A Fantasy of Far Japan; Or, Summer Dream Dialogues

by Kencho Suematsu

—'How does the social condition of Japan stand at present?' asked another; 'from the political point of view, for instance, who is the ruling class?'

—'The social condition of Japan,' I answered, 'is satisfactory. We have aristocracy and commons, as you know, but no class animosity. The distance between them is not great. The commercial class also is making its influence felt: many people who formerly belonged to a class which despised business occupation are now engaged in business. The official positions are occupied almost all by men of ability belonging mostly to the middle class. Almost none of the old nobles occupy any official positions. You must have heard many statesmen and generals called by some titles of nobility, but they are only new nobility, given by the emperor for meritorious services rendered to the new Imperial Government, and therefore their modes of thought and their inclinations are not far different from that of the ordinary people at large. All the Government officials and officers of the army and navy are taken by examination without any distinction of class or locality, and therefore young men belonging to any class of society or to any province have equal chance. It is true that immediately after the restoration some powerful clans, especially that of Satcho, exercised more influence in political circles, but it was only natural as the results of the great change. Even at this moment there are several statesmen, who originally belonged to those clans, who exercise great influence: it is because their services to the country have been great, and consequently they enjoy greater prestige. In the army and navy, also, the majority of the generals of the higher class are in a similar manner men who have risen from those clans. With the rest, the clannish landmarks are already almost indistinguishable; even amongst those of the highest positions the disappearance of the clannish traces must be only a question of time, for most of the personages occupying those positions are already far advanced in age. It is not, therefore, fair for some foreigners to say that the Satcho men placed themselves in the place of the Shogunate. As a matter of fact, the Satcho statesmen themselves have introduced many important regulations for giving equal chances to every class and province. Then, again, what is most worth noticing is perhaps the fact that all public affairs are governed by laws and regulations, and not by any arbitrary will; so much so, that in some instances people think that there are too many laws and regulations. On the whole, I approve the present system, as every one must, because it leaves no room for class or bureaucratic oppression.'

—'Can you explain,' said one, 'how all those psychological changes have been brought about? People in the West have always thought that the Orientals little cared for laws and regulations, their modes of government being based upon customs and traditions.'

—'You may think so,' I answered; 'if you take the generality of the Orientals, but it is not the case with Modern Japan. Even in China the matter was never exactly as you have just said. China has always been wanting in the matter of civil law. But there is one particular feature worth noticing. In the same way as the Romans were rich in the notions of civil law, the Chinese were rich in the ideas of criminal law. I do not, of course, say their system was good from the Western point of view, but in its way it had very good jurisprudence and codes, which were handed down with some necessary modifications from dynasty to dynasty. They knew the importance of separating ethics from jurisprudence for more than a dozen centuries, namely, from the Tang dynasty, when a very good criminal code, which was an improvement and enlargement upon that o£ the preceding dynasty, was enacted. Thus, for instance, torture is looked upon by the Occidentals simply as barbarous, but it has its raison d'être in the Chinese jurisprudence. According to that jurisprudence, no person is to be punished on mere circumstantial evidence, or on the words of witnesses, unless the prisoner himself makes confession of his guilt. The act of confession is technically called the "completion of self-acknowledgment." The object of this is to make sure that no innocent person shall ever be punished. In some cases, if punishments be inflicted, despite the prisoner's strong protest of innocence, on mere circumstantial evidence, or on the evidence of witnesses, great injustice may be done, as was well illustrated in the Beck incident, which recently created so great a sensation in England. Torture is resorted to only in the case where, although the evidence is conclusive, yet the prisoner obstinately refuses to acknowledge his guilt. In other words, the application of torture is only to be resorted to in order that a prisoner whose guilt is quite evident might not be allowed to escape unpunished merely because he obstinately refuses to confess. The raison d'être of the torture, therefore, is not so bad as casual observers imagine. The blame of the method lies in its abuse. We Japanese once followed that jurisprudence, but have given it up because it is liable to misapplication, and we have adopted the European system of judgment by evidence, not because we believed in the infallibility of that system, but because we believed that less injustice would be committed by that system than the other. China has also been very rich in codes of governmental organisation, not indeed in the Western style of constitutional laws; but still, from a literary point of view, they are all very good. Now to return to our subject. If Japan were a country which had not known the usefulness of laws and regulations, and yet had begun to imitate the methods of European legislation with success as she has done, such a result might indeed be a matter of some amazement. She had, however, had much experience in making laws and regulations during the ancient Imperial régime when we had frequent intercourse with the Tang dynasty of China, and therefore, when we began to formulate new legislation on Western lines, it was only necessary to grasp the spirit as to the method, and to make some modification in form of what we had done previously. And besides, scholars well acquainted with the Chinese codes were not wanting, and their ability was ready to be utilised for new legislation.'

—'It would be very interesting,' said one, 'if we could obtain a new book which would scientifically treat of the history of the evolution of all those great changes which have taken place. Really, we know little concerning Japan.'

—'That may be,' I answered, 'but there are several books, especially in English, from which one can gather a good deal of information on Japan, though they are not always correct to our eyes. The French are the people who interest themselves the least in such matters, and yet complain that they are without any information.'

—'I do not care,' he replied, 'for those unscientific books. I am anxious that a good, scientific, and authentic book on those points should be written at first hand by some competent Japanese.'

Here a compatriot of mine turned to me, and said privately that the gentleman who had just made the above remark was one who could not be persuaded to believe that Western civilisation had taken root in Japan, and who did not until recently believe that Japan could cope with the Russians. His reason was not on account of any bias against Japan, but because he could not believe Western civilisation could be transplanted to an exotic soil in so short a time, as in the case of Japan. He had only recently begun to think otherwise, after close observation of the progress of the war, and therefore wished to know the true history of the evolution of all the important changes which had taken place in our country.

—'Now you gentlemen have had enough time,' said a lady. 'It is our turn now. I suppose, baron, you will be going home before long, when the war comes to an end. Shall you also be like some of the Japanese I have had the pleasure of knowing? I mean to say that the Japanese are, as a rule, pleasant enough and friendly enough while with us, but after they have gone back to their country we seldom hear from them. But when they happen to revisit this part of the world, they return to us and are as pleasant and friendly as before, as though nothing had happened in the interval.'

—'Ah! I understand. I am afraid I shall be like them. We Japanese are not good correspondents. In that respect I think the English are the best. It seems writing letters is a part of their pleasure. They write so many letters even in the midst of hasty travelling. Our heads somehow seem heavy when it comes to the task of letter-writing. When we go back to Japan, unless we are engaged in some offices where foreign languages are needed, we have no occasion to think or to write in them, and we soon forget the thread of the foreign style of thought and tongue, and, therefore, it is difficult even to find good dicta for writing a simple letter. Remember, moreover, there is nothing so difficult as writing simple letters; especially is it so with us Japanese. Then, again, the paper, ink, and pens which we use for our own writing are totally different from yours, and they are useless for writing Occidental characters. Therefore, when we think of writing a letter to an Occidental friend, we might find the ink-bottle quite dry, nibs quite rotten, and the sheets of writing paper may be wanting, and perhaps we should have to send for them all anew. The spelling of quite common words may not be at our command, and if we just wished to refer to a dictionary, we should perhaps find that it had been mislaid somewhere among the heaps of Japanese books, or perhaps had been taken away altogether by a young student. Such being the case, you can well imagine that the Japanese cannot be very good correspondents if they wished. The fact that they do not write letters does not show that they do not remember old friendships, and therefore, if they happen to revisit the West, they would be, as you say, as friendly and pleasant as though nothing had happened in the interval.'