LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY f 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
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 AMBASSADORS' Q>mO\
 
 JA PAN 
 
 ITS HisTom . \irrs. \ 
 
 LI Ti:n \T! RK 
 
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 THE VILLAGE WATER WHEEL 
 
 J. B. MILLET GOMPAN1 
 
 BOSTON AND TOKYO
 
 J33HW H3T/.V7 3,)/.JJTY 3HT
 
 JAPAN 
 
 ITS HISTORY, ARTS, AND 
 LITERATURE 
 
 CAPTAIN F. BRINKLEY 
 
 J. 13. MILLET COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON AND TOKYO
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1901 
 BY J B. MILLET CO. 
 
 ENTERED AT STATIONERS BALL, LONDON, ENGLAND 
 
 THE PLIMPTOH PRESS 
 [W . D -o] 
 
 NORWOOD . MASS U S A
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Page 
 PRESENT JAPAN i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 PRIMJEVAL JAPANESE 26 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 JAPAN ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 50 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 TAPAN IN THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY .... 89 
 
 J * 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE JAPANESE IN THE NARA EPOCH 131 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 157 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH (Continued'] 196 
 
 APPENDIX 247
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Page 
 
 The Village Water-Wheel Frontispiece 
 
 A Group of Ainu 32 
 
 Dolmen at Domyoji-yama (Kawachi) 48 
 
 A Shirabiyashi Aristocratic Lady, Heian Epoch . . 120 
 
 A Winter Scene in Yokohama 192 
 
 View of Katsura River near Arashiyama .... 224 
 i
 
 JAPAN 
 
 ITS HISTORY ARTS AND 
 LITERATURE 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 JAPAN, since the resumption of her inter- 
 course with Western nations forty years ago, 
 has attracted much attention and inspired an 
 extraordinarily large number of book-makers 
 to discuss her beauties and her quaintnesses. Not 
 one of these many authors has been wholly con- 
 demnatory. Most of them found something to 
 admire in the manners and customs of her people, 
 and all were charmed by her art and her scenery. 
 Certainly, in the matters of seascape and land- 
 scape, Nature has been profusely kind to the Isles 
 of Nippon. They rise out of the sea with so 
 many graces of form, and lie bathed in an atmos- 
 phere of such sparkling softness, that it is easy to 
 sympathise with the legend ascribing their origin 
 to crystals dropped from the point of the Creator's 
 spear. That they fell from some heaven of gen- 
 erous gods is a theory more consonant with their
 
 JAPAN 
 
 aspect, than the sober fact that they form part 
 of a great ring welded by volcanic energy in the 
 Pacific Ocean, and that still, from time to time, 
 they shudder with uneasy memories of the fiery 
 forces that begot them. 
 
 Eastern Asia thrusts two long slender arms into 
 far oriental waters : Kamtchatka in the north, 
 Malacca in the south ; and between these lies 
 a giant girdle of islands, holding in its embrace 
 Siam, Cochin China, the Middle Kingdom, 
 Korea, and the eastern end of the Great White 
 Czar's dominions, thus extending from latitude 
 50 north to the equator. When Commodore 
 Perry anchored at Uraga, in 1854, the empire 
 of Japan stretched along two-fifths of this girdle. 
 Beginning on the south, at Cape Sata, the lowest 
 point of the Island of Nine Provinces (Kiushu), 
 it ended, on the north, with a disputed fragment 
 of Saghalien, and an unsettled number of the 
 attenuated filament of islets called the Kuriles. 
 Since then, the empire has been pushed ten de- 
 grees southward. Now, including the Riukiu 
 (Loochoo) Islands and Formosa, it constitutes 
 three-fifths of the girdle a distance of two 
 thousand miles and extends over thirty degrees 
 of latitude and thirty-five of longitude. Its ex- 
 pansion has followed the law of geographical 
 affinities temporarily transgressed in the case 
 of the United States only, and ultimately verified 
 by their history also : southward the star of 
 empire has taken its way. One loss of territory
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 was suffered by Japan in that interval, perhaps 
 by way of permanent punishment for standing so 
 long aloof from the outer world : she had to sur- 
 render to Russia the island of Saghalien, Kara- 
 futo, in her own nomenclature. But that exception 
 tends only to emphasise the general rule of her 
 expansion. First, she took steps to assure her 
 possession of the Bonin group of islands Oga- 
 sawara-jima, as she calls them which, though 
 discovered by her mariners two hundred years 
 previously, were not included in her sphere of 
 active occupation until 1871. Next she annexed 
 the Riukiu archipelago, known to Western folks 
 as the Loochoos, which form a series of stepping- 
 stones between her shores and Formosa. They 
 were claimed by China as an integral part of her 
 empire, and the incidents of their acquisition 
 by Japan almost involved the latter in a war 
 with her colossal neighbour, at that time (1874) 
 believed to be a Power of immense military re- 
 sources. But Japan thought that she had a title 
 to the islands, and she asserted it with courageous 
 tenacity. The war then averted with difficulty, 
 broke out twenty years later, and ended in a 
 complete victory for Japan, one of the fruits of 
 her success being that she added Formosa and 
 the Pescadores to her dominions, which thus 
 consist now of five large islands and a multitude 
 of islets, the latter scattered along her coasts or 
 grouped into four clusters, the Kuriles (Chin- 
 shima) on the north ; the Bonins (Ogasawara- 
 
 3
 
 JAPAN 
 
 jima) on the east; the Loochoo (Riukiu or 
 Okinawa) on the south ; and the Pescadores, off 
 the southwest coast of Formosa. 1 
 
 Territorial expansion has therefore been a fea- 
 ture of Japan's debut upon the world's stage. 
 Growth has marked the opening of her new 
 career. The fact takes its place properly at the 
 head of her modern records, for it constitutes a 
 convincing proof that the diet of Western civili- 
 sation has brought to her an access of vigour, 
 instead of overtaxing her digestion, as was gener- 
 ally feared at first. 
 
 To speak of a country as making its debut 
 upon the world's stage, is to suggest the idea of 
 youth. But the age of the Japanese nation, 
 measured by the mere lapse of centuries, is very 
 mature. They themselves claim to have been an 
 organised State for twenty-six hundred years, and 
 there is no valid reason to deny at least the proxi- 
 mate accuracy of their estimate. It is a great 
 age, yet insignificant compared with that of the 
 neighbouring empire, China, which can count 
 fully the double of Japan's tale of years. Both 
 are ancient from an Occidental point of view, 
 and perhaps because their fellowship with the 
 West has been so short in comparison with the 
 long succession of cycles covered by their records, 
 it has become a habit to bracket them together 
 as simultaneously introduced to the circle of 
 civilised States. There is, however, a radical 
 
 1 See Appendix, note i .
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 difference between the two countries. China 
 stands, in the Far East, an imposing figure with 
 her gigantic expanse of territory, her immense 
 population, and her vast wealth of undeveloped 
 resources. Such elements seem capable of being 
 moulded into a world-moving force, and their 
 potentialities have even appalled some leaders 
 of European thought. But if history teaches 
 anything it teaches that there is only one grand 
 climacteric in the career of a nation. Beyond 
 the summit descent is inevitable. The continuity 
 of the downward grade is never broken by a sec- 
 ond eminence. As it fares with a man or with a 
 tree, so it fares with a nation's growth or decay. 
 China long ago reached the zenith of her great- 
 ness, and has been sinking steadily to lower levels 
 ever since. She was never an isolated State, hus- 
 banding her resources in seclusion and waiting to 
 be galvanised into new life by contact with rival 
 countries. Her very name, the " Middle King- 
 dom," indicates the relation in which she stood 
 to the rest of the world. Whatever other States 
 had to give, she received as a tribute to her own in- 
 effable superiority, not as an incentive to emula- 
 tion and exertion. That frame of mind became 
 at last an instinct. It destroyed her appetite for 
 assimilation and condemned her to succumb to 
 any civilisation she could not despise. Japan's 
 case has been dissimilar from point to point. 
 Her whole career has been a continuous effort 
 of assimilation ; her invariable attitude, that of 
 
 5
 
 JAPAN 
 
 modest studentship. One advantage only she 
 claimed over other States. It was the divine ori- 
 gin of her rulers and the consequent guardianship 
 extended to her by the gods. But her deities 
 were not supposed to contribute anything to 
 her material civilisation. Their most beneficent 
 function was tutelary. Hence her people never 
 classed themselves above other nations in a pro- 
 gressive sense. They were always perfectly ready 
 to accept and adopt every good thing that a for- 
 eign country had to offer, whether of philosophy, 
 of art, of technique, of administration, or of legis- 
 lation. That is a fact which stands out in doubly 
 leaded capitals on the pages of Japan's story. From 
 the very earliest hours of her national career the 
 stranger was welcomed within her gates. Who- 
 ever brought to her any product of foreign learn- 
 ing, genius, or industry, whether from China, from 
 Korea, or from the South Seas, was received with 
 acclaim, and not merely granted a domicile, but 
 also admitted to many of the most honourable 
 offices the State had to bestow, and to the highest 
 ranks of the social organisation. Many of her 
 noble families trace their origin to emigrants from 
 the Asiatic continent; many of her artists and 
 men of letters are proud to show a strain of 
 Chinese or Korean blood in their lineage. 
 
 There was, indeed, a long break in the conti- 
 nuity of that liberal attitude, a break of more 
 than two hundred years. From the early part 
 of the seventeenth century to the middle of the 
 
 6 '
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 nineteenth, Japan led an almost hermit existence. 
 Of her own choice she closed her doors to all the 
 nations of the Occident except the Dutch, and 
 with them, too, her intercourse ultimately became 
 an affair of haughty tolerance on one side and 
 narrow privileges on the other. But if the world 
 learned to regard her in those days as a semi-savage 
 recluse, that was simply the world's misconcep- 
 tion. Were the sentiments which, at the close 
 of the nineteenth century, impel the United 
 States and Australia to bar out the Chinese, and 
 induce Russia and Germany to ostracise the Jews, 
 were those sentiments multiplied by factors of 
 political apprehension and religious intolerance, 
 they would still fall short of the feelings that 
 Japan learned to cultivate towards Occidentals at 
 the end of the sixteenth century and the begin- 
 ning of the seventeenth. Opening her ports to 
 their traders more freely than any other con- 
 temporaneous nation would have done, she found 
 them rapidly denude her of her gold and silver. 
 Showing towards the preaching and propagandism 
 of their religion an attitude of tolerance absolutely 
 without precedent in mediaeval days, she discovered 
 that the alien creed became a political weapon 
 pointed at the heart of her own national integrity 
 and independence. Her instincts had prompted 
 her to be liberal and receptive ; her experience 
 had compelled her to be conservative and repel- 
 lent. We who see things assume their due pro- 
 portions in the long vista of the past, know that 
 
 7
 
 JAPAN 
 
 a more patient trial would have dispelled her sus- 
 picions, and that instead of closing her gates against 
 the world for the sake of Roman Catholicism two 
 hundred and fifty years ago, she might safely have 
 kept them open in its despite, and commenced 
 then the career of progress which promises to 
 carry her so far to-day. But to adopt such a 
 course in the face of such dissuasive experiences, 
 she must have been as much in advance of her 
 time as she ultimately fell behind it by choosing 
 a policy of isolation. No nation with which 
 history makes us acquainted would have acted a 
 part different from the one she selected, and if 
 she clung to her seclusion long enough to be 
 counted a benighted bigot, it was largely because 
 a geographical accident made it easy for her, on 
 the one hand, to live apart, and kept her, on the 
 other, beyond the effective range of influences 
 which would certainly have drawn her out of 
 her hermitage. Besides, on the Occident only, 
 or, to narrow the facts to their exact limits, on 
 the Roman Catholic countries of the Occident 
 only, did she turn her back between 1630 and 
 1857. The Dutch had commercial access to her 
 dominions, and the Chinese might come and go 
 at will. Grant that the Hollanders were sub- 
 jected to humiliating restrictions, and grant also 
 that there was no reciprocity of intercourse with 
 China, since Japanese subjects might not cross to 
 the neighbouring empire ; yet it must still be 
 conceded that these ultimate vetoes were dictated 
 
 8
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 by extraneous causes, whereas the previous sanc- 
 tions reflected Japan's natural disposition. She 
 had always been liberal by instinct, though her 
 mood had sometimes become conservative by 
 education. 
 
 If these facts are recognised, her modern ca- 
 reer becomes much more intelligible. Many 
 onlookers have wondered that a nation should be 
 able to spring suddenly out of an isolation which 
 three centuries of observance had crystallised into a 
 creed, and should suddenly embrace an alien civil- 
 isation not merely with avidity, but also with apt- 
 itude such as only a thoroughly liberal mood could 
 beget. The truth is that these singular feats indi- 
 cated, not a change of nature, but the re-assertion 
 of an inborn disposition. For eighteen centuries 
 she had been freely borrowing and assimilating 
 everything that her Oriental neighbours had to 
 offer, and when, in the middle of the nineteenth, 
 she discovered that the Occident was incompara- 
 bly a greater teacher, she merely obeyed her im- 
 memorial tendency of entering the newly opened 
 school. But, it may be urged, though that accounts 
 for her liberalism, it does not explain her recep- 
 tivity. It tells us why she did not cling to her 
 temporary conservatism, but it does not tell us 
 why her progress became so rapid as to surprise the 
 world. When an American squadron arrived to 
 break down her isolation, she did not possess even 
 the beginnings of a national fleet or a national 
 army ; of an ocean-going mercantile marine ; of 
 
 9
 
 JAPAN 
 
 a telegraphic or postal system ; of a newspaper 
 press ; of enlightened codes, of a trained judiciary, 
 or of properly organised tribunals of justice ; she 
 knew nothing of Occidental sciences and philoso- 
 phies ; was a complete stranger to international 
 law and to the usages of diplomacy ; had no con- 
 ception of parliamentary institutions or popular 
 representation, and was divided into a number of 
 feudal principalities, each virtually independent 
 of the other, and all alike untutored in the spirit 
 of nationality or imperialism. In thirty years 
 these conditions were absolutely metamorphosed. 
 Feudalism had been abolished; the whole 
 country united under one administration; the 
 polity of the State placed on a constitutional 
 basis ; the people admitted to a share in the gov- 
 ernment under representative institutions; an ab- 
 sorbing sentiment of patriotism substituted for 
 the narrow local loyalties of rival fiefs ; the coun- 
 try intersected with telegraphs and railways, and 
 its remotest districts brought within the circuit of 
 an excellent postal system ; the flag of the nation 
 carried to distant countries by a large mercantile 
 marine; a powerful fleet organised, manned by 
 expert seamen, and proved to be as capable of 
 fighting scientifically as of navigating the high 
 seas with marked immunity from mishap ; the 
 method of conscription applied to raising a large 
 military force, provided with the best modern 
 weapons and trained according to Western tactics ; 
 the laws recast on the most advanced principles 
 
 10
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 of Occidental jurisprudence and embodied in ex- 
 haustive codes ; provision made for the adminis- 
 tration of justice by well-equipped tribunals and 
 an educated judiciary ; an extensive system of 
 national education inaugurated, with universities 
 turning out students capable of original research 
 in the sciences and philosophies of the West; 
 the State represented at foreign courts by com- 
 petent diplomatists ; the people supplied with an 
 ample number of journals and periodicals ; the 
 foundations of a great manufacturing career laid, 
 and the respect of foreign Powers unreservedly 
 won. Such a record may well excite wonder. 
 
 But before crediting the Japanese with excep- 
 tional qualities for the sake of their modern 
 progress, we must agree upon a standard of com- 
 parison, and that is difficult, since the history of 
 nations furnishes only one case approximately 
 parallel to that of Japan. Were any liberal- 
 minded Western people brought suddenly into 
 contact with a civilisation immensely higher than 
 its own, a civilisation presenting material advan- 
 tages and attractions that the least intelligent must 
 appreciate, who can venture to gauge the impulse 
 of adoption or the speed of assimilation that such 
 a people would develop ? Suppose that to the 
 eyes of the English of a hundred years ago there 
 had been abruptly exposed a stage whereon rail- 
 ways ran, steamboats plied, telegraphs flashed 
 their messages to limitless distances, telephones 
 made whispers audible across continents, torpe- 
 
 ii
 
 JAPAN 
 
 does, breech-loaders, machine guns, and iron-clads 
 revolutionised warfare, carriages were propelled 
 by electricity, and men travelled at the rate of 
 thirty miles an hour on machines which could 
 not stand upright at rest, would not the display 
 have revolutionised England ? Yet this catalogue 
 of wonders has to be largely extended before it 
 covers the exhibition by which Japan was daz- 
 zled forty years ago. No wonder that she 
 stretched out eager hands to grasp such an array 
 of novelties. 
 
 If that were all she had done, it might not be 
 fair to say that any intelligent people would have 
 acted with less vigour under similar circum- 
 stances. But Japan did not confine herself to 
 adopting the externals of Western civilisation. 
 She became an eager pupil of its scientific, politi- 
 cal, moral, philosophic, and legislative systems 
 also. She took the spirit as well as the letter, 
 and by so doing differentiated herself effectively 
 from Oriental States. It has been objected that 
 this wholesale receptivity was limited to a few 
 leaders of thought, to the literati and the mili- 
 tary patricians whose will had always been law 
 to the commoners. Certainly that is true as to 
 the initiative. But it is unimaginable that such 
 sweeping changes could have been effected in a 
 quiet and orderly manner had not the hearts of 
 the people been with the reformers. In Japan 
 no railways were torn up, no machines wrecked, 
 no lines of telegraph demolished by labourers 
 
 12
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 who feared for their own employment or fanatics 
 who saw their superstitions slighted. Rapid as 
 was the pace set by the leaders of progress, the 
 masses did not hang back. That tribute at least 
 must be paid to the nation's intelligent liberality 
 by any honest writer of its modern history. We 
 may deny that other peoples might not have 
 done as well, but we can scarcely affirm that any 
 would have done better. The only known in- 
 stance of parallel opportunity was China, and to 
 China, after a hundred years of scrutiny, the 
 advantages of Occidental civilisation are still 
 invisible. 
 
 Another point to be noted in analysing the 
 causes of Japan's success is that many phases of 
 her own civilisation were superior to the civilisa- 
 tion of the West when she began to assimilate 
 the better parts of the latter. She did not bring 
 to the examination of Occidental systems and 
 their products a mind wholly untrained to dis- 
 tinguish the good from the bad. In her social 
 conventionalisms, in her refinements of life, in 
 her altruistic ethics, in many of her canons of 
 domestic conduct, in her codes of polite etiquette, 
 in her applications of art, she could have given 
 to Europe lessons as useful as those she had to 
 learn from it. That she should see the right 
 quickly might have been anticipated. Then 
 there was her ambition, an absorbing sentiment. 
 Almost from the first moment when she looked 
 out on the world which had so long been hidden 
 
 13
 
 JAPAN 
 
 from her, she detected the wide interval separat- 
 ing her material civilisation from that of the 
 West. Thenceforth it became the constantly 
 expressed aspiration of every educated Japanese 
 that his country soon " get level " with Occi- 
 dental nations in the race of progress. That wish 
 was paramount from the very beginning. There 
 was not the least attempt to throw any bridge of 
 extenuation across the gulf of inferiority. The 
 frankly recognised facts inspired an earnest re- 
 solve to alter them if possible, and as speedily 
 as possible. How many Japanese students have 
 overtaxed their powers of endurance under the 
 goad of that aspiration, how many statesmen have 
 made it the prime motive of their administration, 
 no one can conceive who has not observed these 
 people closely since they first stepped out of the 
 shadow of isolation. 
 
 Strangers discussing the character of the Japan- 
 ese have assigned to it an extraordinary element 
 of patriotism, and inferred abnormal readiness to 
 make sacrifices on the altar of love of country. 
 There is no warrant for such a theory. The 
 Japanese doubtless have their full share of patri- 
 otism, but they cannot claim an unexceptional 
 measure of it. What is mistaken for an unusual 
 abundance of the sentiment is simply its morbid 
 activity, caused, on the one hand, by a genuine 
 perception of the distance they have to traverse 
 before they reach the elevation of prosperity and 
 progress on which Occidental nations stand ; on
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 the other, by the treatment they have received at 
 'the hands of those nations. The most tolerant 
 of Europeans has always regarded the Japanese, 
 and let them see that he regarded them, merely 
 as interesting children. Languidly curious at 
 best about the uses to which they would put 
 their imported toys, his curiosity was purely 
 academical, and whenever circumstances required 
 him to be practical, he laid aside all pretence of 
 courtesy and let it be plainly seen that he counted 
 himself master and intended to be so counted. 
 If the archives of the Japanese Foreign Office 
 were published without expurgation, their early 
 pages would make a remarkable record. Diplo- 
 matic euphemisms are the last thing to be sought 
 there. And in that respect they reflect the de- 
 meanour of the ordinary foreigner. When not 
 a harsh critic, he was either contemptuously tol- 
 erant or loftily patronising. The Japanese chafed 
 under that kind of treatment for many years, and 
 they resent it still ; for though a pleasant altera^ 
 tion has gradually been effected in the foreigner's 
 methods, the memory of the evil time survives. 
 Besides, they neither consider the change com- 
 plete, nor regard its causes with unmixed satis- 
 faction. It is not complete because the taint of 
 Orientalism has not yet been removed from the 
 nation, and the causes are unsatisfactory because 
 they suggest a low estimate of Western morality. 
 No one who should tell the Japanese to-day 
 that the consideration they have won from the 
 
 '5
 
 JAPAN 
 
 West is due solely to their progress in peaceful 
 arts would find serious listeners. They them- 
 selves held that belief as a working incentive 
 twenty years ago, but experience has dissipated 
 it, and they now know that the world never took 
 any respectful notice of them until they showed 
 themselves capable of winning battles. At first 
 they imagined that they might efface the Oriental 
 stigma by living up to civilised standards. But 
 the success they had attained was scarcely per- 
 ceptible when suddenly their victorious war with 
 China seemed to win for them more esteem in 
 half a year than their peaceful industry had won 
 for them in half a century. The perception of 
 that fact upset their estimate of the qualifications 
 necessary for a place in " the foremost files of 
 time/' and had much to do with the desire they 
 henceforth developed for expanded armaments. 
 Their military and naval forces had been proved 
 competent to beat China to her knees with the 
 utmost ease, yet they proceeded at once to double 
 their army. Onlookers watch these doings with 
 interest and speculate whether Japan's financial 
 resources can bear such a strain, but do not seem 
 to consider seriously what it all signifies, or how 
 Japan accounts to her own conscience for these 
 extravagances. Yet the answer appears to lie not 
 far from the surface. To reach it we must first 
 recognise why she drew the sword against China 
 in 1894, not the approximate cause of the 
 struggle, but its remote cause. The approximate 
 
 16
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 cause is readily discernible. China's attitude 
 towards Korea, her fitful interference in the little 
 kingdom's affairs, her exercise of suzerain rights 
 while uniformly disclaiming suzerain responsibili- 
 ties, created a situation intolerable to Japan, who 
 had concluded a treaty with Korea on the avowed 
 basis of the latter's independence. A consenting 
 party to that treaty, China nevertheless ignored 
 it in practice, partly because she despised the 
 Japanese and resented their apostasy from Ori- 
 ental traditions, but chiefly because her ineffable 
 faith in her own superiority to outside nations 
 absolved her from any obligation to respect their 
 conventions. Japan's material and political in- 
 terests in Korea outweigh those of all other States 
 put together. In asserting her commercial rights 
 she could not possibly avoid collision with a 
 Power behaving as China behaved. But there 
 was another force pushing the two States into 
 the arena : they had to do battle for the suprem- 
 acy of the Far East. China, of course, did not 
 regard the issue in that light. It was part of her 
 immemorial faith in her own transcendence that 
 the possibility of being challenged should never 
 occur to her. But Japan's case was different. 
 Her position might be compared to that of a lad 
 who had to win a standing for himself in a new 
 school by beating the head boy of his form. 
 China was the head boy of the East-Asian form. 
 Her huge dimensions, her vast resources, her ap- 
 parently inexhaustible " staying power," entitled 
 2 17
 
 JAPAN 
 
 her to that position, and outside nations accorded 
 it to her. To worst her meant to leap at one 
 bound to the hegemony of the Far East. That 
 was the quickest exit from the shadow of Oriental- 
 ism, and Japan took it. This is not a suggestion 
 that she forced a fight upon her neighbour merely 
 for the purpose of establishing her own superior- 
 ity. What it means is that the causes which led 
 to the fight had their remote origin in the differ- 
 ent attitudes of the two countries towards West- 
 ern civilisation. Having cordially embraced that 
 civilisation, Japan could not consent to be in- 
 cluded in the contempt with which China re- 
 garded it ; and having set out to climb to the 
 level of Occidental nations, she had to begin by 
 emerging from the ranks of Oriental nations. 
 
 This analysis, if we push it to its logical sequel, 
 brings us into the presence of a startling conclu- 
 sion. Japan has risen to the headship of the Far 
 East. Is that the goal of her ambition ? One 
 of her favourite sayings is, " Better be the tail of 
 an ox than the comb of a cock." She is now 
 the comb of the Oriental cock. That is not 
 enough : she wants to be the tail of the Occi- 
 dental ox. How is it to be done ? Evidently 
 by following the route that has already led her 
 so far. She cannot turn back. Her destiny 
 forces her on, and there is no mistaking the sign- 
 post set up by her recent experience. She has 
 been taught that fighting capacity is the only sure 
 passport to European esteem, and she has also 
 
 18
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 been told again and again, is still perpetually 
 told, that her victory over China proved nothing 
 about her competence to stand in the lists of the 
 West. She will complete the proof, or try to 
 complete it. Nothing is more certain, nothing 
 more apparent to all that have watched her 
 closely. Perhaps she has not yet formulated the 
 project to herself in explicit terms. But it has 
 found a lodgment in her heart, and uncon- 
 sciously she is moulding her actions in obedience 
 to it. 
 
 These are the reasons that render Japan such 
 an interesting figure. She rivets our attention, 
 not by what she has done, however remarkable 
 that may seem, but rather by what she must still 
 try to do. She has undertaken to demonstrate 
 that an Eastern nation can act a leading part on 
 the same stage with Western peoples, using the 
 same properties and obeying the same directions. 
 It is the first essay of the kind in history, and it 
 will not be consummated without some stirring 
 episodes. 
 
