THIRD STAGE IN WESTERNIZATION
This is not England, but Shioya, Japan
FOURTH STAGE IN WESTERNIZATION
This is not Manchester, but Osaka, Japan
Thus Shintoism, a cult without any code of morals, in which nature was worshiped in primitive fashion, was made the basis of the national ideal. There is nothing in Shintoism that might with the greatest possible stretch of imagination become the ideal of any other nation in the world. However much Japan might assume the economic leadership of Asia, it would never be because she could obtain a following for her Shinotistic ideals. "Democracy" has become a rallying cry even to the Japanese, but there is nothing in Shintoism that might counteract that appeal.
"What about Bushido?" Japanese will ask. Regarding this, it is also well to read what Professor Chamberlain has to say:
As to Bushido, so modern a thing is it that neither Kaempfer, Siebold, Satow, nor Rein—all men knowing their Japan by heart—ever once allude to it in their voluminous writings. The cause of their silence is not far to seek: Bushido was unknown until a decade or two ago! The very word appears in no dictionary, native or foreign, before the year 1900. Chivalrous individuals of course existed in Japan, as in all countries at every period; but Bushido as an institution or a code of rules, has never existed. The accounts given of it have been fabricated out of whole cloth, chiefly for foreign consumption. An analysis of medieval Japanese history shows that the great feudal houses, so far from displaying an excessive idealism in the matter of fealty to one emperor, one lord, or one party, had evolved the eminently practical plan of letting different members take different sides, so that the family as a whole might come out as winner in any event, and thus avoid the confiscation of its lands. Cases, no doubt, occurred of devotion to losing causes—for example, to Mikados in disgrace; but they were less common than in the more romantic West.
And when it is further taken into consideration that Bushido, or the so-called code of the samurai, was the ideal of a special class, a class that held itself aloof from contact with the heimin, or common people, whom it at at all times treated with contempt, and cut down even for no other reason than that of trying the edge of a new sword, one sees how utterly unacceptable it would be to peoples of other races and nations asked to come to the support of its standards. And according to one Japanese spokesman in America, only by methods that "had the appearance of browbeating her to submission by brandishing the sword" was China brought to accept the infamous Twenty-one Demands.
I search my memory and experience earnestly trying to find a basis for Japan's leadership in Asia that is not materialistic, and I cannot find any. Energy and intellectual capacity Japan has. Her present leadership in practical affairs is a great credit to her. In time, when greater leisure will become the possession of her teeming millions, there is doubtless going to appear much more that is fine and valuable in the fabric of the race. For Japan has fire. Her people are an excitable, flaming people who may burst out in a spasmodic revulsion against their commercialization. But for the time being, her only right to a voice in the destinies of Asia is found in her industrial leadership of the East, but that is a leadership which is fraught with more menace to Japan than to the world.
Let us review hastily the results of this preëminence. From being one of the most admired nations in the world, Japan has suddenly become the object of almost universal suspicion. To a very great extent, commercial jealousy is playing its part in this change. But that is not all, by any means. There is as much enmity between British and American traders in the Far East as there is between Japanese and American, or any other two groups of nationals.