Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

by Lafcadio Hearn

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The reader will now be able to understand the general character, aim, and results of official education as a system. It will be also worth while to consider in detail certain phases of student-life, which equally prove the survival of old conditions and old [431] traditions. I can speak about these matters from personal experience as a teacher,—an experience extending over nearly thirteen years.

Readers of Goethe will remember the trustful docility of the student received by Doctor Mephistopheles in the First Part of Faust, and the very different demeanour of the same student when he reappears, in the Second Part, as Baccalaureus. More than one foreign professor in Japan must have been reminded of that contrast by personal experience, and must have wondered whether some one of the early educational advisers to the Japanese Government did not play, without malice prepense, the very role of Mephistopheles…. The gentle boy who, with innocent reverence, makes his visit of courtesy to the foreign teacher, bringing for gift a cluster of iris-flowers or odorous spray of plum-blossoms,—the boy who does whatever he is told, and charms by an earnestness, a trustfulness, a grace of manner rarely met with among Western lads of the same age,—is destined to undergo the strangest of transformations long before becoming a baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform of some Higher School, and find it difficult to recognize your former pupil,—now graceless, taciturn, secretive, and inclined to demand as a right what could scarcely, with propriety, be requested as a favour. You may find [432] him patronizing,—possibly something worse. Later on, at the University, he becomes more formally correct, but also more far away,—so very far away from his boyhood that the remoteness is a pain to one who remembers that boyhood. The Pacific is less wide and deep than the invisible gulf now extending between the mind of the stranger and the mind of the student. The foreign professor is now regarded merely as a teaching-machine; and he is more than likely to regret any effort made to maintain an intimate relation with his pupils. Indeed the whole formal system of official education is opposed to the development of any such relation. I am speaking of general facts in this connexion, not of merely personal experiences. No matter what the foreigner may do in the hope of finding his way into touch with the emotional life of his students, or in the hope of evoking that interest in certain studies which renders possible an intellectual tie, he must toil in vain. Perhaps in two or three cases out of a thousand he may obtain something precious,—a lasting and kindly esteem, based upon moral comprehension; but should he wish for more he must remain in the state of the Antarctic explorer, seeking, month after month, to no purpose, some inlet through endless cliffs of everlasting ice. Now the case of the Japanese professor proves the barrier natural, to a large extent. The Japanese professor can ask for extraordinary efforts and, [433] obtain them; he can afford to be easily familiar with his students outside of class; and he can get what no stranger can obtain,—their devotion. The difference has been attributed to race-feeling; but it cannot be so easily and vaguely explained.

Something of race-sentiment there certainly is; it were impossible that there should not be. No inexperienced foreigner can converse for one half hour with any Japanese—at least with any Japanese who has not sojourned abroad—-and avoid saying something that jars upon Japanese good taste or sentiment; and few—perhaps, none—among untravelled Japanese can maintain a brief conversation in any European tongue without making some startling impression upon the foreign listener. Sympathethic understanding, between minds so differently constructed, is next to impossible. But the foreign professor who looks for the impossible—who expects from Japanese students the same quality of intelligent comprehension that he might reasonably expect from Western students—is naturally disturbed. "Why must there always, remain the width of a world between us?" is a question often asked and rarely answered.

Some of the reasons should by this time be obvious to my reader; but one among them and the most, curious—will not. Before stating it I must observe that while the relation between foreign [434] instructor and the Japanese student is artificial, that between the Japanese teacher and the student is traditionally one of sacrifice and obligation. The inertia encountered by the stranger, the indifference which chills him at all times, are due in great part to the misapprehension arising from totally opposite conceptions of duty. Old sentiment lingers long after old forms have passed away; and how much of feudal Japan survives in modern Japan, no stranger can readily divine. Probably the bulk of existing sentiment is hereditary sentiment: the ancient ideals have not yet been replaced by fresh ones…. In feudal times the teacher taught without salary: he was expected to devote all his time, thought, and strength to his profession. High honour was attached to that profession; and the matter of remuneration was not discussed,—the instructor trusting wholly to the gratitude of parents and pupils. Public sentiment bound them to him with a bond that could not be broken. Therefore a general, upon the eve of an assault, would take care that his former teacher should have an opportunity to escape from the place beleaguered. The tie between teacher and pupil was in force second only to the tie between parent and child. The teacher sacrificed everything for his pupil: the pupil was ready at all times to die for his teacher. Now, indeed, the hard and selfish aspects of Japanese character are coming to the surface. But a [435] single fact will sufficiently indicate how much of the old ethical sentiment persists under the new and rougher surface: Nearly all the higher educational work accomplished in Japan represents, though aided by Government, the results of personal sacrifice.

From the summit of society to the base, this sacrificial spirit rules. That a large part of the private income of their Imperial Majesties has, for many years, been devoted to public education is well known; but that every person of rank or wealth or high position educates students at his private expense, is not generally known. In the majority of cases this help is entirely gratuitous; in a minority of cases, the expenses of the student are advanced only, to be repaid by instalments at some future time. The reader is doubtless aware that the daimyo in former times used to dispose of the bulk of their incomes in supporting and helping their retainers; supplying hundreds, in some cases thousands, and in some few cases, even tens of thousands, of persons with the necessaries of life; and exacting in return military service, loyalty, and obedience. Those former daimyo or their successors—particularly those who are still large landholders—now vie with each other in assisting education. All who can afford it are educating sons or grandsons or descendants of former retainers; the subjects of this patronage being annually selected from among the students of [436] schools established in the former daimiates. It is only the rich noble who can now support a number of students gratuitously, year after year; the poorer men of rank cannot care for many. But all, or very nearly all, maintain some,—and this even in cases where the patron's income is so small that the expense could not be borne unless the student were pledged to repay it after graduation. In some instances, half of the cost is borne by the patron; the student being required to repay the rest.

