The War in the East: Japan, China, and Corea

by Trumbull White

Notwithstanding the spirit of lawlessness that spread far and wide among the princes and nobles, creating misery and unrest throughout the country, that literary instinct which has been a marked characteristic of the Chinese throughout their long history continued as active as ever. At stated intervals officials, we are told, were sent in light carriages into all parts of the empire to collect words from the changing dialects of each district; and at the time of the royal progresses the official music masters and historiographers of each principality presented to the officials appointed for the purpose, collections of the odes and songs of each locality, in order, we are told, that the character of the rule exercised by their princes should be judged by the tone of the poetical and musical productions of their subjects. The odes and songs as found and thus collected were carefully preserved in royal archives, and it was from these materials, as is commonly believed, that Confucius compiled the celebrated “She King” or “Book of Odes.”

One hundred years before the close of the Chow dynasty, a great statesman named Wei Yang appeared in the rising state of Ch’in and brought about many valuable reformations. Among other things he introduced a system of tithings, which has endured to the present day. The unit of Chinese social life has always been the family and not the individual; and this statesman caused the family to be divided into groups of ten families to each, upon a basis of mutual protection and responsibility. The soil of China has always been guarded as the inalienable property of her imperial ruler for the time being, held in trust by him on behalf of a higher and greater power whose vice-regent he is. In the age of the Chows, land appears to have been cultivated upon a system of communal tenure, one-ninth of the total produce being devoted in all cases to the expenses of government and the maintenance of the ruling family in each state. Copper coins of a uniform shape and portable size were first cast, according to Chinese writers, about half way through the sixth century B.C. An irregular form of money, however, had been in circulation long before, one of the early vassal dukes having been advised, in order to replenish his treasury, to “break up the hills and make money out of the metal therein; to evaporate sea water and make salt. This,” added his advising minister, “will benefit the realm and with the profits you may buy up all kinds of goods cheap and store them until the market has risen; establish also three hundred depots of courtesans for the traders, who will thereby be induced to bring all kinds of merchandise to your country. This merchandise you will tax and thus have a sufficiency of funds to meet the expenses of your army.” Such were some of the principles of finance and political economy among the Chows, customs duties being apparently even at that early date a recognized part of the revenue.

The art of healing was practised among the Chinese in their prehistoric times, but the first quasi-scientific efforts of which we have any record belong to the period with which we are now dealing. The physicians of the Chow dynasty classify diseases under the four seasons of the year—headaches and neuralgic affections under spring, skin diseases of all kinds under summer, fever and agues under autumn, and bronchial and pulmonary[pulmonary] complaints under winter. The public at large was warned against rashly swallowing the prescriptions of any physician whose family had not been three generations in the medical profession.

When the Chows went into battle they formed a line with the bowman on the left and the spearman on the right flank. The centre was occupied by chariots, each drawn by three or four horses harnessed abreast. Swords, daggers, shields, iron headed clubs, huge iron hooks, drums, cymbals, gongs, horns, banners and streamers innumerable were also among the equipment of war. Quarter was rarely if ever given and it was customary to cut the ears from the bodies of the slain.

It was under the Chows, a thousand years before Christ, that the people of China began to possess family names. By the time of Confucius the use of surnames had become definitely established for all classes. The Chows founded a university, a shadow of which remains to the present day. They seem to have had theatrical representations of some kind, though it is difficult to say of what nature these actually were. Music must have already reached a stage of considerable development, if we are to believe Confucius himself, who has left it on record that after listening to a certain melody he was so affected as not to be able to taste meat for three months.

Slavery was at this date a regular domestic institution and was not confined as now to the purchase of women alone; and whereas in still earlier ages it had been usual to bury wooden puppets in the tombs of princes, we now read of slave boys and slave girls barbarously interred alive with the body of every ruler of a state, in order, as was believed, to wait upon the tyrant’s spirit after death. But public opinion began during the Confucian era to discountenance this savage rite, and the son of a man who left instructions that he should be buried in a large coffin between two of his concubines, ventured to disobey his father’s commands.

We know that the Chows sat on chairs while all other eastern nations were sitting on the ground, and ate their food and drank their wine from tables; that they slept on beds and rode on horseback. They measured the hours with the aid of sun dials; and the invention of the compass is attributed, though on somewhat insufficient grounds, to one of their earliest heroes. They played games of calculation of an abstruse character, and others involving dexterity. They appear to have worn shoes of leather, and stockings, and hats, and caps, in addition to robes of silk; and to have possessed such other material luxuries as fans, mirrors of metal, bath tubs, and flat irons. But it is often difficult to separate truth from falsehood in the statement of Chinese writers with regard to their history. They are fond of exaggerating the civilization of their forefathers, which, as a matter of fact, was sufficiently advanced to command admiration without the undesirable coloring of fiction they have thus been tempted to lay on.

IMAGE OF CONFUCIUS.

Of the religions of the Chinese we will speak in a succeeding chapter, but it must be said here that during the Chow dynasty was born the most famous of Chinese teachers, Confucius. He was preceded about the middle of the dynasty by Lao-tzu, the founder of an abstruse system of ethical philosophy which was destined to develop into the Taoism of to-day. Closely following, and partially a contemporary, came Confucius, “a teacher who has been equalled in his influence upon masses of the human race by Buddha alone and approached only by Mahomet and Christ.” Confucius devoted his life chiefly to the moral amelioration of his fellow men by oral teaching, but he was also an author of many works. A hundred years later came Mencius, the record of whose teachings also forms an important part of the course of study of a modern student in China. His pet theory was that the nature of man is good, and that all evil tendencies are necessarily acquired from evil communications either by heredity or association. It was during this same period that the literature of the Chinese language was founded. Of this subject, and some of the famous works, more will be said in a succeeding chapter devoted to literature and education.