 From a physical point of view the Japanese 
 race seems ill fitted for the competition upon 
 which it has entered and for the grim struggle 
 that lies before it. An army of Japanese is to 
 an army of Europeans in respect of stature what 
 an army of females in the Occident would be 
 to an army of males. But the same might be 
 said of the Sepoys or the Ghoorkas ; yet no 
 English general, estimating the results of a colli- 
 
 19
 
 JAPAN 
 
 sion between Indian troops and Europeans, would 
 think of counting the inches of the Ghoorka or 
 the Sepoy. The Japanese, indeed, resemble the 
 Ghoorkas very closely. There is the same light- 
 ness of movement, the same admirable balance of 
 muscle and bone, the same symmetry of form and 
 power of endurance. A very marked advantage 
 in height is on the side of the Chinaman ; so 
 marked that from ancient times he has been 
 accustomed to call the Japanese "pygmies." 
 Nevertheless, in the war of 189495 t ^ le Chinese 
 went down helplessly before the Japanese wher- 
 ever the two met. The same difference of bulk 
 exists in favour of the Korean, yet an even greater 
 difference of righting capacity has been practi- 
 cally established in favour of the Japanese. There 
 is thus no reason to argue any physical disability 
 on the part of the Japanese to take a successful 
 part in a warlike struggle ; and in the Chili cam- 
 paign of 1900, when they marched in the van 
 of Europe and America to the relief of Peking, 
 they showed themselves at least as efficient as the 
 soldiers of any other nationality. They have two 
 very marked advantages : the simplicity of their 
 diet, which immensely facilitates commissariat 
 arrangements ; and the excellence of their officers. 
 It was owing in great part to the former fact that 
 their war with China in 1894-95 cost them only 
 twenty million pounds sterling. They conducted 
 seven campaigns over-sea, involving a force of 
 a hundred and twenty thousand men, and they 
 
 20
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 employed a navy of twenty-eight ships which 
 remained on active service for nine months. 
 
 It was the cheapest belligerent feat on record, 
 and it established for the Japanese the possession 
 of a faculty which had been habitually denied 
 to them by foreign critics, the faculty of organi- 
 sation. For the purposes of that war their organ- 
 isation was really admirable. Such an effort might 
 have been expected to tax their strength to the 
 utmost, to interrupt the course of every-day busi- 
 ness, and to throw their domestic affairs into more 
 or less confusion. It did nothing of the kind. 
 The home life of the people went on placidly 
 and regularly, as though not a ship or a soldier 
 had been sent to meet a foreign enemy. Some- 
 times a little village community left their farm 
 labours to cheer a detachment of troops en route 
 for Manchuria or Korea, and sometimes the arri- 
 val of a batch of wounded Chinese created a pass- 
 ing thrill of excitement. But, for the rest, the 
 great fighting machine worked with absolute 
 silence and smoothness. The troops, carried 
 over specially constructed railways outside the 
 boundaries of the chief cities, or marched quietly 
 at night through their streets, seldom attracted 
 public attention ; the fleet of fifty steam trans- 
 ports was descried once or twice gliding through 
 the narrow strait that gives upon the China Sea, 
 but never came into the vista of national observa- 
 tion ; the newspapers reported yesterday that an 
 army corps of twenty thousand men had embarked 
 
 21
 
 JAPAN 
 
 for Liaotung, to-day that an equal force had landed 
 in Shantung, but if these troops had sprung, fully 
 equipped, from the sea at the place of their exit 
 or destination, the country could not have known 
 less of their comings and goings. There were no 
 accidents, no miscarriages, no apparent errors of 
 calculation or failures of foresight. One may urge, 
 indeed, that neither was there any originality, since 
 European modes were followed. But it is certain 
 that before the war no foreign critic would have 
 credited the Japanese with capacity to conduct 
 such operations. He would have denied their 
 power of organisation, and he is therefore con- 
 strained to attach as much value to the positive 
 evidence of success as he would have inferred from 
 the negative testimony of failure. 
 
 In truth this favourite theory about a want of 
 organising faculty among the Japanese, like that 
 other theory about their want of originality, rests 
 on pure hypothesis aided by ignorance of history. 
 To ascribe lack of originality to a nation which 
 has given the world a new grammar of decorative 
 art is as consistent with facts as to allege absence 
 of organising ability among a people who have 
 produced a Yoritomo, a Hideyoshi, and an leyasu. 
 The two criticisms may be definitely dismissed. 
 
 And the officers that commanded in the field 
 showed themselves as able as those that planned 
 in the Cabinet. They shared every hardship that 
 their men endured, ate the same food, were con- 
 tent with the same shelter, and took the larger 
 
 22
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 share of danger. The Japanese officer has this 
 fine quality, that to a hereditary love of fighting 
 he adds the zeal of a professional soldier. His 
 heart is in his calling. He loves his uniform, has 
 no aim in life higher than the discharge of his 
 duty, and possesses the capacity for obedience 
 which lies at the root of power to command. 
 
 There is nothing decrepit about such a nation. 
 It is old in years, but the infused blood of West- 
 ern civilisation has renewed its youth. The first 
 result of its debut on the world's stage has there- 
 fore been territorial expansion, a fact sufficiently 
 significant to stand at the head of these pages. 
 
 Japan would go far if she were not crippled 
 by a heavy handicap, want of money. She has 
 been called the " England of the East ; " but she 
 differs radically from England in this vital respect 
 that whereas Imperial England has only to follow 
 whither the capital of commercial and industrial 
 England overflows, industrial and commercial 
 Japan is quite unable to utilise the opportunities 
 which Imperial Japan creates. In China and Korea, 
 Japanese diplomacy or Japanese armed strength 
 has won valuable privileges and opened wide 
 fields, but they remain to this day almost entirely 
 unfruitful. Even in the home country the devel- 
 opment of many promising enterprises is delayed 
 for lack of funds. Everything is on a petty scale. 
 There is not throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land a factory or a tradal organisation that 
 would be counted of even mediocre importance
 
 JAPAN 
 
 in America or England. Seventy per cent of the 
 nation's school-age children receive instruction, 
 yet the total sum annually expended on this edu- 
 cation is not twice the yearly income of one of 
 the great colleges of the United States. The 
 aggregate capital invested in all the banks, indus- 
 trial, commercial, insurance, shipping, and agri- 
 cultural companies throughout the empire is less 
 than the fortune of a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt. 
 Many widow's mites are given to relieve distress, 
 but the whole of the charitable and philanthropic 
 donations made by private individuals during the 
 thirty-two years of the Meiji era would look small 
 by the side of a respectable Mansion House fund. 
 So lilliputian are the dimensions of the market 
 that a single speculation disturbs it. Consols are 
 quoted, say at 95, but a purchase or sale of half 
 a million dollars' worth would drive them up to 
 96 or more. The spirit of enterprise, stunted by 
 this atmosphere of impecuniosity at home, natur- 
 ally makes no excursions abroad. Railways wait 
 in vain to be built by Japanese in Korea, new 
 settlements to be colonised in China, large re- 
 sources to be exploited in Formosa. 
 
 There remains, too, a disposition inherited 
 from feudal times, a tendency to rely on official 
 initiative and to shrink from every venture un- 
 aided by the State. Nearly all the material 
 progress of the Meiji era has been led by the 
 Government. Matters have greatly mended in 
 that respect, but the writings of the vernacular 
 
 24
 
 PRESENT JAPAN 
 
 journals, with few exceptions, still show that 
 instead of making opportunities for themselves, 
 the people look to have them made for them 
 officially. If they had stores of spare capital 
 seeking investment, they would act a very dif- 
 ferent part on the neighbouring continent. But 
 chill poverty freezes the current of their activity, 
 and while they have an abundance of the im- 
 perial instinct, they lack the means of making it 
 potential. That difficulty must cripple Japan 
 seriously. A poor nation has never been great. 
 She may succeed in filling her purse before the 
 time comes to open it, but no resources now in 
 sight definitely promise such a result. All that 
 can be said of her is that she has boundless 
 ambition ; that she has established her ability to 
 reach great ends with small means, and that she 
 will certainly bid for a far higher place than 
 she has yet attained.
 
 Chapter II 
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 I 
 
 are three written records of 
 Japan's early history. The oldest l of 
 them dates from the beginning of the 
 eighth century of the Christian era, and 
 deals with events extending back for fourteen 
 hundred years. The compilation of this work 
 was one of the most extraordinary feats ever 
 undertaken. The compiler had to construct the 
 sounds of his own tongue by means of ideographs 
 devised for transcribing a foreign language. He 
 had to render Japanese phonetically by using 
 Chinese ideographs. It was as though a man 
 should set himself to commit Shakespeare's plays 
 to writing by the aid of the cuneiform characters 
 of Babylon. A book composed in the face of 
 such difficulties could not convey a very clear 
 idea of contemporary speech or thought. The 
 same is true, though in a less degree, of the other 
 two 2 volumes on which it is necessary to rely for 
 knowledge of ancient Japan. 
 
 It might reasonably be anticipated, arguing 
 from the analogy of other nations, that some 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 2. 2 See Appendix, note 3. 
 
 26
 
 PRIMAEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 plain practical theory would exist among the 
 Japanese as to their own origin ; that tradition 
 would have supplied for them a proud creed 
 identifying their forefathers with some of the 
 renowned peoples of the earth, and that if the 
 progenitors of the nimble-witted, active-bodied, 
 refined, and high-spirited people now bidding so 
 earnestly for a place in the comity of great 
 nations, had migrated originally from a land 
 peopled by men possessing qualities such as they 
 themselves have for centuries displayed, many 
 annals descriptive of their primaeval home would 
 have been handed down through the ages. 
 There are no such theories, no such annals, no 
 such traditions. 
 
 When the Japanese first undertook to explain 
 their own origin in the three books spoken of 
 above, so unfettered were they by genuine remi- 
 niscences that they immediately had recourse to 
 the supernatural and derived themselves from 
 heaven. Reduced to its fundamental outlines, 
 the legend they set down was that, in the earliest 
 times, a group of the divine dwellers in the plains 
 of high heaven descended to a place with a now 
 unidentifiable name, and thence gradually pushing 
 eastward, established themselves in the " land of 
 sunrise," giving to it a race of monarchs, direct 
 scions of the goddess of light (Amaterasu). Many 
 things are related about these heaven-sent folk 
 who peopled Japan hundreds of years before the 
 Christian era. They are things that must be
 
 JAPAN 
 
 studied by any one desiring to make himself 
 acquainted with the essence of her indigenous 
 religion or her pictorial and decorative arts, for 
 they there play a picturesque and prominent part. 
 But they have nothing to do with sober history. 
 Possibly it may be urged that nations whose tra- 
 ditions deal with a Mount Sinai, a pillar of cloud 
 and fire, and an immaculate conception, have no 
 right to reject everything supernatural in Oriental 
 annals. That superficial retort has, indeed, been 
 made too often. But behind it there undoubtedly 
 lurks in the inner consciousness of the educated 
 and intelligent Japanese a resolve not to scrutinise 
 these things too closely. Whether or not the 
 " age of the gods " kami no yo of which, as 
 a child, he reads with implicit credence, and of 
 which, as a man, he recognises the political uses, 
 should be openly relegated to the limbo of ab- 
 surdities ; whether the deities had to take part in 
 an immodest dance in order to lure the offended 
 Sun Goddess from a cave to which her brother's 
 rudeness had driven her, thus plunging the uni- 
 verse in darkness ; whether the god of impulse 
 fought with the god of fire on the shores of the 
 Island of Nine Provinces ; whether the procrea- 
 tive divinities were inspired by a bird ; whether 
 the germs of a new civilisation were carried across 
 the sea by a prince begotten of the sunshine and 
 born in the shape of a crimson jewel, these are 
 not problems that receive very serious considera- 
 tion in Japan, though neither a Colenso nor a 
 
 28
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 Huxley has yet arisen to attack them publicly. 
 They are rather allegories from which emerges 
 the serviceable political doctrine that the emper- 
 ors of Japan, being of divine origin, rule by divine 
 right. It is the Japanese historian's method, or 
 the Japanese mythologist's manner, of describing 
 an attribute claimed until very recently by all 
 Occidental sovereigns, and still asserted on behalf 
 of some. As for the foreign student of Japan's 
 ancient history, these weird myths and romantic 
 allegories have induced him to dismiss it as a 
 purely imaginary product of later-day imagina- 
 tion. The transcendental elements woven into 
 parts of the narrative discredit the whole in his 
 eyes. And his scepticism is fortified by a gener- 
 ally accepted hypothesis that the events of the 
 thirteen opening centuries of the story were pre- 
 served solely by oral tradition. The three vol- 
 umes which profess to tell about the primaeval 
 creators of Japan, about Jimmu, the first mortal 
 ruler, and about his human successors during a 
 dozen centuries, are supposed to be a collection 
 of previously unwritten recollections, and it seems 
 only logical to doubt whether the outlines of 
 figures standing at the end of such a long avenue 
 of hearsay can be anything but imaginary. Pos- 
 sibly that disbelief is too wholesale. Possibly it 
 is too much to conclude that the Japanese had 
 no kind of writing prior to their acquisition of 
 Chinese ideographs in the fifth century of the 
 Christian era. But there is little apparent hope 
 
 29
 
 JAPAN 
 
 that the student will ever be in a position to 
 decide these questions conclusively. He must be 
 content for the present to regard the annals of 
 primaeval Japan as an assemblage of heterogene- 
 ous fragments from the traditions of South Sea 
 islanders, of central Asian tribes, of Manchurian 
 Tartars and of Siberian savages, who reached her 
 shores at various epochs, sometimes drifted by 
 ocean currents, sometimes crossing by ice-built 
 bridges, sometimes migrating by less fortuitous 
 routes. 
 
 What these records, stripped of all their fabu- 
 lous features, have to tell is this : 
 
 At a remote date, a certain race of highly 
 civilised men highly civilised by comparison 
 arrived at the islands of Japan. Migrating from 
 the south, the adventurers landed on the Southern 
 island, Kiushiu, and found a fair country, covered 
 with luxurious vegetation and sparsely populated 
 by savages living like beasts of the field, having 
 no organised system of administration and inca- 
 pable of offering permanent resistance to the supe- 
 rior weapons and discipline of the invaders, who 
 established themselves with little difficulty in the 
 newly found land. But on the main island two 
 races of men very different from these savages 
 had already gained a footing. One had its head- 
 quarters in the province of Izumo, and claimed 
 sovereignty over the whole country. The other 
 was concentrated in Yamato. Neither of these 
 races knew of the other's existence, Izumo and 
 
 30
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 Yamato being far apart. At the outset, the 
 immigrants who had newly arrived in Kiushiu, 
 imagined that they had to deal with the Izumo 
 folk only. They began by sending envoys. The 
 first of these, bribed by the Izumo rulers, made 
 his home in the land he had been sent to spy out. 
 The second forgot his duty in the arms of an 
 Izumo beauty whose hair fell to her ankles. 
 The third discharged his mission faithfully, but 
 was put to death in Izumo. The sequel of this 
 somewhat commonplace series of events was 
 war. Putting forth their full strength, the south- 
 ern invaders shattered the power of the Izumo 
 court and received its submission. But they did 
 not transfer their own court to the conquered 
 province. Ignorant that Izumo was a mere frac- 
 tion of the main island, they imagined that no 
 more regions remained to be subjugated. By and 
 by they discovered their mistake. Intelligence 
 reached them that, far away in the northeast, 
 a race of highly civilised men, who had origi- 
 nally come from beyond the sea in ships, were 
 settled in the province of Yamato, holding undis- 
 puted sway. To the conquest of these colonists 
 Jimmu, who then ruled the southern immigrants, 
 set out on a campaign which lasted fifteen years, 
 and ended, after some fierce fighting, in the 
 Yamato rulers' acknowledging their consanguin- 
 ity with the invader and abdicating in his favour. 
 Whether Jimmu's story be purely a figment 
 of later-day imagination or whether it consists of 
 
 3'
 
 JAPAN 
 
 poetically embellished facts, there can be no 
 question about its interest, since it shows the 
 kind of hero that subsequent generations were 
 disposed to picture as the founder of the sacred 
 dynasty, the chief of the Japanese race. The 
 youngest of four sons, he was nevertheless selected 
 by his " divine " father to succeed to the ruler- 
 ship of the little colony of immigrants then 
 settled in Kiushiu, and his elder brothers obedi- 
 ently recognised this right of choice. He was 
 not then called " Jimmu " : that is his posthu- 
 mous name. Sanu, or Hiko Hohodemi, was his 
 appellation, and he is represented in the light of 
 a kind of viking. Learning of Yamato and its 
 rulers from a traveller who visited Kiushiu, he 
 embarked all his available forces in war-vessels 
 and set out upon a tour of aggression. Creeping 
 along the eastern shore of Kiushiu, and finally 
 entering the Inland Sea, the adventurers fought 
 their way from point to point, landing sometimes 
 to do battle with native tribes, sometimes to 
 construct new war-junks, until, after fifteen years 
 of fighting and wandering, they finally emerged 
 from the northern end of the Inland Sea, and 
 established themselves in Yamato, destined to be 
 thenceforth the Imperial province of Japan. In 
 this long series of campaigns the chieftain lost 
 his three brothers : one fell in fight ; two threw 
 themselves into the sea to calm a tempest that 
 threatened to destroy the flotilla. Such are the 
 deaths that Japanese in all ages have regarded as 
 
 32
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 ideal exits from this mortal scene ; deaths by the 
 sword and deaths of loyal self-sacrifice. To the 
 leader himself, after his decease, the posthumous 
 name of Jimmu, or " the man of divine bravery," 
 was given, typifying the honour that has always 
 attached to the profession of arms in Japan. 
 The distance from this primitive viking's starting- 
 point to the place where he established his capital 
 and consummated his career of conquest, can 
 easily be traversed by a modern steamer in twice 
 as many hours as the number of years devoted by 
 Jimmu and his followers to the task. That the 
 craft in which they travelled were of the most 
 inefficient type, may be gathered from the fact 
 that the viking's progress eastward would have 
 been finally interrupted by the narrow strip of 
 water dividing Kiushiu from the main island 
 of Japan, had not a fisherman seated on a turtle 
 erriboldened him to strike sea-ward. Thence- 
 forth the turtle assumed a leading place in the 
 mythology of Japan, the type of longevity, 
 the messenger of the marine deity, who dwelt in 
 the crystal depths of the ocean, his palace peopled 
 by lovely maidens. The goddess of the sun shone 
 on Jimmu' s enterprise at times when tempest or 
 fog threatened serious peril, and a kite, circling 
 overhead, indicated the direction of inhabited 
 districts when he and his warriors had lost their 
 way among mountains and forests. 
 
 How much of all this was transmitted by 
 tradition, written or oral, to the compilers of 
 3 33
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Jimmu's history in the eighth century ; how 
 much was a mere reflection of national customs 
 which had then become sacred, and on which 
 the political scholars of the time desired to set 
 the seal of antique sanction, who shall determine ? 
 If Sanu and his warriors brought with them the 
 worship of the sun, that would offer an interesting 
 inference as to their origin. If the aid that they 
 received from his light was suggested solely by 
 the grateful homage that rice-cultivators, thirteen 
 centuries later, had learned to pay to his benefi- 
 cence, then the oldest written records of Japan 
 must be read as mere transcripts of the faiths and 
 fashions of the era when they were compiled, not 
 as genuine traditions transmitted from previous 
 ages. But such distinctions have never been 
 recognised by the Japanese. With them these 
 annals of their race's beginnings have always 
 commanded as inviolable credence as the Testa- 
 ments of Christianity used to command in the 
 Occident. From the lithographs that embellish 
 modern bank-notes the sun looks down on the 
 semi-divine conqueror, Jimmu, and receives his 
 homage. From the grand cordon of an order 
 instituted by his hundred and twenty-seventh 
 successor, depends the kite that guided him 
 through mountain fastnesses, and on a thousand 
 works of art the genius of the tortoise shows him 
 the path across the ocean. If these picturesque 
 elements were added by subsequent writers to the 
 outlines of an ordinary armed invasion by foreign 
 
 34
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 adventurers, the nation has received them and 
 cherishes them to this day as articles of a sacred 
 faith. 
 
 The annals here briefly summarised reveal three 
 tides of more or less civilised immigrants and a 
 race of semi-barbarous autochthons. All the 
 learned researches of modern archaeologists and 
 ethnologists do not teach us much more. It is 
 now known with tolerable certainty that the 
 so-called autochthons were composed of two 
 swarms of colonists, both coming from Siberia, 
 though their advents were separated by a long 
 interval. 
 
 The first, archasologically indicated by pit- 
 dwellings and shell-mounds still extant, were the 
 Koro-pok-guru, or " cave-men." They are believed 
 to be represented to-day by the inhabitants of 
 Saghalien, the Kuriles and Southern Kamschatka. 
 
 The second were the Ainu, a flat-faced, heavy- 
 jawed, hirsute people, who completely drove out 
 their predecessors and took possession of the land. 
 The Ainu of that period had much in common 
 with animals. They burrowed in the ground for 
 shelter ; they recognised no distinctions of sex in 
 apparel or of consanguinity in intercourse ; they 
 clad themselves in skins ; they drank blood ; they 
 practised cannibalism ; they were insensible to ben- 
 efits and perpetually resentful of injuries ; they re- 
 sorted to savagely cruel forms of punishment, 
 severing the tendons of the leg, boiling the arms, 
 slicing off the nose, etc. ; they used stone im- 
 
 35
 
 JAPAN 
 
 plements, and, unceasingly resisting the civilised 
 immigrants who subsequently reached the islands, 
 they were driven northward by degrees, and finally 
 pushed across the Tsugaru Strait into the island 
 of Yezo. That long struggle, and the disasters and 
 sufferings it entailed, radically changed the nature 
 of the Ainu. They became timid, gentle, submis- 
 sive folk ; lost most of the faculties essential to 
 survival in a racial contest, and dwindled to a 
 mere remnant of semi-savages, incapable of prog- 
 ress, indifferent to improvement, and presenting 
 a more and more vivid contrast to the energetic, 
 intelligent, and ambitious Japanese. 
 
 But these Japanese who were they originally ? 
 Whence did the three or more tides of immigration 
 set which ultimately coalesced to form the race 
 now standing at the head of Oriental peoples ? 
 Strangely varying answers to this question have 
 been furnished. Kampfer persuaded himself that 
 the primaeval Japanese were a section of the build- 
 ers of the Tower of Babel. Hyde-Clarke identi- 
 fied them with Turano-Africans who travelled 
 eastward through Egypt, China, and Japan. Mac- 
 leod recognised in them one of the lost tribes of 
 Israel. Several writers have regarded them as 
 Malayan colonists. Griffin was content to think 
 that they are modern Ainu, and recent scholars 
 incline to the belief that they belonged to the 
 Tartar-Mongolian stock of Central Asia. Some- 
 thing of this diversity of view is due to the fact 
 that the Japanese are not a pure race. They pre- 
 
 36
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 sent several easily distinguishable types, notably the 
 patrician and the plebeian. This is not a question 
 of mere coarseness in contrast with refinement ; 
 of the degeneration due to toil and exposure as 
 compared with the improvement produced by 
 gentle living and mental culture. The repre- 
 sentative of the Japanese plebs has a conspicu- 
 ously dark skin, prominent cheek bones, a large 
 mouth, a robust and heavily boned physique, 
 a flat nose, full straight eyes, and a receding 
 forehead. The aristocratic type is symmetrically 
 and delicately built ; his complexion varies from 
 yellow to almost pure white ; his eyes are narrow, 
 set obliquely to the nose ; the eyelids heavy ; the 
 eyebrows lofty ; the mouth small ; the face oval ; 
 the nose aquiline ; the hand remarkably slender 
 and supple. 
 
 Here are two radically distinct types. What 
 is more, they have been distinguished by the Jap- 
 anese themselves ever since any method of record- 
 ing such distinctions existed. For from the time 
 when he first began to paint pictures, the Japan- 
 ese artist recognised and represented only one type 
 of male and female beauty, namely, that distin- 
 guished in a marked, often an exaggerated, degree 
 by the features enumerated above as belonging to 
 the patrician class. There has been no evolution 
 in this matter. The painter had as clear a con- 
 ception of his type ten centuries ago as he has 
 to-day. Nothing seems more natural than the 
 supposition that this higher type represents the 
 
 37
 
 JAPAN 
 
 finally dominant race of immigrants ; the lower, 
 their less civilised opponents. 
 
 The theory which seems to fit the facts best is 
 that the Japanese are compounded of elements 
 from Central and Southern Asia, and that they 
 received their patrician type from the former, 
 their plebeian from the latter. The Asiatic 
 colonists arrived via Korea. But they were 
 neither Koreans nor Chinese. That seems certain, 
 though the evidence which proves it cannot be 
 detailed here. Chinese and Koreans came from 
 time to time in later ages ; came occasionally in 
 great numbers, and were absorbed into the 
 Japanese race, leaving on it some faint traces of 
 the amalgamation. But the original colonists 
 did not set out from either China or Korea. 
 Their birthplace was somewhere in the north 
 of Central Asia. As for the South-Asian immi- 
 grants, they were drifted to Japan by a strange 
 current called the " Black Tide " (Kuro-shiwo], 
 which sweeps northward from the Philippines, 
 and bending thence towards the east, touches the 
 promontory of Kii and Yamato before shaping 
 its course permanently away from the main 
 island of Japan. It is true that in the chrono- 
 logical order suggested by early history the 
 southern colonists succeeded the northern and are 
 supposed to have gained the mastery ; whereas 
 among the Japanese, as we now see them, the 
 supremacy of the northern type appears to have 
 been established for ages. That may be ex- 
 
 38
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 plained, however, by an easy hypothesis, namely, 
 that although the onset of the impetuous south- 
 erns proved at first irresistible, they ultimately 
 coalesced with the tribes they had conquered, and 
 in the end the principle of natural selection 
 replaced the vanquished on their proper plane of 
 eminence. But this distinction, it must be 
 observed, is one of outward form rather than of 
 moral attributes. Neither history nor observa- 
 tion furnishes any reason for asserting that the 
 so-called " aristociatic," or Mongoloid, cast of 
 features accompanies a fuller endowment of either 
 physical or mental qualities than the vulgar, or 
 Malayan, cast. Numerically the patrician type 
 constitutes only a small fraction of the nation, 
 and seems to have been lacking in a majority 
 of the country's past leaders, as it is certainly 
 lacking in a majority of her present publicists, 
 and even in the very crime de la creme of society. 
 The male of the upper classes is not generally an 
 attractive product of nature. He has neither 
 commanding stature, refinement of features, nor 
 weight of muscle. On the other hand, among 
 the labouring populations, and especially among 
 the seaside folk, numbers of men are found who, 
 though below the average Anglo-Saxon or Teuton 
 in bulk, are cast in a perfectly symmetrical mould 
 and suggest great possibilities of muscular effort 
 and endurance. In short, though the aristocratic 
 type has survived, and though its superior beauty 
 is universally recognised, it has not impressed 
 
 39
 
 JAPAN 
 
 itself completely on the nation, and there is no 
 difficulty in conceiving that its representatives 
 went down before the first rush of the southern 
 invaders, but subsequently, by tenacity of resist- 
 ance and by fortitude under suffering, recovered 
 from a shock which would have crushed a lower 
 grade of humanity. 
 
