M. de Coulanges has pointed out* that the absence of individual liberty was the real cause of the disorders and the final ruin of the Greek societies.
[*La Cite Antique. pp, 400-401.]
[450] Rome suffered less, and survived, and dominated,—because within her boundaries the rights of the individual had been more respected…. Now the absence of individual freedom in modern Japan would certainly appear to be nothing less than a national danger. For those very habits of unquestioning obedience, and loyalty, and respect for authority, which made feudal society possible, are likely to render a true democratic regime impossible, and would tend to bring about a state of anarchy. Only races long accustomed to personal liberty,—liberty to think about matters of ethics apart from matters of government,—liberty to consider questions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, independently of political authority,—are able to face without risk the peril now menacing Japan. For should social disintegration take in Japan the same course which it followed in the old European societies,—unchecked by any precautionary legislation,—and so bring about another social revolution, the consequence could scarcely be less than utter ruin. In the antique world of Europe, the total disintegration of the patriarchal system occupied centuries: it was slow, and it was normal—not having been brought about by external forces. In Japan, on the contrary, this disintegration is taking place under enormous outside pressure, operating with the rapidity of electricity and steam. In Greek societies the changes were effected in about three [451] hundred years; in Japan it is hardly more than thirty years since the patriarchal system was legally dissolved and the industrial system reshaped; yet already the danger of anarchy is in sight, and the population—astonishingly augmented by more than ten millions—already begins to experience all the forms of misery developed by want under industrial conditions.
It was perhaps inevitable that the greatest freedom accorded under the new order of things should have been given in the direction of greatest danger. Though the Government cannot be said to have done much for any form of competition within the sphere of its own direct control, it has done even more than could have been reasonably expected on behalf of national industrial competition. Loans have been lavishly advanced. subsidies generously allowed; and, in spite of various panics and failures, the results have been prodigious. Within thirty years the value of articles manufactured for export has risen from half a million to five hundred million yen. But this immense development has been effected at serious cost in other directions. The old methods of family production—and therefore most of the beautiful industries and arts, for which Japan has been so long famed—now seem doomed beyond hope; and instead of the ancient kindly relations between master and workers, there have been brought into existence—with no legislation to restrain [452] inhumanity—all the horrors of factory-life at its worst. The new combinations of capital have actually reestablished servitude, under harsher forms than ever were imagined under the feudal era; the misery of the women and children subjected to that servitude is a public scandal, and proves strange possibilities of cruelty on the part of a people once renowned for kindness,—kindness even to animals.
There is now a humane outcry for reform; and earnest efforts have been made, and will be made, to secure legislation for the protection of operatives. But, as might be expected, these efforts have been hitherto strongly opposed by manufacturing companies and syndicates with the declaration that any Government interference with factory management will greatly hamper, if not cripple, enterprise, and hinder competition with foreign industry. Less than twenty years ago the very same arguments were used in England to oppose the efforts then being made to improve the condition of the industrial classes; and that opposition was challenged by Professor Huxley in a noble address, which every Japanese legislator would do well to read to-day. Speaking of the reforms in progress during 1888. the professor said:
"If it is said that the carrying out of such arrangements as those indicated must enhance the cost of production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competition. I venture, in the first place. to doubt the fact; but, if it be [453] so, it results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either alternative of which threatens destruction.
"On the one hand, a population, the labour of which is sufficiently remunerated, may be physically and morally healthy, and socially stable, but may fail in industrial competition by reason of the dearness of its produce. On the other hand, a population, the labour of which is insufficiently remunerated, must become physically and morally unhealthy, and socially unstable; and though it may succeed for a while in competition, by reason of the cheapness of its produce, it must in the end fall, through hideous misery and degradation, to utter ruin.
"Well, if these be the only alternatives, let us for ourselves and our children choose the former, and, if need be, starve like men. But I do not believe that a stable society, made up of healthy, vigorous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious risk of that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many competitors of the same character just yet; and they may be safely trusted to find ways of holding their own."*
[*The Struggle for Existence in Human Society. "Collected Essays,"
Vol. IX. pp, 113—219.]
If the future of Japan could depend upon her army and her navy, upon the high courage of her people and their readiness to die by the hundred thousand for ideals of honour and of duty, there would be small cause for alarm in the present state of affairs. Unfortunately her future must depend upon other qualities than courage, other abilities than those of [454] sacrifice; and her struggle hereafter must be one in which her social traditions will place her at an immense disadvantage. The capacity for industrial competition cannot be made to depend upon the misery of women and children; it must depend upon the intelligent freedom of the individual; and the society which suppresses this freedom, or suffers it to be suppressed, must remain too rigid for competition with societies in which the liberties of the individual are strictly maintained. While Japan continues to think and to act by groups, even by groups of industrial companies, so long she must always continue incapable of her best. Her ancient social experience is not sufficient to avail her for the future international struggle,—rather it must sometimes impede her as so much dead weight. Dead, in the ghostliest sense of the word,—the viewless pressure upon her life of numberless vanished generations. She will have not only to strive against colossal odds in her rivalry with more plastic and more forceful societies; she will have to strive much more against the power of her phantom past.