Part 26

The foregoing quotations reveal the exalted nature of the ideals held by at least some of the leaders of ethical thought in Japan. Taken as a whole, the moral ideals characterizing the Japanese during their entire historical period have been conspicuously communal. The feudal structure of society has determined the peculiar character of the moral ideal. Loyalty took first rank in the moral scale; the subordination of the inferior to the superior has come next, including unquestioning obedience of children to parents, and of wife to husband. The virtues of a military people have been praised and often gloriously exemplified. The possession of these various ideals and their attainment in such high degree have given the nation its cohesiveness. They make the people a unit. The feudal training under local daimyos was fitting the people for the larger life among the nations of the world on which they are now entering. Especially is their sense of loyalty, as exhibited toward the Emperor, serving them well in this period of transition from Oriental to Occidental social ideals.

Let us now examine some defective moral standards and observe their origin in the social order. Take, for instance, the ideal of truthfulness. Every Occidental remarks on the untruthfulness of the Japanese. Lies are told without the slightest apparent compunction; and when confronted with the charge of lying, the culprit often seems to feel little sense of guilt. This trait of character was noted repeatedly by the early negotiators with Japan. Townsend Harris and Sir Rutherford Alcock made frequent mention of it. When we inquire as to the moral ideal and actual instruction concerning truthfulness, we are amazed to find how inadequate it was. The inadequacy of the teaching, however, was not the primal cause of the characteristic. There is a far deeper explanation, yet very simple, namely, the nature of the social order. The old social order was feudal, and not industrial or commercial. History shows that industrial and commercial nations develop the virtue of truthfulness far in advance of military nations. For these virtues are essential to them; without them they could not long continue to prosper.

So in regard to all the aspects of business morality, it must be admitted that, from the Occidental standpoint, Old Japan was very deficient. But it must also be stated that new ideals are rapidly forming. Buying and selling with a view to making profit, though not unknown in Old Japan, was carried on by a despised section of the community. Compared with the present, the commercial community of feudal times was mean and small. Let us note somewhat in detail the attitude of the samurai toward the trader in olden times, and the ideals they reveal.

The pursuit of business was considered necessarily degrading, for he who handled money was supposed to be covetous. The taking of profit was thought to be ignoble, if not deceitful. They who condescended to such an occupation were accordingly despised and condemned to the lowest place in the social scale. These ideas doubtless helped to make business degrading; traders were doubtless sordid and covetous and deceitful. In the presence of the samurai they were required to take the most abject postures. In addressing him, they must never stand, but must touch the ground with their foreheads; while talking with him they must remain with their hands on the ground. Even the children of samurai always assumed the lordly attitude toward tradesmen. The sons of tradesmen might not venture into a quarrel with the sons of samurai, for the armed children of the samurai were at liberty to cut down and kill the children of the despicable merchant, should they insult or even oppose them.

All this, however, has passed away. Commerce is now honored; trade and manufacture are recognized not only as laudable, but as the only hope of Japan for the future. The new social order is industrial and commercial. The entire body of the former samurai, now no longer maintaining their distinctive name, are engaged in some form of business. Japan is to-day a nation of traders and farmers. Accompanying the changes in the social order, new standards as to honesty and business integrity are being formulated and enforced.

XXIII

MORAL IDEALS

(Continued)

An Occidental is invariably filled with astonishment on learning that a human being, as such, had no value in Old Japan. The explanation lies chiefly in the fact that the social order did not rest on the inherent worth of the individual. As in all primitive lands and times, the individual was as nothing compared to the family and the tribe. As time went on, this principle took the form of the supreme worth of the higher classes in society. Hence arose the liberty allowed the samurai of cutting down, in cold blood, a beggar, a merchant, or a farmer on the slightest provocation, or simply for the purpose of testing his sword.

Japanese social and religious philosophy had not yet discovered that the individual is of infinite worth in himself, apart from all considerations of his rank in society. As we have seen, the absence of this idea from Japanese civilization resulted in various momentous consequences, of which the frequency of murder and suicide is but one.

