A Fantasy of Far Japan; Or, Summer Dream Dialogues

by Kencho Suematsu

—'You mentioned just now,' said the duchess, 'four hundred thousand families of Bushi, and of the heredity of their service. That seems to be somewhat different from our knighthood, which was more of the nature of personal distinction, and its ranks were filled by personal enlistment, although naturally they came from the same class of people.'

—'Well,' said I, 'our term Bushi, otherwise called Samurai, is a comprehensive one. It comprised all the retainers of the feudal lords. They generally lived, with their families, in the capital town of the lords under whom they served. There was generally a quarter in these towns where the Samurai lived quite apart from other people. Under some lords, there were Samurai who lived in the country, but they were exceptions. By Bushi then we understand those retainers in general, and as I said the service usually became hereditary. It was the strong point of our military men and also their weakest point, or at least it became so in the course of time.'

—'What do you mean by weak point? Tell me, please,' said Baron C.

—'I say "weak point," because that system as an organisation for fighting purposes became inefficient: the reason is almost plain without saying. You see the hereditary system has one advantage: respect and affection increase from generation to generation. Personal intelligence was also acquired under that system so long as the training and instruction were well attended to, but the descendant of a warrior who had led, for instance, one thousand or one hundred men with great ability, could not always be expected to do as well as his ancestor. This is so from the very fact that ability and skill for qualifying one for a higher position is not a thing which is hereditary. This is the weakest point of an hereditary military organisation. "Ministership and generalship are no inherited stocks" is our old saying. Napoleon's eighteen marshals were, one and all, children of the time. Even before the restoration of the present Imperial régime we perceived this weak point, and that was one of the reasons we made a radical change in our military system and adopted the system of universal service. One might think that, by doing so, the spirit of respect and affection, in other words, loyalty and patriotism, might be lessened in the ranks of the troops; but that is not so, for with us the spirit of loyalty to and patriotism for the Emperor and country is very strong among all the people. And because the feudal system had been abolished and the whole nation came to owe no other allegiance than that which is direct to the Emperor, there is no necessity of making any difference among the different classes of the people in regard to those services. As to intelligence, we do not leave the children without education, whatever class they may belong to, I mean to say, we have adopted a system of universal education which gives sufficient knowledge and therefore intelligence to the men enlisted in the ranks from all classes. As to the officers, we take in any candidates who are willing to be suitably educated as such, provided they show sufficient capacity, without any distinction of class or family. It seems to us the only way to procure the most efficient officers. We are very radical in these matters. One can see in the Japanese army or navy sons of noblemen or rich merchants being commanded and led by an officer who has risen from the lowest class of the people. There may even be officers whose origin, if scrutinised minutely, belonged to a class vulgarly called "New Commoners."'

—'I think I understand now,' said Baron C. 'But do you mean to say Bushido is a thing of the past? We are made to understand that the whole Japanese army and navy, indeed the whole nation, are animated with the spirit of Bushido at this very moment.'

—'No, I did not say Bushido was a thing of the past. Bushi exists no more, it is true, except that those who belonged to that class still enjoy the privilege of being called Shizoku (knight family), which, however, has no legal signification, and therefore is only an empty title. There may be a Shizoku driving a carriage or earning a living by selling trifles. It is sad to think of the fact, as far as personal consideration is concerned, but they have given their benefits and privileges for the general good of the country, and I am glad to say that the spirit of Bushido is now made the common property of the whole nation. It has been spread throughout every rank of the Japanese.'

—'It seems sad when we think about Bushi, as you say, from a personal point of view,' said the duchess; 'but when a country makes such a great change as your country has done, some great sacrifice on the part of some portion of the community is inevitable.'

—'And especially so with our Bushi,' said I, 'because they were in fact the chief instruments by which the present great change has been brought about. When we view things in this way, we can say that our Bushi fought and sacrificed their lives in order to destroy their own order.'

—'But what do you mean by the "New Commoners," which you mentioned just a minute ago?' asked Baron C.

