A Handbook of Modern Japan

by Ernest W. Clement

One illustration of their natural incapacity for business life is found in the fact that they had no idea of time. They did not understand the value, according to our standards, of the minutes, and were much given to what we call a “waste of time.” They were not accustomed to reckon time minute-ly, or to take into notice any period less than an hour, and considered it nine o’clock until it was ten o’clock. Moreover, the hour of the old “time-table” was 120 minutes long.[71] Besides, the Japanese are too dignified to be in a hurry; so that, if they miss one train, they do not fume and fret because they have to wait even several hours for the next train, but take it all calmly and patiently. And as clocks and watches are still somewhat of a luxury to the common people, we must not expect them to come up at once to our ideas of strict punctuality. But in school and office and business they are learning habits of promptness and coming to realize that “time is money”; so that recent years have shown a marked improvement.

In the character of the Japanese are blended the two inharmonious elements of humility and conceit. Their language, customs, and manners are permeated with the idea of self-abasement, “in honor preferring one another”; but their minds are filled with excessive vanity, individual and national. They call their own country “Great Japan,” and have always had a strong faith in the reality of its greatness. The precocity and conceit of Japanese youth are very noticeable. A schoolboy of fourteen is always ready to express with confidence and positiveness his criticisms on Occidental and Oriental politics, philosophy, and religion. Young Japan, whether individually or collectively, is now in the Sophomore class of the World’s University. Japan is self-assertive, self-confident, and independent. But the marvellous achievements in the transformation of Japan during the past half-century are some excuse for the development of vanity; and the future, with its responsibilities, surely demands a measure of self-confidence.

The Japanese are commonly criticised as being imitative rather than initiative or inventive; and it must be acknowledged that a study of their history bears out this criticism. The old civilization was very largely borrowed from the Chinese, perhaps through the Koreans; and in modern times we have witnessed a similar adoption and imitation of Occidental civilization. But it must also be borne in mind that in few cases was there servile imitation; for, in almost every instance, there was an adaptation to the peculiar needs of Japan. And yet even this assimilation might show that the Japanese have “great talent, but little genius” (Munzinger), or “little creative power” (Rein). However, there have been indications of late years that the Japanese mind is developing inventive power. Originality is making itself known in many really remarkable inventions, especially along mechanical lines. Rifles, repeating pistols, smokeless gunpowder, guncotton, and bicycle boats are a few illustrations of Japanese inventions. Moreover, many of the Japanese inventors have secured letters patent in England, Germany, France, Austria, and the United States. In scientific discoveries, too, the Japanese are coming forward.

The Japanese have also been frequently accused of fickleness, and during the past fifty years have certainly furnished numerous reasons for such a charge. They have seemed to shift about with “every wind of doctrine,” and, like the Athenians in Paul’s day, have been often attracted by new things. But Dening’s defence against this accusation is worthy of notice, and seems quite reasonable. He claims that “this peculiarity is accidental, not inherent”; that there was “no lack of permanence in their laws, institutions, and pursuits in the days of their isolation”; that in recent times “their attention has been attracted by such a multitude of [new] things ... that they have found great difficulty in making a judicious selection”; and the rapid changes “have not been usually dictated by mere fickleness, but have resulted from the wish to prove all things.” Chamberlain, likewise, refers to so-called “characteristic traits” that are “characteristic merely of the stage through which the nation is now passing.” And certainly a growing steadfastness of purpose and action is perceptible in many phases of Japanese life.

The Japanese are pre-eminently an æsthetic people. In all sections, among all classes, art reigns supreme. It permeates everything, great or small. “Whatever these people fashion, from the toy of an hour to the triumphs of all time, is touched by a taste unknown elsewhere.”[72]

The national spirit is excessively strong in Japan, and has been made powerful by centuries of development. Every Japanese is born, lives, and dies for his country. Loyalty is the highest virtue; and Yamato-damashii (Japan spirit) is a synonym too often of narrow and inordinate patriotism. But the vision of the Japanese is broadening, and they are learning that cosmopolitanism is not necessarily antagonistic to patriotism. They used to harp on “The Japan of the Japanese”; later they began to talk about “The Japan of Asia”; but now they wax eloquent over “The Japan of the World.”

Filial piety is the second virtue in the Japanese ethics, and is often carried to a silly extreme. The old custom of inkyō made it possible for parents, even while they were still able-bodied, to retire from active work and become an incubus on the eldest son, perhaps just starting out in his life career. But now there is a law that no one can become inkyō before he is sixty years of age. And yet filial piety can easily nullify the law!

Professor George T. Ladd, who has made a special study of the Japanese from the psychological point of view, sums up their “character” as of the “sentimental temperament.”[73] The following are suggestive passages:—

“This distinctive Japanese temperament is that which Lotze has so happily called the ‘sentimental temperament.’ It is the temperament characteristic of youth, predominatingly, in all races. It is, as a temperament, characteristic of all ages, of both sexes, and of all classes of population, among the Japanese. But, of course, in Japan as everywhere, the different ages, sexes, and classes of society, differ in respect to the purity of this temperamental distinction. Many important individual exceptions, or examples of other temperaments, also occur.

“The distinguishing mark of the sentimental temperament is great susceptibility to variety of influences—especially on the side of feeling, and independent of clear logical analysis or fixed and well-comprehended principles—with a tendency to a will that is impulsive and liable to collapse. Such susceptibility is likely to be accompanied by unusual difficulty in giving due weight to those practical considerations, which lead to compromises in politics, to steadiness in labor, to patience in developing the details of science and philosophy, and to the establishment of a firm connection between the higher life of thought and feeling and the details of daily conduct. On the other hand, it is the artistic temperament, the temperament which makes one ‘interesting,’ the ‘clever’ mind, the temperament which has a suggestion of genius at its command....