THERE are three written records of Japan’s early history. The oldest of them dates from the beginning of the eighth century of the Christian era, and deals with events extending back for fourteen hundred years. The compilation of this work was one of the most extraordinary feats ever undertaken. The compiler had to construct the sounds of his own tongue by means of ideographs devised for transcribing a foreign language. He had to render Japanese phonetically by using Chinese ideographs. It was as though a man should set himself to commit Shakespeare’s plays to writing by the aid of the cuneiform characters of Babylon. A book composed in the face of such difficulties could not convey a very clear idea of contemporary speech or thought. The same is true, though in a less degree, of the other two volumes on which it is necessary to rely for knowledge of ancient Japan.

It might reasonably be anticipated, arguing from the analogy of other nations, that some plain practical theory would exist among the Japanese as to their own origin; that tradition would have supplied for them a proud creed identifying their forefathers with some of the renowned peoples of the earth, and that if the progenitors of the nimble-witted, active-bodied, refined, and high-spirited people now bidding so earnestly for a place in the comity of great nations, had migrated originally from a land peopled by men possessing qualities such as they themselves have for centuries displayed, many annals descriptive of their primaeval home would have been handed down through the ages. There are no such theories, no such annals, no such traditions.

When the Japanese first undertook to explain their own origin in the three books spoken of above, so unfettered were they by genuine reminiscences that they immediately had recourse to the supernatural and derived themselves from heaven. Reduced to its fundamental outlines, the legend they set down was that, in the earliest times, a group of the divine dwellers in the plains of high heaven descended to a place with a now unidentifiable name, and thence gradually pushing eastward, established themselves in the “land of sunrise,” giving to it a race of monarchs, direct scions of the goddess of light (Amaterasu). Many things are related about these heaven-sent folk who peopled Japan hundreds of years before the Christian era. They are things that must be studied by any one desiring to make himself acquainted with the essence of her indigenous religion or her pictorial and decorative arts, for they there play a picturesque and prominent part. But they have nothing to do with sober history. Possibly it may be urged that nations whose traditions deal with a Mount Sinai, a pillar of cloud and fire, and an immaculate conception, have no right to reject everything supernatural in Oriental annals. That superficial retort has, indeed, been made too often. But behind it there undoubtedly lurks in the inner consciousness of the educated and intelligent Japanese a resolve not to scrutinise these things too closely. Whether or not the “age of the gods” —kami no yo— of which, as a child, he reads with implicit credence, and of which, as a man, he recognises the political uses, should be openly relegated to the limbo of absurdities; whether the deities had to take part in an immodest dance in order to lure the offended Sun Goddess from a cave to which her brother’s rudeness had driven her, thus plunging the universe in darkness; whether the god of impulse fought with the god of fire on the shores of the Island of Nine Provinces; whether the procreative divinities were inspired by a bird; whether the germs of a new civilisation were carried across the sea by a prince begotten of the sunshine and born in the shape of a crimson jewel,—these are not problems that receive very serious consideration in Japan, though neither a Colenso nor a Huxley has yet arisen to attack them publicly. They are rather allegories from which emerges the serviceable political doctrine that the emperors of Japan, being of divine origin, rule by divine right. It is the Japanese historian’s method, or the Japanese mythologist’s manner, of describing an attribute claimed until very recently by all Occidental sovereigns, and still asserted on behalf of some. As for the foreign student of Japan’s ancient history, these weird myths and romantic allegories have induced him to dismiss it as a purely imaginary product of later-day imagination. The transcendental elements woven into parts of the narrative discredit the whole in his eyes. And his scepticism is fortified by a generally accepted hypothesis that the events of the thirteen opening centuries of the story were preserved solely by oral tradition. The three volumes which profess to tell about the primaeval creators of Japan, about Jimmu, the first mortal ruler, and about his human successors during a dozen centuries, are supposed to be a collection of previously unwritten recollections, and it seems only logical to doubt whether the outlines of figures standing at the end of such a long avenue of hearsay can be anything but imaginary. Possibly that disbelief is too wholesale. Possibly it is too much to conclude that the Japanese had no kind of writing prior to their acquisition of Chinese ideographs in the fifth century of the Christian era. But there is little apparent hope that the student will ever be in a position to decide these questions conclusively. He must be content for the present to regard the annals of primaeval Japan as an assemblage of heterogeneous fragments from the traditions of South Sea islanders, of central Asian tribes, of Manchurian Tartars and of Siberian savages, who reached her shores at various epochs, sometimes drifted by ocean currents, sometimes crossing by ice-built bridges, sometimes migrating by less fortuitous routes.

What these records, stripped of all their fabulous features, have to tell is this: —

At a remote date, a certain race of highly civilised men—highly civilised by comparison—arrived at the islands of Japan. Migrating from the south, the adventurers landed on the Southern island, Kiushiu, and found a fair country, covered with luxurious vegetation and sparsely populated by savages living like beasts of the field, having no organised system of administration and incapable of offering permanent resistance to the superior weapons and discipline of the invaders, who established themselves with little difficulty in the newly found land. But on the main island two races of men very different from these savages had already gained a footing. One had its headquarters in the province of Izumo, and claimed sovereignty over the whole country. The other was concentrated in Yamato. Neither of these races knew of the other’s existence, Izumo and Yamato being far apart. At the outset, the immigrants who had newly arrived in Kiushiu, imagined that they had to deal with the Izumo folk only. They began by sending envoys. The first of these, bribed by the Izumo rulers, made his home in the land he had been sent to spy out. The second forgot his duty in the arms of an Izumo beauty whose hair fell to her ankles. The third discharged his mission faithfully, but was put to death in Izumo. The sequel of this somewhat commonplace series of events was war. Putting forth their full strength, the southern invaders shattered the power of the Izumo court and received its submission. But they did not transfer their own court to the conquered province. Ignorant that Izumo was a mere fraction of the main island, they imagined that no more regions remained to be subjugated. By and by they discovered their mistake. Intelligence reached them that, far away in the northeast, a race of highly civilised men, who had originally come from beyond the sea in ships, were settled in the province of Yamato, holding undisputed sway. To the conquest of these colonists Jimmu, who then ruled the southern immigrants, set out on a campaign which lasted fifteen years, and ended, after some fierce fighting, in the Yamato rulers’ acknowledging their consanguinity with the invader and abdicating in his favour.

JIMMU 660–585 BC

Whether Jimmu’s story be purely a figment of later-day imagination or whether it consists of poetically embellished facts, there can be no question about its interest, since it shows the kind of hero that subsequent generations were disposed to picture as the founder of the sacred dynasty, the chief of the Japanese race. The youngest of four sons, he was nevertheless selected by his “divine” father to succeed to the rulership of the little colony of immigrants then settled in Kiushiu, and his elder brothers obediently recognised this right of choice. He was not then called “Jimmu”: that is his posthumous name. Sanu, or Hiko Hohodemi, was his appellation, and he is represented in the light of a kind of viking. Learning of Yamato and its rulers from a traveller who visited Kiushiu, he embarked all his available forces in war-vessels and set out upon a tour of aggression. Creeping along the eastern shore of Kiushiu, and finally entering the Inland Sea, the adventurers fought their way from point to point, landing sometimes to do battle with native tribes, sometimes to construct new war-junks, until, after fifteen years of fighting and wandering, they finally emerged from the northern end of the Inland Sea, and established themselves in Yamato, destined to be thenceforth the Imperial province of Japan. In this long series of campaigns the chieftain lost his three brothers: one fell in fight; two threw themselves into the sea to calm a tempest that threatened to destroy the flotilla. Such are the deaths that Japanese in all ages have regarded as ideal exits from this mortal scene; deaths by the sword and deaths of loyal self-sacrifice. To the leader himself, after his decease, the posthumous name of Jimmu, or “the man of divine bravery,” was given, typifying the honour that has always attached to the profession of arms in Japan. The distance from this primitive viking’s starting­point to the place where he established his capital and consummated his career of conquest, can easily be traversed by a modern steamer in twice as many hours as the number of years devoted by Jimmu and his followers to the task. That the craft in which they travelled were of the most inefficient type, may be gathered from the fact that the viking’s progress eastward would have been finally interrupted by the narrow strip of water dividing Kiushiu from the main island of Japan, had not a fisherman seated on a turtle emboldened him to strike sea-ward. Thenceforth the turtle assumed a leading place in the mythology of Japan,—the type of longevity, the messenger of the marine deity, who dwelt in the crystal depths of the ocean, his palace peopled by lovely maidens. The goddess of the sun shone on Jimmu’s enterprise at times when tempest or fog threatened serious peril, and a kite, circling overhead, indicated the direction of inhabited districts when he and his warriors had lost their way among mountains and forests.

How much of all this was transmitted by tradition, written or oral, to the compilers of Jimmu’s history in the eighth century; how much was a mere reflection of national customs which had then become sacred, and on which the political scholars of the time desired to set the seal of antique sanction, who shall determine? If Sanu and his warriors brought with them the worship of the sun, that would offer an interesting inference as to their origin. If the aid that they received from his light was suggested solely by the grateful homage that rice-cultivators, thirteen centuries later, had learned to pay to his beneficence, then the oldest written records of Japan must be read as mere transcripts of the faiths and fashions of the era when they were compiled, not as genuine traditions transmitted from previous ages. But such distinctions have never been recognised by the Japanese. With them these annals of their race’s beginnings have always commanded as inviolable credence as the Testaments of Christianity used to command in the Occident. From the lithographs that embellish modern bank-notes the sun looks down on the semi-divine conqueror, Jimmu, and receives his homage. From the grand cordon of an order instituted by his hundred and twenty-seventh successor, depends the kite that guided him through mountain fastnesses, and on a thousand works of art the genius of the tortoise shows him the path across the ocean. If these picturesque elements were added by subsequent writers to the outlines of an ordinary armed invasion by foreign adventurers, the nation has received them and cherishes them to this day as articles of a sacred faith.

The annals here briefly summarised reveal three tides of more or less civilised immigrants and a race of semi-barbarous autochthons. All the learned researches of modern archaeologists and ethnologists do not teach us much more. It is now known with tolerable certainty that the so-called autochthons were composed of two swarms of colonists, both coming from Siberia, though their advents were separated by a long interval.

The first, archaeologically indicated by pit­dwellings and shell-mounds still extant, were the Koro-pok-guru, or “cave-men.” They are believed to be represented today by the inhabitants of Saghalien, the Kuriles and Southern Kamschatka.

The second were the Ainu, a flat-faced, heavy-jawed, hirsute people, who completely drove out their predecessors and took possession of the land. The Ainu of that period had much in common with animals. They burrowed in the ground for shelter; they recognised no distinctions of sex in apparel or of consanguinity in intercourse; they clad themselves in skins; they drank blood; they practised cannibalism; they were insensible to benefits and perpetually resentful of injuries; they resorted to savagely cruel forms of punishment,—severing the tendons of the leg, boiling the arms, slicing off the nose, etc.; they used stone implements, and, unceasingly resisting the civilised immigrants who subsequently reached the islands, they were driven northward by degrees, and finally pushed across the Tsugaru Strait into the island of Yezo. That long struggle, and the disasters and sufferings it entailed, radically changed the nature of the Ainu. They became timid, gentle, submissive folk; lost most of the faculties essential to survival in a racial contest, and dwindled to a mere remnant of semi-savages, incapable of progress, indifferent to improvement, and presenting a more and more vivid contrast to the energetic, intelligent, and ambitious Japanese.

But these Japanese —who were they originally ? Whence did the three or more tides of immigration set which ultimately coalesced to form the race now standing at the head of Oriental peoples ? Strangely varying answers to this question have been furnished. Kampfer persuaded himself that the primaeval Japanese were a section of the builders of the Tower of Babel. Hyde-Clarke identified them with Turano-Africans who travelled eastward through Egypt, China, and Japan. Mac­leod recognised in them one of the lost tribes of Israel. Several writers have regarded them as Malayan colonists. Griffin was content to think that they are modern Ainu, and recent scholars incline to the belief that they belonged to the Tartar-Mongolian stock of Central Asia. Something of this diversity of view is due to the fact that the Japanese are not a pure race. They present several easily distinguishable types, notably the patrician and the plebeian. This is not a question of mere coarseness in contrast with refinement; of the degeneration due to toil and exposure as compared with the improvement produced by gentle living and mental culture. The representative of the Japanese plebs has a conspicuously dark skin, prominent cheek bones, a large mouth, a robust and heavily boned physique, a flat nose, full straight eyes, and a receding forehead. The aristocratic type is symmetrically and delicately built; his complexion varies from yellow to almost pure white; his eyes are narrow, set obliquely to the nose; the eyelids heavy; the eyebrows lofty; the mouth small; the face oval; the nose aquiline; the hand remarkably slender and supple.

Here are two radically distinct types. What is more, they have been distinguished by the Japanese themselves ever since any method of recording such distinctions existed. For from the time when he first began to paint pictures, the Japanese artist recognised and represented only one type of male and female beauty, namely, that distinguished in a marked, often an exaggerated, degree by the features enumerated above as belonging to the patrician class. There has been no evolution in this matter. The painter had as clear a conception of his type ten centuries ago as he has today. Nothing seems more natural than the supposition that this higher type represents the finally dominant race of immigrants; the lower, their less civilised opponents.