 Histories that describe the manners and cus- 
 toms of a people have been rare in all ages. The 
 compilers of Japan's first annals, in the eighth 
 century, paid little attention to this part of their 
 task. Were it necessary to rely on their narra- 
 tive solely for a knowledge of the primaeval 
 Japanese, the student would be meagrely in- 
 formed. But archaeology comes to his assistance. 
 It raises these men of old from their graves, and 
 reveals many particulars of their civilisation 
 which could never have been divined from the 
 written records alone. 
 
 The ancient Japanese not the Koro-pok-guru 
 or the Ainu, but the ancestors of the Japanese 
 proper buried their dead, first in barrows and 
 afterwards in dolmens. The barrow was merely 
 a mound of earth heaped over the remains, after 
 the manner of the Chinese. The dolmen was a 
 stone chamber. It had walls constructed with 
 blocks of stone, generally unhewn and rudely 
 laid but sometimes hewn and carefully fitted ; its 
 roof consisted of huge and ponderous slabs ; it 
 varied in form, sometimes taking the shape of a 
 long gallery only ; sometimes of a gallery and a 
 
 40
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 chamber, and sometimes of a gallery and two 
 chambers ; over it was built a mound of earth 
 which occasionally assumed enormous dimensions, 
 covering a space of seventy or eighty acres, rising 
 to a height of as many feet, and requiring the 
 labour of thousands of workmen. The builders 
 of the barrows were in the bronze age of civilisa- 
 tion ; the constructors of the dolmens, in the iron 
 age. In the barrows are found weapons and 
 implements of bronze and vessels of hand-made 
 pottery ; in the dolmens, weapons and imple- 
 ments of iron and vessels of wheel-turned pottery. 
 There is an absolute line of division. No iron 
 weapon nor any machine-made pottery occurs in 
 a barrow ; no bronze weapon nor any hand- 
 made pottery in a dolmen. Are the barrow- 
 builders and the dolmen-constructors to be 
 regarded as distinct races, or as men of the same 
 race at different stages of its civilisation ? Barrow 
 and dolmen bear common testimony to the fact 
 that before the ancestors of the Japanese nation 
 crossed the sea to their inland home, they had 
 already emerged from the stone age, for neither 
 in barrow nor in dolmen have stone-weapons or 
 implements been found, though these abound in 
 the shell-heaps and kitchen-middens that con- 
 stitute the relics of the Koro-pok-guru and the 
 Ainu. But, on the other hand, barrow and 
 dolmen introduce their explorer to peoples 
 who stood on different planes of industrial 
 development.
 
 JAPAN 
 
 The progress of civilisation is always gradual. 
 A nation does not pass, in one stride, from burial 
 in rude tumuli to sepulture in highly specialised 
 forms of stone vaults, nor yet from a bronze age 
 to an iron. It is therefore evident that the evolu- 
 tion of dolmen from barrow did not take place 
 within Japan. The dolmen-constructor must 
 have completely emerged from the bronze age 
 and abandoned the fashion of barrow-burial before 
 he reached Japan. Otherwise search would cer- 
 tainly disclose some transitional form between the 
 barrow and the dolmen, and some iron imple- 
 ments would occur in the barrows, or bronze 
 weapons in the dolmens. If, then, the barrow- 
 builder and the dolmen-constructor were racially 
 identical, it would seem to follow that the latter 
 succeeded the former by a long interval in the 
 order of immigration, and brought with him a 
 greatly improved type of civilisation evolved in 
 the country of his origin. 
 
 The reader will be naturally disposed to antici- 
 pate that the geographical distribution of the 
 dolmens and the barrows furnishes some aid in 
 solving this problem. But though the excep- 
 tional number found on the coasts opposite to 
 Korea tends to support the theory that the stream 
 of Mongoloid immigration came chiefly from the 
 Korean peninsula via the island of Tsushima, 
 there is not any local differentiation of one kind 
 of sepulture from the other, and, for the rest, the 
 grouping of the dolmens supplies no information 
 
 42
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 except that their builders occupied the tract of 
 country from the shores opposite Korea on the 
 west to Musashi and the south of Shimotsuke on 
 the east, and did not penetrate to the extreme 
 northeast, or to the regions of mountain and 
 forest in the interior. 
 
 Here another point suggests itself. If the 
 fashion of the Japanese dolmen was introduced 
 from abroad, evidences of its prototype should 
 survive on the adjacent continent of Asia. If the 
 numerous dolmens found on the coasts of Kiushiu 
 and Izumo facing Korea are to be taken as indi- 
 cations that their constructors emigrated origi- 
 nally from the Korean peninsula, then Korea also 
 should contain similar dolmens, and if an ethno- 
 logical connection existed between Japan and 
 China in prehistoric days, China, too, should 
 have dolmens. But no dolmens have hitherto 
 been found in China, and the dolmens of Korea 
 differ radically from those of Japan, being " merely 
 cists with megalithic cap-stones " (Gowland). It 
 has been shown, further, that dolmens similar 
 to those of Japan are not to be found in any part 
 of Continental Asia eastward of the shores of the 
 Caspian Sea, and that Western Europe alone offers 
 exactly analogous types. In short, from an eth- 
 nological point of view, the dolmens of Japan are 
 as perplexing as the dolmens of Europe, and the 
 prospect of solving the riddle seems to be equally 
 remote in both cases. All that can be affirmed 
 is that the dolmens offer strong corroborative 
 
 43
 
 JAPAN 
 
 testimony to the truth of the Japanese historical 
 narrative which represents Jimmu as the leader 
 of the last and most highly civilised among the 
 bands of colonists constituting the ancestors of 
 the present Japanese race. Thus the " divine 
 warrior," after having been temporarily erased 
 from the tablets of history by the modern sceptic 
 of the West, is projected upon them once more 
 from the newly opened graves of the primaeval 
 Japanese. It is true that there is an arithmetical 
 difficulty : it has been supposed that the dolmens 
 do not date from a period more remote than the 
 third century before Christ, whereas Jimmu's 
 invasion is assigned to the seventh. But no great 
 effort of imagination is required to effect a com- 
 promise between the uncertain chronology of the 
 Japanese annals and the tentative estimates of 
 modern archaeologists. 
 
 Some of the burial customs revealed by these 
 ancient tombs resemble the habits of the Scythians 
 as described by Herodotus. The Japanese did 
 not, it is true, lay the corpse of a chieftain be- 
 tween sheets of gold, nor did they inter his 
 favourite wife with similar pomp in an adjoining 
 chamber ; but they did deposit with him his 
 weapons, his ornaments, and the trappings of his 
 war-horse, and in remote times they followed the 
 barbarous rule of burying alive, in the immediate 
 vicinity of his sepulchre, his personal attendants, 
 male and female, and probably also his steed. To 
 the abrogation of that cruel rule is due much 
 
 44
 
 PRIMAEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 information about the garments worn in early 
 epochs, for in the century immediately preceding 
 the Christian era a kind-hearted emperor decided 
 that clay figures should be substituted for human 
 victims, and these figures, being modelled, how- 
 ever roughly, in the guise of the men and women 
 of the time, tell what kind of costumes were 
 worn and what was the manner of wearing them. 
 Collecting all the available evidence, the story 
 shapes itself into this : 
 
 Prior to the third, or perhaps the fourth, cen- 
 tury before the Christian era, when the dead were 
 interred in barrows, not dolmens, the Japanese, 
 though they stood on a plane considerably above 
 the general level of Asiatic civilisation, did not yet 
 understand the forging of iron or the use of the 
 potter's wheel. They were still in the bronze age, 
 and their weapons swords, halberds, and arrow- 
 heads were made of that metal. Concerning 
 the fashion of their garments not much is known, 
 but they used, for purpose of personal adornment, 
 quaintly shaped objects of jasper, rock-crystal, ste- 
 atite, and other stones. Then, owing probably to 
 the advent of a second wave of immigration from 
 the continent, the civilisation of the nation was 
 suddenly raised, and the country passed at once 
 from the bronze to the iron age, with a corre- 
 sponding development of industrial capacity in 
 other directions, and with a novel method of 
 sepulture having no exact prototype except in 
 Western Europe. The new-comers seem to have 
 
 45
 
 JAPAN 
 
 been, not a race distinct from their predecessors, 
 but a second outgrowth of colonists from the same 
 parent stem. Where that stem had its roots there 
 is no clear indication, but it is evident that, during 
 the interval between the first and the second mi- 
 grations, the mother country had far excelled its 
 colony in material civilisation, so that, with the 
 advent of the second band of wanderers, the con- 
 dition of the Japanese underwent marked change. 
 They laid aside their bronze weapons and began to 
 use iron swords and spears, and iron-tipped arrows. 
 A warrior carried one sword and, perhaps, a dagger. 
 The sword had a blade which varied from two 
 and a half feet to over three feet in length. 
 These were not the curved weapons with curi- 
 ously modelled faces and wonderful trenchancy 
 which became so celebrated in later times. 
 Straight, one-edged swords, formidable enough, 
 but considerably inferior to the admirable katana 
 of mediaeval and modern eras, they were sheathed 
 in wooden scabbards, having bands and hoops of 
 copper, silver, or iron, by means of which the 
 weapon was suspended from the girdle. The 
 guards were of iron, copper, or bronze, often 
 coated with gold, and always having holes cut 
 in them to render them lighter. Wood was the 
 material used for hilt as well as for scabbard, but 
 generally in the former case and sometimes in the 
 latter a thin sheet of copper with gold plating en- 
 veloped the wood. Double barbs characterised 
 the arrow-head, and as these projected about four 
 
 46
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 inches beyond the shaft, a bow of great strength 
 must have been used, though of only medium 
 length. Armour does not seem to have been 
 generally worn, or to have served for covering 
 any part of the body except the head and the 
 breast. It was of iron, and it took the shape of 
 thin bands of metal, riveted together for casque 
 and cuirass. Neither brassart, visor, nor greaves 
 have been found in any dolmen, and though sol- 
 erets of copper are among the objects exhumed, 
 they appear to have been rather ornamental than 
 defensive. As to shields, nothing is known. No 
 trace of them has been found, and it seems a rea- 
 sonable inference that they were not used. Horses 
 evidently played an important part in the lives of 
 the second batch of immigrants, for horse-furni- 
 ture constantly appears among the objects found in 
 dolmens. The bit is almost identical with the 
 common " snaffle " of the Occident. Made of 
 iron, it has side-rings or cheek-pieces of the same 
 metal, elaborately shaped and often sheeted with 
 gilded copper. The saddle was of wood, peaked 
 before and behind and braced with metal bands, 
 and numerous ornaments of repousse iron covered 
 with sheets of gilt or silvered copper were attached 
 to the trappings. Among these ornaments a pe- 
 culiar form of bell is present : an oblate hollow- 
 sphere, having a long slit in its shell and containing 
 a loose metal pellet. Stirrups are seldom found 
 in the dolmens, and the rare specimens hitherto 
 exhumed bear no resemblance to the large, heavy, 
 
 47
 
 JAPAN 
 
 shoe-shaped affairs of later ages, but are rather of 
 the Occidental type. 
 
 The costume of these ancient Japanese had lit- 
 tle in common with that of their modern descend- 
 ants. They wore an upper garment of woven 
 stuff, fashioned after the manner of a loosely 
 fitting tunic, and confined at the waist by a 
 girdle, and they had loose trousers reaching 
 nearly to the feet. For ornaments they used 
 necklaces of beads or of rings, silver, stone, 
 or glass ; finger-rings, sometimes of silver or 
 gold, sometimes of copper, bronze, or iron plated 
 with one of the precious metals ; ring-shaped but- 
 tons ; metal armlets ; bands or plates of gilt copper 
 which were attached to the tunic ; ear-rings of 
 gold, and tiaras. Not one item in this catalogue, 
 the tiara excepted, appears among the garments 
 or personal ornaments of the Japanese since their 
 history and habits began to be known to the outer 
 world. No nation has undergone a more radical 
 change of taste in the matter of habiliments and 
 adornments. The ear-ring, the necklace, the fin- 
 ger-ring, the bracelet, and the band or plate of 
 metal attached to the tunic, all these passed 
 completely out of vogue so long ago that, with- 
 out the evidence of the contents of the dolmen, 
 it would be impossible to conceive the existence 
 of such things in Japan. One of the most note- 
 worthy features of the people's habits in mediaeval 
 or modern times is that, with the solitary excep- 
 tion of pins and fillets for the hair, they eschew 
 
 48
 
 HH 
 
 10 
 
 IO 
 
 a
 
 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE 
 
 every class of personal ornament. Yet the dol- 
 mens indicate that personal adornments were 
 abundantly, if not profusely, employed by the 
 ancestors of these same Japanese in prehistoric 
 days. Indeed, the only features common to the 
 fashions of the Japanese as they are now known 
 and the Japanese as their sepulchres reveal them, 
 are the rich decoration of the sword-hilt and scab- 
 bard and of the war-horse's trappings. 
 
 As to the food of these early people, it seems 
 to have consisted of fish, flesh, and cereals. They 
 used wine of some kind, though of its nature 
 there is no knowledge, and their household 
 utensils were of pottery, graceful in outline but 
 unglazed and archaically decorated. Whether or 
 not they possessed cattle there is no evidence, nor 
 yet is it known what means they employed to 
 produce fire, though the fire-drill appears to be 
 the most probable. 
 
 That they believed in a future state is evident, 
 since they buried with the dead whatever imple- 
 ments and weapons might be necessary in the 
 life beyond the grave ; that ancestral worship 
 constituted an important part of their religious 
 cult is proved by the offerings periodically made 
 at the tombs of the deceased ; and that idolatry 
 was not practised or superstition largely prevalent 
 may be deduced from the complete absence of 
 charms or amulets among the remains found in 
 their sepulchres. 
 
 49
 
 Chapter III 
 
 JAPAN ON THE FERGE OF HISTORT 
 
 IN one respect Japan's story differs from that 
 of nearly all other countries : the current 
 of her national life was never diverted from 
 its normal channel by successful foreign in- 
 vasions or by any overwhelming inflow of alien 
 races. It is true that her codes of ethics and 
 social conventions were largely modified, from 
 time to time, by foreign influences. But it is 
 also true that she impressed the stamp of her 
 own originality on everything coming to her 
 from abroad, and that, leading what may be 
 called an uninterruptedly domestic existence 
 during twenty-five centuries, she developed char- 
 acteristics so salient that in studying her annals 
 there is forced upon our attention a continuity 
 of easily synthesised traits. 
 
 No traces of autocratic sovereignty are to be 
 found in the history of the early colonists. The 
 general who led the invaders received recognition 
 as their chief, but the offices of the newly 
 organised States were divided among his principal 
 followers, not as arbitrarily conferred gifts, but as 
 spoils falling to them by right. The occupants 
 
 5
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 of these posts were not removable at the caprice 
 of the Sovereign, and they enjoyed the privi- 
 lege of transmitting their offices to their sons ; a 
 system of hereditary officialdom which remained 
 in operation through long ages. 
 
 Thus the national polity in the earliest times 
 assumed a patriarchal form. Public affairs were 
 administered by a group of official families, and 
 at the head of all stood a lineal descendant of the 
 divine ancestors, the degree of his sway varying 
 from time to time according to the docility of 
 his coadjutors. 
 
 All these great families were supposed to be 
 of divine lineage ; they traced their origin to a 
 Mi koto (an augustness) just as the Sovereign him- 
 self did. Some, presumably the most deserving, 
 obtained offices near the throne when the spoils 
 of conquest were distributed ; others were 
 appointed to provincial posts, and as these latter 
 generally found their administrative regions 
 occupied by barbarians whom they had to subdue 
 at first and to hold in check afterwards, they 
 gradually organised principalities virtually inde- 
 pendent of the central government. That, 
 however, is a historical development subsequent 
 to the era now under consideration. 
 
 It does not appear that there was anything like 
 a fully organised administration until some thir- 
 teen hundred years after the date traditionally 
 assigned for the conquest of Yamato by the 
 Emperor Jimmu. The functions of government 
 
 $1
 
 JAPAN 
 
 were divided, not in accordance with any prin- 
 ciple of convenient discharge, but simply with 
 reference to the claims of the persons undertaking 
 them. To two of the imperial princes were 
 entrusted sacerdotal and executive duties ; to two 
 others, military duties, which consisted chiefly of 
 guarding the new palace and capital ; and to two 
 others, the duties of worship and administration 
 in the provinces. The performance of religious 
 rites formed an essential part of state-craft in 
 those times. In fact, the term (matsur'i} for 
 " worship " was identical with that for " govern- 
 ment," and the identity continued until a very 
 recent era, so that, in the language of every-day 
 life, no distinction was made between the sacred 
 business of prayer and the secular business of 
 ruling. That fact reveals very clearly the foun- 
 dation upon which the national polity stood. 
 The Sovereign was the nation's high-priest. 
 Like the Jewish patriarchs, he interceded for his 
 people direct with Heaven, and ruled them by 
 the authority he derived from the deities. His 
 administrative assistants followed the same prin- 
 ciple. They -invoked the aid of Heaven for the 
 discharge of all their duties, and its blessing upon 
 all the affairs of the people under their control. 
 
 It cannot be affirmed that the high officers of 
 State had any officially recognised designations in 
 remote times, and the absence of such designa- 
 tions goes far to confirm the theory that the 
 functions of the patriarchs were of a genera] 
 
 5*
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 character, and that no attempt to divide them 
 systematically was made. They did, however, 
 receive appellations from the people. Just as 
 household servants speak of " the master " and 
 a ship's crew of " the captain," so the first gov- 
 ernor of a province came to be called " the im- 
 perial person of the country " (Kunino mi-yatsuko} 
 the first agricultural superintendent was known 
 as " the lord of the fields " (agatanushi} ; the first 
 high chamberlain as " the great man of the 
 palace" (miya no obito}. In like manner, such 
 titles as " great body " (omt), " master of the 
 multitude " (muraji}, " honorable intermediary " 
 (nakatomt) and so on, were employed as terms of 
 respect, and ultimately passed into use as official 
 titles. 
 
 The share assigned to a patriarch in the central 
 or provincial administration became his inalien- 
 able property. He transmitted it to his son and 
 to his son's son. Thus not only were offices 
 hereditary but their occupants multiplied, so that 
 all the posts and perquisites of a department fell 
 finally into the possession of a clan. The head 
 of the clan then came to be distinguished by the 
 prefix O (great or senior) ; as O-mi (the senior 
 honourable person), O-muraji (the great master of 
 the multitude), and so on. There were no family 
 names in the Occidental sense of the term. Men 
 were distinguished instead by the titles of the 
 administrative posts belonging to their houses. 
 The name of the post preceded that of the per- 
 
 53
 
 JAPAN 
 
 son, as was natural, so that a man was spoken of 
 as " Hierarch Kasumi " (Nakatomi no Kasumi}, 
 or " Guardsman Moriya " (Monobe Moriya}, or 
 " Purveyor Kujira" (Kashiwade no Kujira}. 1 
 
 Eminent as was the position assigned to religion 
 in the polity of the ancient Japanese, no trace of 
 a doctrinal creed, as creeds are understood in the 
 Occident, is found in their lives. Their burial 
 customs show that they believed in an existence 
 beyond the grave, but they seem to have troubled 
 themselves little about the nature of that exist- 
 ence, or about transcendental speculations of any 
 kind. The chief denizen of celestial space, ac- 
 cording to their creed, was a tutelary deity, the 
 Goddess of Light, and since her worship, or the 
 worship of some lesser spirit, had to preface 
 every administrative act of importance, religious 
 rites were placed, as has been already stated, at 
 the head of all official functions. Yet special 
 buildings for ceremonial purposes did not origi- 
 nally exist. The Emperor, as the nation's high- 
 priest, worshipped in the palace, where were 
 kept the insignia of sovereignty, the sword, the 
 mirror, and the jewel of divine origin. Not until 
 the first century before Christ were shrines 
 erected apart from the palace, and the immediate 
 cause of the innovation was a pestilence which 
 the soothsayers interpreted as a heavenly protest 
 against the method of worship then pursued. 
 The creed was not exclusive. Its pantheon, 
 
 i See Appendix, note 4. 
 
 54
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 which in the beginning included only the deities 
 of high heaven, was soon enlarged by the admis- 
 sion of other powers controlling the forces of 
 nature, as well as by the spirits of deceased heroes, 
 and ultimately received even the supernatural 
 beings supposed to preside over the destinies of 
 the aboriginal tribes. In other words, the civil- 
 ised colonists consented to worship the ancestors 
 of the semi-savage aborigines against whom they 
 perpetually waged war. This might be inter- 
 preted to mean that upon the religion which the 
 Japanese brought with them to Japan the religion 
 of the autochthons whom they found there was 
 engrafted. But nothing is known of the autoch- 
 thonous creed. The true explanation seems to 
 be that the Japanese, analysing their difficulty in 
 subduing the aborigines, attributed it to the influ- 
 ence of the latter's deceased rulers, and concluded 
 that the wisest plan would be to propitiate these 
 hostile powers. Hence it is plain that they be- 
 lieved in malevolent spirits as well as in benevo- 
 lent ; or perhaps the more accurate statement 
 would be that, according to their creed, immortal 
 beings continued to be animated by the sentiments 
 which had swayed them as mortals, and possessed 
 power to give practical effect to their sentiments. 
 They did not associate any idea of rewards and 
 punishments with a future state. Their theory 
 pointed to duality of the soul. They regarded it 
 as consisting of two distinct elements : one the 
 source of courage, strength, and aggressiveness ;
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the other the mainspring of benevolence, refine- 
 ment, and magnanimity. In the good man these 
 elements were blended harmoniously during life, 
 and they survived in like proportions after the 
 death of his body. But whatever had been the 
 quality of the mortal tenement, the immortal 
 tenant passed from the edge of the grave into the 
 "sombre realm" (Tomotsu-kuni}, which was sep- 
 arated from this world by a " broad slope " 
 (Tomotsu-hirazaka}, never recrossed by a spirit 
 that had eaten anything cooked in the land of 
 darkness. The offerings made at the tombs of 
 the deceased had the purpose of providing against 
 that disaster of eternal banishment, and, in an- 
 other sense, were a mark of filial piety, the 
 natural outcome of faith in the terrestrial inter- 
 ference of the departed. 
 
 In addition to the celestial and the terrestrial 
 deities, the animal and vegetable kingdom 
 supplied objects of worship. Monster snakes, 
 supposed to destroy the crops, were propitiated 
 by sacrifice, and giant trees, venerated as the 
 abode of supernal beings, were fenced off with 
 ropes carrying sacred pendants. 1 The folk-lore 
 of the nation includes several stories of losses and 
 sufferings caused by cutting down sacred trees, 
 and the rituals show that herbs, rocks, and trees 
 were supposed to have the power of speech prior 
 to the descent of the deities, when dumbness fell 
 upon all these objects. 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 5.
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 Out of such beliefs a rudimentary form of the 
 doctrine of metempsychosis easily emerges. 
 Yamatake, the great hero of prehistoric Japan, 
 was transformed into a white bird, and Tamichi, 
 the generalissimo vanquished by the Ezo, became 
 a monster snake which devoured the desecrators 
 of his tomb. Some ethnologists allege that the 
 custom of human sacrifices existed in early days ; 
 but the theory is founded on a solitary legend of 
 the Perseus-and-Andromeda type, which does 
 not seem to justify any such inference. Every- 
 thing, indeed, goes to show that while a sacri- 
 ficial element undoubtedly entered largely into 
 the rites of worship, it never involved the taking 
 of human life, the objects offered to the gods 
 being confined to the fruits of the earth, birds, 
 animals, and the products of labour. Auguries 
 were obtained by burning the hoof of an ox 
 or the shoulder-blade of a stag, and deciphering 
 the lines in the calcined bone. But there is 
 reason to believe that no such method of sooth- 
 saying had a place in the primaeval superstitions 
 of the Japanese ; it probably came to them from 
 Korea. A device more consistent with their 
 own beliefs was to invoke a sign from heaven 
 by music, when a deity descended and inspired 
 the musician. 
 
