, the large tolerance and sympathetic imagination
which have made the British preeminent as colonial
rulers are traceable partly to Christian influence, then
the advance of Christianity among the Japanese may
be expected to better their rule in Korea and Formosa.
At any rate, it is significant that Christian officials in
Korea, such as Chief Justice Watanabe, and Christian
Americans in the Philippines, succeed where others
fail. There appears to be a very close connection
between their success and their Christian appreciation
of the worth and dignity of every man of whatever
race.

3. The last potential cause of international difficulty
to be mentioned is immigration into occidental lands.
To be specific, let us consider the "California Ques-
tion." Here again, the fair thing is to try to see the
other side's point of view. To the Japanese mind
these are some of the facts in the case : Japan is densely
populated, and it takes hard work to extract a living
from the ever shrinking allotment of land available
for growing numbers of people. California, with the
same area as Japan, has only one sixteenth as many
people; large tracts of land are undeveloped; and
Japanese are able to enrich both themselves and their
white neighbors by farming more intensively than
white men will do. The Japanese immigrants are
intelligent, industrious, law-abiding, and temperate.

60 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Their children go to school, and, according to the
investigations of Professor Terman, the psychologist,
of Stanford University, they show an intelligence
superior to the average Portuguese immigrant's child,
and not far below that of the average California white
child of Nordic descent.* During the World War,
over 500 Japanese volunteers from Hawaii and the
Pacific Coast states and provinces fought in the Ameri-
can and Canadian armies.

There are among the Japanese in California dull-
witted, narrow-minded men interested only in acquir-
ing a competence. Many of them came to the Pacific
Coast from Hawaii, but Americans should remember
that the first immigrants wanted in Hawaii from Japan
were strong-backed laborers to work in the cane fields.
They were rounded up in droves by emigration com-
panies. Most of them had never gone beyond their
A B Cs in Japan, and in Hawaii had enjoyed scant
opportunities for self-improvement. It is true, the
older people have clung to a crude Buddhist faith and
have mingled little with white folk, but white folk
have not made intercourse easy, and even Christian
Calif ornians have done little to give them true religion.
As for the Japanese born in America, they rapidly
desert Buddhism and ancestral customs.

So much for the Japanese point of view.

What may be called the "California point of view"

is by no means shared by all Californians. It may

be thus outlined. The Japanese are unassimilable

because they are radically different in physique, in

*The Nezv Republic, Dec. 27, 1922.

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 61

customs, religion, and political habits. They do not
treat women as we do, but make them work in the fields
like men. They own allegiance to a "second Prussia,"
and even the Japanese born in America would fight
against the Stars and Stripes in case of war. They
are clannish and form "colonies." They do not often
undercut white workmen, but they work longer hours
and are so efficient that the average white man cannot
compete. They are likely to break a contract if it goes
against them. They are so thrifty and multiply so
rapidly that in a few decades they will own a large
part of the State. The South has one race problem;
we don't want another. Even though we admire many
Japanese, we are convinced that they and we had
better not intermarry or try to live together in large
numbers. The Chinese we like better because they
know their place and keep humble, while the Japanese
know they are as good as white men and want to be
treated accordingly. The Chinese have a passive
government behind them, while the Japanese govern-
ment is alert and aggressive and teaches every subject
that he must make Japan the greatest power on earth.
So our slogan is, respect the Japanese, but keep them
far from us.

Much has been said in rebuttal and in support of
these points of view. But without going exhaustively
into the question, attention should be drawn to a few
important considerations.

Granted that the Japanese are as objectionable as
the bitterest "anti-Japanese" assert, has American
treatment of them been worthy either of American or

62 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Christian principles? President Roosevelt built on
those principles when, in 1907, he made the "Gentle-
men's Agreement," by which Japan consented to stop
the emigration of laborers to the United States. This
Agreement has been well observed, though partially
neutralized by the influx of Japanese brides. But be-
ginning with the passage of the Heney-Webb Land
Bill in May, 1913, the California and other coast
legislatures have passed discriminatory laws which
have deeply offended Japanese feeling and have threat-
ened to work hardship and injustice. The situation
has been relieved by the fact that two of the California
laws have been declared invalid by the federal
Supreme Court.

The net result of the agitation, legislation, and
recrimination of the last ten years has been to irritate
the relations between the two races on the Pacific Coast
and to bring the two nations dangerously near to a
rupture. Fortunately, the Washington Agreements
have removed the bogey of Japan as a "second Prus-
sia/' Few intelligent Americans now entertain fears
of a Japanese invasion of America or of open conflict
with Japan anywhere. Conditions today are more
favorable than for ten years to start afresh and find
a just sohition of the question.

What are some of the principles of such a solution:
Both Japanese and American investigators are
agreed that further immigration of laborers and near-
laborers should be entirely prevented, and also that
the influx of Japanese brides should be rapidly reduced,

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 63

so as to lower greatly, if not to stop, the increase of
the Japanese population.

The Japanese already here should be treated, not
only with justice, but with courtesy, and made to feel
welcome. If the notion of buying or freezing them
out is abandoned, then it is surely good policy to do
everything possible to Americanize them.

Americanization involves the implanting of new
ideals and ways of living. The Japanese residents
are as easy to Americanize as any South Europeans.
Anyone who knows personally young Japanese born
and educated in America laughs at the absurdity of
the assertion "once a Japanese, always a Japanese."
They can hardly be distinguished from breezy young
Americans, for, like all first generation immigrant
children, they tend to be more than "one hundred per
cent Americans." Their parents often complain, just
like immigrant parents from Europe, "We can't hold
our children loyal to the old ideas. They don't care
about their fatherland and dislike to speak their
mother tongue."

The master-keys to Americanization are the Eng-
lish language and Christianity. Whatever measures
therefore, can be taken to these ends will directly
further a spiritual assimilation which is real American-
ization. It is commonly admitted that as soon as
Japanese residents become Christians, the chasm be-
tween them and the average American is bridged.

The problem in its legal and political aspects is
primarily national, and only secondarily state or prov-

64 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

incial. Accordingly, a new "Gentleman's Agree-
ment" might well be adopted, on the basis of a fresh
and dispassionate inquiry into the situation.

More energetic efforts should be made by the
churches, Christian Associations, and other agencies
of good-will to befriend and to Christianize the Japan-
ese transient visitors as well as the Japanese residents.
Every dollar spent on missionary work in Japan
would have its "spiritual purchasing power" greatly
increased if a Christian instead of a neutral or anti-
Christian impression were made on Japanese visitors
to our shores.

X. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF OCCIDENTAL CHRISTIANS

Our excursions into the Korean and immigration
problems may seem to have been far afield, but those
problems are intimately bound up with liberalism and
reaction in Japan. For example, one of the stumbling
blocks in the way of liberalism and of Christianity
alike in Japan is the less than Christian attitude of
Americans in the handling of the Japanese situation
on the Pacific Coast. Nothing heartens and strength-
ens militarists in Japan more than anti- Japanese leg-
islation and un-Christian treatment of Japanese in
America.

This brings us, in conclusion, to a consideration of
three other ways in which Christians in England and
America can help to build up true liberalism in Japan.

(i) They can strive more doggedly to make the
life of the American and British peoples and the
policies of their governments measure up to the high

MILITARISM, REACTION, AND LIBERALISM 65

requirements of a truly Christian liberalism at home
and abroad.* (2) They can stop "knocking" Japan
as entirely and incurably reactionary and treacherous
and can recognize and encourage the growing forces
of liberalism in Japan, exercising patience with its
slow gains, in view of the heavy odds against it.
(3) They can do all in their power to promote the
Christianization of the Japanese people. Is it not as
clear as day that no vital liberalism worthy of the
name can long prevail in any land unless it is fed by
the living springs of Christian conviction and char-
acter? The ramifications of the Spirit of Jesus al-
ready in Japanese life give proof that wherever it
prevails, human personality, regardless of its trap-
pings, is valued, liberty without license is enjoyed, and
the sacrifice of self-interest for the good of the whole
is exemplified. Jesus Christ was the world's first great
liberal and His increasing sway in Japan is the only
sure guarantee of her becoming and remaining a
liberal state.

* Not a little has already been accomplished in the United States
by the Federal Council's Commission on Relations with the
Orient, under the lead of Dr. Sidney Gulick.

Ill

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND CHRISTIAN SOLUTIONS
I. LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION

The Japanese boast that their land has never been
conquered. But though they know it not, industrial-
ism has already subjugated half the nation. Old Japan
had her troubles over food and wages, and there were
occasional uprisings against hard masters, but com-
pared with the welter of the strife today between the
owners and the workers it was the difference between
a mill-pond and the whirlpool rapids of Niagara. And
this revolution has all happened within forty years.

i. Industrialising a feudal nation

As late as 1876 a host of samurai were still bitterly
resenting the opening of Japan to "foreign bar-
barians" and were rebelling against the passing of the
good old times when they were fed and clothed by
their lords and could while away their lives in honor-
able idleness or in light administrative duties. They
continued to .breathe out threatening and slaughter
against the "foreign devils," on whom they laid much
of the blame for upsetting the old order and causing
their hard plight. Haughtily they declared, "An
eagle will starve to death rather than become a seed-
eater; so a two-sworded samurai will never stoop to
work at a trade or in business." But such boasts
filled no rice-bowls, and the samurai soon followed the
rest of the people in a feverish effort to master the

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 67

technique of modern trade and machine industry in
order at any cost to make money and catch up with
the nations of the West. The race has been going
on now for forty years, and it is evident to the
Japanese themselves as well as to outside observers at
what a killing pace they have been running. The
questions spontaneously come to one's lips, "How
much longer can they keep it up? Will the fierce
struggle for wealth through industrialism set up an
economic feudalism which will reverse the trend
toward liberal political institutions and so divide and
demoralize the people as to unfit them for playing a
large and constructive part in the world's -life?"

A strong case could be made for the contention that
industrialism has been more of a curse than a blessing
to Japan. It is not unnatural to wish that the quiet
life of old Japan could be restored. Think of peaceful
agricultural Japan in 1880, when the cities looked like
swollen villages, with their smokeless air and low
buildings, and then behold the great cities of today,
with their forests of chimneys and the rushing trolley
cars and automobiles and the gaunt, reinforced con-
crete structures. The transformation is vividly
reflected in that part of Osaka known as the "old
concession" where foreigners lived. When I first saw
it in 1898, it was like a section of some American
residential town, but today the old dwellings have
either been turned into offices or torn down to make
way for factories, with smoke that makes the sun
look like a red moon. Industrialism has come to stay.

The actual growth in the number of industrial

68 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

plants in the country bears out this impression. In

1883 there were only 125 modern factories, employing

'125,000 laborers. Today there are 30,000 plants and

I they employ over 2,000,000 men, women, and children.

Shipping and railway transportation have also
forged ahead with the vast industrial expansion. Japan
has not only built the largest man-of-war afloat, dis-
placing 40,000 tons, but is turning out merchantmen of
25,000 tons. Her merchant marine on August I, 1922,
numbered 791 steamers of more than i,obo tons and
their total tonnage was 2,779,837. The pennants of
her chief steamship companies are to be seen in the
ports of every continent. Most of the two billion
dollars worth of goods which represent the total of
Japan's import and export trade is carried in Japa-
nese bottoms. Despite all the engineering difficulties
created by steep mountains, torrential floods, earth-
quakes, and tidal waves, Japan has built 7,500 miles
of steam and 1,400 miles of electric railways in an
area less than California.

In a word, the whole nation has risen up and, with
breathless intensity, striven to obey the injunction of
the modern economic and educational prophet,
Fukuzawa, who for thirty years preached in trumpet
tones this gospel : "Young men, poverty and ignorance
are hobbling your country. Master Western science,
make money, and free her!"

2. The cost in terms of life

The abandon with which this counsel has been
followed even by conservative nobles and stoical

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 69

samurai, until lately contemptuous of wealth, has
brought dismay to those who shudder to see the old
handicrafts and the quaint charm of the landscape
sacrificed to the god of industry. The cost of the
industrial revolution in terms of human life and
character has been even more stupendous than the
cost in terms of beauty and simplicity. We may
by picturing the contrast between a typical village
visualize what the change is meaning to the masses
girl of thirty or forty years ago, who, in the security
of home, helped her mother at the loom and about
the household work, and on the other hand, a present-
day factory girl in one of the vast cotton mills.

Even though we resist the temptation to idealize
the past and to blacken the present, the antithesis is
shocking. In the old-time village, girls could at least
expect safe homes, nourishing food, fresh air, variety
in work, visits with friends and relatives, the hilarious
fun connected with festivals, the moral influences of
village custom, shrine, and temple, the ancestor wor-
ship in the home, early marriage, and simple domestic
duties.

On the other hand, the girls lured from country j
homes to the average spinning mill by stories of the '
pleasures and high wages of the city are generally
doomed to a life of disillusionment, drudgery, and
temptation. Three quarters of the girls in these mills
are housed in barrack-like company dormitories. Each
girl's quarters consist of one mat (three by six feet) or
at most two, in a room shared with many other girls,
and in some cases the sharing extends even to the

;o CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

bedding, so that the night shift will have hardly left
their quilts when the day shift, exhausted, tumbles
in under them. The air is laden with the dust of
a thousand looms. Twice a month they have a day
off, when they may be allowed to spend their slender
surplus at the movies or theaters or in carousals or
in wandering about the streets. The monotony and
high pressure of factory work leave them so jaded
that only highly spiced diversions will satisfy. The
lack of play, outdoor exercise, and proper food, and
the exposure to contagious diseases undermine stamina
and leave them weakened for motherhood, if not
chronic invalids. In place of the control of elders
and the restraint of rigid customs, they are left too
often to the mechanical supervision of a dormitory
matron and the wiles of a designing foreman. They
become sophisticated and blase. Coarse pleasures and
hardened companions sear the conscience. The whole
setting of life is dwarfing and demoralizing.

Lest these statements be discounted as mere
rhetoric, it is well to quote from a careful address
made in 1921 before an association of upper class
Japanese women, by Mr. Bunji Suzuki, an influential
labor leader and an educated man of conservative
temper. He said:

The condition of young women employed in the spinning
mills is particularly shocking. Of some 700,000 womer
employed in them today over 75 per cent must live in dor-
mitories furnished by the mill owner:., in dark and dismal
common-rooms without any ventilation. Bathing and toilet
facilities are better imagined than described. They all sleep
together in these huge, prison-like places. Two or three girls

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 71

sleep together on one large mattress supplied by the factory,
and in summer or winter only one thin inadequate covering
is given them. The girls go to bed with their clothes on in
winter in order to keep warm. In summer they lie around in
varying stages of nakedness, in hot, ill-smelling rooms, with-
out a breath of fresh, decent air. As they work in day and
night shifts, these mattresses are in use without rest, day and
night.

j. Conditions in the mines

When industrialism is mentioned, we think mostly
of factories, but modern mines are almost as much
a product of machine industry. Conditions in the
Japanese mines are even worse than in the spinning
mills. When the Rev. T. Kagawa, the pastor and
social worker, investigated the coal mines of Kyusiu
in 1918, his discoveries were so damaging both to the
mine owners and to the government inspectors that
he was forbidden to publish parts of his report. Not
only men, but mothers with babies on their backs,
plunge into the bowels of the earth and work in
noisome shafts for a pittance barely sufficient to live
on. Equally unwholesome are the moral and intel-
lectual conditions under which they are compelled to
live and under which their children are brought up.

Ponder this arraignment by Mr. Suzuki of the
treatment of women in the mines :

In 1917, the number of women employed in the mines of
Japan was 70,000. Today that number is greater by over
60,000. Most of them are between sixteen and twenty years
of age, and they work in the pits along with the men. Very
few women are employed in gold, silver, and copper mines,
but most of them in the coal mines. Twenty per cent of all
the laborers in the coal mines today are women. They are

72 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

usually employed to carry baskets filled in the pits. They
work in the bowels of the earth, naked like the men, wearing
only a little breech clout. There is no ventilation and no
discipline in their surroundings. They are so like animals
that they can hardly be called human. There are other
women who work outside the pits; their work too is very
hard. But mines are usually far away from the villages, and
as the laborers do not see many people from outside, they
do not have much chance to complain where it will do any
good. Mine-owners, therefore, have been, successful in keep-
ing stories of the ill-treatment of their women employees
very quiet. But those who can read statistics realize from the
number of still-born children and the appalling number of
deaths of newly born children in mining communities, that
working and living conditions in them must be awful. At
the mines no one makes complaints; but these statistics cry
to heaven against conditions in mining districts.

4. Some general effects of industrialism

Even when all allowance is made for the welfare
work undertaken by some of the larger companies
and the kindly interest of some proprietors in their
employees, the state of affairs brought on by the
whirlwind expansion of industrialism is nothing less
than appalling. This will be clearer if we turn from
this depressing though typical picture of the immediate
effect of factory and mine life on the workers to
certain effects on the nation at large as shown by
certain well-defined tendencies.

The avalanche of migration from the country to
the cities has been marked in modern Japan as in
Western lands. While the population of the nation
has been growing at the rate of i per cent a year,
since 1900 the population of the larger cities

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 73

leaped forward at the rate of ten to fifteen per cent
a year. Tokyo now numbers 2,300,000, and Osaka
1,400,000, while Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto and
Kobe range from 500,000 to 700,000.

As Mr. Merle Davis points out, the suburban
expansion has been far more striking than that within
the city limits. During the thirteen years, 1903-1916,
Tokyo proper grew 29. per cent, but the industrial
suburbs grew 415 per cent. "Extensive areas, which
ten years ago were planted to rice and vegetables or
were swept by the tides, are now built up in solid
blocks of factories and tenements." If the Greater
Tokyo schemes of men like Mayor Baron Goto are
carried out, the city will annex all these suburbs,
which are already inextricably bound up with her
life, and will then have a population of four million,
surpassed only by New York and London. Obviously,
these rapid shifts of population are affecting every
aspect of Japanese life, breaking down old safeguards
and creating new perils.

The physical well-being of the nation is also being
menaced by the abnormal conditions of life in factories
and mines, despite the great strides made by scientific
medicine in Japan. Hospitals are numerous and fairly
well appointed, and there are thousands of trained
physicians. The public school system and the press
are seconding the efforts of the political authorities
and the doctors to spread hygienic knowledge. But
all these efforts are to a large degree counteracted by
the undermining of health and the spread of disease
by the conditions in the growing army of industrial

74 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

operatives. One of the most careful studies of this
sort is Dr. Ishihara's monograph on the Health of

\> Women Factory Operatives. In it we find these
rather startling facts : Night work by 1,350 girls who
were studied showed an average loss of one and one-
fifth to two and one-half pounds during the five day
period of night labor and a net loss of two thirds of
a pound even after the succeeding five day period of
daytime labor. What wonder that they so readily
fall victims to tubercular and nervous troubles! In
1913 the factories had to recruit 200,000 new girls
from the country districts. The number of recruits
required is said to have grown to more than 300,000
annually, a serious drain upon the nation's vital
resources. One would have expected the General Staff
of the army to have seen that the weakened physique
of hundreds of thousands of potential mothers in the
factories would lower the birth-rate and impair the
stamina of future conscripts.

Out of those annually recruited, over one third return
home within a year, and one sixth of these because
of serious illness. Tuberculosis heads the list, and the
victims become the carriers of disease to their native
villages. In one case a girl returning home with
tuberculosis embedded the disease in her village so that
thereafter every five years thirty persons died of it.

y In another village, out of thirty girls returning home,
twenty were ill and all but four of these had tuber-
culosis. Adding together the deaths of women in
the factories and after they returned home, the ratio
is nearly three times as high as the ordinary death-

. SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 75

rate for women, and higher than for women in any
other occupation.

Social students and welfare workers agree that fac-
tory life has been a fruitful cause of juvenile delin-
quency and sexual immorality. In March, 1919,^
there were 220,222 child laborers under fourteen
years of age (equivalent to thirteen in occidental
countries) of whom 121,994 were girls. Laborers V
between fourteen and eighteen years old numbered
722,303, of whom nearly half were girls. Not a few
of the girls who tire of the drudgery and low pay of
factory life are easily lured into service as waitresses
and then descend by easy steps into a life of crime or
vice. In a volume on Industrial Education, Mr. R>
Unno states that forty-nine per cent of the delinquent
girls arrested in Osaka during a certain period had
been factory workers. Many of them are ruined
^before they leave the factory.

In still another direction machine industry has had
far-reaching consequences. The artisans of Japan
are still famous for their handiwork, but their skill
is waning before the ubiquitous machine whose steel
fingers weave and hammer and carve what used to be
the product of human ringers and wonderfully sharp
eyes and fine taste. If the psychologists are right in
holding that the type of a person's activity goes far
to determine his character and conduct, then we may
expect marked changes in the Japanese people because
of the passing of craftsmanship with its stimulus to
creative instinct, individual variation, pride in work,
and artistic judgment.

76 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Industrialism in Japan is like a stream with two
forks, the one sparkling and gay, bearing gold and all
the delights of modern convenience and luxury, the
other putrid and dark with the wreckage of human
beings. And they flow close together. Go with me to
Kobe to look at the mansion of a ship-building mag-
nate, the head of a plant employing 17,000 men. He is
a gentleman of the best blood and breeding, graduated
from a famous American University, a patron of arts
and philanthropy. He is not a showy spendthrift.
His huge profits from wartime contracts have been
spent largely in assembling a choice collection of
European art and in bringing back to Japan the un-
surpassed Vever collection of Japanese prints. Now
let us walk a mile away to that ante-room of hell, the
\j slums of Shinkawa, where twelve thousand human
beings swarm. Open sewers and germ-haunted ken-
nels multiply disease. Criminals, beggars, gamblers,
and abandoned women are the quarter's leading
citizens. Dirty children in droves play and fight and
ape their elders up and down the goat-path alleys as
though theirs was the normal kind of life. These
slums represent, it is true, the cess-pool of Japanese
industrialism, but it is a pool which is incessantly
replenished by the men and women flung off like
broken fragments from the fast flying wheels of the
economic mill. The Shinkawa slums are duplicated
in every large city of the country. In Old Japan there
were small slums, but nowadays the stream of social
castaways, maimed and despairing, disfigures every
industrial center. All the taxes spent by government

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 77

and the gifts of philanthropists for the welfare and
reform of the submerged tenth in the slums and back
alleys are admittedly like plasters on a cancer power-
less to purify the poisoned blood of the system. Some
of the submerged population are only the latest gen-
eration of a long line of delinquents and incompetents,
but others are of the sort who could play a humble,
though useful, part in a simpler and kindlier social
order, were they not crushed or shunted aside by the
juggernaut of a pitilessly impersonal industrialism.
Machine tending, mass production, and bestial con-
ditions of labor and life are gradually dehumanizing
segments of Japanese life. Some of those finer powers
and sensibilities which formed a part of Japan's
aesthetic and moral heritage are being atrophied by
disuse or destroyed by the intemperate rush for profits.
Who can measure the intangible but very real loss
caused to the nation and to the world ?

5. The evolution of the labor movement

The idea that a race has inborn traits and ideals
which are practically unchangeable is sharply chal-
lenged by the rapid changes brought about in the
thoughts and habits of millions of the Japanese people
as they have been suddenly transplanted from country
to city. Old Japan may be said to have been rural- U
minded ; New Japan is urban-minded. Old Japan was
a paternalistic oligarchy; New Japan is becoming
democratic overfast. Old Japan was ruled by tra-
dition and loyalty; New Japan is dominated increas-
ingly by science and the lust for money. Old Japan

78 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

was ruled by her upper classes less than five per
cent of the people while the other ninety-five per
cent plodded on submissively in the ways of their
forefathers, not always happy, but living an uneventful
life close to nature and marked by the homely virtues
of a hard-working agricultural people. Their place
in New Japan is being taken by a class-conscious,
sophisticated, and aggressive working dass who are
learning, not only the shibboleths of socialism and
the red international, but who are becoming adepts
at direct action and mass pressure upon employers
and rulers alike. The irrepressible Labor Movement
is the salient embodiment of all these changes.

It was in 1897 under the lead of Katayama and
other socialists that the modern labor movement first
began to take shape. The boom after the victory of
Japan over China had been accompanied by high prices,
and the workers, in straits, began to clamor for higher
wages. In February, 1898, a successful strike was
waged on the largest railway in the country. There
were then no legal obstacles in the way of labor organ-
izations, and several strong unions were started, some
of them based on the century-old artisan guilds. So-
cialism and the rights of the worker were discussed
and applauded by many progressive intellectuals, in-
cluding Marquis Okuma, who was always an "Athen-
ian" and a good-natured patron of novel, causes.

But the infant labor movement was given a body
blow in 1900 when the Public Order Police Law was
passed. Article 17 of this law has been freely invoked

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 79

to prevent both industrial workers and tenant farmers
from organizing- unions or agitating against employ-
ers or landlords.

The police used their new weapon with such deadly
effect that from 1903 until 1917 aggressive labor
unions were well-nigh unknown. But the workers
had tasted blood, and they continued spasmodically in
mines or railways to rise up in their wrath and by
strikes or destructive riots to wrest concessions from
their employers. In 1905 the populace of Tokyo,
indignant over the peace terms with. Russia and the
repression of popular freedom at home, ran wild until
the city was placed under martial law. I well recall
how a battalion of troops was billeted in the large
Y. M. C. A. hall, sleeping on the benches and on the
floor. Japanese miners have always been pretty
much a law unto themselves, and so it was not sur-
prising that in 1907, when they were being forced to
work at the point of the rifle, they revolted en masse
in two copper mines and caused enormous damage.

6. The labor movement becomes belligerent

In the August of 1912 occurred a red-letter event
for the Japanese laborer, for it was then that a young
Christian lawyer, Bunji Suzuki, formed the Laborer's
Friendly Society (Yuai Kai). Mr. Katayama and his
colleagues in the earlier labor movement had encum-
bered the movement with Marxian socialism. Mr.
Suzuki avoided that error and at first formed simply
a mutual benefit society, not a labor movement. But

So CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

from an early date he cherished the plan of transform-
ing it into a labor union as soon as the members had
been sufficiently trained and tested.

This is exactly what has come to pass, but the pro-
cess was hastened by the awakening of the common
people under the lash of war-time exploitation, and the
intolerable cost of rice, fuel, and clothing. Shipping
1 speculators paid for a vessel in a single voyage. Mills
declared one hundred per cent dividends and gave fat
bonuses to directors so as to avoid the income tax,
while wages were only grudgingly raised. The vul-
gar newly-rich "sprang up like mushrooms after a
spring rain despised nankins who, lying back in pink
upholstered foreign limousines, honk-honked com-
mon millions out of the narrow streets. And with
every new nankin the price of rice rose another
notch." And rice is bread and meat to the Japanese.
Goaded to desperation by such heartless display and
by the hoarding of rice by speculators and sake manu-
facturers, the angry mobs set out to execute rude
justice as they saw it. The "rice riots" in Kobe
during those hot August days in 1918 set match to
powder in scores of cities.

Forthwith the Imperial Household itself started a
conciliation and relief fund by a contribution of
$1,500,000, and the victims and other wealthy men
almost in a panic added $12,000,000. It was no
doubt conscience money in many cases, disgorged lest
a worse thing befall; but some of th,e donors were
men bred on traditional standards, kind-hearted and
fairly honest, who must have been pained and per-

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 81

plexed by the high-handed demands of the populace.
This huge largess was used to give immediate relief
to the poor and to establish public markets, cheap
restaurants, and other alleviating agencies.

These miraculously effective riots whetted the fight-
ing edge of the laborers. The great body of public
opinion inclined to side with them; for the doctrine
of self-determination and the half-understood but
wonde.rfully stirring ideas of "democracy" popularized
through translations of President Wilson's utterances,
found ready soil in the hearts alike of the intellectuals
and of the common people. Historians will probably
look back upon the years 1917 and 1918 as marking
the emergence of the Japanese proletariat.

The rapid increase in the number of strikes during
the war is an unmistakable index of the revolutionary
change in ideas which was going on. In 1914 there \/
were only 50 strikes involving 7,904 workers; in 1917
the number had increased to 398 strikes involving
57,309 workers, and the peak was reached in 1918 with
417 strikes involving 66,457 workers. The sharp
slump of 1920, bringing wide unemployment in its
train, robbed the workers of much of their power to
put organized pressure upon employers. This is regis-
tered by the fact that in 1921 the number of strikes
had fallen to 246, involving 58,225 workers.

The employing class were at first dumbfounded by
the effrontery of their erstwhile docile employees.
They had flattered themselves that Japan would escape
the labor struggles of the West because, forsooth,
in old Japan the employer was a father and the

&j CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

workers were his children. The ingrained relation of
superior and inferior resulting from seven centuries
of feudalism surely could not be destroyed in a few
decades by the introduction of Western machinery
and methods ! Even though the old intimacy between
proprietor and worker which had prevailed in house-
hold handicrafts would needs give place to a more
impersonal relationship, yet the employer and the
government by means of welfare work and paternal
protection of the worker and his family would pre-
serve much of the spirit of the old regime and forestall
any danger of violent protests among his grateful
employees.

But this bright dream faded into thin air before
the demands of the disillusioned workers wno had
tasted welfare work and found it a poor substitute
for wages enough to feed their children and freedom
enough to organize and express themselves like self-
respecting citizens. After the employers had recovered
from the first shock of aggrieved surprise they yielded
in most cases to the demands of the workers, for labor
was at a premium during the war and it was better
to share a fraction of the profits than to lose them all.
With each success the laborers gained confidence and
skill, and though they had almost no accumulated funds
to pay strike benefits, they showed marvelous tenacity
and power of sticking together, forming, firm groups
out of what had been only a promiscuous aggregation
of individual atoms. They developed mass singing
for the first time and found it worked wonders in
bracing courage and arousing devotion to the cause

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 83

in the face of suffering and of police opposition. A
typical song is the one printed below, which was sung
by a procession of laborers formed to welcome Mr.
Suzuki to Kobe during the labor struggles of 1919 :

Workers of Nippon, awake, awake!
Old things are done with and passed away.
Worlds that are new are for you to ma,ke.
Strive, then, and fail not in this your day.

Farmers and weavers and shipwrights all,
Miners who labor beneath the soil,
You who drop sweat to get bread, we call.
Honors are now for the sons of toil.

Early to work though cold winds bite,
Tired ere homeward their way they take,
Daylight gone and the stars alight
So they toil for the whole world's sake.

Workers of Nippon, awake, awake!
Old things are done with and passed away.
Worlds that are new are for you to make.
Strive, then, and fail not in this your day.
Hooray for the Yuai-kai! Hooray!*

They organized cooperative markets and eating
houses where they and their families could be sure of
one meal a day. If they stayed on the job or went back
to work before the companies yielded, they shrewdly
practised the ca'canny or "go slow" tactics of occi-
dental strikers, and (ttiu-s compellbd the Kawasaki
Dockyards to divide among them $1,875,000 out of
the company's huge surplus. Some of the leading

*Japan Chronicle, August 14, 1919.

84 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

newspapers, like those in Osaka, eighteen miles away,
gave outspoken backing to the strikers, and three thou-
sand Osaka workmen crowded a special train in order
to go to Kobe and join in a sympathetic demonstration.

The story of the struggle in the great Kobe ship-
yards in 1921 showed that the day of suppressing
or hoodwinking the erstwhile bovine laborers has gone
beyond recall.

The upshot of the whole struggle was an apparent
victory for the employers, for the strikers returned
to work. But as the employers had refused to yield,
so the workers made no terms, simply declaring that
they would postpone a solution until a more favorable
occasion. They had developed an esprit de corps.
For the first time they had measured swords with
their masters and discovered that they could almost
worst them.

Strikes have occurred, not only in the shipyards
and mines, but in all the major industries and even in
the chief government arsenals. These arsenals are
under the stern hand of the War Department, but
the omnipotent General Staff had to compromise with
the strikers. On the occasion of a certain paper
factory strike, three hundred men made an effigy of
their employer, stuck long lances through, it, and
then bore it tauntingly up and down before his resi-
dence. Even the stenographers in the national Par-
liament struck for higher wages and stopped the
wheels of Imperial affairs.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 85

7. The awakening of the tenant farmers

Thus far we have dealt with the labor uprisings
brought about by the exploitation of workers in
factories and mines, but there has been a parallel
uprising among the tenant farmers of the country
which bids fair to have equally far-reaching and
revolutionary results. Seventy per cent of the popu-
lation are engaged in agricultural pursuits and of
that number seventy per cent are tenants, each tilling
an average of one and one half acres. In other words,
forty-nine per cent of the 58,000,000 in Japan are
not owners, but dependent tenants working on shares
and exposed to all the uncertainties of drought and
flood and storm. For hundreds of years they have
patiently borne their hard lot, only breaking out here
and there against particularly harsh masters and then
going back to the old treadmill. But universal edu-
cation has made eighty per cent of them able to read
the papers, and the steady increase of population has
so reduced the land area available to supply rice and
barley for each new mouth that discontent has inev-
itably developed. Even the remotest hamlets have
been touched by the tidal wave of democracy and
self-assertion created by the upheavals of war-time.
There have been many examples of generosity on the
part of wise and kindly landlords who have made
their tenants' sufferings their own, but there have
been still more cases of grasping and heartless indif-
ference. The result is that tenant farmer unions
have sprung up all over the Empire until there are

86 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

now over five hundred. What the end will be no
man dares predict, but it is recognized by wise ob-
servers that it portends a radical readjustment in the
very foundations of Japanese life.