The theory which seems to fit the facts best is that the Japanese are compounded of elements from Central and Southern Asia, and that they received their patrician type from the former, their plebeian from the latter. The Asiatic colonists arrived via Korea. But they were neither Koreans nor Chinese. That seems certain, though the evidence which proves it cannot be detailed here. Chinese and Koreans came from time to time in later ages; came occasionally in great numbers, and were absorbed into the Japanese race, leaving on it some faint traces of the amalgamation. But the original colonists did not set out from either China or Korea. Their birthplace was somewhere in the north of Central Asia. As for the South-Asian immigrants, they were drifted to Japan by a strange current called the “Black Tide” (Kuro-shiwo), which sweeps northward from the Philippines, and bending thence towards the east, touches the promontory of Kii and Yamato before shaping its course permanently away from the main island of Japan. It is true that in the chronological order suggested by early history the southern colonists succeeded the northern and are supposed to have gained the mastery; whereas among the Japanese, as we now see them, the supremacy of the northern type appears to have been established for ages. That may be explained, however, by an easy hypothesis, namely, that although the onset of the impetuous southerns proved at first irresistible, they ultimately coalesced with the tribes they had conquered, and in the end the principle of natural selection replaced the vanquished on their proper plane of eminence. But this distinction, it must be observed, is one of outward form rather than of moral attributes. Neither history nor observation furnishes any reason for asserting that the so-called “aristociatic,” or Mongoloid, cast of features accompanies a fuller endowment of either physical or mental qualities than the vulgar, or Malayan, cast. Numerically the patrician type constitutes only a small fraction of the nation, and seems to have been lacking in a majority of the country’s past leaders, as it is certainly lacking in a majority of her present publicists, and even in the very crême de la crême of society. The male of the upper classes is not generally an attractive product of nature. He has neither commanding stature, refinement of features, nor weight of muscle. On the other hand, among the labouring populations, and especially among the seaside folk, numbers of men are found who, though below the average Anglo-Saxon or Teuton in bulk, are cast in a perfectly symmetrical mould and suggest great possibilities of muscular effort and endurance. In short, though the aristocratic type has survived, and though its superior beauty is universally recognised, it has not impressed itself completely on the nation, and there is no difficulty in conceiving that its representatives went down before the first rush of the southern invaders, but subsequently, by tenacity of resistance and by fortitude under suffering, recovered from a shock which would have crushed a lower grade of humanity.

Histories that describe the manners and customs of a people have been rare in all ages. The compilers of Japan’s first annals, in the eighth century, paid little attention to this part of their task. Were it necessary to rely on their narrative solely for a knowledge of the primaeval Japanese, the student would be meagrely informed. But archaeology comes to his assistance. It raises these men of old from their graves, and reveals many particulars of their civilisation which could never have been divined from the written records alone.

The ancient Japanese  not the Koro-pok-guru or the Ainu, but the ancestors of the Japanese proper—buried their dead, first in barrows and afterwards in dolmens. The barrow was merely a mound of earth heaped over the remains, after the manner of the Chinese. The dolmen was a stone chamber. It had walls constructed with blocks of stone, generally unhewn and rudely laid but sometimes hewn and carefully fitted; its roof consisted of huge and ponderous slabs; it varied in form, sometimes taking the shape of a long gallery only; sometimes of a gallery and chamber, and sometimes of a gallery and two chambers; over it was built a mound of earth which occasionally assumed enormous dimensions, covering a space of seventy or eighty acres, rising to a height of as many feet, and requiring the labour of thousands of workmen. The builders of the barrows were in the bronze age of civilisation; the constructors of the dolmens, in the iron age. In the barrows are found weapons and implements of bronze and vessels of hand-made pottery; in the dolmens, weapons and implements of iron and vessels of wheel-turned pottery. There is an absolute line of division. No iron weapon nor any machine-made pottery occurs in a barrow; no bronze weapon nor any hand­made pottery in a dolmen. Are the barrow­builders and the dolmen-constructors to be regarded as distinct races, or as men of the same race at different stages of its civilisation? Barrow and dolmen bear common testimony to the fact that before the ancestors of the Japanese nation crossed the sea to their inland home, they had already emerged from the stone age, for neither in barrow nor in dolmen have stone-weapons or implements been found, though these abound in the shell-heaps and kitchen-middens that constitute the relics of the Koro-pok-guru and the Ainu. But, on the other hand, barrow and dolmen introduce their explorer to peoples who stood on different planes of industrial development.

The progress of civilisation is always gradual. A nation does not pass, in one stride, from burial in rude tumuli to sepulture in highly specialised forms of stone vaults, nor yet from a bronze age to an iron. It is therefore evident that the evolution of dolmen from barrow did not take place within Japan. The dolmen-constructor must have completely emerged from the bronze age and abandoned the fashion of barrow-burial before he reached Japan. Otherwise search would certainly disclose some transitional form between the barrow and the dolmen, and some iron implements would occur in the barrows, or bronze weapons in the dolmens. If, then, the barrow­builder and the dolmen-constructor were racially identical, it would seem to follow that the latter succeeded the former by a long interval in the order of immigration, and brought with him a greatly improved type of civilisation evolved in the country of his origin.

The reader will be naturally disposed to anticipate that the geographical distribution of the dolmens and the barrows furnishes some aid in solving this problem. But though the exceptional number found on the coasts opposite to Korea tends to support the theory that the stream of Mongoloid immigration came chiefly from the Korean peninsula via the island of Tsushima, there is not any local differentiation of one kind of sepulture from the other, and, for the rest, the grouping of the dolmens supplies no information except that their builders occupied the tract of country from the shores opposite Korea on the west to Musashi and the south of Shimotsuke on the east, and did not penetrate to the extreme northeast, or to the regions of mountain and forest in the interior.

Here another point suggests itself. If the fashion of the Japanese dolmen was introduced from abroad, evidences of its prototype should survive on the adjacent continent of Asia. If the numerous dolmens found on the coasts of Kiushiu and Izumo facing Korea are to be taken as indications that their constructors emigrated originally from the Korean peninsula, then Korea also should contain similar dolmens, and if an ethnological connection existed between Japan and China in prehistoric days, China, too, should have dolmens. But no dolmens have hitherto been found in China, and the dolmens of Korea differ radically from those of Japan, being “merely cists with megalithic cap-stones” (Gowland). It has been shown, further, that dolmens similar to those of Japan are not to be found in any part of Continental Asia eastward of the shores of the Caspian Sea, and that Western Europe alone offers exactly analogous types. In short, from an ethnological point of view, the dolmens of Japan are as perplexing as the dolmens of Europe, and the prospect of solving the riddle seems to be equally remote in both cases. All that can be affirmed is that the dolmens offer strong corroborative testimony to the truth of the Japanese historical narrative which represents Jimmu as the leader of the last and most highly civilised among the bands of colonists constituting the ancestors of the present Japanese race. Thus the “divine warrior,” after having been temporarily erased from the tablets of history by the modern sceptic of the West, is projected upon them once more from the newly opened graves of the primaeval Japanese. It is true that there is an arithmetical difficulty: it has been supposed that the dolmens do not date from a period more remote than the third century before Christ, whereas Jimmu’s invasion is assigned to the seventh. But no great effort of imagination is required to effect a compromise between the uncertain chronology of the Japanese annals and the tentative estimates of modern archaeologists.

Some of the burial customs revealed by these ancient tombs resemble the habits of the Scythians as described by Herodotus. The Japanese did not, it is true, lay the corpse of a chieftain between sheets of gold, nor did they inter his favourite wife with similar pomp in an adjoining chamber; but they did deposit with him his weapons, his ornaments, and the trappings of his war-horse, and in remote times they followed the barbarous rule of burying alive, in the immediate vicinity of his sepulchre, his personal attendants, male and female, and probably also his steed. To the abrogation of that cruel rule is due much information about the garments worn in early epochs, for in the century immediately preceding the Christian era a kind-hearted emperor decided that clay figures should be substituted for human victims, and these figures, being modelled, however roughly, in the guise of the men and women of the time, tell what kind of costumes were worn and what was the manner of wearing them. Collecting all the available evidence, the story shapes itself into this: —

Prior to the third, or perhaps the fourth, century before the Christian era, when the dead were interred in barrows, not dolmens, the Japanese, though they stood on a plane considerably above the general level of Asiatic civilisation, did not yet understand the forging of iron or the use of the potter’s wheel. They were still in the bronze age, and their weapons—swords, halberds, and arrow­heads—were made of that metal. Concerning the fashion of their garments not much is known, but they used, for purpose of personal adornment, quaintly shaped objects of jasper, rock-crystal, steatite, and other stones. Then, owing probably to the advent of a second wave of immigration from the continent, the civilisation of the nation was suddenly raised, and the country passed at once from the bronze to the iron age, with a corresponding development of industrial capacity in other directions, and with a novel method of sepulture having no exact prototype except in Western Europe. The new-comers seem to have been, not a race distinct from their predecessors, but a second outgrowth of colonists from the same parent stem. Where that stem had its roots there is no clear indication, but it is evident that, during the interval between the first and the second migrations, the mother country had far excelled its colony in material civilisation, so that, with the advent of the second band of wanderers, the condition of the Japanese underwent marked change. They laid aside their bronze weapons and began to use iron swords and spears, and iron-tipped arrows. A warrior carried one sword and, perhaps, a dagger. The sword had a blade which varied from two and a half feet to over three feet in length. These were not the curved weapons with curiously modelled faces and wonderful trenchancy which became so celebrated in later times. Straight, one-edged swords, formidable enough, but considerably inferior to the admirable katana of medieval and modern eras, they were sheathed in wooden scabbards, having bands and hoops of copper, silver, or iron, by means of which the weapon was suspended from the girdle. The guards were of iron, copper, or bronze, often coated with gold, and always having holes cut in them to render them lighter. Wood was the material used for hilt as well as for scabbard, but generally in the former case and sometimes in the latter a thin sheet of copper with gold plating enveloped the wood. Double barbs characterised the arrow-head, and as these projected about four inches beyond the shaft, a bow of great strength must have been used, though of only medium length. Armour does not seem to have been generally worn, or to have served for covering any part of the body except the head and the breast. It was of iron, and it took the shape of thin bands of metal, riveted together for casque and cuirass. Neither brassart, visor, nor greaves have been found in any dolmen, and though solerets of copper are among the objects exhumed, they appear to have been rather ornamental than defensive. As to shields, nothing is known. No trace of them has been found, and it seems a reasonable inference that they were not used. Horses evidently played an important part in the lives of the second batch of immigrants, for horse-furniture constantly appears among the objects found in dolmens. The bit is almost identical with the common “snaffle” of the Occident. Made of iron, it has side-rings or cheek-pieces of the same metal, elaborately shaped and often sheeted with gilded copper. The saddle was of wood, peaked before and behind and braced with metal bands, and numerous ornaments of repoussé iron covered with sheets of gilt or silvered copper were attached to the trappings. Among these ornaments a peculiar form of bell is present: an oblate hollow­sphere, having a long slit in its shell and containing a loose metal pellet. Stirrups are seldom found in the dolmens, and the rare specimens hitherto exhumed bear no resemblance to the large, heavy, shoe-shaped affairs of later ages, but are rather of the Occidental type.

The costume of these ancient Japanese had little in common with that of their modern descendants. They wore an upper garment of woven stuff, fashioned after the manner of a loosely fitting tunic, and confined at the waist by a girdle, and they had loose trousers reaching nearly to the feet. For ornaments they used necklaces of beads or of rings,—silver, stone, “or glass; finger-rings, sometimes of silver or gold, sometimes of copper, bronze, or iron plated with one of the precious metals; ring-shaped buttons; metal armlets; bands or plates of gilt copper which were attached to the tunic; ear-rings of gold, and tiaras. Not one item in this catalogue, the tiara excepted, appears among the garments or personal ornaments of the Japanese since their history and habits began to be known to the outer world. No nation has undergone a more radical change of taste in the matter of habiliments and adornments. The ear-ring, the necklace, the finger-ring, the bracelet, and the band or plate of metal attached to the tunic,—all these passed completely out of vogue so long ago that, without the evidence of the contents of the dolmen, it would be impossible to conceive the existence of such things in Japan. One of the most noteworthy features of the people’s habits in mediaeval or modern times is that, with the solitary exception of pins and fillets for the hair, they eschew every class of personal ornament. Yet the dolmens indicate that personal adornments were abundantly, if not profusely, employed by the ancestors of these same Japanese in prehistoric days. Indeed, the only features common to the fashions of the Japanese as they are now known and the Japanese as their sepulchres reveal them, are the rich decoration of the sword-hilt and scabbard and of the war-horse’s trappings.

As to the food of these early people, it seems to have consisted of fish, flesh, and cereals. They used wine of some kind, though of its nature there is no knowledge, and their household utensils were of pottery, graceful in outline but unglazed and archaically decorated. Whether or not they possessed cattle there is no evidence, nor yet is it known what means they employed to produce fire, though the fire-drill appears to be the most probable.

That they believed in a future state is evident, since they buried with the dead whatever implements and weapons might be necessary in the life beyond the grave; that ancestral worship constituted an important part of their religious cult is proved by the offerings periodically made at the tombs of the deceased; and that idolatry was not practised or superstition largely prevalent may be deduced from the complete absence of charms or amulets among the remains found in their sepulchres.

 

 

JAPAN ON THE VERGE OF HISTORTY

 

None respect Japan’s story differs from that of nearly all other countries: the current of her national life was never diverted from its normal channel by successful foreign invasions or by any overwhelming inflow of alien races. It is true that her codes of ethics and social conventions were largely modified, from time to time, by foreign influences. But it is also true that she impressed the stamp of her own originality on everything coming to her from abroad, and that, leading what may be called an uninterruptedly domestic existence during twenty-five centuries, she developed characteristics so salient that in studying her annals there is forced upon our attention a continuity of easily synthesised traits.

No traces of autocratic sovereignty are to be found in the history of the early colonists. The general who led the invaders received recognition as their chief, but the offices of the newly organised States were divided among his principal followers, not as arbitrarily conferred gifts, but as spoils falling to them by right. The occupants of these posts were not removable at the caprice of the Sovereign, and they enjoyed the privilege of transmitting their offices to their sons; a system of hereditary officialdom which remained in operation through long ages.

Thus the national polity in the earliest times assumed a patriarchal form. Public affairs were administered by a group of official families, and at the head of all stood a lineal descendant of the divine ancestors, the degree of his sway varying from time to time according to the docility of his coadjutors.

All these great families were supposed to be of divine lineage; they traced their origin to a Mikoto (an augustness) just as the Sovereign himself did. Some, presumably the most deserving, obtained offices near the throne when the spoils of conquest were distributed; others were appointed to provincial posts, and as these latter generally found their administrative regions occupied by barbarians whom they had to subdue at first and to hold in check afterwards, they gradually organised principalities virtually independent of the central government. That, however, is a historical development subsequent to the era now under consideration.

