I

it must be admitted that the women do | back to the year 660 B.C. for the origin of
their very best to make themselves hide- their monarchy, and gravely tell us the
ous by excessive paint and powder, and very day — the 7th of April-on which
by swathing themselves in an awkward, the first of the mikados ascended the
bundled-up costume. Their youth, too, throne of the Reedy Land.
The one
rapidly fades away, they nurse their chil- certain fact to be extracted from these
dren into the fifth year, and, as Mr. An- primitive records is that at some period,
derson has acutely observed, "Three anterior probably by a few centuries only
years of marriage carry the girl of the to the date of the compilation of the
middle and lower classes over fifteen Kojiki, colonizing bands, coming from or
years of her youth." * But the delightful through Korea, settled in Japan, princi-
ease and grace of their manners, their pally on the shores of the fertile plain
pretty gestures, and, above all, their mu- on which the modern and ancient capi-
sical voice and silvery laugh, constitute tals, Kiyôto and Nara, now stand. The
undeniable attractions, of which it were earlier immigrations seem to have taken
as unfair as ungallant not to record their place before Chinese letters and civiliza-
possession.
tion had penetrated into Korea, after the
introduction of which, fresh bands, less
numerous probably than those which had
preceded them, brought a knowledge of
the arts, literature, and polity of China
to their kinsmen in Japan. The earliest
polity and the earliest literature of the
latter country were wholly Chinese in

Some hundred and fifty pages of Sir
E. Reed's first volume are taken up with
an elaborate summary of Japanese his
tory, which our space compels us to notice
very briefly. The annals of Japan are
not inviting reading. Their dull monot-
ony of partisan warfare and intrigue is
unrelieved even by an episodical struggle | form, and almost wholly Chinese in spirit.
for any great, good, or generous object,
while the people remain throughout in a
condition of servitude or effacement.
Their historical value, too, is doubtful;
especially is this the case with compila-
tions of a date anterior to the thirteenth
century, which are, indeed, in great part,
mere collections of myths, legends, and
traditions. The Japanese, however, have
long accepted, and still to a considerable
extent accept, these chronicles as verita-
ble history, and on this account, as well
as for other obvious reasons, they demand
and even repay an attentive study. Sir
E. Reed has been careful to make his
epitome as interesting as the subject ren-
ders possible; the labor, perhaps, was the
less irksome in that he seems to share
the faith of the Japanese in the trust-
worthiness of even their earlier annals.
The art of writing was introduced into
Japan during the sixth century of our
era, and the Kojiki (Notices of Ancient
Things) and the Nihongi (Chronicles of
Japan) the earliest of extant writings,
were compiled at the beginning of the
eighth century. Yet the Japanese go

The elaborate legal code known as the Taihô Riyô,* said to have been promulgated in the districts within the immediate rule of the mikado in the eighth century, is Chinese in style, terminology, and substance. Up to the commencement of the current decade, the civilization of the Japanese was almost entirely Chinese in character; and even at the present day the acceptance of Western civilization is principally confined to a comparatively small section of the ruling class, the members of which are with few exceptions ci-devant Samurai. The Samurai are probably the descendants, with more or less admixture of aboriginal blood, of the primitive Chinese or Korean immigrants; the number of Chinese words, altered only in pronunciation, received into the language, especially into the book and newspaper language, daily increases, and it is still doubtful whether silent Chinese influence will not carry the day against at least the moral and spiritual forces of European civilization. The almost com

* An interesting account of this, by Mr. C. J. Tarring, will be found in Vol. III., P. 2, of the Transac

* Dobell's Annual Reports on Diseases of the Chest, tions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. (London: Trüb1878.

ner and Co.)

furnished as "alms," influence and support were purchased, the priests of the existing religions were insulted and attacked, their idols destroyed, their shrines and temples manded to become Roman Catholics by their burnt. The people were in many places comconverted lords, the alternative being banishment and loss of all they possessed.

plete absence of any traces of an in- | With the doubloons of Spain and Portugal, digenous Japanese civilization, and even of any noteworthy development of the civilization introduced from the Middle Kingdom, is a remarkable feature in the history of the Japanese people, and one that should be carefully borne in mind in estimating the national character, and in drawing conclusions as to the real meaning and probable outcome of the political and social changes now in progress.

