The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 2 (of 2) / As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L., Many Years Consul and Minister in China and Japan

by Alexander Michie

VII. THE BIRTH OF NEW JAPAN.

Four years of civil strife—Cessation of efforts to eject foreigners—The adoption of foreign appliances—Educational missions—Unanimity of Japanese in cultivating foreign intercourse—The merits of those who promoted the movement—Sir R. Alcock's services in the cause of Japanese progress—His services to Japanese art.

"Is this the commencement of a civil war?" wrote the British Minister during his first year of residence in Japan. When he left the civil war was well advanced. Feverish energy was being displayed by every party in the State. There was a race for foreign ships and armaments among the Daimios; the Tycoon was involved in a struggle for existence; the legitimate sovereign was asserting his authority, and the feudatories were rallying to his support. Neither the immediate nor the remote issues were clear, but the sword was out of the scabbard, and would not be sheathed again until a new order of things should be established.

The civil strife, which ended within four years in the abolition of feudalism and the assumption by the Mikado by divine right of all administrative functions, may be called revolution, restoration, or merely evolution, according to the point of view from which we regard it. The hand of the foreigner had loosened the stone from the mountain-side, but it rolled down by its own laws. The introduction of foreigners into the country brought down vengeance on the Tycoon as the responsible agent. To abase him and transfer the sceptre to another house was perhaps as far as the views of the hostile princes in the first instance extended. The consummation of the movement in the unification of the State, though its natural fruit, grew and ripened with a rapidity which bewildered the lookers-on. From the moment when the goal was descried a profound unanimity of sentiment urged the leaders towards it, the territorial magnates being themselves the first to propose the abolition of the privileges, titles, and responsibilities of their order, which stood in the way of nationality in the larger sense. But wide and manifold as were the issues raised in the course of the brief but fierce struggle, it concerns us chiefly to remember that the avowed impulse which gave the first impetus to the whole was the passionate purpose of expelling the foreigner. This was the rallying cry that brought the entire nation into line. The presence of the foreigner on the soil sacred to the gods was an insult and a deep humiliation. The manifestoes of the Daimios, their invective against the Tycoon, the distress of the Mikado and his constant imploring appeals for help to purge the land of its defilement, testify to the sincerity and universality of the feeling. In that sentiment there was no difference between Tycoon and Mikado, the Daimios attached to the one and those attached to the other: they were only divided as to the time and the means, the risks and the consequences.

From the first the foreigners had evidence of the tenacious character of the Japanese: their persistency in face of difficulties and discouragements, and, above all, their readiness, not only to risk, but deliberately to sacrifice, their lives in the pursuit of an object. Such a spirit would render any people formidable,—most formidable when united in a common purpose; and their genius for combination is one of their most typical characteristics. What these qualities have already led to the world has partly seen; what they will hereafter lead to is perhaps as much hidden from our generation as the phenomena of the present were from the preceding one. But from the earliest days of the new intercourse it was hardly possible to misconstrue the seriousness of the Japanese people, though their refinement of taste, especially in art, their pleasant vices, and their addiction to light and frivolous recreation, often masked their more solid qualities. One word may possibly reconcile the seeming contradiction. They are an intensely vital people, living every part of their lives earnestly, which, however, is no synonym for solemnly. The gravest and the gayest have their appointed place in the social system, whose parts appear to be co-ordinated as if the whole were a direct inspiration of nature itself, elastic, accommodating, ever renewing itself, and yet so highly organised that there is no unemployed surplus, no waste material, nothing that does not find an effective place in the great cosmic product. That many practical men have misjudged the Japanese is beyond doubt. Indeed it is the so-called practical men who are the most apt to misjudge human phenomena, seeing that their system leaves out of account all they do not understand, which is usually a good deal. It was long thought that the Japanese were mere copyists and imitators, and disparaging epithets have been applied to them under that misapprehension. But, rightly considered, their very imitation was the clearest proof of their depth. They had been overcome by the foreigner, therefore they would help themselves to his weapons—all his weapons, educational, scientific, ethical, and not merely the machinery of war. This was not imitation, but adaptation and assimilation. It was no more imitation than what is seen every day among Americans, for instance, who so successfully "exploit" the ideas of Europe, and improve on them. It gradually dawned upon the intelligent few who watched the process from the beginning that the adaptation of European customs and costume was nothing but a strict application of the laws of evolution. The Japanese began spontaneously to appropriate ideas from the dress of Europeans; modifications, scarce perceptible, were adopted at first by servants. Certain malefactors advertised for by the Yedo police as early as 1862 were described as wearing "riding trousers and coats of tight foreign fashion." Each article of attire was adopted on its merits, for convenience and for no other reason, one of the first items being buttons. Strange combinations were sometimes seen, such as a billycock hat, or policeman's cast-off coat with a few buttons left on, surmounting a pair of bare legs shod with wooden clogs. Such bizarre combinations were not uncommon during the time of transition. The growing habits of travel necessitated a revolution in the coiffure. The ancient custom of shaving part of the head and training the truncated queue required a staff of skilled barbers to accompany every travelling party. The expense and inconvenience were intolerable, and so the old head-dressing had to go the way of obsolete things.

