The old world and its ways

by William Jennings Bryan

The Methodists have eighteen boarding schools and nineteen day schools with a total attendance of nearly five thousand. Their college at Kobe is a very promising institution.

The Baptists have a theological seminary, an academy, five boarding schools for girls and eight day schools, with a total attendance of nearly a thousand. The Episcopal Church has also taken an important part in educational work, while the Catholics (who were first on the ground) have over sixty seminaries, schools and orphanages, with an attendance of some six thousand.

The Japanese government supports more than twenty-five thousand primary schools, attended by over five million boys and girls; it supports more than two hundred and fifty middle schools, with an attendance of nearly one hundred thousand. While less than two per cent of the primary students enter the middle schools, more than ten per cent of the middle school students enter the higher colleges.

Although these figures give some idea of the interest taken in education, they do not furnish an adequate conception of the enthusiasm with which a large number of these students pursue their studies. Nearly fifty young men called upon me or wrote to me asking to be taken to America that they might continue their studies. Many of the leading men in Japan to-day are graduates of American or European colleges. The physicians have shown a preference for German schools, while to engineers and politicians our universities have been more attractive. A part of the friendliness felt toward foreigners can be traced to the favors shown Japanese boys who left home in search of knowledge. Marquis Ito, one of the first of these, owes much to an elder of the Presbyterian Church in England in whose home he lived as a student, and the marquis has ever since been making returns in kindness to foreigners and Christians.

Marquis Ito's case is not exceptional; all over Japan are men who hold in grateful remembrance Americans and Europeans to whom they are indebted for assistance. I met a man, now the publisher of an influential paper, who twenty years ago, at the age of sixteen, went to sea and in a shipwreck was cast upon one of the islands in the South Pacific. He became a retainer for the king of the islands and as such wore the scanty native dress, consisting of a loin cloth. He went with his king to Honolulu to pay a visit to the Hawaiian queen, and finding a Japanese settlement there, remained for two or three years. He then went to the United States and, making a friend of a professor in one of the universities, attended school there for several years. He now visits the United States every year or so on business, and one seeing him wearing a silk hat and a Prince Albert coat would hardly guess the experiences through which he has risen to his present position. If Japan, beginning fifty years ago with no educational system and scarcely any educated men or women, could accomplish what she has accomplished in half a century, what will she accomplish in the twentieth century, with the start which she now has and with the educational advantages which her people now enjoy?

Japan has several religions, although Shintoism has been, since 1868, the state religion. As a matter of fact, however, Shintoism can hardly be called a religion for it has no creed, no priesthood and no code of morals. It is really ancestor worship and comes down from time immemorial. It implies a belief in immortality, for the ancestral spirits are invoked and vows are paid to them at the numberless shrines that dot the country. These shrines are not usually in temples, although sometimes Shintoism and Buddhism have been mixed together and one temple employed for both shrines; as a rule, however, the Shinto shrine is in some secluded spot on the top of a hill or on a mountain side where a bit of natural scenery awakens a spirit of reverence. A gate of simple but beautiful design is placed at the point where the pathway to the shrine departs from the main road. We had read of these Shinto gates and had seen pictures of them, but we first saw one at Honolulu, itself the gateway to the Orient. No description can convey to the reader the impression which this gate makes upon the traveler; its outlines are so graceful and yet so strong that it seems an appropriate portal to a holy place.

The moral code of Confucius has also influenced the thought of Japan.

About fourteen hundred years ago the Buddhist religion was introduced into Japan by Chinese priests, and it spread rapidly throughout the islands. Its temples were imposing, its ceremonies impressive and the garb of its priests costly and elaborate. It did not root out Shintoism, it simply overwhelmed and absorbed it. The Buddhist temples, though not as popular as they once were, are still visited by millions of believers and are objects of interest to the tourist. Most of them are old, one at Nara having been built about the year 700. It is in such an excellent state of preservation that one can hardly believe that it has stood the storms of twelve centuries.

In the center of the temple is an image of Buddha, and on either side the figure of a huge warrior. There is also in this temple a God of War to which the Japanese were wont to pay their vows before going to battle. The devout Buddhist, approaching the image of the founder of his religion, bows and mutters a prayer, half audibly, and, throwing his mite in a box or on the floor before the shrine, departs. There is usually a bell, or sometimes only a chain, hanging above the place where prayers are said, and the suppliant swings a rope against the bell or shakes the chain before his prayer and claps his hands two or three times at its close. We inquired about the bell and received two answers: One, that it was to attract the attention of the god, and the other that it was to awaken the conscience of the one about to present his petition.