It does not appear that there was anything like a fully organised administration until some thirteen hundred years after the date traditionally assigned for the conquest of Yamato by the Emperor Jimmu. The functions of government were divided, not in accordance with any principle of convenient discharge, but simply with reference to the claims of the persons undertaking them. To two of the imperial princes were entrusted sacerdotal and executive duties; to two others, military duties, which consisted chiefly of guarding the new palace and capital; and to two others, the duties of worship and administration in the provinces. The performance of religious rites formed an essential part of state-craft in those times. In fact, the term (matsuri) for “worship” was identical with that for “government,” and the identity continued until a very recent era, so that, in the language of every-day life, no distinction was made between the sacred business of prayer and the secular business of ruling. That fact reveals very clearly the foundation upon which the national polity stood. The Sovereign was the nation’s high-priest. Like the Jewish patriarchs, he interceded for his people direct with Heaven, and ruled them by the authority he derived from the deities. His administrative assistants followed the same principle. They invoked the aid of Heaven for the discharge of all their duties, and its blessing upon all the affairs of the people under their control.

It cannot be affirmed that the high officers of State had any officially recognised designations in remote times, and the absence of such designations goes far to confirm the theory that the functions of the patriarchs were of a general character, and that no attempt to divide them systematically was made. They did, however, receive appellations from the people. Just as household servants speak of “the master” and a ship’s crew of “the captain,” so the first governor of a province came to be called “the imperial person of the country ” (Kuni no mi-yatsuko); the first agricultural superintendent was known as “the lord of the fields” (agatanushi) ; the first high chamberlain as “the great man of the palace” (miya no obito). In like manner, such titles as “great body” (obi), “ master of the multitude” (Muraji), “ honorable intermediary” (nakatomi) and so on, were employed as terms of respect, and ultimately passed into use as official titles.

The share assigned to a patriarch in the central or provincial administration became his inalienable property. He transmitted it to his son and to his son’s son. Thus not only were offices hereditary but their occupants multiplied, so that all the posts and perquisites of a department fell finally into the possession of a clan. The head of the clan then came to be distinguished by the prefix O (great or senior) ; as O-mi (the senior honourable person), O-muraji (the great master of the multitude), and so on. There were no family names in the Occidental sense of the term. Men were distinguished instead by the titles of the administrative posts belonging to their houses. The name of the post preceded that of the person, as was natural, so that a man was spoken of as “Hierarch Kasumi” (Nakatomi no Kasumi) or “Guardsman Moriya” (Monobe Moriya), or “Purveyor Kujira” (Kashiwade no Kujira).

Eminent as was the position assigned to religion in the polity of the ancient Japanese, no trace of a doctrinal creed, as creeds are understood in the Occident, is found in their lives. Their burial customs show that they believed in an existence beyond the grave, but they seem to have troubled themselves little about the nature of that existence, or about transcendental speculations of any kind. The chief denizen of celestial space, according to their creed, was a tutelary deity, the Goddess of Light, and since her worship, or the worship of some lesser spirit, had to preface every administrative act of importance, religious rites were placed, as has been already stated, at the head of all official functions. Yet special buildings for ceremonial purposes did not originally exist. The Emperor, as the nation’s high-priest, worshipped in the palace, where were kept the insignia of sovereignty, — the sword, the mirror, and the jewel of divine origin. Not until the first century before Christ were shrines erected apart from the palace, and the immediate cause of the innovation was a pestilence which the soothsayers interpreted as a heavenly protest against the method of worship then pursued. The creed was not exclusive. Its pantheon, which in the beginning included only the deities of high heaven, was soon enlarged by the admission of other powers controlling the forces of nature, as well as by the spirits of deceased heroes, and ultimately received even the supernatural beings supposed to preside over the destinies of the aboriginal tribes. In other words, the civilised colonists consented to worship the ancestors of the semi-savage aborigines against whom they perpetually waged war. This might be interpreted to mean that upon the religion which the Japanese brought with them to Japan the religion of the autochthons whom they found there was engrafted. But nothing is known of the autochthonous creed. The true explanation seems to be that the Japanese, analysing their difficulty in subduing the aborigines, attributed it to the influence of the latter’s deceased rulers, and concluded that the wisest plan would be to propitiate these hostile powers. Hence it is plain that they believed in malevolent spirits as well as in benevolent ; or perhaps the more accurate statement would be that, according to their creed, immortal beings continued to be animated by the sentiments which had swayed them as mortals, and possessed power to give practical effect to their sentiments. They did not associate any idea of rewards and punishments with a future state. Their theory pointed to duality of the soul. They regarded it as consisting of two distinct elements: one the source of courage, strength, and aggressiveness; the other the mainspring of benevolence, refinement, and magnanimity. In the good man these elements were blended harmoniously during life, and they survived in like proportions after the death of his body. But whatever had been the quality of the mortal tenement, the immortal tenant passed from the edge of the grave into the “sombre realm” (Yomotsu-kuni), which was separated from this world by a “ broad slope ” (Yomotsu-birazaka), never recrossed by a spirit that had eaten anything cooked in the land of darkness. The offerings made at the tombs of the deceased had the purpose of providing against that disaster of eternal banishment, and, in another sense, were a mark of filial piety, the natural outcome of faith in the terrestrial interference of the departed.

In addition to the celestial and the terrestrial deities, the animal and vegetable kingdom supplied objects of worship. Monster snakes, supposed to destroy the crops, were propitiated by sacrifice, and giant trees, venerated as the abode of supernal beings, were fenced off with ropes carrying sacred pendants. The folklore of the nation includes several stories of losses and sufferings caused by cutting down sacred trees, and the rituals show that herbs, rocks, and trees were supposed to have the power of speech prior to the descent of the deities, when dumbness fell upon all these objects.

Out of such beliefs a rudimentary form of the doctrine of metempsychosis easily emerges. Yamatake, the great hero of prehistoric Japan, was transformed into a white bird, and Tamichi, the generalissimo vanquished by the Ezo, became a monster snake which devoured the desecrators of his tomb. Some ethnologists allege that the custom of human sacrifices existed in early days; but the theory is founded on a solitary legend of the Perseus-and-Andromeda type, which does not seem to justify any such inference. Everything, indeed, goes to show that while a sacrificial element undoubtedly entered largely into the rites of worship, it never involved the taking of human life, the objects offered to the gods being confined to the fruits of the earth, birds, animals, and the products of labour. Auguries were obtained by burning the hoof of an ox or the shoulder-blade of a stag, and deciphering the lines in the calcined bone. But there is reason to believe that no such method of sooth­saying had a place in the primaeval superstitions of the Japanese; it probably came to them from Korea. A device more consistent with their own beliefs was to invoke a sign from heaven by music, when a deity descended and inspired the musician.

The most famous legend in Japan is that which is supposed to describe the origin of religious services. The Goddess of the Sun (Amaterasu Okami), having retired into a cave so that the universe was plunged in darkness, the eight hundred myriads of lesser deities assembled to propitiate her. Thereafter the act of worship took this shape : five hundred saplings of sakaki (Clyera japonica) with their roots were arranged round a mirror (made of copper) which typified the goddess of light. In the upper branches of the trees were hung balls representing the sacred jewel, and in the lower branches, blue and white pendants. A prayer was then recited by the chief hierarch, in lieu of the Emperor, and the service concluded with a dance and the lighting of fires, in imitation of the devices employed by the deities to lure the sun goddess from her retirement. The prayers offered on these occasions were probably rendered into exact formulas at an early date, but they were not reduced to writing until the tenth century. Twenty-seven of them have been preserved, and seventy-five are said to have been in use. Their language is often majestic, poetical, and sonorous, but not one of them contains a word suggesting that the primaeval Japanese troubled themselves much about a future state after death or about posthumous punishment for sins committed during life. Their idea of crime was that it polluted the person committing it, but that its commission was inevitable. Hence purification services were performed twice in every year, the gods of the swift streams, the tumbling cataracts, and the raging tides being invoked to wash away and dissipate all offences. First among crimes was the removal of a neighbour’s landmark—described as breaking down divisions between rice­fields ; then followed the damming of streams and the destruction of water-pipes, whence it may be inferred that the problem of irrigation for purposes of rice-culture proved as perplexing to these ancient folk as it does to their modern descendants. On the same plane of heinousness stood the cruelty of flaying the living or the dead, and among lesser crimes were enumerated cutting and wounding, incest and the practice of witchcraft. Every religious service was accompanied by offerings betokening gratitude for past favours or beseeching future blessings, and the things prayed for were good harvests, an abundance of food, security of dwelling-houses against natural calamities, and against the intrusion of reptiles or polluting birds, tranquil and efficient government, and protection from tempests, conflagrations, pestilence, inundations, and vengeful deities—in a word, prosperity and peace. Incidentally, these rituals further show that the Japanese believed in a solid firmament walling the universe, though certain passages suggest that they thought this distant envelope light enough to be supported by the winds, which not only filled space, but were also capable of serving as a ladder for the feet of the deities when they descended to the earth. The fermented liquor called sake, that is to say, rice-beer, must have been highly appreciated in early times, for no ritualistic enumeration of offerings made to the gods is without a reference to “piled up sake­pots” or “bellying beer-jars ranged in rows.”

It has been shown above that the story of the first mortal emperor’s conquest of Yamato indicates the use of clumsy boats and a marked deficiency of navigating enterprise. But the rituals of Shinto—as Japan’s ancient creed is called— do not confirm that idea. They speak of ships that “continually crowd on the wide sea-plane,” and of “a huge vessel moored in a great harbour, which, casting off her stern moor­ings, casting off her bow moorings, drives forth into the vast ocean.”

It is curious that among the evils from which deliverance was besought, earthquakes are nowhere mentioned, and that robbery is not included in the list of polluting crimes. Some have inferred that this commonest of all sins in all nations was unknown among the ancient Japanese. But that is a doubtful conclusion. It might be inferred with equal justice that incest was regarded with abhorrence, since the rituals class it among sins contaminating the perpetrator. Yet it is certain that men had relations with the mothers of their wives and even with their own mothers and daughters,—though facts will presently be cited which mitigate the horror of such acts,—that unnatural crimes of a most disgusting character were committed not infrequently, and that no veto is known to have been pronounced against them.

There was, in fact, no system of philosophy nor any code of ethics. India had Sidathra, China had Confucius, but neither in ancient, mediaeval, nor modern time has Japan produced a great teacher of morality. She has had plenty of brilliant interpreters, plenty of profound modifiers, but no conspicuous originator.

The right of primogeniture was not recognized in the age here spoken of. A father chose his heir at will. Generally the choice fell on his youngest son, for reasons which become plain when the marital customs of the time are considered. The conception of marriage was practically limited to cohabitation. A husband incurred no obligations or responsibilities towards his wife. It is related that the first emperor (Jimmu), chancing to meet a band of seven maidens, made immediate proposals that one of them should become his mate. The girl agreed, and the sovereign passed the night at her house, a visit which he thenceforth became entitled to repeat whenever he pleased. That was wedlock. To be married involved no change in a woman’s life except the liability to receive visits from her husband. As to the man, there was absolutely no duty of fidelity on his side. He might form as many different unions as fancy prompted. The children were brought up by the mother, and it was possible for one household to remain in entire ignorance of another’s existence. Mutual knowledge generally signified feuds and fighting, for the father’s favour was naturally bestowed on the children of his latest affection, and the elder against such partiality. Another result of the system was marriages between half-brothers and half-sisters, or between uncles and nieces. These unions were not condemned by the moral code of the time. Indeed, the existence of any relationship was sometimes unknown to the parties themselves, a man’s wives and families in different places not necessarily having any mutual acquaintance. The only restriction recognised was that children of the same mother must not intermarry. It is easy to see that under these circumstances the ties of consanguinity did not bind men very closely. To be sons of the same father carried no obligation of friendship or sympathy. Often in the annals of the innumerable civil wars that disturbed Japan the reader is shocked by deeds of vengeance, treachery, or ambitious truculence that violate all the dictates of natural affection. The origin of these displays of callousness or cruelty must be sought in the ancient system which condemned a wife to perform the functions of a mere animal, and deprived her children of any claim on their father’s love and protection.

“Houses” have been spoken of above, but a reservation is necessary : the upper classes lived in houses; the lower inhabited caves or holes in the earth, choosing hillsides for sites in order to escape inundations, which were then of calamitous dimensions and frequency. These cave-dwellings seem to have measured from four to six square yards in area, and to have been closed by a door four or five feet high. Common folk used them all the year round, and even princes and nobles found them comfortable as winter residences, transferring themselves in summer to huts built near the entrance of the caves. In constructing houses of the best type, the palaces of the era, flat stones were sunk in the ground to form a foundation, and on these was raised a stout up-right, the “heavenly pillar” (ame no mihashira).  At every corner also a pillar of lesser dimensions  was erected, and between the tops of these corner pillars, as well as from each of them to the central post, beams were stretched, the whole bound together with wistaria withes. Reeds or rushes served for thatching, and heavy logs laid over the thatch prevented it from being blown away. The ends of the tie-beams projected high above the roof, a feature permanently preserved in Shinto architecture; a hole in the thatch gave exit to the smoke of the cooking-fire; the frames of doors and windows were tied in their places with stems of creepers, and the walls consisted of logs or bark, or of both combined. These edifices generally stood near a stream which carried off impurities ; mats, rushes, or skins were spread for a bed, and furs, cloth, or silk served for coverlets. The floor was of timber, but whether of logs or of boards is not known. A religious service of consecration for propitiating the deities of timber and rice was held when the first emperor built his palace at Kashibara after he had conquered Yamato, and it became customary thenceforth to repeat the service at coronations and after harvest fetes. Common people, when they built a residence, invited their friends to a “ house-warming,” but the Emperor invoked the gods against the entry of snakes that bit the inmates, or of birds that polluted the food; against groaning timbers, loosening ties, unevenness of thatch, and creaking floors.

All this indicates a comparatively low type of civilisation. And yet, as has been shown in a previous chapter, objects found in the tombs of these early Japanese show that they possessed much skill in the casting and chiselling of metals, that their arms and the trappings of their horses were highly ornamented, and that their costume had many elements of refinement.