8. Wise leaders needed

The men and women on farms and in factories

whose life-blood is being sucked out by the system

of which they are so helpless a part and the working

fathers and mothers who see their children doomed

to grow up stunted in body and mind cry aloud for

help, and when their cries come back to them from

heaven like brass, it is small wonder that they feel

driven to take matters into their own hands rather

than wait for the slow and hitherto temporizing

measures of the privileged classes. But our account

of the Kobe shipyard strikers indicates, that the

workers are like children playing with razors. They

are surprised and intoxicated by their unsuspected

power. Having been themselves held in check by

force, they quickly resort to violence when peaceful

and, to their thinking, reasonable demands are spurned

by employers. They have too often been their own

worst enemies. Like undisciplined masses everywhere,

they too readily follow the blatant leader who boasts

that he will "beat the money barons to a frazzle."

What the workers and the employers both need
is fair-minded, wise leadership. Without this the
labor movement is in imminent danger of falling
under the sway of self-seeking demagogues or hot-
headed partisans. How real this danger is will be

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 87

apparent in the report of a recent national labor
conference sent to me by Mr. Guy C. Converse, an
eye-witness :

I attended the National Trade Union Conference in Osaka
on September 30, 1922. There were 106 delegates from 59
trade unions. Twice during the Conference the 300 police
present broke up the meeting because of disorder. They also
broke up a meeting of socialists, anarchists, and bolshevists,
who were paralleling the Trade Union Conference.

At the Conference the air was electric. Divergent ele-
ments police and spies, and the radicals in the gallery shout-
ing taunts continually made it a very difficult situation.
Every time a chair was tipped over or there was any stir,
the crowd was on its feet. I saw a hundred men surge to
the windows at a slight noise only to return rather sheep-
ishly when they found nothing happening in the courtyard
below.

The Conference was entirely in the hands of the workers,
all of whom revere Kagawa as the man who wakened
them and who did the pioneer work, but many of them
feel that he is too passive, not radical enough for today.
Suzuki they consider a man of the past, an opportunist, who
did good service in his day ; but now they feel they need real
laborers who are willing to fight if necessary. Russia exerts
a great influence. The class struggle is very much a part of
their philosophy. They are opposed to international war,
all war being considered, of course, a "capitalists' war.'
With such a situation you can see that the Christianizing and!
educating of labor leaders is one of the most urgent needs.]

If it be asked, What relation has Christianity to
these conditions in Japan? it must be promptly ad-
mitted that America and England, though long under
the influence of Christian teaching, have not solved
their industrial problems; but the chief reason why
they have escaped worse troubles is that so many

88 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

/employers and employees are at least partially con-
trolled by the Spirit of Jesus.

But the Christian churches of the West, through
foreign missions, have made a noteworthy contribution
toward meeting the very similar problems in Japan.
Most of the ablest leaders of the constructive labor
and reform movements have been bred in Christian
schools or vitally influenced by missionaries. Mr.
Suzuki owes much to the Rev. Dr. Clay McCauley
and Mr. Kagawa looks upon the Rev. Dr. H. W.
Myers as more than a father. The same is true in
varying degrees of scores of others, writers, business
men, and publicists, who are the spear-head of the
social advance.

Just how indispensable a part must be taken by
Christians in meeting the problems created by modern
industry will become clearer as we turn now to the
remedial forces at work.

II. ATTEMPTED REMEDIES FOR SOCIAL ILLS

The Japanese are a humane people. Buddhism
has saturated them with tenderness and pity, but
their long feudal training and the dominance of the
family system predispose them to limit their sympathy
to relatives or fellow-clansmen. Besides this, the pity
engendered by Buddhism does not so quickly take
shape in action as the more positive love engendered
by Christ. It tends rather to beget the mild fatalism
reflected in the everyday phrase "Shikata ga nai"
"It can't be helped." Furthermore, the glamour of
the wealth created by the industrial system has so

iz;
o

Q
P

88 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

/employers and employees are at least partially con-
trolled by the Spirit of Jesus.

But the Christian churches of the West, through
foreign missions, have made a noteworthy contribution
toward meeting the very similar problems in Japan,
Most of the ablest leaders of the constructive labor
and reform movements have been bred in Christian
schools or vitally influenced by missionaries. Mr.
Suzuki owes much to the Rev. Dr. Clay McCauley
and Mr. Kagawa looks upon the Rev. Dr. H. W.
Myers as more than a father. The same is true in
varvinof degrees of scores of others, writers, business

^ j t* '

men, and publicists, who are the spear-head of the
social advance.

Just how indispensable a part must be taken by
Christians in meeting the problems created by modern
industry will become clearer as we turn now to the
remedial forces at work.

IT. ATTEMPTED REMEDIES FOR SOCIAL ILLS

The Japanese are a humane people. Buddhism
has saturated them with tenderness and pity, but
their long feudal training and the dominance of the
family system predispose them to limit their sympathy
to relatives or fellow-clansmen. Besides this, the pity
engendered by Buddhism does not so quickly take
shape in action as the more positive love engendered
by Christ. It tends rather to beget the mild fatalism
reflected in the everyday phrase "Shikala ga iiai"
''It can't be helped." Furthermore, the glamour of
the wealth created bv the industrial system has so

H
H

Q
Q
P

o
o
W
o

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 89

blinded many eyes that they cannot see the maimed
victims of the process who lie all about their path.
Like the man who went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho and was left half-dead by the wayside, so
great numbers of innocent men and women and
children are lying along the rough highway of Jap-
anese industry, and as yet the good Samaritans are
all too few to bind up their wounds. And what is
more, no force has appeared capable of ridding the
highway of the robber bands. But I would not give
a wrong impression; the government and hundreds
of private employers and other men of good-will
have tried hard to remedy the worst abuses growing
out of the industrial revolution.

j. The National Factory Law

First of all should be mentioned the National Fac-
tory Law which was passed by the Imperial Diet in
1911 and was finally put into effect in September,
1916. The chief provisions are as follows:

1. Children under twelve years of age cannot be employed,
except that, with the permission of the administrative
authorities, children as young as ten may be employed on
light work.

2. The employment of children under fifteen and women
for more than twelve hours a day is prohibited.

3. Employment of children under fourteen and women
between the hours of ten P. M. and four A. M. is pro-
hibited.

4. At least two holidays a month shall be allowed women
and children workers: four holidays for those employed
alternately on day and night work.

5. At least thirty minutes of rest within the first six

D-.Tap

o
o

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 89

blinded many eyes that they cannot see the maimed
victims of the process who lie all about their path.
Like the man who went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho and was left half-dead by the wayside, so
great numbers of innocent men and women and
children are lying along- the rough highway of Jap-
anese industry, and as yet the good Samaritans are
all too few to bind up their wounds. And what is
more, no force has appeared capable of ridding the
highway of the robber bands. But I would not give
a wrong impression: the government and hundreds
of private employers and other men of good-will
have tried hard to remedy the worst abuses growing
out of the industrial revolution.

/. The National Factory Law

First of all should be mentioned the National Fac-
tory Law which was passed by the Imperial Diet in
JQII and was finally put into effect in September.
1916. The chief provisions are as follows:

1. Children under twelve years of age cannot be employed.
except that, with the permission of the administrative-
authorities, children as younif as ten may be employed OH
light work.

2. The employment of children under fifteen and women
for more than twelve hours a day is prohibited.

3. Employment of children under fourteen and women
between the hours of ten P. M. and four A. M. is pro-
hibited.

4. At least two holidays a month shall be allowed women
and children workers: four holidays for those employed
alternately on day and night work.

5. At least thirty minutes of rest within the first six

D-.lup

90 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

hours of work and sixty minutes if working in excess of
ten hours must be allowed.

6. Operatives shall not work more than ten consecutive
nights.

7. Women and children are not to engage in dangerous
work or to be employed where poisonous gases or other
injurious substances are manufactured or generated.

The first and third provisions were not to be put
into operation for fifteen years in order to allow the
factories time to adjust themselves! Furthermore,
most of the provisions are so weakened by the dis-
'cretion given to administrative officers in permitting
their suspension that they have been at best but a flimsy
protection. Practically all safeguards were swept
away during the war when the pressure for production
was intense and both laborers and employers were
keen after profits. Of late the government inspectors
have insisted more strictly on obedience to the law
and in many of the large factories conditions are
fairly good. In the smaller plants, located in the
towns and villages and often housed in dark unsanitary
structures, inspection is infrequent and abuses are
likely to escape detection.

2. Welfare work in private factories

The welfare work conducted by scores of the larger
spinning and weaving concerns will bear comparison
with much of that done by occidental employers.
There are doctors and nurses, playgrounds and enter-
tainment halls, good ventilation and lighting, retiring
allowances, and sick benefits; but unfortunately these

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 91

features are found only in a small minority of the
total number of plants. In Tokyo, for example, three
hundred only out of the five thousand factories have
anything deserving the name of welfare work.

The outstanding weakness, however, even of these
high-grade factories, is the lack of opportunity for
self-expression and self-government by the employees.
The habit of paternal direction, not to say domination,
still persists, and it is to be feared that with the insist-
ent demand of the workers for greater self-determina-
tion, the employers may delay granting it too long.
Indeed, the labor outbreaks, already recounted, are
ample evidence of the peril of delay and repression.

In 1910 the police unearthed what the)' declared
to be a plot against the life of the Emperor. Many
anarchists and other radicals were arrested, and from
among them twelve were executed early in 1911. The
trials were held in absolute secrecy, but the story went
abroad that the cases against most of these so-called
anarchists were police frame-ups. This rumor added
fuel to the growing discontent of the dependent classes,
and it is supposed that it was with the intent to
allay unrest and forestall outbreaks that the Imperial
Household started a national relief fund. The Cabinet
immediately took up the matter and by pressure
secured from men of wealth a total of $10,000,000.
This Fund was put into the custody of a new organi-
zation called the Saiscikai. With the income from
this endowment, which amounts to about $325,000
a year, subsidies are granted to hospitals all over the

92 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

country, and new charity hospitals have been estab-
lished. Medical relief is thus being given to some
100,000 persons each year.

j. Private and governmental institutions

The severe labor troubles of war-time impelled
some of the most eminent industrial leaders to establish
what is called the Association of Harmonious Coop-
eration (Kyo Cho Kai) for the promotion of good
relations between labor and capital. There is no
reason to doubt the sincerity and breadth of purpose
of this Association, but inevitably it has incurred the
distrust of laborers, being looked upon as a capitalistic
agency for the maintenance of things as they are.

Another enterprise indicative of the thorough
methods which thoughtful Japanese are applying to
industrial problems, is the Ohara Institute for Social
Research, founded in 1919 by a munificent gift from
a factory magnate who had been impregnated with
the Christian spirit through the influence of Ishii Juji,
the George Miiller of Japan. The Institute is akin
to the Russell Sage Foundation of New York and
has already issued a number of valuable studies.

The Social Welfare Bureau in the Imperial De-
partment of Home Affairs and the corresponding
bureaus in the chief provinces show how up-to-date
the Japanese Government is in its attempt to mitigate
the evils of modern civilization. It is noteworthy that
a goodly number of the experts in these bureaus are
Christian men and women, not a few of them trained
in Japanese Christian schools and later in occidental

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 93

universities. Recent years have seen a marvelous
expansion of practical relief measures on the part
of the chief municipalities. Cheap lodging- houses,
restaurants, baths, employment agencies, and night
schools are now accessible to multitudes. In Osaka,
for example, the Working Men's Club is a spacious
building, providing most of the facilities characteristic
of a Y. M. C. A. building. The director, Mr. Shiga,
is a university graduate who, for some time, was an
"Association" secretary, and he is attempting to
minister in the spirit of his Master to the swarms of
working men who throng the building.

4. Tuberculosis, unemployment, housing shortage

The spread of tuberculosis in Japan has been aggra-
vated by the conditions in the factories and mines so
that the ratio of tubercular patients is one of the
highest among civilized nations, being one to every
fifty-two persons. In 1916 there were 86,633 ^deaths
from tuberculosis which is at the rate of 157 in 10,000.
The government authorities were surprisingly slow
in adopting preventive measures, but now both gov-
ernment and volunteer agencies are actively educating
the people as to the prevention and cure of the disease.
During the past few years five municipal sanitaria
have been established. There are also five private
sanitaria for tuberculosis, three of which are under
Christian auspices.

The phenomenal expansion of industry between
1914 and 1919 led to a huge mobilizing of labor in the
larger cities, and when the sudden slump struck all

94 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

industry in 1920, there was a corresponding concen-
tration of the unemployed. One of the chief relief
measures adopted was the rapid extension of employ-
ment exchanges by the cooperation of the national
and local governments. An impetus in this direction
was given by the resolutions of the International Labor
Conference held at Washington in 1919. The result
has been the increase in the number of employment
exchanges from 23 in 1916 to 396 in 1921. The greater
. part of this increase is due to the establishment of
municipal and village exchanges.

Like every other country, since the War Japan has
had an acute housing shortage due to the concentration
of resources upon the manufacture of munitions.
Finally, in 1919, the government made available to
municipalities a loan of $11,500,000 to be used in the
erection of dwellings, particularly for the laboring
class. A total of 15,500 houses had been completed in
accordance with this plan up to the end of 1921, but
creditable as this result was, it supplied only one
eighth of the number of dwellings needed.

In some municipalities laborers' lodging houses are
operated at a cost charge of between six and ten
cents a night. In addition to fairly clean beds, whole-
some food, a bath, an employment office, and a small
reading room are provided. These houses are a great
boon to countrymen coming to the city to look for a
job, and to the thousands of men thrown out of work
whenever there is a business depression.

An influential factor in the improvement of slum
conditions is the schools for poor children .such as

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 95

those operated in the lower east side and other slum
districts in Tokyo. In eight of these schools there
are altogether 4,800 children. It is found that the
children are pitifully lacking in physical stamina, and
that, accordingly, ninety-five per cent of those entering
one school were found to.be afflicted with some form
of nervous disease. Coming as they do from hovels
where old and young are crowded together in sickness
and health, with alternate carousing and quarreling
going on and lack of normal opportunities for play
and wholesome recreation, it is small wonder that the
children are so abnormal. Many of the teachers in
these poor schools are veritable missionaries of light
and love to their own people.

5. Christian leaders in welfare activities

To anyone who knows how vital a contribution
Christianity is making to the solution of social prob-
lems in the Far East, it will be no surprise to learn
that the welfare work carried on in factories owned
by Christians has been so uniquely successful as to
constitute in itself an apologetic for the Christian life.
Notable among these is the work carried on by Mr.
T. Watanabe, whose remarkable story has been given
me by his close friend, Mr. J. Merle Davis :

Mr. T. Watanabe six years ago was the manager of one
of the cotton spinning mills of the Fuji Gassed Cotton Spin-
ning Co. situated at Oyama, on the Tokaido Railroad line
near the foot of Mt. Fuji. He was not at that time a
Christian. He began to notice the sweet devotion and
kindly, self-sacrificing spirit of one of the nurses attached

96 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

to the Mill Hospital. Her conduct and personality stood out in
sharp contrast with the other nurses and matrons of the mill.
One day, Mr. Watanabe asked the nurse why she took so
much pains to be kind and thoughtful with her patients and
why she seemed happy all the time amid rather depressing
surroundings. She replied that she was a Christian and had
the love of Christ in her heart; that it was Christ within
her. Mr. Watanabe was deeply impressed and finally decided
if Christ could so change this nurse that he needed him
and would seek him. Not long after this he was baptized.

Later Mr. Watanabe was transferred to the managership
of one of the Company's Tokyo plants, and it was here that
he began, about four and a half years ago, the remarkable
Christian social welfare program which marks him as one of
the outstanding pioneers in industrial betterment in Japan.
He found the directors of his Company hard-headed, practi-
cal men, opposed to appropriating adequate sums for welfare
work and prejudiced against the Christian emphasis which
Watanabe placed in his welfare program. They granted
him an utterly inadequate sum with which to carry out his
plans, and told him if he made good, they would put a
larger sum in the budget of the next year. He was thus
compelled to work practically without equipment.

He organized Bible study groups meeting in the early
morning, singing and social groups in the evening. The
simple, fundamental principles of right living, of relationship
to God and to fellow-men were taught, and soon hundreds
of the girls went to their work singing Christian hymns. A
joint Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. was organized, patterned after
the Tokyo City Y. M. C. A., but open to both men and women.
The full time help of a Christian Pastor was secured, and in
the course of a few months a Christian (Presbyterian)
Church was formed within the mill, with a membership of
eighty-five.

A new spirit of faithfulness, of efficiency, of happiness
and interest in work soon became apparent to the manage-
ment of the mill and with it came a noticeable increase in
output. The result at the end of the first year was a very
substantial increase in appropriation for Welfare Work and
Mr. Watanabe was virtually given a free hand to do as he

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 97

wished with the mill operatives. In time this branch of the
Fuji Corporation found itself the object of attention and
study on the part of mill owners from all parts of Japan.
He fearlessly told them that it was the method of Christ.
At a notable convention of mill and factory owners
managers in 1918, Mr. Watanabe read the most important
paper of the Conference, explaining the application of the
spirit and teachings of Christ to the problems of management.
About two years ago Mr. Watanabe resigned from the
Fuji Company to organize a mill of his own. He is prosper-
ing financially, and a year ago he gave twelve hundred yen
to the building extension fund of the Tokyo Y. M. C. A.

I have visited a half dozen other industrial enter-
prises conducted by Christians and in every case have
found material for a similar story. Let me sketch
three of them.

There is a rich silk-producing district not far from
Kyoto, and at the center of it lies Ayabe, which has
become famous through the life and achievements
of a prodigal son named T. Hatano. Thirty years
ago he was a physical and moral wreck, who had
wasted his own and his family's substance in riotous
living. But one day in the midst of his despair he
stumbled into a Christian preaching hall in Kobe,
and forthwith light began to break upon his path.
Eventually he became a firm Christian, returned to
his native village, and was reconciled with his wife
and family. It required a long period of hard work
before he could regain the confidence of his fellow-
townsmen. After a time he became convinced that the
farmers of the district were making a mistake in trying
to raise cotton, whereas the soil was well suited to
raising silk cocoons, and he began to try to get enough

98 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

money to make a demonstration. One old farmer
was at length convinced and lent him a small sum.
With that meager start, Hatano entered upon the
career which in a few years made him the leading
silk expert of the county, the head of silk filatures
employing three thousand workers, and the saintly
leader of a Christian church which sprang out of
his life and work.

Another instance of the fruits of religion in industry
is that of my friend, C. Nakatsu of Kumamoto.
Twelve years ago he graduated from Kyoto Imperial
University. Having inherited considerable property,
he might, according to Japanese custom, have retired
to respectable idleness in his native city, but instead
he determined to make his wealth and his education
count to the utmost for the Kingdom of God. Ac-
cordingly, he organized a laundry and later an iron
foundry. His interests have gradually multiplied,
but he has continued to devote himself like a father
to the scores of young men and boys in his foundry.
He has drawn around him a number of associates
who share his views, and together they have permeated
the shops with the spirit of Christ until it has become
a factory of character, no less than of pumps and
engines.

Every day for a few minutes the office and shop
staffs gather in the shed which serves as a chapel and
there, under the lead of Mr. Nakatsu, they have a
session of singing, meditation, and exhortation, and of
conference regarding the well-being of the whole
force. His home is a most Christian place, a bene-

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 99

diction to those who, like myself, have enjoyed its
hospitality. In the local Episcopal church and the
Young" Men's Christian Association he has been a
successful teacher of Bible classes and a leader in the
development of a choir, which is a rare feature in
Japanese churches. His hobby is the study and teach-
ing of the Gospel of John.

Let me mention one more instance, the dyeing es-
tablishment owned by a Christian family near Osaka.
So ardent was the religious interest of the parents
that they dedicated one of their boys at birth to the
Christian ministry. In his maturity he fulfilled their
hopes and is today one of the most devoted pastors
in that vicinity. It is not strange, therefore, to see
blazoned on the smoke-stack of the dye-works the
sign of the Cross, so that all may be reminded when-
ever they see it of the living Christ ; and in the works
below that sign, the life and policy of the management
are such as to commend the gospel of Christ.

The Christian Association in Tokyo Imperial
University was for years content to confine its efforts
to religious and social work among the students, but
the emphasis upon social problems at student confer-
ences and in Bible classes awakened a number of
medical members and graduates to their duty toward
the innocent victims of the industrial system in the
slums of East Tokyo. They resolved to establish
a maternity hospital and visiting nurses' center in
one of the most needy wards of the city. The enter-
prise was carried out entirely without foreign aid or
funds. At its head is a retired professor of medicine.

ioo CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Although for many years he had maintained only a
loose connection with the church, he seemed to have
been longing for some practical need which he was
peculiarly fitted to meet, and gladly put his prestige
and skill at the service of the hospital.

Many other examples of the leadership of Christians
in social enterprises could be given. To a practical
people like the Japanese, who judge a religion chiefly
by its fruits, these enterprises are more convincing
than volumes of apologetics. One of their aphorisms
is to the effect that an ounce of evidence outweighs
a ton of argument. For generations the common
people have associated religion with the shaven-headed
Buddhist priests, who 1 drone Sanskrit liturgies and
officiate at funerals, while they give the multitudes
sweating under the yoke of life exhortations on the
unreality of evil and the compensations of a paradise
hereafter. A learned comparison between Buddhism
and Christianity is beyond their grasp, but a religion
that incarnates itself in self-sacrificing service and
that stoops in the spirit of Christ unto the very least
of the drudges in mines and factories, and the unfor-
tunates in the slums, will command their respect.

6. Relief or reconstruction' Kagawa's ivork

Enough has been said of the relief and welfare
work inaugurated by the Government and the pro-
gressive employers to show that they are not without
value. They should go far to allay discontent and
promote general well-being. But the crucial defect
in the policy of all who have not caught the Christian

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 101

purpose is that they accept the present industrial and
social order as final and merely attempt to smooth
down the rough corners, never thinking to inject
such an altruistic spirit as shall ultimately reconstruct
the present order more nearly after the pattern of
the Kingdom of God.

A social and economic system which is dooming
increasing numbers to a hard, cramped, and even
sub-human existence must eventually be made over,
and whether it is to be remade by reasonable and
gradual changes or by revolutionary violence, will
depend in large measure upon the degree to which
the working- masses and the privileged class alike are.
saturated with the spirit of Christ.

It is at this point that the romantic life and achieve-
ments of Rev. T. Kagawa. of the Kobe slums, shed
light and hope upon the whole troubled situation.
It is easy to use superlatives about Kagawa. for
although he is yet a young man, just turned thirty-
four, he has achieved more than most men at sixty.
His career is so illuminating that it will be recounted
in some detail.

Tradition says that St. Paul was small and unpre-
possessing, and so Mr. Kagawa, who has been called
the "Saint of the Shinkawa Slums," weighs perhaps
one hundred and ten pounds and has an undistin-
guished . face until it is lighted up by inward fires as
he pleads with some throng of strikers for patience
and restraint, or as he appeals to some audience of
university men and women to follow him in Christ-
like ministry to the under-man.

102 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Mr. Kagawa discloses much of his life-story in the
guise of a novel entitled Crossing the Death-Hue, which
has gone through three hundred editions (200,000
copies) within two years, a striking indication of his
hold on the public and of the wide appeal of the idealist
approach to social problems. But it is set forth in more
orderly fashion in a sketch kindly written at my request
by Kagawa's second father. Rev. Dr. Harry W. Myers,
which is here reproduced.

Toyohiko Kagawa was born August 10, 1888, in Kobe.
His father's family was wealthy. His father's legal wife
had no children.

I first met Toyohiko when he was a slender, precocious
lad of thirteen, with a brilliant mind and an ambition to
learn everything. He was converted while a member of
my English Bible class and at once threw himself with all
his energy into the work of the church and Sunday school
to an extent that was at times embarrassing. On graduating
from the middle school he told his uncle that he was going
to become a Christian minister, and was promptly told to
get out of the house if that was his plan. He came around
to live in our home, as he had nowhere else to go, and we
sent him up to study at Meiji Gakuin, the Presbyterian
School in Tokyo.

After finishing in Tokyo he came back to Kobe and
entered our Theological School, but before long developed
tuberculosis and had to withdraw and try to get back his
health. Twice he was at the very point of death, and once
I sat up all night with him in the hospital, because the
doctor thought he might pass away before morning. He
spent nearly a year in a little fisherman's cottage on the
sea-side at Gamagori, which he rented for fifty cents a
month. While there he learned to know and love the poor.
as he wrote their letters, painted their names on their oiled
paper umbrellas, smoothed out their family quarrels, and
was big brother to all the children in the village.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 103

In his graduating year at the Theological School he began
going down to preach in the slum section of Shinkawa in
Kobe on the street corners, and before long he began to sec
results. He asked permission to leave the dormitory and
rent a room down there that he might provide a place for
the young men he was getting hold of where they would be
free from the temptations of the slums. We tried to dis-
suade him as we felt that with his weak physique this would
be signing his death-warrant, but he had made up his mind,
and go he would, regardless of consequences.

He was living the Sermon on the Mount literally. He
never possessed two coats, as he would give one away to the
first man he saw shivering from the cold. For one living in
such a quarter, an occasional change of clothing is a neces-
sity, so we adopted the expedient of providing an extra
outfit for him, and having him change at our house every
two weeks. Often he would give away his food and live on
two meals a day, so we tried to entice him up to eat a square
meal as often as possible. During this time he wrote his
great book on The Psychology of Poverty. He also wrote
a little book of poems of the slums, Two Measures of Tears,
which was quite successful.

During those early years his activity was simply astonish-
ing. He would get up at five o'clock and preach on the
streets or down at the water front to the laborers about
to go to their work, and again at dusk here and there in
the slums. He was tireless in visiting, nursing the sick, and
helping to bury the dead. Friends who saw his work gave
him considerable sums of money which he used with a
lavish hand, reserving only about two dollars a month for
his own support. He tried various plans to help the com-
munity about him, such as a night school, a sewing school, a
dormitory, a cheap eatinghouse, a brush factory, accompany-
ing it all with much preaching, prayer, and Bible teaching.

He set as his ideal a celibate life of service such as that
of Origen or Francis of Assist, but the Lord sent him an
ideal wife, who was heart and soul in sympathy with him
and his work, and Mrs. Kagawa is able to run his home
efficiently for him and, at the same time, do a great deal of
religious, social, and charitable work with him.

104 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Shortly after his marriage, Mr. Kagawa arranged for
his wife to take a course of study in a religious training-
school in Yokohama, while he went to America to study
at Princeton Seminary and University. After three years'
study he returned to Japan in 1918 and spent his first night
in Japan down at his old home in the slums. He had not
been spoiled in the least by his life abroad. While he was
away, his work had been carried on by one of his young
converts.

After his return from America, Mr. Kagawa leaped into
prominence. His book on Poverty had made him an authori-
ty on social work, and he was invited to give lectures in
schools and in public gatherings far and wide. He began to
organize unions among the laborers, and soon earned a repu-
tation in some quarters as an "agitator." He was responsible
for getting up many public meetings to agitate for prohibi-
tion, for the abolition of the licensed quarters, for universal
suffrage, for better streets, and similar reforms. Requests
for magazine articles came pouring in on him. He was in
great demand as a preacher, and hundreds were added to the
churches as a result of his addresses.

His most successful literary venture was almost accidental.
During his illness in Gamagori years ago, he amused him-
self by writing a biographical novel or fictitious auto-
biography which he entitled Crossing the Death-line. The
manuscript of this book lay for years untouched till two
years ago, when he was casting around for additional means
to finance his many ventures. This manuscript was hauled
down, re-written, and sent to the publishers.* The book is
deeply religious, and gives the picture of a young man pass-
ng through temptation and mental struggle into a life of
Sacrifice and unselfish service. The book sold from the first
as fast as it could be printed, and in two years from the
date of its publication, it has nearly reached its three
mndredth edition} and is now the best seller in the country.
Its sequel has been published, and is only a little less

*They are said to have given him $500 for it, but to have sent
a check for $15,000 more when the hundreth edition had been
reached.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 105

popular than the first volume. Crossing the Death-line has
been published in English.

For a long time Mr. Kagawa was feared and watched by
the authorities as a dangerous radical. When members of
the Imperial family passed through Kobe, detectives were
detailed to watch him. Once he was called into court and
fined because some reference he made to the form of gov-
ernment in the new nations of Europe was interpreted to
be a veiled attack upon the government here. All this was
rather ludicrous in view of the fact that he is a pacifist of
the Tolstoian type.

Along with his activity as a labor organizer, he has done
fine work as a peace-maker in numerous strikes. In con-
nection with his activities in this line, he was arrested
last year and spent several weeks in prison, but was treated
with great consideration, and released at the direct com-
mand of the Department of the Interior. The authorities
are at last waking up to the fact that Mr. Kagawa rep-
resents one of the strongest conservative forces among
laborers in Japan.

Neither fame nor weariness has ever weaned
Kagawa and his wife away from their tiny home and
their motley family in the heart of the disease-smitten
slums. Criminals and dead-beats and demented
wrecks of humanity have imposed upon their un-
stinted charity and made unceasing drafts upon their
sympathy.

It is as the founder and leader of the Western
Federation of Labor that Kagawa has rendered his
most difficult and unique service to the cause of in-
dustrial peace. When the Federation was being
launched, a deputation of working men waited upon
him and his friend Mr. Hisatome and got them to
edit the organ of the Federation. During the past
four years of tempestuous labor strife, Kagawa has

io6 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

been a buttress against violence and vindictive
measures to such a degree that the ultra-radical leaders
have attempted to undercut his influence and elbow
him out of the inner councils. But he is neither per-
turbed nor swerved from the straight road of utterly
unselfish service to laborer and employer alike. The
founding of a Labor College by Mr. Kagawa, in
Osaka, is one of his most far-sighted moves. It aims
to train labor leaders, whereas the school opened by
the Capital and Labor Harmonization Society aims to
raise the efficiency of the workers. The enrolment
of these schools is still less than two hundred for
both. The labor school started last September by
the Osaka Young Men's Christian Association has
enrolled two hundred and six. In all these schools
the faculties would rank with the best, for not a few
of the Imperial University and Christian college
professors are enthusiastically giving their services.
In the Y. M. C. A. school, for example, we find seven
doctors of philosophy, medicine, and divinity. It
would not be surprising a decade hence to find that
the ablest labor leaders had been given ballast and
dynamic in these labor colleges.

A terse yet eloquent summary of Mr. Kagawa's
gospel is given in a message written for this book.*

If the missionaries and the churches are rearing
even a few apostles like Mr. Kagawa and they are
the demons in the Japanese body politic can be cast
out and even industry can be more and more impreg-
nated by the Spirit of Christ.

* See Appendix.

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS

"Not many years ago there was on exhibition in
an art gallery of Tokyo a remarkable picture. It
was not exactly a masterpiece, but its subject was
exceedingly suggestive. In the center stood a child,
and grouped around it were four men, each beckoning
it to follow. On the face of the child was an ex-
pression of bewilderment. The child was meant to rep-
resent Japan, and the four men represented a Shinto
priest, Confucius, Gautama Buddha, and Jesus."*

I. THE BLENDED STRATA OF JAPANESE RELIGION

This painting symbolizes the Japanese people. But
it is not quite accurate: for just as an American can
be at once a member of the Republican Party and
of the Associated Charities and of the Church, so a
Japanese can be a supporter of Shinto as a patriotic
ritual, a disciple of Confucius as a teacher of civic
and family ethics, and an adherent of some sect of
Buddhism, probably because his ancestors were. The
three faiths have not always lived in perfect
peace; orthodox Confucianists have at times opposed
Buddhism, and at the Restoration of 1868 the loyalists
frowned on Buddhism and exalted Shinto. But they
have all been so interwoven in Japanese life and
thought, that Dr. Harada was quite justified in
calling his book "The Faith of Japan" for it describes
the religious ideas held in common by Japanese of

* Reischauer, A. K. : Studies in Japanese Buddhism, p. i.

io8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

all faiths and of none. This blending process was
given its great impetus in the ninth century when two
brilliant priests, Gyogi and Kobo Daishi, in order to
wean the mass of people from their stubborn adherence
to their native Shinto, devised the clever theory that
the myriad gods of the Shinto pantheon were simply
the Japanese counterparts of the Buddhist deities.

Tolerance for things foreign and new has always
been a marked characteristic of the Japanese people.
In the religious realm it made them ready to welcome
Buddhism in the sixth century and Christianity in
the sixteenth. The same tolerant open-mindedness
is still one of their most charming and hopeful traits.
In like manner assuredly, every follower of Him who
said "The truth shall make you free" will be not less
eager to discover all that is good and beautiful in
the faiths of Japan. The true missionary takes as
his mottoes, "I came not to destroy but to fulfil" and
"I am come that they might have life and have it
abundantly." He will therefore judge other faiths
by their best rather than by their worst. He will
unfeignedly rejoice over every evidence of their power
to bless human life and bring forth the unmistakable
fruits of the Spirit. Then having discovered where
the older faiths leave the Japanese seeker groping
or impotent, the Christian will leap to share with
him the secret which he has himself tested, of Christ
the Open Door, the perennial Fountain.

Approached in this spirit, the history and the
present state of Shinto and Confucianism and
Buddhism in Japan are charged with a vivid, almost

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 109

poignant interest. One feels that he is not a cold
student of "false" or outworn "systems," but a
witness of the very birth-throes of human souls, and
of the age-long yearning of the Heavenly Father
to impart his Light to bewildered men.

Our purpose being to find what living Japanese
need rather than to study the philosophy of religions,
we shall merely touch the mountain peaks in the
history of the older faiths and devote major attention
to their present-day significance and to the voids they
have left for Christianity to fill.