 The most famous legend in Japan is that 
 which is supposed to describe the origin of 
 religious services. The Goddess of the Sun 
 (Amaterasu Okami), having retired into a cave so 
 
 57
 
 JAPAN 
 
 that the universe was plunged in darkness, the 
 eight hundred myriads of lesser deities assembled 
 to propitiate her. Thereafter the act of worship 
 took this shape : five hundred saplings of sakakl 
 (Clyera japonica} with their roots were arranged 
 round a mirror (made of copper) which typified 
 the goddess of light. In the upper branches of 
 the trees were hung balls representing the sacred 
 jewel, and in the lower branches, blue and white 
 pendants. A prayer was then recited by the 
 chief hierarch, in lieu of the Emperor, and the 
 service concluded with a dance and the lighting 
 of fires, in imitation of the devices employed by 
 the deities to lure the sun goddess from her 
 retirement. The prayers offered on these occa- 
 sions were probably rendered into exact formulae 
 at an early date, but they were not reduced to 
 writing until the tenth century. Twenty-seven 
 of them have been preserved, and seventy-five are 
 said to have been in use. Their language is often 
 majestic, poetical, and sonorous, 1 but not one of 
 them contains a word suggesting that the 
 primaeval Japanese troubled themselves much 
 about a future state after death or about posthu- 
 mous punishment for sins committed during life. 
 Their idea of crime was that it polluted the 
 person committing it, but that its commission 
 was inevitable. Hence purification services were 
 performed twice in every year, the gods of the 
 swift streams, the tumbling cataracts, and the 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 6.
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 raging tides being invoked to wash away and 
 dissipate all offences. First among crimes was 
 the removal of a neighbour's landmark de- 
 scribed as breaking down divisions between rice- 
 fields ; then followed the damming of streams 
 and the destruction of water-pipes, whence it 
 may be inferred that the problem of irrigation 
 for purposes of rice-culture proved as perplexing 
 to these ancient folk as it does to their modern 
 descendants. On the same plane of heinousness 
 stood the cruelty of flaying the living or the 
 dead, and among lesser crimes were enumerated 
 cutting and wounding, incest and the practice of 
 witchcraft. Every religious service was accom- 
 panied by offerings betokening gratitude for past 
 favours or beseeching future blessings, and the 
 things prayed for were good harvests, an abun- 
 dance of food, security of dwelling-houses against 
 natural calamities, and against the intrusion of 
 reptiles or polluting birds, tranquil and efficient 
 government, and protection from tempests, con- 
 flagrations, pestilence, inundations, and vengeful 
 deities in a word, prosperity and peace. Inci- 
 dentally, these rituals further show that the 
 Japanese believed in a solid firmament walling 
 the universe, though certain passages suggest that 
 they thought this distant envelope light enough 
 to be supported by the winds, which not only 
 filled space, but were also capable of serving as a 
 ladder for the feet of the deities when they 
 descended to the earth. The fermented liquor 
 
 59
 
 JAPAN 
 
 called sake, that is to say, rice-beer, must have 
 been highly appreciated in early times, for no 
 ritualistic enumeration of offerings made to the 
 gods is without a reference to " piled up sake- 
 pots" or "bellying beer-jars ranged in rows." 
 
 It has been shown above that the story of the 
 first mortal emperor's conquest of Yamato indi- 
 cates the use of clumsy boats and a marked 
 deficiency of navigating enterprise. But the 
 rituals of Shinto as Japan's ancient creed is 
 called do not confirm that idea. They speak 
 of ships that " continually crowd on the wide 
 sea-plane," and of " a huge vessel moored in a 
 great harbour, which, casting off her stern moor- 
 ings, casting off her bow moorings, drives forth 
 into the vast ocean." 
 
 It is curious that among the evils from which 
 deliverance was besought, earthquakes are no- 
 where mentioned, and that robbery is not included 
 in the list of polluting crimes. Some have 
 inferred that this commonest of all sins in all 
 nations was unknown among the ancient Japanese. 
 But that is a doubtful conclusion. It might be 
 inferred with equal justice that incest was re- 
 garded with abhorrence, since the rituals class 
 it among sins contaminating the perpetrator. 
 Yet it is certain that men had relations with the 
 mothers of their wives and even with their own 
 mothers and daughters, though facts will 
 presently be cited which mitigate the horror of 
 such acts, that unnatural crimes of a most 
 
 60
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 disgusting character were committed not infre- 
 quently, and that no veto is known to have been 
 pronounced against them. 
 
 There was, in fact, no system of philosophy 
 nor any code of ethics. India had Sidathra, 
 China had Confucius, but neither in ancient, 
 mediaeval, nor modern time has Japan produced 
 a great teacher of morality. She has had plenty 
 of brilliant interpreters, plenty of profound modi- 
 fiers, but no conspicuous originator. 
 
 The right of primogeniture was not recognised 
 in the age here spoken of. A father chose his 
 heir at will. Generally the choice fell on his 
 youngest son, for reasons which become plain 
 when the marital customs of the time are con- 
 sidered. The conception of marriage was 
 practically limited to cohabitation. A husband 
 incurred no obligations or responsibilities towards 
 his wife. It is related that the first emperor 
 (Jimmu), chancing to meet a band of seven 
 maidens, made immediate proposals that one of 
 them should become his mate. The girl agreed, 
 and the sovereign passed the night at her house, 
 a visit which he thenceforth became entitled to 
 repeat whenever he pleased. That was wedlock. 
 To be married involved no change in a woman's 
 life except the liability to receive visits from her 
 husband. As to the man, there was absolutely no 
 duty of fidelity on his side. He might form as 
 many different unions as fancy prompted. The 
 children were brought up by the mother, and it 
 
 61
 
 JAPAN 
 
 was possible for one household to remain in 
 entire ignorance of another's existence. Mutual 
 knowledge generally signified feuds and fighting, 
 for the father's favour was naturally bestowed on 
 the children of his latest affection, and the elder 
 branches of his offspring frequently rebelled 
 against such partiality. Another result of the 
 system was marriages between half-brothers and 
 half-sisters, or between uncles and nieces. These 
 unions were not condemned by the moral code 
 of the time. Indeed, the existence of any rela- 
 tionship was sometimes unknown to the parties 
 themselves, a man's wives and families in different 
 places not necessarily having any mutual acquaint- 
 ance. The only restriction recognised was that 
 children of the same mother must not intermarry. 
 It is easy to see that under these circumstances 
 the ties of consanguinity did not bind men very 
 closely. To be sons of the same father carried 
 no obligation of friendship or sympathy. Often 
 in the annals of the innumerable civil wars that 
 disturbed Japan the reader is shocked by deeds 
 of vengeance, treachery, or ambitious truculence 
 that violate all the dictates of natural affection. 
 The origin of these displays of callousness or 
 cruelty must be sought in the ancient system 
 which condemned a wife to perform the functions 
 of a mere animal, and deprived her children of 
 any claim on their father's love and protection. 
 
 " Houses " have been spoken of above, but a 
 reservation is necessary : the upper classes lived 
 
 62
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 in houses ; the lower inhabited caves or holes in 
 the earth, choosing hillsides for sites in order to 
 escape inundations, which were then of calamitous 
 dimensions and frequency. These cave-dwellings 
 seem to have measured from four to six square 
 yards in area, and to have been closed by a door 
 four or five feet high. Common folk used them 
 all the year round, and even princes and nobles 
 found them comfortable as winter residences, 
 transferring themselves in summer to huts built 
 near the entrance of the caves. 1 In constructing 
 houses of the best type, the palaces of the era, 
 flat stones 2 were sunk in the ground to form a 
 foundation, and on these was raised a stout up- 
 right, the "heavenly pillar" (ame no mihashira}. 
 At every corner also a pillar of lesser dimensions 
 was erected, and between the tops of these corner 
 pillars, as well as from each of them to the 
 central post, beams were stretched, the whole 
 bound together with wistaria withes. Reeds or 
 rushes served for thatching, and heavy logs laid 
 over the thatch prevented it from being blown 
 away. The ends of the tie-beams projected high 
 above the roof, a feature permanently preserved 
 in Shinto architecture ; a hole in the thatch gave 
 exit to the smoke of the cooking-fire ; the frames 
 of doors and windows were tied in their places 
 with stems of creepers, and the walls consisted 
 of logs or bark, or of both combined. These 
 edifices generally stood near a stream which 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 7. 2 See Appendix, note 8. 
 
 63
 
 JAPAN 
 
 carried off impurities ; mats, rushes, or skins were 
 spread for a bed, and furs, cloth, or silk served for 
 coverlets. The floor was of timber, but whether 
 of logs or of boards is not known. A religious 
 service of consecration for propitiating the deities 
 of timber and rice was held when the first 
 emperor built his palace at Kashibara after he 
 had conquered Yamato, and it became customary 
 thenceforth to repeat the service at coronations 
 and after harvest fetes. Common people, when 
 they built a residence, invited their friends to a 
 " house-warming," but the Emperor invoked the 
 gods against the entry of snakes that bit the 
 inmates, or of birds that polluted the food ; against 
 groaning timbers, loosening ties, unevenness of 
 thatch, and creaking floors. 
 
 All this indicates a comparatively low type of 
 civilisation. And yet, as has been shown in a 
 previous chapter, objects found in the tombs of 
 these early Japanese show that they possessed 
 much skill in the casting and chiselling of metals, 
 that their arms and the trappings of their horses 
 were highly ornamented, and that their costume 
 had many elements of refinement. 
 
 Perhaps the most special feature of their habits 
 was cleanliness. It distinguishes them from all 
 other Oriental nations. Whether this propensity 
 grew out of their religious observances or was 
 merely reflected in them, there is no means of 
 determining. Knowledge is limited to the facts 
 that they held every form of pollution to be
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 offensive to the gods; that the chief Shintd ser- 
 vice, the " high mass " of the cult, has for its 
 purpose the purification of the believer's body as 
 well as of his heart : that chastity and simplicity 
 were fundamental features of all the rites, con- 
 structions, and paraphernalia of the creed, and 
 that the virtue of cleanliness received practical 
 acknowledgment even among the lowest classes. 
 
 Songs and dances appear among the most an- 
 cient pastimes of the people. Love is supposed 
 to have inspired the first ode composed in Japan, 
 the Emperor Jimmu having been moved to song 
 on meeting with the maiden Isuzu. The refer- 
 ence here is to mortal poets. A still earlier 
 couplet is attributed to one of the immortals 
 when she danced before the cave into which the 
 Sun Goddess had retired. In the latter incident 
 also ethnologists find the supposed origin of danc- 
 ing, which from time immemorial has been at 
 once a religious observance and an universally 
 popular amusement. Virgins danced before the 
 shrine of the Sun Goddess at the beginning of 
 the nation, and from the highest noble to the 
 meanest churl everyone loved the music of motion. 
 The first costume-dance was prompted by pain, 
 when a deity, vanquished in fight and threatened 
 with drowning, painted his face red and lifted 
 his feet in an agony of supplication. This hayato- 
 mai (the warrior dance), as it is called, is still 
 included among the classical mimes of the Impe- 
 rial Court. It was performed to the music of a 
 5 65
 
 JAPAN 
 
 stringed instrument (the Wa-kin) l and of a flute, 
 perhaps accompanied by a drum. Even the spirits 
 of the dead were supposed to be moved by song 
 and dance. When a man died, his corpse was 
 placed in a building specially erected for the 
 purpose. There it lay for ten days, while the 
 relatives and friends of the deceased assembled 
 and venerated his spirit, making music and danc- 
 ing. This ceremony of farewell seems to have 
 been originally prompted by a hope of recalling 
 the departed, but it soon lost that character and 
 became a mere token of respect. Ancient Japan 
 was largely indebted to Korea for developments 
 of musical instruments. On the death of the 
 Emperor Ingyo (453 A. D.), the Korean Court 
 sent eighty musicians robed in black, who 
 marched in procession from the landing-place to 
 the Yamato palace, playing and singing a dirge 
 as they went. 
 
 The oldest organised form of amusement seems 
 to have been the Ka-gaki, or poetical picnic. 
 Parties of men and women met at appointed 
 places, either in town or country, and composed 
 couplets, delivering them with accompaniment 
 of music or dancing. This kind of pastime had 
 its practical uses : it brought lovers together and 
 soon became a recognised preface to marriage. 
 Among amusements confined to men, cock-fight- 
 ing and hunting were most affected. Large 
 tracts of the country being still unreclaimed, deer 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 9. 
 
 66
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 and wild-boar abounded. These were driven by 
 beaters into open spaces, there to be pursued by 
 men on horseback armed with bows and arrows. 
 In the fourth century the pastime of hawking 
 was introduced. It came from Korea : a king 
 of that country sent a present of falcons to the 
 Emperor of Japan, who caused a special office to 
 be organised for the care of the birds. 
 
 Chinese annalists, writing in the third century, 
 allege that the Japanese tattooed their faces and 
 bodies, the positions and size of the designs con- 
 stituting an indication of rank. Tattooing the 
 body and cutting the hair were counted by the 
 Chinese as violations of the rules of civilisation, 
 and they offer an interesting explanation of the 
 origin of these customs in Japan. They allege 
 that the first rulers of that country were wander- 
 ing princes of the Chou dynasty ( 1 200 B. c.) who 
 abandoned their patrimony in China, and mi- 
 grated southwards, cutting their hair and tattoo- 
 ing themselves, to mark the completeness of their 
 expatriation. The theory is quite untenable. 
 One well-known Chinese work regards tattooing 
 in Japan as a protection against the attacks of 
 marine creatures of prey. But there are strong 
 reasons to doubt whether tattooing was at any 
 time prevalent among the Japanese proper. Pos- 
 sibly Chinese writers failed to distinguish between 
 the inhabitants of the Riukiu archipelago and the 
 people of Nippon, for tattooing of the face was 
 never practised by the Japanese, whereas the 
 
 6?
 
 JAPAN 
 
 habit did prevail among the people of Riukiu. 
 Another reasonable hypothesis is that tattooing 
 was introduced among a limited section of the 
 nation when Japan received the Malayan element 
 of her population. At all events, in every era 
 it was confined to the lowest classes, namely, those 
 who bared their bodies to perform the severe 
 labour falling to their lot. 
 
 These Chinese annalists confirm the supposition 
 suggested by the rituals, as noted above, that 
 crimes of larceny and burglary were very rare in 
 old Japan. They say, also, that Japanese women 
 were neither sensual nor jealous, which is as- 
 suredly true in modern times and seems to have 
 been true in every age of the nation's existence. 
 Another fact adduced in praise of the people was 
 that they gave the law courts very little occupa- 
 tion. But there is an unfavourable interpretation 
 of that state of affairs. The severity of the law, 
 when occasion for its enforcement did arise, was 
 terrible. If political considerations aggravated a 
 crime, the whole family of the criminal were 
 executed, and sometimes every member, even to 
 distant relations, was reduced to the condition of 
 serfdom. The people in general may be said to 
 have been serfs with regard to the interval separat- 
 ing them from the upper classes. Thus, if an 
 inferior met a superior, the former had to step 
 aside and bow profoundly. He was further 
 required to squat, or kneel, with both hands on 
 the ground, when addressing a man of rank. 
 
 68
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 That custom appears to have existed from the 
 earliest time, and cannot be said to have yet 
 become wholly extinct. 
 
 The accounts that Chinese annalists in the 
 third century gave of contemporaneous Japan, 
 indicate that intercourse existed between the two 
 countries at that remote epoch. Indeed China 
 and Korea began at an early date to act some 
 part in the civilisation of Japan, and the Japanese 
 themselves have always frankly admitted that 
 they owe many of their refinements and accom- 
 plishments to their continental neighbours. But 
 the common belief about that matter needs 
 modification. 
 
 One naturally expects that since a section of 
 the original Japanese colonists arrived via Korea, 
 they must have received some impress of that 
 country's civilisation during their passage through 
 it, and must also have preserved permanent touch 
 with it subsequently. The former anticipation 
 is largely borne out by a comparison of the two 
 countries' customs, for they practised in common 
 the rules that prisoners taken in war and members 
 of a criminal's family should be reduced to slavery ; 
 that the corpses of persons executed for crime 
 should be exposed ; that the personal attendants 
 of a high dignitary should be buried alive at his 
 interment ; that a bridegroom should visit his 
 bride at her own house ; that before engaging 
 in war or undertaking any important enterprise, 
 prayer should be addressed to heaven and augu-
 
 JAPAN 
 
 ries drawn from scorched bones, and that festivals 
 in honour of the deities should be held in spring, 
 in autumn, and at the close of the year. There 
 is here too much similarity to be merely fortui- 
 tous. But as to the relations between the two 
 nations, they were limited for a long time to 
 mutual raids. In the century immediately pre- 
 ceding the Christian era, when the Japanese had 
 been reduced almost to helplessness by a pesti- 
 lence, the first historical reference to Korea is 
 found, namely, that an incursion of Korean free- 
 booters took place into the island of Kiushiu, 
 and that thousands of the invaders settled in the 
 deserted hamlets of the plague-stricken Japanese. 
 Japan's attention was thus disagreeably directed 
 towards her neighbour, and when, by and by, 
 inter-tribal disputes disturbed the peace of Korea, 
 the Yamato rulers were easily induced to inter- 
 fere. It appears, further, that Korea constantly 
 lent assistance to the semi-savage aborigines of 
 Kiushiu, whose subjugation long remained a diffi- 
 cult problem for the Japanese. Indeed, the only 
 questions of foreign policy with which the early 
 Japanese colonists had to deal arose out of the 
 fact that the autochthons whom they sought to 
 bring under their sway, received aid in the south 
 from Korea and in the north from the Tartars. 
 There was not much probability that Japan would 
 become a disciple of Korean ethics under such 
 circumstances. Hence, though Korea and China 
 are often bracketed together as Japan's instructors, 
 
 70
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 the truth is that Korea was only a channel, whereas 
 China was a source. Originally Korea did not 
 stand on a much higher plane than her island 
 neighbour in any respect, and in some her level 
 was distinctly lower. But when she came within 
 the range of Chinese civilisation, she began to 
 reflect a faint light. Her record ought to have 
 been better than it is, for she fell under the direct 
 influence of China at a very early date. In the 
 twelfth century before Christ, a band of Chinese 
 wanderers found their way to the eastern region 
 of the peninsula, and settling there, imparted to 
 the tribe which received them forms of etiquette, 
 principles of justice, methods of irrigation, tillage, 
 sericulture, and weaving, and the provisions of 
 " the Eight Fundamental Laws." Again, in the 
 first century before Christ, a group of Chinese 
 nobles, accompanying a fugitive prince, established 
 themselves in the district lying nearest to Japan. 
 And in the second century after Christ, north- 
 western Korea was overrun by a Chinese army, 
 and divided into four districts each under the rule 
 of a Chinese satrap. If, then, the atmosphere of 
 Korea had been favourable to the growth of 
 Chinese civilisation, she should have become a 
 well-equipped teacher for Japan at an early date. 
 But she never showed any strongly receptive 
 faculty. Japan had to go direct to China, and 
 that was an immense undertaking in days when 
 means of communication were primitive. The 
 character that the journey bore in the recollection
 
 JAPAN 
 
 of persons making it may be gathered from the 
 writings of Chonen, a Bonze, who, in company 
 with five acolytes, travelled to the Court of a 
 Sung emperor, in the year 984 A. D. : "I turn 
 my face to the setting sun, and journey westward 
 over a hundred thousand // (thirty-three thousand 
 miles) of boundless billows. I watch for the 
 monsoon and return eastward, climbing over 
 thousands of thousands of wave-mountain peaks. 
 Towards the end of summer, I raise my anchor 
 at Cheh-Kiang, and, in the early spring, I reach 
 the suburbs of my metropolis." Thus the journey 
 occupied six months even in Chonen's day. What 
 time and toil must it have involved nine centu- 
 ries earlier ! The Japanese appear to have essayed 
 it only thrice during the three opening centuries 
 of the Christian era : first in the year 57 A. D., 
 when envoys, visiting the Chinese court, received 
 from the ruler of the Middle Kingdom a gold 
 seal and a ribbon ; secondly in 1 07 A. D., when 
 a hundred and sixty slaves were presented for the 
 Chinese monarch's acceptance ; and thirdly in 
 238 A. D. These facts are quoted from Chinese 
 history. In Japanese annals the third embassy 
 takes the form of an armed invasion of Korea, 
 and constitutes one of the most celebrated as 
 well as one of the most disputed incidents of 
 Japan's story. A female chieftain, the Empress 
 Jingo, is represented as having organised the 
 expedition in obedience to divine orders. Her 
 flotilla, led by a fierce deity and protected by a
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 benignant god, travelled over sea on the crest of 
 a tidal wave, and sweeping into the realm of her 
 enemy, terrified him into unresisting submission. 
 At the portals of the Korean palace she set up 
 her staff and spear to stand there for five centuries, 
 and she compelled the monarch of the defeated 
 nation to swear that until the sun rose in the 
 west and set in the east, until streams flowed 
 towards their source, until pebbles from the 
 river bed ascended to the sky and became stars, 
 his allegiance should remain inviolate. That is 
 the romantic and picturesque form into which 
 the writers of Japanese history (the Nihongi} 
 wove the legend four centuries later. But modern 
 critics have discovered discrepancies which induce 
 them to cut down the tale to vanishing propor- 
 tions, and to dismiss Jingo as a myth. Their 
 iconoclasm is probably excessive. For Chinese 
 annalists say that, at the very time when Jingo's 
 figure is so picturesquely painted on the pages of 
 Japanese records, a female sovereign of Japan 
 sent to the Court of China an embassy which 
 had to beg permission from the ruler of north- 
 western Korea to pass through his territory en 
 route westward. Thus, although the celebrated 
 empress' foreign policy be stripped of its brilliant 
 conquests and reduced to the dimensions of mere 
 envoy-sending, her personality at least is recalled 
 from the mythical regions to which some sino- 
 logues would relegate it. The Chinese relate, it 
 may be mentioned incidentally, that she was old 
 
 73
 
 JAPAN 
 
 and unmarried at the time of the coming of her 
 envoys ; that she possessed skill in magic arts, by 
 which she deluded her people ; that she had a 
 thousand female attendants, but suffered no man 
 to see her face except one official, who served her 
 meals and acted as a means of communication 
 with her subjects ; and that she dwelt in a palace 
 with lofty pavilions surrounded by a stockade and 
 guarded by soldiers. 
 
 Only three instances of direct official commu- 
 nication with China during the first thousand 
 years of Japan's supposed national existence imply 
 very scanty access to the great fount of Far- 
 Eastern civilisation. Yet, from another point of 
 view, these embassies are significant. For when 
 Japan sent her first envoys to Loyang, the then 
 capital of the Middle Kingdom, she had never 
 been invaded by her neighbour's forces, nor ever 
 even threatened with invasion, and in the com- 
 plete absence of tangible displays of military 
 prowess the only universally recognised pass- 
 port to international respect in those epochs 
 the homage that China received from the island 
 empire bears eloquent testimony to the position 
 the former held in the Orient. In truth she 
 towered gigantic above the heads of Far- 
 Eastern States in everything that makes for 
 national greatness. The close of the third cen- 
 tury saw the rise of the Han dynasty and the 
 completion of the magnificent engineering works 
 at the Shensi metropolis ; works which still 
 
 74
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 excite the world's wonder and must have appeared 
 almost miraculous in the eyes of people such as 
 the Japanese were in that era. It is therefore 
 surprising, that the interval between the civilisa- 
 tion of the two empires remained so long 
 unbridged, and the explanation suggested by the 
 above retrospect is that Korea proved a bad 
 medium of transmission, and that China was 
 almost inaccessible by direct means. Some 
 special factor was needed to bring the real China 
 within easier reach of Japanese observation, and 
 that factor was furnished in the fourth century 
 by a wave of Chinese colonists who came to 
 Japan in search of profitable enterprises. Nothing 
 is known about the prime cause of their migra- 
 tion, but the Chinese seem to have been as 
 ardent fortune-questers fifteen centuries ago as 
 they are to-day, and seeing that they had already 
 exploited the northwest, the east and the south- 
 west of Korea, the fact that they pushed on to 
 Japan excites no surprise. A large ingress of 
 Koreans occurred at nearly the same time. They 
 were not voluntary emigrants, but fugitives from 
 the effects of defeat in civil war. Their advent, 
 however, compared with that of the Chinese, had 
 no special importance except as illustrating 
 Japan's freedom from international exclusiveness 
 at that epoch. 
 