Perhaps the most special feature of their habits was cleanliness. It distinguishes them from all other Oriental nations. Whether this propensity grew out of their religious observances or was merely reflected in them, there is no means of determining. Knowledge is limited to the facts that they held every form of pollution to offensive to the gods; that the chief Shinto service, the “ high mass ” of the cult, has for its purpose the purification of the believer’s body as well as of his heart: that chastity and simplicity were fundamental features of all the rites, constructions, and paraphernalia of the creed, and that the virtue of cleanliness received practical acknowledgment even among the lowest classes.

Songs and dances appear among the most ancient pastimes of the people. Love is supposed to have inspired the first ode composed in Japan, the Emperor Jimmu having been moved to song on meeting with the maiden Isuzu. The reference here is to mortal poets. A still earlier couplet is attributed to one of the immortals when she danced before the cave into which the Sun Goddess had retired. In the latter incident also ethnologists find the supposed origin of dancing, which from time immemorial has been at once a religious observance and an universally popular amusement. Virgins danced before the shrine of the Sun Goddess at the beginning of the nation, and from the highest noble to the meanest churl everyone loved the music of motion. The first costume-dance was prompted by pain, when a deity, vanquished in fight and threatened with drowning, painted his face red and lifted his feet in an agony of supplication. This hayato-mai (the warrior dance), as it is called, was included among the classical mimes of the Imperial Court. It was performed to the music of a  stringed instrument (the Wa-kin) and of a flute, perhaps accompanied by a drum. Even the spirits of the dead were supposed to be moved by song and dance. When a man died, his corpse was placed in a building specially erected for the purpose. There it lay for ten days, while the relatives and friends of the deceased assembled and venerated his spirit, making music and dancing. This ceremony of farewell seems to have been originally prompted by a hope of recalling the departed, but it soon lost that character and became a mere token of respect. Ancient Japan was largely indebted to Korea for developments of musical instruments. On the death of the Emperor Ingyo (453 AD), the Korean Court sent eighty musicians robed in black, who marched in procession from the landing-place to the Yamato palace, playing and singing a dirge as they went.

The oldest organised form of amusement seems to have been the Ka-gaki, or poetical picnic. Parties of men and women met at appointed places, either in town or country, and composed couplets, delivering them with accompaniment of music or dancing. This kind of pastime had its practical uses: it brought lovers together and soon became a recognised preface to marriage. Among amusements confined to men, cock-fighting and hunting were most affected. Large tracts of the country being still unreclaimed, deer and wild-boar abounded. These were driven by beaters into open spaces, there to be pursued by men on horseback armed with bows and arrows. In the fourth century the pastime of hawking was introduced. It came from Korea : a king of that country sent a present of falcons to the Emperor of Japan, who caused a special office to be organised for the care of the birds.

Chinese annalists, writing in the third century, allege that the Japanese tattooed their faces and bodies, the positions and size of the designs constituting an indication of rank. Tattooing the body and cutting the hair were counted by the Chinese as violations of the rules of civilisation, and they offer an interesting explanation of the origin of these customs in Japan. They allege that the first rulers of that country were wandering princes of the Chou dynasty (1200 BC) who abandoned their patrimony in China, and migrated southwards, cutting their hair and tattooing themselves, to mark the completeness of their expatriation. The theory is quite untenable. One well-known Chinese work regards tattooing in Japan as a protection against the attacks of marine creatures of prey. But there are strong reasons to doubt whether tattooing was at any time prevalent among the Japanese proper. Possibly Chinese writers failed to distinguish between the inhabitants of the Riukiu archipelago and the people of Nippon, for tattooing of the face was never practised by the Japanese, whereas the habit did prevail among the people of Riukiu. Another reasonable hypothesis is that tattooing was introduced among a limited section of the nation when Japan received the Malayan element of her population. At all events, in every era it was confined to the lowest classes, namely, those who bared their bodies to perform the severe labour falling to their lot.

These Chinese annalists confirm the supposition suggested by the rituals, as noted above, that crimes of larceny and burglary were very rare in old Japan. They say, also, that Japanese women were neither sensual nor jealous, which is assuredly true in modern times and seems to have been true in every age of the nation’s existence. Another fact adduced in praise of the people was that they gave the law courts very little occupation. But there is an unfavourable interpretation of that state of affairs. The severity of the law, when occasion for its enforcement did arise, was terrible. If political considerations aggravated a crime, the whole family of the criminal were executed, and sometimes every member, even to distant relations, was reduced to the condition of serfdom. The people in general may be said to have been serfs with regard to the interval separating them from the upper classes. Thus, if an inferior met a superior, the former had to step aside and bow profoundly. He was further required to squat, or kneel, with both hands on the ground, when addressing a man of rank. That custom appears to have existed from the earliest time, and cannot be said to have yet become wholly extinct.

The accounts that Chinese annalists in the third century gave of contemporaneous Japan, indicate that intercourse existed between the two countries at that remote epoch. Indeed China and Korea began at an early date to act some part in the civilisation of Japan, and the Japanese themselves have always frankly admitted that they owe many of their refinements and accomplishments to their continental neighbours. But the common belief about that matter needs modification.

One naturally expects that since a section of the original Japanese colonists arrived via Korea, they must have received some impress of that country’s civilisation during their passage through it, and must also have preserved permanent touch with it subsequently. The former anticipation is largely borne out by a comparison of the two countries’ customs, for they practised in common the rules that prisoners taken in war and members of a criminal’s family should be reduced to slavery; that the corpses of persons executed for crime should be exposed; that the personal attendants of a high dignitary should be buried alive at his interment; that a bridegroom should visit his bride at her own house; that before engaging in war or undertaking any important enterprise, prayer should be addressed to heaven and auguries drawn from scorched bones, and that festivals in honour of the deities should be held in spring, in autumn, and at the close of the year. There is here too much similarity to be merely fortuitous. But as to the relations between the two nations, they were limited for a long time to mutual raids. In the century immediately preceding the Christian era, when the Japanese had been reduced almost to helplessness by a pestilence, the first historical reference to Korea is found, namely, that an incursion of Korean free­booters took place into the island of Kiushiu, and that thousands of the invaders settled in the deserted hamlets of the plague-stricken Japanese. Japan’s attention was thus disagreeably directed towards her neighbour, and when, by and by, inter-tribal disputes disturbed the peace of Korea, the Yamato rulers were easily induced to interfere. It appears, further, that Korea constantly lent assistance to the semi-savage aborigines of Kiushiu, whose subjugation long remained a difficult problem for the Japanese. Indeed, the only questions of foreign policy with which the early Japanese colonists had to deal arose out of the fact that the autochthons whom they sought to bring under their sway, received aid in the south from Korea and in the north from the Tartars. There was not much probability that Japan would become a disciple of Korean ethics under such circumstances. Hence, though Korea and China are often bracketed together as Japan’s instructors, the truth is that Korea was only a channel, whereas China was a source. Originally Korea did not stand on a much higher plane than her island neighbour in any respect, and in some her level was distinctly lower. But when she came within the range of Chinese civilisation, she began to reflect a faint light. Her record ought to have been better than it is, for she fell under the direct influence of China at a very early date. In the twelfth century before Christ, a band of Chinese wanderers found their way to the eastern region of the peninsula, and settling there, imparted to the tribe which received them forms of etiquette, principles of justice, methods of irrigation, tillage, sericulture, and weaving, and the provisions of  “the Eight Fundamental Laws.” Again, in the first century before Christ, a group of Chinese nobles, accompanying a fugitive prince, established themselves in the district lying nearest to Japan. And in the second century after Christ, north­western Korea was overrun by a Chinese army, and divided into four districts each under the rule of a Chinese satrap. If, then, the atmosphere of Korea had been favourable to the growth of Chinese civilisation, she should have become a well-equipped teacher for Japan at an early date. But she never showed any strongly receptive faculty. Japan had to go direct to China, and that was an immense undertaking in days when means of communication were primitive. The character that the journey bore in the recollection of persons making it may be gathered from the writings of Chonen, a Bonze, who, in company with five acolytes, travelled to the Court of a Sung emperor, in the year 984 AD: “I turn my face to the setting sun, and journey westward over a hundred thousand li (thirty-three thousand miles) of boundless billows. I watch for the monsoon and return eastward, climbing over thousands of thousands of wave-mountain peaks. Towards the end of summer, I raise my anchor at Cheh-Kiang, and, in the early spring, I reach the suburbs of my metropolis.” Thus the journey occupied six months even in Chonen’s day. What time and toil must it have involved nine centuries earlier! The Japanese appear to have essayed it only thrice during the three opening centuries of the Christian era : first in the year 57 AD, when envoys, visiting the Chinese court, received from the ruler of the Middle Kingdom a gold seal and a ribbon; secondly in 107 AD, when a hundred and sixty slaves were presented for the Chinese monarch’s acceptance; and thirdly in 238 AD. These facts are quoted from Chinese history. In Japanese annals the third embassy takes the form of an armed invasion of Korea, and constitutes one of the most celebrated as well as one of the most disputed incidents of Japan’s story. A female chieftain, the Empress Jingo, is represented as having organised the expedition in obedience to divine orders. Her flotilla, led by a fierce deity and protected by a benignant god, travelled over sea on the crest of a tidal wave, and sweeping into the realm of her enemy, terrified him into unresisting submission. At the portals of the Korean palace she set up her staff and spear to stand there for five centuries, and she compelled the monarch of the defeated nation to swear that until the sun rose in the west and set in the east, until streams flowed towards their source, until pebbles from the river bed ascended to the sky and became stars, his allegiance should remain inviolate. That is the romantic and picturesque form into which the writers of Japanese history (the Nihongi) wove the legend four centuries later. But modern critics have discovered discrepancies which induce them to cut down the tale to vanishing proportions, and to dismiss Jingo as a myth. Their iconoclasm is probably excessive. For Chinese annalists say that, at the very time when Jingo’s figure is so picturesquely painted on the pages of Japanese records, a female sovereign of Japan sent to the Court of China an embassy which had to beg permission from the ruler of north­western Korea to pass through his territory en route westward. Thus, although the celebrated empress’ foreign policy be stripped of its brilliant conquests and reduced to the dimensions of mere envoy-sending, her personality at least is recalled from the mythical regions to which some sinologues would relegate it. The Chinese relate, it may be mentioned incidentally, that she was old and unmarried at the time of the coming of her envoys; that she possessed skill in magic arts, by which she deluded her people; that she had a thousand female attendants, but suffered no man to see her face except one official, who served her meals and acted as a means of communication with her subjects; and that she dwelt in a palace with lofty pavilions surrounded by a stockade and guarded by soldiers.

Only three instances of direct official communication with China during the first thousand years of Japan’s supposed national existence imply very scanty access to the great fount of Far-Eastern civilisation. Yet, from another point of view, these embassies are significant. For when Japan sent her first envoys to Loyang, the then capital of the Middle Kingdom, she had never been invaded by her neighbour’s forces, nor ever even threatened with invasion, and in the complete absence of tangible displays of military prowess—the only universally recognised passport to international respect in those epochs—the homage that China received from the island empire bears eloquent testimony to the position the former held in the Orient. In truth she towered gigantic above the heads of Far-Eastern States in everything that makes for national greatness. The close of the third century saw the rise of the Han dynasty and the completion of the magnificent engineering works at the Shensi metropolis; works which still excite the world’s wonder and must have appeared almost miraculous in the eyes of people such as the Japanese were in that era. It is therefore surprising, that the interval between the civilisation of the two empires remained so long unbridged, and the explanation suggested by the above retrospect is that Korea proved a bad medium of transmission, and that China was almost inaccessible by direct means. Some special factor was needed to bring the real China within easier reach of Japanese observation, and that factor was furnished in the fourth century by a wave of Chinese colonists who came to Japan in search of profitable enterprises. Nothing is known about the prime cause of their migration, but the Chinese seem to have been as ardent fortune-questers fifteen centuries ago as they are today, and seeing that they had already exploited the northwest, the east and the south­west of Korea, the fact that they pushed on to Japan excites no surprise. A large ingress of Koreans occurred at nearly the same time. They were not voluntary emigrants, but fugitives from the effects of defeat in civil war. Their advent, however, compared with that of the Chinese, had no special importance except as illustrating Japan’s freedom from international exclusiveness at that epoch.

