This incubus of two languages, disguised as one, was rendered still more irksome by the fact that the borrowed Chinese written language never became thoroughly assimilated and incorporated with the Japanese spoken language to which it was joined, but preserved a more or less separate identity. It would have simplified matters if the Japanese had given up their spoken language and adopted Chinese in its place. There would then have been a natural harmony and relation between the spoken and written tongues, such as exists in China to-day. Japanese would then have written as they spoke, and spoken as they wrote. But this they did not do. Their own spoken language was there, and had sufficient vitality to resent the intrusion of the alien tongue, though not enough to enable the nation to shake itself free of the incubus it had voluntarily imposed upon itself by this wholesale importation of Chinese characters. In these considerations lies the explanation of the constantly recurring agitation in favour of the adoption of the Roman alphabet in the place of Chinese.
In justice to Chinese characters it is well not to overlook the advantage which a knowledge of them gives to the Japanese people over foreign competitors in their intercourse and trade with China. It should also be borne in mind that the Chinese side, so to speak, of the Japanese language lends itself with peculiar facility to the formation of new words to express new ideas. In this respect it has served to encourage the introduction of Western civilization. These advantages are, nevertheless, counterbalanced to a large extent by the addition to the language of a countless host of dissyllabic words, only to be distinguished one from the other by the attendant hieroglyphs. The result is the creation of a cumbrous vocabulary, based on Chinese, which is growing so fast as to discourage scholarship, thus hampering the very progress it is employed to promote.
One other difficulty remains to be considered. In turning to the West for inspiration in the work of reconstruction Japan was borrowing not from one country, as before, but from several. Nor was there any natural affinity between her and them, as in the case of the first country, China, which she had laid under contribution. The new ideas, moreover, she was assimilating belonged not to the same, but to different periods of time. There was as great diversity of date, as there was of origin. But they all came together, and had to be harmonized, in some degree, with a foundation of things in its origin Chinese. Japan has been generally regarded as having deliberately embarked on a policy of eclecticism. No other course lay open to her. Out of the crowd of new things which presented themselves she had to make a choice. And the urgency of the moment left her little time in which to make it.
We have noticed some of the difficulties which lay in the path of Japan’s progress, and tended to complicate the work of reconstruction. Let us see what advantages she had to help her. There were not many, and some were moral and not material. The reforming statesmen were helped by the feeling of exaltation common to all political revolutions, as well as by the wave of enthusiasm for what was hailed as the restoration of the direct rule of the Sovereign, though what this would mean, when accomplished, beyond the disappearance of the Shōgunate, none of its advocates had any clear notion. The general feeling in favour of reform which, with exceptions in the case of the former military class, existed throughout the country was also in their favour. Japan, too, in these early years was conscious of the sympathy of Treaty Powers. It has been the fashion amongst a certain class of writers to decry the attitude of foreign Powers, who are represented as unsympathetic and as having held out no helping hand to the young Government then on its trial. This is an erroneous view. Even before the Restoration, at the time when the Court was openly hostile to foreign intercourse, and the Shōgunate, in its extremity, was facing both ways—announcing to the Throne its determination to expel the hated barbarian, while assuring the latter in the same breath of the friendliness of its feelings; conniving at obstruction it would have liked to direct more openly and then feigning indignation at its own misdeeds—the forbearance of foreign Governments, and the patience of their agents, are things of which the West may well be proud. And as soon as the sincerity of Japanese reforms was clearly understood, the sympathy of foreign Governments took a more active shape.
Perhaps, also, we shall be safe in assuming that the new Government was assisted to some extent in the introduction of reforms by the submissiveness of the people they were called upon to rule. Under the influence of Chinese ideas the dividing line separating rulers from ruled was very sharply drawn. Both in Confucian ethics, and in Buddhist teaching, the two foundations of Japanese morality, the greatest weight is given to the virtue of loyalty to superiors, which comprises—and this is an essential point—obedience to constituted authorities. Equal prominence in the same ethics and teaching is assigned to the corresponding duty of the ruler to govern wisely, or, as the phrase runs, “with benevolence.” The conception of the relationship between governors and governed, as it presented itself to the Japanese mind of those days, was that it was the business, the duty, of the Government to govern, the privilege, or right, of the subject to be ruled. The latter looked to those in authority for light and leading. So long as the government was in accordance with Confucian doctrine, conducted with “benevolence,” that is to say, without glaring injustice and tyranny, he was satisfied. The establishment later on of constitutional government and the practical working of a Diet and local assemblies have somewhat modified this habit of mind. But even in the most stormy and tumultuous sessions which have of recent years characterized the development of parliamentary institutions the influence of this old idea has been apparent; while in the earlier periods of which we are now speaking it was a dominant and salutary factor, lightening very materially the task of the administrator.
There was still another agency working in the same direction. This was the new field of activity opened by the changes accompanying the Restoration to the energies of the people, more especially those of the commercial and industrial classes. Their attention was engrossed in a large measure by their own concerns, which were rendered of increased and more varied interest by the upheaval caused by the revolution in national life. They had thus little time, even had the wish been there, to enquire closely into the direction of public affairs.
There was advantage, too, in the fact that Japan had borrowed before, and had, therefore, gained experience in the art of assimilating foreign ideas. She was not new to the work. She was only doing now on a less extensive scale what she had done on a previous occasion. And her task was rendered more simple because what she was now taking from the West lent itself to her immediate requirements, perhaps, in a more practical way than her borrowings of former days from a sister nation.
Finally, we must not overlook the immense advantage she had in the adoption of all reforms which were based on Western models. At no cost to herself, without expenditure of time, thought, labour or money, she took the fruit of generations of toil in Europe and America. She levied toll on all the Western world. Profiting, at once, by the discoveries and improvements made in the course of centuries in every field of human energy, she began in her career of constructive progress at the point which other countries had already reached.
CHAPTER XI
Changes and Reforms—Relations with China and Korea—Rupture in Ministry—Secession of Tosa and Hizen Leaders—Progress of Reforms—Annexation of Loochoo—Discontent of Former Military Class.
The changes introduced after the Restoration group themselves broadly into two kinds—those borrowed from abroad, and those due to the inspiration of the reformers themselves. The reforms affecting the land, which we have already considered, fall essentially into the latter category. Though some colouring of Western ideas may be apparent in the stress laid on uniformity of tenure and taxation, and in some other respects, the land reform, viewed as a whole, was the logical outcome of the abolition of feudalism. It was thus from the first a matter into which domestic considerations alone entered, one that was free, therefore, from any marked foreign influences.