 The Chinese brought with them a compilation 
 destined to serve as a primer to Japanese students 
 in all ages, "The Thousand Characters," that 
 
 75
 
 JAPAN 
 
 is to say, a book containing a selection of the 
 ideographs in commonest daily use ; and they 
 brought also the " Analects of Confucius," which 
 soon became, and has ever since remained, the 
 gospel of Japanese ethics. There is no reasonable 
 doubt that the existence of an ideographic script 
 was known to the Japanese long before the fourth 
 century. That conclusion is easily reached. For 
 whatever may be said about the legend that the 
 diagrams of Fuh (3200 B.C.) or the tortoise- 
 shell mottling of Tsang (2700 B. c.) was the 
 embryo of the ideograph, unquestionably the 
 Chinese developed that form of writing as far 
 back as the eighteenth century before Christ ; and 
 since they virtually began to overrun Korea six 
 hundred years subsequently, and intercourse 
 existed between Korea and Japan from a date 
 certainly not later than a thousand years after the 
 latter event, it is plain that both Korea and Japan 
 must have known about the ideograph long 
 before "The Thousand Characters" and the 
 " Analects of Confucius " reached the Court at 
 Yamato. But to know about the ideograph and 
 to use it are two very different things. An 
 alphabet, or even a syllabary, being a purely 
 phonetic vehicle, lends itself to the transcription 
 of any language. But ideographs, having their 
 own inflexible sounds and their own fixed sig- 
 nificances, cannot readily serve to transcribe the 
 words of a foreign language which have different 
 sounds and different significances. Suppose that 
 
 76
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 it were required to write English by means of 
 Greek monosyllables. Such a word as " garrison," 
 for instance, might be composed phonetically by 
 putting together yap is and ov, but if these mono- 
 syllables necessarily conveyed the meaning of 
 " for," " strength," and " his " respectively, it 
 would be perplexing to have to attach to their 
 combination the meaning of " a body of troops 
 for the defence of a fortress." That is a compara- 
 tively easy example of the task that confronted 
 the Japanese when they attempted to adapt the 
 ideographs of China to the uses of their own 
 language. In fact, they did not think of making 
 the attempt until the ideograph had been known 
 to them as a kind of distant acquaintance for 
 many generations, and even when the " Analects " 
 reached them, their ambition was limited at first 
 to deciphering the strange script. History has 
 not thought it worth while to record how or by 
 whose genius the ideographs were first employed 
 as a kind of syllabary for the purpose of writing 
 Japanese. That is what had virtually happened, 
 however, before the fifth century. And very 
 soon something else happened also, namely, a 
 radical modification of the Japanese language. 
 For the more familiar the knowledge that 
 students obtained of the ideograph, the less could 
 they reconcile themselves to use it in a purely 
 phonetic manner. It conveyed to their eyes a 
 significance quite unconnected with the mean- 
 ing of the Japanese word its sound conveyed to 
 
 77
 
 JAPAN 
 
 their ears. Therefore by degrees sense took 
 precedence of sound, and Japanese words were 
 transcribed by means of ideographs which corre- 
 sponded with their meaning, but were pronounced 
 in a new manner, divested of all the harshness 
 and confusing tones of the Chinese tongue. This 
 is a wearisome subject, but some knowledge of 
 it is essential to any one desirous of understanding 
 the genius of the Japanese language and appreci- 
 ating its unique excellence as a vehicle for translat- 
 ing new ideas. Suppose that a Japanese wants to 
 write the compound word " Western-jewel/' 
 In his own original language the sounds would 
 be nishi-no-tama. But he takes two ideographs 
 which in China are pronounced see-yuh, and 
 having written them down in their proper sense, 
 he reads them either sai-gyoku or nishi-no-tama , 
 calling the former the on, or Chinese pronuncia- 
 tion though it is really a Japanese modification 
 of the Chinese sounds and the latter the kun, 
 or pure Japanese sound. Hence one of the 
 results of using the ideographs was that the 
 Japanese language acquired an alternative pro- 
 nunciation : it became a dual language as to 
 sound without changing its construction. It 
 acquired also an extraordinary capacity of expan- 
 sion, becoming the most flexible vehicle for 
 translating ideas that the world has ever possessed. 
 For the Chinese language, which was thus 
 grafted on the Japanese, is not so much a col- 
 lection of words as a vast thesaurus of materials 
 
 78
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 for constructing words. It is, in fact, a repertoire 
 of forty thousand monosyllables each of which 
 has its exact significance. These syllables may 
 be used singly, or combined two, three, four, or 
 five at a time, so as to convey every conceivable 
 idea, however complex, delicate, or abstruse. 
 The genius of man has never invented any 
 machinery so perfect for converting thoughts 
 into sounds. Possessors of an alphabet may 
 denounce the ideograph as a clumsy, semi- 
 civilised form of writing, and may accuse it of 
 developing the mechanics of memory at the 
 expense of the intellectual faculty. But the 
 Chinese ideographist can oppose to such criti- 
 cism the answer that as a vehicle for rendering 
 the products of the mind the ideograph is with- 
 out rival, and that, while the Anglo-Saxon has to 
 devise a vocabulary for his scientific and philo- 
 sophical developments by the halting aid of dead 
 languages, exact equivalents for every new con- 
 ception can be coined readily by the unassisted 
 ideographic mint. The chronological sequence 
 of this retrospect may be anticipated so far as to 
 say that it was owing to the possession of such 
 mechanism that the Japanese scholar found no 
 serious difficulty in fitting an accurate terminology 
 to the multitude of novel ideas presented to him 
 by Western civilisation in the nineteenth century, 
 just as it would scarcely have been possible for 
 him to assimilate the ethics of Confucianism and 
 the civilisation of China fifteen centuries earlier, 
 
 79
 
 JAPAN 
 
 had he not simultaneously made this great 
 linguistic acquisition. 1 
 
 But, as stated above, the Japanese had long 
 been admiring and marvelling at the ideographic 
 script, and had long been studying it solely for 
 the sake of the literature to which it gave access, 
 before they succeeded in using it to transcribe 
 their own language. That they seem to have 
 done during the sixth century, for towards its 
 close they began to compile the first records of 
 their country's history, began to reduce to writ- 
 ing such tales as had been handed down by tra- 
 dition during the preceding twelve hundred years. 
 A celebrated litterateur, statesman, and religionist, 
 Prince Shotoku, and an equally celebrated Prime 
 Minister and patron of Buddhism, Soga no 
 Umako, essayed this maiden historiographical 
 task. Their work did not survive, but there is 
 no doubt that much of its contents found a place 
 in the Kojiki and Nihongi of the eighth century, 
 the oldest Japanese annals now extant. 
 
 Here an interesting question suggests itself. 
 According to the most conservative estimate, 
 China had possessed a written history for at least 
 nine hundred years before the first Japanese 
 envoys reached her shores. Does her history 
 show that she knew, or thought she knew, any- 
 thing about the Japanese before they introduced 
 themselves to her notice by means of ambassadors ? 
 Of course it is quite plain that the two nations 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 10. 
 
 80
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 must have had some intercourse prior to the 
 opening of official relations ; otherwise the Japan- 
 ese envoys could not have been intelligible when 
 they reached the Chinese Court. The question 
 here, however, is not of Chinese history relating 
 to a remote past. The question is, Did Prince 
 Shotoku and Premier Umako find in Chinese 
 history, when its pages were first opened for their 
 inspection, any explanation of the Japanese na- 
 tion's origin ? It has been related that the pre- 
 decessors of Japan's first mortal sovereign are 
 declared by her historians to have been heavenly 
 deities, and that the recorded incidents of their 
 careers are fabulous and supernatural. Now the 
 only islands spoken of by the early Chinese his- 
 torians in terms suggesting Japan, are described 
 as the abode of genii, the land of immortals pos- 
 sessing the elixir of life, a corpse-reviving drug, 
 golden peaches weighing a pound each, timber 
 of immense strength yet so buoyant that no super- 
 imposed weight would sink it, rare trees, a moun- 
 tain plant that could be plaited into mats and 
 cushions, mulberries an inch long, and an envi- 
 ronment of black sea, where the waves, not 
 driven by any wind, rose to a height of a thou- 
 sand feet. At the risk of challenging a cherished 
 faith, it is difficult to avoid the hypothesis that 
 from these fables the compilers of Japan's first 
 written history derived the idea of an " age of 
 the gods " and of a divinely descended emperor. 
 The unique qualification of Shotoku and Umako 
 6 81
 
 JAPAN 
 
 for their task of history-making was familiarity 
 with Chinese ideographic script and with the 
 literature of the Middle Kingdom. Could any- 
 thing be more natural, more inevitable, than that 
 they should sjearch the pages of that literature for 
 information about the early ages of their nation's 
 existence ; or that they should place implicit 
 reliance upon all the information thus acquired ? 
 A child, when it sits down to transcribe the 
 head-lines of its first copy-book, does not think 
 of questioning the logic or morality of the pre- 
 cepts inscribed there. Shotoku and Umako were 
 in the position of children so far as Chinese 
 historical records were concerned. From the 
 annalists of the kingdom at whose civilised feet 
 the whole semi-barbarous world sat, they learned 
 that, prior to the year 700 B. c., islands lying in 
 the region of Japan had been known as the habi- 
 tation of genii and immortals, and with immortals 
 and genii the Prince and the Prime Minister 
 peopled the Japanese Islands. 
 
 Sinologues have shown that these primitive 
 Japanese annals contain internal evidence of ex- 
 tensive reliance on Chinese sources. The posthu- 
 mous names that is to say, the historical names 
 given to the forty-two emperors from Jimmu 
 to Mommu (697 A. D.), are all constructed on 
 Chinese models ; the name " Jimmu " itself is 
 an exact imitation of the title chosen by the 
 Toba Tartars for their remote ancestor ; the war- 
 like lady whose alleged invasion of Korea stands 
 
 82
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 out so prominently in Japan's ancient history, 
 was evidently called after the Chinese Empress 
 Wu, whose name and style corresponded with 
 " Jingo." Of course, it is not implied that every 
 event recorded in Japan's first written annals is 
 to be counted of foreign suggestion. Domestic 
 traditions, more or less trustworthy, are doubt- 
 less embodied in their pages, as well as reflec- 
 tions of Chinese prehistorical myths. But it 
 does seem a reasonable conclusion that, among 
 many borrowings made by Japan from China, 
 the idea of her " Age of Gods " has to be 
 included. 
 
 The sequence of events has been somewhat 
 anticipated here for the sake of explaining the 
 introduction of ideographic script into Japan, an 
 event belonging to the second half of the sixth 
 century. During the interval of nearly two 
 hundred years which separated that consumma- 
 tion from the great wave of Chinese and Korean 
 immigration that reached Japan in the beginning 
 of the fourth century, marked progress had been 
 made in many of the essentials of civilisation. 
 The science of canal cutting, the art of fine em- 
 broidery, improved methods of sericulture and 
 of silk-weaving were introduced by the immi- 
 grants, and the intelligent interest taken by the 
 Government in encouraging progress may be 
 inferred from the fact that it caused the new- 
 comers to distribute themselves throughout the 
 country so as to extend the range of their instruc- 
 
 83
 
 JAPAN 
 
 tion. Some idea of the part played by these 
 immigrants is suggested by the fact that, in the 
 second half of the fifth century, when it was 
 deemed advisable to re-assemble the foreign ex- 
 perts and organise them into separate departments, 
 the families enrolled in the sericultural section 
 alone aggregated nearly nineteen thousand mem- 
 bers. By this time (450 A. D.) the policy of 
 specially importing skilled aid direct from China 
 had been inaugurated, and large bodies of female 
 weavers and embroiderers were invited to settle 
 in Japan. They taught the use of the loom so 
 successfully that fine brocades for the palace were 
 among the products of the time. At the same 
 epoch the first two-storeyed house was constructed. 
 It is strange that the Japanese, who through their 
 embassies to the Han y the Tsin, and the Song 
 Courts, must have acquired some knowledge of 
 the splendours of the Chinese capitals as Loyang, 
 Hsian, and Nanking, should have been content to 
 live until the middle of the fifth century in log 
 huts tied together with wild-vine ligatures. Such 
 is the fact, however, and no explanation has been 
 suggested. A little later, but still in the fifth 
 century, the art of tanning skins was imparted 
 by Korean immigrants and greatly developed by 
 Chinese instruction. 
 
 In the domain of morals, the fourth century, 
 as has been shown, brought to Japan a knowledge 
 of the Chinese classics, and her historians claim 
 that she then learnt the golden rule, as well as 
 
 84
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 the Confucian precepts of refraining from excess, 
 abhorring evil and curbing the passions. They 
 also claim that she quickly began to practise these 
 ethical canons, and they point to the career of 
 the Emperor Nintoku (313399) as an example 
 of the new morality. But- Nintoku, though he 
 displayed some of the most picturesque virtues of 
 a ruler, was an extreme type of libertine. He 
 crowned a long list of excesses by marrying his 
 step-mother's daughter. Fifty years later, the 
 Nero of Japanese history appeared in the person 
 of Yuraku (457459), who exiled an official in 
 order to obtain possession of his wife, and per- 
 petrated a wholesale slaughter of his own brothers, 
 their children, and other members of the Imperial 
 family. His successor (Seinei) carried out a 
 similar massacre, and the Imperial line would 
 have become extinct had not a child been secreted 
 and reduced to the position of a serf in order to 
 escape the quest of the official assassins. Buretsu, 
 who reigned a few decades later (499507), ranks 
 even below Yuraku as a fierce and merciless 
 despot, and at the same time the great families 
 who had become depositories of administrative 
 power behaved with the utmost arrogance, de- 
 spising the laws, defying the sovereign's authority, 
 and perpetrating all kinds of excesses. In brief, 
 if Confucianism, and its comparatively high code 
 of moral precepts, obtained recognition in Japan 
 during the fourth century, its civilising influence 
 is not to be detected in the fifth, which may
 
 JAPAN 
 
 justly be called the blackest era in the history of 
 Japanese imperialism. 
 
 Of course the moral condition of the inferior 
 classes was not better than that of the Court. 
 The selfish aims of religion became so para- 
 mount as to deprive it of all dignity. Among 
 the tutelary deities added to the pantheon there 
 were some whose attributes should have deprived 
 them of any title to respect ; others whose vene- 
 ration betrayed a scarcely credible depth of super- 
 stition. An extreme example was the worship of 
 caterpillars, which, at that epoch, infested the 
 orange trees and the ginger vines. The changes 
 these insects underwent were considered typical 
 of the poor growing rich, the old renewing their 
 youth, and men built shrines and offered sacri- 
 fices to the gods thus manifested. 
 
 Society was disfigured by class dissensions. 
 The great families which for over a thousand 
 years had monopolised the principal offices of 
 State as hereditary rights, were no longer repre- 
 sented by one or two households ; they had 
 grown to the dimensions of clans, and their 
 members lived on the proceeds of extortion and 
 oppression, secured by the collective protection 
 of the clan against inconvenient results. Profit 
 and prosperity seem to have been the paramount 
 motives of the era. Servants were so indifferent 
 to the dictates of loyalty that they turned their 
 hand against their liege lords, and wives had so 
 little sense of family fidelity that they cheated 
 
 86
 
 ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY 
 
 their husbands. Superstition had invaded every 
 domain of life. There existed a belief that ex- 
 hibitions of the divine will could always be ob- 
 tained by employing some process of divination 
 or repeating some formula of incantation. Judi- 
 cial decisions were based entirely on the result of 
 ordeal ; dreams were regarded as revelations for 
 guidance at important crises, and the necessity of 
 avoiding pollution dictated grotesque rules of 
 conduct. Thus the mere fact of encountering a 
 stranger, or of coming into contact with any of 
 his belongings, was held to cause contamination 
 that demanded a service of purification, and a 
 traveller was consequently required to carry a 
 bell which he rang as he moved along, after the 
 manner of a leper in mediaeval Europe. If he 
 boiled his food by the roadside, he exposed him- 
 self to the lawful displeasure of the nearest 
 household, and if he borrowed cooking utensils 
 from anyone in the neighbourhood, they had to 
 be solemnly purified before being returned to 
 their owner or allowed to touch any other ob- 
 ject. Evidently inns could not exist under such 
 circumstances, and the difficulties of travel were 
 enormous, as everything needed for the journey 
 must be carried by the wayfarer. A woman had 
 to be moved into a segregated hut at the time of 
 parturition, and a ceremony of purification, a 
 species of " churching," was necessary before she 
 might return to her place in society. To have 
 been present at a sudden death was another 
 
 87
 
 JAPAN 
 
 source of contamination, rendering a man re- 
 sponsible to the nearest house or hamlet, and 
 involving elaborate rites of cleansing. It resulted 
 that the companions of a man who fell sick by 
 the roadside or was drowned, used generally to 
 fly precipitately without waiting to succour or 
 inter him, the promptings of charity and of fel- 
 lowship being thus subserved to the dictates of 
 unreasoning superstition. In short, the nation 
 offered a striking example of well-developed ma- 
 terial civilisation side by side with most rudimen- 
 tary morality. A religion was wanted. The 
 Shintv cult, after long and uninterrupted trial, a 
 trial lasting for more than eleven hundred years, 
 had proved itself essentially deficient in the guid- 
 ing influences of a creed. Its want of any code 
 of sanctions and vetoes, its indifference to a future 
 state, its negative rules of conduct, its exaltation 
 of deities whose powers were exercised for tem- 
 poral purposes only all these attributes de- 
 prived it of elevating effect upon the masses. 
 Confucianism was powerless to correct these 
 evils. It appealed to the intellect and left senti- 
 ment untouched. A religion was wanted, and it 
 came in the form of Buddhism. 
 
 88
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 JAPAN IN THE EARLY ERAS 
 OF HISrORT 
 
 I 
 
 greatest event in the career of 
 ancient Japan was the advent of Bud- 
 dhism in the year 552 A. D. It is 
 usually said that the Indian creed came 
 officially, a copy of its scriptures and an image of 
 Buddha having been sent to the Yamato Court 
 by the Government of one of the Korean King- 
 doms. In a sense this statement is correct, for 
 without that ambassadorial introduction the new 
 religion would probably have long remained a 
 comparative stranger to the mass of the Japanese 
 nation. But it is a fact that the doctrine had 
 been preached in Japan by enterprising mission- 
 aries for many years before the arrival of the 
 Korean envoy. Unsuccessfully preached, how- 
 ever. Buddhism owes much to its accessories, 
 to its massive and magnificent temples, its 
 majestic images, its gorgeous paraphernalia, the 
 rich vestments of its priests, and the picturesque 
 solemnity of its services. These elements must 
 have been absent failing the Government's sanc- 
 tion and support. Besides, from the first chapter 
 
 89
 
 JAPAN 
 
 of Japanese history to the last, there is no in- 
 stance of a radical reform effected, or a novel 
 system inaugurated, without official guidance. 
 The people's part has always been to follow; the 
 Government's to lead. It may therefore be said 
 with truth that Buddhism was planted officially 
 in Japan, though a few unfruitful seeds had been 
 previously scattered by private enterprise. 
 
 How came it that the Government showed a 
 liberal attitude towards an alien faith ? Was 
 there genuine conviction of the excellence of the 
 Buddhist doctrine, or did some other cause 
 operate ? 
 
 Both questions may be answered in the affirma- 
 tive with reservations. The first Japanese 
 Emperor (Kimmei) who listened to the new 
 gospel seems to have found it mysterious, lofty, 
 and attractive. Its doctrine of metempsychosis, 
 its law of causation, its theory of a future of 
 supreme rest, charmed and startled him. But 
 the argument most potent in winning his support 
 was the ambassador's assurance that Buddhism 
 had become the faith of civilised Asia. Japan 
 of the sixth century was just as ambitious to 
 stand on the highest level of civilisation as Japan 
 of the nineteenth. She turned to Buddhism for 
 the sake of the converts it had already won 
 rather than for the sake of her own conversion. 
 At first, the attitude of the Court was tentative. 
 When the Sovereign summoned a Council of 
 Ministers, as was customary in those days of pa- 
 
 90
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 triarchal administration, only the premier Soga 
 no Iname espoused the cause of the imported 
 creed. The rest declared that its adoption would 
 insult the hundred and eighty deities, celestial 
 and terrestrial, who already had the country under 
 their tutelage. The Emperor compromised by 
 entrusting the image and the sutras (Buddhist 
 canons) to Iname and postponing the final ques- 
 tion of adoption or rejection. 
 
 There has never been any attempt to explain 
 why the Soga family embraced Buddhism with 
 such zealous constancy. Iname and his son and 
 successor, Umako, gave to it equally steadfast 
 support in the face of fierce opposition. Twice 
 the Soga mansion was destroyed by the people, 
 who believed that the conversion of the Prime 
 Minister's house into a temple for strange deities 
 had brought pestilence upon the land. Other 
 excesses were committed. A nun was stripped 
 and publicly whipped, and the image of the 
 Buddha was thrown into a river. But these epi- 
 sodes did not shake the faith of the Soga family. 
 
 Soon, too, a powerful coadjutor appeared in 
 the person of an imperial prince, Shotoku, whose 
 figure justly occupies the frontispiece in the first 
 chapter of Japan's moral and intellectual prog- 
 ress. Chiefly through his ardent patronage and 
 extraordinary fervour of piety Buddhism became 
 the creed of the Court and of the nobility. 
 
 Military strength also contributed aid. A 
 statement frequently made with all the assurance 
 
 9 1
 
 JAPAN 
 
 of historical conviction is that Buddhism is 
 essentially a peaceful and adaptive creed ; that it 
 never demolishes other faiths but rather assimi- 
 lates them. That is certainly true of Buddhism 
 in the abstract, but its establishment in Japan 
 was not unaccompanied by a sanguinary exercise 
 of armed force. The question of invoking 
 Buddha's succour on behalf of a sick emperor 
 led to a fierce conflict between the three great 
 political parties of the era, with the result that 
 the opponents of the foreign faith suffered defeat. 
 They had been led by one of the ancient princely 
 families, which occupied a high place in the 
 official hierarchy, and now the chiefs of the 
 family were put to death, its estates confiscated to 
 endow the first great Buddhist temple, and its 
 members condemned to serve as slaves in the 
 new place of worship. 
 
 Another factor that made for the spread of 
 Buddhism was the zeal, almost fanatical, of the 
 empress Suiko, who reigned during the epoch of 
 Prince Shotoku's reforms. She issued edicts 
 enjoining the adoption of the faith ; ordered that 
 all the princes of the blood and the Ministers of 
 State should have images of Buddha in their pos- 
 session, and conferred rank and rewards on sculp- 
 tors of idols. Indeed, although the imperial 
 ladies of Japan acted a noble role in her early 
 history, their careers illustrate the truism that the 
 emotional element of female character is a dan- 
 gerous factor in state administration. During the 
 
 92
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 period of one hundred and sixty-eight years from 
 591 to 759, fourteen sovereigns reigned, and five 
 of them were females. A sixth lady practically 
 ruled though she did not actually reign. The 
 sway of these Empresses aggregated seventy-one 
 years, and every one of them carried her religious 
 fervour almost to the point of hysteria. 1 They 
 were certainly instrumental in raising Buddhism 
 to the place of eminence and influence it occu- 
 pied so soon after its arrival in Japan, and it is 
 not surprising to find that, in the seventy-second 
 year after the Korean ambassador's coming, the 
 country had forty-six temples, eight hundred and 
 sixteen priests, and sixty nuns. Neither is it 
 surprising to find that, in obedience to Shinto 
 precedents, Buddhism was drawn into the field 
 of politics, and Buddhist priests were admitted to 
 a share in the administration. For the extreme 
 practice of these methods also a female was 
 responsible. The Empress-dowager Koken 
 (749-758) organized a religious government dis- 
 tinct from the secular, issued orders for the 
 spiritual regulation of men's lives, assisted a 
 monk (Dokyo) to dethrone the Emperor, and, if 
 she did not sanction, certainly failed to check, 
 the crimes he perpetrated to prepare his own 
 path to the throne. 
 
 Not in the history of any other country can 
 there be found a parallel for the large support 
 that sovereign after sovereign of Japan extended 
 
 1 See Appendix, note n. 
 
 93
 
 JAPAN 
 
 to Buddhism in the seventh and eighth centuries. 
 Innumerable temples were built at enormous 
 expense and endowed with great revenues. 
 Quantities of the precious metals were devoted 
 to the casting of idols and the decoration of edi- 
 fices to hold them. Arbitrary edicts were issued 
 thrusting the faith upon the people by force of 
 official authority. 1 It even became customary to 
 surrender the highest posts and honours in the 
 empire for the sake of taking the tonsure and 
 leading a recluse life. 2 Striking testimony to the 
 religious fervour of the Court survives in the 
 magnificent assemblage of temples in and about 
 Nara. Almost the whole of these were built and 
 furnished during the seventy-five years (710-785) 
 of the Court's residence at that place, and when 
 it is remembered that the immense outlay re- 
 quired for such works had to be defrayed by 
 taxing a nation of only four and a half millions 
 of people, it is apparent that religious zeal com- 
 pletely outran financial discretion. It is a con- 
 stant assertion of foreign critics that the religious 
 instinct is absent from the character of the 
 Japanese, but their history cannot be reconciled 
 with such a theory. 
 
 Japanese sovereignty, as has been shown al- 
 ready, was based upon Shinto. The sovereigns 
 " sons of heaven " ( Tensfu\ as they were, and are 
 still, called traced their descent to the deities 
 of that creed, and the essence of their adminis- 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 12. 2 See Appendix, note 13. 
 
 94
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 trative title was that they interceded with the 
 gods for the people they governed. All their 
 principal traditions and temporal interests should 
 have dictated the rejection of a creed which 
 preached the supremacy of a new god and took 
 no cognisance of their divine descent. It would 
 have been in accord with the nature of political 
 evolution that the people should have espoused 
 the doctrines of a faith which absolved them from 
 allegiance to their rulers, but how can the fact be 
 explained that the rulers themselves patronised a 
 creed which annulled their sovereign title ? Dur- 
 ing the first century and a half after the intro- 
 duction of Buddhism, that question does not seem 
 to have troubled anyone in ancient Japan. If it 
 was sometimes urged that the tutelary deities 
 might be offended by the worship of a strange 
 god, all manifestations of their umbrage were 
 associated with the people's welfare, not with 
 the sovereign's titles, and no one seems to have 
 thought it necessary to assert the divinity of the 
 Mikado against the alien theocracy. 1 When the 
 Prime Minister, Soga no Umako, caused the 
 Emperor Sujun to be assassinated (592 A. D.), 
 Prince Shotoku justified the act by explaining 
 that the sovereign's death had been in accordance 
 with the Buddhist doctrine which condemns a 
 man to suffer in this life for sins committed in a 
 previous state of existence. Thus, only forty 
 years after the introduction of Buddhism, the 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 14. 
 
 95
 
 JAPAN 
 
 lives of the " sons of heaven " were declared 
 subject to its decrees. A century later, one of 
 the Imperial Princes was ordered to commit sui- 
 cide because he had struck a mendicant and 
 clamorous priest. Only from the sufferings they 
 inflicted on the people was the displeasure of the 
 Shinto deities inferred. Twice their hostility to 
 Buddhism was supposed to have been displayed 
 by visitations of pestilence, and at last, during 
 the reign of Shomu (724-748), when the enor- 
 mous expenditure incurred on account of temple 
 building and idol casting had so impoverished 
 the people as to produce a famine with its usual 
 sequel, pestilence, the Shinto disciples once again 
 insisted that these calamities were the deities' 
 protest against the strange faith. It was then 
 that the great Buddhist priest Giyogi saved the 
 situation by a singularly clever theory. He 
 taught that the Sun Goddess, the chief of the 
 Shinto deities, had been merely an incarnation of 
 the Buddha, and that the same was true of all 
 the members of the Shinto pantheon. The two 
 creeds were thus reconciled, and as evidence of 
 their union the Emperor caused a colossal idol to 
 be set up, the celebrated Daibutsu (great Buddha) 
 of Nara ; the copper used for the body of the 
 image representing the Shinto faith, the gold that 
 covered it typifying Buddhism. This amalgama- 
 tion was for the sake of the people's safety ; it 
 had nothing to do with rehabilitating the divine 
 title of the sovereign. In the face of these facts,
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 is it possible to conceive that any such title ranked 
 as a vital tenet of the nation's political creed? 
 Must not the theory of heavenly descent be placed 
 rather in the category of traditions which had 
 not yet begun to assume the paramount im- 
 portance subsequently assigned to them ? 
 
