Japan

by Walter G. Dickson

The Period of Enlightened Rule—The Japanese Imperial Family—Semi-Democratic Government—Social and Educational Conditions—Religion and Law—Industries and Commerce—European Influence—The Agricultural Class—The Greater Japan—Japan and Asia—The Leader of Asiatic Countries—Japan’s Development of Formosa—Her Influence in Siam—Her Interests in China—Japan and the Boxer Movement—Japanese Trade in Manchuria—Japan’s Interests in Corea—The Anglo-Japanese Alliance—Japan and the United States—Japan and Russia—Russian Interference with Japan in Manchuria and Corea—The Diplomatic Game with Russia—Outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War—Japan’s Naval and Military Strength—The Naval and Military Operations at the Opening of War

Having taken her place as a power on an equality with the great world-powers, Japan entered upon the Twentieth Century as the leader of Asiatic nations in introducing modern civilization. The year 1901, in the Japanese calendar, was called the Meiji Era, or Period of Enlightened Rule—a fitting name for the first year of the New Empire in the new century. The electoral franchise had been extended, in 1900, to include all excepting certain uneducated persons in the lowest classes. The country was now divided politically into fifty Prefectures, Imperial Cities and Territories, in each of which the people had a voice in the administration. Consistent with her alliance with the great nations of Christendom, and with a constitutional government, the Japanese people now enjoyed, not only representative institutions, but also local self-government, freedom of the press and of public meetings, and religious liberty. Behold Twentieth Century Japan, then, open to any and every religious faith; her people taking part in the government, and through the Imperial Diet, a representative body, wielding a direct influence; the right of petition, assembly, discussion, and publication, free and open; advocating free and untrammeled education of her masses; and to the ambitious student lending a helping hand to the attainment of the highest education.

The Japanese Imperial family, at the dawn of the twentieth century, had severed its connection with all the impracticable and æsthetic traditions of 2,600 years; and its members permitted the people now to look upon their faces, meeting Japanese subjects face to face, without fear on either side. Even the Emperor, Mutsuhito, the one hundred and twenty-second Mikado in direct descent of the dynasty founded B.C. 660, is to-day a personage far different from the Mikado of 1804. Instead of the secluded monarch, whose face was never seen by his subjects, the Mikado of 1904 appears in public quite as freely as the King of England or the President of France. Three times a year he reviews his troops; he permits foreign visitors to be shown through his palace; he receives distinguished foreigners in person; he drives through the streets and parks daily. This monarch, not by force or by revolution, but voluntarily, surrendered to the people many of his prerogatives. By the Mikado, in fact, more than by any statesman or party, Japan was recreated.

As for the Empress, Her Majesty, more than any Japanese man, is responsible for the changed conditions surrounding Japanese womanhood. Toward the close of the nineteenth century she adapted modern ideas to Japanese customs, in so far as they affected those of her sex. Instead of being a recluse, a prisoner, virtually a slave, with blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows, like her predecessor of 1804, the Empress of 1904 appears frequently in public with her beauty unimpaired. She encourages, in every practical way, feminine education. She is a patron of many artistic and philanthropic enterprises and a member of the International Red Cross Society. She is beloved by the people for her many good and charitable deeds. Mainly through the influence of the Empress, then, the conditions surrounding Japanese women, with the dawn of the twentieth century, had changed for the better. Formerly, the Japanese women had no rights whatsoever. A wife was merely an Oriental chattel—she could be sold or divorced as her husband willed. In 1899, however, rights which her husband was bound to respect, together with her legal social status, were defined as follows: “A woman can now become the head of a family and exercise authority as such; she can inherit and own property and manage it herself; she can exercise parental authority; she can act as guardian or executor and has a voice in family councils.”

The Crown Prince of Japan, Yoshihito—Prince of Haru-no-Miya—who will succeed the present Mikado on the throne, followed his father and mother in the adoption of Western ideas and customs. Though he has never traveled outside of Japan, he has ignored the traditions of his dynasty to an extent unheard of in any other Oriental country. His attendance at the Nobles School in Tokio marked the beginning of the new era in Japanese education. For theretofore the Imperial Princes were educated privately within the seclusion of the palace walls. The Crown Prince, however, recited his lessons with the children of the nobles and joined them in their games. In May, 1900, the Crown Prince, then in his twenty-first year, was married at Haru to the second daughter of Prince Kujo. His bride, Princess Sava-Ko, was then in her nineteenth year. As the future Empress of Japan, she is now receiving an education that will fit her for the throne.

To conclude this mention of the Imperial family, it may be stated that the Shogun, meantime, and all that he represented, had passed into history. The last of the Tokugawa dynasty—referred to in a previous chapter—who abdicated in 1867, was, in 1901, living in retirement in Tokio as a private citizen, riding a bicycle and otherwise evincing practical approval of the New Japan that had shouldered aside the Old Japan.

The new form of government in Japan was declared by statesmen of the Liberal party to be only semi-democratic. Enlightened Japanese and students of Japan’s development asserted that Japan was hampered rather than helped by this semi-democracy, and affirmed that the new order of things was a complete disappointment.

“The representative assembly of Japan, so admirably arranged in theory,” wrote United States Senator Beveridge, after a close study of the subject, “has more than once proved to be a vexatious interference with the far-seeing plans of the empire’s real statesmen. The floors of the Diet have frequently been made rostrums from which demagogy has shouted to the masses—a stage upon which candidates for applause have outscreamed one another in playing the rôle of parliamentary conspicuity.”

All such criticism of the new form of government was based on comparison with that of European powers whose period of development included centuries, while Japan’s period of advancement covered barely half a century. Against the “disappointment” of students who had been educated out of Japan, and of “enlightened Japanese” who had traveled abroad, stood the satisfaction of the great body of people, whose source of satisfaction was the comparison of conditions in their country at the beginning of the twentieth century with conditions at the opening of the nineteenth century. Conditions in Japan in the first years of the nineteenth century are given in detail in previous chapters of this work. In comparison with those conditions, it is now in order to give the most important details of conditions one hundred years later. It must be remarked, first, that all Japan’s real advance took place during the last third of the nineteenth century, and that conditions in 1904 were the result, therefore, of the achievements of a single generation. It is not recorded in history that any other nation advanced so far in so short a time.

In 1904, foreigners, instead of being feared, hated, and excluded from the country, as in 1804, were invited to come to Japan by the Government itself—to teach in Japanese universities, to drill the Japanese army and navy, to advise in matters of administration, and to engage in trade. Thousands of foreigners, then, of many different nationalities, not only traveled in Japan, but resided there. On the other hand, thousands of Japanese subjects were now seen in all parts of the world; many were enrolled as students in European and American universities; and many were residing in foreign countries as merchants and traders. In all the harbors of Japan were seen vessels flying the flags of many different nationalities; while vessels carrying the Japanese flag plied regularly between home ports and Asia, America, Europe, and Australia, conducting freight and passenger service.