The Japanese deliberately resolved to learn every secret thing that any foreign nation possessed. To do this they had to be conciliatory, so as to gain access to schools, laboratories, arsenals, factories of every kind. Japanese swarmed in the workshops of Europe and America; they took military, naval, mercantile, and industrial service wherever they could get it.[10] In such pursuits an outlandish costume would have been a severe handicap, not merely marking them as strangers, but hampering them for the mechanical work they might be engaged in. To be the comrades of the foreign workmen they must dress like them, and minimise all personal peculiarities. It is often said by those who regret the change that the native dress was so becoming, and that the Japanese looked ever so much nicer in their own than in foreign garb—which may be true, though irrelevant. To look nice was not what they were aiming at. They had to join the family of nations, to become men of the world, to comply with all civilised observances, and as much as in them lay to avoid attracting notice to their nationality. Such a programme necessitated adoption of the common costume of the Western nations, and if we do not accuse German, French, English, and Americans of being imitators, who for similar reasons adopt a uniform society habit, why should the Japanese be imitators when doing the very same thing? Let the world not deceive itself,—there is something more serious than copying in the development of the Japanese nationality. Borrowers they have undoubtedly been, and that on a grand scale. Religion, philosophy, language, literature, art, and artistic manufacture they took bodily from China, apparently through Korea. But who shall say they have not improved upon their teachers? That is a kind of borrowing which may yet carry Japan very far. We should not forget that even a Shakespeare may be an incorrigible borrower.

From the first appearance of Commodore Perry's "black ships" in 1853 one idea took complete possession of the Japanese ruling classes, and inspired all their manifestoes. How far the common people were in sympathy with their rulers there was no evidence available to show. The idea was that their nation was weak, and in its seclusion had been outstripped by the nations of the West, and that they must make every exertion to arm themselves in order to be able to cope with and to expel the barbarians. All their temporising with the enemy had this end in view, and they followed it up with such zeal, intelligence, and national harmony, as to excite both wonder and admiration. In the building up of their nation, and giving it a status among the military and industrial Powers, the Japanese freely and extensively employed foreigners in all capacities, dispensing with their services when done with as naturally as a builder dispenses with his temporary scaffolding. They used foreigners from the outset, but have never allowed foreigners to use them. They have thus remained the masters in their own house, and therein has lain their strength, present and prospective. Teaching they have recompensed with coin; and though confidences have been received with courtesy, their own plans and purposes have been veiled from the most honoured of their tutors. Their attitude has remained what it was in the days of the Dutch monopoly, when instruction in Western lore, including naval and military science, was freely imparted to them, while the uses to which it was applied were studiously hidden from the teachers. Though the Dutch, for example, taught the Japanese mathematics and triangulation so successfully that the pupils were able to make accurate surveys and construct maps of the country and charts of its sea-coasts, yet the Dutch were never permitted to see the finished result.

In looking back on the work of those foreign Governments and their agents who by their interference shook this new nation into life, it is obvious that they did not, any of them, know what they were doing. There was a divinity shaping their ends which they, with their conventional concessions to the modern spirit, had no idea of. If we are to pass judgment at all on those men, it must not be by the ulterior consequences which they did not and could not foresee, but on the merits of the problem which immediately presented itself to them. The demand for free intercourse with Japan being shared by all the nations of Christendom was bound to be satisfied one day: it was but a question of a favourable opportunity. Commodore Perry and the United States Government made their opportunity. Townsend Harris had his opportunity made for him, and with great adroitness, and not too much scruple, he took advantage of it to force the half-open door. Lord Elgin, in his turn, did a smart thing in sandwiching in a full treaty with Japan between his earlier and later negotiations with China. Each in his degree contributed to the general result without any apparent sense of responsibility for unsettling an ancient polity of which they were ignorant, and to which they were blind. Lord Elgin was indeed visited by the qualms of conscience which were as natural to him as they were honourable, but the particular consequences of which he had a passing dread were not those which followed. In any case, his act was momentary: its results remained to be dealt with by those who came after. The heat and burden of the day fell upon those who had to "stub the Thurnaby waste" which the cavaliers had gaily cantered round,—to reduce theories and compliments to everyday practice. Here was not only a labour but a responsibility, not of the attenuated abstract order, but one which was apt to knock violently at their door every morning and every night. For whatever might be the remote effects, the immediate issues were always urgent, and what a conscientious man had to do was to shape a daily course among unknown rocks and whirlpools such as would eventually lead to a successful ocean voyage. It is surely a test of good pilotage in such emergencies that no step need be retraced; that to whatever extent temporary exigencies may hasten or retard, they should never deflect the general movement from its true direction; that the years achievement should be homogeneous with the day's doings. It is a test which would eliminate the time-server from political life, but it was in all important particulars well responded to in the short career of Sir Rutherford Alcock in Japan.