II. THE CONTRIBUTION OF SHINTO

Shinto, which means "The Way of the Gods," is the
original faith of the Japanese people and reflects more
perfectly than any other institution their character and
genius. It arose like so many other primitive faiths out
of a belief in spirits on the one hand and an adoration
of natural forces on the other. Even today the mass
of the people wear amulets or tack up paper and
wooden charms over the front doors of their dwellings.
To one who has seen Mt. Fuji at sunrise or the
Inland Sea under the full moon, it is small wonder
that the Japanese early became nature worshipers.
Like the Canaanites, the Japanese have erected shrines
on every high hill, surrounded by magnificent cedar or
camphor trees. At the foot of a crag or the approach
to a waterfall or around a great tree, their reverent
fingers have twined straw ropes in token of their
worshipful reverence for the beautiful, the grand,
and the extraordinary. In Japanese mythology the

no CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

sun goddess, Amaterasu, is exalted as the source of
life and food as well as the ancestress of the Imperial
House. Even a scientifically trained Christian is in-
stinctively impelled to bow when, standing on the
coast of Japan, he sees the mighty sun rise in all its
majesty from the bosom of the Pacific.

Amaterasu and other nature deities were called
kami, which means something superior and awe-
inspiring. It is even today applied by the common
people to the government, and it has been adopted
by Christians as one of the words to express the idea
of God. It is, therefore, not strange that the Shinto
worship of the nature gods or kami was also ex-
tended to include departed tribal chieftains by whose
prowess the tribe had been delivered. The next step
was to worship the living chieftain or Mikado, who
was the visible representative of the gods as well as
the political ruler. This doctrine of the divinity
of the Imperial line was resurrected after the long
eclipse of the Imperial family, by loyalist scholars
of the eighteenth century. Their writings gradually
built up among the samurai such an ardent patriotism
for the Emperor that when the pressure of America
and other powers in the eighteen-fifties forced Japan
to open her doors, the strongest clans rallied around
the Emperor and made him the sacred center of
national unity. Naturally, therefore, from the time
of the Restoration this political type of Shinto has
been systematically promoted by statesmen and con-
servatives as a buttress against the invasion of both
Christianity and democracy.

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS in

The lengths to which nationalistic Shintoists will
carry their exaltation of the Emperor are well-nigh
inconceivable to a prosaic Westerner. It was only
a decade ago that a cabinet minister. Baron Oura,
made this pronouncement: "That the majesty of
our Imperial House towers high above everything
to be found in the world, and that it is as durable
as heaven and earth, is too well known to need
dwelling on here. ... If our country needs a
religious faith, then, I say, let it be converted to a
belief in the religion of patriotism and loyalty, the
religion of Imperialism, in other words, to Emperor-
worship."*

We remarked above that Shinto reflects the genius
of the Japanese people. It exalts simplicity, purity,
racial unity, and nature worship. The shrines, with
their shingled roofs, simple lines, and straight-grained
natural woods, bare of ornament, foster a correspond-
ing simplicity in the devout worshiper. Before each
shrine there is a bowl of holy water into which the
worshiper dips his fingers as a symbol of purifica-
tion. On the other hand, Shinto is lacking in any
clear idea of God, and therefore of moral responsi-
bility, of either sin or salvation. Shinto teachers
have been fond of asserting the native purity of
the Japanese heart that the only requisite for salva-
tion was to follow one's own instincts and be loyal
to the Emperor. Shinto does not plumb the depths
of the human heart or answer its longings and strag-

* Millard : Democracy and the Eastern Question, p. 21.

ii2 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

gles. Like the exquisite shrines standing in groves
apart, the Shinto faith seems to dwell apart from
the bustle and strife of real life. Not an iota of
its beauty, its mysticism, its reverence for nature
and for past generations, should be lost. They all
can be conserved and treasured by the Christian. And
who shall deity that the Christian Church in Japan
and elsewhere would be the gainer by incorporating
the true and beautiful aspects of Shinto shorn of
superstition and narrow nationalism?

Two of the festivals connected with the old faiths
are already being re-christened and given a Christian
dress. One of them is the joyous Buddhist feast of all
spirits, when torches and lanterns are set a-twinkling
far and wide in the rice fields, and the candles are
lighted indoors amid feasting and merriment. The
change into a commemoration of All Saints, marked
by a service of praise for departed relatives and
friends, is being readily made by not a few churches.
Another is the Shinto feast of first fruits, when the
new rice is presented to the gods of fertility; it is
found by Christians to be a natural occasion for a
service of praise and thanksgiving to the Giver of
all good.

In recent years two professors in Tokyo Imperial
University have made a daring attempt to rationalize
Shinto, and give it a place alongside of Christianity
and Buddhism. Indeed, preposterous as it may seem,
these learned gentlemen, both of them acquainted
with Western philosophy and the history of Chris-
tianity, have assumed that Shinto could be transformed

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 113

into a universal and credible religion, despite its evident
origin as a crude nature worship blended later with
veneration of the Imperial line. Although their works
are too abstruse to reach a wide audience, they have
had a temporary effect on a number of younger
students to whom the notion of evolving a religion
which would enthrone their own emperors as heredi-
tary demigods and pontiffs makes a seductive appeal.
Cabinet ministers like Mr. Tokonami have in one
breath vigorously denied that patriotic Shinto was
a religion, and in the next they have encouraged at
Shinto shrines ceremonies and prayers which have
all the earmarks of religion. The most striking em-
bodiment of this two-faced cult is the imposing Meiji
Shrine, erected in Tokyo two years ago at a cost of
several million dollars, and visited already by millions
of worshipers. It is evident that nationalistic Shinto
will long hold a prominent place in popular affection,
blocking the way for a higher faith.

III. CONFUCIANISM AND CHINESE CULTURE IN JAPAN

Chinese civilization came in the fifth century to
the tribes of the Island Empire like some grand
galleon of the Spanish Main, laden with all the
treasures of a culture which was old when Moses was
born. Chief among the treasures were the Chinese
classics, including the ethical and political system
summarized by Confucius and Mencius. They brought
a sudden widening of horizon and enrichment of life
to the Japanese, much as the revival of Greek learning
did to medieval Europe. The entire system of

ii4 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

government was recast after Chinese models. Codes
of law were drafted, literature and the fine arts arose.
But in the long run perhaps the greatest gift of China
to Japan was an ethical system. Confucianism is a
system of ethics and civics inseparably combined.
Underlying the whole system is an indefinite faith in
the order or will of the universe which is called
Heaven. Confucius once said, "Honor the gods, but
keep far from them," for his central interest was
man; he ignored alike the physical world and the
ultimate problems of theology. Right relations to
parents, to superiors, to brothers, and to friends, in
accordance with the principles of righteousness,
benevolence, and reason, which are embedded in
human nature and in the universe these are the
essence of Confucianism.

But, like everything else that they touch, the
Japanese were not content to accept Confucianism
without adapting it to their own traditions and social
demands. The result is that while in China filial
piety was the cardinal virtue, in Japan loyalty took
'precedence. This was a natural accommodation to
the requirements of a military and feudal stage of
development.

Furthermore, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Japanese scholars magnified the more mys-
tical and spiritual elements in Confucianism. Promi-
nent among these scholars were Toju, the Sage of
Omi, his disciple Banzan, and Muro Kynso.

Perhaps the greatest need which Confucianism
supplied was the idea of obligation, which like every-

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 115

thing else was vague and unsystematic in Shinto. I
Confucianism also emphasized the sacredness of
family and civic relationships, and thus tended to
maintain a sane balance even when Buddhism with
its ascetic and anti-social influence was in the
ascendant. Confucianism,- as it were, injected iron
into the blood; it put re-enforced concrete in the
social system.

Bushido, or "The Way of the Knight," represented
the result of the blending of Confucian ideals with
the native warrior ideals of Japan known as Yamato-
damashii, which means the "Spirit of Yamato," or
Japan, for Yamato was the name of the tribe which
first subdued the greater part of the country and
formed an empire. Bushido, like the English ideal of
a gentlemen, was elusive, but it represented that fine
combination of self -obliterating loyalty, of contempt
of suffering and poverty and death, of love for lord!
and native land, which made the medieval Japanese!
knight a close rival of the flower of European chivalry J
Being the ideal of the ruling class, Bushido was
unconsciously imbibed by the mass of the people, and
even now it influences the conduct of every loyal
Japanese. But Bushido, like Confucianism, was the
flower of an earlier age, when society was organized
on the basis of family and clan, and when farming
and fighting were the two great industries. It exalts
the clan and the family, but minimizes individuality.
. Even its apologists admit that it is a pitiful misfit in
the complex life of modern Japan. It has no answers
^ito the perplexing problems of an industrial, cosmo-

1)6 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

politan age, and leaves unmet the deep demand of the
heart for a rational and powerful faith.*

It will be evident that Confucianism is not,, properly
speaking, a religion. Hence it has never been a rival
to Buddhism or Christianity. On the other hand, it
supplies invaluable elements which Christianity can
build upon. In fact, nearly all the early leaders of
the Christian Church in Japan, and a large proportion
of the Christian writers, preachers, and educators
today were brought up on Confucianism. Acute
observers believe that without a substructure of Con-
fucian training the character of Japanese Christians
is likely to lack the clean-cut ideals of duty and loyalty,
and the delicate sense of honor which mark the finer
Japanese personalities.

IV. THE BLESSING AND BANE OF BUDDHISM

Buddhism, from the first, stood sharply contrasted
with Shinto. But the very fact that it was so different
and professed to supplement and not to compete with
or destroy Shinto had much to do with its rapid and
complete triumph. Chinese literature had preceded
Buddhism's entry into Japan by a century and had
paved the way for it. When Buddhism came, by way
of Korea in 552 A. D V it brought as its dowry not only
a fresh access of Chinese culture, but also the arts of
India and Korea, for in that age, Buddhism was as
intimately bound up with all aspects of culture as was
Christianity in medieval Europe. As every student
of Japanese art knows, he cannot appreciate its subtler
* Imai, J. : Bushido from the Christian Point of View.

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 117

meanings without a considerable knowledge of Bud-
dhism. Like the cathedrals of Europe, the most
exquisite architectural creations in Japan were the
temples erected for Buddhist worship. On their dec-
oration artists lavished their lives, deriving many of
their subjects from the literature and symbolism of
Buddhism. Most of the pioneers of letters in Japan
were Buddhist priests. Well-nigh the only schools
for centuries were those conducted by priests in the
temples and monasteries or those taught by them in
the palaces of provincial lords. Bridge building and
the control of river torrents were also introduced by
the priests. Today Buddhism is the creed of half
Japan, a palliative for aching but credulous hearts,
and a bulwark against change. Any understanding,
therefore, of Japanese character and any program for
the future must reckon with Buddhism.

T. Changes in Buddhism

Japanese Buddhism is different from that in China
and still more different from original Buddhism in
India, for, like a long river, Buddhism has taken
its color and shape from the consistency of the banks
through which it has flowed. Original Buddhism
might be called the Protestantism of Brahminism; it
was a recoil against empty speculation, lifeless
ceremonies, and priestly tyranny. Its Luther was
Prince Siddartha, Gautama Buddha, the Enlightened
One. The many gods of Hinduism and the Absolute
of the Vedanta alike he rejected. He fled from his
family and all social obligations and, as a wandering

ii8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

ascetic, tried to lighten the misery of existence by
kindly ministry. At length, having found enlighten-
ment by the expulsion of all desire, he preached this
discovery to his fellows. He had not been long dead
before his remarkable character and teachings led
his disciples to exalt him into an object of worship,
notwithstanding he had himself cast away all faith
in the gods and had preached salvation by self-
conquest and good works. But with the passing of
the centuries and the spread of Buddhism into Tibet
and China there developed a polytheistic system, an
ornate ritual, and a monkish hierarchy so intricate
and so contradictory to Guatama's original teaching
that he would have been shocked beyond words had
he come back to earth and witnessed the amazing
transformation. Only in the Southern Buddhism of
Ceylon, idealized in Sir Edwin Arnold's The Light
of Asia., and represented by the Zen Sect of Japan,
was the ethical agnosticism of Gautama measurably
preserved.

2. Prominent Sects in Japan

Buddhism as it was brought to Japan in the sixth
and later centuries was identical with that in vogue
in Korea and China. Its priests came armed with
a vast library of divergent sutras and commentaries
which became the bases of a number of rival sects.
Most of these sects have persisted, and new ones
original to Japan have developed, so that today there
are twelve chief sects. The)'- represent the extremes of
the northern polytheistic and the southern atheistic

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 119

and ethical school. The ethical school is represented
by the Zen Sect which came from China in the eighth
century. It exalts contemplation and intuition. It
is akin to Stoicism in its superiority to hardship
and its struggle for enlightenment by concentration
of thought, especially by fixing the eyes on one spot,
such as the end of the hose, until ecstasy and
enlightenment are induced. Zen has appealed power-
fully to soldiers. It exalts self-reliance and self-
mastery, but has no gospel for men in the toils of sin
nor does it impel men to spend themselves for the
regeneration of society.

Most of the other sects are dominated by the
doctrine of salvation by faith, which is preached in
its most pronounced and aggressive form by the Jodo
and Shin sects. They all maintain that Buddhism has
two aspects: the esoteric, for people of critical
intelligence, the other for simple minds dependent
upon the sensuous appeal of reward and punishment.
Instead of an absorption into the absolute, the glowing
picture of a Western Paradise is held before their
eyes. Instead of rigorous self -discipline indefinitely
prolonged, they are offered salvation by the mere
repetition of the magic name of Amida, the all-pitiful.
The tradition is that ages ago Amida lived a perfect
human life as a monk, and when he was about to
return to his divine abode he was so smitten with pity
for suffering humanity that he vowed not to abandon
them until by infinite suffering he had heaped up
merit sufficient to save all mankind.

These Amida sects were established and elaborated

120 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

by two men of remarkable character and ability who
flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the
first named Honen and the second, his disciple
Shinran. In addition to magnifying- reliance upon the
merits of Amida, Shinran's most original contribution
to Buddhism was the insistence upon the right of
priests to marry and to eat meat. He founded the
sect called Shin Shu. Its tremendous hold upon the
masses is symbolized by the two magnificent temples
which first strike the eye of the visitor to Kyoto,
known as Eastern and Western Honganji. When
the newest of these temples was erected some thirty
years ago at a cost of several million dollars, two
of the cables used in the temple were braided from
the hair of millions of devotees.

Tenderness and mercy are among the chief virtues
springing from Buddhism. They are embodied in the
god Jizo, the companion and guardian of little chil-
dren and the conqueror of the powers of death. He
appears to represent much the same response to human
longings as the worship of the Virgin Mary.

A few years after Shinran, there arose another
powerful personality, Nichiren, who founded the
sect known by his name. He recoiled from the
doctrine of Amiclaism. It was too personal and
theistic. With the intimate Japanese feeling for nature,
he demanded a pantheistic explanation of the uni-
verse; so that in his system beasts and inanimate
objects were represented as capable of attaining
Bnddhahood, or enlightenment after various trans-
migrations. He also exalted the Sanscrit sutra called

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A JAPANESE PASTOR AND HIS FAMILY. THE REV. HIROSHI HATANAKA

WAS EDUCATED IN AMERICA. HE WAS FORMERLY A BOYS' WORKER,

NOW PASTOR OF KYOTO KUMIAI CHURCH, ONE OF THE STRONGEST

CHURCHES IN CENTRAL JAPAN

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 121

Saddharma Pimdarika and taught his followers to
chant, "Hail ! O Sutra of the Lotus, of the Wonderful
Law," instead of the phrase endlessly repeated by
Shin believers, "Hail ! Amida Buddha !" With respect
to salvation, Nichiren taught, like the Southern
School, that it could be attained by one's own efforts
if one reverenced the law and was strictly orthodox.
From the first, Nichiren has been a crusading sect,
waging uncompromising war against rivals.

Nichiren himself was a fiery patriot with a deep
faith in the common man and an intolerance of every-
thing foreign. At the time of the attack by the
Armada of Kublai Khan, he rallied the defenders like
a Peter the Hermit or a John Knox, and the heroic
statue erected in his honor among the pines on the
coast near Fukuoka commemorates alike the protec-
tion of the gods and the labors of Nichiren. With
characteristic elasticity the Nichiren sect attached
itself to the Shinto belief in the rice god Inari, who
is supposed to punish those who offend him by
inflicting fox-possession. The Nichiren priests claim
power to exorcise these evil spirits, much like the
soothsayers and medicine men of primitive tribes.
Because of its intolerance and superstition and blind
patriotism, Nichiren has been a stubborn obstacle in
the way of Christianity.

j. Power of accommodation

As already pointed out, Buddhism found Shinto
in possession of the field upon its arrival from the
continent, but instead of denouncing it, the shrewd

E-Jap

122 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

priests under the leadership of Kobo Daishi declared
the Shinto gods to be merely manifestations of the
Buddhist deities. So plausibly did they manipulate
this idea that it was generally accepted. The result
was the composite system called Ryobu-Shinto or

JfTwo-fold Way of the Gods." The effects of this
combination are evident today in the overlaying of
some of the Shinto shrines with Buddhist ornamenta-
tion. ^But at the Restoration of 1868 with its revival
of pure Shinto, Ryobn-Shinto fell under the ban and
most of the Shinto shrines were restored to their
pristine simplicity.

Buddhism has always been like an enormous sponge
capable of absorbing everything it touched and of

'conforming to every new environment. Its leaders
in Japan, therefore, as Christianity has prospered,
have set themselves to borrow Christian methods and
ideas. Many temples now have Buddhist preaching
services and Svinday schools. There are Young Men's
Buddhist Associations with dormitories similar to
those started by the Y.M.C.A., and many of the sects
have printed selections from their sacred writings in
volumes bound in close imitation of the Christian
Bible. Even the Zen Sect, which depends so much
upon intuition and so little upon literature, has
published such a book. More striking still are the
Buddhist hymns modeled after Christian hymns, with
slight changes, such as, "O, for a thousand tongues
to sing my blessed Buddha's praise," and "All hail
the power of Buddha's name!" Thus far the Shin
and the Nichiren sects seem to be the only ones that

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 123

are undertaking foreign missionary work, and for
the most part their activities are confined to com-J
munities where there are Japanese colonies.

The chameleon-like accommodation of Buddhism to
its surroundings and to the vocabulary of each new
day makes it comparatively easy for the Buddhist
apologist to maintain that Buddhism, after all, contains
the essential ideas of Christianity and that it
other ideas which adapt it better to the oriental mind.
Let us remember that the adequacy and excellence
of any religion will not be settled by argument, but
by the try-out of real life; and that human nature at
bottom is so nearly alike, East and West, that it will
demand and respond to the same fundamental truths
and appeals. Having laid down these principles, it
will be ilhiminating to contrast the two faiths as
fairly as may be in brief compass, even though words
are admittedly inadequate to define life, and Chris-
tianity is primarily a life rather than definitions or
precepts.

V. BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN TEACHING AND
EFFECTS CONTRASTED

Original Buddhism grew out of the life and
teaching' of a noble Indian prince, who loved men
and made works of self-denying benevolence almost
a religion, though he was an agnostic; but the Bud-
dhism which has chiefly prevailed in East Asia has
been a speculative philosophy with only slight his-
torical connections, and with some borrowing from
early Christian thought regarding salvation by faith.

124 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Christianity in all its forms is based upon the historical
fact of Jesus Christ, the ideal man, the revealer and
incarnation of God. Original Buddhism offers a
nebulous Absolute, absorption into which constitutes
the goal of all existence. Christianity preaches the
Holy Father and Saviour, harmony with whose will
opens the door to fulness of life in this world and
Vforever. Popular Buddhism points men to a paradise
hereafter, and minimizes family and social obligations.
Christ invites men of all races and conditions to
enter the Kingdom of God and so to impregnate the
family and other social institutions with the spirit
of Jesus that they shall all be built into that Kingdom.
Buddhism maintains that evil and sin are illusions to
be explained away or escaped, either by mastering
desire or by supinely trusting the merits of Amida.
jChrist shows that sin is a fact, but to be overcome
by God working in men, and requiring effort by men
themselves, as well as trust in Christ. Buddhism
has emphasized asceticism and flight from evil instead
of fighting to replace evil with good. This sentence
of a Buddhist teacher is characteristic: "Religion
is a device to bring peace of mind in the midst of
things as they are." Some of the temples have their
funds invested in houses licensed for evil purposes,
and social reforms have never secured the support
|Of any considerable number of Buddhist leaders, but
jhave generally been initiated by Christians and liberal-
Iminded men bred in Confucian ethics. Buddhism
minimizes personality, because it has no clear revela-
tion of the Heavenly Father in whose image man has

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 125

been made. Particularly does Buddhism degrade
woman by denying her equality with man and requir-
ing her to go through a longer process of rebirth in
order that she may, by becoming a man, ultimately
be saved. Buddhism promises salvation without effec-
tive repentance because it has no clear doctrine of sin.
It encourages vows and pilgrimages, formulas end-
lessly repeated, and votive offerings in place of a new
life dedicated to the will of God. As President Ebinay.
has pointed out: "Buddhism and Confucianism give
no impulse of service for outside peoples or of world
responsibility, whereas Christianity has filled us with
a sense of world stewardship."

In the most vital aspects of life Buddhism leaves
an aching void. Christ brings the satisfying gospel
of the universal Father suffering- \yit\i and for his
children. Instead of pessimistic condemnation of the
world on the one hand or easy self-indulgence on
the other, Christ brings the vision of the Kingdom V
of God, an inspiring ideal toward whose realization
every disciple can make a contribution. The spirit
of resignation under the hand of destiny, the tender
pity toward suffering among animals and men alike,
the consciousness of being knit into the intricate fabric
of the universe, all these are beautiful legacies of
Buddhism, by all means to be cherished, but sup-
plemented and vitalized by the gospel of the Christ-
like God.

We have by no means said all that could be said
to bring out the strength of Buddhism or the other
faiths. But the fairness of our summary is confirmed

126 CREATIVE FORGES IN JAPAN

by these words used by the professor of the Science
of Religion in Tokyo Imperial University, Dr. M.
Anesaki :* "Confucianism is a humanitarian ethics,
but being an elaboration of a patriarchal system of
politics and morals, its teachings are peculiarly static
and formal. Shinto, being a remnant of ancient
nature worship and of the cult of the spirits, cannot
hope to stand the pressure of science, while its com-
munal ethics is struggling for life or death in face of
the industrial regime. One religion that remains in
the field with some hope is Buddhism. But it is
hopelessly divided, its organizations are parochial,
and its tenets too often metaphysical." These are
the words of an exceptionally intelligent, fair-minded
scholar who might be called a liberal scientific Buddhist
with Christian leanings.

VI. MODERN SECTS

The inability of the old religions to satisfy the
people has been strikingly shown by the appearance
of numerous popular sects during the past few
decades. They are nearly all offshoots of Shinto,
with Buddhist and Taoist elements intertwined.
Among the most prominent are : Tenrikyo, which has
3,000,000 adherents, and 21,000 teachers and preach-
ers; Taiseikyo, which is reputed to have 400,000
adherents and 5,000 teachers; Konkokyo, which has
nearly 600,000 adherents and 1,150 teachers; Ontake-
kyo, which has 1,000,000 adherents, and 9,000 teach-

* The Social and Religious Problems of the Orient. The Earl
Lectures for 1921, at Pacific School of Religion.

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 127

ers. Most of them emphasize faith-healing and exalt
national traditions. They have built up a miscellan-
eous body of doctrine which is polytheistic and not of
a high moral order.

The most noted of the new sects is Omotokyo,
which arose some thirty years ago at Ayabe, through
the revelations which an unlettered old woman
claimed to have received. Later her son-in-lawl
supplied the brains to elaborate the doctrine and. to
organize the movement, until by 1921 it had attracted
hundreds of thousands of believers, and had amassed
considerable property. It had even gone so far as
to establish a daily newspaper in Osaka, the editor
of which was a retired general who had doubtless
been attracted by the chauvinistic patriotism engen-
dered by its leaders. It was a strange compound
of superstition, mesmerism, faith-healing, and patriot-
ism. When, however, the leaders went so far as
to proclaim that the capital of Japan and the world
would be at Ayabe, and that the high priests of the
sect were the inspired guides of all men in every
relation of life, the government authorities arrested
the leaders and sentenced the chief high priest to
five years in prison; and, not content with that, they
had the chief shrine razed to the ground, so that the
whole sect has been disrupted.

The unquenchable thirst of the more intelligent
young men and women for some satisfying faith is
evident to anyone who talks with them. One writer,
Ehara, who has let his imagination play freely on the
stories of the Old and New Testament, has issued

128 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

three bulky volumes which have found a large reading
public. He is not a Christian, and his books distort
some of the facts and doctrines, but on the whole
they may help to lead men to the light. The amazing
popularity of Rev. T. Kagawa's writings is another
indication of the widespread demand, and still
another is Kurata's life of the great Buddhist leader
of the twelfth century, Shinran.

VII. PROPHETS AND GUIDES OF YOUNG JAPAN

The dominant impression of the religious situation
in Japan in these days is that it resembles the
confluence of a multitude of streams ; but one current
flows clear in the midst of the turgid waters, that is,
the life and teaching of Jesus. The appeal of Jesus
to Japanese of a mystical ' turn of mind has been
mediated most powerfully by men like St. Francis of
Assisi and Count Leo Tolstoy. A number of the
modern prophets who are officially connected with
neither Buddhism nor Christianity acknowledge both
Jesus of Nazareth and the historic Gautama as their
masters. They recoil from the worship of mammon
and the complex artificiality and irreverence of the
feverish life around them. We cannot do better than
glance at the character and teaching of some of these
men, for they are symptomatic of the quest of the
Holy Grail by multitudes of Japanese youth.

One of them is R. Tsunashima, a mystical and
unconventional Christian who died several years ago.
From a book written on his death-bed, note these rapt
sentences, as rendered by Professor Anesaki:

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 129

How often has my heart beaten in joy facing a light the
light of finding my God seated in the innermost sanctuary
of my sincere heart ! The God I have then seen was no

more the old traditional idol or an abstract ideal

My former experience of seeing God was sure and significant,
yet it was subtle and elusive. Now it is quite otherwise.
My God, the God of heaven and earth, has now appeared
face to face, like a fact of intense daylight, as a fact
astonishing and thrilling. . . . Blessed is he who believes
without seeing, and more blessed is he who believes by
having seen with the inner eye. ... I am a son of God,
and share the government of human life, of heaven and
earth. "... I must live like a son of God, and be worthy
of sonship.*

Another is Y. Miyazaki. a liberal Buddhist, who
in 1921 published a tribute to St. Francis, entitled.
The Adoration of Holy Poverty, in which we find
these penetrating comments on modern life:

There can never be an end to conflicts in a society divided
into classes as we see it today. There is never saturation
in the claims of rights, just as in the calls of responsibilities,
for human desires and demands expand indefinitely. The
final solution lies nowhere else than in a total abnegation of
self in an ecstasy, in "all or nothing." ... St. Francis's
whole life was a realization of his gospel of love and toil.
His life was pure poetry. He saw God, communed with
Him, by serving the afflicted souls of human beings. How-
ever obstinate a soul might be, it could not but be restored
to its original purity on encountering his loving service,
which fused everything it touched into the white heat of
love. Therein was his life, his faith, grand and sublime, as
shown in his deeds.

Still another is Tenko Nishida, who, after long
searching, dedicated himself to a life of renunciation.
He knew almost nothing of St. Francis, but to a

* Quoted from Social and Religious Problems of Asia Today.

ISO CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

marked degree adopted his principles of love and uncal-
culating service. Nishida's career is so significant that
I will quote from Professor Anesaki's account of it:

He was born and grew up a Buddhist. He had once been
an industrial enterpriser; but his failure, due chiefly to the
difficulties and pressure brought upon him by capitalists and
workmen, plunged him into despair and vice. Even in the
pit of despair he never ceased to meditate on the meaning of
life, and particularly on the foundation of the existing
economic system. In the depth of failure and agony he de-
cided to renounce everything, his family and his own self,
too. For a while he lived like a beggar or hermit, without
paying heed as to how to feed himself; still he was able to
keep alive somehow. One day he picked up the grains of rice
strewn on the street and sustained life. Like a flash, an
idea came to him, that man lives, not by the virtue of his
own merit, but by the gift of Nature and that what he
deemed to be his work and possession was not in fact his
own, but a free gift of grace. Then he served a friend's
family by taking up menial work and demanded nothing in
return but just a bare living. There he himself was almost
amazed to see the profoundly edifying effect of his humble
service upon himself as well as upon the whole family of
his friend, including its servants, because his life inspired
the whole circle with a bountiful spirit of ardor in mutual
service.

This, together with his meditation in solitude, accom-
plished a revolutionary conversion in his spirit and life,
and thereafter he has continued to live up to his principle
of non-possession and service, going from one place to
another. He does not know how to name his religion or. his
God, nor try to formulate his ideas. But he shows his
Buddhist heritage in often calling the final resort of his
life the "Universal Light, the Source of all being, the Giver
of grace." .... Nishida is now proceeding to the
practical question of reforming the economic life of modern
society in accordance with the principles of service and
non-possession. He seems to have considerable organizing

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 131

talent, and his operation of a mine started a few years ago
is a matter of keen interest to all observers. Some of
his fellows have organized factories, somewhat along the
line of cooperative societies. They insist on non-possession
and regard these properties as mandates entrusted to them
for serving mankind.

One-sided though men like Nishida may be, they
are among the powerful upbuilding forces at work
among the Japanese people. It is the part of the
Christian not to decry, but to encourage them where-
ever they are building on reality, and to share with
them the larger truth.

The last of the modern prophets to be mentioned
is T. Arishima, who, though still a follower of Jesus,
has left the Christian Church in disgust at its ineffici-
ency and the hypocrisy of some of its members, but
who preaches a life of individual development by
virtue of complete love as exemplified by Jesus. In
his volume on All-embracing Love he strikes this
keynote: "Christ embraced into his supreme love all
mankind, past, present, and future. He could not
have done otherwise. That he has never ceased to
give shows that he found great satisfaction in the
endless expansion of his self. Did he not say, 'Love
thy neighbor as thyself? He was the Man who
experienced most fully the joy of loving self, and
therefore loved others and embraced them all into
himself. That he exhorted men to follow him shows
that he was convinced of the possibility on the part
of all men, mean and foolish like myself, of treading
the same pathway." Mr. Arishima has a considerable
number of scattered followers. There are many other

132 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

similar informal brotherhoods of aspiring youth, some
living together in simple commtmal fashion, others
going about their studies or their work like other men,
but cherishing a great hope or a great longing.

These earnest strivings after the light fill any
sympathetic student of Japan today with mingled joy
and sorrow. The old faiths have manifestly left the
people at best in a hazy twilight, at worst in darkness.
Jesus Christ himself, through historic personalities
like St. Francis and Luther, Wesley, and Livingstone,
has begun to shine through the mists. In proportion
as he is adequately represented among the Japanese
by living ambassadors they will inevitably kneel and
worship. Indeed, it is not fanciful to assume that
if Confucius and Buddha, Shinran and Sontoku
themselves, but knew Christ in all his glo^, they
would joyfully acclaim him as the Sun, beside whom
they were but as stars.

None are more ready than thoughtful Japanese
to recognize the inadequacy of the old faiths, even
when they have been revived and expanded by
contact with the spirit and teaching of Jesus. I
remember some years ago with what vehemence Baron
Hiroyuki Kato, himself a devotee of science and agnos-
ticism, denounced the hollowness of Buddhism and
the rottenness of its priests, and at the same time
praised the noble character of Christians, although
he maintained that Christianity itself was unpatriotic,
because it exalted humanity above nationality. About
the same time I heard the late Hon. S. Ebara, a
samurai of the old school, and a princely Christian,

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 133

declare that Japan needed Christianity above anything
else, for although she had developed excellent systems
of government, education, law, and industry, her
systems of morals and religion were outgrown, and
only Christianity could possibly meet the need.

VIII. SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGES OF SOME JAPANESE
SEEKERS AFTER GOD

Strange as it may seem to dilettante students of
things Japanese, some of the most scholarly Japanese
Christians have no love for Buddhism or Shinto.
They understand well the sublime aspects of the
speculative philosophy of Buddhism and its softening
influence on Japanese life. They appreciate the naive
simplicity of Shinto. But in addresses they rarely
allude to either. Indeed, I have heard two of them,
one a conservative, the other a liberal church leader,
scout the idea that the old religions should be used
as a stepping-stone into Christianity. To them Bud-
dhism and Shinto suggest the smothering of all divine
life and practical value under a blanket of corruption
and formalism.

But, on the contrary, one finds a few equally earnest
Christians who, as Paul said of Judaism, have found
Buddhism to be a "tutor-slave to lead us to Christ."
Such a man is my friend, Mr. K. Yamamoto,
secretary of the Tokyo Y. M. C. A., who thus sum-
marizes his indebtedness to the older faiths:

In my early schooling I was taught Confucian morality,
and thus given a conception of universal brotherhood.
Although different from and vaguer than the Christian

134 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

teaching, it prepared me to believe in human brotherhood
and divine Fatherhood. I was born in a Buddhist home,
and thus imbibed a faint idea of the immortality of spirits,
which tended to belief in eternal life. In such a strong
Shinto district, we were all brought up to go on festival
days to the shrines to worship the gods and goddesses, to
make offerings, and to vow fealty to our rulers. Reverence
toward the gods and loyalty to one's sovereign seem to me
essential preparations for the higher religious experiences.
Thus these three fundamental truths, universal brotherhood,
the future life, and loyalty were all in me awaiting the
germinating touch of Christianity.