Another, and this constitutes one of the most striking differences between the moral ideals of the East and the West, is the low estimate put upon the inherent nature and value of woman, by which was determined her social position and the moral relations of the sexes. Japan seems to have suffered somewhat in this respect from her acceptance of Hindu philosophy. For there seems to be considerable unanimity among historians that in primitive times in Japan there prevailed a much larger liberty, and consequently a much higher regard, for woman than in later ages after Buddhism became powerful. With regard, however, to that earlier period of over a thousand years ago, it is of little use to speculate. I cannot escape the feeling, however, that the condition of woman then has been unconsciously idealized, in order to make a better showing in comparison with the customs of Western lands. Be that as it may, the notions and ideals presented by Buddhism in regard to woman are clear, and clearly degrading. She is the source of temptation and sin; she is essentially inferior to man in every respect. Before she may hope to enter Nirvana she must be born again as man. How widely these extreme views of woman have found acceptance in Japan, I am not in a position to state. It is my impression, however, that they never received as full acceptance here as in India. Nevertheless, as has already been shown, the ideals of what a woman should do and be make it clear that her social position for centuries has been relatively low; as wife she is a domestic rather than a helpmeet. The "three obediences," to parents, to husband, to son, set forth the ideal, although, without doubt, the strict application of the third, obedience to one's son after he becomes the head of the household, is relatively rare.

What especially strikes the notice of the Occidental is the slight amount of social intercourse that prevails to-day between men and women. Whenever women enter into the social pleasures of men, they do so as professional singers and dancers, they being mere girls and unmarried young women; this social intercourse is all but invariably accompanied with wine-drinking, even if it does not proceed to further licentiousness. The statement that woman is man's plaything has been often heard in Japan. Confucian no less than Buddhistic ethics must bear the responsibility for putting and keeping woman on so low a level. Concubinage, possibly introduced from China, was certainly sanctioned by the Chinese classics.

The Lei-ki allows an Emperor to have in addition to the Empress three consorts, nine maids of high rank, and twenty-seven maids of lower rank, all of whom rank as wives, and, beside these, eighty-one other females called concubines. Concubinage and polygamy, being thus sanctioned by the classics, became an established custom in Japan.

The explanation for this ideal and practice is not far to seek. It rests in the communal character of the social order. The family was the social unit of Japan. No individual member was of worth except the legal head and representative, the father. A striking proof of the correctness of this explanation is the fact that even the son is obeyed by the father in case he has become "in kio," that is, has abdicated; the son then becomes the authoritative head. The ideals regarding woman then were not unique; they were part of the social order, and were determined by the principle of "communalism" unregulated by the principle of "individualism." Ideals respecting man and woman were equally affected. So long as man is not valued as a human being, but solely according to his accidental position in society, woman must be regarded in the same way. She is valued first as a begetter of offspring, second as a domestic. And when such conceptions prevail as to her nature and function in society, defective ideals as to morality in the narrower sense of this term, leading to and justifying concubinage, easy divorce, and general loose morality are necessary consequences.

But this moral or immoral ideal is by no means peculiar to Japan. The peculiarity of Japan and the entire Orient is that the social order that fostered it lasted so long, before forces arose to modify it. But, as will be shown later, the great problem of human evolution, after securing the advantages of "communalism," and the solidification of the nation, is that of introducing the principle of individualism into the social order. In the Orient the principle of communalism gained such headway as effectually to prevent the introduction of this new principle. There is, in my opinion, no probability that Japan, while maintaining her isolation, would ever have succeeded in making any radical change in her social order; her communalism was too absolute. She needed the introduction of a new stimulus from without. It was providential that this stimulus came from the Anglo-Saxon race, with its pronounced principle of "individualism" wrought out so completely in social order, in literature, and in government. Had Russia or Turkey been the leading influences in starting Japan on her new career, it is more than doubtful whether she would have secured the principles needful for her healthful moral development.

Justice to the actual ideals and life of Old Japan forbids me to leave, without further remark, what was said above regarding the ideals of morality in the narrower significance of this word. Injunctions that women should be absolutely chaste were frequent and stringent. Nothing more could be asked in the line of explicit teaching on this theme. And, furthermore, I am persuaded, after considerable inquiry, that in Old Japan in the interior towns and villages, away from the center of luxury and out of the beaten courses of travel, there was purity of moral life that has hardly been excelled anywhere. I have repeatedly been assured that if a youth of either sex were known to have transgressed the law of chastity, he or she would at once be ostracised; and that such transgressions were, consequently, exceedingly rare. It is certainly a fact that in the vast majority of the interior towns there have never, until recent times, been licensed houses of prostitution. Of late there has been a marked increase of dancing and singing girls, of whom it is commonly said that they are but "secret prostitutes." These may to-day be found in almost every town and village, wherever indeed there is a hotel. Public as well as secret prostitution has enormously increased during the last thirty or forty years.