The Chinese brought with them a compilation destined to serve as a primer to Japanese students in all ages, “The Thousand Characters,” that is to say, a book containing a selection of the ideographs in commonest daily use; and they brought also the “Analects of Confucius,” which soon became, and has ever since remained, the gospel of Japanese ethics. There is no reasonable doubt that the existence of an ideographic script was known to the Japanese long before the fourth century. That conclusion is easily reached. For whatever may be said about the legend that the diagrams of Fuh (3200 BC) or the tortoise­shell mottling of Tsang (2700 BC) was the embryo of the ideograph, unquestionably the Chinese developed that form of writing as far back as the eighteenth century before Christ; and since they virtually began to overrun Korea six hundred years subsequently, and intercourse existed between Korea and Japan from a date certainly not later than a thousand years after the latter event, it is plain that both Korea and Japan must have known about the ideograph long before “The Thousand Characters” and the “Analects of Confucius” reached the Court at Yamato. But to know about the ideograph and to use it are two very different things. An alphabet, or even a syllabary, being a purely phonetic vehicle, lends itself to the transcription of any language. But ideographs, having their own inflexible sounds and their own fixed significances, cannot readily serve to transcribe the words of a foreign language which have different sounds and different significances. Suppose that it were required to write English by means of Greek monosyllables. Such a word as “garrison,” for instance, might be composed phonetically by putting together yap ts and ov, but if these monosyllables necessarily conveyed the meaning of “for,” “strength,” and “his” respectively, it would be perplexing to have to attach to their combination the meaning of “a body of troops for the defence of a fortress.” That is a comparatively easy example of the task that confronted the Japanese when they attempted to adapt the ideographs of China to the uses of their own language. In fact, they did not think of making the attempt until the ideograph had been known to them as a kind of distant acquaintance for many generations, and even when the “Analects” reached them, their ambition was limited at first to deciphering the strange script. History has not thought it worth while to record how or by whose genius the ideographs were first employed as a kind of syllabary for the purpose of writing Japanese. That is what had virtually happened, however, before the fifth century. And very soon something else happened also, namely, a radical modification of the japanese language. For the more familiar the knowledge that students obtained of the ideograph, the less could they reconcile themselves to use it in a purely phonetic manner. It conveyed to their eyes a significance quite unconnected with the meaning of the Japanese word its sound conveyed to their ears. Therefore by degrees sense took precedence of sound, and Japanese words were transcribed by means of ideographs which corresponded with their meaning, but were pronounced in a new manner, divested of all the harshness and confusing tones of the Chinese tongue. This is a wearisome subject, but some knowledge of it is essential to any one desirous of understanding the genius of the Japanese language and appreciating its unique excellence as a vehicle for translat­ing new ideas. Suppose that a japanese wants to write the compound word “Western-jewel.” In his own original language the sounds would be nishi-no-tama. But he takes two ideographs which in China are pronounced see-yuh, and having written them down in their proper sense, he reads them either sai-gyoku or nishi-no-tama, calling the former the on, or Chinese pronunciation—though it is really a Japanese modification of the Chinese sounds—and the latter the kun, or pure Japanese sound. Hence one of the results of using the ideographs was that the Japanese language acquired an alternative pronunciation : it became a dual language as to sound without changing its construction. It acquired also an extraordinary capacity of expansion, becoming the most flexible vehicle for translating ideas that the world has ever possessed. For the Chinese language, which was thus grafted on the Japanese, is not so much a collection of words as a vast thesaurus of materials for constructing words. It is, in fact, a repertoire of forty thousand monosyllables each of which has its exact significance. These syllables may be used singly, or combined two, three, four, or five at a time, so as to convey every conceivable idea, however complex, delicate, or abstruse. The genius of man has never invented any machinery so perfect for converting thoughts into sounds. Possessors of an alphabet may denounce the ideograph as a clumsy, semi­civilised form of writing, and may accuse it of developing the mechanics of memory at the expense of the intellectual faculty. But the Chinese ideographist can oppose to such criticism the answer that as a vehicle for rendering the products of the mind the ideograph is without rival, and that, while the Anglo-Saxon has to devise a vocabulary for his scientific and philosophical developments by the halting aid of dead languages, exact equivalents for every new conception can be coined readily by the unassisted ideographic mint. The chronological sequence of this retrospect may be anticipated so far as to say that it was owing to the possession of such mechanism that the Japanese scholar found no serious difficulty in fitting an accurate terminology to the multitude of novel ideas presented to him by Western civilisation in the nineteenth century, just as it would scarcely have been possible for him to assimilate the ethics of Confucianism and the civilisation of China fifteen centuries earlier, had he not simultaneously made this great linguistic acquisition.

But, as stated above, the Japanese had long been admiring and marvelling at the ideographic script, and had long been studying it solely for the sake of the literature to which it gave access, before they succeeded in using it to transcribe their own language. That they seem to have done during the sixth century, for towards its close they began to compile the first records of their country’s history,— began to reduce to writing such tales as had been handed down by tradition during the preceding twelve hundred years. A celebrated litterateur, statesman, and religionist, Prince Shotoku, and an equally celebrated Prime Minister and patron of Buddhism, Soga no Umako, essayed this maiden historiographical task. Their work did not survive, but there is no doubt that much of its contents found a place in the Kojiki and Nihongi of the eighth century, the oldest Japanese annals now extant.

Here an interesting question suggests itself. According to the most conservative estimate, China had possessed a written history for at least nine hundred years before the first Japanese envoys reached her shores. Does her history show that she knew, or thought she knew, anything about the Japanese before they introduced themselves to her notice by means of ambassadors. Of course it is quite plain that the two nations must have had some intercourse prior to the opening of official relation ; otherwise the Japanese envoys could not have been intelligible when they reached the Chinese Court. The question here, however, is not of Chinese history relating to a remote past. The question is, Did Prince Shotoku and Premier Umako find in Chinese history, when its pages were first opened for their inspection, any explanation of the Japanese nation’s origin? It has been related that the predecessors of Japan’s first mortal sovereign are declared by her historians to have been heavenly deities, and that the recorded incidents of their careers are fabulous and supernatural. Now the only islands spoken of by the early Chinese historians in terms suggesting Japan, are described as the abode of genii, the land of immortals possessing the elixir of life, a corpse-reviving drug, golden peaches weighing a pound each, timber of immense strength yet so buoyant that no super­imposed weight would sink it, rare trees, a mountain plant that could be plaited into mats and cushions, mulberries an inch long, and an environment of black sea, where the waves, not driven by any wind, rose to a height of a thousand feet. At the risk of challenging a cherished faith, it is difficult to avoid the hypothesis that from these fables the compilers of Japan’s first written history derived the idea of an “age of the gods” and of a divinely descended emperor. The unique qualification of Shotoku and Umako for their task of history-making was familiarity with Chinese ideographic script and with the literature of the Middle Kingdom. Could anything be more natural, more inevitable, than that they should search the pages of that literature for information about the early ages of their nation’s existence; or that they should place implicit reliance upon all the information thus acquired? A child, when it sits down to transcribe the head-lines of its first copy-book, does not think of questioning the logic or morality of the precepts inscribed there. Shotoku and Umako were in the position of children so far as Chinese historical records were concerned. From the annalists of the kingdom at whose civilised feet the whole semi-barbarous world sat, they learned that, prior to the year 700 b. c., islands lying in the region of Japan had been known as the habitation of genii and immortals, and with immortals and genii the Prince and the Prime Minister peopled the Japanese Islands.

Sinologues have shown that these primitive Japanese annals contain internal evidence of extensive reliance on Chinese sources. The posthumous names —that is to say, the historical names—given to the forty-two emperors from Jimmu to Mommu (697 AD), are all constructed on Chinese models; the name “Jimmu” itself is an exact imitation of the title chosen by the Toba Tartars for their remote ancestor; the war­like lady whose alleged invasion of Korea stands out so prominently in Japan’s ancient history, was evidently called after the Chinese Empress Wu, whose name and style corresponded with “Jingo.” Of course, it is not implied that every event recorded in Japan’s first written annals is to be counted of foreign suggestion. Domestic traditions, more or less trustworthy, are doubtless embodied in their pages, as well as reflections of Chinese prehistorical myths. But it does seem a reasonable conclusion that, among many borrowings made by Japan from China, the idea of her “Age of Gods” has to be included.

The sequence of events has been somewhat anticipated here for the sake of explaining the introduction of ideographic script into Japan, an event belonging to the second half of the sixth century. During the interval of nearly two hundred years which separated that consummation from the great wave of Chinese and Korean immigration that reached Japan in the beginning of the fourth century, marked progress had been made in many of the essentials of civilisation. The science of canal cutting, the art of fine embroidery, improved methods of sericulture and of silk-weaving were introduced by the immigrants, and the intelligent interest taken by the Government in encouraging progress may be inferred from the fact that it caused the new­comers to distribute themselves throughout the country so as to extend the range of their instruction. Some idea of the part played by these immigrants is suggested by the fact that, in the second half of the fifth century, when it was deemed advisable to re-assemble the foreign experts and organise them into separate departments, the families enrolled in the sericultural section alone aggregated nearly nineteen thousand members. By this time (450 AD) the policy of specially importing skilled aid direct from China had been inaugurated, and large bodies of female weavers and embroiderers were invited to settle in Japan. They taught the use of the loom so successfully that fine brocades for the palace were among the products of the time. At the same epoch the first two-storeyed house was constructed. It is strange that the Japanese, who through their embassies to the Han, the Tsin, and the Song Courts, must have acquired some knowledge of the splendours of the Chinese capitals as Loyang, Hsian, and Nanking, should have been content to live until the middle of the fifth century in log huts tied together with wild-vine ligatures. Such is the fact, however, and no explanation has been suggested. A little later, but still in the fifth century, the art of tanning skins was imparted by Korean immigrants and greatly developed by Chinese instruction.

In the domain of morals, the fourth century, as has been shown, brought to Japan a knowledge of the Chinese classics, and her historians claim that she then learnt the golden rule, as well as the Confucian precepts of refraining from excess, abhorring evil and curbing the passions. They also claim that she quickly began to practise these ethical canons, and they point to the career of the Emperor Nintoku (313—399) as an example of the new morality. But Nintoku, though he displayed some of the most picturesque virtues of a ruler, was an extreme type of libertine. He crowned a long list of excesses by marrying his step-mother’s daughter. Fifty years later, the Nero of Japanese history appeared in the person of Yuraku (457—459), who exiled an official in order to obtain possession of his wife, and perpetrated a wholesale slaughter of his own brothers, their children, and other members of the Imperial family. His successor (Seinei) carried out a similar massacre, and the Imperial line would have become extinct had not a child been secreted and reduced to the position of a serf in order to escape the quest of the official assassins. Buretsu, who reigned a few decades later (499-507), ranks even below Yuraku as a fierce and merciless despot, and at the same time the great families who had become depositories of administrative power behaved with the utmost arrogance, despising the laws, defying the sovereign’s authority, and perpetrating all kinds of excesses. In brief, if Confucianism, and its comparatively high code of moral precepts, obtained recognition in Japan during the fourth century, its civilising influence is not to be detected in the fifth, which may justly be called the blackest era in the history of Japanese imperialism.

Of course the moral condition of the inferior classes was not better than that of the Court. The selfish aims of religion became so paramount as to deprive it of all dignity. Among the tutelary deities added to the pantheon there were some whose attributes should have deprived them of any title to respect ; others whose veneration betrayed a scarcely credible depth of superstition. An extreme example was the worship of caterpillars, which, at that epoch, infested the orange trees and the ginger vines. The changes these insects underwent were considered typical of the poor growing rich, the old renewing their youth, and men built shrines and offered sacrifices to the gods thus manifested.

Society was disfigured by class dissensions. The great families which for over a thousand years had monopolised the principal offices of State as hereditary rights, were no longer represented by one or two households; they had grown to the dimensions of clans, and their members lived on the proceeds of extortion and oppression, secured by the collective protection of the clan against inconvenient results. Profit and prosperity seem to have been the paramount motives of the era. Servants were so indifferent to the dictates of loyalty that they turned their band against their liege lords, and wives had so little sense of family fidelity that they cheated their husbands. Superstition had invaded every domain of life. There existed a belief that exhibitions of the divine will could always be obtained by employing some process of divination or repeating some formula of incantation. Judicial decisions were based entirely on the result of ordeal; dreams were regarded as revelations for guidance at important crises, and the necessity of avoiding pollution dictated grotesque rules of conduct. Thus the mere fact of encountering a stranger, or of coming into contact with any of his belongings, was held to cause contamination that demanded a service of purification, and a traveller was consequently required to carry a bell which he rang as he moved along, after the manner of a leper in mediaeval Europe. If he boiled his food by the roadside, he exposed himself to the lawful displeasure of the nearest household, and if he borrowed cooking utensils from anyone in the neighbourhood, they had to be solemnly purified before being returned to their owner or allowed to touch any other object. Evidently inns could not exist under such circumstances, and the difficulties of travel were enormous, as everything needed for the journey must be carried by the wayfarer. A woman had to be moved into a segregated hut at the time of parturition, and a ceremony of purification, a species of “churching,” was necessary before she might return to her place in society. To have been present at a sudden death was another source of contamination, rendering a man responsible to the nearest house or hamlet, and involving elaborate rites of cleansing. It resulted that the companions of a man who fell sick by the roadside or was drowned, used generally to fly precipitately without waiting to succour or inter him, the promptings of charity and of fellowship being thus subserved to the dictates of unreasoning superstition. In short, the nation offered a striking example of well-developed material civilisation side by side with most rudimentary morality. A religion was wanted. The Shinto cult, after long and uninterrupted trial, a trial lasting for more than eleven hundred years, had proved itself essentially deficient in the guiding influences of a creed. Its want of any code of sanctions and vetoes, its indifference to a future state, its negative rules of conduct, its exaltation of deities whose powers were exercised for temporal purposes only—all these attributes deprived it of elevating effect upon the masses. Confucianism was powerless to correct these evils. It appealed to the intellect and left sentiment untouched. A religion was wanted, and it came in the form of Buddhism.

 

JAPAN IN THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY

 

THE greatest event in the career of ancient Japan was the advent of Buddhism in the year 552 AD. It is usually said that the Indian creed came officially, a copy of its scriptures and an image of Buddha having been sent to the Yamato Court by the Government of one of the Korean Kingdoms. In a sense this statement is correct, for without that ambassadorial introduction the new religion would probably have long remained a comparative stranger to the mass of the Japanese nation. But it is a fact that the doctrine had been preached in Japan by enterprising missionaries for many years before the arrival of the Korean envoy. Unsuccessfully preached, however. Buddhism owes much to its accessories,— to its massive and magnificent temples, its majestic images, its gorgeous paraphernalia, the rich vestments of its priests, and the picturesque solemnity of its services. These elements must have been absent failing the Government’s sanction and support. Besides, from the first chapter of Japanese history to the last, there is no instance of a radical reform effected, or a novel system inaugurated, without official guidance. The people’s part has always been to follow; the Government’s to lead. It may therefore be said with truth that Buddhism was planted officially in Japan, though a few unfruitful seeds had been previously scattered by private enterprise.

How came it that the Government showed a liberal attitude towards an alien faith ? Was there genuine conviction of the excellence of the Buddhist doctrine, or did some other cause operate?

Both questions may be answered in the affirmative with reservations. The first Japanese Emperor (Kimmei) who listened to the new gospel seems to have found it mysterious, lofty, and attractive. Its doctrine of metempsychosis, its law of causation, its theory of a future of supreme rest, charmed and startled him. But the argument most potent in winning his support was the ambassador’s assurance that Buddhism had become the faith of civilised Asia. Japan of the sixth century was just as ambitious to stand on the highest level of civilisation as Japan of the nineteenth. She turned to Buddhism for the sake of the converts it had already won rather than for the sake of her own conversion. At first, the attitude of the Court was tentative. When the Sovereign summoned a Council of Ministers, as was customary in those days of patriarchal administration, only the premier —Soga no Iname— espoused the cause of the imported creed. The rest declared that its adoption would insult the hundred and eighty deities, celestial and terrestrial, who already had the country under their tutelage. The Emperor compromised by entrusting the image and the sutras (Buddhist canons) to Iname and postponing the final question of adoption or rejection.

