I can quite imagine him saying it, and his comrades finding the jest useful.
XX
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Men.
I sometimes wonder who it was first coined that well-known phrase, “little Japanese sailors.” As phrases go it is very “catchy,” but in the matter of accuracy it is very general only. Save for Russians and Italians, some of the biggest sailors going are Japanese. Beside their own officers they look giants, while actually they average nearly an inch higher than British bluejackets, and in breadth fully equal them. One and all, they are fine men physically, able to hold their own in size with almost any other nation’s bluejackets, except Russians and Italians. They are almost invariably stout and well set up, and they are always smiling; they take to their profession much as their officers do.
As previously stated, they are recruited chiefly from the northern islands, and chiefly from the lowest classes. These make the bravest sailors, and they have been educated from early youth upward into a disregard for death. Till quite recently, most Japanese villages had feuds with neighbouring hamlets, and these resulted in a good many broken heads and a fair amount of blood-letting, all of which the Government, if it did not actually encourage, at least viewed with a very lenient eye on account of its practical utility in rearing fighters.
Japanese officers have, on the whole, a preference for sailors of little education. Their view is that such are less hampered by appreciating danger. Apparently some of the better class sailors—artificers and others drawn from a rather better class socially, acquire with their education an inconvenient ability to realise some of the frightful dangers of modern naval warfare. Either from experience or instinct, these more educated men are not looked on with favour. “The less a man knows the better sailor he will make,” is the saying.
A rabid anti-Japanese of my acquaintance, who has spent his life in the Far East, allows the Japanese only one virtue—general and complete bravery. “No Japanese,” said he, “is ever afraid.” It is not easy to reconcile this statement with the Japanese estimate of educated sailors given above; but I am not in a position to deliver a verdict of any value on the question. The officers’ contempt of danger, alluded to some pages back, has little bearing on the point. The fact that “cowardice” exists as an offence in the Japanese naval code of punishments may, perhaps, throw a little light upon the matter; but, even so, we need an exact definition of what the word “cowardice” means to a Japanese. It does not mean cowardice as we should understand it. I incline to fancy that it means the absence of an utter disregard for life; and that what the Japanese call a coward we describe as a waverer—which is by no means the same thing. It is not impossible that their more liberal definition of cowardice would include a man who got unduly excited in action. After Yalu, several men were punished for that.
The general intelligence of Japanese bluejackets is high, they have the national aptitude for “picking things up” with marvellous rapidity—wherein they form a marked contrast to the Russian sailors, who learn very slowly. They—some of them—also forget rapidly; a national defect in Japan.
In many ways they are replicas of their officers. Like their officers, their ideas of dissipation centre round learning something. Parties of fifty or so “do” London and our chief industrial centres when they are in England. On these occasions, and, indeed, always in foreign ports, their behaviour leaves nothing to be desired. At Portsmouth, where public houses are thick as can be, and where leave is given very freely, a hundred or so will roam the town all day in groups, fraternising and being made much of by the populace, but any disorder or trouble with the police in consequence is almost unknown.
On shipboard drinking is said to be on the increase; but it is rarely a cause of trouble, though a drunken Japanese is a nasty customer. Most are temperate.