 Thus, almost from the very outset, Buddhism 
 received the strenuous support of the Imperial 
 Court and of the nobles alike. Never did any 
 alien faith find warmer welcome in a foreign 
 country. It had virtually nothing to contend 
 against except the corruption and excesses of its 
 own ministers. The lavish patronage extended 
 to them disturbed their moral balance. From 
 luxury and self-indulgence they passed to chi- 
 canery and political intrigue, until, in the middle 
 of the eighth century, one of them actively con- 
 spired to obtain the throne for himself. Through- 
 out the whole course of its history in Japan, alike 
 in ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times, 
 Buddhism has been discredited by the conduct 
 of its priests. But it has also numbered among 
 its propagandists many men of transcendent 
 ability, lofty aims, and fanatical courage. It 
 found its way to the heart of the Japanese 
 nation less for the sake of its doctrines than for 
 the sake of the civilisation it introduced. Its 
 priests became the people's teachers. They con- 
 stituted a bridge across which there passed per- 
 petually from the Asiatic continent to Japan a 
 stream of new knowledge. To enumerate the 
 7 97
 
 JAPAN 
 
 improvements and innovations that came to her 
 by that route would be to tell almost the whole 
 story of her progress. 
 
 The seventh and eighth centuries are among 
 the most memorable epochs of Japan's history. 
 They witnessed her passage from a comparatively 
 rude condition to a state of civilisation as high as 
 that attained by any country in the world, from 
 the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of 
 modern Occidental nations, and they witnessed 
 also a political revolution the exact prototype of 
 that which has made her remarkable in modern 
 times. 
 
 Prince Shotoku stands at the head of the move- 
 ment of progress. Not only did he secure the 
 adoption of Buddhism, but he also organised an 
 administrative system embodying the first germs 
 of practical imperialism, drafted a constitution 
 and compiled the earliest historical essays. His 
 constitution is full of interest as affording a clear 
 outline of the ethical ideals of the time and of the 
 polity that this singularly gifted man desired to 
 establish : 
 
 i. Concord and harmony are priceless ; obedience to 
 established principles is the fundamental duty of man. 
 But in our country each section of the people has its 
 own views and few possess the light. Disloyalty to 
 Sovereign and parent, disputes among neighbours, are 
 the results. That the upper classes should be at unity 
 among themselves and intimate with the lower, and that 
 all matters in dispute should be submitted to arbitra- 
 
 98
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 tion that is the way to place society on a basis of 
 strict justice. 1 
 
 3. Imperial edicts must be respected. The Sover- 
 eign is to be regarded as the heaven, his subjects as the 
 earth. The heaven hangs above, the earth sustains it 
 beneath ; the four seasons follow in ordered succession, 
 and all the influences of nature operate satisfactorily. 
 Should the earth be placed above the heaven, ruin 
 would at once ensue for the universe. So the Sovereign 
 directs, the subject conforms. The Sovereign shows 
 the way, the subject follows it. Indifference to the 
 Imperial edicts signifies national ruin. 
 
 4. Courtesy must be the rule of conduct for all the 
 Ministers and officials of the Government. Wise ad- 
 ministration of national affairs has its roots in the 
 observance of etiquette. Without etiquette on the part 
 of the superior, it is impossible to govern the inferior, 
 and if inferiors ignore etiquette, they will certainly be 
 betrayed into offences. Social order and due distinctions 
 between the classes can only be preserved by strict con- 
 formity with etiquette. 
 
 5. To punish the evil and reward the good is hu* 
 manity's best law. A good deed should never be left 
 unrecompensed or an evil unrebuked. Sycophancy and 
 dishonesty are the most potent factors for subverting 
 the State and destroying the people. Flatterers are 
 never wanting to recount the faults of inferiors to su- 
 periors and depict the latter's errors to the former. To 
 such men we can never look for loyalty to the Sovereign 
 or sympathy with their fellow-subjects. They are the 
 chief elements of national disturbance. 
 
 9. To be just one must have faith. Every affair 
 demands a certain measure of faith on the part of those 
 that deal with it. Every question, whatever its nature 
 or tendency, requires for its settlement an exercise of 
 
 1 See Appendix, note i 5. 
 
 99
 
 JAPAN 
 
 faith and authority. Mutual confidence among officials 
 renders all things possible of accomplishment ; want of 
 confidence between Sovereign and subject makes failure 
 inevitable. 
 
 10. Anger is to be curbed, wrath cast away. The 
 faults of another should not rouse our resentment. 
 Every man's tendency is to follow the bent of his own 
 inclination. If one is right, the other is wrong. But 
 neither is perfect. Both are victims of passion and 
 prejudice, and no one has exclusive competence to dis- 
 tinguish the evil from the good. Sagacity is balanced 
 by silliness ; small qualities are combined with great, 
 so that neither is salient in the total, even as a sphere is 
 without angles. To chide a fault does not certainly 
 prevent its repetition, nor can the censor himself be 
 secure against error. The sure road to accomplish- 
 ment is that trodden by the people in combination. 
 
 14. Those in authority should never harbour hatred 
 or jealousy of one another. Hate begets hate, and jealousy 
 is without discernment. A wise man may be found once 
 in five hundred years ; a true sage, hardly once in a 
 thousand. Yet without sages no country can be gov- 
 erned peacefully. 
 
 15. The imperative duty of man in his capacity of 
 subject is to sacrifice his private interest to the public 
 good. Egoism forbids cooperation, and without co- 
 operation there cannot be any great achievement. 
 
 Prince Shotoku spoke with the wisdom in- 
 spired by Buddhism and Confucianism. But 
 the principles of constitutional monarchism that 
 he enunciated so plainly were suggested by the 
 conditions of his era. The patriarchal families 
 which filled the principal offices of State by 
 hereditary right, had grown into great clans. 
 
 100
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 They grasped the reality of administrative power, 
 leaving its shadow only to the sovereign, who, 
 cut off, on the one hand, from all direct com- 
 munication with the people, was condemned, on 
 the other, to see his authority abused for purposes 
 of oppression and extortion. The state of the 
 lower orders was pitiable. They were little better 
 than serfs. The products of their toil went almost 
 entirely to defray the extravagant outlays of the 
 patrician clans, and if sometimes they rose in 
 abortive revolt, their more general resource was 
 to fly to mountain districts beyond the reach of 
 the tax-collector. Permanent escape was im- 
 possible, however. They were sought out, and 
 forcibly compelled to return to their life of un- 
 rcmunerated labour. Prince Shotoku saw that 
 the remedy for these wretched conditions, which 
 threatened even the stability of the throne, was to 
 crush the power of the patrician class and bring 
 the nation under the direct sway of emperors gov- 
 erning on constitutional principles. He inculcated 
 the spirit of that most enlightened reform, but did 
 not live to see its practical consummation. 
 
 Within a quarter of a century after his death, 
 however, the last l of the great office-owning clans 
 was annihilated, and for the first time in Japanese 
 history the Emperor became a real ruler. This 
 happened in the middle of the seventh century. 
 History calls it the " Taikwa Reform." 3 A long 
 series of changes were crowned by an edict un- 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 16. 'See Appendix, note 17. 
 
 101
 
 JAPAN 
 
 precedented in Japan. The sovereign addressed 
 himself direct to the people, and employed lan- 
 guage evidently an echo of Prince Shotoku's 
 constitution. Its gist was that since the faculty 
 of self-government must be acquired before at- 
 tempting to govern others, and since obedience 
 could be obtained only by one worthy to com- 
 mand, the sovereign pledged himself to behave 
 in strict conformity with the principles of im- 
 perialism, relying on the aid of heaven and the 
 support of the people. Tenchi, who issued this 
 edict, may be called the father of constitutional 
 monarchism in Japan. His fourth successor, 
 Mommu (697708), inaugurated his reign by a 
 similar rescript, promising, with the help of his 
 ancestors and the gods, to promote the welfare of 
 his people. The interval of forty years separating 
 Tenchi's accession and Mommu's death (668- 
 708) may be regarded as the only period, in all 
 the long history of Japan prior to modern times, 
 when the sovereign was not divided from the 
 people by nobles who usurped his authority. 
 Mommu endeavoured to invest the issue of his 
 edict with great pomp and ceremony, but of an es- 
 sentially democratic character. The princes of 
 the blood, the great nobles, and the chief officials 
 were all required to attend, and the people were 
 invited en masse. Then a crier read the edict 
 aloud in four parts, and at the end of each part 
 all present, high and low alike, were invited to 
 signify their assent. 
 
 102
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 This remarkable chapter of Japanese history 
 may be broadly described as a political revolution 
 resulting from the introduction of Chinese civil- 
 isation through the medium of Buddhist priests, 
 just as a similar revolution in recent times resulted 
 from the introduction of Western civilisation 
 through the medium of gunboats. The splen- 
 dour and prestige of the Tang dynasty, which in 
 the beginning of the seventh century had wrested 
 the sceptre of China from the hands of the scarcely 
 less magnificent Sui sovereigns, were reflected in 
 Japan. Tenchi and Mommu modelled their ad- 
 ministration on the lines indicated in the "Golden 
 Mirror " of Tatsong, and the grand capital estab- 
 lished at Nara in the beginning of the eighth 
 century was an imitation of the Tang metropolis 
 at Hsian. 
 
 Another feature common to the records of 
 seventh-century and nineteenth-century progress 
 was extraordinary speed of achievement. Just as 
 forty years of contact with Occidental civilisation 
 sufficed to metamorphose Japan in modern time, 
 so a cycle of Chinese influence revolutionised her 
 in ancient days. 
 
 In the era immediately prior to the latter 
 change, nothing was more marked than the wide 
 interval separating the patrician and the plebeian 
 sections of the nation. The lower orders, as has 
 been already stated, were reduced to a state of 
 virtual slavery, and the upper obeyed only the 
 law of their own interests and passions. A patri- 
 
 103
 
 JAPAN 
 
 cian held himself defiled by mere contact with a 
 plebeian, and marriages between them were not 
 tolerated. Great importance attached to well- 
 established pedigrees. During the lapse of ages 
 and in the absence of any written records, few 
 genealogical trees could be traced clearly through 
 all their ramifications, and the danger of admit- 
 ting some strain of vulgar blood into a family 
 imparted special advantage to marriages between 
 children of the same father by different mothers. 
 Confucianism proved entirely powerless to check 
 that abuse, or to provide any general corrective 
 for the relations between the sexes, which were 
 frequently subserved to degrading influences. 
 Wives had now ceased to live apart from their 
 husbands, but concubinage was largely practised, 
 and marital and extra-marital relations alike were 
 severed on the slightest pretext. A woman, 
 however, did not recover her full freedom when 
 abandoned by her husband or protector. She 
 was still supposed to owe some measure of fidelity 
 to him, and if she contracted a second alliance, 
 her new partner often found himself exposed to 
 extortionate demands from her former mate. 
 Another evil practice was that powerful families 
 trafficked in the honour of an alliance with 
 them, first dictating a marriage, and then making 
 it a pretext for levying large contributions on the 
 bride's parents. Loss of affection or inclination 
 was deemed a sufficient reason for divorcing a 
 woman, and sometimes mere suspicion of a wife's 
 
 104
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 infidelity induced a husband to appeal to the 
 law for an investigation, which meant that the 
 unfortunate woman had to undergo the ordeal 
 of thrusting her hand into boiling water or 
 grasping a red-hot axe. Many women con- 
 ceived such a dread of the married state that they 
 deliberately chose the life of domestic servants, 
 thus incurring the plebeian stigma and becoming 
 ineligible for patrician attentions in any form. 
 Even the terrible custom of/KJRfAr, or dying to 
 accompany a deceased chieftain, had lost some- 
 thing of the discredit attached to it by the ordi- 
 nance of the enlightened emperor Suinin five 
 centuries previously. Faithful vassals still took 
 their own lives in order to be buried near their 
 lord's tomb, and wives and concubines followed 
 their example, voluntarily or on compulsion. 
 Horses also were killed to serve their masters 
 beyond the grave, and valuables of all kinds were 
 interred in sepulchres, as had been the habit from 
 time immemorial. When duty to the dead was 
 not pushed to these extremes, the survivors con- 
 sidered it necessary at least to cut their hair or to 
 mutilate their bodies. 
 
 All these abuses were strictly interdicted in the 
 reformation foreshadowed by Prince Shotoku's 
 adoption of Buddhism and Confucianism, and 
 embodied in a series of legislative measures during 
 the period 645 to 708. l The nation suddenly 
 sprang to a greatly higher level of civilisation. 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 18. 
 
 105
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Notably the style of dwellings was altered. 
 Architects, turners, tile-makers, decorative artists, 
 and sculptors coming from China and Korea, 
 magnificent temples were built, enshrining 
 images of high artistic beauty, and adorned with 
 paintings and carvings which would be worthy 
 objects of admiration in any age of aesthetic 
 development. Rich nobles, at the same time, 
 began to construct for themselves 1 mansions 
 which already showed several features destined 
 to permanently distinguish Japanese residences. 
 The processes of manufacturing paper and ink, of 
 weaving carpets with wool or the hair of animals, 
 of concocting dyes, of preparing whetstones, of 
 therapeutics, of compiling a calendar, and of ship- 
 building on greatly improved lines, all these, 
 learned from China, were skilfully applied. 
 
 It may be noted incidentally that the growth 
 of wealth resulting from this influx of material 
 civilisation gave additional emphasis to the 
 superiority of the Chinese, for they had to be 
 placed at the head of the various bureaux of the 
 Treasury, there being no Japanese competent to 
 discharge such duties. Commerce also felt the 
 expansive impulse. Men travelled from province 
 to province selling goods ; foreign vessels fre- 
 quented the ports ; a collector of customs and a 
 superintendent of trade were appointed, and an 
 officially recognised system of weights and meas- 
 ures was introduced. 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 19. 
 
 1 06
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 Not less marked were the changes of costume. 
 Instead of dressing the hair so as to form a loop 
 hanging over each ear, men tied it in a queue 
 on the top of the head. This novel fashion was 
 due to the use of hats as insignia of official ranks. 
 There were twelve varieties of hat corresponding 
 to as many grades, and each was tied on with 
 cord of a distinct colour, just as the colour of a 
 cap-button now indicates official quality in 
 China. Wigs had hitherto been largely used, 
 but they were now abandoned except on occa- 
 sions of special ceremonial, when they were fast- 
 ened to the hat. The introduction of the queue 
 seems to have been responsible for the first dis- 
 play of foppery on the part of men. It was 
 ornamented with gold in the case of the highest 
 officials, with tiger's hair by men of lesser rank, 
 and with cock's feathers in a still lower grade. 
 
 The abolition of hereditary offices necessitated 
 a thorough re-organisation of the administrative 
 system, and it is a remarkable fact that the 
 remodelled form remained permanent through 
 all ages and still exists to a recognisable degree. 
 For managing affairs in the provinces where 
 the great families had gradually become auto- 
 cratic, not only levying imposts at will, but also 
 appropriating to their own uses the taxes that 
 should have gone to the Court local governors 
 and district headmen were appointed, and at the 
 head of the central government was placed a de- 
 partment of shrines, immediately under it being 
 
 107
 
 JAPAN 
 
 a cabinet with a bureau of councillors, two secre- 
 tariats, and finally eight departments of State. A 
 system of civil-service examination was also inau- 
 gurated. Youths desiring administrative posts had 
 to enter one of the educational institutions then 
 founded, and subsequently to undergo examina- 
 tion, though this routine might be departed from 
 in the case of men whose fathers had deserved 
 conspicuously well of the country. The name 
 of a man's office now ceasing to do duty as a 
 patronymic, the hats mentioned above became 
 the only means of recognising rank, so that their 
 importance grew greater, and their number 
 gradually increased, first to thirteen and after- 
 wards to forty-eight. But at that point the 
 system ceased to be practicable, and certificates 
 of grade were substituted, a method still pursued. 
 Great pains were taken to effect a distinct 
 classification of the people, the general divisions 
 adopted being " divine " (Shin-bet su, i. e. de- 
 scended direct from the deities) ; " imperial " 
 (Kwo-betsu\ and " alien " (Ham-betsu] t distinc- 
 tions which will be more fully explained in a 
 future chapter. A still broader division was that 
 of ryo-min (noble) and sem-min (ignoble), the 
 former including the Kivo-betsu and the Shin- 
 betsu ; the latter the Ham-betsu only. The con- 
 stant tendency was to accentuate these distinctions, 
 though it sometimes happened that men reduced 
 to a state of indigence sold their family name and 
 descended to the position of servants. Clandes- 
 
 108
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 tine intercourse between patrician and plebeian 
 lovers was also not infrequent, but the law took 
 care that the offspring of such unions should 
 seldom obtain admission to the higher rank. It 
 is a curious fact that the legislators of the time 
 never conceived the possibility of a patrician 
 lady's forming a liaison with a plebeian : they 
 provided for the contingency of a man's succumb- 
 ing to the charms of a plebeian beauty, but they 
 made no allowance for any such weakness on the 
 part of a nobly born woman. 
 
 Concerning the terms "noble" and "ignoble," 
 it is not to be supposed that the former originally 
 included only such persons as would be called 
 "gentlemen" and "ladies" in Europe or 
 America. In addition to the whole of the offi- 
 cial and military elements, the ryo-min comprised 
 many bread-winners who, under the more exclu- 
 sive system of subsequent eras, were relegated to 
 a lower social status. The most comprehensive 
 definition is that only those pledged to some 
 form of servitude stood in the ranks of the sem- 
 min, all others being ryo-min. There were five 
 classes of sem-min, the lowest being private ser- 
 vants, and the highest, public employes. The 
 distinction of "military man" (samurai or 
 shizoku) and "commoner"' or "civilian" (hei- 
 min) did not exist at the time now under consid- 
 eration. Indeed, at this point another resemblance 
 is found between the " Restoration " in the 
 seventh century and that in the nineteenth ccn- 
 
 109
 
 JAPAN 
 
 tury; for just as the modern government signal- 
 ised the fall of feudalism and the transfer of 
 administrative power to the sovereign by abolish- 
 ing the samurai's privilege of wearing two swords, 
 and thus, in effect, abolishing the samurai him- 
 self, so when the Taikwa Government put an end 
 to the system of hereditary offices in 645, it 
 collected all the implements of war from their 
 owners and stored this great assemblage of 
 swords, bows, and arrows in magazines. The 
 bearer of arms thus lost whatever prestige had 
 previously attached to that distinction. But such 
 a state of affairs could not be permanent in a 
 country where the control of the indigenous 
 inhabitants still continued to demand constant 
 exhibitions of force. Before forty years had 
 elapsed, another emperor (Temmu) organised a 
 definite military establishment and inaugurated 
 a course of training in warlike exercises ; and 
 shortly afterwards, an empress (Jito) introduced 
 conscription. At first only twenty-five per cent 
 of the youths throughout the realm were required 
 to serve, but at the beginning of the eighth cen- 
 tury the number was increased to one in every 
 three. All the ryo-min appear to have been held 
 liable for this service. Thus a man engaged one 
 day in hawking merchandise or dyeing cloth 
 might find himself, the next, bearing arms and 
 receiving military training. A regiment was 
 organised for every five rural divisions, and from 
 among these regiments certain sections were 
 
 no
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 selected to guard the imperial palace, while 
 others were told off for coast duty, three years 
 being the term of service in either case. Had 
 this system remained in operation, there would 
 have been no such thing as a feudal Japan, nor 
 would the profession of arms have become the 
 special right of a limited class. But the course 
 of events may be anticipated so far as to say that, 
 before the lapse of a century after the introduc- 
 tion of conscription, military duties became 
 hereditary, and Japanese society assumed a struc- 
 ture which continued without radical change 
 until the revolution of recent times. 
 
 It will readily be conjectured that, turning to 
 China for models, Japan did not fail to make 
 the family system a fundamental feature of her 
 reforms. A family might consist of a single 
 household, or it might comprise several house- 
 holds ; but every family, whatever its dimensions, 
 had to have one recognised head, to whom the 
 subordinate households were related by blood. 
 Thus, since the subordinate households generally 
 included wives, concubines, children, and ser- 
 vants, the head of the whole family sometimes 
 represented a clan of a hundred or a hundred and 
 fifty persons. This position of headship could 
 not be occupied by any save a legitimate scion, 
 but a female was eligible, provided she had at- 
 tained the age of twenty, and was not actually a 
 widow, a wife, or a concubine. Remembering 
 the marked laxity of the marital relation prior to 
 
 in
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the era of this new system, one is astonished at 
 the courage with which such sweeping changes 
 were effected, and at the complacence with 
 which they were received. For whereas previ- 
 ously men had been free to adopt any rule of 
 succession they pleased, and the legitimacy of an 
 heir had scarcely been considered, it now became 
 necessary that the successor to the headship of a 
 family should be legitimate before everything : 
 adoption being declared preferable to the choice 
 of a bastard. But the higher the social grade of 
 the family, the greater the latitude in this respect. 
 It does not appear that the eligibility of an im- 
 perial concubine's son was ever questioned, and 
 in the case of a noble belonging to one of the 
 three first grades, a child born out of wedlock 
 might succeed, failing legitimate sons or grand- 
 sons. Adoption, too, must be exercised within 
 the limits of blood relatives, any departure from 
 that rule being criminal. 
 
 Five families living in the same district were 
 combined into an administrative group, which 
 elected its chief and delegated to him a general 
 duty of supervision. The group (ho} was re- 
 sponsible for the payment of its members' taxes. 
 In those days it was not an uncommon incident 
 for a family to abscond en masse, in the hope of 
 avoiding extortionate imposts. The group had 
 to trace the absconders, and discharge their fiscal 
 liabilities during their absence. 
 
 The marriageable age for youths was fifteen, and 
 
 112
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 for maidens thirteen, but the consent of parents 
 or grandparents had to be obtained. Already the 
 preliminaries of wedlock were entrusted to a go- 
 between, and the degree of order introduced into 
 these previously disorderly connections is shown 
 by the fact that, so soon as the concurrence of the 
 two families had been secured by the go-between, 
 a "marriage director" was duly appointed, his 
 function being to secure conformity with every 
 legal requirement. A girl of the upper classes 
 had to consult the views of an extensive circle 
 of relatives parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, 
 brothers, and parents-in-law but this rule was 
 relaxed in proportion as the social grade descended. 
 Etiquette forbade that a wedding should be cel- 
 ebrated during the illness or imprisonment of a 
 parent or a grandparent, and an engagement be- 
 came invalid when the nuptial ceremony had been 
 capriciously deferred for three months by the 
 man ; or when he had absconded and remained 
 absent for a month ; or when, having fallen into 
 pecuniary distress in another part of the realm, 
 be failed to return within a year; or when he 
 had committed a serious crime. 
 
 Concerning divorce, a theme much discussed 
 by critics of Japan's ethical systems, the family of 
 a wife were entitled to demand her freedom in 
 two cases : first, in the event of deliberate deser- 
 tion, extending to three years when there had 
 been offspring of the marriage, and two years 
 where the union had been childless ; secondly, in 
 8 113
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the event of a husband's incurring pecuniary ruin 
 in a distant place, and failing to come home for 
 five years if he had left a child, and for three if 
 there was no child. But against this exceedingly 
 brief list of a wife's rights, there is a long cat- 
 alogue of the husband's. He was entitled to 
 divorce his wife if she did not bear him a male 
 child, if her habits were licentious, if she failed 
 in her duty to her parents-in-law, if she indulged 
 a love of gossip, if she committed a theft, if she 
 betrayed a jealous disposition, or if she suffered 
 from an obnoxious disease. The more important 
 a man's social position, the greater his obligation 
 to secure the assent of his own parents and his 
 wife's before putting her away, but in the lowest 
 classes scarcely any impediment offered to separa- 
 tion. Sentiment, however, interposed a curious 
 veto. If a wife had contributed money for the 
 funeral of a parent-in-law, or if a husband oc- 
 cupying a low social grade at the time of his 
 marriage had subsequently risen to a higher, or 
 if a wife had no home to which she could retire 
 after separation, then divorce was held to be in- 
 admissible. The one redeeming feature of the 
 wife's position was that all the property, whether 
 in money, chattels, or serfs, brought with her 
 at the time of her marriage, had to be returned 
 on divorce. Her enforced subservience to her 
 parents-in-law, and her obligation to patiently 
 endure the presence of one or more concubines, 
 if her husband so willed it, were often cruel bur- 
 
 114
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 dens in her daily life. A concubine acquired by 
 this new legislation the status of a second-grade 
 relative, but the system was purely morganatic, 
 the law peremptorily refusing to recognise two 
 wives. 
 
 The edicts of the era embodied an excellent 
 code of ethics. Such virtues were inculcated as 
 industry, integrity, frugality, simplicity of funeral 
 rites, diligent transaction of business even during 
 periods of mourning, and the exclusion of merce- 
 nary motives from marriage contracts. Further, 
 the new democratic principle extracted from the 
 Confucian cult the principle that the throne 
 must be based on the good will of the nation at 
 large, and that full consideration should be given 
 to the views of the lower orders found practical 
 expression in the erection of numerous petition- 
 boxes wherein men were invited to deposit a 
 statement of grievances demanding redress, and 
 in the hanging of bells which were to be rung 
 when it was desired to bring any trouble of a 
 pressing nature to official notice. Codes of laws 
 were also framed. 
 