There has never been any attempt to explain why the Soga family embraced Buddhism with such zealous constancy. Iname and his son and successor, Umako, gave to it equally steadfast support in the face of fierce opposition. Twice the Soga mansion was destroyed by the people, who believed that the conversion of the Prime Minister’s house into a temple for strange deities had brought pestilence upon the land. Other excesses were committed. A nun was stripped and publicly whipped, and the image of the Buddha was thrown into a river. But these episodes did not shake the faith of the Soga family.

Soon, too, a powerful coadjutor appeared in the person of an imperial prince, Shotoku, whose figure justly occupies the frontispiece in the first chapter of Japan’s moral and intellectual progress. Chiefly through his ardent patronage and extraordinary fervour of piety Buddhism became the creed of the Court and of the nobility.

Military strength also contributed aid. A statement frequently made with all the assurance of historical conviction is that Buddhism is essentially a peaceful and adaptive creed; that it never demolishes other faiths but rather assimilates them. That is certainly true of Buddhism in the abstract, but its establishment in Japan was not unaccompanied by a sanguinary exercise of armed force. The question of invoking Buddha’s succour on behalf of a sick emperor led to a fierce conflict between the three great political parties of the era, with the result that the opponents of the foreign faith suffered defeat. They had been led by one of the ancient princely families, which occupied a high place in the official hierarchy, and now the chiefs of the family were put to death, its estates confiscated to endow the first great Buddhist temple, and its members condemned to serve as slaves in the new place of worship.

Another factor that made for the spread of Buddhism was the zeal, almost fanatical, of the empress Suiko, who reigned during the epoch of Prince Shotoku’s reforms. She issued edicts enjoining the adoption of the faith; ordered that all the princes of the blood and the Ministers of State should have images of Buddha in their possession, and conferred rank and rewards on sculptors of idols. Indeed, although the imperial ladies of Japan acted a noble role in her early history, their careers illustrate the truism that the emotional element of female character is a dangerous factor in state administration. During the period of one hundred and sixty-eight years from 591 to 759, fourteen sovereigns reigned, and five of them were females. A sixth lady practically ruled though she did not actually reign. The sway of these Empresses aggregated seventy-one years, and every one of them carried her religious fervour almost to the point of hysteria. They were certainly instrumental in raising Buddhism to the place of eminence and influence it occupied so soon after its arrival in Japan, and it is not surprising to find that, in the seventy-second year after the Korean ambassador’s coming, the country had forty-six temples, eight hundred and sixteen priests, and sixty nuns. Neither is it surprising to find that, in obedience to Shinto precedents, Buddhism was drawn into the field of politics, and Buddhist priests were admitted to a share in the administration. For the extreme practice of these methods also a female was responsible. The Empress-dowager Koken (749-758) organized a religious government distinct from the secular, issued orders for the spiritual regulation of men’s lives, assisted a monk (Dokyo) to dethrone the Emperor, and, if she did not sanction, certainly failed to check, the crimes he perpetrated to prepare his own path to the throne.

Not in the history of any other country can there be found a parallel for the large support that sovereign after sovereign of Japan extended to Buddhism in the seventh and eighth centuries. Innumerable temples were built at enormous expense and endowed with great revenues. Quantities of the precious metals were devoted to the casting of idols and the decoration of edifices to hold them. Arbitrary edicts were issued thrusting the faith upon the people by force of official authority. It even became customary to surrender the highest posts and honours in the empire for the sake of taking the tonsure and leading a recluse life. Striking testimony to the religious fervour of the Court survives in the magnificent assemblage of temples in and about Nara. Almost the whole of these were built and furnished during the seventy-five years (710—785) of the Court’s residence at that place, and when it is remembered that the immense outlay required for such works had to be defrayed by taxing a nation of only four and a half millions of people, it is apparent that religious zeal completely outran financial discretion. It is a co­stant assertion of foreign critics that the religious instinct is absent from the character of the Japanese, but their history cannot be reconciled with such a theory.

Japanese sovereignty, as has been shown already, was based upon Shinto. The sovereigns—“sons of heaven” (Tenshi) as they were, and are still, called— traced their descent to the deities of that creed, and the essence of their administrative title was that they interceded with the gods for the people they governed. All their principal traditions and temporal interests should have dictated the rejection of a creed which preached the supremacy of a new god and took no cognisance of their divine descent. It would have been in accord with the nature of political evolution that the people should have espoused the doctrines of a faith which absolved them from allegiance to their rulers, but how can the fact be explained that the rulers themselves patronised a creed which annulled their sovereign title? During the first century and a half after the introduction of Buddhism, that question does not seem to have troubled anyone in ancient Japan. If it was sometimes urged that the tutelary deities might be offended by the worship of a strange god, all manifestations of their umbrage were associated with the people’s welfare, not with the sovereign’s titles, and no one seems to have thought it necessary to assert the divinity of the Mikado against the alien theocracy. When the Prime Minister, Soga no Umako, caused the Emperor Sujun to be assassinated (592 AD), Prince Shotoku justified the act by explaining that the sovereign’s death had been in accordance with the Buddhist doctrine which condemns a man to suffer in this life for sins committed in a previous state of existence. Thus, only forty years after the introduction of Buddhism, the lives of the “sons of heaven” were declared subject to its decrees. A century later, one of the Imperial Princes was ordered to commit suicide because he had struck a mendicant and clamorous priest. Only from the sufferings they inflicted on the people was the displeasure of the Shinto deities inferred. Twice their hostility to Buddhism was supposed to have been displayed by visitations of pestilence, and at last, during the reign of Shomu (724—748), when the enormous expenditure incurred on account of temple building and idol casting had so impoverished the people as to produce a famine with its usual sequel, pestilence, the Shinto disciples once again insisted that these calamities were the deities’ protest against the strange faith. It was then that the great Buddhist priest Giyogi saved the situation by a singularly clever theory. He taught that the Sun Goddess, the chief of the Shinto deities, had been merely an incarnation of the Buddha, and that the same was true of all the members of the Shinto pantheon. The two creeds were thus reconciled, and as evidence of their union the Emperor caused a colossal idol to be set up, the celebrated Daibutsu (great Buddha) of Nara; the copper used for the body of the image representing the Shinto faith, the gold that covered it typifying Buddhism. This amalgamation was for the sake of the people’s safety; it had nothing to do with rehabilitating the divine title of the sovereign. In the face of these facts, is it possible to conceive that any such title ranked as a vital tenet of the nation’s political creed ? Must not the theory of heavenly descent be placed rather in the category of traditions which had not yet begun to assume the paramount importance subsequently assigned to them?

Thus, almost from the very outset, Buddhism received the strenuous support of the Imperial Court and of the nobles alike. Never did any alien faith find warmer welcome in a foreign country. It had virtually nothing to contend against except the corruption and excesses of its own ministers. The lavish patronage extended to them disturbed their moral balance. From luxury and self-indulgence they passed to chicanery and political intrigue, until, in the middle of the eighth century, one of them actively conspired to obtain the throne for himself. Throughout the whole course of its history in Japan, alike in ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times, Buddhism has been discredited by the conduct of its priests. But it has also numbered among its propagandists many men of transcendent ability, lofty aims, and fanatical courage. It found its way to the heart of the Japanese nation less for the sake of its doctrines than for the sake of the civilisation it introduced. Its priests became the people’s teachers. They constituted a bridge across which there passed perpetually from the Asiatic continent to Japan a stream of new knowledge. To enumerate the improvements and innovations that came to her by that route would be to tell almost the whole story of her progress.

The seventh and eighth centuries are among the most memorable epochs of Japan’s history. They witnessed her passage from a comparatively rude condition to a state of civilisation as high as that attained by any country in the world, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of modern Occidental nations, and they witnessed also a political revolution the exact prototype of that which has made her remarkable in modern times.

Prince Shotoku stands at the head of the movement of progress. Not only did he secure the adoption of Buddhism, but he also organised an administrative system embodying the first germs of practical imperialism, drafted a constitution and compiled the earliest historical essays. His constitution is full of interest as affording a clear outline of the ethical ideals of the time and of the polity that this singularly gifted man desired to establish : —

1. Concord and harmony are priceless ; obedience to established principles is the fundamental duty of man. But in our country each section of the people has its own views and few possess the light. Disloyalty to Sovereign and parent, disputes among neighbours, are the results. That the upper classes should be at unity among themselves and intimate with the lower, and that all matters in dispute should be submitted to arbitration — that is the way to place society on a basis of strict justice.

3. Imperial edicts must be respected. The Sovereign is to be regarded as the heaven, his subjects as the earth. The heaven hangs above, the earth sustains it beneath; the four seasons follow in ordered succession, and all the influences of nature operate satisfactorily. Should the earth be placed above the heaven, ruin would at once ensue for the universe. So the Sovereign directs, the subject conforms. The Sovereign shows the way, the subject follows it. Indifference to the Imperial edicts signifies national ruin.

4. Courtesy must be the rule of conduct for all the Ministers and officials of the Government. Wise administration of national affairs has its roots in the observance of etiquette. Without etiquette on the part of the superior, it is impossible to govern the inferior, and if inferiors ignore etiquette, they will certainly be betrayed into offences. Social order and due distinctions between the classes can only be preserved by strict conformity with etiquette.

5. To punish the evil and reward the good is humanity’s best law. A good deed should never be left unrecompensed or an evil unrebuked. Sycophancy and dishonesty are the most potent factors for subverting the State and destroying the people. Flatterers are never wanting to recount the faults of inferiors to superiors and depict the latter’s errors to the former. To such men we can never look for loyalty to the Sovereign or sympathy with their fellow-subjects. They are the chief elements of national disturbance.

9. To be just one must have faith. Every affair demands a certain measure of faith on the part of those that deal with it. Every question, whatever its nature ’ or tendency, requires for its settlement an exercise of faith and authority. Mutual confidence among officials renders all things possible of accomplishment; want of confidence between Sovereign and subject makes failure inevitable.

10. Anger is to be curbed, wrath cast away. The faults of another should not rouse our resentment. Every man’s tendency is to follow the bent of his own inclination. If one is right, the other is wrong. But neither is perfect. Both are victims of passion and prejudice, and no one has exclusive competence to distinguish the evil from the good. Sagacity is balanced by silliness; small qualities are combined with great, so that neither is salient in the total, even as a sphere is without angles. To chide a fault does not certainly prevent its repetition, nor can the censor himself be secure against error. The sure road to accomplishment is that trodden by the people in combination.

14. Those in authority should never harbour hatred or jealousy of one another. Hate begets hate, and jealousy is without discernment. A wise man may be found once in five hundred years; a true sage, hardly once in a thousand. Yet without sages no country can be governed peacefully.

15. The imperative duty of man in his capacity of subject is to sacrifice his private interest to the public good. Egoism forbids cooperation, and without co­operation there cannot be any great achievement.

Prince Shotoku spoke with the wisdom inspired by Buddhism and Confucianism. But the principles of constitutional monarchism that he enunciated so plainly were suggested by the conditions of his era. The patriarchal families which filled the principal offices of State by hereditary right, had grown into great clans. They grasped the reality of administrative power, leaving its shadow only to the sovereign, who, cut off, on the one hand, from all direct communication with the people, was condemned, on the other, to see his authority abused for purposes of oppression and extortion. The state of the lower orders was pitiable. They were little better than serfs. The products of their toil went almost entirely to defray the extravagant outlays of the patrician clans, and if sometimes they rose in abortive revolt, their more general resource was to fly to mountain districts beyond the reach of the tax-collector. Permanent escape was impossible, however. They were sought out, and forcibly compelled to return to their life of unremunerated labour. Prince Shotoku saw that the remedy for these wretched conditions, which threatened even the stability of the throne, was to crush the power of the patrician class and bring the nation under the direct sway of emperors governing on constitutional principles. He inculcated the spirit of that most enlightened reform, but did not live to see its practical consummation.

Within a quarter of a century after his death, however, the last of the great office-owning clans was annihilated, and for the first time in Japanese history the Emperor became a real ruler. This happened in the middle of the seventh century. History calls it the “Taikwa Reform.” A long series of changes were crowned by an edict unprecedented in Japan. The sovereign addressed himself direct to the people, and employed language evidently an echo of Prince Shotoku’s constitution. Its gist was that since the faculty of self-government must be acquired before attempting to govern others, and since obedience could be obtained only by one worthy to command, the sovereign pledged himself to behave in strict conformity with the principles of imperialism, relying on the aid of heaven and the support of the people. Tenchi, who issued this edict, may be called the father of constitutional monarchism in Japan. His fourth successor, Mommu (697—708), inaugurated his reign by a similar rescript, promising, with the help of his ancestors and the gods, to promote the welfare of his people. The interval of forty years separating Tenchi’s accession and Mommu’s death (668—708) may be regarded as the only period, in all the long history of Japan prior to modern times, when the sovereign was not divided from the people by nobles who usurped his authority. Mommu endeavoured to invest the issue of his edict with great pomp and ceremony, but of an essentially democratic character. The princes of the blood, the great nobles, and the chief officials were all required to attend, and the people were invited en masse. Then a crier read the edict aloud in four parts, and at the end of each part all present, high and low alike, were invited to signify their assent.

This remarkable chapter of Japanese history may be broadly described as a political revolution resulting from the introduction of Chinese civilisation through the medium of Buddhist priests, just as a similar revolution in recent times resulted from the introduction of Western civilisation through the medium of gunboats. The splendour and prestige of the Tang dynasty, which in the beginning of the seventh century had wrested the sceptre of China from the hands of the scarcely less magnificent Sui sovereigns, were reflected in Japan. Tenchi and Mommu modelled their administration on the lines indicated in the “Golden Mirror” of Tatsong, and the grand capital established at Nara in the beginning of the eighth century was an imitation of the Tang metropolis at Hsian.

Another feature common to the records of seventh-century and nineteenth-century progress was extraordinary speed of achievement. Just as forty years of contact with Occidental civilisation sufficed to metamorphose Japan in modern time, so a cycle of Chinese influence revolutionised her in ancient days.

