Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

With the fall of the Shogunate and the reorganisation of the national government the feudal system was doomed; for such a programme as Japan had already sketched out for herself was incompatible with that medieval form of government. This fact was soon recognised by the daimyo of Satsuma and Choshu, who offered in 1868 to surrender their fiefs; the generous offer was gladly accepted and their example was followed by all the other daimyo. But for the time the ex-daimyo were all appointed governors of their respective fiefs so that they might aid in bringing their former subjects to a full sense of the new condition of things. Three years later, in 1871, the clans were abolished and the whole country was divided into prefectures. The daimyo and their retainers received government bonds in commutation of the incomes they had thitherto derived from their fiefs. The substitution of prefectures for clans was made with the object of breaking up the clan bias which was prejudicial to national unity and of giving the central government a more complete control over the provinces by the appointment to prefectural offices of high officials from Tokyo. For to prevent disaffection or crush open revolt in the provinces, it was necessary to centralise as much as possible the government of the country; and with all its precautions, the new government had to cope with several little uprisings, culminating in the Satsuma rebellion which spread over a greater part of the island of Kyushu and taxed its resources to the utmost. But when this was quelled, the country enjoyed absolute peace; no internal disorder has since taken place with the sole exception of a small local trouble in 1884.

The result of this centralisation was that Tokyo became the centre of the whole national life. Men seeking office hurried to it; students entered its schools; the trades and professions seemed to thrive only in the capital. The measures which the government took at the time tended still further to make Tokyo attractive. For the Restoration and the consequent national reorganisation were for the most part the work of the military class, or rather of the samurai of a few clans under the guidance of a small group of leaders. The country bowed to the inevitable; but the people had little or no voice in the matter. Whatever drastic measures the government might take, the nation at large could not at a word of command throw off the immemorial traditions in which it had been brought up; it failed to realise the drift of the new policy its leaders were entering upon. Consequently, the first and most important duty of the government was to guide its people in the path it had taken. New laws were published with minute instructions; schools of all kinds were established on the western plan, the higher colleges being located in Tokyo; model government factories were built in the environs of the city; in short, nothing that a paternal government could do was omitted to take the people by the leading-strings. The higher schools were soon filled; their graduates found ready employment. The country was ruled by a huge army of officials, who, taking as they did the place of the old samurai in the popular estimation, commanded respect and deference often out of proportion to the importance of their posts, which, with the comparatively high salaries they enjoyed in those days, made government service the most attractive of all occupations. In fact, in the early days, Tokyo may be said to have derived its enhanced prosperity from the superabundance of officials. Then too, men of the legal, medical, and other professions all opened practice in Tokyo; only in recent years when every rank has been overcrowded in the city, have they sought fresh fields in the provinces.

It was not long, however, before the evils of excessive centralisation began to make themselves felt; and when the task of national reorganisation was fairly complete, steps were taken towards decentralisation. Prefectural assemblies were opened in 1881 as a preliminary measure to the establishment of the national assembly. In 1888, local self-government was granted to provincial cities, towns, and villages, and everything was done to promote local prosperity. The close of the year 1890 saw the opening of the national diet. The war with China in 1894–5 and that with Russia ten years later brought on in either case a sudden activity in all departments of commerce and industry and gave a great impetus to railway enterprise. Many bogus companies, it is true, were formed at the same time, and their collapse was a serious set-back to the national economy. But the undoubted increase of commercial and industrial enterprises has served to relieve the pressure of population upon Tokyo. Osaka, for instance, which has for centuries been a great commercial centre, has within the last few years become as great a centre of industry, with a population exceeding a million. Kyoto, the old capital, remains somnolent; but Nagoya and the trade-ports of Kobe and Yokohama are forging ahead. In short, though Tokyo, as the capital, will probably remain the largest city in the Empire, it cannot be denied that it is not now so far in advance of the rest as it was a few years ago. This rise of great provincial cities is a necessary result of the growth of manufacturing industries which are bound, if the country is to prosper, to take the place of agriculture, which is too limited in its scope in a country of such a moderate extent as Japan. It is indeed but a repetition of the rise of the great provincial towns like Birmingham, Sheffield, and Manchester in England in the last century.