It would be idle to conjecture the probable course of events had a different spirit prevailed among the first diplomatic representatives in Japan. Had they been a weak and yielding body, or had they been connected with the bureaux of their respective Governments by electric wire; still more, had each step taken by them formed a bone of contention between opposing factions in their legislatures, all alike ignorant of the situation, the proceedings of the Ministers would not only have been deprived of all initiative, but would have been liable to paralysis at every critical moment. Under such conditions foreign policy in Japan would have been like driftwood in a whirlpool; the forces of reaction must have gained courage; the position of foreigners would have been rendered untenable; and what might have happened in the country itself it would, as we have said, be quite idle to imagine. In those days no Power would have interfered to maintain order or to defend treaties had England held aloof. There is no need to carry hypothesis further than this in order to appreciate the good fortune not only of Great Britain herself, but of Japan and the world, in having as pioneer representative a man so alert, so capable, so clear, and with such unshakable nerve as Sir Rutherford Alcock; for it is the man on the spot in distant countries who shapes the policy of his Government, if it is to have a policy at all, and this historic service the first Minister sent to Japan did effectually render to his country. Amid difficulties unprecedented, emergencies incessant, and an elemental strife ever raging, the terms of which were inscrutable, two immutable principles guided the Minister to a clear issue. The first was duty, at all costs and hazards; the second, the integrity of the treaties. Whatever might be argued about the policy or the ethics of making them, once made, retreat from their engagements was impossible and compromise futile. Matters had to be pushed to an issue. The whole term of Sir Rutherford Alcock's service in Japan was filled up with a warfare against the temptation to temporise in the hope that things would be better,—a temptation to which, as we have seen, her Majesty's Government for a time succumbed. In perplexing situations the best solvent is simplicity, and the Minister found his safety in directness of aim and inflexibility of purpose. Standing on that rock, the mystifications with which he was surrounded lost their power to disturb him. "Fortunately," he wrote to Earl Russell, "whether the Tycoon was playing a comedy or not, the course plainly indicated is the same, the assertion of a fixed determination not to be driven out, and to maintain the rights secured under treaties, by force, if all other means fail."

To the man who perceived and successfully carried out this simple rule of action his countrymen owe no common debt.

As it is proverbially the busiest people who have the most leisure, the British Minister found time in the midst of his harassing labours to employ his æsthetic gifts for the benefit of the public. It fell to his lot, as the reader may remember, while consul in Shanghai, to contribute samples of the art, industry, and natural products of China to the Great Exhibition of 1851, neither the native Government nor the foreign mercantile community being sufficiently interested to assist in the work. A similar service was asked of him in Japan for the Exhibition of 1862, and it was performed under similar conditions, neither the native Government nor the foreign residents taking any part in it. The task had a special fascination for Sir Rutherford, for Japanese art was a new and rich field for the student as for the dilettante. The Japanese had originally borrowed their whole art, with their literature and religion, from China, but they had improved or at least transformed it so much as to make it their own, though it is contended that in ceramics they had never succeeded in overtaking the Chinese. For five hundred years they had worked on the Chinese idea; but at last in the eleventh century A.D. native schools sprang up, and thenceforth Japanese artists followed their own inspiration, which was that of nature, producing, in the fulness of time, the exquisite results with which the world is now so familiar. The introduction of this Japanese work to the connoisseurs of Europe through the London Exhibition of 1862 was effected through the personal exertions of Sir Rutherford Alcock, who added immensely to the obligations under which he laid his countrymen by the publication in 1878 of a short but comprehensive work on 'Art and Art Industries of Japan.' Like the collecting of objects for the Exhibition, the writing of this book was evidently a labour of love. It reviews with a sympathy which almost rises to enthusiasm not only the finished product, but the stages of the evolution of Japanese art, having its origin in a loving fellowship with nature and in a special affinity with what may be called its humorous side. The genius of Japan has taken a different form from that of the West, where "the great works of the sculptor and the painter are seen by but few," whereas the art work of Japan, "which is always in sight, tends to cultivate the taste of the million by bringing constantly before their eyes objects of taste, not less effective because they are unconsciously felt and enjoyed." It is art pressed into the service of the life of the people "which can give a priceless value to the commonest and least costly material by the mere impress of genius and taste, ... which is the most precious, tested by any true estimate of value and utility." The volume is well worth perusal by those who are interested in art, not only for its philosophical yet simple analysis of the subject generally, but for the instructive way in which universal principles are adapted to the popularised art of Japan. To read this book, one would imagine the writer had devoted the whole of the three years and a half he spent in Japan to the cultivation of the industrial fine arts.

The Japanese language, too, attracted the interest of the busy Minister, who during his stay in Yedo brought out a grammar and phrase-book in Japanese and English. They have, as a matter of course, been superseded by the more recondite studies of later students; but as a first step towards familiarising the language to visitors and strangers these introductory works cannot be denied their meed of merit.