For the story of the medieval wars of the Hei and Gen, of the usurpation of Yoritomo, the founder of the Shôgunate, and of the deeds of Nobunaga, Taikosama and the great Iyeyasu or Gongen Sama, the first of the Tokugawa dynasty, and the deified hero of the splendid temples

and shrines at Nikkô

sources of in

And (p. 296):

It appears beyond all doubt certain that, as the Roman Catholic missionaries made progress in Japan, they became less wise, less prudent, and less just in the course which they pursued, they or their converts making war upon the Buddhist priests, whom they called devils, overthrowing their gods and temples, instant converts to Christianity or to take and commanding the people either to become themselves off from their families, their homes, and all they possessed.

The italics in the last extract are our own.

numerable legends, romances, and dramas we must refer our readers to the sixth and several following chapters of Sir E. Reed's first volume. To ourselves the most interesting portion of Japanese his- The writings of Charlevoix, the corretory is the Christian episode of the six-spondence of the missionaries preserved teenth and seventeenth centuries. We in the "Lettres Edifiantes," and the varialtogether dissent from the harsh judg-ous authorities summed up in M. Léon ment Sir E. Reed has deemed it necessary Pagès' exhaustive and easily accessible to pass upon early Christianity in Japan. We have no great sympathy with Catholicism, but we have a regard for justice, and justice has not been meted out to the pioneer missionaries of that faith in the Sun-Source Empire. No records left behind by the native Christians of that age have come to light, and the only indigenous accounts of their doings that appear to have been preserved are the compilations of the enemies and persecutors of their faith. Quoting from one of these writers, Sir E. Reed says of the early missionaries:

"Histoire de la Chrétienté au Japon," demonstrate with abundant clearness the utter falsity of these monstrous accusations, brought by Japanese authors translations of extracts from whose works seem alone to have been consulted by Sir E. Reed - against the Christian fathers. The missionaries squabbled among themselves, and, doubtless, were not always wise in their policy, or prudent in their fervor. It is possible, too, that the converted lords may occasionally have compelled their vassals to adopt the "evil doctrine," though no single instance of such compulsion can, we believe, be found in the reports sent to Rome by the missionaries during the hundred years that Christianity was more or less tolerated by the government of the Shôguns, and it cannot be supposed that facts were wilfully kept back or carelessly passed over by the fathers, that would have testified to the success of their operations.

It was not until 1614, considerably more than half a century after the visit of Xavier in 1548 or 1549, that any active measures were taken against the Christians, less on account of any positive doctrines they professed, than because they disbelieved "in the gods and Buddha," which, being interpreted, probably meant at bottom merely a disinclination to pay Shintô and Buddhist tithes and church-rates. The proclamations of

ོ༢

...

ported the unifying policy of the Shôguns, the persecutions that culminated in the massacre of Shimabara in 1637 of the Hizen insurgents, whose rising is said by a native writer "to have been mainly caused by the bad government of the reigning prince," * would probably never have defaced the pages of Japanese history. The persecuting spirit lingered down to our own times. It was only in April 1873 that the notice boards at the entrances of villages and towns prohibiting the "evil sect," whose doctrines, by the way, Sir E. Reed likens to those of Buddhism, were removed. In the previ