—'By "New Commoners" is meant those who have been newly made ordinary commoners by emancipation. There was in Japan a class of people below the class of the common subjects of the empire; they neither enjoyed the rights of ordinary Japanese nor owed any duty similar to others. I mean to say, they enjoyed no citizenship, but, on the other hand, they had in most cases not to pay taxes for the lands they tilled or dwelt on. Their position may be in one way compared with the slavery which existed in the West from the Roman period onward. But there were two points of a great difference. In the West the slaves had their masters whom they served, and it seems that no personal pollution in our sense was attached to them. In Japan, those people had no masters to serve, and earned their living by their own labour. At the same time, however, they were regarded as having personal pollution, so much so indeed, that they were not allowed, nor did they themselves dare, to enter within the door of an ordinary Japanese, still less could they intermarry or indeed hold any social intercourse with them. A love-affair like that of Aïda, a slave girl, and Ardamès in the opera "Aïda," which I had the pleasure of seeing in your company the other evening, is a thing almost unimaginable in Japan between a girl belonging to the class I have just spoken of, and a man of any other class. The number of these people was only a very small minority of the whole population. But they were to be found in all parts of Japan. In the country they formed here and there small villages. They were also to be found in the vicinity of towns, but always having separate communities. They were the only people who dealt with dead oxen and horses, and even dogs, and also were the only people who dressed the skins of those animals. In former days in Japan no beef was eaten but by those people. Horse flesh was not eaten even by them. The common notion was that horse flesh was sour and inedible, but I am sorry to say that, of late years, it is eaten by the poorer classes to some extent. The dealers in it insist on continuing the trade on the ground that the same business is carried on in the midst of the most enlightened nations in the West. I do not like the idea at all. However, to proceed with my story. When a cow, a horse, or a bullock belonging to a commoner died, it was notified to a community of those people, who in a group came and carried the carcase to a convenient place, where they skinned it and buried the rest; and in the case of a cow or a bullock, if it had not died from any infectious disease, they took away its flesh to their homes, as well as the skin and horns. It was the occupation of those communities who lived in the vicinity of a town to prepare the skins sent to them from all parts of the country. Their lot was not, therefore, an enviable one, as you may perceive. This class of people was called "Yeta," which is represented, though by corruption, by the Chinese ideographs meaning "much pollution." No one knows exactly what their origin was; some say they were the remnants of Mongolian troops who remained in the land after the total destruction of Mongolian armada, while some say they might have been prisoners from Corea; but all these conjectures are not satisfactory. There was another portion of the people very much akin to those just described. They were known by the name of "Hinin," a term which is represented by two Chinese ideographs, meaning "not-man," which suggests a similarity of notion to the European term "outlaw." This class was in number even less than the former. Their occupation was also very different. They chiefly lived by fishing or by making some trifling articles, and, therefore, no such deep stigma of personal pollution was attached to them as to the other ones. In fact, it was supposed that among this class of men there were sometimes to be found a Samurai declassed from one cause or another. In Yedo, now Tokio, homeless destitutes were known by that name. One must not suppose, however, that either class was unprotected by law, for their lives and properties were respected just as those of ordinary people; and, moreover, they were not necessarily poor people, because some of them, especially those who lived near towns, were very well off. A characteristic of these people was that they had a certain sentiment of community throughout their own class without distinction of locality. They had no privilege of attending a "Shinto" or Buddhist temple belonging to the citizen classes, but they had here and there their own Buddhist temple and priests. I have never seen any instance of their possessing any Shinto temples; this fact arises from the very nature of Shintoism, which is most sensitive of anything unclean, in other words, most opposed to any pollution. The Imperial régime was inaugurated with most enlightened notions, especially in the matter of personal freedom. At the very beginning of the Imperial régime, the present Marquis Ito was governor of the prefecture of Hiogo-Kobe, and he emancipated, on his own initiative, the Yeta and Hinin under his government, and made them ordinary commoners. There was little formality in such matters in those days. A governor of a province sometimes took such measures on his own responsibility. In the course of a few years the Imperial Government emancipated all of those people throughout the whole empire, and the people thus emancipated came to be vulgarly called "New Commoners." That term, however, is fast losing its significance, inasmuch as those people are daily acquiring common intercourse with the ordinary people; this is especially the case with those who transfer their abodes to other parts of the country, where their identity is not known. I am even told there are one or two deputies in the House of Representatives who originally belonged to that class.'