The heart pilgrimages of some modern Japanese
seekers after God will be more convincing than
anything I could say. Let me recount those of a
man and a woman reared in old Japan, then of a
young man and a woman of new Japan, all of them
alike unable to find rest until they had found Christ.

A Merchant Prince

The first was Baron Morimura. When I first met
him sixteen years ago he was a man of sixty with a
crown of white hair and a white beard framing a
placid, kindly face ; but within was profound discontent
for he had been reared a Conf ucianist, and as a wealthy
merchant he had spent large sums in disseminating
the Confucian morality among his employees. But
he had become convinced that Confucianism alone
was not enough. He had also delved into Buddhism,
but had found in its maze-like contradictions and its
negative attitude no gospel for men struggling with
the realities of modern life. Then he had turned to
Christianity in its ethical form, and had engaged a

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 135

lecturer to preach a compound of Christianity and
Confucianism to his hundreds of employees. But this
too failed to satisfy him, and finally, twelve years ago,
he turned full face toward Christ and spent the last\
decade of his life as a radiant and devoted Christian.
Merchant prince though he was, and created a peer
of the realm for his pioneer contributions to the
nation's industry and foreign trade, he loved to stand
before his fellow-countrymen and in unaffected sim-
plicity bear testimony to the sufficiency of Christ, and
Him alone.

A Masterful Woman's Search

Madam Hirooka was one of the most striking
characters of her day. She was a veritable Amazon
in business, in educational reform, and in Christian
evangelism. Of all the Japanese women I have met
she was the most racy and emphatic in her speech.
Her convictions were unshakable, for they were based
on an experience which was her very own. Born in
the wealthy patrician family of Mitsui, in her girlhood
she received the usual training in polite accomplish-
ments, but she insisted upon reading solid books such
as only boys were supposed to care for. Married
at seventeen, she soon found that her husband was
neglecting his business, and she, therefore, began, by
studying late at night on arithmetic and commercial
subjects, to equip herself to take his place. Five years
after her marriage the crash came, and her husband
was left nearly bankrupt. She separated from him
and, single-handed, reorganized his firm, and devel-

136 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

oped a coal mine, a bank, a life insurance company,
and agricultural lands in Korea. For nearly forty
years she was one of the prominent business leaders
of the Empire. When asked how she happened to
become a Christian, she replied:

I wanted women to be good and wanted to help them to
improve their lot. I found that I could not accomplish what
I desired without religion. That conclusion sent me to study
religion from the woman's point of view. I found that there
is no hope for women in any of the religions of the Orient.
They teach that from the cradle to the grave women are
evil and inferior to men. The Confucian system of ethics,
for example, teaches that fools and women cannot be
educated. A woman cannot be a "heavenly creature." It
teaches that it is better to see a snake than a woman, for
the latter arouses passion. Japanese women have been
so long oppressed by this kind of teaching that they no
longer stop to ask why. They are afraid, like slaves.

Then I began to read the Bible. I did not like some parts
of it any better than I liked the religions of the East. I
did not see why any woman should call her husband, "Lord
and Master." Saint Paul made me very angry. He was an
old bachelor anyone can see that ! He didn't know much
about women. But Peter! He was fine. He had a wife,
he understood women. One can see that from his epistle.
When I read the gospels I found that Jesus made no dis-
tinction between the sexes. I liked that. We are all, women
as well as men, children of God. I came to the conclusion
that the only hope for the women of the Orient to attain
their true position is through Christianity.*

Madam Hirooka was one of the great Christian evangel-
ists of Japan. In connection with the United Evangelistic
Campaign she toured from north to south and south to
north, making her thrilling, almost terrific, appeals for pure
Christian living. One night at Shimonoseki she held a vast
theater audience of two thousand for a solid hour with her

* Quoted from The Democratic Movement in Asia, p. 141.

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 137

virile gospel message. She always dressed in European
clothes, which made her quickly recognized everywhere.*

Many a time I have gone to Madam Hirooka's
home to consult her about some phase of Christian
work. She always gave me good counsel, and was
the very first Japanese Christian of eminence to
support the plan of establishing a Japanese summer
conference plant at the foot of Mt. Fuji. After my
main question had been disposed of she would always
engage in lively discussion of some social or religious
problem, and with sweeping invective condemn the
faint-hearted Christians who to her seemed to be
compromising with evil. She waxed most eloquent
in denouncing the slavery imposed upon women by
law and tradition, and she saw no hope for freedom
for either women or men except through the gospel
of Christ. Buddhism and Confucianism alike, as
she had known them, were powerless to break the

shackles. )

A Buddhist Scholar's Dilemma j/

The most illuminating story of the spiritual pil-
grimage of a modern educated Japanese that I have
ever heard is that of my friend Ryoun Kumagai.
Its freedom from all denunciation and cant and its
clear witness to the supremacy of Christ are im-
pressive. The following extracts are taken from his
appeal to Buddhists to become Christians : '

I know little about Christianity yet, except that I have
been won by the power of the love of Christ.

I was born the eldest son in a Buddhist temple of the

* What Shall I Think of Japan.

138 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

city of Toyama in the strongly Buddhist province of Etchu.
Through the exertions of ray parents and other believers,
I succeeded in graduating from the Imperial University,
specializing in religion.

After entering the University I came strongly under the
influence of Chikazumi Jokan. I owe it to him that I am
able to go forward boldly now in my present convictions.
He himself was a deeply religious, absolutely consistent man,
who would not compromise, but go straight ahead. But
though I listened to his sermons for four years, somehow I
never could fully believe in Amida Buddha ; on the contrary,
Christianity began to sink in. I was powerfully attracted by
the work of earnest saints like Bun3 r an and Luther and
Augustine and St. Paul. The words of Yamamuro Gumpei,
of the Salvation Army, too, seemed more precious than gold.

Mr. Kumagai then tells of becoming a teacher in
Otaru and of the coming 1 to the city of the famous
evangelist, Pastor Paul (Tsurin) Kanamori. He
continues :

I saw Mr. Kanamori in the distance, walking in quiet
meditation along a road which ran into the hills, and I fol-
lowed after him. It was in the depths of the peaceful
mountains, lovely with autumn colouring, that I first spoke
to this man of God. He listened to nie as we walked, and
gave me kindly answers. We turned homewards, but still
there was much to say. Next day I laid all my deepest
doubts before him, and he took up my problems and solved
them one by one. But I did not then in the least intend
to become a Christian. . . .

When we came to the final parting, Mr. Kanamori prayed
for me, and, strange to say, that prayer, full as it was of a
boundless sympathy such as I had never heard since I was
born, brought a great light and power into my life.

After that came a period of great distress and doubt,
because Christ was attracting my heart strongly, but it was
not easy to cast away my old faith in Amida. Should I
believe in Christ? Should I believe in Amida? ... I
even dreamed of starting a new religion which should

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 139

maintain that both were One Being. But I did not feel ray
strength adequate for such an enterprise.

Soon after my return home, letters came from the head
temple, appointing me chief priest. But after passing
through a time of mental storm, I definitely determined to
become a Christian ....

But why did I cast away Buddhism like a worn-out sandal
and put my trust in Christ alone? There was a deep
reason for that. The age-long sufferings of Amida one
cannot believe them to have been actual fact. Of course
there may be good effects from believing in them and deep
philosoph} 7 - in the doctrine; one may behave as if one be-
lieved, and preach about the vows of Amida; and as 1 had
hitherto studied the subject, I could argue to any extent
about it, but still it was impossible to hold these things as
historical truth. But the Cross of Christ is a fact. And
when I read about the words and deeds of Christ, it became
clear to me that these were not the words and deeds of a

man; that Christ is God Then the love of Christ! That

is beyond the power of the heart or of words to express.
The more I knew of the things of Christ, the more I touched
the source of fathomless depths of truth and discovered for
the first time the way in which I could truly live. . . . The
world became a radiant place, filled with love and life and
power. By degrees, as I went on reading the Bible, I under-
stood that the teaching of Christ is not only not inferior to
any other religion, but that it is so far above them that they
cannot be compared with it. Christianity includes everything
good to be found in Shin Shu, Nichiren Shu, and Zen Shu,
and is higher than all. . . .

When I had made this decision, I was especially troubled
about my mother. I could imagine how she would not only
refuse her consent, but would for a time be full of qualms
about its being unfilial to our ancestors. There was no way
but to pray that my mother might herself be brought to see
the love of Christ, and come to work with me in the Path of
God. ... I cannot but believe that in time she will come
to rejoice in the boundless loving-kindness of God. . . .
I am not making light of Buddhism, but I believe that its
purpose is realized best by Christianity. After the sun has

140 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

risen, it is not necessary to go on burning electric lights.
If Shaka and Shinran could see that their aims .of mercy
and salvation for man can be attained completely by the
more excellent religion of Christianity, I believe they would
be perfectly satisfied.*

Incidentally, this moving appeal illustrates the sort
of Christian apologetic which is being developed to
meet the needs of Buddhists, much as St. Paul in
the Epistle to the Romans developed an apologetic
primarily to meet the needs of Jews.

From Shinto to the One God

Almost as illuminating as Mr. Kumagai's con-
version from Buddhism is the story of the conver-
sion of Miss Michi Kawai and her father from
Shinto, for he was a priest of Shinto, descended
from forty generations of priests at the Imperial
Shrines of Ise. Family pride, patriotic devotion, and
professional interest all argued against this man fol-
lowing Christ. He always rose at dawn to salute
the rising sun and to pray reverently to the guardian
deities of Great Nippon. But one day, when
Michi-ko was about eleven years old, her father called
the family together and solemnly told them he had
found the true, living God. Till then the children
had always prayed facing toward the Ise shrines,
but forthwith he instructed them to pray turned away
from the shrines, to impress the change of faith on
their childish minds.

Soon after her father's conversion, Miss Kawai
was sent to a Christian school for girls in Sapporo.

* Christian Movement in Japan, 1922, pp. 80-87.

RELIGIOUS RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS 141

It was when she was fourteen that Dr. I. Nitobe
met her there and when he returned home said to
his wife, "Today I have discovered the coming
woman of Japan." Commenting on this remark a
few years ago, Miss Macdonald wrote, "She is not
the coming woman any more, she has come!" But
it required long years of preparation, including a
college course at Bryn Mawr, eight years of teaching
in Miss Tsuda's fine girls' school in Tokyo, and
two years in Europe and America studying social
and religious conditions and speaking to hundreds of
gatherings.

Since 1916 she has been National General Secre-
tary of the Young Women's Christian Associations,
but her influence has been potent among men as
well as women in all parts of the Empire and in for-
eign lands. Her clear-cut evangelistic appeals have
carried conviction to students in Europe and North
America no less than they have in Japan. Breaking
over the bounds of ancient etiquette she has courage-
ously urged Japanese men to deal chivalrously with
womankind. She is an elder and an ardent worker
in Dr. Uemura's church.

By making a composite of the foregoing stories
of Japanese converts to Christianity one can gain a
fairly accurate reflection of the religious situation in
Japan. It is such men and women who constitute
the unanswerable argument for the adequacy of
Jesus Christ and the sufficient justification for
Christian missions to Japan.

J42 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

EPOCHS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE
CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT

Our survey of certain aspects of the social, political,
and religious situation will have made it evident that
the problems of the Japanese people demand the
solvent power of the Christian gospel, but equally
evident that the attempt to bring the people .as a
whole to faith in Jesus Christ is a task in some
respects unparalleled in history. For Japan not only
has, like China, an ancient and advanced political,
intellectual, and religious civilization, but she has
progressed much farther than China toward universal
. education, an omnipresent daily press, a cosmopoli-
tan literature, and a national self -confidence based on
repeated triumphs in war. In short, the messengers of
Christ have never approached a people at once so civil-
ized, so puissant and so proud, and so fully acquainted
with the shortcomings of the peoples who are called
Christian. As though all these factors did not make
the situation sufficiently difficult, the first entry of
Christianity into Japan in the sixteenth century, com-
plicated as it was by the political designs of Spain
and Portugal, left behind it a suspicion of the "evil
sect" which has survived even to this day.

Thus far in our study emphasis has been laid on
the problems confronting the Japanese people and
the indigenous character and resources available for
their solution. Beyond referring to the work of
a few individual Christians, we have reserved for

ACHIEVEMENTS OF .CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 143

this and the concluding chapter a conspectus of the
achievements and potentialities of the Christian
movement as a whole. Any adequate appraisal of the
capacity and promise of that movement must consider,
not only its present-day leaves and fruit, but also its
roots and trunk; in other words, the slowly germinated
seed and the buffeted young shoots. As we rapidly
make this survey, it will be instructive to ask ourselves
frequently: What mistakes were made? How might
wiser policies have been adopted?

i. The tragic first coming of Christianity

Christian missions in Japan have presented a
dramatic mingling of triumph and tragedy. The
entire story from the entry of the Jesuits nearly
four centuries ago would furnish thrilling material
for a scenario writer. The first scene would depict
Francis Xavier, a pioneer member of the Society of
Jesus, commonly called Jesuits, landing at the southern
tip of Japan in 1549, accompanied by his first
convert and interpreter, Anjiro, exultant at the
thought of claiming this virgin kingdom for his
Master. Xavier penetrated as far as Kyoto, the
capital, meeting with poor success and dependent for
the most part on the charity of a suspicious people.
In the southern island of Kyusiu, however, he won
some influential converts, including a prince who was
so impressed by a picture of Mary and the Child
Jesus that he fell on his knees and commanded all
of his followers to do likewise. Xavier left within two
years to evangelize China, but his successors reaped

144 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

where he had sown and at the end of thirty years
claimed 150,000 converts and within fifty years, half
a million.

The depth of the faith of many of the new converts
was convincingly demonstrated a little later when
thousands faced martyrdom rather than recant. The
success of the Jesuits, however, was not entirely
due to their zeal or their doctrines. Political motives
had much to do with the support which some of the
princes gave" the missionaries, and in Japan, as among
the Teuton tribes, it was common for the subjects to
change their religion at the command of their ruler.
Furthermore, the old religions were then at a low
ebb, and the trappings and ceremonies of Roman
Catholicism, bearing some resemblance to those of
Buddhism, made it easier for the common folk to
make the change. In 1583 one prince sent an embassy
to Rome to declare allegiance to the Holy See, and
at the same time the subjects of the prince were
ordered to embrace Christianity or go into exile. Some
Buddhist priests who refused were put to death and
their monasteries were burned to the ground.

But when certain of the princes who were nominally

Christians tried to turn their religion to political

account, it was inevitable that their enemies should

exert themselves to check the foreign religion. The

/great military triumvirate who ruled Japan between

I 1570 and 1620 detected in the Jesuit missionaries the

advance guard of Portuguese imperialism. This

suspicion was based in part upon the remark of a

Portuguese sea-captain who was reported to have

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 145

said, "The King, my master, begins by sending priests
to win over the people; and when this is done, he
despatches his troops to join the native Christians,
and the conquest is easy and complete." In 1587 a
national decree ordered the expulsion of the foreign
priests, but by closing their churches and working
in secret in friendly provinces they were able for a
time to evade the military authorities. A little later
Franciscan monks came to Japan and competed with
the Jesuits, notwithstanding that the Pope had given
the Jesuits the exclusive privilege of evangelizing
Japan. The military authorities were stirred to new
persecution and in 1597 twenty-six persons, including
six of the Franciscan fathers, were crucified at
Nagasaki. A few years later came missionaries from
two other orders, the Dominican and the Augustinian,
and sharp quarrels broke out among the different
orders.

Finally, in 1614 the military ruler, Shogun leyasu,
believing that he had discovered a plot of the Chris-
tians and foreigners for his overthrow, issued a
decree ordering all members of the religious orders,
whether Japanese or foreign, to be expelled. Three
hundred persons were deported to Macao and a
number of Japanese Christians were sent to the
Philippines where their descendants still live. The
persecution waxed vehement, and hundreds of con-
verts testified to the depth of their faith by submitting
without a murmur, not only to being crucified and
burned at the stake, but to being buried alive. As
might be expected, considerable numbers recanted,

146 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

^ bxit multitudes remained unshaken to the end, com-
parable in fortitude with the martyrs of ancient
Rome. In Nagasaki harbor Pappenberg Island is
still pointed out as the traditional cliff over which
scores of the Christians were hurled to death.

In 1638 a blending of religious and political motives
led to the so-called Christian rebellion of Shimabara.
In quelling it, thirty-seven thousand persons were
massacred. Thereupon, the conquerors are said to
have erected over the ruins of the castle a stone with
this inscription: "So long as the sun shall warm the
earth, let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan ;
and let all know that the King of Spain himself, or
the Christians' God, or the Great God of all, if he
violate this command, shall pay for it with his head."

II. BEGINNING THE MODERN CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT

As soon as a few ports were accessible to foreign
residence in 1859, tne missionaries pressed in. They
faced a formidable array of obstacles. None of them
knew the Japanese language, which is as difficult
as the Chinese, and there were then no textbooks,
dictionaries, or teachers. Christianity was still a
prohibited abomination. All Westerners were feared,
for the European powers had for decades been despoil-
ing China, and the Japanese feared that their turn
would soon come. Internally, Japan was on the verge
of civil war as the two parties, which stood, the one
for keeping the country closed, the other for opening
it to international intercourse, strove for the mastery.

AH during the sixties a little band of missionaries

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 147

numbering less than a score were concentrating every
effort to gain a knowledge of the language and to
win promising leaders among the progressive young
men who dared to listen to them. Fortunately, the
early Protestant missionaries included several men
and women of eminent character and ability, and they
were remarkably well diversified in their talents. The
Rev. John Liggins and the Rev. C. M. Williams, after-
wards Bishop Williams, came from the American
Episcopal Church Mission in China and drew around
them youths who have since become leaders in the
Church. Dr. James Hepburn was not only a gifted
physician, but a scholar whose Japanese-English
dictionary remains his monument. The Rev. S. R.
Brown and the Rev. D. B. Simmons of the Reformed
Church in America both showed a talent for getting
hold of bright young men. Dr. Guido Verbeck was
a man of international training, and more than any
other foreigner was trusted by high officials in affairs
of state. The Rev. J. Goble, the pioneer Baptist mis-
sionary, invented the jinrikisha which is now used
all over southern Asia. In 1869 came Dr. D. C.
Greene, a sage, eminent as a translator of the Bible
and as a counsellor of influential Japanese. Later
Dr. J. C. Berry, a physician, founded the Nurses'
Training School in Kyoto and aided in establishing
a modern prison system. The first missionary from
England, the Rev. G. Ensor, reached Nagasaki in
1869, and quietly influenced a group of bright youths.
In the early seventies came Dr. Nathan Brown, of
the American Baptists, who devoted himself to trans-

148 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

lating the New Testament, and Archdeacon Shaw, a
saintly representative of the Society for the Propaga-
tion of the Gospel ; also a magnetic group of Method-
ists, Dr. R. S. Maclay and Dr. M. C. Harris (later
Bishop) from the United States, and D. Macdonald,
M. D., from Canada.

All the missionaries who have been mentioned
represented Western Christianity, but in 1861 there
came to Japan a remarkable Russian, Father Nicolai,
who afterward became Archbishop of the Eastern
Orthodox Church in Japan. He stood in the front
rank of modern missionary statesmen. For several
years he devoted himself entirely to a study of the
language, and only after five years did he baptize his
first convert, a Buddhist priest, who had first ap-
proached him to ridicule Christianity. In the trans-
lation of the Bible, in the education of the clergy,
and in preaching, he labored with such energy and
wisdom that at his death the Eastern Orthodox
Church in Japan numbered over thirty thousand
communicants. His courage and devotion were
strikingly shown during the Russo-Japanese War
when he insisted upon remaining at his post even
though the Japanese felt it necessary to shut him
up in honorable imprisonment within the compound
of the cathedral, where he had his residence. Nicolai's
successor, Bishop Sergie, has emulated his generous
spirit, as, for instance, by regular attendance upon the
national interdenominational Christian conference of
1922.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 149

Roman Catholic missionaries came back to Japan
in 1862, the very year that the Pope proclaimed the
canonization of the twenty-six martyrs who had been
crucified at Nagasaki in 1597. Consideration for the
sensibilities of the Japanese had led the Catholic ,
authorities to send French priests rather than Spanish
or Portuguese. To their great surprise and joy,
after laboring quietly two or three years, the priests
discovered that there were thousands of descendants
of the ancient Christians, especially in Nagasaki, who
after eight generations still remained loyal to the
Christian faith.

It was not long before the authorities took
stringent steps to suppress these believers. The perse-
cution reached its height in 1869. Thousands were
sent into exile, and many were put at hard labor
in the mines or were tortured and beaten. During
the five years ending in 1873, at least six thousand
Christians were thus maltreated. Two thousand of
them died in prison. The United States Minister,
Mr. Long-, who had protested against such acts, re-
ported to his government: "After all our arguments
had been, used we were finally told by Mr. Iwakura that
this government rested upon the Shinto faith which
taught the divinity of the Mikado, that the propa-
gation of the Christian faith and religion tended to
dispel that belief, and that consequently it was the
resolve of this government to resist its propagation
as they would resist the advance of an invading
army." The continued protests of the foreign min-

ISO CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

isters, aided by the course -of events, at last led to a
cessation of these persecutions, and, in 1872, many of
the prisoners were set at liberty.

The first Protestant convert was Yano Riyu, a
teacher of the language to one of the missionaries
in Yokohama. The three who were next baptized
had learned of Christ in a romantic fashion. One of
them, named Wakasa, was an official of high rank,
living a hundred miles from Nagasaki, who \vas sent
with a force of men to patrol the port of Nagasaki
while English and French men-of-war were anchored
there in 1855, a few months after Perry had negotiated
the American treaty. One day he noticed a book
floating upon the water near the shore and ordered
one of his men to get it. None of the party could
identify the book. The curiosity of the nobleman
was so excited that after the foreign ships had de-
parted and he had returned home, he sent one of his
retainers to Nagasaki to find out about the book,
which proved to be a Dutch Bible. Learning that
a Chinese version had been published in Shanghai, he
secretly sent a man thither to purchase a copy.
Wakasa, with his younger brother and some friends,
commenced an earnest study of the volume. In 1862
the brother went to Nagasaki, hoping to get aid in
understanding it, and he there made the acquaintance
of Rev. Guido Verbeck of the Dutch Reformed Mis-
sion. Afterward Wakasa sent another relative to
Nagasaki to study English and the Bible. This man
carried questions and answers back and forth between
the two places, and in this way the strange Bible class

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 151

was carried on for three years. In 1866 the two
brothers, with the other relative, went to Nagasaki
and were baptized. On returning home they reported
to their feudal lord what they had done. He was
inclined to permit them to do as they pleased, but his
superiors ordered that they be punished. Little was
done, however, except to burn some of the books.
Wakasa died in 1874. The zeal that he had shown
for the conversion of his children and friends was
proved by fruits gathered in later years.

Other isolated converts were gained from time to
time, but up to the spring of 1872, nearly thirteen
years after the arrival of the first Protestant mis-
sionaries, only ten Japanese had received baptism at
their hands.

Parallel with the unwearied labors of the mission-
aries, unique service was being rendered by certain
Christian laymen. Among them was the Honorable
Townsend Harris who negotiated the American treaty
with Japan in 1858. The countless delays and pre-
varications which he had to endure threw into bright
relief the patience and unselfishness of his character.
He set a high precedent for diplomatic intercourse
with Japan. Most of the other laymen in Japan had
been called as teachers in the schools or advisors to
government! departments. Dr. David Murray in the
Department of Education helped found the primary
school system on the American model. Dr. W. E.
Griffis taught in a provincial school and later in the
University of Tokyo and had among his pupils many
men who became prominent. President W. S. Clark

152 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

of Massachusetts was engaged to establish an Agri-
cultural College at Sapporo in northern Japan, and
during the eleven months of his stay in the country
his fearless Christian character deeply impressed his
pupils. He was at first restrained from speaking
about Christianity, but the restriction was removed
when he insisted that he could not teach ethics satis-
factorily without using the Bible. Among those whom
he led into the Christian life are Dr. Sato, now Presi-
dent of the Imperial University, which has developed
from the old Agricultural College; Dr. Nitobe, the
author of Bushido and other well-known works and
one of the four Chief Secretaries of the League of
Nations ; and Kanzo Uchimura, the independent Chris-
tian leader.

III. TRAINING JAPANESE LEADERS

The early missionaries wisely focused their efforts
upon the winning and training of leaders, and it is a
striking fact that the men who have led the Church
and Christian education from the beginning were
almost all won in the early years by men and women
who with rare wisdom and self-effacement invested
their energies in small bands of disciples. There were
five such bands which have become historical, at Ku-
mamoto, Sapporo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Hirosaki.

The most romantic story is that connected with the
Kumamoto Band. In 1872 Captain Janes, formerly
an instructor in the United States Military Academy
at West Point and a man of soldierly bearing and
courage, was employed to found a school in Kuma-

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 153

moto. He was a zealous Christian, and every Saturday
he read the Bible with a band of his students. They
came to study English and also to find "holes" in the .
Christian teaching. But one after another their scepti-
cism was overcome, so that in three years there were
thirty believers. In that district the anti-foreign spirit
was strong, and among the samurai were desperate
men who longed for a chance to cut oft Captain Janes'
head. They openly spat at him on the streets. When
these fanatical patriots learned of the conversion of
so many students to the hated foreign faith, they
resolved to kill the converts on a certain night, but
the plot was discovered just at dusk. With blanched
face, one of the youths went to the Captain's house
crying, "We're all to be killed tonight !"

"Very well," cheerfully replied the Captain, "then
you'll all be in heaven tonight, and I'll be there with
you! Get your swords and I'll take my revolvers."

The director of the school was sent for and sternly
asked why he had permitted the plot. The culprit
denied his guilt, but the Captain decisively said: "I
know it all, and you're at the bottom of it. If a single
hair of these boys' heads is injured, off comes your
head first of all."

The young men felt that it might be a fight to the
death. Climbing Flowery Hill just outside the city,
they gathered under a gnarled pine still standing
and in their own blood signed a solemn covenant to
stand fast and go forth to enlighten the darkness of
the Empire with the gospel of Christ. A fierce perse-
cution broke out, but most of the lads stood true.

P-.TaD

154 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Among them, eight went to Kyoto to form the first
class in Doshisha University which Dr. Neesiina and
the missionaries of the American Board were trying
to establish. Some of the Band fell by the wayside
in later years, but others have continued to this day
in the forefront of the Christian movement. One
of them, Dr. Ebina, is president of the Doshisha,
which now enrols 2,500 students; another is Dr.
Kosaki, long prominent as pastor, author, and Sunday
School leader; and still another is Pastor Paul
Kanamori, who has become famous for the three-
hour sermon which he has preached to hundreds of
thousands.

The Sapporo Band has already been referred to
as an outgrowth of the remarkable influence of Presi-
dent Clark. The Hirosaki Band developed from the
work of little-known early Methodist missionaries,
but so deep was the impress they made that a score
of the leaders of the Methodist Church have come
from that one district.

The Osaka Band was the outgrowth, chiefly, of the
quiet, personal influence of Bishop Williams, Arch-
deacon Warren, and Dr. Tyng, and yielded several
of the ablest leaders for the Nippon Sei Ko Kwai,
Japan Holy Catholic Church (Anglican).

The Yokohama Band grew out of the labors of a
group of Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian mis-
sionaries, among whom were Dr. S. R. Brown, Dr.
Hepburn, and Dr. James H. Ballagh. From their
work came the Band that in 1872 founded the
first church in Japan, known as Kaigan, or Seashore

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 155

Church, which is now in the Presbyterian family.
Among them were the first Bishop of the Japan
Methodist Church, the saintly Yoitsu Honda; Dr.
K. tbuka, educator and leader in all cooperative enter-
prises; and the Rev. M. Oshikawa, former president
of Northeastern College at Sendai. They were joined
a year later by Pastor Uemura, equally eminent as
author, pastor, educator, and administrator, whose
theological library Dr. John Kelnian declared to be the
best selected he had ever seen in any pastor's home.
Eminent as Dr. Uemura is, he is so reticent that no
sketch of his life has hitherto appeared, but he finally
yielded to my entreaty and disclosed to a common
friend some of the salient points in his career. Apart
from its intrinsic interest, the sketch throws sidelights
on the stuff of which Japanese Christian leaders are
made. I will give it as he told it.

I was born in 1857. My father was a samurai of high
rank in the Tokugawa clan, but with the downfall of the clan
at the Restoration, he was reduced to penury. Fired with
ambition to restore the family fortunes, at fifteen I entered
Mr. (later Doctor) James Ballagh's school in Yokohama.

My family were Shintoists and I devoutly worshiped at
the shrine of a blacksmith who had risen to be a great soldier
and patriot, praying that I might rise in like manner. But
my fellow-students- ridiculed my piety, and I stopped my
visits to the shrine. One day I learned from Mr. Ballagh
that Westerners also worshiped, but only one God. This
greatly impressed and astonished me. I immediately grasped
and accepted the idea. Only later, after I began to study
theology, did grave doubts occur to me.

I found my ambitions radically changed. I no longer cared
to become a high official, and in a short time I felt a deep
desire to be a Christian minister. My parents objected to my

156 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

receiving baptism, and I postponed it- for several months.
But five years later they too were baptized. Even though
the Edict boards against Christianity were still hanging,
there was no official persecution.

In 1878 I entered an English college opened by Dr. S. R.
Brown. The tuition was ten yen a month, equivalent to fifty
yen now. I did all sorts of work to earn expenses. My chief
reliance was a school of my own where I taught fifty classes
of one pupil each, from one until ten o'clock. I also raised
pigs then considered rather disgraceful. I know all. about
pigs. Their chief virtues are that they need to be fed only
twice a day and they turn everything they eat into gold !

I studied everything and learned quickly except the
organ, which refused to yield to my awkward fingers. When
the college was moved to Tokyo to become the forerunner of
the present Meiji Gakuin, I went with it and finished the
course.

My first church was in a poor part of Tokyo. I earned
my own living, so the church was self-supporting, a vital
principle with me! Then I began to preach in friends'
houses in the better residential quarter. In 1887 a chapel
was built. There were only twenty members, so I continued
to earn my living by translating for magazines and teaching
theology at Meiji Gakuin. Finally, in 1903, some conserva-
tive missionaries objected to my using W. N. Clarke's
Christian Theology, so I resigned and in 1904 started an
independent Theological School. Three years later a con-
verted stockbroker gave the school a site and building and a
small endowment. It has continued ever since to have twenty
or thirty students.

I started the Fuk-uin Shimpo (Gospel News) as a Japanese
"British Weekly." From the first I have been editor and
business manager. It has never received a subsidy from
anywhere, though I have had to put a good deal of my own
income into it at times. Generally I look after the business
end of it.

In 1888 I went abroad, and, declining scholarships at
Columbia and Princeton, I went to London and for five
wonderful months heard Spurgeon and Joseph Parker, and
James Martineau, and I read to my heart's content. Dr.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 157

Dykes, later principal of Westminster College, was especially
kind to me. On a later visit to London, I and my companion,
an M. P., got locked in Hyde Park, and had to throw away
our dignity and climb the high iron palings.

Dr. Uemura has long been the foremost figure in
the Nihon Kirisuto Kyokai (Church of Christ in
Japan). He is blunt and brusque, but absolutely
sincere and loyal to the truth as he sees it. When the
issue of the independence of the Church from the
Missions was up, he led the assault and carried the
day. Yet he highly values missionaries of the right
sort and wishes more of them. His living monument
is the Fujimicho Church > of which he has been pastor
ever since its foundation,, thirty-five years ago. It is
worth going far to see, and still farther to be a part of
it, as I was for several years. It pulses with outgoing
life, for it is a mother of churches and a breeder of
ministers. It embraces rich and poor, official and
ex-convict, for a stream of released prisoners is
brought to it through the work of Miss Macdonald
and Miss West. It spends little on itself and much
on extension. Its pulpit is life-building, for the
sermons are expository and searching.

Last year Pastor Uemura, as permanent chairman
of the National Board of Missions of his denomina-
tion, was sent to America and Scotland on the occasion
of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the
Nihon Kirisuto Kypkai, to express thanks' to the
churches abroad which had sent missionaries to plant
the Church in Japan. In what other country, I
wonder, can the man be found who has spanned the

1 58 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

entire history of a denomination, having been a lead-
ing factor in its evangelistic, literary, educational,
and administrative activities, and at sixty-six is still
the most dynamic, sagacious personality in its ranks?

There were no such clearly marked bands among
Japanese women, but the influence of some of the
early missionary women was just as remarkable as
that of the men who have been mentioned. One
thinks at once of Miss Russell of the Methodist
School at Nagasaki; of that remarkable Congrega-
tional trio at Kobe Miss Talcott, Miss Barrows,
and Miss Dudley; of Miss Ividder and Mrs. Pruyn at
Yokohama; of Miss Tristram at Osaka; and of many
others who are still alive and rejoicing in the strong
workers, men as well as women, whom they have
helped to raise up.