Thanks to Mr. Murphy's consecrated energy, the appalling legalized and hopeless slavery under which these two classes of girls exist is at last coming to light. He has shown, by several test cases, that although the national laws are good to look at they are powerless because set aside by local police regulations over which the courts are powerless! In September, 1900, however, in large part due no doubt to the facts made public by him, and backed up by the public press, and such leaders of Japan's progressive elements as Shimada Sabur, the police regulations were modified, and with amazing results. Whereas, previous to that date, the average monthly suicides throughout the land among the public prostitutes were between forty and fifty, during the two months of September and October there were none! In that same period, out of about five thousand prostitutes in the city of Tokyo, 492 had fled from their brothels and declared their intentions of abandoning the "shameful business," as the Japanese laws call it, and in consequence a prominent brothel had been compelled to stop the business! We are only in the first flush of this new reform as these lines are written, so cannot tell what end the whole movement will reach. But the conscience of the nation is beginning to waken on this matter and we are confident it will never tolerate the old slavery of the past, enforced as it was by local laws, local courts, so that girls were always kept in debt, and when they fled were seized and forced back to the brothels in order to pay their debts!

But in contrast to the undoubted ideal of Old Japan in regard to the chastity of women, must be set the equally undoubted fact that the sages have very little to say on the subject of chastity for men. Indeed there is no word in the Japanese language corresponding to our term "chastity" which may be applied equally to men and women. In his volume entitled "Kokoro," Mr. Hearn charges the missionaries with the assertion that there is no word for chastity in Japanese. "This," he says, "is true in the same sense only that we might say that there is no word for chastity in the English language, because such words as honor, virtue, purity, chastity have been adopted into English from other languages." I doubt if any missionary has made such a statement. His further assertion, that "the word most commonly used applies to both sexes," would have more force, if Mr. Hearn had stated what the word is. His English definition of the term has not enabled me to find the Japanese equivalent, although I have discussed this question with several Japanese. It is their uniform confession that the Japanese language is defective in its terminology on this topic, the word with which one may exhort a woman to be chaste being inapplicable to a man. The assertion of the missionaries has nothing whatever to do with the question as to whether the terms used are pure Japanese or imported Chino-Japanese; nor has it any reference to the fact that the actual language is deficient in abstract terms. It is simply that the term applicable to a woman is not applicable to a man. And this in turn proves sharp contrasts between the ideals regarding the moral duties of men and of women.

An interesting point in the Japanese moral ideal is the fact that the principle of filial obedience was carried to such extremes that even prostitution of virtue at the command of the parents, or for the support of the parents, was not only permitted but, under special conditions, was highly praised. Modern prostitution is rendered possible chiefly through the action of this perverted principle. Although the sale of daughters for immoral purposes is theoretically illegal, yet, in fact, it is of frequent occurrence.

Although concubinage was not directly taught by Confucius, yet it was never forbidden by him, and the leaders and rulers of the land have lent the custom the authority and justification of their example. As we have already seen, the now ruling Emperor has several concubines, and all of his children are the offspring of these concubines. In Old Japan, therefore, there were two separate ideals of morality for the two sexes.

The question may be raised how a social order which required such fidelity on the part of the woman could permit such looseness on the part of the man, whether married or not. How could the same social order produce two moral ideals? The answer is to be found in several facts. First, there is the inherent desire of each husband to be the sole possessor of his wife's affections. As the stronger of the two, he would bring destruction on an unfaithful wife and also on any who dared invade his home. Although the woman doubtless has the same desire to be the sole possessor of her husband's affection, she has not the same power, either to injure a rival or to punish her faithless husband. Furthermore, licentiousness in women has a much more visibly disastrous effect on her procreative functions than equal licentiousness in man. This, too, would serve to beget and maintain different ethical standards for the two sexes. Finally, and perhaps no less effective than the two preceding, is the fact that the general social consciousness held different conceptions in regard to the social positions of man and woman. The one was the owner of the family, the lord and master; to him belonged the freedom to do as he chose. The other was a variety of property, not free in any sense to please herself, but to do only as her lord and master required.

An illustration of the first reason given above came to my knowledge not long since. Rev. John T. Gulick saw in Kanagawa, in 1862, a man going through the streets carrying the bloody heads of a man and a woman which he declared to be those of his wife and her seducer, whom he had caught and killed in the act of adultery. This act of the husband's was in perfect accord with the practices and ideals of the time, and not seldom figures in the romances of Old Japan.

