The mission, at one time, adopted the plan of throwing upon the local churches the responsibility of deciding as to the fitness of young men for mission aid in securing a theological education. It was agreed by representatives of the churches and the mission that each candidate should secure the approval of the deacons of the church of which he was a member, and that the church should pay a certain proportion of the candidate's school expenses. It was thought that by this method the leading Christians of the young man's acquaintance would become his sponsors, and that they would be unwilling to take this responsibility except for men in whom they had personal confidence, and for whom they would be willing to make personal contributions. In course of time the mission discovered that the plan was not working as expected. The young men could secure the approval of the deacons of their church without any difficulty; and as for the financial aid from the church, that could be very easily arranged for by the student's making a monthly contribution to the church of the sum which the church should contribute toward his expenses. Although this method seems to the average Occidental decidedly deceptive, it seemed to the Japanese perfectly proper. The arrangement, it is needless to state, was not long continued. I am persuaded that the correct explanation of these cases is "yumei-mujitsu."
Not long since express trains were put on between Kobe and Tokyo. One morning at Osaka I planned to take the early express to Kyoto, distant about thirty miles. These are the second and third cities of Japan, and the travel between them is heavy. On applying for a ticket I was refused and told there was no train for Kyoto. But as multitudes were buying tickets, and going out upon the platform, I asked an official what the trouble was, and received the explanation that for this express train no tickets could be sold for less than forty miles; but if I would buy a ticket for the next station beyond Kyoto, it would be all right; I could get off at Kyoto. I was assured that I would be allowed to land and leave the station at Kyoto. This I did then, and have repeatedly done since. The same absurd rule is applied, I am told, between Yokohama and Tokyo.
But our interest in these illustrations is the light they shed on Japanese character. They indicate the intellectual angle from which the people have looked out on life. What is the origin of the characteristic? Is it due to deep-lying race nature, to the quality of the race brain? Even more clearly than in the case of "roundaboutness," it seems to me that "nominality" is due to the nature of the old social order. Feudalism has always exhibited more or less of these same features. To Anglo-Saxons, reared in a land blessed by direct government of the people, by the people, and for the people, such methods were not only needless but obnoxious. Nominal responsibility without real power has been seen to breed numberless evils. We have learned to hate all nominalism, all fiction in government, in business and, above all, in personal character. But this is due to the Anglo-Saxon social order, the product in large measure of centuries of Christian instruction.
Through contact with Westerners and the ideas they stand for, directness and reality are being assimilated and developed by the Japanese. This would be impossible were the characteristic in question due to inherent race nature necessarily bequeathed from generation to generation by intrinsic heredity.
XIX
INTELLECTUALITY
Some writers hold that the Japanese are inherently deficient in the higher mental faculties. They consider mediocre mentality to be an inborn characteristic of Japan and assert that it lies at the root of the civilizational differences distinguishing the East from the West. The puerility of Oriental science in all its departments, the prevalence of superstition even among the cultivated, the lack of historical insight and interpretation of history are adduced as conclusive evidences of this view.
Foreign teachers in Japanese employ have told me that Japanese students, as compared with those of the West, manifest deficient powers of analysis and of generalization. Some even assert that the Japanese have no generalizing ability whatever, their progress in civilization being entirely due to their remarkable power of clever imitation. Mr. W.G. Aston, in ascribing the characteristic features of Japanese literature to the fundamental nature of the race, says they are "hardly capable of high intellectual achievement."[[AL]]
While we may admit that the Japanese do not seem to have at present the same power of scientific generalization as Occidentals, we naturally ask ourselves whether the difference is due to natal deficiency, or whether it may not be due to difference in early training. We must not forget that the youth who come under the observation of foreign teachers in Japanese schools are already products of the Japanese system of education, home and school, and necessarily are as defective as it is.