Slowly, but solidly, through all the trying early
years, the foundations of the Church were being laid.
Although the first Protestant congregation, Kaigan
Church at Yokohama, celebrated its Jubilee in 1922, it
was not organized until the missionaries had been there
thirteen years. Even then the edict against Chris-
tianity was still prominently exhibited and nominally
in force. It took no little courage for the eleven young
men who formed the Kaigan Church to commit them-
selves irrevocably to the Christian cause in face of the
opposition of friends and relatives, of the law of the
land and of public opinion. This first church was in-
tended to be undenominational, for its members saw
no reason why they should perpetuate the divisions of
the Church in Western lands. The constitution de-

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 159

clared: "Our Church does not belong to any sect
whatever; it believes only in the name of Christ, in
whom all are one; it believes that all who take the
Bible as their guide and who diligently study it are
the servants of Christ and our brethren. For this
reason all believers on earth belong to the family of
Christ in the bonds of brotherly love." Ultimately
this church became a part of what is now known as
"The Church of Christ in Japan" which is Presby-
terian in polity. Passengers who alight from the
steamers in Yokohama naturally pass by the building
which has housed it for the past forty years.

In Osaka a remarkable early church was that
founded by Paul Sawayama, the first Japanese to be
ordained in Japan and the first to insist on self-
support. It took truly apostolic faith and devotion
for him to refuse all the attractions of lucrative Gov-
ernment posts and live on the few dollars r, month
contributed by the eleven members of his church who
had caught his unbounded faith. In his biography,
A Modern Paul in Japan, the results are thus recorded :
"The Naniwa Church grew very rapidly. At the
end of five years it had increased its annual contri-
butions from seventy to seven hundred dollars. It
had started another independent church in Osaka,
and had made a beginning in nine other places. It
had also established a Christian girls' school."

Hand in hand with the founding of the Church went
the establishment of Christian schools. The first one
to" be founded in the interior, Doshisha College, was
the result of the vision conceived by Joseph Neesima

160 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

while he was still studying in the United States. : Leav-
ing- Japan secretly in 1864 at the peril of his life, he
was befriended by a Christian merchant in Boston,
Alpheus S. Hardy, and was given the best education
that New England afforded. In 1872, when the Japa-
nese Embassy, under Prince Iwakura, was touring the
world, young Neesima was asked to join them, and
thus he became intimate with the most eminent states-
men of the time, and they were attracted to him in
spite of their aversion to his new religion. He was
repeatedly offered high government positions, but he
held fast to his one purpose (Doshisha means "one
purpose") to found a Christian college which would
nurture leaders for the Christianizing of his people.

The story of his struggles against fierce Buddhist
and official opposition, and of his ultimate success in
securing a tract of land in the very heart of Kyoto,
the ancient religious and political capital, is one of
the most thrilling stories in all modern biography.

A missionary colleague, Dr. J. D. Davis, shared
with him the struggles and the ultimate triumphs of
those early years. Col. Davis feared God and nothing
else. He trusted Neesima and they, together, strong
in a common purpose, labored until, in 1875, Doshisha
College was an accomplished fact, with eight pupils
and two teachers who met in rented buildings and
started with prayer, as Dr. Davis thus records : "We
began our school this morning with a prayer-meeting
in which all the scholars took part. I shall never
forget Mr. Neesima's tender, tearful, earnest prayer
as we began school." Thus they successfully defied

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 161

the prophecy of a Buddhist priest who had facetiously
remarked, "You might as well try to remove yonder
Mount Hiei into Lake Biwa as to start a Jesus school
in the city of Kyoto."

The early missionaries and their energetic young
converts worked indefatigably to create Christian
literature. The first weekly paper in the country was
started by Dr. Orramel Gulick, in 1875, being called
"One in Seven News." Apologetic works, original
and translated, were issued, but the greatest achieve-
ment of all was the cooperative translation of the
Bible, of which the New Testament was completed in
1880 and the Old Testament in 1887.

IV. THE PERIODS OF POPULARITY AND REACTION

During the early eighties, the Christian movement
gained such momentum that not a few leaders pre-
dicted that Japan would become a Christian nation
within a generation. Some of the young missionaries
arriving in the country were advised that only a
smattering of Japanese would suffice, since English
was becoming widely understood, and the opportu-
nities for work were so insistent that time could not
be spared for a thorough study of the language.

But about 1889 a sharp reaction set in. The acces-
sions to the churches in a single year fell from 5,677
to 1,199, an d during the following decade the defec-
tions from the churches were so numerous and the
antipathy to Christianity so strong that most of the
churches barely held their own. The causes for this
reaction are not far to seek. In the eighties everything

i6s CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

foreign, including Christianity, was enthusiastically
welcomed, and Fukuzawa, an influential journalist,
went so far as to argue that it would be well for the
whole nation to become nominally Christian so as to
hasten political equality with the West, which was
the dearest ambition of the nation. The Japanese
resented being classed with backward countries, like
Turkey, and insisted that all foreigners should be
placed under the jurisdiction of the Japanese courts.
One fanatic, who thought Marquis Okuma, then
Foreign Minister, was not aggressive enough in
pressing Japan's case, threw a bomb which cost the
Marquis the loss of one leg. Finally, after a decade
of insistent negotiation, extra-territoriality was ended
in 1898. Meanwhile, everything foreign was disliked,
and Christian work suffered accordingly. Another
reason was the shallow nurture which most converts
had received before entering the Church. Men and
women were baptized by the score without a clear
idea of the meaning of Christian discipleship. Further-
more, the more extreme and untested theories of the
German "higher criticism" swept like a wave over the
unprepared Christian community, undermining the
faith of many who had no depth of Biblical knowledge
or of Christian experience.

The decade of the nineties also brought another
severe ordeal to the young Church in the form of the
rather hot-headed demand of certain Japanese Church
leaders for independence of the missionaries. This
struggle was most marked between the vigorous
Kumiai or Congregational churches and the corre-

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 163

spending American Board Mission. The bitterness
of the struggle was aggravated by the so-called
Poshisha trouble, when, after the death of Neesima,
some of the Japanese alumni and faculty, yielding
to the prevalent anti-foreign feeling, strove to seize
entire control of the institution and to weaken its
Christian character. The same struggle broke out
later in other denominations, especially in the Church
of Christ in Japan (Presbyterian). The very con-
scientiousness and strength of character of the two
parties to the struggle caused wounds which it took
years to heal.

In the light of today, it is clear that some of the
Japanese leaders were contentious, and many of the
churches were unprepared for aH the burdens of
self-government, and that, on the other hand, some
of the missionaries . were too slow in placing respon-
sibility squarely on the shoulders of their spiritual
children and letting them work out their own salvation
by "trial and error." Fortunately, to-day, even those
who were in the very thick of the fight can link arms
and work as equals on the great tasks that still remain.

V. ON THE UPWARD TRAIL

Attention should be called to one outstanding
asset of Christianity in Japan; namely, freedom of
belief and propaganda. In the very Constitution of
the Empire (Article 28) we read: "Japanese subjects
shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order,
and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy
freedom of religious belief." The value of this guar-

164 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

antee cannot be overestimated. A Japanese diplomat
spoke almost the exact truth when he said in 1901,
"The profession and the propagation of Christianity
are as untrammeled in Japan as in any part of the
world." Such obstacles as there have been arose
from prejudice and fear rather than from the law
of the land.

With the opening of the twentieth century the
whole Christian movement seemed to turn a sharp
corner and to enter upon a pathway of steady growth.
In place of apologetic addresses, a campaign of direct
evangelism was inaugurated. The Japanese Evan-
gelical Alliance took the first step by deciding to raise
a fund for the purpose. Soon after, in 1900, the
cooperation of the 'missionaries was enlisted, and joint
committees were appointed. This Forward Movement
was signally blessed. Hundreds whose faith had
been undermined during the decade of reaction were
reestablished in the Church and hundreds of new
converts of standing were won. At the height of
the Movement Dr. John R. Mott conducted a fruitful
series of meetings among students, Dr. R. A. Torrey
spoke to large audiences in a few centers, and Dr.
M. C. Harris, later made Bishop, returned to Japan
and gave characteristically moving addresses. The
revived enthusiasm thus engendered for evangelism
and for cooperative effort has been maintained ever
since and has helped remove the stigma of cold intel-
lectualism which had begun to be fixed upon the
Christian movement in Japan. In 1904-05 the min-
istry of the Y. M. C. A. and the churches to the

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 165

soldiers during the war with Russia enabled the
Christian message to be carried to thousands of the
men and to their families, who belonged for the most
part to the conservative peasant class. In 1907 came
the first world gathering of any sort ever held in
the Orient, the Convention of the W\orld's Student
Christian Federation at Tokyo. It created a new
respect for Christianity as a world force, and the
accompanying evangelistic meetings held throughout
the Empire focussed the attention of students upon
Christ and resulted in many accessions to the churches.
The most notable demonstration of the courage
and zeal of the combined Christian forces was the
nation-wide United Evangelistic Campaign which
grew out of the national conference held in 1913 by
Dr. Mott as chairman of the Edinburgh Continuation
Committee. The campaign continued from 1914 to
1917 and was followed by a year of "conservation."
The campaign was engineered largely by the Japanese,
but the cooperation of missionaries was everywhere
sought and appreciated with a heartiness which be-
tokened the final dying out of the earlier assertive spirit
of independence. The Campaign Generals were four
of the ablest pastors in the country, Doctors Uemura
and Kosaki of Tokyo and Doctors Miyagawa and
Naide of Osaka. Around them was a cohort of very
able speakers. Lay and clerical, "liberal" and "con-
servative," vied with one another in bearing- witness to
the things they assuredly knew about Christ, the life-
giving Saviour. There were 410,000 auditors, and of
these, 14,404 were enroled as seekers or new believers.

166 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Since 1918 the various denominations have con-
ducted mutually supplementary Forward Movements
which have brought gratifying results in largely
increased contributions, .as well as in evangelism.
Among individual "evangelists," the most prominent
have been Rev. Paul Kanamori, Colonel Yamamuro,
and the Rev. Seimatsu Kimura, at whose meetings
thousands have, taken the first step in the Christian life.

The net growth in the membership of the Protestant
churches by decades is interesting. From 1899 to 1909
the growth was 23,567; from 1909 to 1919, it was
34,076. An analysis of the membership drawn from
different classes, in one fairly representative local
church, belonging to the United Brethren, shows that
thirty per cent were in commercial pursuits, twenty-
eight per cent students, eight per cent government
officials and soldiers, six per cent nurses and doctors,
three per cent artists, and twenty-eight per cent
unclassified. These percentages would not hold for
all the churches, some of which are much stronger
in the number of business and professional men. In
general, the backbone of the whole Church is composed
of the educated classes in cities and towns. Farmers
are comparatively few and manual laborers barely
represented.*

The Christians of Japan are by no means all in
the churches. One of the largest groups of unbap-
tized believers has arisen from the work of Mr. Kanzo
Uchimura. He is a Biblical teacher and writer of
extraordinary power, but a pronounced independent,
* See Appendix I, Chapter V, for Christian statistics.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 167

opposed to all religious organizations and rites. His
magazine, The Bible Study, founded a decade ago, is
unique in its magnetic quality as well as in its circu-
lation. Mr. Uchimura's followers include farmers
and students, officials and teachers. Many of them
are earnest propagators of their faith. Movements
like this are symptomatic; they represent a consid-
erable, perhaps growing number of Christians and
secret believers who do not find satisfaction in the
Church.

The finances of Christian organizations are often
an index of their spiritual condition. It is, therefore,
gratifying to note that the amount raised by Japanese
Christians for annual budgets has increased far more
rapidly than church membership. . Even after allow-
ing for the lower purchasing power of money, the
increase is striking. In 1910 they raised $150,000;
in 1915, $290,000; and in 1920, $750,000. The
amounts raised by various bodies in 1920 were as
follows : Kumiai Church, $164,000; Methodist Church,
$73,000 (in 1921 the Forward Movement swelled the
total to $155,000) ; Ninon Kirisuto Kyokai, $124,000;
Sei Ko Kwai (Anglican), $91,000; Salvation Army,
$73,000; Baptist, $14,000; Young Men's Christian
Associations, $148,000. The value of church prop-
erty, including Christian Associations but not schools,
increased from $692,000 in 1910 to $1,981,000 in
1915, and to $3,518,000 in 1920.

Without belittling the importance of the missions,
it is increasingly evident that the heart of the Christian
movement is the self-supporting Japanese Church.

i68 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

The conflict between Mission and Church, so acute
between 1890 and 1905, has subsided during the last
ten years. The reason is that in the larger denomina-
tions the battle was won, and now that the churches
have proved themselves, there is only a dwindling
minority of missionaries today who resist the transfer
of authority and responsibility to the Japanese. A
growing number would go so' far as to abjure the
revered tenet that "he who pays the fiddler calls the
tune," at least in so far as it would preclude the giving
of grants to self-governing churches.

The Sunday School movement has grown nearly
threefold since 1905, when the enrolment was 64,910,
In 1910 it had risen to 97,760; in 1915 to 148,333,
and in 1921 to 170,169. Despite the impetus given
by the prospect of having the World's Sunday School
Convention meet in Tokyo in 1920, the ratio of
growth fell during the last five years. It is likely
to take a new leap forward during the next period.
The World's Convention was an historic event not
only for the Sunday School movement itself, but
for the whole Christian cause in Japan.. It received
extensive notice in hundreds of secular papers. The
fact that the Emperor and Empress contributed
$25,000 to its expenses stopped the mouths of the
conservatives who had been inciting public school
teachers to discriminate against Sunday School pupils.
The convention also gave a greatly needed impetus
to more thorough-going programs of religious educa-
tion and to the wider use of music and pageantry.

The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 169

Associations have made large gains. The combined
membership is 30,434, which does not include the more
than 10,000 students in their educational classes. The
service rendered by the Associations to the soldiers
in Siberia and .France enlisted the cooperation of
many missionaries and Japanese workers. Non-Chris-
tians contributed the bulk of the $600,000 expended
in this work. Tens of thousands of elementary school
children drew or wrote post-card greetings to be sent
through the Red Triangle secretaries to the soldiers.
Relief funds for the students of Central Europe have
been given by thousands of Japanese students, in
response to the appeal^ of the Associations. Systematic
physical education, which was introduced only in 1914,
with the opening of the gymnasium in Tokyo, has
taken firm root and has drawn within the circle of
Christian influence many boys and men otherwise
inaccessible. The recently started special work for
boys and for employed girls is full of promise. The
beautiful summer conference grounds acquired in
1912 near Mt. Fuji have provided a long desired
training and recreation center. The most significant
achievement of the Christian Associations has been
the finding of national secretaries of such caliber as
Miss Michi Kawai and Mr. Soichi Saito.

VI. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AND THE GOVERNMENT

SYSTEM

In the nineties the Christian schools in common
with the churches suffered severely, and in 1899 the
reactionaries had secured the promulgation of an ordi-

i;o CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

nance which seemed like a body blow. It provided
that no school which desired for its pupils the same
privileges as government school students with regard
to the postponement of conscription and admittance
to government colleges, should give religious instruc-
tion, or hold religious exercises. But gradually the
government wak persuaded to modify this ordinance
so faffr that Cnristian schools now stand practically
on a pi'rn irij^arffrnmrnt institutions. During the
decade of op^wion and eclipse, the missionary sup-
porters in. America and England habjDecome somewhat
discouraged and had failed tofljiKe the funds needed
for expansion. Mean-^jfci-let^^^B^ernmeiit institu-
tions were forging rapidly^S^^MJP^ally, about 1908,
the missionary societies ( ^B^^ully aroused to the
short-sightedness of neglecnng the Christian schools
whence they must derive their leaders, and since then
there has been a notable increase in funds available
both for buildings and for current budgets.

Fortunately, Japanese alumni who have attained
affluence are beginning to give generously to their
alma maters. Doshisha has an endowment fund of
$250,000 contributed mostly by Japanese. Aoyama
Gakuin, the Methodist College, has received $150,000
from an alumnus made rich by war-time shipping for
the erection of a handsome building. Kwansei Gakuin
(Methodist South and Canadian), at Kobe, is con-
stajitly adding to its equipment, and St. Paul's College
in Tokyo (Episcopal) has spent about $250,000 on
an impressive group of buildings. The eminent serv-
ices rendered to education by Dr. Schneder and North-

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 171

western College at Sendei have moved a number of
non-Christian Japanese to contribute generously to
rebuild the academy building destroyed by fire.

At the same time, Christian schools for girls have
prospered. In the earlier period missionaries made
one of their greatest contributions to Japan by pioneer-
ing in the education of women. Until 1900 they
had the field almost to themselves. Since then gov-
ernment girls' schools have sprung up by the hundreds,
but in recent years the Christian women's colleges,
like those for men, have been making up for lost
time by strengthening their equipment and faculties.
Among them six may be mentioned : Kobe College
(Congregational) enjoys the distinction of being
the first woman's college to win a government license
as a university; St. Agnes School (Episcopal),
Kyoto, and Bishop Poole's School (Anglican), Osaka,
have trained a host of Christian women; Miss Tsuda's
College in Tokyo (Independent), has developed a
number of outstanding leaders ; the Presbyterian Girls'
School in Tokyo has been notable for the quality of
its influence under the leadership of the venerable
Madame Yajima. The Tokyo Women's Union
College, in which six American Mission Boards are
cooperating, is a notably successful development. It
has reached the limit of its present capacity two
hundred but the special funds recently raised in the
United States with the help of the Laura Spelman
Rockefeller Memorial will make early expansion
possible.

There are nearly forty thousand enroled in Chris-

i/2 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

tian schools of all grades, beside ten thousand
children in the kindergartens. The majority of
them are in middle or high schools, at an age when
the most vital choices are generally made. Of late,
several of the Christian schools have opened com-
mercial departments and the applicants for admission
have been so numerous that it has required strenuous
efforts to maintain the Christian influence of the
schools unimpaired.

It is significant that as much money ($250,000) is
derived from Japanese as from the Mission Boards
for the annual maintenance of the schools. Their
total property value is about six millions, exclusive
of the Christian Association buildings.

Notwithstanding their shortcomings, it would IDC
hard to exaggerate the contribution which the Chris-
tian schools have made to the Christian movement.
Even though none of them yet equals in rank the
highly equipped government colleges and universities,
they have supplied the inspiration and the initial train-
ing to a majority of the men and women dedicated
to professional Christian service. But it is greatly
to be regretted that the effort of a few years ago to
establish a Central Union Christian. University of the
highest grade was not successful. This makes all
the more urgent the improvement of existing institu-
tions, and also the extension of Christian effort among
the students of government and other non-Christian
colleges. Their most insidious peril is the temptation
to put size above quality, and thus to dilute their Chris-
tian influence so markedly as to fail to supply the

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 173

consecrated leaders so greatly needed in Japan today.

The state system of education in Japan has won
high praise from foreign critics. But it is undoubt-
edly too much of a system; it cramps originality
and spontaneity in both pupils and teachers and tends
to over-emphasize nationalism, on the one hand, and
getting a living, on the other, to the neglect of the
old ideal of culture and character. The govern-
ment schools have multiplied by leaps and bounds.
Twenty-five years ago there was only one Imperial
university. Today there are five, enroling 10,250
men, all of whom are over twenty-one and are doing
professional or graduate work. It always solemnizes
me to pass by Tokyo Imperial University with its
imposing buildings and its still more imposing array
of 5,500 students, who above any other group in Japan
hold the keys of the future.

One cannot help thinking of what a constant irre-
ligious influence is brought to bear upon them in
most of the lecture rooms. The need is great for
strengthening the positive Christian influences which
play upon them outside. It is, however, encouraging
to know that there are not less than twenty Christian
men on the University faculty, and that the churches
and Christian student hostels in the vicinity are af-
fecting several hundreds of the students in the Univer-
sity and in the neighboring government college. The
same is true of the other four Imperial Universities.

Only second to the Imperial Universities in influence
are the great private institutions, Waseda University,
founded by the late Marquis Okuma, and Keio Uni-

174 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

versity founded by Fukuzawa, who might be called
the Benjamin Franklin of Japan.

Indispensable as the Christian schools are, the
Christian movement can even less afford to overlook
the government schools than the Christians in America
could afford to ignore the public high schools and
state and municipal universities. The total enrol-
ment of the Christian schools is only fifty thousand,
over against a total of eleven millions in the govern-
ment schools, which is one half of one per cent.
Even in the institutions of high school grade and
above, the Christian school enrolment is only twenty-
six thousand or eight per - cent of the number in
government institutions. Two or three of the Imperial
Universities have capital investments and annual
budgets as large as all the Christian schools in the
Empire. In the next chapter we shall consider the
bearing of these facts on the policy of Christian
education. Here it is important to see that wise
strategy justifies 'all the effort that has been made
to exert a Christian influence on students in non-
Christian schools.

Who can estimate the good done by the long line
of Christian teachers of English and other subjects
in government schools, many of them self-supporting
missionaries in spirit? The first systematic attempt
to supply such teachers was in 1887 when Dr. Eby
of the Canadian Methodists induced eleven men and
one woman to go to Japan. Ultimately a number
of them became regular missionaries. Dr. Eby
himself laid siege to the students of Tokyo Imperial

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 175

University, especially by means of apologetic lectures.
The Y. M. C. A., through the English Teacher Move-
ment, since 1890 has placed over two hundred and
fifty teachers, young college graduates, most of whom
have persuasively presented Christ to lads otherwise
inaccessible.

Among a people so literate as the Japanese, litera-
ture wields a potent influence, and it has not been
neglected by Christian workers. One of the most
effective ways of capturing the attention of students
and teachers in the public schools has been the
monthly magazine called Morning Star (Myojo},.
which is edited by the Christian Literature Society.
No copies are distributed except with the permission
of the principals. Strange as it may seem, it is wel-
comed or tolerated in nearly every high school in the
Empire. The monthly edition of seventy-five thou-
sand goes to two thousand schools.

The most effective literary ally of the Christian
cause has been the increasing volume of books and
magazines written, published, and distributed by
Japanese, without a penny of foreign aid. From
an early period zealous young converts found means
by hook or crook to express their new-found con-
victions on the printed page. Laughable reminiscences
are told of how a group of youths (now venerable
elder statesmen in the Church) used to slave away
on copy and subscriptions for their magazine (Rikugo
Zasshi) , debating heatedly over manuscripts, and after
the last proof had been sent to the long-suffering-
printer, celebrating by a frugal, but hilarious mid-

176 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

night repast. The profitable business built up by
several of the Christian firms who publish Japanese
works is conclusive evidence of the wide demand for
the products of Japanese Christian experience and
scholarship.

Another effective means of leavening the students
in non-Christian schools is the hostel, which is simply
a home and social center where a few Christian
students live and to which other students are invited
for Bible classes and socials. The plan was started
thirty years ago by the College Y. M. C. A. at Kyoto,
and recently when a visitor was examining a photo-
graph of the charter members he was surprised to
discover among them the face of the Civil Governor
of Korea, the Hon. C. Ariyoshi. He exclaimed:
"Now I understand the source of the splendid
character of this great administrator and of his
life-long interest in the Young Men's Christian
Association." Many other men prominent in Church
and State would join him in gratefully acknowledging
their debt to the little hostel where they lived and
worked for their fellows during college days. Several
missionaries have found in such hostels their most
effective approach to students. At Waseda University,
Dr. Benninghoff of the Baptist Mission has made two
hostels the center of a varied and fruitful activity.
Near Tokyo Imperial University a hostel has been
built by a Japanese Episcopalian with funds raised
from American friends, and there he and some of
the Episcopal missionaries find access to a picked
group of men. When the hostel is expanded into a

ACHIEVEMENTS. OF CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT 177

club house and auditorium, as it has been by the
Christian Associations at Tokyo Imperial University
and by the Baptists at Waseda University, it becomes
a factor in the life of the whole student body.

Who can survey the solid achievements of the Chris-
tian movement among the Japanese people in spite
of all set-backs and defects without recognizing the
mighty hand of God! As we look back over the pe-
riods of popularity and reaction, we marvel at the
undiscourageable patience and the solid achievements
of the missionaries in the face of stupendous difficul-
ties, but still we cannot help wishing that they might
somehow have been lifted clear above the dust of the
day and been able to see, as we can so easily, that they
should have striven even harder to establish a few very
strong and amply supported schools and colleges, that
they should have softened the shock of "higher criti-
cism" by wise use of the historical method themselves,
that they should have shared and turned over respon-
sibility more willingly to the Japanese and stood by
to steady them in their plucky though over-confident
efforts to walk alone.

But noWj as we look to the future, we ask, what
of the towering unsolved problems, the neglected
classes, the inadequate Japanese and missionary forces,
the challenge of the days just ahead ?

i/8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

THE CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW

As a laboratory in missionary science, Japan could
hardly be surpassed. Within the short span of sixty
years the missionary methods in Japan have passed
through a gamut of changes comparable to the
changes in the political world. The very fact that the
Japanese churches have had to struggle, sometimes
against governmental and secular opposition, some-
times against foes of their own household, has
strengthened them for the equally hard times ahead.
If the six decades already .past are considered the
infancy and adolescence of the Christian movement,
then the next few decades may be called its youth.
Sinewy from its struggles, hopeful from its triumphs
hitherto, it must expect in coming days to be tested
at every joint more severely than ever before. Within,
are the ever growing problems arising from rapid
industrialization, from the awakening of the masses
of the people, from the breakdown of old moral
supports, and from the galvanizing into new life of
half-reformed Buddhism ; without, are the pressure of
baleful tides of thought and the conflict of racial
and national ambitions. If ever the Christian forces,
missionary and Japanese alike, needed to summon
their united energies and sharpen their weapons, it is
today.

It is important to realize in advance that the
Christianizing of a people which possesses so highly
developed religious and social systems as the Japanese

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 179

will be a long, complex undertaking. Hitherto, the
Christian movement has made its gains almost entirely
among students and other groups most responsive to
new ideas. To make headway among the conservative
groups will call for siege-work. Although suspicion
and bitter opposition toward Christianity have largely
disappeared, other difficulties have arisen. Thirty
years ago Christian workers were acknowledged to
be the bearers of superior ethical ideals, as represented
by the hospitals and schools and reform movements
which they introduced. Even outside the Christian
circle, Japanese writers and publicists gradually
accepted Christian standards by which to judge the'ir
institutions and ideas. The government adopted the
programs of philanthropy and women's education,
which had at first been the monopoly of the mis-
sionaries. The newspapers, for example, nowadays
criticize public men for personal immorality which
would have been ignored a few decades ago. Thus,
without recognizing its indebtedness to the missionary
movement and the numerically insignificant Japanese
churches, educated public opinion has become to a
lar.ge degree ethically Christian. So far as it goes,
this constitutes a triumph for Christianity. But it
has deprived the Christian message of one of its
chief grounds of appeal.

Another difficulty is the aggressive competition of
Shinto and Buddhism with Christianity. In so far
as the old religions are being purified, every Christian
will rejoice, but he will be pardoned for fearing that
the leopard can never entirely change his spots.

iSo CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Shinto can hardly get rid of its nationalistic bias.
Buddhism can hardly escape entirely from its nega-
tive pessimism. Yet the Shin Sect of Buddhism has
gone a good way toward making its escape. Many
of the old sects are borrowing without apology the
methods and ideas of Christianity. That the results
are generally pale imitations is to be expected.
Ultimately, the impossibility of making a life-giving
religion out of an eclectic combination of new and
old wine will be apparent. But meanwhile, modernized
Buddhism and glorified Shinto will seriously impede
the progress of Christian truth.

A still further stumbling-block is "Christian civili-
zation." The era when the brilliance of occidental
civilization cast a glamor upon the religion of the West
has forever passed. The World War cast a lurid light
on the "Christian nations." Their religion was seen
to be impotent to subdue political and financial ambi-
tions. The messengers of Christ in Asia now find
"Christian civilization" rather to be apologized for
than an effective apologetic for their message.

I. POLICIES AND EMPHASES REQUIRED

Our cursory survey of these giants in the path
of the Christian movement in Japan will have shown
that the task ahead is no holiday parade. To make
the Japanese people predominantly Christian will be
a stupendous achievement. It is, therefore, fitting
that we attempt to forecast some of the most
important steps to that end.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 181

i. Cooperation and federation

The first requisite is the better coordination and
use of all the Christian forces. At various times
prominent Japanese laymen have agitated for the
organic union of the denominations, but they have
lacked the knowledge of church history and the
leadership to carry it through against the passive
resistance of the rank and file and the active opposition
of some of the clergy. An all-inclusive organic union
is doubtless visionary for the present, but a further
combination of kindred denominations would appear
to be both practicable and desirable. Already the
Japanese have gone far in that direction : the results
of the labors of the four Presbyterian and Reformed
missions have been included in the Nihon Kirisuto
Kyokai; the work of the two American and one
Canadian Methodist missions has contributed to the
formation of the single Japan Methodist Church;
the missionaries of the Church of England, the
Church of England in Canada, and the American
Episcopal Church are all connected with the Sei-ko-
kwai; a single Association of Baptist Churches has
grown out of the work of two Baptist missions. The
same process could well be carried further, especially
by the union, respectively, of the Disciples, Christians,
United Brethren, Methodist Protestant, and Evan-
gelical Churches with congenial larger denominations.
Then later a formula might be worked out for a
still wider union, catholic enough to allow flexibility
and variety, but close and vital enough to ensure the

i&z CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

strength and daring that come from unity of purpose
and of general policy. In hastening this consumma-
tion the missionaries must play varying parts. On
the union of the larger, independent bodies they can
exert but slight influence. But on the union of the
smaller denominations, which still depend largely on
mission funds, they can exert a strong influence;
indeed, hitherto they may have yielded too easily when
Japanese leaders have objected to such combinations,
ostensibly on principle, but often, it is to be feared,
from partisan or personal motives.

It may surprise occidental readers, but the fact
is that sectarianism in recent years has been more
obstinately perpetuated by the Japanese, especially the
clergy, than by their missionary colleagues. The laity,
on the contrary, would generally endorse plans for
a considerable degree of church union. In the case,
however, of the union or federation of Christian
schools in order to pave the way for a union Christian
university, it was the Japanese alumni rather than
the missionary teachers who objected. Has not the
day fully come when a more resolute effort should
be made both in Japan and among the supporting
home churches to present a united fighting front?

Taking the situation as it is, the next important
step toward the effective coordination of Christian
forces is to make strong the recently created National
Christian Council, which is composed of eighty-five
representatives appointed by the various churches and
missions, (exclusive of the Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox) and fifteen others selected by these

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 183

appointees. Some of the most far-sighted leaders hope
it will not only have a Japanese majority which the
constitution ensures but that in the course of time
the missionary minority may give way so that the
Council will become practically a federation of the]
Japanese churches. Otherwise the churches would!
need to perpetuate the present rather weak Federation
of Churches, and unless a large majority in the
Council were Japanese, there would be danger of the
more aggressive and "committee-minded" missionary
members exerting, in spite of themselves, a dominat-
ing influence.

There has been for twenty years a vigorous
Federation of Christian Missions, which includes
thirty-three mission bodies. It has promoted coopera-
tion along many lines, especially in evangelism and
in literature. It has published the monthly Japan
Evangelist and the authoritative year-book called The
Christian Movement in Japan, Korea, and Formosa
and has established the Christian Literature Society,
whose output during its first ten years has totalled
167,587,069 pages. Evidently there will be need for
this Federation for a considerable time; but just as
the individual missionary strives to magnify his
Japanese associates and to pass over to them enter-
prises which he has painfully developed, so it is
natural to expect the Federation of Missions to plan
and seize upon opportunities to entrust some of its
functions and enterprises to the National Christian
Council. A resolution declaring this to be the purpose
of the Federation was adopted at its annual meeting

i&t CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

in 1922. The question arises whether the time may
not soon come when the Christian Literature Society
should be transferred to the Council.

In any case, the Missions should leave no stone
unturned to give the Council the men and the means
to be a powerful agent of the entire Christian Move-
ment. An ample budget and an able Japanese
Executive Secretary and a missionary associate would
seem to be required, and the Missions will no doubt
count it a privilege to make the sacrifices required
to supply them. The need for such a National
Council is even greater in Japan than in most other
countries, for the reason that all aspects of life
political,, educational, economic, and religious tend
toward a national and centralized organization. The
inherent democracy and local autonomy of the
constituent denominational bodies may be trusted to
prevent over-centralization. The Council will be a
spokesman, a clearing-house, and an -advisory general
staff for all its members. It will put the strength of
all at the disposal of each.