 An interesting fact shown by this legislation is 
 that the economical principle of a common title 
 to the use of land received recognition, practi- 
 cally at all events, in ancient Japan. Looking 
 as far back as history throws its light, it is seen 
 that the Crown's right of eminent domain was 
 an established doctrine, but that, during the era 
 of patriarchal government, large tracts of land 
 
 "5
 
 JAPAN 
 
 came into the possession of the great governing 
 families, and remained their property until the 
 fall and virtual extermination of the last of these 
 families in the early part of the seventh century. 
 The Emperor then becoming, for a time, the 
 repository of complete authority, resumed pos- 
 session of all private estates, and exact rules for 
 the distribution and control of land were em- 
 bodied in the new codes. The basis of the 
 system then adopted was the general principle 
 that every unit of the nation had a natural title 
 to the usufruct of the soil. It was therefore 
 enacted that to all persons, from the age of five 
 upwards, " sustenance land " should be granted in 
 the proportion of two-thirds of an acre to each 
 male and one-third to each female. These 
 grants were for life, and the grantee was entitled 
 to let the land for one year at a time, provided 
 that, at his death, it reverted to the Crown. 
 Redistribution every sixth year was among the 
 provisions of the code, but the difficulties of 
 carrying out the rule soon proved deterrent. 
 Lands were also conferred in consideration of 
 rank. Imperial princes of the first class received 
 two hundred acres ; those of the second class, one 
 hundred and fifty acres ; those of the third, one 
 hundred and twenty-five acres, and those of the 
 fourth, one hundred acres. In the case of the 
 ten grades into which officialdom had now been 
 divided, the grants ranged from twenty to two 
 hundred acres, and females belonging to any of 
 
 116
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 these grades received two-thirds of a male's 
 share, the consideration shown to them being 
 thus twice as great as that extended to women 
 of inferior position. Finally, land was given in 
 lieu of official emoluments ; the Prime Minister's 
 salary being the produce of one hundred acres ; 
 that of the second and third Ministers, seventy 
 five acres each ; and that of other officials rang- 
 ing from two to fifty acres. Land, indeed, may 
 be said to have constituted the money of the 
 epoch. It was given in lieu not only of salaries 
 but also of allowances, even post-stations along 
 the high-roads being endowed with estates whose 
 produce they were expected to employ in pro- 
 viding horses, couriers, and baggage-carriers for 
 Government use. It need scarcely be added that 
 meritorious public services were rewarded with 
 estates, granted sometimes in perpetuity, some- 
 times for two generations only. 
 
 A special arrangement existed for encouraging 
 sericulture and the lacquer industry. Tracts of 
 land were assigned to families for planting mul- 
 berry or lacquer trees in fixed quantity, and such 
 land might be leased for any term of years or 
 sold with official permission ; neither did it revert 
 to the Crown unless the family became extinct. 
 But any land left uncultivated for three years was 
 regarded as forfeited, and had to be resumed or 
 re-allotted. 
 
 The exact amount of taxes levied at various 
 eras in Japan has always been difficult to asccr- 
 
 117
 
 JAPAN 
 
 tain, for not only did the method of assessment 
 vary in different provinces, but also the legal 
 limits were seldom the real limits. In the 
 period now under consideration, the records 
 show that, for purposes of local administration, 
 a tax in kind, representing five per cent of the 
 gross produce of the land, was levied, and that 
 the expenses of the central government were 
 defrayed by means of miscellaneous imposts on 
 all the principal staples of production, as silk, 
 fish, cloth, etc., and by a corvee of thirty days' 
 work annually from every male between the ages 
 of twenty-one and sixty-six years, and fifteen days 
 from every minor. An adult's labour might be 
 commuted by paying three pieces of hempen 
 cloth. These labourers were not hardly treated 
 in the comparatively rare cases where they chose 
 to work rather than to commute. During the 
 dog days, they were entitled to rest from noon 
 to four p. M., and night work was not required. 
 Rations were provided, and in wet weather they 
 were not expected to work out of doors. If a 
 man fell ill while on corvee, due provision was 
 made for his maintenance, and in case of death 
 he was coffined at official expense, and the body 
 was either given up to any relative or friend on 
 application, or cremated and the ashes buried by 
 the wayside. There were, of course, various ex- 
 emptions from forced labour. Females or per- 
 sons suffering from illness or deformity were 
 invariably excused, and holders of official rank 
 
 II*
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 obtained exemption, not only for themselves, but 
 also for their fathers and sons, and even for their 
 grandfathers, brothers, and grandsons, in the 
 highest grade. 
 
 These imposts were evidently onerous. The 
 corvee alone, representing one-twelfth of a man's 
 yearly labour, would have been a heavy burden 
 without the addition of five per cent of the gross 
 produce of the land and a contribution of general 
 staples equal, probably, to at least two or three 
 per cent more. Mercy was shown, however, in 
 the event of defective crops. The remissions on 
 that account were regulated by a schedule : the 
 land tax being remitted if the shortage amounted 
 to fifty per cent of the average yield, the mis- 
 cellaneous taxes if the shortage reached seventy 
 per cent, and the corvee when there was a loss 
 of eighty per cent. The five-families group 
 spoken of above was responsible for the cultiva- 
 tion of all maintenance estates. Thus, if a man 
 fled from the pursuit of justice or the burden of 
 his taxes, the group to which he belonged took 
 care of the land for three years and discharged 
 his fiscal liabilities, at the end of which time the 
 land reverted to the State in the event of his 
 continued absence. 
 
 The Codes contained provisions with regard 
 to inheritance also. The system was regulated 
 by strict rules of descent, and not only land, but 
 also serfs, houses, and personal property were in- 
 cluded in the estate. The eldest son, his mother, 
 
 119
 
 JAPAN 
 
 and his step-mother received two parts each ; the 
 younger sons, one part each ; the daughters and 
 the concubines, half of a part each. Here, too, 
 the general principle applicable to woman's rights 
 was observed, namely, that the female ranked as 
 a minor, or as one half of an adult male. A 
 mother's rights, however, did not descend to her 
 daughter. Thus, whereas a son's children of 
 either sex represented their father in the division 
 of the family estate, a daughter's children did 
 not represent their mother. On the other hand, 
 property belonging to a woman at the time of 
 her marriage was not necessarily absorbed into 
 the family estate of her husband. Neither did 
 these rules apply to land granted for public ser- 
 vices. Such land had to be divided equally among 
 all the children, male and female alike. Other 
 rules existed, but enough has been said to show 
 the general character of the law of inheritance. 
 
 Wills were not considered in the code ; they 
 became almost superfluous instruments in the face 
 of such precise legal provisions. It does not 
 follow, however, that estates were invariably di- 
 vided in the manner here indicated, or that the 
 law interdicted all liberty of action in such mat- 
 ters. If the members of a family agreed to live 
 together and have everything in common, they 
 were exempted from the obligation of observing 
 the rules of inheritance ; and, further, a parent 
 was entitled, during his lifetime, to distribute 
 the property among his children in accordance 
 
 1 20
 
 = i 
 
 V 1 J* 
 
 21 
 
 1 
 
 E o 
 
 o 2 
 
 - ^
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 with the dictates of his own judgment. He also 
 possessed the power of expelling a profligate son 
 from the paternal home, and such expulsion 
 carried with it disinheritance. 
 
 The " serfs," to whom several allusions have 
 already been made, had certain exceptional rights. 
 A public serf was entitled to receive from the 
 State as much maintenance land as a free-man, 
 and a private serf received one-third of that 
 amount. But a difference existed in the nature 
 of the tenure ; for whereas a free- man might let 
 or even sell his land with official consent, a serf 
 was obliged to cultivate it himself. On the other 
 hand, the serf paid no taxes and enjoyed exemp- 
 tion from forced labour. 
 
 The Government exercised no scrutiny into 
 any transactions of sale unless lands or serfs were 
 concerned. But it endeavoured to control trans- 
 actions of borrowing. Priests and nuns were 
 forbidden to lend money or goods on interest ; 
 officials to borrow from any one in their own 
 department ; and imperial relatives, of or above 
 the fifth grade, to make loans in the districts of 
 their residence. Interest was to be collected 
 every 60 days, the rate not exceeding one-eighth 
 of the principal ; but after 480 days had elapsed, 
 the interest might become cent per cent, though 
 no accumulation exceeding twice the principal 
 was recognised. Loans of rice and millet must 
 not run for more than a year. If, at the expira- 
 tion of that time, the debtor could not discharge 
 
 121
 
 JAPAN 
 
 his liability, his property might be sold, and its 
 proceeds supplemented by his own serfdom, if 
 necessary. Official attempts were often made to 
 prevent the mortgaging of land, but permanent 
 success never attended them. 
 
 The people's chief occupation in those days 
 was agriculture. It cannot be said, however, 
 that the choice of farming pursuits was specially 
 suggested by the nation's aptitudes. The genius 
 of the Japanese seems to find most congenial 
 exercise in all manufacturing efforts that demand 
 skill of hand and delicacy of artistic taste. But 
 as yet no considerable demand for the products 
 of such skill had arisen, whereas the cultivation 
 or reclamation of lands gradually freed from the 
 occupation of the stubborn autochthons, being 
 always an urgent necessity, was correspondingly 
 encouraged by the Government. Rice was the 
 chief staple of production, and the methods of 
 the rice-farmer differed little from those now in 
 vogue, though not until the middle of the ninth 
 century did the practice commence of hanging 
 the sheaves on wooden frames to dry. Hitherto 
 they had been strewn on the ground during the 
 process, the fate of the grain thus depending 
 wholly on the weather's caprices. Rice is not a 
 robust cereal. Deficiency of rain in June, a low 
 range of thermometer in July and August, storms 
 in September, any one of these common inci- 
 dents largely affects the yield. After the intro- 
 duction of Buddhism, when fish and flesh could 
 
 122
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 not be eaten without violating the sanctity of life, 
 inclement seasons must often have compelled men 
 to choose between the laws of the creed and the 
 dictates of nature. It was appropriate that the 
 female rulers who patronised Buddhism so pas- 
 sionately, should make special efforts to save their 
 subjects from the temptation of the alternative ; 
 and accordingly the Empresses Jito (690-696) and 
 Gensho (715725) took steps to encourage the 
 cultivation of barley, Indian corn, wheat, sesamum, 
 turnips, peaches, oranges, and chestnuts. Tea, 
 buckwheat and beans were added to this list 
 during the first half of the ninth century, and it 
 is thus seen that Japan possessed at an early date 
 all her staple bread-stuffs, except the sweet potato 
 and the pear. The Empresses mentioned above 
 and the Emperors of their era devised several 
 measures to encourage agriculture, such as grant- 
 ing free tenure of waste land or bestowing rewards 
 on its cultivators, making loans of money for 
 works of irrigation, and munificently recognising 
 the services of officials in provinces where farming 
 flourished, or punishing them when it fell into 
 neglect, and adopted precautions against famine 
 by requiring every farmer to store a certain quan- 
 tity of millet annually. In all ages the Japanese 
 Court showed itself keenly solicitous for the wel- 
 fare of the people, and its solicitude was fully 
 shared by its proteges, the Buddhist priests. If at 
 one time an Emperor Tenchi (668-671) remitted 
 all taxes for three years, until signs of returning 
 
 123
 
 JAPAN 
 
 prosperity were detected, or an imperial prince 
 (Yoshimune, 803) invented the water-wheel, at 
 another Buddhist prelates of the highest rank 
 travelled about the country, and showed the 
 people how to make roads, build bridges, con- 
 struct reservoirs, and dredge rivers. Stud farms 
 and cattle pastures were among the institutions 
 of the era, so that, on the whole, agriculture must 
 be said to have reached a tolerably high standard. 
 But beyond doubt the most noteworthy devel- 
 opment of all took place in the domain of art. 
 The student is here confronted by one of the 
 strangest facts in Japan's story. There are ample 
 reasons for concluding that when Buddhism was 
 introduced in the middle of the sixth century, 
 both pictorial art and applied art were at an alto- 
 gether rudimentary stage in Japan. There was 
 considerable skill in the casting, chiselling, and 
 general manipulation of metals for the purpose 
 of decorating weapons of war and horse-trappings, 
 or manufacturing articles of personal adornment, 
 but artistic sculpture and painting were virtually 
 unknown. Yet, before the lapse of a hundred 
 years, both had been carried to a high standard 
 of excellence, sculpture specially reaching a point 
 never subsequently surpassed, a point which, 
 under ordinary circumstances, should have marked 
 the zenith of a long orbit of evolution. It is 
 customary to dismiss this enigma by attributing 
 the best achievements of the time entirely to 
 Korean and Chinese immigrants, and certainly 
 
 124
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 many artists from the neighbouring empires 
 crossed to Japan at that era. 1 But there are 
 almost insuperable obstacles to complete accept- 
 ance of such a theory. The subject will be re- 
 ferred to in another place. Here it must be 
 dismissed by noting the extraordinary impulse of 
 progress that gave to Japan, in a brief space of 
 time, sculptors of noble images, architects of im- 
 posing edifices, and painters of grand religious 
 pictures. Lacquerers might be added to the cate- 
 gory ; but the processes of lacquer manufacture 
 are said to have been known in Japan as far back 
 as the third century before Christ, and it is pos- 
 sible that before the Emperor Kotoku (645654) 
 ordered his coffin and his crown to be lacquered, 
 fine examples of that kind of work may have 
 been produced. There is no guide here. But 
 it is known that, in the second half of the seventh 
 century, lacquer was so highly prized that lac- 
 quered articles were received in payment of taxes, 
 and also that, at about the same epoch, red 
 lacquer, five-coloured lacquer, aventurine lacquer, 
 and lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl were 
 produced. 
 
 In the absence of any form of literature the 
 Japanese people remained entirely without intel- 
 lectual education during the first thousand years 
 of their existence as a nation. That is their 
 own account of themselves, and there are no suf- 
 ficient grounds for a different version, difficult as 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 20. 
 
 125
 
 JAPAN 
 
 it is to believe that they should have derived so 
 little advantage from the neighbourhood of a 
 people like the Chinese, whose literary talents 
 were already well developed when the earliest 
 Japanese colonists crossed from the continent. 
 The coming of two Korean literati to the Court 
 of the Emperor Ojin at the close of the third 
 century of the Christian era is regarded as the 
 event that inaugurated the study of books in 
 Japan. These two men were naturalised, and 
 having received official recognition as instructors, 
 settled, one in the province of Yamato, the other 
 in that of Kawachi, and there founded, respec- 
 tively, the families of Bunshi and Shishi, whose 
 scions, during several generations, enjoyed a mo- 
 nopoly of literary teaching. Little is known as 
 to the nature of the instruction imparted by 
 them, but it was doubtless confined to the ideo- 
 graphs and to the exposition of some elementary 
 Chinese works. Generally, however, the phi- 
 losophy of the Middle Kingdom then began to 
 unfold its pages, and before the close of the fifth 
 century a tolerably intimate acquaintance with 
 the Chinese sages' writings had been acquired by 
 the Court and by the heads of the Government, 
 though the great mass of the people still re- 
 mained in profound ignorance. Thenceforth a 
 constant ingress of literati took place from the 
 neighbouring continent, especially after the intro- 
 duction of Buddhism, and, in the sixth cen- 
 tury, the medical science of the Chinese, their 
 
 126
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 
 processes of divination and their methods of 
 almanac-compiling, constituted new inducements 
 to literary studies. But such a thing as a 
 school did not exist until the time of the Empe- 
 ror Tenchi (668-671), when the first institution 
 of the kind was opened in the capital, to be 
 followed, ten years later, by a university and by 
 a few provincial seminaries. The curriculum of 
 this university represents the ideal of literary 
 attainment in its era. There were " four paths " 
 of essential learning the Chinese classics, bi- 
 ographies, law and mathematics. Caligraphy 
 and music were taught independently. The 
 "classics" were divided into three sections: the 
 first, or "major classic," consisting of the Book 
 of Etiquette and the Biographies ; the second, 
 or " middle classic," comprising the Book of 
 Poetry and two Books of Etiquette; and the 
 third, or " minor classic," including the Book 
 of Changes and the Maxims. These were the 
 bases of the regular course of lectures, but 
 students of literature were required to study also 
 the Classic of Filial Piety and the Analects of 
 Confucius. It will be perceived that Buddhism 
 had no place in this sphere of study. Yet, at the 
 close of the seventh century, when the university 
 had four hundred and thirty students, and when 
 it represented the only high educational institu- 
 tion in the Empire, Buddhism as a religion had 
 already absorbed the attention of all the nation's 
 leaders. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact of 
 
 127
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Japanese history that religion was thus excluded 
 from the range of education. Services were per- 
 formed at the university and at the schools in 
 honour of ancient men of erudition, and Confu- 
 cius was deified under the title of Bunsen-o ; but 
 while sovereign, princes, and nobles were pos- 
 sessed by passionate zeal for the propagandism of 
 Buddha's creed, and were impoverishing them- 
 selves and the nation to build magnificent temples 
 and furnish them with thousands of costly images 
 and quantities of gorgeous paraphernalia, they 
 were equally persistent in telling the people that 
 filial piety, as exemplified in the Chinese records, 
 should be the basis of all action, 1 and that the 
 whole code of every-day ethics was comprised in 
 the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Per- 
 haps if Buddhism had possessed a literature of its 
 own, the field might not have been exclusively 
 occupied by the Chinese classics. But Buddhism 
 has no literature, or to speak more accurately, no 
 literature intelligible to laymen. Its scriptures 
 are couched in language which specialists only 
 can understand, and by sermons and oral teaching 
 alone are its precepts communicable to the pub- 
 lic. Shinto, on the other hand, has no code of 
 morals at all. Thus Confucianism presented 
 itself as the sole working system of ethics avail- 
 able for educational purposes in ancient Japan. 
 
 It is easy to appreciate what a perplexing 
 problem presented itself to Japanese publicists 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 2 1 . 
 
 128
 
 THE EARLY ERAS OF HISTORY 
 and educationalists in the eighth century. The 
 foundations of the national polity rested on the 
 Shinto tenets that the sovereign was the son of 
 heaven, that his intervention with the gods was 
 essential to the well-being of the people, and that 
 every unit of the nation must look up to him 
 with the profoundest veneration. Confucian 
 ethics, as expounded by Mencius, taught that 
 the sovereign's title to rule rested entirely on his 
 qualities as a ruler ; that the people's welfare 
 took precedence of the monarch's prerogatives, 
 and that filial piety was the highest of all virtues. 
 Buddhism placed at the head of its scripture the 
 instability of everything human ; compared each 
 series of worldly events, however great the actors, 
 however large the issues, to a track left by a ship 
 upon the wide ocean, and educated a pessimistic 
 mood of indifference to sovereign and parent 
 alike. Can anything less consistent be conceived 
 than the conduct of a government which em- 
 ployed all its influence to popularise the religion 
 of Buddha, which appealed to Shintti shrines for 
 heavenly guidance in every administrative per- 
 plexity, and which adopted Confucianism as an 
 ethical code in the education of youth ? The 
 difficulty, in the case of Buddhism and Shinto, 
 was to some extent overcome, as already shown, 
 by a clever adjustment which recognised incarna- 
 tions of Buddha in the principal Shinto deities. 
 But it was not overcome in the case of the 
 Confucian philosophy, nor is there any room 
 9
 
 JAPAN 
 
 to doubt that the troubles which beat against 
 the Throne, and nearly overthrew it, from the 
 eighth century to the nineteenth, were in some 
 degree the outcome of ideas derived from the 
 Chinese Classics. 
 
 130
 
 Chapter V 
 
 THE JAPANESE IN THE 
 NARA EPOCH 
 
 1 
 
 restoration of the administrative 
 power to the Emperor in the middle 
 of the seventh century, which was 
 marked by the great legislative meas- 
 ures already spoken of and by the re-modelling 
 of the government on Chinese bureaucratic lines, 
 prefaced a period generally known as the " Nara, 
 or Heijo, epoch" (709-784), because the town 
 of Nara, then chosen as the imperial capital, had 
 the distinction of being the first city to hold that 
 rank independently of changes of sovereign. 
 Hitherto it had been the custom for the Emperor 
 and the heir apparent to reside in different places, 
 and of course there grew up about the palace of 
 the prince material interests and moral associa- 
 tions opposed to a change of habitation. Hence 
 on his accession to the throne, he usually trans- 
 ferred the capital of the empire from the place 
 occupied by his predecessor to the site of his 
 own palace. In addition to this source of fre- 
 quent change, it happened occasionally that the 
 residence of the Imperial Court, and therefore
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the capital of the empire, was moved from one 
 place to another twice or even thrice during the 
 same reign, the only limit set to all these shift- 
 ings being that the five adjacent provinces 
 occupying the waist of the main island, and 
 known as " Gokinai," were regarded as possess- 
 ing some prescriptive title to contain the seat of 
 government, Yamato being especially honoured 
 in that respect. A long list might be compiled 
 of places distinguished by imperial residence 
 during the early centuries, notable among them 
 being Kashiwara, the capital of the Emperor 
 Jimmu ; Naniwa (now Osaka), that of the 
 Emperor Nintoku ; Otsu, that of the Emperor 
 Tenchi ; and Fujiwara, that of the Emperor 
 Temmu. It must be noted, however, that in 
 those ages of comparative simplicity and frugal- 
 ity, the seat of government was not invested with 
 attributes of pomp and grandeur such as the 
 haughtier conceptions of later generations pre- 
 scribed. The sovereign's mode of life differed 
 little from that of his subjects, and the transfer 
 of his residence from place to place involved no 
 costly or disturbing effect. But as civilisation 
 progressed, as the population grew, as the busi- 
 ness of administration became more complicated, 
 as increasing intercourse with China furnished 
 new standards for measuring the interval between 
 ruler and ruled, and, above all, as class distinc- 
 tions acquired emphasis, the character of the 
 palace assumed magnificence proportionate to 
 
 13?.
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 the imperial ceremonies and national receptions 
 that had to be held there. By the beginning 
 of the eighth century, this development had 
 reached a stage which necessitated a permanent 
 capital, and Nara, thenceforth called Heijo (the 
 castle of peace), was chosen. 
 
 The capital established there was on a scale of 
 unprecedented size and splendour, and a lady's 
 name that of the Empress Gemmiyo is fitly 
 associated with this tribute to outward appear- 
 ances. The plan of the city was taken from 
 that of the Chinese metropolis. There were 
 nine gates and nine avenues. The palace stood 
 in the northern section and was approached from 
 the south by an avenue, broad and perfectly 
 straight, which divided the city into two exactly 
 equal halves, the " left metropolis " and the 
 " right metropolis." All the other streets ran 
 in perfect parallelism with this main avenue, or 
 at right angles to it. 1 Seven sovereigns reigned 
 in succession at Nara. Some partial attempts were 
 made from time to time to revive the old custom 
 of changing the Court's residence on a change of 
 emperor, but the unprecedentedly grand dimen- 
 sions which Nara had quickly assumed, and the 
 group of magnificent temples that had sprung up 
 there in a brief period, constituted a metropolitan 
 title which could not be ignored. 
 
 The Nara epoch owes its prominent place 
 in history chiefly to the extraordinary zeal 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 22. 
 
 '33
 
 JAPAN 
 
 shown by the Court and the great nobles in pro- 
 moting the spread of Buddhism. During the 
 seventy-five years comprised in the epoch, no 
 less than seven of the grandest temples ever seen 
 in Japan were erected ; a multitude of idols were 
 cast, among them a gigantic Daibutsu; colossal 
 bells were founded, and all the best artists and 
 artisans of the time devoted their services to 
 these costly works. The mania reached its 
 zenith in the reign of the Emperor Shomu 
 (724749), whose religious zeal was supple- 
 mented by a love of pomp that led him to lavish 
 great sums on rich costumes, expensive sports, 
 and handsome edifices, and by superstition so 
 profound that whenever any natural calamity or 
 abnormal phenomenon occurred, he caused reli- 
 gious services to be performed at heavy cost. In 
 addition to the large demands of the central 
 treasury, salaries and emoluments for the leading 
 officials were assessed on a liberal scale ; the 
 Prime Minister's pay being equal to the earning 
 capacities of three thousand families, that of the 
 second Minister to the earnings of two thousand 
 families, and so on in a descending rate. 
 
 The agricultural classes, who were the chief 
 tax-payers, began to show themselves unequal to 
 this strain. It was also appreciated that the theory 
 of State ownership of land, applied according to 
 the provisions of the Taikiva and Taiho legislation, 
 produced a demoralising effect upon the farmer, 
 since he did not care to improve land which might 
 
 134
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 be transferred to some one else in six years, and 
 was at best secure for only one generation. The 
 Government, therefore, began to recognise the 
 principle of private ownership, and also to lend 
 to agriculturists in spring such funds or articles 
 as were required for the cultivation of their farms. 
 In fact, the policy pursued by the State was a 
 curious mixture of desire to reform and inability 
 to retrench. Resolute efforts were made, for 
 example, to improve means of communication 
 by constructing roads and organising post-stations ; 
 but, at the same time, officially guarded fences 
 and barriers were established at commanding 
 points, the necessity of fixing the tax-payer im- 
 movably in one place being considered more 
 important than the expediency of bringing new 
 markets within reach of his produce. It was in 
 the reign of this same Emperor (Shomu) that men 
 witnessed the spectacle of the great Buddhist pre- 
 late Giyogi travelling about the country, attended 
 by a large body of priests and acolytes, who, under 
 his direction, began the building of bridges, the 
 making of roads, the digging of canals and reser- 
 voirs, the improvement of harbours and the erec- 
 tion of embankments in various places where 
 special engineering skill was needed. Inspired 
 by such an example, the people flocked from all 
 sides to complete these works, and the Govern- 
 ment showed its appreciation of Giyogi's labours 
 by redoubling its patronage of his creed. 
 
 The lower orders did not derive much benefit 
 
 J35
 
 JAPAN 
 
 from these improved facilities of communication. 
 Government officials alone were allowed to use 
 the horses kept at the post-stations and to demand 
 a night's board and lodging in the houses of 
 wealthy persons en route. Common folk had 
 still to carry their food with them when they 
 made journeys, and to cook it wherever they 
 might. In recognition of that necessity, it be- 
 came habitual for a man's friends to present to 
 him a little bag containing two or three flints 
 and steels when he contemplated a journey. In 
 exceptionally favourable conditions the wayfarer 
 found shelter for the night under some friendly 
 or charitable roof, but in general he bivouacked 
 at the foot of a tree, or, if he was a man of rank 
 travelling with a retinue, his attendants constructed 
 a hut for his accommodation. 1 Death from star- 
 vation on a journey was a not infrequent occur- 
 rence. To such a fate labourers especially were 
 exposed who had been summoned to some remote 
 place on corvee : they perished on their way home. 
 The humane Empresses Gemmyo and Gensho 
 (708723) sought to abate these evils by estab- 
 lishing stores of grain at intervals along the prin- 
 cipal highways, and by requiring wealthy people 
 in the provinces to make arrangements for selling 
 rice to travellers. A few years subsequently, an 
 edict, issued at the suggestion of a Buddhist priest, 
 required that fruit-trees should be planted on both 
 sides of the main road in the five metropolitan 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 23. 
 
 136
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 provinces, and there can be no doubt that the 
 noble rows of pines lining some of the public 
 avenues of Japan were a later outcome of the 
 custom thus inaugurated in the middle of the 
 eighth century. 
 
