Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

It would be a great mistake, however, to infer from such passivity and enduring patience in attention that Japanese audiences are ready to accept with complaisance whatever any one may choose to tell them for truth; or, indeed, to regard the ipse dixit of their authorised instructors as of itself, a sufficient authority. On the contrary, no small portion of the “Young Japan,” especially among the student classes, is inclined to an extreme of bumptiousness. Considering the circumstances of the present and the experiences of the recent past, this is not strange; in view of the characteristics of the race and its history in the more remote times, it is not unnatural. Moreover, science, scholarship, and inventive talents, cannot be subjected promptly in Japan to the same severe and decisive tests, which are available to some extent in this country, but to a far greater extent in most countries of Europe. But surely, in this country to-day the difference between pretence or quackery and real merit or unusual attainments, is not so well recognised, either by the people, or by the press, or even by the executive officers of our educational institutions, as to enable us to throw stones at the Japanese,—or for that matter at any other civilised nation.

Perhaps there is no larger proportion of any Japanese audience, who have perfect confidence in the superiority of their own views, or in the originality and conclusiveness of their own trains of thinking, or in their infallibility of judgment and loftiness of point of standing, than would be the case with an audience similarly gathered and constituted in America. I do not mean to say that Japanese student audiences are lacking in docility or difficult to teach. On the contrary, I think they are much more eager to hear about the last things in science, politics, philosophy, and religion, than are the college and university students in this country. And they certainly are on the whole much more in deadly earnest in the matter of getting an education. Something—probably much—of the old Samurai spirit still lingers, which forbade the boy to rest or sleep until he had finished his appointed task. I have had more than one of my own pupils tell me how he had studied on through the night, applying wet bandages to his head, or placing some sharp instrument so as to prick his forehead, if, overcome by sleepiness, he nodded in his task.

This earnestness of demeanour, joined with the full confidence in an ability to judge or even to discover for one’s self, undoubtedly makes the audiences of students in Japan the more exacting. Besides, they are prompt, severe, and even extreme,—oftentimes—in their judgments concerning the ability and moral character of their teachers. It is a by no means unusual occurrence for the students in private or even in the Government institutions, to demand the removal of some teacher, about whom they have made up their minds that he is either incompetent as a scholar or unsafe and misleading as a guide. I have repeatedly heard of “strikes” among the students to enforce such a demand; but I have yet to hear of a strike or a “call-off” in the interests of fewer hours or easier lessons. Indeed, nine-tenths of the students in the Imperial University of Tokyo are probably, in their ignorant enthusiasm to master quickly the whole realm of learning, taking a much larger quotum of lecture-hours than is for the good of sound scholarship, or than should be permitted by the University.

As underlying or supporting or modifying all the other characteristic features of the task attempted by the foreigner who expects to be really successful in treating of serious themes with a Japanese audience, is the high value placed on education by the nation at large. At the period of first excitement over the action of the School Board of San Francisco, in 1906, a Japanese friend of mine, a professor in the Imperial University of Tokyo, who had spent some fifteen years of his earlier life in this country, remarked to me with extreme concern and sadness, that now his countrymen were wounded by us at their most sensitive point. “Nothing else,” he added, “do all our common people prize so much, for their children and for themselves, as education.” In spite of its comparative poverty, and of the feeling which—wisely or unwisely—it shares with America and Europe, that the lion’s part of its resources must go to the support of the army and navy, there is none of these nations which is giving so much official attention to the education of all its people as is Japan. As has already been pointed out in another connection, the minister of Education takes rank with the other members of the Ministry. The President of the Imperial Teacher’s Association is a member of the House of Peers; he is a permanent officer and his office is not a merely honorary position, is in no respect a sinecure. As I know very well, his active administration includes the care of the details, physical and intellectual, of the various meetings of the Association. The case is as though some Government official of high rank—for example like the late Senator Hoar of Massachusetts—were to be the permanent president and active manager of the general Teachers’ Association of the United States. The Professors of the Imperial Universities have court rank, in accordance with the length of the time and the distinction of their services. Distinguished men of science and of literature are appointed members of the Upper House or are decorated by the Emperor, in recognition of their services to the country and of the value of their presence, as men who may be reasonably supposed to know what they are talking about, in the councils of the nation. Diplomats, even of the lower ranks, must be educated in the languages and history of the countries in which they are to be stationed as members of the foreign service. The ability to read, speak, and write English is required of all the graduates of the Government Schools of Trade and Commerce. There is a larger proportion of the children in the public schools than in any other country, with the possible exception of Germany. The proportion of illiterates to the entire population is much less than it is in this country. And in spite of the meagreness of equipment, the incompetence of much of the teaching force, the large amount of crude experimenting, and the numerous and serious deficiencies, which still afflict the system of public education in Japan, the recognition of the absolute necessity and supreme value of education in determining the conditions of national prosperity and even of continued national existence, is intelligent, sincere, and practically operative among all classes throughout Japan.