The new Civil Code adopted in 1898 furnishes an authoritative statement of many of the moral ideals of New Japan. For the following summary I am indebted to the Japan Mail. In regard to marriage it is noteworthy that the "prohibited degrees of relationship are the same as those in England"--including the deceased wife's sister. "The minimum age for legal marriage is seventeen in the case of a man and fifteen in the case of a woman, and marriage takes effect on notification to the registrar, being thus a purely civil contract. As to divorce, it is provided that the husband and wife may effect it by mutual consent, and its legal recognition takes the form of an entry by the registrar, no reference being necessary to the judicial authorities. Where mutual consent is not obtained, however, an action for divorce must be brought, and here it appears that the rights of the woman do not receive the same recognition as those of the man. Thus, although adultery committed by the wife constitutes a valid ground of divorce, we do not find that adultery on the husband's part furnishes a plea to the wife. Ill-treatment or gross insult, such as renders living together impracticable, or desertion, constitutes a reason for divorce from the wife's point of view." The English reviewer here adds that "since no treatment can be worse nor any insult grosser than open inconstancy on the part of a husband, it is conceivable that a judge might consider that such conduct renders living together impracticable. But in the presence of an explicit provision with regard to the wife's adultery and in the absence of any such provision with regard to the husband's, we doubt whether any court of law would exercise discretion in favor of the woman." The gross "insult of inconstancy" on the part of the husband is a plea that has never yet been recognized by Japanese society. The reviewer goes on to say: "One cannot help wishing that the peculiar code of morality observed by husbands in this country had received some condemnation at the hands of the framers of the new Code. It is further laid down that a 'person who is judicially divorced or punished because of adultery cannot contract a marriage with the other party to the adultery.' If that extended to the husband it would be an excellent provision, well calculated to correct one of the worst social abuses of this country. Unfortunately, as we have seen, it applies apparently to the case of the wife only." The provision for divorce by "mutual consent" is striking and ominous. It makes divorce a matter of entirely private arrangement, unless one of the parties objects. In a land where women are so docile, is it likely that the wife would refuse to consent to divorce when her lord and master requests or commands her to leave his home? "There are not many women in Japan who could refuse to become a party to the 'mutual consent' arrangement if they were convinced that they had lost their husband's affection and that he could not live comfortably with them." It would appear that nothing whatever is said by the Code with reference to concubinage, either allowing or forbidding it. Presumably a man may have but one legitimate wife, and children by concubines must be registered as illegitimate. Nothing, however, on this point seems to be stated, although provision is made for the public acknowledgment of illegitimate children. "Thus, a father can acknowledge a natural child, making what is called a 'shoshi,' and if, subsequent to acknowledgment, the father and mother marry, the 'shoshi,' acquires the status of a legitimate child, such status reckoning back, apparently to the time of birth." Evidently, this provision rests on the implication that the mother is an unmarried woman--presumably a concubine.

Recent statistics throw a rather lurid light on these provisions of the Code. The Imperial Cabinet for some years past has published in French and Japanese a résumé of national statistics. Those bearing on marriage and divorce, in the volume published in 1897, may well be given at this point.

MARRIAGES DIVORCES LEGITIMATE BIRTHS ILLEGITIMATE 1890 325,141 109,088 1,079,121 66,253 1891 325,651 112,411 1,033,653 64,122 1892 349,489 133,498 1,134,665 72,369 1893 358,398 116,775 1,105,119 73,677 1894 361,319 114,436 1,132,897 76,407 1895 365,633 110,838 1,166,254 80,168 1897 395,207 124,075 1,335,125 89,996

These authoritative statistics show how divorce is a regular part of the Japanese family system, one out of three marriages proving abortive.

Morally Japan's weak spot is the relation of the sexes, both before and after marriage. Strict monogamy, with the equality of duties of husband and wife, is the remedy for the disease.

This slight sketch of the provision of the new Code as it bears on the purity of the home, and on the development of noble manhood and womanhood, shows that the Code is very defective. It practically recognizes and legalizes the present corrupt practices of society, and makes no effort to establish higher ideals. Whether anything more should be expected of a Code drawn up under the present circumstances is, of course, an open question. But the Code reveals the astonishingly low condition of the moral standards for the home, one of the vital weaknesses of New Japan. The defectiveness of the new Code in regard to the matters just considered must be argued, however, not from the failure to embody Occidental moral standards, but rather from the failure to recognize the actual nature of the social order of New Japan. While the Code recognizes the principle of individualism and individual rights and worth in all other matters, in regard to the home, the most important social unit in the body politic, the Code legalizes and perpetuates the old pre-Meiji standards. Individualism in the general social order demands its consistent recognition in every part.