The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

by Inc. Encyclopaedia Britannica

The history of China since 1875 is told pretty completely in the article China, in two sections, the first on 1875–1901 being by Sir Valentine Chirol, author of The Far Eastern Question. But in connection with the general treatment the student should read the articles on Korea, Annam and Tongking for the earlier efforts to detach from the Chinese empire these quasi-vassals; Chino-Japanese War for the military details of the struggle by which Japan got command of the Korean coast-line; Mekong for the dispute of 1895 with Great Britain; Kiaochow Bay, Port Arthur and Wei-Hai-Wei for the seizures of 1897 and 1898 by Germany, Russia and Great Britain respectively; John Hay for America’s part in the Open Door policy; Peking and Tientsin for details added to the general account in the article China, of the “Boxer” rising; Manchuria for Russian encroachments before, and Japan for Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War.

JAPAN

Japanese in America

The article Japan (Vol. 15, p. 156) is equivalent to 370 pages of this Guide,—and is almost entirely the work of Captain Frank Brinkley, editor of the Japan Mail, author of Japan, A History of Japan, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, etc. The article is divided into 10 parts—Geography, People, Language and Literature, Art, Economic Conditions, Government and Administration, Religion, Foreign Intercourse, Domestic History, and The Claim of Japan; A Japanese View, by Baron Dairoku Kikuchi, in which the president of the Imperial University of Kyoto and of the Imperial Academy of Japan discusses “the ambition of the Japanese people ... to be recognized as an equal by the Great Powers,” their resenting “any discrimination against them as an Asiatic people,” the “misrepresentation, arising from want of proper knowledge of Japanese character and feelings,” that the Japanese immediately after the war with Russia were “ready and eager to fight with the United States”—whereas the Japanese have always regarded the Americans with a special good will, due no doubt to the steady liberal attitude of the American government and people towards Japan and Japanese, and they look upon the idea of war between Japan and the United States as ridiculous.

Marks of the Race

Any justifiable discrimination against the Japanese as Asiatics must of course be based upon such characteristics of custom and thought as render Japanese immigration undesirable, and not upon the colour of the Japanese skin or any other peculiarity of appearance. But it is none the less interesting to turn from Baron Dairoku Kikuchi’s argument to Capt. Brinkley’s careful study (p. 164) of the physical characteristics of the Japanese. “The best authorities are agreed that the Japanese do not differ, physically, from their Korean and Chinese neighbors as much as the inhabitants of Northern Europe differ from those of Southern Europe.” Some of the bodily traits which distinguish the Japanese from races of European origin are to be observed “in the eyes, the eyelashes, the cheekbones and the beard.” The eyeball does not differ from that of an occidental, but the eye is less deeply set. The conspicuous peculiarity is that the upper eyelids are much heavier at the inner corners than at the outer, making the eyes apparently oblique; and a fold of the upper lids hangs over the roots of the upper lashes. The lashes, too, are short and scanty, and converge, instead of diverging as they do in occidentals, so that the tips are nearer together than the roots. There is but little hair on the face (except among the Ainus), and it is nearly always straight. The cheekbones are prominent among the lower, rather than the upper classes. The article proceeds to discuss the moral characteristics of the Japanese; attributing to them a degree of frugality and endurance such as to make it virtually impossible for any occidental race, living in reasonable comfort, to compete with Japanese labour.

As in the study of India and China, it will be well for the student of Japanese history to make himself familiar with the Britannica’s full material on native religion: see Vol. 15, p. 222, noting especially that in the section on Shinto it is said: “The grandson of the sun goddess was the first sovereign of Japan, and his descendants have ruled the land in unbroken succession ever since.”

Foreign intercourse

In Japanese history two main topics of study present themselves—foreign intercourse and domestic or internal history—the former naturally the more attractive to the foreign student, and of additional interest both because of its picturesque and romantic early detail and by reason of its explaining the sudden emergence of Japan as a power in world politics. Portuguese shipwrecked in Japan in 1542 or 1543 opened the country to Portuguese trade and in 1549 landed the great Jesuit missionary, Francisco de Xavier: see the article by K. G. Jayne, author of Vasco da Gama and his Successors. The contest between Spain and Portugal for Eastern trade and between Jesuits and Franciscans for Japanese converts to Christianity and the other factors that resulted in the suppression of Christianity in 1614 and the consequent persecutions of converts and missionaries are told in the article Japan—and so also is the story of the foothold that Dutch and English traders got before the Japanese practically excluded them also, as Christians rather than as foreigners or traders. From the middle of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century Japan was practically untouched by Western civilization. The part of the United States navy in opening the country to trade in 1853 is described in the article Japan (pp. 237–238) and in the article Matthew Calbraith Perry. The article Japan also devotes much space (p. 238) to the work done by another American, Townsend Harris, who was less known than Perry, but who carried through the immensely important first commercial treaty.

Recent Wars