Japanese Plays and Playfellows

by Osman Edwards

Before dismissing from consideration the prevalent hostility to foreign residents, more noticeable in the ports than elsewhere, and most pronounced in relation to mercantile rivals, a word should be said as to its effects on mission work. Between 1878 and 1888 Christianity appeared to be carrying all before it. The land was honeycombed with evangelists of every sect, from the resplendent deacons of the Orthodox Russian cathedral, which so insolently dominates the capital from the summit of Suruga-dai, to the dingy crowd of Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, Universalists, and others, none of whom were without a hopeful following of more or less sincere converts. In fact, so fashionable did the once-persecuted faith become that Mr. Fukuzawa, “the Jowett of Japan,” the intellectual father of her most progressive pioneers, advocated for a time that it should be adopted as the national religion, by no means on account of its intrinsic merits, but rather as a certificate of spiritual respectability and a passport to more intimate relationship with the Powers which call themselves Christian. This success is easily explained. Not only were many of the missionaries men of high principle and attractive personality, but they had the wisdom to minimise doctrinal differences and the opportunity of conferring no small material benefit on their disciples by teaching them the English tongue. The commercial value of an English education stood high, and the army of native Christians had a better chance than most of obtaining posts in governmental or other offices. I may mention in passing that the first professed Christian to hold ministerial rank was the Minister of Education in the short-lived Okuma-Itagaki Government of 1898.

Of course, I would not insinuate that cases of genuine conversion were not numerous and productive of moral regeneration, or that the creed of Christendom has failed to strike root among the simple and warm-hearted peasantry. But it is certain that among the educated classes it is now viewed with rationalistic indifference.

Mr. G. W. Aston, towards the close of his “History of Japanese Literature,” makes a very significant admission:

“The process of absorbing new ideas, which has mainly occupied the Japanese nation during the last thirty years, is incomplete in one very important particular. Although much in European thought which is inseparable from Christianity has been freely adopted by Japan, the Christian religion itself has made comparatively little progress. The writings of the Kamakura and two subsequent periods are penetrated with Buddhism, and those of the Yedo age with moral and religious ideas derived from China. Christianity has still to put its stamp on the literature of the Tōkyō period.”

Shintō Temple at Miyajima.

Whether this apathy towards Christian teaching should be attributed, as some aver, to an incapacity for abstract speculation, or, as others assert, to the revolution which its adoption would entail in the position of women, need not be discussed at present. Let the following facts speak for themselves. The latest available statistics show that the number of converts is decreasing. Even within the ranks of Japanese Christianity is a strongly marked tendency to replace foreign by native teachers, and to nationalise that religion by robbing it of many dogmas which are elsewhere regarded as essential. The case of the Dōshisha, which has been of late years a burning question among Japanese and American Christians, is one with which all who take an interest in mission work should certainly be well acquainted, for it furnishes a striking illustration of the appropriative and, to our ideas, somewhat unscrupulous proclivities of Nipponean patriots. The Dōshisha is a Christian university founded at Kyōto in 1875 under the auspices of the American Board Mission. So liberal were the contributions of foreign believers to this very flourishing institution, that at last it came to include, besides a special theological department, a girls’ school, a science school, a hospital, and a nurses’ training school. Needless to say, the Presbyterian donors inserted a clause in the constitution to the effect that their form of faith should be perpetually and obligatorily taught. Religious schools, however, cannot claim the same privileges as civil schools from the Home Department, which, on the plea of neutrality, only grants to undenominational ones special concessions with regard to military conscription. Realising that this disability acted unfavourably on the number of pupils and retarded the expansion of their work, the governing body of the Dōshisha proceeded to increase the number of native subscribers, and with their connivance to dechristianise the college, in order to escape the disadvantage already mentioned. That is, the Christian instruction was made optional instead of obligatory, but the buildings and appliances, bought with American money, were of course retained. The Board, representing the original subscribers, protested against what they did not hesitate to characterise as a flagrant breach of faith: the governing body pleaded expediency, and were prepared to redefine Christianity in accordance with their own conceptions of an undeniably vague term. There the matter rests. It might seem unfair to lay stress on this matter, were it not that this action of the Dōshisha authorities is typical of the attitude of native educationalists at the present time to foreign teaching: it forms, in fact, part of the patriotic movement, which I desire to indicate without praise or blame, more especially as that movement is so little known outside Japan. Of course, there has been for years a very natural and proper tendency to replace foreign by native officials as soon as the latter seemed capable of discharging the functions primarily entrusted to the former. But this is very different from denying to foreigners the right of founding schools at their own risk—a right which they would enjoy as a matter of course in any but reactionary States. Such, however, is the policy urged on the Government by the Higher Educational Council (composed of professors in the chief schools and colleges), which on April 17, 1899, passed the following resolution:

“Foreigners who are not conversant with Japanese shall not be allowed to become teachers in other courses than those of foreign languages or special courses in special schools and of schools exclusively intended for foreigners. Foreigners who are licensed as teachers in the above-mentioned capacities shall not be allowed to found schools other than those exclusively intended for foreigners.”

As the founder of a school should legally be a licensed teacher, the foregoing clauses practically prohibit foreigners from establishing schools for Japanese. Besides, there is a clause prohibiting religious education and ceremonies in privileged schools. In other words, the nationalists wish education to be not only in their own hands, but also entirely secular; and those who desire to introduce from abroad theological tenets may no longer do so, if the Government should follow this advice, except from the pulpit or as private individuals. Whether such a restriction be or be not in violation of existing treaties with foreign Powers, I cannot say.