2. Rearing Japanese leaders

But a more vital requisite for a victorious Christian
movement is an adequate supply of competent
Japanese leaders. The early Japanese converts, such
as those in the Kumamoto and Yokohama bands,
included a surprisingly high proportion of able
leaders. Fortunately, many of them are still in harness
and pulling more than their share. But several have
already died, and those captains courageous who are

7 Jan.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 185

left must within a few years find successors. And
besides, the new day with its more complex problems
will call for even abler men than the past. As each
veteran has passed on, his place has somehow been
filled, and among the middle-aged leaders are men
of power. But speaking generally, it seems as though
the decade of reaction the 'nineties had left a gap
in the ranks. That cold decade chilled the early flush
of enthusiasm for the adventure of Christian service.
The lure of political and commercial careers has
proved stronger for many men than the rough,
uncertain road of Christian ministry, and not a few
who had stilled conscience by resolving to devote to
the advancement of the Kingdom the prestige and
wealth they might win in secular pursuits, have
drifted far from their early purpose. The net result
is that all the Christian callings are short of men and
women equal to the exacting demands of the times.
And what of the remedy? It would be folly to
pretend that there is any short and easy way. One
rich source of supply, hitherto but slightly worked,
is the student body of the government high schools
and colleges. Of course the Christian schools will
furnish many workers, especially if their supporters
do not grow weary in giving the funds to raise
their standards. But the government schools have
twelve times as many men and women in them and, as
a rule, the brightest in the land. Particular attention
should be paid to the high schools and vocational
schools, well-nigh a thousand of them, for students
make the great decisions in their teens. Here is a

G-Jap

i86 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

field where many a missionary man or woman will
find a fascinating opportunity. It might not be
excessive if every tenth missionary were chosen with
reference to such work well-educated, attractive,
willing to work quietly with small groups, and irradi-
ated with the love of Christ for heart-hungry youths.
Let such a man or woman settle near a school or two,
keep open house and open heart, use the Bible and
intimate talks, games and athletics, music and English
conversation and literature and social science, all to
light men's way to the Master. The results might be
slow, but they would be sure and cumulative, and out
of it would come ministers and teachers and laymen
of ability, anchored in faith against all storms. This
is not a fine-spun theory: the early missionaries did
something like it, and some are now doing it. Among
them are women missionaries whose unheralded work
among high school boys has been fruitful beyond
computation. There are such missionaries in Sendai,
and others in Okayama, Tokyo, and Sapporo, who,
beside doing arduous work among women, have
poured themselves into the lives of government school
lads and have been rewarded by seeing man after man
develop into stalwart Christian leadership. It should
be said that their labors have been closely interwoven
with the remarkable Bible classes for students con-
ducted by Dr. K. Sasao and other Japanese professors..
A glance over the Empire discloses a growing
group of younger leaders who have resulted from
just such quiet work. One thinks of such pastors as
Rev. H. Hatanaka of Kyoto, who calls the missionary

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 187

guide of his youth "Mother"; Pastor Yanagihara
of the Sei Ko Kwai in Osaka, who owes much to
consecrated parents and also to missionary friends;
Rev. Z. Ono of the Methodist Church in Kofu, a
flaming evangelist among schoolboys ; of such laymen,
graduates of Imperial Universities, as Dr. S. Yoshino,
professor in Tokyo Imperial University and leading
exponent of liberalism and international cooperation;
Dr. F. Usawa, member of the Imperial Educational
Council as well as of Parliament; Motoi Kurihara,
teacher, writer, and translator of Dr. Fosdick's
volumes; Soichi Saito, national general secretary of
the Young Men's Christian Associations; Takeshi
Saito, professor in Tokyo Imperial University;
Chikayoshi Nakatsu, manufacturer; Setsuzo Sawada,
diplomat and peace-maker; and of the noble cohort
of younger women represented by Miss Michi Kawai,
national general secretary of the Young Women's
Christian Associations, and Miss Yasui, dean of Tokyo
Women's Union College. All of these and many more
pillars of the Church would gladly acknowledge their
deep debt to some self -obscuring missionary or pastor
or teacher, whose life, through them, has been
multiplied a hundredfold. When one begins thus to
run down the lengthening list, one feels new assur-
ance for the future of the Christian movement. One
is also encouraged to believe that these brilliant young
leaders, at home in both Eastern and Western thought,
will serve as channels through whom the Japanese will
make their unique contribution toward the completer
expression of the many-sided Christ.

i88 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

A second source of leaders, too little tapped as yet,
is that reservoir of manhood, the village and small
town. Japan is still a nation of peasants, for seventy-
five per cent are tillers of the land and fishermen. The
army and the factories go to the countryside for
their recruits. Many of the sages and apostles and
statesmen of Old Japan were bred there. But the
Christian Church, in spite of all its valuation of the
common man and the precedent of Jesus' peasant
disciples, has somehow found little time for getting
hold of the sturdy Japanese peasant. The main
reason has been a shortage of workers and funds,
but there has also been a conviction that concentrating
in the dominating centers, as St. Paul did, was wise
strategy. And with some, perhaps, the obsession of
numbers has been too strong. Some years ago I tried
to persuade a Japanese pastor who had studied in
America to take a country charge which his bishop
was offering him. I pictured how he could become
the guide and confidant of hundreds of farmers and
their children and mold the civic and social as well
as religious life of a county; how he would be dealing,
not with the transients of a city church, but with the
most stable group in. the country. He couldn't catch
the vision, and has since lived a respectable but
apparently humdrum life as a worker in a great city.
The solemnizing fact is that four out of five of the
country dwellers have never been reached by any
Christian worker. Of late years a number of mis-
sionaries have moved into the smaller cities so as to
be in closer touch with their country fields.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 189

The most determined and resourceful effort to work
the rural lode is Omi Mission on Lake _Biwa. If
anyone fancies that romance and novelty have faded
out of missionary service in Japan, let him not fail
to go to Hachiman and see with his own eyes a
veritable miracle.*

In 1905 William Merrell Vories was called as a
"Y. M. C. A. English teacher" to the commercial high
school at Hachiman. He accepted the call because he
had early resolved to go somewhere to an unoccupied
field and work as a self-supporting missionary. When
the number of his student converts aroused opposition
and cost him his post, he turned to architecture for
support. Today he is surrounded by seventy men and
women, mostly Japanese, an intensely happy, busy
family, engaged not only in building goodly structures
all over the Empire, but preeminently in building-
Christ into the lives of the farmers and village folk
of a province. A student hostel, two railway men's
clubhouses, the steam launch "Galilee Maru," a tuber-
culosis sanitarium, kindergartens and active churches
have sprung up, one after another. The sanitorium
was recently declared, by the head of the largest
government pulmonary hospital, to be the best in
Japan. In 1922 Mr. Vories was requested by the

* Far-sighted civil and military officials have done all in their
power to develop the Young Men's Associations, especially in the
country districts. The Associations number 16,694, having 2,703,-
447 members, expenditures of 2,052,160 yen in 1920, and property
valued at 5,789,300 yen. In some places they have done much to
benefit their communities. They are supposed to be non-religious,
but generally they are made media for strengthening State Shinto.
(See pamphlet published by Home Department, 1922.)

ipo CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

Minister of the Interior to serve as Counselor to the
National Commission on Housing. Equally remark-
able is the fact that in an official textbook on ethics,
Omi Mission is described as a bright example of com-
munity helpfulness. The platform of Omi Mission
is only twenty lines long, but it is notable for its
daring originality:

1. To preach the gospel of Christ in the Province
of Omi, Japan, without reference to denominations.
There being no "Omi Mission Church," converts to
be organized into self-supporting congregations of the
denominations of their own choice.

2. To practice the complete unifying of the work
and fellowship of Japanese and foreign workers.

3. To evangelize communities unoccupied by any
Protestant Mission, and under no circumstances to
overlap with the work of such Missions.

4. To evangelize rural communities, as the most
conservative element of the nation, and the most
probable source of leadership.

5. To seek, enlist, and train leaders and workers.

6. To work for social reforms, including temper-
ance, social purity, marriage customs, physical and
sanitary betterment, and definite efforts for the poor
and the "out-casts."

It is a logical as well as romantic sequel to the
tale that four years ago Mr. Vories was married to
the daughter of Viscount Hitotsuyanagi. The family
was very ancient and proud. It was opposed to
Christianity, but the daughter had been converted in
America, where she graduated from Bryn Mawr

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 191

College. It was "the first case in history of a Japanese
noble giving up rank and nationality in order to marry
a foreigner of no rank," a striking example of the
superiority to race, rank, and worldly advantage
which true Christian faith engenders and for which
Omi Mission stands. The number of diamonds in
the rough found by Mr. Vories and his colleagues
among the yokels of Omi confirms the claim that the
Christian movement can find many of its needed
leaders in the country.

At this point attention should be called to the respec-
tive advantages of two contrasted types of church
polity for the nurturing of Japanese leaders. The Con-
gregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and
various other missions have naturally magnified the
independence and self-support of the Japanese Church.
Each congregation and minister enjoys almost com-
plete autonomy. The result has been to call forth
initiative and self-reliance in the Japanese. Men of
independent, aggressive character have been attracted
to these denominations. The unfavorable side of the
system was the tendency, during the 'nineties, when
the entire nation was self-assertive and impatient of
foreign control, for the missionary and Japanese
workers to fall apart and hence to deprive the Japanese
of the steadying and stimulating influence of the
"thoroughbred Christian" missionary. The Anglican
missions, on the other hand, have magnified the historic
continuity and universal oneness of the Church and the
necessity of a prolonged period of training and sub-
ordination for the Japanese workers under an ordained

192 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

missionary superior. The local congregations, like-
wise, are not granted autonomy and less stress is laid
on self-support. The result has been to develop
Japanese workers of less initiative but of deeper
grounding in the faith and finer appreciation of the
mystical elements in Christianity. Both of these
systems manifestly have certain distinctive advan-
tages, for both types of leaders are needed in the
Church.

There are certain obstacles to securing able Japanese
leaders which missionaries can help remove. One
of them lies in the quite wholesome dread on the
part of a sensitive Japanese of being 1 bossed or
supported by a foreigner.- He dreads it partly from
samurai pride, perhaps, but equally because it degrades
him and undercuts his influence with his own people.

Other obstacles are the low salaries and precarious
future of a Christian calling- for a man with a growing
family in a country where living expenses insist on
rising and where men in civil and business life get
generous bonuses and retiring allowances. The cases
of self-sacrifice already referred to show that the
Japanese Christian worker is not looking for luxury
or honor, but there are limits to the compulsory
heroism which an unimaginative superintendent may
impose on a young Japanese dependent upon him.

j. Sharing and transferring responsibility

Many a foreign missionary has insisted too long
upon disbursing all funds granted for evangelism by
his home board. No rule can be laid down as to just

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 193

when he should let go of them, but some men have
wasted their own strength and impaired their finer
influence by failing to entrust funds more fully to
Japanese colleagues. To be sure, some of the dollars
might possibly appear to go further if the missionary
were handling them, but it is very doubtful if they
would carry so much of the love and power of Christ
with them. I do not doubt that scores of Japanese of
the largest caliber have been repelled from Christian
service by the domineering spirit and close financial
control of a few missionaries whose reputations have
hurt the entire missionary body. The equality of all
clergymen, whether Japanese or missionaries in the
Methodist Church, and the fact that the Bishop is a
Japanese have reduced friction in this Church. De-
cided steps in the right direction have recently been
taken by several of the non-episcopal missions by
giving control of evangelistic funds and of the assign-
ment of missionaries to a board composed not less
than half of Japanese. In the case of the American
(Congregational) Board, it is composed of fifteen
Japanese and only three foreign members. An increas-
ing volume of missionary opinion supports the view
that no new work should be undertaken without the
approval of the Japanese Church concerned.

4. Christian educational institutions need strength-
ening

The strengthening of the Christian schools is one
of the salient needs of the day. No one would
deny the importance of laying siege to the government

194 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

school student body, but it is likewise vitally important
to create a chain of Christian schools, of the highest
quality, in every section of the Empire. In the long
run, this would be one of the most highly multiplying
uses of missionary men and money. Who prates of
the competition between the evangelistic and the
educational work? They are one and inseparable,
interacting organs of one body. The schools work
on the most plastic minds, not for a few minutes a
week, but for months on end. They operate by peace-
ful penetration, not by sudden attack; but in a true
sense they are evangelistic.

The Christian schools have been sharing with all
other schools a remarkable rush of applicants. The
commercial departments opened by several of them
have proved so popular as to threaten to commercialize
the institutions and weaken their decided Christian"
spirit. The increased income thus brought in becomes
a subtle temptation. This phenomenon only throws
into higher relief the need for larger funds from
Christians abroad in order to enable the Christian
schools to raise their faculties and equipments to such
a pitch of excellence as to attract the best students
and hold them to graduation. The achievements
of the Christian schools are remarkable when con-
trasted with their meager equipment and resources.
But if one may hazard a guess, a fifty per cent
increase in the grants for maintenance and buildings
made by the Mission Boards would double the net
productivity of the schools. And the yield of every
lower school would be much increased if, by a com-

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 195

bination of Japanese and American resources, one
'Christian university of the highest grade could be
established. It would form a much needed capstone
to the whole Christian system and would go far to
supply the present great deficiency of highly trained,
thoroughly Christian teachers for the lower institu-
tions. Besides strengthening the individual schools
and planting some new ones, the Christian forces
should set up a central educational bureau of research
and service served by educational specialists. Thus by
every possible means effort should be focussed upon
making the Christian schools preeminent for quality,
not for size.

5. The challenging opportunities for social work

The menacing conditions created by the industrial
upheaval have been described in an earlier chapter.
The very foundations of the family and of the old
religious and ethical standards are being pulverized
by the shock. The principles and spirit of Christ
are not the only factors at work to avert disaster,
but it is safe to say that they are the most potent
and deep. What a challenging opportunity for a few
choice missionaries thoroughly trained in social and
economic science and moved by a deep Christian
purpose! They would get close to working people
and employers alike, making their own homes a
trysting place for perplexed souls, calling into being
neighborhood houses and laborers' friendly societies,
and interlocking groups of employers and employed.
They would work shoulder to shoulder with brave

196 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

spirits like Mr. Kagawa of the Kobe slums, or Rev.
S. Sugiura of the True Light Church in lower Tokyo,
or Mr. Mikimoto, the "culture pearl" manufacturer,
among whose employees a group of one hundred
believers has grown up', or with other Christian em-
ployers who are striving to incorporate the Golden
Rule into Japanese business.

Keen American university men or women, filled
with the Christian social passion and ambitious to
blaze new trails, will find plenty of chances in Japan.
Let me give an illustration, just as striking in some
ways as Omi Mission. A few years ago a young
Toronto University man and his wife, the Rev. Mr.
and Mrs. P. G. Price, came to Japan under the Can-
adian Methodist Mission. For several years they
studied the language and worked among the people
in a bigoted Buddhist province on the northern coast.
Meanwhile they were becoming versed in the life
and thought of the common people and were making
a study of the way in which industrialism is affecting
the entire nation even out in the mountain hamlets.
Then they were transferred to Tokyo, to carry on a
neighborhood house already begun by Dr. Saunby, an
older missionary, who had fallen ill. But the hero
of the story is a Japanese, Mr. Yataro Kobayashi,
whose interest was aroused by the missionaries. His
career reads like a novel yet I have known several
others as remarkable.

Mr. Kobayashi is the son of a millionaire sugar
merchant. As a youth he was sent to Kobe to learn
the business. While there, he found lodgings in the

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 197

home of a fine Christian, Dr. Yoshioka, then president
of Kwansei Methodist College. That home deeply
impressed him. Later he went to America, still
studying sugar. There he was led into the Christian
life. A university course clouded his faith, and it
was only after some years of distress that he recovered
it and united with Central Tabernacle in Tokyo.
Dr. Saunby was looking for a residence in the
poorer quarter of the city in order to start social
work, when in Negishi, he came upon a large vacant
house with a lovely garden. It transpired that Mr.
Kobayashi owned it, and he insisted upon giving it
outright to the mission for social and religious work.
This is worth at least $25,000. Soon after this, Mr.
and Mrs. Price came upon the scene, and found in Mr.
Kobayashi an indefatigable team-mate. After study-
ing all existing social work in the city, they made
their own plans. Mr. Kobayashi volunteered to carry
the entire budget for five years, aindi besides, he
bought in Nippon, a slum district, an old factory
and remodelled it so as to house a day school, relief
bureau, dispensary, and Japanese pastor's residence.
The staff of the settlement includes a pastor-
manager, a doctor, a nurse and a midwife, two relief
workers and four teachers. The day school has one
hundred and thirty children, who are given a little
industrial training besides the three R's. It was
illuminating to discover that there were six hundred
children of school age in that one district (Nippori)
not attending school, partly because so many of them
had never been "registered." The proportion of

ig8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

illegitimate unregistered children is high. One of
the relief workers makes a specialty of getting both
children and marriages registered matters of unusual
importance in Japan, Records of the settlement ac-
tivities and of investigations are carefully kept, and
the entire work is being run on scientific lines. Close
contact is maintained between the settlement and the
mother church, Central Tabernacle. Through Mr.
Kobayashi's earnest personal work numbers of
students have been drawn into the church, and they
are being drafted for service at the settlement. In
order the better to equip them, a Social Service
Library has been opened in a quiet room at the
Tabernacle, accessible to members of the group.

A promising institutional church is being devel-
oped in the house in Negishi, and still other centers
are soon to be opened up. In all this fascinating
game of Christian geometrical progression, Mr. and
Mrs. Price have been the pathfinders and Mr.
Kobayashi their loyal partner and financier. One is
not surprised to have the missionary concerned pen
these prophetic sentences:

It seems to me that there is no more hopeful place for
evangelism than in the suburbs of Tokyo at the present time.
I know in the older sections Christian work is difficult, but
in the newer sections where the families who have moved in
are living away from temple or shrine influence, I think we
have the most hopeful field in all Japan. I believe, for in-
stance, that it would be possible to open up next year twenty
new churches in the suburbs of Tokyo without any of these
churches infringing upon any other. I expect that within a
year we shall move to some other location and begin over
again.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 199

6. Work among neglected groups

But there are large sections and classes of the
Japanese people who have thus far remained as little
touched by Christianity as the industrial workers.
Among them are the farmers (already mentioned),
the nobility, the fishermen, the miners, the outcasts,
and the lepers, all of them hitherto outside the main
currents of Christian influence. Yet they are not
impervious.

The Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century
won quite a following among the nobles, but in modern
times converts have come from the middle classes.
Both social extremes have been hard to reach. Now
and then there has been a notable exception. Vis-
count Arinori Mori, the eminent diplomat and
Minister of Education, is said by his relatives to
have been an earnest though unconfessed Christian.
He certainly gave courageous backing to Neesima
when he was struggling to found Doshisha, and today
his son is a Christian minister and his widow is a
faithful member of Dr. Uemura's church. Another
little known case was Mrs. Merrell Vories' mother,
Viscountess Hitotsuyanagi, who, in 1868, when there
were only four or five baptized Protestant Christians,
professed and held to her new-found faith in the face
of bitter persecution. It would have been a misfortune
if the modern Christian movement had been inflated
by the adherence in the earlier years of a considerable
number of the high nobility. The Church has needed
testing and seasoning. But today for their own

200 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

sakes as well as for the general cause, it is high
time that more effort were made to reach them. The
unmistakably friendly interest of the Prince Regent
and the Princess in things Christian is having SL
favorable effect. The Counselor to the Prince
Regent, Viscount Chinda, is a product of Christian
education both in Japan and in America. Viscount
Fukuoka has long been identified with the Sei Ko
Kwai and everything Christian, and several other
members of the House of Peers were educated in
Christian colleges. Yet, so conservative are the Im-
perial Court and the nobility in general, and so
powerfully intrenched are the forces of nationalistic
conservatism in all the seats of power that the
Christian forces will find ample exercise for all their
faith before marked victories are won.

At the other end of the social scale are the 903,022
former outcasts, Eta (much defiled) who are even
yet ostracised by other classes. They are generally
scavengers, butchers, or leather workers. The gov-
ernment is striving to educate and help them, and
individual Buddhists and Christians are carrying on
relief and sanitary work in a few Eta villages. In
Omi province one Christian physician found half of
the population of a village of eight hundred suffer-
ing from trachoma. He gave 4,500 treatments free
of charge and practically eradicated the disease in
that village. In order to follow up the improvement
he had begun, he has since supported two social
workers in the village. The churches and mission-
aries as a whole, however, have neglected the Eta,

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 201

leaving them to resort to mongrel superstitions and
idolatry.

Among the 50,000 lepers, Christian missionaries
have been comparatively active. The first two leper
hospitals in the Empire were established by mission-
aries and were perhaps the chief means of arousing
the government to enter the field. The Home of
the Resurrection of Hope, as the hospital conducted
by English lady missionaries is called, is at once a
pathetic and a cheering place to visit, for the spirit
of the Great Physician irradiates the whole place.
The government makes modest grants-in-aid to the
private leper hospitals, as to other philanthropic
enterprises. The Union Christian Leper Hospital
near Tokyo obtains half its support from govern-
ment and other Japanese sources, and half from the
International Mission for Lepers. Dr. William C.
Sturgis calls Miss Cornwall-Leglrs work among the
lepers at the Kasatsu hot-springs, "the most impres-
sive evidence of God's grace that I saw in Japan.

There is no outstanding instance of evangelism
or social ministry among the miners, whose harsh
conditions of labor and isolation from the life of
the outside world make a strong appeal to Christian
sympathy.

Although the fisher-folk form one twentieth of
the population, there is comparatively little effort
put forth to evangelize them. They are scattered
like a fringe all around the indented coast, and like
Norsemen they revel in the freedom of their hazard-
ous trade. From among them are recruited a goodly

202 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

proportion of the hardy sailors who man Japan's
men-of-war and merchantmen. Perhaps the most
successful and picturesque foreign missionary enter-
prise among seafarers anywhere is that started by
Captain Luke Bickel in the Inland Sea, which will
be described further on. It is another evidence that
the day of surprising innovations is not past in Japan
and that the most clannish and ossified groups will
yield to a combination of ingenuity and self-giving
love.

/. Impregnating Japanese thought with Christian
thought

Only second in importance to raising up competent
Japanese leaders is the problem of injecting a power-
ful infusion of the spirit and principles of Jesus Christ
into the turgid thought currents that are sweeping
through the people.

Although Christian ideas have widely permeated
the literature and life of the nation, they are far
from dominant. There is danger lest the little
Christian minority only one in two hundred will
be swept into a side eddy and will not realize that
they are not in the main current. The Church :nd
its auxiliary agencies need to be on guard ag'ainst
getting set hard in the mold of programs and for-
mulas which are not vitally responsive to the needs
of each changing day. In Japan the Church as a
whole shows no leaning toward such asceticism of
other-worldliness as earned for the early Christians
the epithet "third race," but there are some Japanese

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 203

Christians and foreign missionaries who fail to
appreciate and cooperate with the constructive new
movements springing up all around them, or to enter
into the travail of the souls struggling amid the
conflict of new and old ideals. They only faintly
realize that a stupendous upheaval is taking place,
that New Japan is having a rebirth. At such a
juncture an outstanding need is for more leaders, both
foreigners and Japanese, who, like their Master, can
ride the storm and still it. To* do that demands
both intellectual and spiritual power of a high order.
Men of the requisite spiritual power are even rarer
than those of large intellectual caliber. A few of
the Japanese and missionary leaders possess both:
they are of apostolic mold.

The task of leavening the thought of Japan calls,
not only for powerful Christian personalities, but
for the more adequate use of literature. For all
that has been achieved by the missionary publishing
agencies and the Christian Japanese publishing firms,
one may be unfeignedly grateful, but today, in face
of the welter of unsettling and often debasing litera-
ture that is being poured over the nation, no pica-
yune, sentimental, or second-rate Christian output
will get attention. The half mile of book stalls in
Tokyo's student quarter is rilled with an astonishing-
variety of recent occidental books, and the magazines
abound in half-digested and revolutionary ideas. The
situation calls for the mobilizing of Christian talent,
particularly of rising Japanese writers. Good work-
has been done by the Christian Literature Society of

204 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

the Federation of Missions, but its basis should be
boldly revamped so as to allow equal if not majority
Japanese membership, and funds in far more generous
measure should be given to it by the missions and the
churches. The same is true of the "newspaper evan-
gelism," which missionaries have nursed through the
period of testing to assured success. Without men-
acing its evangelistic effectiveness, it could be made
more appealing and be integrated more closely with
the churches if full Japanese partnership were invited.

II. THE FUNCTION OF MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN TODAY

The Japanese Christians do not all answer alike
when they are asked how many more missionaries are
needed and what kinds. Some of them hold that while
the missionary was indispensable in earlier stages, he
should now leave everything to the Japanese churches,
except for teaching in the Christian schools and in
highly specialized activities. Even money from abroad
in large amounts is not desirable, they hold. This
view is held chiefly by laymen and by some of the
more independent-minded pastors. They represent
Lhe left wing.

On the right wing is another group of Japanese,
fortunately few in number, who have become para-
sitic. They have been so long used to depending on
foreign missionary leadership and money that it is
irksome to contemplate the necessity of standing on
their own feet. Of course they favor more mission-
aries and more money. In a sense these are "rice

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 205

Christians," although most of them really would hold
fast to their faith whatever happened.

i. More missionaries of the right kind needed

In the center are to be found the bulk of the
Japanese Christians. -They appreciate the great
service of the missionary body nowadays as well as
in the earlier stages. Still, they are not blind to
the shortcomings of the missionaries individually or
of the "system." They would say, "Yes, a slight
increase of the missionary force may be desirable, but
far more to be desired is still more rigid selection of
those who are sent, and the improvement of the
working relations between them and the Japanese
workers." This view would also represent fairly
well, I believe, the conviction of the most competent
missionaries in Japan.

The chief reasons for desiring that the present
missionary force be maintained and slightly enlarged
are these: the vast majority of the people have not
been and cannot be effectively brought under Christian
influence without reinforcements: the forces of the
opposition crass materialism, corrupt religions, and
mercenary cults misleading the people, destructive
moral and social ideas from abroad all these and
more call for a more aggressive advance by the
Christian forces; the seasoned spiritual character and
the specialized training possessed by the best type of
missionary are invaluable to the Kingdom of God
in Japan.

206 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

But invariably such appeals are coupled with two
provisos. The first is that they be missionaries of
the right kind. The specifications for the "right
kind" have been partially brought out in description
of various representative missionaries, but it will
be well to state all of them together here. The
missionaries needed will, of course, differ in many
ways, but the attitudes and convictions which they
all must have without exception are these: (i) An
absolute loyalty to Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior
and a growing experience of fellowship with God
through Him. (2) A willingness to "play second
fiddle" and be loyal, whether to Japanese or to fellow-
missionaries. (3) A primary concern, not for any
denomination, but for the Kingdom of God, and
eagerness to cooperate with all other Christians and
men of good-will in its realization. (4) A flexible
mind and teachable spirit. (5) A firm grasp of the
essentials of Christian truth and an earnest desire
to bring men into the Christian life. (6) A sympathy
superior to racial, creedal, and national distinctions.
(7) A capacity to see the humorous and the hopeful
sides of every situation. (8) A refined and appre-
ciative spirit, capable of appealing to the romantic
and aesthetic temper of the Japanese. (9) A char-
acter that rings true.

Surely these are not unattainable ideals. Besides
all these minimal qualifications, the combinations and
degrees of attainments are almost infinitely varied.
There is need for intellectual giants and specialists
able to master the Japanese language and the intri-

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 207

cacies of oriental religious and social systems. But
there is also need for technicians and executives, expe-
rienced in social work and industrial problems, and
able to organize and guide bodies of men. And
there is always need for physicians of the heart, rich
in sympathy and intuitive insight, glad to spend time
on people, without thinking of schedules or reports. :
Sometimes in describing the kind of new missionaries
desired, the Japanese hold the standard discouragingly
high. But the verdict of the sainted Bishop Honda
gives the true emphasis: "What Japan supremely
needs from the West is missionaries who are satu-
rated with Jesus Christ, who embody the fruits of
generations of Christian breeding." To sum up the
point: a welcome and a career in Japan are to be
expected only by missionaries of rich personality, of
large caliber.

The second proviso is that missionary- Japanese
relationships in church work be made right. That
is, of course, a matter of making the heart right even
more than the formal arrangement. Hundreds of
missionaries are working smoothly and effectively
with Japanese associates. But there is more maladjust-
ment than appears on the surface. The Japanese
are reticent and reluctant to complain, especially
when they know their missionary associates mean well.
The missionaries do mean well, but they are often,
like occidentals generally, dull in intuitive perception,
and are likely to take at face value the conventional
and considerate assurances of the Japanese that all
is well. A loving, unselfish heart, watchful to detect

208 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

friction, is certainly the first requisite for a solution.
But the system must also be set right, lest even the
best of intentions be thwarted. Dr. Arthur D. Berry
expressed the basic principle in these words: "The
independence and self-government of the Church in
Japan is a settled fact. The missionary who is not
willing to recognize it and, if asked, willing to work
under Japanese direction, should be recalled and sent
to some other field."*

The polity and methods of control in the various
churches will necessarily affect the application of this
principle. Bishop Tucker points out its bearing upon
the Anglican communion in these very frank, wise
sentences :

Foreign and Japanese clergy have exactly the same stand-
ing ... in all legislation and formulation of policies.
... no distinction is made between "native" and for-
eigner. The Japanese have practical control because of their
numbers. In theory nothing could be more equitable or more
conducive to genuine cooperation or provide more ample
scope for Japanese initiative. In practice, however, the
theory breaks down in two respects. The first is the authority
of the Bishops, all of whom are foreigners. . . . The
employment, dismissal, and locating of Japanese evangelistic
workers is determined by him, except where their salaries
are paid by the native congregations. . . . The second
point is that the control of the support which comes from
abroad is in foreign hands. ... As practically all evan-
gelistic policies involve the expenditure of money, it is evi-
dent that Japanese freedom and initiative are limited to the
self-supporting portion of the work. . . . For equipment
also the native pastor must either secure the interest of the

* Address before the Foreign Missions Conference at Beth-
lehem, Pa., January, 1923.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 209

Bishop or of some missionary, or else go without improve-
ments needed to carry out his plans.*

Such a relationship inevitably conduces to inequality
and to real, though concealed, dissatisfaction. The
installation of Japanese bishops will go far to remedy
this situation. As Bishop Tucker observes: "The
moral effect of a native bishop, both upon Christians
and upon non-Christians would undoubtedly be great.
He would naturally understand conditions better and
be able to get into closer touch with the people than a
foreigner." The Japan Methodist Church has had a
Japanese bishop ever since it was formed fifteen years
ago (by the union of three bodies), and both mission-
aries and Japanese clergy have worked harmoniously
under him.

The sum of the matter is that for the individual
missionary, for the Mission Board, and for the
Church, the supreme concern must be for the Kingdom
of God in Japan. If that is verily sought first and
fearlessly, all knotty questions of relationship can be
solved.

There is one more point which ought to be given
more emphasis in the equipment of missionaries and
in the program of the Christian movement in Japan.
It is suggested by the now well-worn words "religious
education." Regardless of the type of his work, the
modern missionary should realize that the only sound
means for developing mature individual Christians
or churches is through an educational process. There
is nothing new or revolutionary about this, except that

^Missionary Problems and Policies in Japan, 1921.

210 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

the "workman who needeth not to be ashamed" will
study with all his might the latest and best results of
pedagogy and psychology in order that he may by all
means win and hold and establish men in the faith.
This involves also a magnifying of work among chil-
dren and youth, who alone are educable. In the bright
light of the ideal, how pitiably small and ineffective
appear the Bible schools and the young people's work
and the Associations! The chief essential for lifting
them all nearer to the ideal is Japanese leadership,
but the missionary must be competent to do his bit
as a pioneer, a demonstrator and a trainer.

2. New emphases and methods called for

Originality in missionary methods has been as
strikingly displayed in Japan since 1900 as in any
other field : witness the interracial Omi Mission, the
placing of English teachers in government schools,
the newspaper evangelism, the student hostels, the
work of Miss Macdonald among criminals, the
Inland Sea Mission of Captain Bickel, and the inter-
national relations ministry of men like Gilbert Bowles.
Who can predict how many more ingenious and valu-
able methods and emphases will be invented during
the next decade? We cannot do better than dip into
the story of some of these successful experiments.

The Silent Messenger

"Newspaper Evangelism" strikes strangely on the
ear. Yet the strangest thing about it is that until
a missionary in Japan hit upon the plan, twenty-

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 211

five years ago, no one in the mission field had system-
atically utilized paid space in the daily press to present
Christian truth. Like most innovations it has had to
win its way gradually, but it is now recognized to be
one of the most telling and economical evangelistic
methods, especially for the country districts where
churches are few and the people are conservative. The
plan in brief is to select the best papers to reach any
desired population and then to publish once or twice
a week a carefully prepared series of expositions of
Christian truth, or passages from the Bible with
simple explanations, and to offer to answer inquiries
and supply literature and New Testaments. The
foreign missionary and his Japanese associate conduct
a central office where a varied assortment of Christian
literature is kept on hand, and where callers from the
outlying towns and villages are welcomed for inter-
views. As the inquiries are followed up, man after
man and family after family all over the. district
become interested and desire to spread the good news
to their neighbors. As soon as a few persons in a
place have become avowed believers, the central office
sends out a carefully prepared order of service with a
mimeographed sermon, so that the whole service can
be conducted by the leader, who invites his neighbors
in to what oftentimes develops, as in New Testament
times, into the "church in the house." In addition to
the headquarters office, the missionary and his Japa-
nese colleagues visit as many of the outlying inquirers
as possible, and gradually form the nuclei of perma-
nent churches. There have been some dramatic con-

212 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

. versions brought about by this long-distance or "corre-
; ; spondence" evangelism. One instance among many
may be quoted:

A man in jail received from a friend a present of some
food wrapped up in half a page of an old newspaper. Having
nothing to read, he proceeded to study it, when his eye caught
an article entitled, "Which was first the egg or the hen?"
It was one sent out by the "Eternal Life Hall" at Oita, and
was an argument for believing in a Creator.

The man's interest was quickened, and he got in touch with
the missionary. On his release, he made his way at once
to the newspaper office and, after a period of instruction and
probation, was baptized. Today he is an elder of the church
to which he belongs.*

Newspaper evangelism has now been so completely
tested that the Federation of Missions, not only has
endorsed it, but has voted to establish offices in Tokyo,
Osaka, and other large cities, so as to utilize the
metropolitan dailies which reach hundreds of thou-
sands of both city and country dwellers. In this as
in other literary enterprises, the chief part can most
: effectively be taken by Japanese, but there is a large
and attractive opening also for foreigners who possess
the right combination of gifts. The success of this
plan in Japan has led to its adoption by one of the
missions in China.