Iyeyasu, of which an interesting sum-
mary is given p. 298, can hurl no
heavier accusation against the bateren or
padri than that "they disbelieve in the
army of gods, if they see a con-
demned fellow they run to him with joy
and do him reverence." "If this,"
adds the great Gongen Sama naïvely, "is
not an evil law, what is it?" It is true
that the "Kirishitan" band is in the pre-
amble charged with not "merely sending
their merchant vessels to exchange com-
modities, but also longing to disseminate
an evil law, to overthrow right doctrine,
so that they may change the government of
the country, and obtain possession of the ous year, the strenuous and long-contin-
land," and a similar accusation is pre- ued exertions of Mr. Adams, our then
ferred in the very curious account of chargé d'affaires, and his French col-
Christian principles given by an expelled league, M. de Turenne, obtained the
Buddhist priest and quoted on p. 297. release of a number of native Christians,
Charges of this kind, however, were mere whose only crime was their faith, and who
inferences, not drawn by the Japanese had been imprisoned for more than four
themselves, but suggested, fifty or sixty years. This fact is not mentioned in the
years after the introduction of Christian- work before us. a significant incident, if
ity, by the Protestant rivals of the Span- it was the fact that out of three thousand
iards and Portuguese for the commercial who went into prison barely one thousand
supremacy in the far East. No proofs came out alive. True to the spirit of
whatever are cited by Sir E. Reed none, kindly, if occasionally somewhat exces-
indeed, have yet come to light-other sive, admiration of everything Japanese,
than the assertions of their enemies, that that pervades every page of his book, Sir
the missionaries ever taught or sought the E. Reed finds in Shintô a pure, native
subversion of the Japanese State, and it is religion, founded originally upon the
but a cheap sneer to hint that they did not conception, stated with amusing vigor,
introduce the "composing doctrine of that
Christ's love -peace and goodwill," but
"the use of firearms and the doubtful
blessing of imported cannon," to be fol-
lowed up in the nineteenth century by
what we suppose must be taken as the
certain "blessing" of imported ironclads.
The opposition to Christianity that
arose in the seventeenth century was, in-
deed, almost wholly of a political charac-
ter. Its doctrines became obnoxious
because they were connected with the
dread of foreign subjugation, suggested,
as we have shown, by Protestant traders
a dread that has ever since haunted the
Japanese mind, and still, perhaps, forms a
leading element in the foreign policy of
Japanese statesmen. The political rival-
ries, again, that kept the country in per-
petual turmoil during the Shôgunates of
Nobunaga, Taiko, and Iyeyasu, compelled
the converts to take sides in the factious
wars that desolated the land, and Chris-
tianity became, perhaps, eventually as
much a political as a religious bond of
union. Had the Christian daimiyôs sup-

there existed in the beginning one God, and nobody and nothing besides .. whose name signifies

THE LORD OF THE CENTRE OF HEAVEN ; and next, and before anybody or anything else entered upon the scene, appeared [two other gods, their] names respectively signifying

LOFTY PRODUCER, and

DIVINE PRoducer.

But these are merely synonymous epithets of the sun, and the Japanese originally worshipped, as they still worship, the sun, as the most prominent natural object and as the source of all life and light. This is not monotheism; at first probably the sun was reverenced purely as a natural object; the anthropic ideas involved in the epithets we have cited had a much later birth.

Whatever remains Shintô may possess of an indigenous religion, it cannot be doubted that, in the form under which we know it, doctrines akin to those of Taoism have entered largely into its composition. The myths of Shintô, though

Christianity in Japan, by J. H. Gubbins, of Translation of Mr. E. Satow, Japanese secretary H.B.M.'s Consular Service, Japan. Transactions of the Association Society of Japan, vol. vi., pt. 1.

to the British Legation in Japan.

Thou shalt honor the Gods and love thy
country.

Thou shalt clearly understand the principle of
heaven and the duty of Man.
Thou shalt revere the Emperor and obey the

will of his Court.