Now this esteem of the importance of instruction has a profound, if not consciously recognised, influence on the attitude of all sorts of Japanese audiences toward the person who is addressing them. He is assumed to be telling them something which is true and which they need to know. Talks by foreigners, that are merely for entertainment or amusement are, in general, an insoluble puzzle to the average Japanese audience. Of course this failure to appreciate such efforts is in part due to the wide difference in the spirit and structure of the two languages,—that of the speaker and that of his hearers. But it is even more largely due to something which lies far deeper. The Oriental story-teller and professional joker has his place in the estimate of the educated and even of the common people. It is side by side with the juggler or performer with marionettes. To consider such a person as a teacher would be foreign to the conception,—a scandalous profanation of a sacred term. On the other hand, if one can—and this must come only after a considerable period of testing—win and hold the claim in its highest meaning, he may, as simply a teacher, wield an influence in Japan which is comparable to that to be gained in the same way in no other civilised land. For have not the greatly and permanently influential benefactors of the race always been teachers? Were not Confucius, and Sakya-Muni, and Jesus, all teachers? And in Japan itself, only a few years ago, did not a certain man who had refused offers of government positions deemed higher by most, in order that he might remain a teacher of Japanese youth, when his work was ended, have his coffin attended to its resting-place by ten thousand of his fellow citizens of all classes, walking bareheaded through the rain? Even now, when the appreciation of the importance and value of wealth, for the individual and for the nation, is rising, and the appreciation of the importance and value of intelligence and character is, I fear, relatively declining, it is still possible for the truly successful teacher to gain the esteem and influence over Japanese audiences which are implied in the very word Sensei, or its equivalent. And if the title is used with its full, old-fashioned significance, it will have much the same meaning as the word “Master” in the New Testament usage.

“[THE BEARING OF THE BOYS AND GIRLS IS SERIOUS, RESPECTFUL AND AFFECTIONATE]”

At the time of my last visit to Japan, in 1906 and 1907, the temper of the entire nation was particularly and indeed uniquely interesting. They had just been through a terrible struggle with what had, at the beginning of the struggle, been quite generally regarded as an invincible European power. They had been, indeed, uniformly victorious; but at the cost of enormous treasure and of the outpouring of the blood of the flower of their youth. The nation was heavily burdened with debt; and its credit, in spite of the fact that the financing of the war had been conducted with very unusual honesty, frankness, and skill, was low for purposes of borrowing large additional sums of money. The great body of the people, who did not know what His Majesty, the Genro, and the most intimate circle of advisers knew perfectly well, considered the nation humiliated and defrauded by the unfavourable terms on which the Portsmouth Treaty of Peace was concluded. As I can testify, there was an almost complete absence of those manifestations of elation and headiness, amounting to over-confidence and excessive self-conceit, which prevailed so widely at the end of the Chino-Japanese war. On the contrary, the great body of the people, especially outside of Tokyo and the ports of Yokohama and Kobe, were in a thoughtful, serious, and even anxious state of mind. This condition could not fail to make itself felt upon the attitude of the audiences toward those who addressed them, in correspondingly thoughtful and serious fashion, on themes of education, morals, and religion. Even in the public schools of the primary grade, [the bearing of the boys and girls toward their work is serious; and toward their teachers, respectful and even affectionate].

Indeed, in the year after the war with Russia ended, the demand everywhere in Japan was for the discussion of moral problems; and of educational, economic, and political problems, as affected by moral conditions and moral principles. The lectures to the teachers which were most eagerly welcomed and which made by far the most profound impression, spoke of the teacher’s function, equipment, ideals, and relations to society and to the state, from the ethical point of view. A course of lectures on the “Doctrine of the Virtues as applied to Modern Business” was called for by the Government Business Colleges. On my accepting an invitation to speak to the boys in the Fisheries Institute, and asking for the topic which was preferred for the address, the reply was given without hesitation: “Tell them that they must be ‘good men,’ and how they may serve their country better by becoming good men. Most of these boys come from low-class families, whose morals are very bad, and they have not been well brought up; but we wish them to become honest and virtuous men.”

Nor was this interest, amounting in many cases to anxiety, about the moral condition and future moral welfare of the nation, confined to educational circles. The Eleventh of February is a national holiday in Japan, corresponding more exactly than any other of its national holidays to our Fourth of July. This is the traditional date of the founding of the Empire. On this date, in 1889, the “Constitution was promulgated by the Emperor in person, with solemn and gorgeous ceremony, in the throne-room of the Imperial Palace,—and its proclamation was followed by national rejoicings and festivities.” In 1907 the Asahi Shimbun, a leading paper of the large commercial city of Osaka, undertook to commemorate the day by a public meeting in the Hall of the Assembly of the District, and by a banquet in the neighbouring hotel. In the afternoon I addressed an audience of more than twelve hundred on the “Conditions of National Prosperity,” dwelling chiefly on those conditions which are dominatingly moral and religious in character. The banquet in the evening was attended by about one hundred and fifty persons, and was fairly representative of all the most influential citizens of various classes. After the customary exchange of complimentary addresses, opportunity was given for others to speak. A venerable gentleman, one of the most distinguished physicians of the city, was the first to rise. With great seriousness he made, in substance, the following comments on the exercises of the afternoon,—which were, however, not interpreted for me until a full fortnight later. He had been much impressed by what the speaker had said at the afternoon meeting about the dependence of national prosperity upon the nation’s morality; but he had asked himself: “Why are such things said to us? We are not ‘rice merchants’ (a term of opprobrium); we are the leading and most respectable citizens of Osaka.” He had, however, at once reminded himself that this is precisely what their own great teacher, Confucius, taught them centuries ago. And then he had asked himself: “Why do the ancient Oriental teacher, and the modern teacher, both teach the same thing,—namely, that nations can have genuine and lasting prosperity only on condition that they continue to pattern themselves after the eternal principles of righteousness?” His answer was: “They tell us this, because it is so.” And “surely,” he added with much impressiveness, “it is time that we were all governing our actions in accordance with so important a truth.”