Among Prisoners and Criminals

It is always embarrassing to call attention to the
work of persons still living, but in the case of those
here mentioned I do not fear that it will turn their
heads. One of the remarkable workers in Japan

* The East and the West, April, 1922, p. 169.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 213

today is Miss Macdonald, a tiny Canadian lady of
Scotch ancestry, for whom, if need should arise, scores
of the most notorious criminals in Japan would gladly
give their lives. She was sent out to found the Young
Women's Christian Association, and after ten fruitful
years turned over the responsibility to Miss Michi
Kawai and gave her attention to work among prisoners
and their families. This ministry had literally been
thrust upon her by the fact that a member of her young
men's bible class had been sentenced to death for
murder, and she went frequently to prison to see him.
That opened the way to a constantly widening and
inescapable ministry among other prisoners and their
relatives, and gradually among prison officials and the
neglected classes who constantly swell- the ranks of
crime. A dramatic outgrowth of her work is most
vividly presented in the volume entitled A Gentleman
in Prison, which is the autobiography of one Ishii,
who for twenty years figured in police annals as a
murderer and a defier of gods and men. Dr. John
Kelman has compared this book with John Bunyan's
story for its moving power and its evidence of the
undiminished potency of the gospel. The passage
where Ishii tells of reading the New Testament given
him by Miss Macdonald and her colleague, Miss West,
and of the breaking open of his double-barred heart
at the words of Jesus, "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do," is among the most
touching in all biographical literature.

But the work among prisoners has opened before
Miss Macdonald such glimpses into the abyss of crime

214 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

and vice and poverty in East Tokyo that she has been
impelled to found a neighborhood house there which
shall form a center for all the phases of the work,
and shall become a training ground for Japanese
workers and a clinic in the application of divine power
to human life at its worst. Ten eminent Japanese
Christians, who have been from the first closely
associated with this work, have pledged themselves to
secure $75,000 for the neighborhood house and have
already raised part of it. In the districts where the
work has been carried on for five years a group of
Japanese associates has been raised up, some of them
brands snatched from the burning; others, men and
women from homes of privilege. Rven this brief
account of the work will add further evidence of the
unexpected new opportunities that are waiting to be
developed by resourceful missionaries.

Fishing for Men in the Inland Sea

Captain Luke Bickel, the Dr. Grenfell of Japan,
has already been alluded to, but his work is so sug-
gestive that it deserves fuller mention. Captain Bickel
was every inch of his six-feet-two a sailor and a
Christian. A friend offered the American Baptist
Missionary Society funds for a Gospel Ship to
work among the neglected inhabitants of the Inland
Sea, provided the Society would find a suitable
skipper-missionary. At that time Captain Bickel was
Executive Director of the London Baptist Publica-
tion Society, but when the call came to this new
yenture, he said "yes," although he and his good

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 215

wife knew it meant endless privation and difficulty.
At length the ship was built. The first job was to
find a Japanese crew. The men whom he finally had
to engage were as tough and untutored a gang as
even Captain Bickel had ever seen. But the Captain
Considered the task of Christianizing the crew just
as pressing as to preach among the million and a
half stubborn and suspicious islanders who formed
his larger parish. In the Captain's biography the
most thrilling incident is the almost unbelievable con-
version of the most hardened member of the crew,
Hirata. We quote from the Captain's log.*

Well, Hirata had one virtue at least, he was openly,
cheerfully evil. He and the devil went watch and watch.
He gambled, stole, and lied by preference. He drank heavily
and loved to fight, for was he not a jiujitsu expert of seven
years' training? All this he did and worse.

Man has a soul, they say. We tried to find his, tried for
two years, but never got a glimpse. He came to the ship's
daily worship with the rest, bowed his head like a saint and
looked out of his eight-point eyes at the rest of the crew
with a wink to which they responded. When it was all over,
they went away forward and laughed at the fun. Being of
sailor build, we had seen a craft or two since we first sailed
deep water, but for straight evil-doing the Mission Ship
outsailed them all. Morally, spiritually, it was bedlam with
the lid oft", and our friend was the man who held the lid.

This lasted two years and then something happened. One
of the men fell overboard in a winter gale and was drowned.
God used this to move our friend's heart. He began to
inquire, but how? Must he learn English? No. Would he
not have to go to school and study before he could find any
help from Christianity? So little impression had the two

* Captain Bickel of the Inland Sea. C. K. Harrington. Fleming
H. Revell Co., New York.

216 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

years on the ship made ! Ignorant to the extent of not being
able to read or write the simple Japanese Kana, or syllable
alphabet, morally crooked in all his ways, was there any hope
of his being changed. In deep disappointment, almost with
disgust, we answered his inquiries. We did not believe him
sincere then nor did we later on when he professed faith in
Christ.

We refused baptism, but there was a change, even we could
not deny it; yes, a change at last, slight indeed, but growing
in force continually until the old man became completely new.

The upshot of it all was that Hirata became a crude
but powerful evangelist, one of that procession of
twice-born men which sprang up along- Captain
Bickers path. The work so well started by Captain
Bickel has gone forward since his death. There are
several other groups of islands waiting for men of
like vision to sail a ship among them bearing the Good
News of peace and new life.

Peace-makers

Christian mediation between races and nations is
becoming more and more urgent as the contacts and
sources of friction between the East and West
multiply. In this realm many missionaries in Japan
have rendered distinctive service, but in recent years
none more notably than a modest Quaker, Mr. Gilbert
Bowles. Mild-mannered and unassuming, he has won
the confidence of fair-minded Japanese from privy
councilors down, and in quiet ways has brought to
bear the ideals of Christ upon the situations which
threatened to lead to open rupture. Other Christian
men of like mind, Japanese and missionaries and

CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE YOUNGER GENERATION. JIRO HOSHIJIMA
(UPPER LEFT), MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT; MISS MICHI KAWAI (UPPER
RIGHT) , NATIONAL SECRETARY OF THE Y. w. c. A. ; REV. SHOICHI
IMAMURA (LOWER LEFT), RELIGIOUS EDUCATION DIRECTOR, REINAN
ZAKA CHURCH', SHINATO SHIGA (LOWER RIGHT), EXECUTIVE SECRE-
TARY, PEOPLE'S CLUB, OSAKA

s. SAITO (UPPER LEFT), NATIONAL SECRETARY OF THE y. M. c. A. ;
SAKUZO YOSHINO ( UPPER RIGHT), PROFESSOR IN TOKYO IMPERIAL
UNIVERSITY; ISAMU KAWAKAMI (LOWER LEFT), SECRETARY INTER-
NATIONAL SERVICE BUREAU; REV. z. ONO (LOWER RIGHT), PASTOR

AT KOFU

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 217

foreign merchants, have worked with him until there
have arisen such powerful agencies as the Japanese
League of Nations Association and the International
Service Bureau, directed by a Christian graduate of
Waseda and Princeton, Mr. Isamu Kawakami.

An unheralded but dynamic development of this
interracial friendliness has been the gathering to-
gether of leading Chinese and Japanese Christians
and a few missionaries from each of the two countries
to talk and pray together confidentially. Twice they
have met, once in China and once in Japan, and dis-
cussed with utmost freedom the points of irritation
between the two governments and peoples. In this
and other ways, these modern peace-makers have
affected the springs of action which statesmen cannot
touch, and have proved that literally nothing human
is foreign to the heart of Christ and His representa-
tives. Lothrop Stoddard quotes with approval
Madison Grant's words, "It is quite another (thing)
for the white man to share his blood with or entrust
his ideals to brown, yellow, black, or red men." (Italics
are Grant's.) Is it not high time for Christian white
men to give the lie to such intolerant, pagan appeals
to race arrogance by backing up without reserve the
Christ-like service of men like Bowles ?

While there will doubtless continue to be need for
more of the resourceful, much-enduring, evangelistic
missionaries, and for the regular educational mis-
sionaries, the strongest demand is likely to be for men
and women of rounded training, but of superior ability
and specialized training in one line. How many of

H-Jap

2i8 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

them? If only they measure up fairly closely to the
specifications already given, the Japanese churches and
the broad-minded public will welcome a good many
more. The number of such candidates available in all
North America and Great Britain is so very limited
that there is no danger of too many being sent.

III. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER

The issues at stake in the Far East are too great
for the man in the street to grasp. Japan is so far
away and the United States and Canada so mighty
and self-sufficient that he may think it far-fetched to
talk about Japan's future determining to any percep-
tible degree the destiny of North America. But Japan
is the vanguard of Asia, and if Asia falls into the pit,
Western nations can no more help being dragged in
than America can escape the down-draft of Europe's
present debacle. An American scientist of interna-
tional reputation after spending half of 1922 studying
conditions on the Continent declared that European
civilization would not recover for two generations and
that Japan and China were bound to wield a corre-
spondingly larger influence on the thought and destiny
of both East and West. Americans now living are
likely to behold them become as potent in world affairs
as England and America have been for the past hun-
dred years.

Thank God, the Japanese people today are plastic
and ready to be recast. From nobles to navvies they
are conscious that things are wrong and that they
need new power to put them right. Consider the

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 219

appalling clash of forces amid which the Japanese
people are struggling today autocracy and demo-
racy, feudalism and industrialism, family authority
and individual freedom, superstitious faiths and New
Testament revelation, stout hearts may well quail
and weak hearts despair. As Baron Kato, chief dele-
gate to the Washington Conference, was returning
to Japan he dropped this pregnant remark : "We did
our best at Washington and will work hard to live
up to the agreements, but we need the help of the
teachers of religion to supplement what we did there."
Now that the Baron is Premier he seems to be making
an honest fight for a righteous policy toward China,
Siberia, and the United States, and for greater popu-
lar freedom at home. But he and other leaders of
Japan confess that the one thing needful, an inward
dynamic, they cannot supply.

If the evidence arrayed in this book is accepted at
face value, it would seem to indicate that Christ has
proved to be the desired dynamic in Japanese hearts,
as we know Him to be in our own. But before settling
back comfortably on anyone else's ready-made conclu-
sions either on this point or on the whole question
of the place and power of Christ and the Church in
Japan today and tomorrow, it will be well to take a
birdseye view of the ground we have traversed.

Only a few segments of the entire complex situation
in Japan today have been covered in this volume, yet
they were intended to be the most significant and
representative segments. If that is a reasonable as-
sumption, one should be able to answer with some

220 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

confidence the question, What are the main conclusions
to which the evidence points? No reader or study-
group should accept another person's answer; but tak-
ing the privilege of an author and assuming the atti-
tude of a judge, I would, for myself at least, formulate
some of the conclusions in the following paragraphs.

The Japanese people are likely to exert a mighty
influence upon the peoples of Asia and also upon the
rest of the world. For a generation to come their
influence in Asia may entitle them to be called "the
rudder of the Orient."

The phenomenal expansion of industry and the land-
slide of population into the cities, coupled with uni-
versal education, the emergence of the common people,
and the recognition of women's rights have powerfully
affected the character and life of the people. Ven-
erable customs and ethical standards have lost their
authority. The sway of the old faiths has waned as
scientific education has advanced. Even the military
career, typified by the sword ("soul of the samurai"),
has lost its prestige, discredited by the excesses of
the militarists in all lands since the World War and
undermined by the cumulative effect of Christian
teaching. The advance of liberalism and popular
rights and the decline of repressive upper-class domi-
nation have become irresistible. But unless the spirit
and standards of Jesus become steadily more potent
in Japanese society, all these emancipating tendencies
will lead toward a refined but selfish materialism
and toward exchange of upper-class for lower-class
domination.

CHALLENGE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 221

The conflict between the old family authority and
the new personal liberty presses hard on the younger
generation. Many of them have run the gamut of
naturalism, agnosticism, and cynicism, and when they
come to themselves, they yearn for some sure word
of life. Out of the depths of their bewilderment and
need, shallow men and women are seizing upon strange
travesties of religion, while the more serious-minded
are taking refuge in the more spiritual elements of
Buddhism and Shinto; and still other earnest souls,
who know little about Christ, have become enamored
of the character of St. Francis of Assisi, and by way
of his footsteps are groping their way toward the
light of Christ Himself.

Were the Master to appear in Japan today, he would
doubtless recognize many more friends and allies
than our dull eyes can descry. We depend too much
upon labels and definitions, while he "looketh on the
heart." But I fully believe that he would hail the
folk in Japan who bear his name, the Church con-
ceived most broadly and in all its branches and auxil-
iaries despite their distorted representation of him,
as the driving center of the forces that are to establish
his Kingdom among the Japanese people. Their rein-
forcement and upbuilding, therefore, is a para-
mount duty.

After his last visit to Japan Dr. Robert E. Speer
wrote: "The present is the day of all days for
the churches at home to support these churches
and missions in Japan by enabling them to put
forth the maximum of direct evangelistic effort

222 CREATIVE FORCES IN JAPAN

and to use to the limit every opportunity of press
and school."*

What poignant grief must Christ feel over the dis-
loyalty and niggardliness and timidity of many of
his followers in North America and Great Britain, as
they sit supine before Japan's urgent need! What
unsuspected powers and graces may He call forth in
the yet unevangelized Japanese people! But to many
of them His liberating touch will only go as we stand
by the meager Christian forces now in Japan.

Three years ago at the World's Sunday School
Convention in Tokyo occurred a scene full of sym-
bolic meaning. It vividly represented the forces which
are playing a leading part in re-creating Japan. A
great chorus of young Japanese Christians, reinforced
by a hundred missionaries, made the galleries of the
Imperial Theater resound to the thrilling harmonies
of the "Hallelujah Chorus." All distinctions of
Orient and Occident, of foreigner and Japanese, were
fused into one mighty ensemble. In the heart of the
capital, within sight of the Imperial Palace, rang forth
the prophetic words: "The Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth! The Kingdoms of this world are become
the Kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ. And
He shall reign forever and ever!"

* Report on India and Persia, 1922, p. 15.

APPENDIX I

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL AND QUOTATIONS

CHAPTER I
Illuminating Quotations

The Japanese, like (yourselves, are human beings subject to
the wants and frailties of our common humanity loving and
courting love aspiring and falling sinning and being sinned
against but knit together by a few underlying principles of
far-reaching worth, among which are loyalty, the capacity for
self-sacrifice, and the enthronement of knightly honor as the
supreme rule of life. VISCOUNT KIKUJIRO ISHII, Japan Review,
Nov., 1919, pp. 9, 10.

Their moral sense is low, they are not industrious, their in-
telligence is imitative but not initiative, while their ambition is
blended with an unfortunate aggressiveness and a deplorable
sensitiveness. ANDREW M. POOLEY, Japan at the Cross Roads,
p. 20.

The net judgment with which we returned to America, after
three visits during seven months, is a judgment of increased
respect for Japan and what she has achieved, and a deepened
confidence in the worthy and better elements of Japanese life
and character. ROBERT E. SPEER, Missionary Review of the
World, July, 1916, p. 517.

For seventeen years, I have been associating intimately with
Japanese of literally every class, and especially with those in
rural parts. I have consistently treated them as if their psy-
chology were the same as that of other brother men, and those
who have failed to respond to such an approach with like atti-
tude have been the exceptions. Precisely what Mr. Marcosson
proclaims impossible for a foreigner to slap a Japanese on the
shoulder and talk to him as he would to an Occidental crony
I have never found to be at all resented. In fact the response
has been in kind. WILLIAM MERRELL VORIES, The Omi Mustard
Seed, Dec. 1922, p. 160.

I had read in books of learned "globe-trotters" that the
Japanese were a stoical race, never displaying their feelings in
public. Imagine my surprise, then, at witnessing a whole room-

223

224 APPENDIX I

f ul of young men, at the very age when one is least willing to
show emotion, so deeply moved by these simple incidents and
parables from the life of Christ, that tears and even audible
sobs were not infrequent. W. M. VORIES, A Mustard Seed in
Japan, p. 13.

CHAPTER II

Illuminating Quota tlons

The governments of Europe .she saw organized on a basis of
force rather than of right . . . This discovery brought a horrible
chill to every thoughtful Japanese. Not her intrinsic civilization,
nor her attainments in appreciating the moral, intellectual, and
political achievements of the most advanced nations of the West,
would of themselves alone protect her from the engulfing swirl
of European militaristic domination. Only by her own military
might could she hope to confront their military might and main-
tain her independent life. Even most of those who through the
7o's or 8o's had been liberal leaders, since 1890 had at least
acquiesced in the rise of the new militarism of Japan. They said
that "preparedness" was essential to safety in such a world as
Europe had created. TASUKU HARADA, Ex-President of Doshisha
University, Japan Review, February, 1920, p. 105.

The Prussian monarchy is a result of fierce racial struggles.
Without the wars of aggrandizement Prussia could never have
attained its unity and expansion. On the other side, Japan at-
tained her unity and solidarity in the peaceful isolation of an
insular nation of which its time-honored monarchy is the emblem.
This is not a mere geographical difference, but it has created a
marked difference in the temperament of the two peoples, and
in the relationship between the rulers and the ruled. PROFES-
SOR MASAHARU ANESAKI, What Japan Thinks, p. 151.

Sober-minded Japanese, however, will tell you today that the
moment the United States entered the World War the jingo
bubble burst. The spectacle of the stupendous economic machine
that we reared so swiftly to bulwark the men at the front, to-
gether with a corresponding realization that such an effort was
absolutely beyond the resources of Japan, did the business . . .
Although possibly a sacrilege to Japanese reactionaries, it is not
unlikely that what might be called a commercial Genro (Elder

APPENDIX I 225

Statesmen) will succeed that other and well-nigh extinct politi-
cal Genro which ruled the country for years. ISAAC F." MARCOS-
SON, Saturday Evening Post, June 24, 1922, pp. 89, 90.

Whatever develops in China, one thing seems certain, the
likelihood of international war in the Orient has been removed
[by the Washington Conference] for at least ten years, and by
that time peace may have become a habit. ISAAC F. MARCOSSON,
Saturday Evening Post, June 24, 1922, p. 97.

Race is a fetish with the Japanese. Moreover, it is a valuable
asset. The whole immigration problem in connection with
America is an instrument "a potential weapon in her political
arsenal," as it has been so well termed. . . Whenever the
Elder Statesmen, particularly Prince Yamagata, wanted in-
creased military appropriations, it was only necessary to exr
pose the issue of race discrimination against the Japanese to
get them over. . . Any foreigner may become a Japanese sub-
ject if he has been domiciled in the country for at least five
years continuously ; if he is twenty years of age ; if he possesses
property or the means to support himself; if he has no nation-
ality, as the technical phrase goes, or is willing to lose the one
he has. When he becomes a subject of the Mikado by marry-
ing a Japanese woman on condition of being adopted into her
family and assuming the family name of the wife, only one
year's residence is required. ISAAC F. MARCOSSON, Saturday
Evening Post, Sept. 30, 1922, pp. 28, 30.

Even Christianity has abruptly stopped and struck its standard
before the racial wall, and has no courage to advance. A
Western nation may declare a Monroe Doctrine, but is re-
luctant to accord an Asiatic nation a similar privilege. The
West expects the East to open its doors to the exploitation of
the white race, but reserves the right to slam its own doors in
the faces of Orientals. K. K. KAWAKAMI, Japan in World
Politics, pp. 10-12.

The military party in Japan is at present in control. It can
act without accountability to parliament or cabinet; it can over-
ride the decisions of the civil government or circumvent them
by duplicity; it can send soldiers where it will anc 5 mold the
foreign policy of the Empire beyond the power of any other
party to prevent ; and it does all these things ruthlessly.

If that were the real and only Japan, what hope would there

226 APPENDIX I

be for peace? But I come back with another Japan as the
center of my hope. This new Japan is pictured in a Buddhist
business man telling me with deep emotion of the fact that of
all the boys who wish a high school education only one in three
can have one because there are not schools enough. "See," he
said, "the millions we spend on armaments! A great cry goes
out of the heart of Japan, 'Have done with these armies and
navies and give us schools !' "

In the midst of a conversation with a group of the Empire's
leaders, one of them, pointing out the window, said, "Do you
see that red building there? That is the Department of Justice.
And that square building beyond is the headquarters of our
[Army] General Staff, and that is our great enemy." So
President Ebina, that venerable leader of Christian Japan, put
it: "Like a chick within the shell, struggling to be born, young
liberal Japan is growing up inside the strong, encrusted tradi-
tions of her militaristic state, and she wants help from without
as well as power from within to burst through."

See, then, where the real alignment is! It is not between
Japan as a whole and America as a whole. It is between the
forward-looking, liberal, humane-spirited people of America
and Japan together on the one side and the militaristic and
reactionary cliques in both countries on the other. When I
talk with a hard-hearted, visionless, militaristic American, I will
not acknowledge him a member of my spiritual country. When
I talk with a liberal, forward-looking, Christian-minded Japanese,
I know I have met a citizen of my fatherland. HARRY EMER-
SON FOSDICK, "Do We Want War in the Far East?" Sermon
published Oct., igzi.

The only hope for more assistance to education from the
national treasury is to economize in armaments. Therefore,
the very teachers who have been filling their pupils with im-
perialistic ideas are now ready to demand disarmament.

Militarists agree that though navies are being reduced, the
same does not apply to armies. They say that the nations of
the world are teaching military science in their colleges, and
in America the flag is used everywhere for what is called
"Americanization," but what they believe to be narrow nationalism.
They insist that the conditions in Siberia and China present
a continual danger to Japan.

APPENDIX I 227

The liberal-minded people of Japan are sometimes hindered
by the narrow nationalism of other peoples, yet they are also
stimulated by it. Even the most narrow nationalists of Japan
are anxious to keep abreast of other nations and will follow
whatever they believe to be the world tendency, whether it be
imperialism, or justice and good-will. If another Washington
Conference can decide upon reduction of the army, there is
good reason for believing that Japan will be glad to follow.
ISAMU KAWAKAMI, "International Morality and Japanese Na-
tionalism," pamphlet published Nov., 1922.

These are spacious days for all of us, days when we are
seeing realized before our eyes things that most of us had
not the faith to expect inside the next twenty years. Those of
lyou who have worked and prayed for the Washington Con-
ference did not pin your faith to a fancy. That Conference
has meant worlds to the progress of the liberal movement in
Japan. A CANADIAN RESIDENT IN JAPAN, Extract from a letter
of January 2, 192$.

We have observed the apparent determination of the govern-
ment to follow the path of democratic Britain with an open safety
valve of free speech rather than the discredited methods of
militaristic Russia with its resultant volcanic upheaval of revolu-
tion. We have seen professors, writers, and leaders of the
Diet who are demanding immediate universal manhood suffrage,
a cabinet and Diet responsible only to the people, the abolition
of militarism and of Dual government, the reduction of the
army, the policy of the open door in China, the withdrawal of
the Japanese troops from all disputed areas, justice for labor,
rights for the new woman, and numerous other reforms.
SHERWOOD EDDY, Letter of September, 1922.

In the mission school and in their experiments with ecclesiasti-
cal organizations the Christians acquire self-confidence. . . The
Christian missions of Asia are cradles of patriotism. . .

The missionary has been the carrier of the democratic ideal
to the four corners of the earth. . . When the missionary
makes a convert, he makes a radical. TYLER DENNETT, The
Democratic Movement in Asia, pp. 189, 242-3.

228 APPENDIX I

CHAPTER III

Supplemental Text

The following is Mr. Kagawa's message dictated in English to
Dr. Myers at Kobe, Oct. 6, 1922. Except for recasting an awk-
ward sentence here and there, Dr. Myers says that these are Mr.
Kagawa's very words :

"My chief work is the building and the re-building of the Hu-
man Temple. It is the Carpenter Jesus alone who is able to do
this work. I am helper and servant to Him. The material for
this building is Life, Labor, and Liberty.

Hitherto, religious teachers have confined their efforts too much
to doctrine and emotion, and men of the world have emphasized
matter and money. They must all learn to worship God through
life, not merely through doctrine or emotion or matter or money.
I am strongly opposed to the Marxian materialistic conception
of history. Economics and religion are not separate but one.
To live a life, and to live up to life is economics and it is religion.
Without God there is no economics and there is no life, for God
is Life Eternal.

The action of life is Labor; therefore man must enjoy labor.
I am opposed to the system which makes a mere "human ma-
chine" of labor and laborers. Labor is not a commodity to be
bought and sold, it is a gift of God to be respected and honored.
But labor without God is useless effort, a tread-mill that brings
man to no goal. Labor expended, for instance, at a brewery or
in making munitions at the arsenal, is destructive, and does not
accord with God's purpose of Life for mankind. Unemployment
is not in accord with God's will, for we must get a realization of
life through labor. The exploitation of labor for selfish purposes
is one of the worst of evils. Paul says, "If any will not work,
neither let him eat"

The third material in the Human Temple is Liberty. This does
not mean equality. God has given to every man a different de-
gree of ability. If a man is allowed to realize and employ all the
\ powers that God has given him, that is liberty. No man has a
right to hinder this liberty in any other man. The principle of
equality lies in the fact that God has given life equally to all.
Men must have liberty to be educated, liberty to marry, liberty

APPENDIX I 229

to vote, liberty to organize, liberty to migrate, liberty to think
and speak, liberty to worship.

Just now, Life, Labor, and Liberty are all three being de-
stroyed. Class hatred and revolution are being emphasized from
the side of the oppressed. The leaders are preaching revolution
with a promise of bread. The real demand and need are not for
bread alone, but for Life, Labor, and Liberty. Violence and
revolution will never bring men these three. Souls must be
redeemed first. The wounds have pierced too deeply into the
souls of men. Without regeneration and rejuvenation of the
souls of men from within, men can never see the Kingdom of
God. We cannot redeem ourselves ; we must believe in the power
of God to redeem. The work of Christ is to supply our defi-
ciency, and the mission of the followers of Christ is to go out in
the power of the Spirit of God to save the suffering, armed, not
with a sword, but with love. Christians must glorify God in the
flesh as Christ glorified God in the flesh. This is the building of
the Human Temple and the Gospel of the Incarnation. To live
a Life is a fine art, it is to glorify God in our bodies. This is
where art and religion meet. Economics is a part of art; it is
the art of making life enjoyable and happy. Art without God is
nothing. To live a religious life, a man cannot withdraw to some
desert cave or mountain temple. He must bear his cross in the
flesh and live a life of service among men. That is the art of art,
the economics of economics, and the religion of religion. That is
the Gospel of Christ." Signed TOYOHIKO KAGAWA.

Illuminating Quotations

Sooner or later Japan must undergo an industrial revolution.
It is the only agency that can clear up the situation. Wages are
still too low and most of the profits now go to the rich families,
who pay a trifling income tax. The worker does not get his just
share and he proposes to get it. The Japanese worker has been
a long-suffering individual and has never asserted his rights,
but now he is beginning to put fear into the heart of the
employer.

"Will Japanese labor ever go Bolshevik?" I asked.

"It is not impossible," he answered; "but we Japanese would
never go to an extreme that would menace the security of our

230 APPENDIX I

Emperor. His place must always be secure. I believe in the
doctrines of Karl Marx, and many of my colleagues think
the same way. . . . ." B. SUZUKI. From an article by Isaac
Marcosson, published in Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 12, 1922,
page 86.

In Osaka there are 50,000 people living and working on the
cargo-boats which ply up and down the rivers and canals. In
the congested districts there are some 50,000 Eta. In the mint,
the arsenal, and iron works of the city about 50,000 people are
employed. There is no Christian worker set apart for any of
these. . . . There is an increasing demand for Christians to act
as matrons and teachers and superintendents in factories and
municipal lodging houses, nurseries, etc., for there is a growing
feeling that unless love is at the center, the whole scheme falls
to the ground. L. L. SHAW_, Japan In Transition, pp. 99, 100, 101.

CHAPTER IV

Illuminating Quotations

To the alternative Christianity or materialism we must add a
third term, modernized and Christianized Buddhism . . . Patriot-
ism is not, as is sometimes said, the only religion of the Japanese,
but no religion which does not give satisfaction to their patriotic
feeling will be likely to win their allegiance. . . . We must make
plain the capacity of Chritianity to be a New Testament, not only
to Hebraism and to Greek Philosophy, but also to Buddhism,
Shintoism, and Confucianism. We must recognize that God in
time past spoke at sundry times and in divers manners to the
Oriental as well as to the Hebrew and to the Greek. Should we
not also expect that the fullness of the Godhead which dwells in
Christ cannot be perfectly revealed until He has had the oppor-
tunity to bring to its consummation those aspects of the truth
that were entrusted to the prophets of the East?

In 1882 Mr. Fukuzawa, the eminent editor and educator, wrote :
"That Christianity is a danger to our national power is evident.
Unless Buddhism is assisted by the influence of the upper classes
nothing can obstruct the intrusion of Christianity. Buddhist
priests are immoral and shameless, and without energy of
spirit. It is very unsafe to trust this weighty cause to them

APPENDIX I 231

alone. We do not believe in Buddhism nor do we respect the
priest. Our concern is for the national power, in the conserva-
tion of which that religion must be utilized." BISHOP H. ST.
GEORGE TUCKER, Missionary Problems and Policies, pp. 10, n,

13, I4> 19-

The doctrine of transmigration naturally creates superstition,
mating it possible to worship all manner of living creatures,
real and imaginary. . . The Neo-Platonist explained Egyptian
animal worship by the doctrine of transmigration. In the same
way the Buddhist custom of holding mass for animals can be
accounted for. For instance, the Young Men's Buddhist As-
sociation in Kyusiu recently held memorial services for 34,000
frogs, 7,000 rats, 1,000 hares, 500 dogs, 500 cats, 500 hens, and
500 doves dissected in the study of anatomy in Kyusiu Uni-
versity. ROBERT C. ARMSTRONG, Christian Movement in Japan,
1922, p. 94.

In September, 1911, the Department of Education issued an
order which reads: "The sentiment of reverence (keishin) is
correlative with the feeling of respect for ancestors and is most
important in establishing the foundations of national morality.
Accordingly, on the occasion of the festivals of the local shrines
of the districts . . . the teachers must conduct the children to
the shrines and give expression to the true spirit of reverence."
D. C. HOLTOM, Christian Movement in Japan, 1922, p. 125.

Christianity has brought a widening of ideas, the feelings of
internationalism and brotherhood. Commerce is self-seeking.
Christianity has been unselfish. . . The Buddhism in Japan
is far better and purer than that in India. We take the best,
and we shall be glad to take the best out of Christianity.
BARON SAJCATANI, The Democratic Movement in Asia, p. 55.

Viscount Shibusawa said to Dr. L. L. Wirt of the Near East
Relief : "The Buddhists of Japan will adopt a thousand orphans
from your Holy Land, only, please don't call us 'heathen' any
more." ....

As a religion of power, Buddhism cannot successfully com
pete with Christianity, when both are confronted equally with
the problems of a modern world. But time is required to prove
this to be true. WILLIAM C. STURGIS, Report to Department of
Missions, Protestant Episcopal Church, August, 1921.

We have seen the great audiences of students and young

232 APPENDIX I

men in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Moji listening, no longer with
a blind exclusive patriotism, but with a new interest in interna-
tional, racial, and industrial problems, and with a new heart
hunger for vital religion. Many have turned from the material-
ism and agnosticism of the last decade and are seeking with
new eagerness for the truth which alone can satisfy. Never
have I seen such an encouraging situation in Japan nor such
an opportunity for the forces of vital religion. SHERWOOD EDDY.
Letter of September, 1922.

Christianity has already spread its roots deep in Japanese soil ;
it has become a Japanese religion, in the same sense that Buddh-
ism became a Japanese religion centuries ago. It is notable
also that independent Japanese Christianity is really independent,
receiving no foreign assistance. KANZO UCHIMURA, What Japan
Thinks, p. 213.

The truth, it seems to us, is that Buddhism, which is too often
represented to be dying, is really reviving, and thus presents an
almost insurmountable obstacle in the path of Christian propa-
ganda. M. ZUMOTO, What Japan Thinks, pp. 210-11.

Abstract talk about the Christian life was largely uncompre-
hended through lack of concrete examples. I could not point to
a single member of the faculty as an illustration fit for emulation.
I could not find a priest in the town although there were some
sixteen temples and shrines of Buddhism and Shintoism in our
midst who was a fit example for young men. W. M. VORIES,
A Mustard Seed in Japan, p. 15.

CHAPTER V

Christian Strength in the Japanese Empire in 1921

Church membership (Communicants) :

PROTESTANT

(INCLUDING ROMAN EASTERN
ANGLICAN) CATHOLIC ORTHODOX
Japan proper . . 120,017 75983 37,iO4

Korea .... 91,818
Formosa . . .

Sunday School Enrolment (Japan proper Protestant) 170,169

APPENDIX I 233

Japanese Workers : MEN WOMEN

Evangelistic 1,817 obi

Educational 761 967

Medical 37 67

Literary 5 9

Others 104 75

2,724 1,719
Missionaries :

Evangelistic r 266 218

Educational 98 182

Medical 2 4

Literary 8 7

Others 20 68

Wives 244

394 723
Christian Schools' Enrolment:

Kindergarten . 9,910

Day Nurseries 39

Primary Schools 2,946

Sunday Schools 170,169

English Schools 4,584

Middle Schools 9,151

Girls' Schools 11,322

Higher Department of Schools 3,045

Normal Department of Schools 90

Theological Schools 667

Industrial Schools 1,222

213,145

Young Men's Christian Association membership : 22,434.
Young Women's Christian Association membership : 8,000.

Some Facts regarding the Larger Churches

Notwithstanding the serious limitations under which they
have struggled, the self-governing denominations have taken
long strides forward.