In the era immediately prior to the latter change, nothing was more marked than the wide interval separating the patrician and the plebeian sections of the nation. The lower orders, as has been already stated, were reduced to a state of virtual slavery, and the upper obeyed only the law of their own interests and passions. A patrician held himself defiled by mere contact with a plebeian, and marriages between them were not tolerated. Great importance attached to well-established pedigrees. During the lapse of ages and in the absence of any written records, few genealogical trees could be traced clearly through all their ramifications, and the danger of admitting some strain of vulgar blood into a family imparted special advantage to marriages between children of the same father by different mothers. Confucianism proved entirely powerless to check that abuse, or to provide any general corrective for the relations between the sexes, which were frequently subserved to degrading influences. Wives had now ceased to live apart from their husbands, but concubinage was largely practised, and marital and extra-marital relations alike were severed on the slightest pretext. A woman, however, did not recover her full freedom when abandoned by her husband or protector. She was still supposed to owe some measure of fidelity to him, and if she contracted a second alliance, her new partner often found himself exposed to extortionate demands from her former mate. Another evil practice was that powerful families trafficked in the honour of an alliance with them, first dictating a marriage, and then making it a pretext for levying large contributions on the bride’s parents. Loss of affection or inclination was deemed a sufficient reason for divorcing a woman, and sometimes mere suspicion of a wife’s infidelity induced a husband to appeal to the law for an investigation, which meant that the unfortunate woman had to undergo the ordeal of thrusting her hand into boiling water or grasping a red-hot axe. Many women conceived such a dread of the married state that they deliberately chose the life of domestic servants, thus incurring the plebeian stigma and becoming ineligible for patrician attentions in any form. Even the terrible custom of junshi, or dying to accompany a deceased chieftain, had lost something of the discredit attached to it by the ordinance of the enlightened emperor Suinin five centuries previously. Faithful vassals still took their own lives in order to be buried near their lord’s tomb, and wives and concubines followed their example, voluntarily or on compulsion. Horses also were killed to serve their masters beyond the grave, and valuables of all kinds were interred in sepulchres, as had been the habit from time immemorial. When duty to the dead was not pushed to these extremes, the survivors considered it necessary at least to cut their hair or to mutilate their bodies.

All these abuses were strictly interdicted in the reformation foreshadowed by Prince Shotoku’s adoption of Buddhism and Confucianism, and embodied in a series of legislative measures during the period 645 to 708. The nation suddenly sprang to a greatly higher level of civilisation. Notably the style of dwellings was altered. Architects, turners, tile-makers, decorative artists, and sculptors coming from China and Korea, magnificent temples were built, enshrining images of high artistic beauty, and adorned with paintings and carvings which would be worthy ’ objects of admiration in any age of aesthetic development. Rich nobles, at the same time, began to construct for themselves mansions which already showed several features destined to permanently distinguish Japanese residences. The processes of manufacturing paper and ink, of weaving carpets with wool or the hair of animals, of concocting dyes, of preparing whetstones, of therapeutics, of compiling a calendar, and of ship­building on greatly improved lines,—all these, learned from China, were skilfully applied.

It may be noted incidentally that the growth of wealth resulting from this influx of material civilisation gave additional emphasis to the superiority of the Chinese, for they had to be placed at the head of the various bureaux of the Treasury, there being no Japanese competent to discharge such duties. Commerce also felt the expansive impulse. Men travelled from province to province selling goods; foreign vessels frequented the ports; a collector of customs and a superintendent of trade were appointed, and an officially recognised system of weights and measures was introduced.

Not less marked were the changes of costume. Instead of dressing the hair so as to form a loop hanging over each ear, men tied it in a queue on the top of the head. This novel fashion was due to the use of hats as insignia of official ranks. There were twelve varieties of hat corresponding to as many grades, and each was tied on with  cord of a distinct colour, just as the colour of a cap-button now indicates official quality in China. Wigs had hitherto been largely used, but they were now abandoned except on occasions of special ceremonial, when they were fastened to the hat. The introduction of the queue seems to have been responsible for the first display of foppery on the part of men. It was ornamented with gold in the case of the highest officials, with tiger’s hair by men of lesser rank, and with cock’s feathers in a still lower grade.

The abolition of hereditary offices necessitated a thorough reorganisation of the administrative system, and it is a remarkable fact that the remodelled form remained permanent through all ages and still exists to a recognisable degree. For managing affairs in the provinces—where the great families had gradually become autocratic, not only levying imposts at will, but also appropriating to their own uses the taxes that should have gone to the Court—local governors and district headmen were appointed, and at the head of the central government was placed a department of shrines, immediately under it being a cabinet with a bureau of councillors, two secretariats, and finally eight departments of State. A system of civil-service examination was also inaugurated. Youths desiring administrative posts had to enter one of the educational institutions then founded, and subsequently to undergo examination, though this routine might be departed from in the case of men whose fathers had deserved conspicuously well of the country. The name of a man’s office now ceasing to do duty as a patronymic, the hats mentioned above became the only means of recognising rank, so that their importance grew greater, and their number gradually increased, first to thirteen and after­wards to forty-eight. But at that point the system ceased to be practicable, and certificates of grade were substituted, a method still pursued.

Great pains were taken to effect a distinct classification of the people, the general divisions adopted being “divine” (Shin-bet suy i.e. descended direct from the deities); “imperial” (Kwo-betsu), and “alien” (Ham-betsu), distinctions which will be more fully explained in a future chapter. A still broader division was that of ryo-min (noble) and sem-min (ignoble), the former including the Kswo-betsu and the Shin- betsu; the latter the Ham-betsu only. The constant tendency was to accentuate these distinctions, though it sometimes happened that men reduced to a state of indigence sold their family name and descended to the position of servants. Clandestine intercourse between patrician and plebeian lovers was also not infrequent, but the law took care that the offspring of such unions should seldom obtain admission to the higher rank. It is a curious fact that the legislators of the time never conceived the possibility of a patrician lady’s forming a liaison with a plebeian: they provided for the contingency of a man’s succumbing to the charms of a plebeian beauty, but they made no allowance for any such weakness on the part of a nobly born woman.

Concerning the terms “noble” and “ignoble,” it is not to be supposed that the former originally included only such persons as would be called “gentlemen” and “ladies” in Europe or America. In addition to the whole of the official and military elements, the ryo-min comprised many bread-winners who, under the more exclusive system of subsequent eras, were relegated to a lower social status. The most comprehensive definition is that only those pledged to some form of servitude stood in the ranks of the sem-min, all others being ryo-min. There were five classes of sem-min, the lowest being private servants, and the highest, public employes. The distinction of “military man” (samurai or shyzoku) and “commoner ” or “civilian” (hei-min) did not exist at the time now under consideration. Indeed, at this point another resemblance is found between the “Restoration” in the seventh century and that in the nineteenth century; for just as the modern government signalized the fall of feudalism and the transfer of administrative power to the sovereign by abolishing the samurai’s privilege of wearing two swords, and thus, in effect, abolishing the samurai himself, so when the Taikwa Government put an end to the system of hereditary offices in 645, it collected all the implements of war from their owners and stored this great assemblage of swords, bows, and arrows in magazines. The bearer of arms thus lost whatever prestige had previously attached to that distinction. But such a state of affairs could not be permanent in a country where the control of the indigenous inhabitants still continued to demand constant exhibitions of force. Before forty years had elapsed, another emperor (Temmu) organised a definite military establishment and inaugurated a course of training in warlike exercises; and shortly afterwards, an empress (Jito) introduced conscription. At first only twenty-five per cent of the youths throughout the realm were required to serve, but at the beginning of the eighth century the number was increased to one in every three. All the ryo-min appear to have been held liable for this service. Thus a man engaged one day in hawking merchandise or dyeing cloth might find himself, the next, bearing arms and receiving military training. A regiment was organised for every five rural divisions, and from among these regiments certain sections were selected to guard the imperial palace, while others were told off for coast duty, three years being the term of service in either case. Had this system remained in operation, there would have been no such thing as a feudal Japan, nor would the profession of arms have become the special right of a limited class. But the course of events may be anticipated so far as to say that, before the lapse of a century after the introduction of conscription, military duties became hereditary, and Japanese society assumed a structure which continued without radical change until the revolution of recent times.

It will readily be conjectured that, turning to China for models, Japan did not fail to make the family system a fundamental feature of her reforms. A family might consist of a single household, or it might comprise several house­holds; but every family, whatever its dimensions, had to have one recognised head, to whom the subordinate households were related by blood. Thus, since the subordinate households generally included wives, concubines, children, and servants, the head of the whole family sometimes represented a clan of a hundred or a hundred and fifty persons. This position of headship could not be occupied by any save a legitimate scion, but a female was eligible, provided she had attained the age of twenty, and was not actually a widow, a wife, or a concubine. Remembering the marked laxity of the marital relation prior to the era of this new system, one is astonished at the courage with which such sweeping changes were effected, and at the complacence with which they were received. For whereas previously men had been free to adopt any rule of succession they pleased, and the legitimacy of an heir had scarcely been considered, it now became necessary that the successor to the headship of a family should be legitimate before everything: adoption being declared preferable to the choice of a bastard. But the higher the social grade of the family, the greater the latitude in this respect. It does not appear that the eligibility of an im­perial concubine’s son was ever questioned, and in the case of a noble belonging to one of the three first grades, a child born out of wedlock might succeed, failing legitimate sons or grand­sons. Adoption, too, must be exercised within the limits of blood relatives, any departure from that rule being criminal.

Five families living in the same district were combined into an administrative group, which elected its chief and delegated to him a general duty of supervision. The group (h0) was responsible for the payment of its members’ taxes. In those days it was not an uncommon incident for a family to abscond en masse, in the hope of avoiding extortionate imposts. The group had to trace the absconders, and discharge their fiscal liabilities during their absence.

The marriageable age for youths was fifteen, and for maidens thirteen, but the consent of parents or grandparents had to be obtained. Already the preliminaries of wedlock were entrusted to a go-between, and the degree of order introduced into these previously disorderly connections is shown by the fact that, so soon as the concurrence of the two families had been secured by the go-between, a “marriage director” was duly appointed, his function being to secure conformity with every legal requirement. A girl of the upper classes had to consult the views of an extensive circle of relatives—parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, and parents-in-law—but this rule was relaxed in proportion as the social grade descended. Etiquette forbade that a wedding should be celebrated during the illness or imprisonment of a parent or a grandparent, and an engagement became invalid when the nuptial ceremony had been capriciously deferred for three months by the man; or when he had absconded and remained absent for a month; or when, having fallen into pecuniary distress in another part of the realm, be failed to return within a year; or when he had committed a serious crime.

Concerning divorce, a theme much discussed by critics of Japan’s ethical systems, the family of a wife were entitled to demand her freedom in two cases: first, in the event of deliberate desertion, extending to three years when there had been offspring of the marriage, and two years where the union had been childless; secondly, in the event of a husband’s incurring pecuniary ruin in a distant place, and failing to come home for five years if he had left a child, and for three if there was no child. But against this exceedingly brief list of a wife’s rights, there is a long catalogue of the husband’s. He was entitled to divorce his wife if she did not bear him a male child, if her habits were licentious, if she failed in her duty to her parents-in-law, if she indulged a love of gossip, if she committed a theft, if she betrayed a jealous disposition, or if she suffered from an obnoxious disease. The more important a man’s social position, the greater his obligation to secure the assent of his own parents and his wife’s before putting her away, but in the lowest classes scarcely any impediment offered to separation. Sentiment, however, interposed a curious veto. If a wife had contributed money for the funeral of a parent-in-law, or if a husband occupying a low social grade at the time of his marriage had subsequently risen to a higher, or if a wife had no home to which she could retire after separation, then divorce was held to be inadmissible. The one redeeming feature of the wife’s position was that all the property, whether in money, chattels, or serfs, brought with her at the time of her marriage, had to be returned on divorce. Her enforced subservience to her parents-in-law, and her obligation to patiently endure the presence of one or more concubines, if her husband so willed it, were often cruel burdens in her daily life. A concubine acquired by this new legislation the status of a second-grade relative, but the system was purely morganatic, the law peremptorily refusing to recognise two wives.

The edicts of the era embodied an excellent code of ethics. Such virtues were inculcated as industry, integrity, frugality, simplicity of funeral rites, diligent transaction of business even during periods of mourning, and the exclusion of mercenary motives from marriage contracts. Further, the new democratic principle extracted from the Confucian cult—the principle that the throne must be based on the good will of the nation at large, and that full consideration should be given to the views of the lower orders—found practical expression in the erection of numerous petition­boxes wherein men were invited to deposit a statement of grievances demanding redress, and in the hanging of bells which were to be rung when it was desired to bring any trouble of a pressing nature to official notice. Codes of laws were also framed.

An interesting fact shown by this legislation is that the economical principle of a common title to the use of land received recognition, practically at all events, in ancient Japan. Looking as far back as history throws its light, it is seen that the Crown’s right of eminent domain was an established doctrine, but that, during the era of patriarchal government, large tracts of land came into the possession of the great governing families, and remained their property until the fall and virtual extermination of the last of these families in the early part of the seventh century. The Emperor then becoming, for a time, the repository of complete authority, resumed possession of all private estates, and exact rules for the distribution and control of land were embodied in the new codes. The basis of the system then adopted was the general principle that every unit of the nation had a natural title to the usufruct of the soil. It was therefore enacted that to all persons, from the age of five upwards, “sustenance land” should be granted in the proportion of two-thirds of an acre to each male and one-third to each female. These grants were for life, and the grantee was entitled to let the land for one year at a time, provided that, at his death, it reverted to the Crown.