Still Tokyo must take the lead in all that pertains to the adoption of western civilisation. Osaka and other manufacturing cities will develop the inevitable but unwelcome phases of western industrialism. Already the labour problem looms before us, and the government must before long legislate on the question. There are also signs of socialistic agitation. But these questions do not affect Tokyo so seriously as other cities, for the factories on its outskirts are comparatively few and the land is too valuable for residential purposes to be occupied by manufactories.

Tokyo will remain what it has always been, the home of the best classes in every department of national life. It will always indicate the high-water mark of oriental culture and occidental influence. Here, as nowhere else, will be seen that antagonism of the two, the pressure of western customs and ways of life following on the heels of the sciences and practical knowledge we are eagerly imbibing from the West and the resistance of oriental traditions and usages, which refuse to admit a tittle more than is absolutely necessary to bring the country to a material and intellectual equality with the foremost nations of the world. To those who look below the surface nothing is more interesting in viewing the progress of Japan than this combination of radicalism and conservatism. The Japanese, for all his apparent love of innovation, still retains that stolid self-satisfaction usually associated with the oriental mind, though it is no rarer in the West. He has long recognised that his country must advance along the lines taken at the Restoration, but he would have the development take place without the sacrifice of the national characteristics which have marked his countrymen from time immemorial. The agitation which was set up some twenty years ago for the preservation of these characteristics by those who feared the mania for everything European which was then at its height would result in the obliteration of the qualities which have kept Japan in full vitality through the centuries, still finds an echo in his heart. The threatened sudden metamorphosis of those days was but a passing whim; the change is now slower and more subtle, and it is hard to mark the exact line at which the encroaching tide of European civilisation shall be made to stop. But the Japanese feels that the line must be drawn somewhere. The problem is certainly difficult to solve. It appears hardly possible to reap the fruits of the material and intellectual progress of the West and yet to shut out the moral and religious sources of that progress; but for all that, it would be premature to pronounce it impossible. For we have already done what seemed at first beyond the verge of possibility. Who, for instance, of the thousands who nightly thronged to the Savoy Theatre to laugh over the famous Gilbert and Sullivan opera, would have thought at the time that a few years thence their country would form a treaty of alliance with the land of Koko, Yum-yum, and Nankipoo? They would have flouted the very idea; but that alliance is generally regarded as a natural outcome of the recent course of events in the Ear East. Would it be, we wonder, a much harder task to discriminate the elements of European civilisation?

There are of course people who find their account in advocating the rapid adoption of everything European; but their utmost efforts notwithstanding, there is one citadel which will long resist their attacks and remain almost as purely Japanese as in the days of their forefathers. That impregnable citadel is the home; woman is in Japan as elsewhere the greatest conservative element of national life, and within her sphere of influence tradition reigns as supreme as ever. Globe-trotters who advise their friends to visit this country with as little delay as possible for fear that in a few years Old Japan would cease to be, do not reckon with our domestic life. Japanese women are as a class gentle, pliant, and docile; and these qualities stand them in good stead at home. Whether it be that they manage with all their demureness to twist their lords round their little fingers or that the latter are afraid that any change in home life would develop a new revolting woman who would refuse to be as submissive as they are at present, the fact remains that with the mass of the nation there has been little change in the conditions of domestic life. And what these conditions are and how little the influx of new ideas has affected the home of Old Japan, it is the object of the following chapters to relate.

CHAPTER II.
THE STREETS OF TOKYO.

The area and population of Tokyo—Impression of greater populousness—Street improvements—Narrow streets—Shops and sidewalks—Road-making—Dusty roads—Lamps and street repairs—Drainage—Street-names—House-numbers—Incongruities.