The political ingenuity of the last commandment, especially of the concluding portion of it, is amusing.

not more repulsive, as Sir E. Reed justly guage and literature of Japan is full of observes, than those of Greece, have curious information. True, it is not free found no Homer to enshrine them in from errors, but Sir E. Reed does not song, and it must be confessed that it pretend to possess even a rudimentary would be difficult to extract from most of knowledge of the language, and his misthem any poetic meaning or to invest takes are, for the most part, not of a serithem with any attractiveness for the Eu- ous character. For some of them, indeed, ropean mind. A considerable number of he is not primarily responsible, as, for inthem are collected in these volumes, to stance, the statement made on the authorthe pages of which we must refer the ity of Captain Brinkley, R. A., for many reader for examples of the mythological years professor of mathematics in one of inventiveness of the ancient Japanese. the government colleges in Tôkiyô, that Although Buddhism is tolerated, the offi- "twelve or thirteen thousand characters cial religion is a sort of improved Shin- must be stowed away in the memory, tôism, of which the following three com- beyond the reach of time and the necesmandments, promulgated by the govern- sity of revision, before the young Japanese ment in 1872, form the basis. can fairly start in pursuit of science." masters of more than five thousand charVery few Japanese, in point of fact, are acters; with three thousand, almost any book, save such technical terminology as it may contain, may be easily deciphered, and it is wonderful how far a knowledge of even fifteen hundred will carry the European student of Japanese literature.* The system of writing, however, is sufficiently complicated to justify its being Shintô, whatever may be its value from characterized by Captain Brinkley as "a a philosophical point of view, has un- terrible blemish; even the natives spend doubtedly been of immense service in pre- from five to seven years in acquiring a serving the unity of the Japanese Empire sufficient command of it. It has reduced through many vicissitudes. Its cardinal a noble tongue to a dissonant, brokendoctrine, the divine origin and absolute down Chinese jargon, and maintains the supremacy of the mikado, has never been Japanese- if not to their own harm, to lost sight of, even in the most troublous that of the rest of the world in an intimes; and Yoritomo, Nobunaga, Hide- tellectual isolation through which only yoshi and Iyeyasu, though they arrogated scholars favored with leisure and posto themselves all executive power, never sessed of great patience and enthusiasm failed to recognize the religious and legal can ever hope to win. It is almost wholly pre-eminence of the mikado, through this difficulty of mere decipherment, that whom, and through whom alone, the gods prevents foreign residents, though well communicated with the people and acquainted with the spoken language, watched over their safety and welfare. from being capable of reading "a news Nor has it fallen before the learning and paper article, a book, or a letter addressed influence of the Buddhist clergy, who, to them," and not, as our author appears indeed, do not seem at any time to have to suppose, the difference that exists besought its downfall, but rather to have en-tween the written and colloquial vocabucroached upon its domain and to have found in it a sort of natural, as opposed to a revealed Buddhism, more or less obscured by superstitious practices. The mikado himself was often, if not always, more or less of a Buddhist, and the Japanese generally appear to have viewed the *In the Chinese version of the Bible, and 27 other "way of Buddha" and "the way of the books printed at their press, the Shanghai Presbyterian Mission employed 1,100,000 characters, but only 5,150 gods," as equally certain paths to happi- different characters. In the translation of the Scrip ness and to heaven; the latter route, per-tures 4,141 different characters were used. In the above haps, being rather preferred by the 28 works 13 characters were found to occur over 10,000 times each, 229 over a thousand times each, and 3,715 peasantry, and the former by such of the characters (many probably as phonetics to render proper higher classes of society as were not names) less than 25 times each, showing that with a knowledge of some 1,500 characters and their com Confucianists. pounds the whole of the 28 works might be deciphered with little difficulty.

Sir E. Reed's disquisition on the lan

laries and styles. Pure Japanese is, as
Mr. Chamberlain, in a passage cited by
Sir E. Reed, rightly says,
66 a mellifluous
language," in which "it would be hard
to find one word less euphonious

...

22

than another: in that tongue, so different | the construction as to rest the power of
from the semi-Chinese jargon of the pres- the executive upon the intelligent assent
ent day, every syllable is a delight to
listen to."