A Short History of Russia

by Mary Platt Parmele

The Manchus had not much in the way of civilization to impose upon the people they had conquered. But such as they had they brought with them; and the shaven forehead and the queue, so precious to the Chinese, are Manchurian exotics. Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, became the "Sacred City," where Manchurian Emperors at death were laid beside Tai-Tsu. Wealthy mandarins built residences there. It became splendid and, next only to Pekin, was known as the second official city in the empire.

While the world has long been familiar with China and its civilization, Japan and Korea have only recently come out from their Oriental seclusion. In looking into the past of the former, in vain do we seek for any adequate explanation, anything which will reasonably account for that phenomenally endowed race which occupies the centre of the stage to-day; which, knowing absolutely nothing of our civilization forty years ago, has so digested and assimilated its methods and essential principles that it is beating us at our own game.

From its earliest period this country was under a feudal system of government, with the Mikado as its supreme and sacred head. The Divine nature of this being separated him from the temporal affairs of the nation, which were in the hands of the Shogun, who represented the strong arm of the state. Next below the Shogun were the Daimios, the feudal or military chiefs; these in turn being the rulers of bands of military retainers which constituted the aristocratic class, and were called the Samurai.

Shintoism, a form of ancestral worship and sacrifice to dead heroes, which was the primitive cult of Japan, was in 600 A. D. superseded, or rather absorbed, by Buddhism, which for a thousand years has prevailed. And although Shintoism to some extent still lingers, and although Confucianism with its philosophical and abstract principles has always had its followers, still Japanese civilization is the child of Gautama.

The dual sovereignty of the Mikado and the Shogun, like that existing in the Holy Roman Empire, made a great deal of history in Japan. The things representing the real power in a state were in the hands of the Shogun. The Mikado was venerated, but this first servant in the land was feared, the one dwelling in a seclusion so sacred that to look upon him was almost a sacrilege, the other with armies and castles and wealth and the pomp and circumstance which attend the real sovereign. History again repeats itself as we see this Maire du Palais obscuring more and more the titular sovereign, the Mikado, until like Pepin he openly claimed absolute sovereignty, assuming the title of Tycoon.

The people rose against this usurpation. It was while in the throes of this revolution that the United States Government dispatched a few ships under Commodore Perry, in protection of some American citizens in Japan. After this events moved swiftly. In 1854 a treaty with the United States—their first with foreign nations—was signed at Yokohama. Treaties with other nations speedily followed. In 1860 a Japanese embassy arrived at Washington, and similar ones were established in European capitals.

In 1869 the revolution was over. The party of the usurping Tycoon was defeated and the Shogunate abolished. The anti-foreign spirit which was allied with it shared this defeat, and the party desiring to adopt the methods of foreign lands was triumphant. There was a reorganization of the government, with the Mikado as its single and supreme head. The entire feudal structure, with its Daimios and Samurai, was swept away. A representative body was created holding a relation to the Mikado similar to that of the Houses of Parliament to the King of England. The rights of the people were safeguarded. In other words, at a bound, an Oriental feudal and military despotism had become a modern democratic free state. From this moment dates an ascent from obscurity to an advanced type of civilization, accomplished with a swiftness without a parallel in the history of nations.

Japanese youths, silent, intent, studious, were in European and American universities, colleges, technical schools, learning the arts of war and of peace. When war was declared between China and Japan (1894), the world discovered that they had not studied in vain.

In order to understand the Chino-Japanese war, one must know something of Korea, that, little peninsula jutting out between these two countries, washed by the Yellow Sea on the west and by the Sea of Japan on the east.

In the Koreans we seem to behold the wraith of a something which existed long ago. There are traditions of ancient greatness, the line of their present King stretching proudly back to 1390, and beyond that an indefinite background of splendor and vista of heroic deeds which, we are told, made China and Japan and all the East tremble! But to-day we see a feeble and rather gentle race, eccentric in customs and dress and ideals, with odd rites and ceremonials chiefly intended to placate demoniacal beings to whom they ascribe supreme control over human events. Nothing may be done by the King or his humblest subject without consulting the sorcerers and exorcists, who alone know the propitious moment and place for every important act. With no recognition of a Supreme Being, no sacred books; without temples, or art, or literature, or industries, excepting one or two of a very simple nature, it is extremely difficult for the Western mind to understand what life must mean to this people. That it is a degenerate form of national life which must be either absorbed or effaced seems obvious. And if the life of Korean nationality is prolonged in the future, it will be simply because, like Turkey, it harmlessly holds a strategic point too valuable to be allowed to pass into the hands of any one of the nations which covet it. And it is also easy to foresee that in the interval existing until its absorption, Korea must remain, also like Turkey, merely the plaything of diplomacy and the battle-ground for rival nations.