Now these aristocratic examples are extensively followed through other grades of society. Merchants, bankers, and manufacturers—all rich men of the commercial and industrial classes—are educating students. Military officers, civil service officials, physicians, lawyers, men of every profession, in short, are doing the same thing. Persons whose incomes are too small to permit of much generosity are able to help students by employing them as door-keepers, messengers, tutors,—giving them board and lodging, and a little pocket-money at times, in return, for light services. In Tokyo, and in most of the large cities, almost every large house is guarded by students who are being thus assisted. As for what the teachers do—that requires special mention.

The majority of teachers in the public schools do not receive salaries enabling them to help students with money; but all teachers earning more than the [437] bare necessary give aid of some sort. Among the instructors and professors of the higher educational establishments, the helping of students seems to be thought of as a matter of course,—so much a matter of course that we might suspect a new "tyranny of custom," especially in view of the smallness of official salaries. But no tyranny of custom would explain the pleasure of sacrifice and the strange persistence of feudal idealism which are revealed by some extraordinary facts. For example: A certain University professor is known to have supported and educated a large number of students by dividing among them, during many years, nearly the whole of his salary. He lodged, clothed, boarded, and educated them, bought their books, and paid their fees,—reserving for himself only the cost of his living, and reducing even that cost by living upon hot sweet potatoes. (Fancy a foreign professor in Japan putting himself upon a diet of bread and water for the purpose of educating gratuitously a number of poor young men!) I know of two other cases nearly as remarkable; the helper, in one instance, being an old man of more than seventy, who still devotes all his means, time, and knowledge to his ancient ideal of duty. How much obscure sacrifice of this kind has been performed by those least able to afford it never will be known: indeed, the publication of the facts would only give pain. I am guilty of some indiscretion in mentioning [418] even the cases brought to my attention—though human nature is honoured by the mention…. Now it should be evident that while Japanese students are accustomed to witness self-denial of this sort on the part of native professors, they cannot be much impressed by any manifestation of interest or sympathy on the part of the foreign professor, who, though receiving a higher salary than his Japanese colleagues, has no reason and small inclination to imitate their example.

Surely this heroic fact of education sustained by personal sacrifices, in the face of unimaginable difficulties, is enough to redeem much humbug and wrong. In spite of the corruption which has been of late years rife in educational circles,—in spite of official scandals, intrigues, and shams,—all needed reforms can be hoped for while the spirit of generous self-denial continues to rule the world of teachers and students. I can venture also the opinion that most of the official scandals and failures have resulted from the interference of politics with modern education, or from attempting to imitate foreign conventional methods totally at variance with national moral experience. Where Japan has remained true to her old moral ideals she has done nobly and well: where she has needlessly departed from them, sorrow and trouble have been the natural consequences.

There are yet other facts in modern education [439] suggesting even more forcibly how much of the old life remains hidden under the new conditions, and how rigidly race-character has become fixed in the higher types of mind. I refer chiefly to the results of Japanese education abroad,—a higher special training in German, English, French, or American Universities. In some directions these results, to foreign observation at least, appear to be almost negative. Considering the immense psychological differentiation,—the total oppositeness of mental structure and habit,—it is astonishing that Japanese students have been able to do what they actually have done at foreign Universities. To graduate at any European or American University of mark, with a mind shaped by Japanese culture, filled with Chinese learning, crammed with ideographs,—is a prodigious feat: scarcely less of a feat than it would be for an American student to graduate at a Chinese University. Certainly the men sent abroad to study are carefully selected for ability; and one indispensable requisite for the mission is a power of memory incomparably superior to the average Occidental memory, and different altogether as to quality,—a memory for details;—nevertheless, the feat is amazing. But with the return to Japan of these young scholars, there is commonly an end of effort in the direction of the speciality studied,—unless it happens to have been a purely practical subject. Does this signify incapacity for independent work [440] upon Occidental lines? incapacity for creative thought? lack of constructive imagination? disinclination or indifference? The history of that terrible mental and moral discipline to which the race was so long subjected would certainly suggest such limitations in the modern Japanese mind. Perhaps these questions cannot yet be answered,—except, I imagine, as regards the indifference, which is self-evident and undisguised. But, independently of any question of capacity or inclination, there is this fact to be considered,—that proper encouragement has not yet been given to home-scholarship. The plain truth is that young men are sent to foreign seats of learning for other ends than to learn how to devote the rest of their lives to the study of psychology, philology, literature, or modern philosophy. They are sent abroad to fit them for higher posts in Government-service; and their foreign study is but one obligatory episode in their official career. Each has to qualify himself for special duty by learning how Western people study and think and feel in certain directions, and by ascertaining the range of educational progress in those directions; but he is not ordered to think or to feel like Western people—which would, in any event, be impossible for him. He has not, and probably could not have, any deep personal interest in Western learning outside of the domain of applied science. His business is to learn how to understand such matters from the [441] Japanese, not from the Occidental, point of view. But he performs his part well, does exactly what he has been told to do, and rarely anything more. His value to his Government is doubled or quadrupled by his allotted experience; but at home—except during a few years of expected duty as professor or lecturer—he will probably use that experience only as a psychological costume of ceremony,—a mental uniform to be donned when official occasion may require.