234 APPENDIX I

THE KUMIAI (CONGREGATIONAL) CHURCHES AND THE AMERICAN

BOARD

The Kumiai Churches were the first to attain their independence
and form a strong national body. Their growth is indicated
by these figures :

NUMBER OF ANNUAL

CHURCHES MEMBERS PASTORS BUDGET PROPERTY

1910 .... 116 14,631 108 $44,700 $116,000

1920 .... 156 23,490 136 139.500 705,000

The curve of accessions to the churches was 1,000 in 1911-12,
and 1,517 in 1921. Doshisha University is now united and grow-
ing tinder President Ebina. There are 75 missionaries cooperating
with the Kumiai Churches, 23 men and 52 women. The Kumiai
Churches have conducted vigorous missionary work among
Koreans and more recently in the South Sea Islands, which are
under Japanese mandate. The work in Korea was started in
rpio, when there were 35 churches and 1,758 members. In 1920
the number of churches had Increased to 143 and the members
to 14,951; Among the sixty-five pastors only four are Japanese.
In 1922 the Koreans were given self-government with a subsidy
in 1921 of $25,000 from the Japanese churches.

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED CHURCHES AND MISSIONS

The Nihon Kirisuto Kyokai corresponds to the Presbyterian
and Reformed denominations in the Occident. Its member-
ship and 336 ordained clergy are characterised by steadfastness
and devotion. Among its veteran leaders are Dr. Ibuka, the
administrator, and Pastors Uemura and Tada. Its growth dur-
ing the decade was from 18,460 in 1910 to 31,673 in 1920. It has
a vigorous home mission society which conducts work in Man-
churia, North China, and Formosa as well as in Japan proper.
The Fukuin Skimp o, a weekly founded and edited by Mr.
Uemura, supplies spiritual meat to readers in all the denominations.
It has always been self-supporting. A five year Forward Move-
ment is now in progress, and is especially vigorous in the North.
One layman has given $5,000 toward its expenses. There are 224
missionaries cooperating with the Church, 79 men and 145 women.

APPENDIX I 235

THE METHODIST CHURCH AND MISSIONS

The Japan Methodist Church was richly blessed in its first
Bishop, the late Dr. Honda. It cost a hard struggle under
Bishops Honda and Hiraiwa to amalgamate the three constituent
denominations into a living unity and to reduce to small propor-
tions the financial dependence on the mission boards. How
successfully these difficulties have been surmounted is seen in
the splendid "Forward Movement" which has been in progress
for two years under the leadership of Bishop Usaki. It has
already attained its financial goal of $300,000, to be used for
evangelism, ministerial retirement, church building, and the
education of ministers and their children. Steady progress has
been made toward doubling the membership by 1923. This has
been in good measure the work of laymen, whose growing
affluence is indicated by the fact that six men have pledged
$5,000 each to the fund. The Church membership has in-
creased from 13,135 in 1911 to 22,130 in 1920. The Methodist
Colleges at Tokyo and Kobe have expanded rapidly since 1915.
The number of missionaries, from U. S. A. and Canada, is 246,
65 men and 181 women.

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND MISSIONS

The Nippon Sei Ko Kwai [Anglican] growth has been as
follows : in 1910 ordained Japanese 76, members 15,314, con-
tributions $17,800. In 1920 ordained Japanese 145, members
28,267, contributions $70,800. The per capita annual giving rose .
from $1.14 to $3.61. There is no Japanese Bishop in the Sei
Ko Kwai as yet, one of the strongest candidates, the scholarly
Dr. J. T. Imai, having passed away in 1919. An advance in
theological education was made in 1913 under the lead of
Bishop Awdry, by combining all theological education under
English and American Episcopal auspices into the Central
Theological College of Tokyo. From 1913 to 1919 this college
enjoyed the help of Father Herbert Kelly of Kelham. St.
Paul's University, under American control, has developed rapidly
and will soon realize its hopes for the addition of a medical
department. The American Episcopal Mission has well-
equipped hospitals in Tokyo and Osaka, which are considered a

236 APPENDIX I

valuable phase of the work. There are 199 missionaries cooperat-
ing with the Sei Ko Kwai, 59 men and 140 women.

THE BAPTIST CHURCHES AND MISSIONS

The membership in 45 churches was 5,162 and the amount
raised 'by them in the year was $23,330. There were 259
Japanese employed in the religious and educational work, 137
of them men and 122 women. The missionary force numbered
98, of whom 32 were men and 66 women, connected with the
American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (69) and the South-
ern Baptist Convention (29).

One of the noteworthy churches is Misaki Tabernacle in
ToTqyo, the most comprehensive "institutional" church in Japan.
The institutional features are in large measure financed by the
Mission. Among the activities are: day and evening schools, in-
cluding classes for apprentices, day nursery, kindergarten, work-
ing men's society, clinic, playground, and lectures; also daily
preaching and otlier religious gatherings.

METHODIST PROTESTANT CHURCHES AND MISSIONS

There were 1,984 members in 18 churches which raised
$5,196; 118 Japanese employed, of whom 81 were men and
37 women. The missionary force numbered 3 men and 12
women. The boys' school at Nagoya is flourishing.

UNITED BRETHREN CHURCHES AND MISSION

There were 1,756 members in 20 churches; 32 Japanese em-
ployed, of whom 18 were men and 14 women. Missionary
force: 4 men and 3 women.

UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCHES AND MISSIONS

There were eleven churches with 1,233 members; 43 Japanese
men and 9 women; 36 missionaries, of whom 16 were men and
20 women. Kyusiu Gakuin, their boys' high school, has had a
rapid and substantial development.

APPENDIX I 237

AMERICAN CHRISTIAN CONVENTION CHURCHES AND MISSION

There were 1,557 members in 14 churches; $22,447 raised;
Japanese employed 23, of whom 14 were men, 9 women; mis-
sionaries 4 men and 5 women.

UNITED CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY CHURCHES AND MISSION

There were 1,439 members in 14 churches; Japanese employed
120, of whom 72 were men, 48 women ; missionaries 10 men and
23 women.

EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION CHURCHES AND MISSION

There were 1,456 members in n churches; $5,000 raised;
Japanese employed 87, of whom 36 were men, 51 women; mis-
sionaries 3 men and 13 women.

SALVATION ARMY

Although the Salvation Army is not nominally a church, it
functions like one, and sometimes crosses the wires of the
churches; but it is prized for its evangelistic and social work.
It has grown even more rapidly than the churches during the
decade. It has no educational work, except the Officers' Train-
ing School, but in addition to street preaching, has established
fourteen social institutions including girls' rescue homes, a
hospital, a tuberculosis sanitarium, and slum stations. The
War Cry circulation increased from 216,000 in 1911 to 500,000
in 1920. The self-denial collection which is pressed with much
the same fearlessness on Tokyo streets as in London or New
York netted $16,000 in 1920. There are now 112 corps, manned
by 310 officers and cadets and 850 local officers. Among the
officers are 15 missionaries, 8 men and 7 women. The moving
spirit in the Army and one of the great assets in the Christian
movement in Japan is Colonel Yamamuro, who was won to
Christ while studying in Doshisha College. The Army's Counsel
Bureau has deterred many despondent persons from suicide.

238 APPENDIX I

Illuminating Quotations

It has been just fifty years since the first Protestant Church
was organized in Yokohama. I was in Yokohama at the time,
a young man, not a charter member, but I was among the first.
I have just been thinking of how the church has grown. It
seems to me nothing less than a miracle. In the beginning there
were only eleven young men studying the English Bible with
the missionaries. They were finally organized into the first
Christian Church. Soon after, the famous edict banning
Christianity was removed, but prejudice was still strong and
persecution was general. Dr. Sato, president of the Imperial
University of Hokkaido, was one of the eleven. He wields a
strong force for Christian principles. Now it is the usual thing
to find Christian jurists, editors, army and navy men, govern-
ment officials, and business men. There are churches and
chapels in almost every town and large village. The Japanese
people have organized churches in Manchuria, in Korea, in
China, and in Singapore. Probably there will be one soon in
Hongkong. That the gospel is spreading in outward form is
evident. It is not only growing as the grain of mustard seed
grew, it is growing inwardly as the leaven leavened the whole
lump. Christianity is molding the thoughts and ideals of our
people. The Japanese language is changing in order to be a
suitable vehicle to convey Christian ideas. We have 160,000
members on the rolls. There are many more whom we may
call hidden Christians. Even beyond these tiiere is a large
number of people who are friendly to Christianity. Secretly
they are in accord with our ideas. The great present task of
the Japanese Church is that of the finding, training and thrust-
ing forth into the whitening harvest field, capable, efficient
leaders. DR. K. IBUKA. Extract from Address of Sept. 1922.

The prevailing popular conceptions of mankind, humanity,
labor, eta, to say nothing of love and liberty, are all traceable,
directly or indirectly, to Christianity. It is at least obvious
that they have come neither from Confucianism nor from Buddh-
ism. There is no refuting the fact that Japan is learning
and adopting Christian ideas and ideals, not only through loyal
Christians, but also through those who were once Christians,
for "backsliders," as the latter may 'be, they can never com-

APPENDIX I 239

pletely shake off the spiritual and intellectual influences to
which they once yielded. Take, for instance, such sayings as
"man does not live by bread alone," "happier is it to give than
to receive," "God is love," or the word "gospel," which are on
everybody's lips nowadays. K. UCHIMURA, What Japan Thinks,
p. 214

Hitherto in the East personality has received very little em-
phasis. We have thought in terms of the group. Probably most
men would assert that personality is entirely masculine. Women,
they would say, have none. Their place in our economy has
been entirely derivative,) never independent. . . Christianity
cuts directly across this idea, laying stress upon individual re-
sponsibility and freedom. Christianity has, therefore, given us
a new valuation of women. PROFESSOR INAZO NITOBE. Quoted
in The Democratic Movement in Asia, p. 143.

Dr. Mott's intense earnestness and the fine interpretation of
Mr. Rinshiro Ishikawa, then a student in the University, stimu-
lated young men to organize branches of the Y. M. C. A. where-
ever the speakers went (in 1901). Dr. Mott's work, concen-
trating and organizing scattered energies and supplying to
Christian young men centers for every kind of activity, effected
a great revolution, by means of which the present development
of Christianity among the young has been pushed forward.
PROFESSOR SAKUZO YOSHINO. Christian Movement in Japan,
1922, p. 161.

The feeble-minded, the blind, the lepers, the slum-dwellers
these were formerly the sunken classes, to be noticed only to
be pushed down and out. Then comes a Christian priest or
scientist; he sees the need, and henceforth devotes his life to
it. Japan looks on; wakes up, receives an inspiration, and,
presently, a whole new feature begins to characterize the Gov-
ernment system of education and social service. The tourist
notes this and says, "How wonderful are the Japanese! Why
should we presume to send missionaries to them?" Yet Japan
owes it all to the Church. . . I went to Japan with my mind
not prepared to consider the kindergarten system seriously; I
came away convinced that it is one of the most powerful agencies
that the Church has in Japan. This is evidenced, not so much
by the effect upon the children themselves, as upon their elders.
WILLIAM C. STURGIS. From Report previously quoted.

240 APPENDIX I

CHAPTER VI

Illuminating Quotations

Here [in Japan] the church is standing at the parting of
the ways. Is it to utter the prophetic note of social justice for
the downtrodden masses or "Keep Out" of industry, politics,
and moral issues and become the comfortable club of a small,
respectable middle class of privilege? No organization has
larger access or greater opportunity for moral leadership here
than the Young Men's Christian Association if it will wisely
press its advantage at once for a great spiritual advance. Now
is the nick of time for the New Japan which, more than any
other nation, may dominate the destiny of Asia. SHERWOOD
EDDY. Letter of Sept., 1922.

The miracle of the burning bush is ever re-enacted, for the
Christian Church in Japan is ever sustained by the prayer life
of the whole body of Christ throughout the world. Every
movement of thought or work anywhere in the Christian Church
is sooner or later reflected in the Church in Japan, and, through
the little group of Christians, is projected into the life of the
nation. And its power and momentum are determined by the
number of men and women in the homelands, as well as in
Japan, who are ready to yield themselves to the operation of
the Holy Spirit who guides and presides over all. The com-
munion of saints is a living reality. LORETTA L. SHAW, Japan
in Transition.

A Church able to maintain itself and a Church competent to
give Christianity to the nation are two different things. The
fundamental question, therefore, in determining future mis-
sionary policy is whether the independent Church, which is now
in process of formation, is competent to carry forward, unaided,
the evangelization of Japan. . . . Above all, the principle that
he who pays the piper calls the tune, must be laid aside, for
the very purpose of this policy is to enable Japanese freedom
and initiative to operate on a wider scale. BISHOP H. ST. GEORGE
TUCKER. Missionary Problems and Policies, pp. 23, 25.

APPENDIX II
BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I

CLEMENT, ERNEST W. A Short History of Japan. University
of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1915. Concise and readable.
$1.50. .

CLARKE, JOSEPH I. C. Japan at First Hand. Dodd, Mead, and Co.,
New York. 1921. Entertaining and appreciative description
of the people arid institutions. Not scholarly. $3.50.
GULICK, SIDNEY L. Evolution of the Japanese, Social and
Psychic. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1904. Pene-
trating and scholarly analysis of Japanese character and insti-
tutions. $2.00. See especially chapters 5 to 24.
CHAMBERLAIN, B. H. Things Japanese. Charles Scribner's Sons,
New York. A fascinating miniature encyclopedia of many
subjects. $6.00.

ROBERTSON- SCOTT, J. W. Foundations of Japan. D. Appleton and

Co., New York. 1922. Unique description of rural Japanese

life and thought. $6.00. See especially chapters 3, 5, n,

12, 36.

BRINKLEY, FRANK. "Japan." To be found in Encyclopedia Britan-

nica. Comprehensive and authoritative.

DENNETT, TYLER. Americans in Eastern Asia. The Macmillan Co.,
New York. 1922. A critical study of the policy of the United
States with reference to China, Japan, and Korea in the nine-
teenth century. $5.00.

ECKEL, EDWIN CLARENCE. Coal, Iron and War. Henry Holt and
Co., New York. 1920. A study in industrialism, past and
future. $3.00.

CHAPTER II

GLEASON, GEORGE, What Shall I Think of Japan? The Macmillan
Co., New York. 1921. A fair presentation of some phases
of the struggle between militarism and liberalism. $2.25.
See especially chapters 6, 10, n,.

DENNETT, TYLER. The Democratic Movement in Asia. The
Association Press, New York. 1918. $2.00.

241

242 APPENDIX II

MARCOS SON, ISAAC F. The Changing East. Three articles that
appeared in the Sat^trday Evening Post, June 24, August 12,
arid September 30, 1922. A capable journalist's picture of
the situation, vivid and dependable on the political issues.

KAWABE, KISABURO. Press and Politics in Japan. The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1921. Valuable for re-
flection of spirit and influence of the press and of the
growth of public opinion. $2.00. See especially chapters

II, 12.

IYENAGA AND SATO. Japan and the California Problem. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, New York. 1921. A dispassionate, sug-
gestive treatment. $2.50. See especially chapters 6, 7, 8.

"Present-Day Immigration, with special reference to the
Japanese." Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science, January, 1921, Part I. A valuable
symposium by American and Japanese authorities.

MCLAREN, W. W. A Political History of Japan During the
Meiji Era. A thorough and interesting presentation.

GRIFFIS, WILLIAM ELLIOT. The Hope of Japan. Envelope Series.
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
14 Beacon Street, Boston. April, 1922. Part I is a vivid,
brief sketch of trends in Japanese political and moral life.
10 cents.

KAWAKAMI, K. K. What Japan Thinks. The Macmillan Co.,
New York. 1921. A well selected series of articles by
representative Japanese, on current issues. $2.00. See es-
pecially chapters 4, 5. 9, 12, 13.

CHAPTER III

Christian Movement in Japan, Korea and Formosa. Committee
of Reference and Counsel, 25 Madison Avenue, New York.
1919, Chapter 17; 1921, Chapters 19, 21; 1922, Chapter 19.
This annual volume is the best source on social and re-
ligious conditions. $2.00.

GULICK, SIDNEY L. Working Women of Japan. Missionary Edu-
cation Movement. 1915. A well-drawn picture which is
still substantially true to life. 50 cents. See especially
chapter 9. Order through your denominational board.

KAGAWA, TOYOHIKO. Crossing the Death-Line. Japan Chronicle,

APPENDIX II 243

Kobe, 1922. An autobiographical novel by a Christian social
worker, depicting problems and possible solutions. 3 yen.

HUNT, FRAZIER. The Rising Temper of the East. Bobbs - Mer-
rill Co., Indianapolis. 1921. Full of dramatic touches and
human interest. $2.50. See especially pp. 94-111 and chapter 5.

KATAYAMA, SEN. The Labor Movement in Japan. Charles H.
Kerr and Co., Chicago. 1918. Written by a leader in the
early stages of the movement when official opposition was
severe. $1.00.

"The Japanese Labor Movement" By an American Sociologist.
Japan Chronicle, 1921.

GLEASON, GEORGE. What Shall I Think of Japan f Already
noted. See pp. 105-114,

GODWIN, FRANK. "The Rise of the Japanese Labor Conscious-
ness," The Nation, October 26, 1921.

CHAPTER IV

HARADA, TASUKU. The Faith of Japan. The Macmillan Com-
pany, New York. 1914. Describes the ideals and assump-
tions pervading Japanese thought regardless of formal re-
ligious affiliation. Hartford-Samson lectures on the re-
ligions of the world. $1.25.

Christian Movement in Japan, 1922. Already noted. See chapters
6, 9, 10, ii.

SOPER, EDMUND DAVISON. The Faiths of Mankind. Association
Press, New York. 1920. Includes a brief outline of
Japanese religions. 60 cents.

REISCHAUER, AUGUST K. Studies in Japanese Buddhism. The
Macmillan Co., New York. 1917. The standard work on
the subject. Rather detailed for the average reader. $2.00.

SAUNDERS, KENNETH J. Buddhism in the Modern World.
S. P. C. K., London, 1922. Pages 30-42, 54-56. Concise,
fresh, appreciative account of Buddhism today. 35.

LLOYD, ARTHUR S. The Creed of Half Japan. E. P. Dutton
& Co., New Yofk. 1912. Interesting and dependable de-
scription of Buddhism, with emphasis on points of contact
with Christianity. $2.50.

ANESAKI, MASAHARU. Social and Religious Problems of the
Orient. The Macmillan Co., New York. 1923. Earl Lee-

244 APPENDIX II

tures. Fresh and penetrating discussions by an authority
on oriental religious and social conditions. $1.00

HOLTOM, D. C. The Political Philosophy of Modern Shinto, the
State Religion of Japan. Transactions of the Asiatic Society
of Japan. Vol. 49, Pt. 2. 1922. 5 yen.

HEARN, LAFCABIO. Japan; An Interpretation. Grosset and Dun-
lap. 1904. An able exposition of the family and ancestor-
worship, by a noted writer who tends to idealize. 75 cents.
See chapters 2, 5, 8, 9, 14.

ROBERTSON-SCOTT, J. W. Foundations of Japan. Already noted.
Chapters 6, 7, 10, 23.

CHAPTER V

CLEMENT, ERNEST WILSON. Christianity in Modern Japan,
American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia. In-
forming, popular account, up to 1905.

FISHER, GALEN M. "The Missionary Significance of the Last
Ten Years in Japan." International Review of Missions.
April, 1922.

DAVIS, J. D. A Maker of the Nezv Japan. Fleming H. Revell
Co., New York. Life of the great pioneer, Dr. Neesima. $1.00.

GLEASON, GEORGE. What Shall I Think of Japan. Already noted-
See Chapter 12: "Can Japanese be Christians?"

Christian Movement in Japan, Korea, and Formosa. Already
noted. See 1919: Chapters 2, 4; 1922: Chapters 2, 5.

SHAW, LORETTA. Japan in Transition. George H. Doran Co.,
New York. 1923. Well written accounts of Christian work.
$1.25. See Chapters 7, 8.

ISHII, TOKICHI. A Gentleman in Prison. George H. Doran Co.,
New York. 1922. The conversion of a confessed mur-
derer, simply, but movingly told by himself. $1.75.

CARY, OTIS. History of Christianity in Japan. Fleming H.
Revell Co., New York. 1909. 2 volumes. The standard
work; detailed, but not heavy. $2.50.

GRIFFIS, WILLIAM ELLIOT. Verbeck of Japan. Fleming H.
Revell Co., New York. 1900. $1.50.

DE FOREST, CHARLOTTE B. The Evolution of a Missionary. A
biography of John Hyde De Forest. Fleming H. Revell Co.,
New York. 1914.

APPENDIX II 245

HARRINGTON, CHARLES KENDALL. Captain Bickel of the Inland
Sea. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1919. $1.75.

Noss, CHRISTOPHER. Tohoku, the Scotland of Japan, Board of
Foreign Missions, Reformed Church in the United States,
Fifteenth and Race Streets, Philadelphia. 1918. 50 cents.

CHAPTER VI

Christian Movement in Japan, Korea, and Formosa. Already
noted. Chapters 4, 5, 7, U, 35, 36, 37-

TUCKER, H. ST. GEORGE. Missionary Problems and Policies in
Japan. Department of Missions, Protestant Episcopal
Church, New York. 1921. A masterly discussion by an
experienced missionary Bishop. 20 cents.

VORIES, WILLIAM MERRELL. A Mustard-Seed in Japan. Omi
Mission publication. 1922. A thrilling story of an original
mission in rural Japan, told by the founder. Can be pur-
chased through Mrs. W. G. Chapin, 436 Putnam Avenue,
Brooklyn, N. Y. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 75 cents.

The Kingdom of God in Japan. Report of the Deputation sent
by the A. B. C. F. M., 14 Beacon Street, Boston. Most of
it is applicable to all missions.

INDEX

Amida, 119-120.

Anesaki, Dr. M., quoted, 126, 128-
129, 130-131. .

Aoyama Gakuin, 170.

Anshima, T., 131.

Art, ii-i2.

Association of Harmonious Coopera-
tion, 92.

Ballagh, Dr. James H., 154, 155.

Battzan, 4, 114.

Berry, Dr. J. C., 147-

Bickel, Captain Luke, 202, 210, 214-

216.

Brown, Dr. Nathan, 147.
Brown, Rev. S. R., 147, 154, 156.
Buddhism, 2, 3, 4, 24, 88, 107, 108,

116-126, 179-180.
Bushido, "The Way of the Knight,"

"5-

"California Question," the, 59-64.

Children, excursions among _ school,
12-13; effect of labor conditions on,
75; improvement in slum condi-
tions of, 94-95-

China, Japan s differences with, 56-
58.

Christianity, 30, 32, 87-88; effects of.
on social problems, 95 ff.: appeal
of, to Young Japan, 128 ff.; Jap-
anese seekers after, 133-141; de-
velopment of, in Japan, 163 ff.;
problems of, 178 ff., policies and
emphases required, 180 ff.

Christian Literature Society, 183.

Christian Movement in Japan, the,
42 ff.; 161 ff.; 178 ff.; coming of
Christianity, 143-145; beginning of
modern Christian Movement, 146
ff., 161 ff.; 178 ff.; first Protestant
convert, 150; the Christian Church
in Japan, 154-155, I57-I59, 161-
168; founding Christian schools,
159-161; developing Christian lit-
erature, 161, 174-175, 183; growth
of Christian churches, 161-168; con-
flict between Church and missions,
162-163, 167-168, 192-193; Sunday
School movement, 168-169; devel-
opment of Y. M. and Y. \V. C. A.,
168-169; Christian education, 169
ff- 193-195; Christian opportuni-
ties for social service, 176-177, 195
ff.; sectarianism, 181 ff. ; work
among neglected groups, 198-202;
leavening the thought of, with
Christianity, 202 ff.; issues at stake,

2l8ff.

Christian Movement in Japan, Korea,
and Formosa, The, 183.

246

Confucianism, 24, 32, 107, 108, 113-

116.
Criminals, work among, 212-214.

Daishi, Kobo, 3, 108, 122.
Davis, J. Merle, cited, 73, 95.
Dennett, Tyler, cited, 8.
Doshisha University, 6, 36, 154, 159-

161, 163, 170, 199.
Dual Government, 40-42.

Eastern Orthodox Church in Japan,

148.

Ebina, President, cited, 125, 154.
Education, 9-10, 12-13, 159-161, 169

ff., I93-I9T--
Ensor, Rev. G., 147.
Eta, need for work among the, 200.

Farmers, awakening of tenant, 85 ff.
Fisher-folk, need for work among the,

201, 214-216.
Forward Movement in Japan, 164 ff.

Goble, Rev. J., 147.
Greene, Dr. D. C., 147.

Hachiman, Omi Mission at, 189.
Harris, Bishop M. C., 148, 164.
Hatanaka, Rev. H., 186.
Hatano, T., 97-98.

Health, conditions unfavorable to,
23-25; effects of industrialism on,

73 .

Hepbnrn, Dr. James, 147, 154.
Hirooka, Madam, 135-137.
HirosaH Band, the, 154.
Home of the Resurrection of Hope,

201.

Honda, Bishop Yoitsu, 155.
Hostels, development of, 176-177.

Ibuka, Dr. K, 155.

Industrialism, expansion of, 66 ff.;
effect of, on life of women, 68-75;
on handcraft, 75; on slum condi-
tions, 76.

Industrial workers, need for work
among, 198.

Janes, Captain, 152-154.

Japan, religious sentiment in, 13-14,
53, 107, 108, 163 ff.; pivotal loca-
tion of, 25-27; raw materials of,
27-28; wealth of, 28-30; govern-
ment in, 31 ff. ; break with feudal-
ism and isolation of, 32-34; strug-
gle betwe_en political liberalism and
reaction in, 35-4; "dual govern-
'ment" in, 40-42; Christian leaders
in, 42-45: democratic advance in,
45 ff.; reforms in Korea, 54-56, 57-

INDEX

247

59; the "California Question,"
64; industrial expansion, 66
labor movement in, 77 ft'.; awaken-
ing of the tenant farmers, 85 ff.;
wise leaders needed in, 86-88; at-
tempted remedies for social ills, 88
ff.; religious sects in, 118-121, 126-
128.

Japanese, the, 6-21; mental ability of ,
7; philosophical ability of, 8; intel-
lectual capacity of, 8 ; imitative and
inventive qualities of, 8-9; passion
for education of, 9-10; plasticity
of, 10-11; artistic genius of, 11-12;
love of nature of, 12-13; emotional
nature of, 13-14; moral qualities
of, 14-21; loyalty of, 15; filial piety
of, 15-16; propriety of, 16-17; de-
pendability of, 17-19; self-confi-
dence of, 19-20; cheerfulness of,
20-21; energy of, 21; racial stock
of, 22; physique of, 22-23; physical
vigor 01, 23-25; militarism of, 31,

B-40, 45 ; in California, 59-64;
iristian leaders among the, 95-
lo6_; religious tolerance among, 108;
religions of, 109-126; modern sects
among, 126-127; prophets and guides
of young, 128-133 ; seekers after God
among, 133-141; training Christian
leaders among, 152-161, 184 ff.

Japanese Evangelical Alliance, the,

164.
( Japan Evangelist, 183.

Japan League of Nations Associa-
tion, 43.

Jugi, Isnii, 92.

Juvenile delinquency, 75.

Kagawa, Rev. T., 88, 101-106, 128,
, 195.
Kaigan, first church in Japan, 154-

,,155. 158-159;

Kanamori, Pastor Paul, 138, 154, 166.

Kataoka, Kenkichi, 36.

Katayama, 78.

Kato, Admiral Baron, 52, 132.

Kawai, Miss Michi, 140-141, 169, 187.

Keio University, 173.

Kimura, Rev. Seimatsu, 166.

Kitasato, Dr., 8.

Kobayashi, Yataro, 196-198.

Kobe, Social Settlement work in,

101-105.

Konkokyo, religious sect, 126.
Korea, reforms in, 53-56; dangers of

situation in, 57-59.
Kosaki, Dr., 154, 165.
Kumagai, Ryoun, 137-140.
Kumamoto Band, the, 152-154.
Kurihara, Motoi, 187.
Kwansei Gakuin, 170.
Kyoto, Y. M. C. A. hostel in, 177.

Labor movement, the, 77_ ff.
Leadership, Japanese Christian, 42-45,

59, 86-88, 95 ff., 152-161, 184, 183-

187, 188-191, 192.
Lepers, need for work among the,

201.
Liberalism, in Japan, 35-40, 45 ff.,

56 ff.

Liggins, Rev. John, 147.
Literature, developing Christian, 161,

174-175.

Macdonald, Miss, 141, 210, 212-214.
Mikomoto, Mr., 195.
Militarism, 31, 37'4O, 45, Si, 53-
Mines, condition in the, 71-72.
Missionaries, women, 158; function

of, in Japan today, 204; need for

more, 205-209; new emphases and.

methods called for among, 210; as

peacemakers, 216-217.
Miyagawa, 165.
Miyazaki, Y., quoted, 129.
Mori, Viscount Arinori, 9, 199.
Morimura, Baron, 134-135.
Mott, Dr. John "R.. 164, 165.
Myers, Rev. Dr. H. W., 88, 102.

Naide, Dr., 165.

Nakatsu, Chikayoshi, 98, 187.

Naniwa Church, the, 159.

National Christian Council, 182, 183,

184.

National Factory Law, the, 89.
Neesima, Joseph Hardy, 5-6, 36, 154,

159-161, 163, 199.
Negishi Settlement, 197-198.
"Newspaper Evangelism," 210-211.
Nichiren. 3, 120, 121.
Nicolai. Father, 148.
Nihon Kirisuto Kyokai, 157.
Nippon Sei Ko Kwai, 154.
Nishida, Tenko, 129-131.
Nitobe, Dr. I., cited, 140, 152.
No Dramas, 11-12.
Nogi, General, 5.
Noguchi, Dr., 8.
Northwestern College at Sendei, 170-

171.

Ohara Institute for Social Research,

92.

Okuma, Marquis, 37, 38, 46, 162, 173.
Omi Mission, 189, 196-198.
Omotokyo, religious sect, 127.
"One in Seven News," 161.
Ono, Rev. Z., 187.
Onodzuka, Professor, 45.
Ontakekyo, religious sect, 126-127.
Osaka, Working Men's Club in. 93;

Labor College in, 106; early church

in, 150.

Osaka Band, the, 154.
Oshikawa, Rev. M., 155.
Ozaki, the Hon. Yukio, 43-44.

Press, rising power of the, 49.
Price, Rev. and Mrs. P. G., 196-198.

248

INDEX

Riyu, Yano, 150.
Roman Catholic missions. 149.
Ryobu-Shinto, the Two-fold Way of
the Gods, 122.

Saito, Soichi, 169, 187.

Saito, Takeshi, 187.

Samurai, 5, 32, 66.

Sapporo Band, the, 154.

Sasao, Dr. K., 186.

Sawada, Setsuzo, 187.

Sawayama, Paul, 159.

Schneder, Dr., 170.

Scriptures, translation of, 161, 210-
2 ir.

Shantung, 28, 37, 52-53.

Shantung Agreement, the, 53.

Shaw, Archdeacon, 148.

Shiga, Mr., 93.

Shin Sect, 3.

Shinzon Sect, 3.

Shinkawa shims, the, 76.

Shinran, 3, 120.

Shinto, 24, 44, 107, 108, 109-113, 126,
179-180.

Simmons, Rev. D. B., 147.

Slum conditions, 76, 94-95.

Socialism, 77 ff.

Social Settlements, 99 ff.

Social Welfare Bureau in the Impe-
rial Department of Home Affairs,
92.

Sturgis, Dr. t William C., cited, 201.

Suffrage, agitation for universal, 48.

Sugvura, Rev. S., 195.

Sunday School Movement, 168-169.

Suzuki, Mr., 88.

Tagawa, Hon. D., 43.

Taiseikyo, religious sect, 126.

Tenrikyo, religious sect, 126. -

Terman, Lewis, M., cited, 8, 60.

Toju, the Sage of Omi, 3-4, 114.

Tokugawa, Prince, 33, 43.

Tokyo Imperial University, 99, 112,

173, 175, 177-

Tokyo Women's Union College, 171.
Tsunashima, R., 128.

Tuberculosis, 22, 74, 93.
Twenty-one Demands, the, 37.
Tyng,,Dr., 154.

Uchimura, Kanzo, 152, 166-16
Uemura, Pastor, 155-158, 165,
Unemployment, 93-94-
Union Christian. Leper Hospite
United Evangelistic Campaign,
Usawa, Dr. V., 187.

Verbeck, Dr. Guido, 147, 150.
Vories, William Merrell, 189-

Wakasa, 150.

Waseda University, 173, 177.

Warren, Archdeacon, 154.

Washington Agreement, the,
53, 56.

Watanabe, T., 95-97.

Welfare work in factories, 90

Williams, Bishop, C. M., 147,

Women, effect of industrial
sion on, 68-72, 74-75.

World's Student Christian '.
tion at Tokyo, Convention
165.

World's Sunday School Con-
in Tokyo, 1 68.

Yajima, Madame, 171.
Yamagata, Prince, 41.
Yarnamoto, K., 133-134.
Yamamuro, Colonel, 166.
Yanagihara, Pastor, 187.
Yasui, Miss, 187.
Yokohama, first church in, i

158-159-

Yokohama Band, the, 154.
Yoshino, Dr. S., 43, 45, 187.
Yoshioka, Dr., 197.
Young Men's Buddhist Asso

122.
Young Men's Christian Asso

164, 168-169, 175, 177-.
Young Women s Christian 1

tion, 168-169.

Zen Sect, 118, 119, 122.

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