Redistribution every sixth year was among the provisions of the code, but the difficulties of carrying out the rule soon proved deterrent. Lands were also conferred in consideration of rank. Imperial princes of the first class received two hundred acres; those of the second class, one hundred and fifty acres; those of the third, one hundred and twenty-five acres, and those of the fourth, one hundred acres. In the case of the ten grades into which officialdom had now been divided, the grants ranged from twenty to two hundred acres, and females belonging to any of these grades received two-thirds of a male’s share, the consideration shown to them being thus twice as great as that extended to women of inferior position. Finally, land was given in lieu of official emoluments; the Prime Minister’ salary being the produce of one hundred acres; that of the second and third Ministers, seventy five acres each; and that of other officials ranging from two to fifty acres. Land, indeed, may be said to have constituted the money of the epoch. It was given in lieu not only of salaries but also of allowances,—even post-stations along the high-roads being endowed with estates whose produce they were expected to employ in providing horses, couriers, and baggage-carriers for Government use. It need scarcely be added that meritorious public services were rewarded with estates, granted sometimes in perpetuity, sometimes for two generations only.

A special arrangement existed for encouraging sericulture and the lacquer industry. Tracts of land were assigned to families for planting mulberry or lacquer trees in fixed quantity, and such land might be leased for any term of years or sold with official permission; neither did it revert to the Crown unless the family became extinct. But any land left uncultivated for three years was regarded as forfeited, and had to be resumed or re-allotted.

The exact amount of taxes levied at various eras in Japan has always been difficult to ascertain, for not only did the method of assessment vary in different provinces, but also the legal limits were seldom the real limits. In the period now under consideration, the records show that, for purposes of local administration, a tax in kind, representing five per cent of the gross produce of the land, was levied, and that the expenses of the central government were defrayed by means of miscellaneous imposts on all the principal staples of production, as silk, fish, cloth, etc., and by a corvee of thirty days’ work annually from every male between the ages of twenty-one and sixty-six years, and fifteen days from every minor. An adult’s labour might be commuted by paying three pieces of hempen cloth. These labourers were not hardly treated in the comparatively rare cases where they chose to work rather than to commute. During the dog days, they were entitled to rest from noon to four p. m., and night work was not required. Rations were provided, and in wet weather they were not expected to work out of doors. If a man fell ill while on corvee, due provision was made for his maintenance, and in case of death he was coffined at official expense, and the body was either given up to any relative or friend on application, or cremated and the ashes buried by the wayside. There were, of course, various exemptions from forced labour. Females or persons suffering from illness or deformity were invariably excused, and holders of official rank obtained exemption, not only for themselves, but also for their fathers and sons, and even for their grandfathers, brothers, and grandsons, in the highest degree.

These imposts were evidently onerous. The corvée alone, representing one-twelfth of a man’s yearly labour, would have been a heavy burden without the addition of five per cent of the gross produce of the land and a contribution of general staples equal, probably, to at least two or three per cent more. Mercy was shown, however, in the event of defective crops. The remissions on that account were regulated by a schedule: the land tax being remitted if the shortage amounted to fifty per cent of the average yield, the miscellaneous taxes if the shortage reached seventy per cent, and the corvée when there was a loss of eighty per cent. The five-families group spoken of above was responsible for the cultivation of all maintenance estates. Thus, if a man fled from the pursuit of justice or the burden of his taxes, the group to which he belonged took care of the land for three years and discharged his fiscal liabilities, at the end of which time the land reverted to the State in the event of his continued absence.

The Codes contained provisions with regard to inheritance also. The system was regulated by strict rules of descent, and not only land, but also serfs, houses, and personal property were included in the estate. The eldest son, his mother, and his step-mother received two parts each; the younger sons, one part each; the daughters and the concubines, half of a part each. Here, too, the general principle applicable to woman’s rights was observed, namely, that the female ranked as a minor, or as one half of an adult male. A mother’s rights, however, did not descend to her daughter. Thus, whereas a son’s children of either sex represented their father in the division of the family estate, a daughter’s children did not represent their mother. On the other hand, property belonging to a woman at the time of her marriage was not necessarily absorbed into the family estate of her husband. Neither did these rules apply to land granted for public services. Such land had to be divided equally among all the children, male and female alike. Other rules existed, but enough has been said to show the general character of the law of inheritance.

Wills were not considered in the code; they became almost superfluous instruments in the face of such precise legal provisions. It does not follow, however, that estates were invariably divided in the manner here indicated, or that the law interdicted all liberty of action in such matters. If the members of a family agreed to live together and have everything in common, they were exempted from the obligation of observing the rules of inheritance; and, further, a parent was entitled, during his lifetime, to distribute the property among his children in accordance with the dictates of his own judgment. He also possessed the power of expelling a profligate son from the paternal home, and such expulsion carried with it disinheritance.

The “serfs,” to whom several allusions have already been made, had certain exceptional rights. A public serf was entitled to receive from the State as much maintenance land as a free-man, and a private serf received one-third of that amount. But a difference existed in the nature of the tenure ; for whereas a free-man might let or even sell his land with official consent, a serf was obliged to cultivate it himself. On the other hand, the serf paid no taxes and enjoyed exemption from forced labour.

The Government exercised no scrutiny into any transactions of sale unless lands or serfs were concerned. But it endeavoured to control transactions of borrowing. Priests and nuns were forbidden to lend money or goods on interest; officials to borrow from any one in their own department; and imperial relatives, of or above the fifth grade, to make loans in the districts of their residence. Interest was to be collected every 60 days, the rate not exceeding one-eighth of the principal; but after 480 days had elapsed, the interest might become cent per cent, though no accumulation exceeding twice the principal was recognised. Loans of rice and millet must not run for more than a year. If, at the expiration of that time, the debtor could not discharge his liability, his property might be sold, and its proceeds supplemented by his own serfdom, if necessary. Official attempts were often made to prevent the mortgaging of land, but permanent success never attended them.

The people’s chief occupation in those days was agriculture. It cannot be said, however, that the choice of farming pursuits was specially suggested by the nation’s aptitudes. The genius of the Japanese seems to find most congenial exercise in all manufacturing efforts that demand skill of hand and delicacy of artistic taste. But as yet no considerable demand for the products of such skill had arisen, whereas the cultivation or reclamation of lands gradually freed from the occupation of the stubborn autochthons, being always an urgent necessity, was correspondingly encouraged by the Government. Rice was the chief staple of production, and the methods of the rice-farmer differed little from those now in vogue, though not until the middle of the ninth century did the practice commence of hanging the sheaves on wooden frames to dry. Hitherto they had been strewn on the ground during the process, the fate of the grain thus depending wholly on the weather’s caprices. Rice is not a robust cereal. Deficiency of rain in June, a low range of thermometer in July and August, storms in September,—any one of these common incidents largely affects the yield. After the introduction of Buddhism, when fish and flesh could not be eaten without violating the sanctity of life, inclement seasons must often have compelled men to choose between the laws of the creed and the dictates of nature. It was appropriate that the female rulers who patronised Buddhism so passionately, should make special efforts to save their subjects from the temptation of the alternative; and accordingly the Empresses Jito (690—696) and Gensho (715—725) took steps to encourage the cultivation of barley, Indian corn, wheat, sesamum, turnips, peaches, oranges, and chestnuts. Tea, buckwheat and beans were added to this list during the first half of the ninth century, and it is thus seen that Japan possessed at an early date all her staple bread-stuffs, except the sweet potato and the pear. The Empresses mentioned above and the Emperors of their era devised several measures to encourage agriculture,—such as granting free tenure of waste land or bestowing rewards on its cultivators, making loans of money for works of irrigation, and munificently recognising the services of officials in provinces where farming flourished, or punishing them when it fell into neglect,—and adopted precautions against famine by requiring every farmer to store a certain quantity of millet annually. In all ages the Japanese Court showed itself keenly solicitous for the welfare of the people, and its solicitude was fully shared by its protégés, the Buddhist priests. If at one time an Emperor Tenchi (668—671) remitted all taxes for three years, until signs of returning  prosperity were detected, or an imperial prince (Yoshimune, 803) invented the water-wheel, at another Buddhist prelates of the highest rank travelled about the country, and showed the people how to make roads, build bridges, construct reservoirs, and dredge rivers. Stud farms and cattle pastures were among the institutions of the era, so that, on the whole, agriculture must be said to have reached a tolerably high standard.

 

 

But beyond doubt the most noteworthy development of all took place in the domain of art. The student is here confronted by one of the strangest facts in Japan’s story. There are ample reasons for concluding that when Buddhism was introduced in the middle of the sixth century, both pictorial art and applied art were at an altogether rudimentary stage in Japan. There was considerable skill in the casting, chiselling, and general manipulation of metals for the purpose of decorating weapons of war and horse-trappings, or manufacturing articles of personal adornment, but artistic sculpture and painting were virtually unknown. Yet, before the lapse of a hundred years, both had been carried to a high standard of excellence, sculpture specially reaching a point never subsequently surpassed,—a point which, under ordinary circumstances, should have marked the zenith of a long orbit of evolution. It is customary to dismiss this enigma by attributing the best achievements of the time entirely to Korean and Chinese immigrants, and certainly many artists from the neighbouring empires crossed to Japan at that era. But there are almost insuperable obstacles to complete acceptance of such a theory. The subject will be referred to in another place. Here it must be dismissed by noting the extraordinary impulse of progress that gave to Japan, in a brief space of time, sculptors of noble images, architects of imposing edifices, and painters of grand religious pictures. Lacquerers might be added to the category; but the processes of lacquer manufacture are said to have been known in Japan as far back as the third century before Christ, and it is possible that before the Emperor Kotoku (645—654) ordered his coffin and his crown to be lacquered, fine examples of that kind of work may have been produced. There is no guide here. But it is known that, in the second half of the seventh century, lacquer was so highly prized that lacquered articles were received in payment of taxes, and also that, at about the same epoch, red lacquer, five-coloured lacquer, aventurine lacquer, and lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl were produced.

In the absence of any form of literature the Japanese people remained entirely without intellectual education during the first thousand years of their existence as a nation. That is their own account of themselves, and there are no sufficient grounds for a different version, difficult as it is to believe that they should have derived so little advantage from the neighbourhood of a people like the Chinese, whose literary talents were already well developed when the earliest Japanese colonists crossed from the continent. The coming of two Korean literati to the Court of the Emperor Ojin at the close of the third century of the Christian era is regarded as the event that inaugurated the study of books in Japan. These two men were naturalised, and having received official recognition as instructors, settled, one in the province of Yamato, the other in that of Kawachi, and there founded, respectively, the families of Bunshi and Shishi, whose scions, during several generations, enjoyed a monopoly of literary teaching. Little is known as to the nature of the instruction imparted by them, but it was doubtless confined to the ideographs and to the exposition of some elementary Chinese works. Generally, however, the philosophy of the Middle Kingdom then began to unfold its pages, and before the close of the fifth century a tolerably intimate acquaintance with the Chinese sages’ writings had been acquired by the Court and by the heads of the Government, though the great mass of the people still remained in profound ignorance. Thenceforth a constant ingress of literati took place from the neighbouring continent, especially after the introduction of Buddhism, and, in the sixth century, the medical science of the Chinese, their processes of divination and their methods of almanac-compiling, constituted new inducements to literary studies. But such a thing as a school did not exist until the time of the Emperor Tenchi (668-671), when the first institution of the kind was opened in the capital, to be followed, ten years later, by a university and by a few provincial seminaries. The curriculum of this university represents the ideal of literary attainment in its era. There were “four paths” of essential learning—the Chinese classics, biographies, law and mathematics. Caligraphy and music were taught independently. The “classics” were divided into three sections: the first, or “major classic,” consisting of the Book of Etiquette and the Biographies; the second, or “middle classic,” comprising the Book of Poetry and two Books of Etiquette; and the third, or “minor classic,” including the Book of Changes and the Maxims. These were the bases of the regular course of lectures, but students of literature were required to study also the Classic of Filial Piety and the Analects of Confucius. It will be perceived that Buddhism had no place in this sphere of study. Yet, at the close of the seventh century, when the university had four hundred and thirty students, and when it represented the only high educational institution in the Empire, Buddhism as a religion had already absorbed the attention of all the nation’s leaders. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact of Japanese history that religion was thus excluded from the range of education. Services were performed at the university and at the schools in honour of ancient men of erudition, and Confucius was deified under the title of Bunsen-o; but while sovereign, princes, and nobles were possessed by passionate zeal for the propagandism of Buddha’s creed, and were impoverishing themselves and the nation to build magnificent temples and furnish them with thousands of costly images and quantities of gorgeous paraphernalia, they were equally persistent in telling the people that filial piety, as exemplified in the Chinese records, should be the basis of all action, and that the whole code of everyday ethics was comprised in the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Perhaps if Buddhism had possessed a literature of its own, the field might not have been exclusively occupied by the Chinese classics. But Buddhism has no literature, or to speak more accurately, no literature intelligible to laymen. Its scriptures are couched in language which specialists only can understand, and by sermons and oral teaching alone are its precepts communicable to the public. Shinto, on the other hand, has no code of morals at all. Thus Confucianism presented itself as the sole working system of ethics available for educational purposes in ancient Japan.

It is easy to appreciate what a perplexing problem presented itself to Japanese publicists and educationalists in the eighth century. The foundations of the national polity rested on the Shinto tenets that the sovereign was the son of heaven, that his intervention with the gods was essential to the well-being of the people, and that every unit of the nation must look up to him with the profoundest veneration. Confucian ethics, as expounded by Mencius, taught that the sovereign’s title to rule rested entirely on his qualities as a ruler; that the people’s welfare took precedence of the monarch’s prerogatives, and that filial piety was the highest of all virtues. Buddhism placed at the head of its scripture the instability of everything human; compared each series of worldly events, however great the actors, however large the issues, to a track left by a ship upon the wide ocean, and educated a pessimistic mood of indifference to sovereign and parent alike. Can anything less consistent be conceived than the conduct of a government which employed all its influence to popularise the religion of Buddha, which appealed to Shinto shrines for heavenly guidance in every administrative perplexity, and which adopted Confucianism as an ethical code in the education of youth? The difficulty, in the case of Buddhism and Shinto, was to some extent overcome, as already shown, by a clever adjustment which recognised incarnations of Buddha in the principal Shinto deities. But it was not overcome in the case of the Confucian philosophy, nor is there any room to doubt that the troubles which beat against the Throne, and nearly overthrew it, from the eighth century to the nineteenth, were in some degree the outcome of ideas derived from the Chinese Classics.