 Architectural improvement was another con- 
 spicuous feature of the Nara epoch, and, like 
 most incidents of Japanese progress, it owed 
 much to official influence. A tiled roof seems 
 to have been the chief ambition in the early 
 stage of development, but the first attempt to 
 construct one for the palace of the Empress 
 Saimei (655661) proved a failure, and it was not 
 till the time of her successor, the Empress Jito, 
 that the Government found itself able to issue 
 an order for the tiling of all the State offices. 
 There is difficulty in believing that during an 
 era when applied art made such remarkable 
 strides as it did in the second half of the seventh 
 century, the bulk of the people were content to 
 inhabit rudely built hovels with thatched or 
 shingled roofs, and that even the imperial princes 
 lived in houses of timber from which the bark 
 had not been removed. It is true that to be 
 a prince in those days did not necessarily imply 
 the possession of wealth or even of a moderate 
 competence, for sometimes the sovereign had to 
 make special allowances of rice and salt to his 
 relatives to save them from absolute want. But the 
 opulent as well as the indigent were alike satisfied 
 with dwellings of the lowliest character until the
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Nara epoch, when a new conception of the 
 proper attributes of an empire's capital presented 
 itself to Shomu's privy councillors. They 
 addressed to the Throne a memorial insisting 
 that the nation needed a metropolis worthy of 
 the sovereign's residence and of the receptions 
 his Majesty had to give to foreign embassies, and 
 they argued that though houses with roofs of 
 thatch and shingle had the sanction of ancient 
 custom, such a method of construction could not 
 be reconciled with any principles of sound econ- 
 omy. The result of these representations was an 
 edict ordering that the houses of all officials of 
 the central government from the fifth grade of 
 rank upwards, as well as those of all wealthy 
 commoners, must be tiled and painted red as 
 expeditiously as possible, and soon afterwards the 
 system was extended to the provinces. To esti- 
 mate the significance of such an edict it has to 
 be remembered that a change of generation 
 usually meant the construction of a new house in 
 that era. The religious prejudice against pollu- 
 tion was so strong that a house where a death 
 had taken place was considered unfit for further 
 occupation, and was either pulled down and re- 
 built or abandoned altogether. The edict, 
 therefore, had an immediately practical interest 
 for those to whom it was addressed. As to the 
 seemingly capricious order about red paint, its 
 evident purpose was to put an end to the use of 
 timber carrying the bark, and of course the 
 
 138
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 choice of red was dictated by an instinctive 
 knowledge of the law of complementary colours. 
 The beautiful harmonies commonly seen in 
 Japan between rich vermilion pagodas, or deep- 
 red columns of temples, and their environment 
 of green woods, had its origin in the desire to 
 make religious edifices an object lesson to archi- 
 tects of private residences. But the project 
 failed signally. Rough timbers, indeed, soon 
 ceased to be used for building the houses of the 
 upper classes, but no one could ever be induced 
 to have his private residence of the prescribed 
 tint. Red, in short, came to be regarded as 
 a religious colour, and that fact alone would 
 have sufficed to prevent its employment by lay 
 architects, for in every age the Japanese have 
 persistently refused to admit the structural or 
 decorative style of sacred edifices into the domain 
 of private architecture. 
 
 It is, perhaps, by considering the costumes of 
 the Nara epoch that the clearest conception is 
 obtained of the refinement of the nation's life at 
 that time, and of the source from which it 
 derived its new civilisation. Speaking generally, 
 the garments worn by men differed much less 
 from those of modern Europe than did the gar- 
 ments of the Japanese when they first became 
 known to the Occident. The essentials were 
 a tunic-like coat and trousers, the former having 
 comparatively tight sleeves, and being girt at the 
 waist by a belt made either of Korean brocade 
 
 '39
 
 JAPAN 
 
 or of embroidered silk studded with plates of 
 jade. Two other garments were added one 
 over the trousers and one over the coat but 
 they had nothing of the loose flowing character 
 usually associated with Japanese dress. They 
 were, in fact, copied with scarcely any change 
 from the Chinese robes of the epoch, and had 
 their dimensions been fuller, they would be iden- 
 tical with the Chinese robes of the present day. 
 We thus conclude that, just as the men of 
 modern Japan have copied the costumes of the 
 Occident in adopting its civilisation, so the men 
 of ancient Japan imported Chinese robes with 
 Chinese systems of morality and administration. 
 
 Law after law was enacted regulating the exact 
 measurements of these various articles and, above 
 all, their quality and texture. In early times, 
 the best material available was manufactured 
 from the paper mulberry or from hemp ; but, by 
 and by, grass cloth and cotton fabrics came into 
 use, and, in the fifth century, sericulture and 
 silk-weaving were successfully practised. The 
 silk then produced was of very inferior quality, 
 and though several fine varieties as sarcenet, 
 figured silk, brocade, and so on were soon 
 obtained, they served for ornamental purposes 
 rather than for every-day wear. But in the Nara 
 epoch, neither the most elaborate fabrics that the 
 home loom could turn out, nor yet the rare silks 
 and brocades brought from China by the Bud- 
 dhist priests, who made it a duty to familiarise 
 
 140
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 Japan with all the best products of Asiatic skill, 
 were deemed too costly for purposes of personal 
 adornment. This extravagant tendency received 
 its first impulse in the middle of the seventh 
 century when, as part of the reforms and re-or- 
 ganisations consequent on the abolition of the 
 patriarchal system and the assumption of admin- 
 istrative autonomy by the Emperor, the custom 
 of employing hats to distinguish official grades 
 was imported from China. The designing of 
 these hats constituted quite a legislative occupa- 
 tion, and the story of the changes they under- 
 went is bewildering. One excellent sovereign 1 
 seems to have been reduced to a state of despair- 
 ing recklessness by sumptuary problems, for he 
 issued a decree declaring that everybody might 
 wear anything he pleased. Other monarchs, 
 however, grappled with the question, and it was 
 not until the beginning of the eighth century, 
 just before the commencement of the Nara 
 epoch, that the many-hued hats of China were 
 exchanged for a sober head-gear of uniform 
 colour silk gauze covered with black lacquer 
 better adapted to the artistic instincts of the 
 Japanese. It must not be imagined that these 
 finally evolved hats were intended to discharge 
 any head-covering function ; they were as inno- 
 cent of such purpose as is the extravagant head-gear 
 of fashionable ladies in the jin-du-sitcle Occi- 
 dent. The hat, supposed to have the shape of a 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 24.
 
 JAPAN 
 
 cicada, was poised on the top of the head much 
 as an insect might have perched there. At the 
 time when this fortunate simplicity was attained 
 as to one article of costume, there were no less 
 than eighteen ranks of princes, thirty principal 
 ranks of officials, twenty supernumerary ranks, 
 and twelve orders of merit. All these had to be 
 differentiated by points of apparel, and as there 
 were three costumes for each rank the cere- 
 monial costume, the Court costume, and the ordi- 
 nary uniform the task to be discharged by the 
 bureau of etiquette was to devise two hundred 
 and sixteen varieties of dress. Necessarily the 
 pettiest details had to be enlisted in this phalanx 
 of diversities. White trousers were always de 
 rigueur, but a pure white girdle might be used 
 by the Prince Imperial only : other princes were 
 obliged to have embroidered or figured girdles, 
 and the girdles of lower dignitaries had to be of 
 designated colours. Jewels and jade necessarily 
 adorned the belts of the upper ranks of princes. 
 But that essentially Chinese fashion did not long 
 survive in Japan. It has always been against the 
 instinct of the Japanese male to use jewels of any 
 kind for purposes of personal adornment. Socks 
 were made of silk brocade another extrava- 
 gance ultimately abandoned in favour of white 
 cotton-cloth and the feet were thrust into 
 black lacquered shoes with up-tilted toes. As 
 for the colour of the upper garments, the general 
 rule was that the deeper the colour, the higher 
 
 142
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 the rank purple, Indian red, crimson, cherry- 
 red, blue, mulberry, leaf-green, grass-green, and 
 so on, in fixed gradation. Unclassed officials and 
 commoners had to wear yellow, and servants 
 were clothed in black. Any departure from 
 these rules in the sense of trespassing upon the 
 costume of a higher rank, exposed the delinquent 
 to severe punishment. Even the number of 
 knots on the strings of an amulet-bag was a 
 matter of regulation, and a high official, when in 
 full dress, carried in his hand a flat piece of ivory, 
 fourteen or fifteen inches long, in imitation of 
 the tablets used by Chinese statesmen for writing 
 orders or reports. 
 
 Ladies, too, were denied the privilege of 
 choosing fashions for themselves. It has already 
 been shown that, in very early times, both men 
 and women wore strings of beads on their necks, 
 arms, and legs, and there is evidence that each 
 sex used to fasten spring-flowers or autumn 
 sprays in the hair by way of ornament. Why 
 and when these customs were abandoned there is 
 nothing to show, but it is certain that, in the 
 Nara epoch, ladies were required to use orna- 
 ments of gold, silver, or jade for their heads, and 
 that these ornaments generally took the shape of 
 the natural objects for which they were substi- 
 tuted, though sometimes forms from the Chinese 
 grammar of art were chosen, as highly conven- 
 tionalised dragons and clouds, tortoises and waves, 
 or Dogs of Fo and peonies. Legislators had fur- 
 
 H3
 
 JAPAN 
 
 ther the temerity to order the binding up of a 
 lady's hair, 1 which she had hitherto worn hang- 
 ing loose, or merely bound by a fillet at the back 
 of the head. But the authority of law proved 
 abortive at this point : ladies laughed at a threat 
 announced in an edict of the Emperor Temmu 
 (673-686) that every long-haired female should 
 be called a sorceress. In other respects, how- 
 ever, they had to bow to the law. High rank 
 conferred on a lady the privilege of wearing her 
 own locks ; if she was below the sixth grade she 
 had to have a wig. Her garments 2 appear to 
 have been shaped like those of the other sex ; * 
 a fact which must have simplified matters 
 considerably for the officials of the bureau of 
 etiquette, and which was consistent with the 
 important part acted by women in all affairs 
 of religion and State. The Emperor Temmu 
 (673686) seems to have considered it desirable 
 that the differences between the habits of the 
 sexes should be still farther obliterated, for he 
 forbade women to ride on horseback with both 
 feet in one stirrup, as had hitherto been their 
 wont, and ordered them to straddle their steeds 
 in male fashion. 
 
 The etiquette of official intercourse naturally 
 received much attention side by side with these 
 minute regulations about costume. In the reign 
 of the fanatically religious Empress Suiko (593- 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 25. 2 See Appendix, note 26. 
 
 See Appendix, note 27. 
 144
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 628), it had been enacted that any one entering 
 the palace gate must kneel on both knees, place 
 his hands on the ground, bow his head, and in 
 that attitude crawl across the threshold. Twenty 
 years later, this prostrate method of approach was 
 abandoned ; to be again revived shortly after- 
 wards, and again finally abandoned towards the 
 close of the seventh century. The Japanese, in 
 fact, adopted Chinese customs sometimes faith- 
 fully, sometimes tentatively. They were disposed 
 to take them wholesale, but equally disposed to 
 reject them after trial. They did not then cover 
 the floors of their rooms with the clean soft 
 mats that subsequently came into universal use. 
 Boards were employed, and kneeling on boards 
 being irksome, a standing salutation was substi- 
 tuted. Matting, cushions, cr skins were spread 
 on the ground to serve as seats, but by high 
 officials a large four-legged dais, a la Chinoise, 
 was used. This solid, handsome article of fur- 
 niture, with lacquered legs and edges, metal 
 mountings, and brocade-rimmed matting on its 
 surface, served as a kind of chair of state. Its 
 occupant did not kneel with his feet under him, 
 as subsequently became the fashion ; he sat tailor- 
 wise. Another Chinese custom that of join- 
 ing the palms of the raised hands and clapping 
 them by way of greeting to a superior came 
 into vogue and was practised for a considerable 
 time. But being associated with the standing 
 system of etiquette, this hand-clapping courtesy 
 10 145
 
 JAPAN 
 
 ceased to be allowed after the introduction of 
 mats. For chairs and mats were incompatible; 
 the former necessarily disappeared when the 
 latter were adopted, and since a matted floor 
 plainly invited a kneeling salutation, the palm- 
 striking obeisance finally disappeared except as 
 preface to a prayer before shrines or in temples. 1 
 When an inferior official met a superior on the 
 road, the former had to step aside and stand still 
 until the latter passed, and had further to kneel 
 with his hands on the ground whenever he de- 
 sired to make a remark. The same rule applied 
 to youths and elders irrespectively of rank, and 
 if an official of a class lower than fifth, or a com- 
 moner, happened to be riding on horseback when 
 he encountered a superior, he had to dismount 
 and stand aside. 
 
 The food of the people during the Nara era 
 consisted of rice, steamed or boiled, millet, barley, 
 fish of various kinds (fresh or salted), sea-weed, 
 vegetables, fruit (pears, chestnuts, and minor vari- 
 eties), and the flesh of fowl, deer, and wild-boar. 
 Strenuous efforts were made by the Court to en- 
 force the Buddhist commandment against taking 
 life, but the nation steadily eschewed that kind 
 of fanaticism, and even the priests themselves did 
 not obey their own laws. Sake a fermented 
 liquor made from rice and tea, which had 
 recently been imported from China, were the 
 chief beverages, and soy (a sauce made from 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 28. 
 
 146
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 beans) and vinegar served for seasoning purposes. 
 In this context reference may be made to a detail 
 which constitutes another point of likeness between 
 the adoption of foreign civilisation in the seventh 
 and eighth centuries and its adoption in modern 
 times. Milk was suggested to the Emperor 
 Kotoku (645654) by a Korean envoy as a useful 
 article of medicinal diet, and it found so much 
 favour that at the beginning of the eighth cen- 
 tury a " milk section " was established in the 
 medical bureau, and an imperial edict required 
 that butter should be sent to the Court periodi- 
 cally from all parts of the empire. The fancy 
 did not live more than a hundred years, nor was it 
 revived until the eighteenth century. The lower 
 orders enjoyed none of these luxuries. A poem 
 of the period shows that instead of fish, salt was 
 their principal relish ; instead of rice, barley or 
 millet their staple article of diet ; and instead of 
 clear sake they drank the lees of the brewer's vat 
 diluted with water. 
 
 In a peculiarly constructed l wooden storehouse 
 attached to the celebrated temple Totai-ji there 
 is preserved a collection of objects from the pal- 
 aces of the Emperors and Empresses that reigned 
 during the Nara epoch. It would plainly be a 
 false conclusion to regard these things as speci- 
 mens of the furniture and utensils ordinarily used 
 at the Court of Japan in the eighth century. 
 Had they not been rare and choice in their time, 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 29. 
 
 H7
 
 JAPAN 
 
 they would not have been thought worthy of 
 preservation. But they certainly bear witness to 
 the refinements of the era and to the affinities of 
 its civilisation, just as the ornaments of a French 
 salon in the sixteenth century bear witness to the 
 graces of life at that time and to the Italian in- 
 fluences that then pervaded French asstheticism. 
 Many of the Totai-ji treasures are of Chinese 
 provenance ; a few are Indian, and a still smaller 
 number, Persian. China's large contribution 
 might have been expected, for if the Japanese in 
 the seventh and eighth centuries regarded their 
 continental neighbour as the source of everything 
 that was best in matters legislative, ethical, philo- 
 sophical, political, and literary, they would natur- 
 ally look to her also for standards of social 
 refinement. The story these relics tell is that 
 the occupants of the Nara palace had their rice 
 served in small covered cups of stone-ware, with 
 celadon glaze these from Chinese potteries, for 
 as yet the manufacture of vitrifiable glazes was 
 beyond the capacity of Japanese keramists ; ate 
 fruit from deep dishes of white agate ; poured 
 water from golden ewers of Persian form, having 
 bird-shaped spouts, narrow necks and bands of 
 frond diaper ; played the game of go on boards 
 of rich lacquer, using discs of white jade and red 
 coral for pieces ; burned incense in censers of 
 bronze inlaid with gems, and kept the incense in 
 small boxes of Paulloivnia wood with gold lacquer 
 decoration these of Japanese make, or in 
 
 148
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 receptacles of Chinese celadon ; wrote with camel's 
 hair brushes having bamboo handles, and placed 
 them upon rests of prettily carved coral ; employed 
 plates of nephrite to rub down sticks of Chinese 
 ink ; sat upon the cushioned floor to read or 
 write, placing the book or paper on a low lec- 
 tern of wood finely grained or ornamented with 
 lacquer ; set up flowers in slender, long-necked 
 vases of bronze with a purple patina ; used for 
 pillow a silk-covered bolster stuffed with cotton 
 and having designs embroidered in low relief; 
 carried long, straight, two-edged swords attached 
 to the girdle by strings (not thrust into it, as after- 
 wards became the fashion) ; kept their writing 
 materials in boxes of coloured or gold lacquer ; 
 saw their faces reflected in mirrors of polished 
 metal, having the back repousse and chiselled in 
 elaborate designs ; kept their mirrors in cases 
 lined with brocaded silk ; girdled themselves with 
 narrow leather belts, ornamented with plaques of 
 silver or jade and fastened by means of buckles 
 exactly similar to those used in Europe or America 
 to-day ; and played on flutes made of bamboo 
 wood. In short, the Shoso-in relics introduce us 
 to a people imbued with a strong taste for the 
 refinements of civilisation, but not yet possessed 
 of artistic and technical skill sufficient to supply 
 their own wants. 
 
 In this Nara epoch a legislative attempt was 
 made to restrain all illicit intercourse between 
 the sexes, but it does not appear that the slightest 
 
 149
 
 JAPAN 
 
 success attended the experiment. There is noth- 
 ing to show that virgin purity was less esteemed 
 in a Japanese maiden of gentle birth than it has 
 ever been esteemed by any nation under any 
 system of ethics. But the recognition extended 
 to concubinage necessarily produced a confusion 
 of principles. From the sovereign down to the 
 artisan, a man's extra-marital relations were 
 limited only by his means and opportunities. 
 The obligation of sexual fidelity rested on the 
 woman alone, and constituted her whole code of 
 morality. She valued virtue, not for virtue's 
 sake, but as part of her duty to some one man 
 either in esse or in posse, and she discharged that 
 duty with remarkable steadfastness whether as a 
 maiden, a mistress, or a wife. But it is easy to 
 see that since society did not scrutinise with any 
 severity her relation to the man claiming her 
 affection, and frowned on her only when she 
 betrayed him, her first concessions to love were 
 often made without much ceremony. The cus- 
 tom of leaving a wife to reside in her parental 
 house had long ceased in practice, but its princi- 
 ple found expression in a rule that when a man 
 married, he must construct special apartments 
 for his bride's accommodation. 1 Another cu- 
 rious canon was that until a girl became be- 
 trothed, she must never speak of herself by her 
 family name, and that when lovers parted, the 
 string of the man's under-garment was tied to 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 30. 
 
 150
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 that of the woman, with a promise that the knot 
 should never be loosened till they were reunited. 
 It was also by her betrothed that a maiden's hair, 
 which in girlhood flowed over her shoulders, was 
 for the first time bound with a fillet. This last 
 custom survives in a degraded form until the 
 present day, as will be seen when the time 
 comes to speak of public fStes in which profes- 
 sional dancing-girls (geisha} act a prominent 
 part. 
 
 Japan's borrowings from China were of course 
 liberal in the sphere of literary culture. Having 
 no books of her own, she depended entirely on 
 the library of her neighbour. Compared with 
 the barrenness of her intellectual realm, that 
 library opened up to her an immensely fruitful 
 area of science, philosophy, and belles lettres, and 
 there would be no grounds for surprise had she 
 lost herself in its multitudinous paths. But if we 
 except the engrossing claim that Confucianism 
 made upon her attention, the chief effect pro- 
 duced upon her by Chinese literature was to set 
 her to writing poetry. Throughout the century 
 culminating at the zenith of the Nara epoch, she 
 abandoned herself almost deliriously to that oc- 
 cupation. To turn a couplet deftly became the 
 test not merely of literary education but even of 
 administrative competence. There is difficulty 
 in conveying to the mind of a Western reader 
 any exact idea of the habit that grew out of this 
 poetic extravagance. If at a banquet given by
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the sovereign of England to his Ministers and 
 leading civil and military officials, or at a recep- 
 tion by the President of the United States in the 
 White House, pens and paper were handed 
 round, and all the guests were invited to spend 
 several hours composing versicles on themes set 
 by Mr. McKinley or King Edward, and further, 
 if the pastime were repeated again and again, 
 day after day, until the construction of couplets 
 became an engrossing national occupation, such 
 a state of affairs would represent with tolerable 
 accuracy the custom that began to come into 
 vogue in the middle of the seventh century, 
 a custom which produced its best results from a 
 literary point of view a hundred years later in 
 the Nara epoch, and continued in an even in- 
 creasing degree through several generations. 
 
 But although this poetic mania is here asso- 
 ciated with the introduction of Chinese literature, 
 it did not derive its metric inspiration from that 
 source. The Japanese system of versification is 
 their own, 1 nor did their poets borrow anything 
 from the treasures of Chinese literature. It is a 
 system radically different from the Chinese system ; 
 radically different from the system of any other 
 country, Eastern or Western. Uniquely in this 
 one path they ignored their neighbour's influence, 
 and wrote unrhymed lines which derived their 
 poetic character solely from the rhythmic beat 
 of a fixed number of syllables, five followed by 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 3 1 .
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 seven, seven followed by five, in changeless alter- 
 nation. What Chinese intercourse did was to 
 supply a medium for transcribing these stanzas, 
 and to suggest the custom of composing them as 
 a pastime at social reunions. The art itself had 
 long existed in Japan, but from the middle of the 
 seventh century it became a polite accomplish- 
 ment. The Japanese stanza defies translation in 
 any other language. It is a verbal melody which 
 cannot be transposed ; cannot be played on a 
 foreign instrument. There is virtually no such 
 thing as versified narrative ; no subject is treated 
 continuously in varying phases. In Occidental 
 poetry the cadence of the verse is the accompani- 
 ment of the idea ; in Japanese poetry, the idea is 
 set to the cadence. The Greeks by a laboured 
 organisation of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, 
 strove to impart to their chorus harmonic as well 
 as metrical value. The Japanese, by a regular 
 alternation of syllabic chords, succeeded in com- 
 bining the effects of music and metre. The em- 
 bodied idea is seldom more than a mere suggestion; 
 the whisper of a thought pervading the melody. 
 The music is everything. To seek in the pro- 
 ductions of such an art high displays of dramatic 
 imagination, is as idle as to render these snatches 
 of music into the rhymed verses of Western metri- 
 cal art. To form a true conception of Japanese 
 poetry one must read it in the original. 
 
 It is easy to understand that in an age when 
 the passion for verbal melody attained such pro- 
 
 '53
 
 JAPAN 
 
 portions, dancing also must have been in wide 
 favour. There is no Japanese music that will 
 not serve as accompaniment for the Japanese 
 stanza, and the stanza, in turn, adapts itself per- 
 fectly to the fashion of the Japanese dance. The 
 law of the unities seems to have prescribed that 
 the cadence of the stanza should melt into the 
 lilt of the song, and that the measure of the song 
 should be worked out by the " woven paces and 
 waving hands " of the dance. That is the inevit- 
 able impression produced by Japanese poetry, 
 Japanese music, and Japanese dancing. The affin- 
 ity between them is so close that it is difficult to 
 tell where one begins and the other ends. 1 The 
 music of words, the music of motion, and the 
 music of song rank equally in popular apprecia- 
 tion. Of course Buddhist music is not included 
 in that description. Buddhist music is a wail, a 
 threnody. It makes no appeal to the natural 
 disposition of the Japanese, and the vogue it ob- 
 tained from the Nara epoch onwards largely con- 
 tributed to the growth of a dangerous form of 
 pessimism. The tendency of the Japanese has 
 always been to accompany their feasting and 
 merry-making with music, versifying, and danc- 
 ing. At the time now under consideration, there 
 was the " winding water fete," when princes, 
 high officials, courtiers, and noble ladies seated 
 themselves by the banks of a rivulet meandering 
 gently through some fair park, and launched tiny 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 32. 
 
 154
 
 IN THE NARA EPOCH 
 
 cups of mulled wine upon the current, each com- 
 posing a stanza as the little messenger reached 
 him, or drinking its contents by way of penalty 
 for lack of poetic inspiration. There were also 
 the flower festivals that for the plum-blossoms, 
 that for the iris, and that for the lotus, all of which 
 were instituted in this same Nara epoch when 
 the composition of couplets was quite as impor- 
 tant as the viewing of the flowers. There was 
 further the grand New Year's banquet in the 
 " hall of tranquillity " at the Court, when all 
 officials from the sixth grade downwards sang a 
 stanza of loyal gratitude, accompanying themselves 
 on the koto. 1 Specially remarkable was the Ufa- 
 gaki, which in this epoch assumed the dimensions 
 of a grand spectacular display. Hundreds of 
 youths and maidens, wearing blue silk robes with 
 long red girdles, assembled at the palace gate and 
 danced in the presence of the Emperor, the men 
 and women in separate rows ; and thereafter con- 
 tinued the performance through the city, singing 
 in union some simple stanza, such as 
 
 Crystal-born river, 
 Hakata, thy jewelled stream 
 Flows through ten thousand 
 Times ten thousand ages, pure. 
 
 It was an era of refined, effeminate amusements. 
 Wrestling had now become the pursuit of pro- 
 fessionals. Aristocrats engaged in no rougher 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 33. 
 
 155
 
 JAPAN 
 
 pastime than archery, polo, a species of football, 
 hawking and hunting. Everybody gambled. It 
 was in vain that, from the time of the Empress 
 Jito (694-696], edicts were issued against dicing 
 (sugoroku). Tne vice defied official restraint. 
 
 .56
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 (End ef the Eighth te the Middle of the Twelfth Century) 
 
 IT has been shown that after the fall of the 
 patriarchal system of government the ad- 
 ministrative power reverted to the sovereign, 
 and that a series of vigorous reforms were 
 undertaken on the lines of Chinese civilisation. 
 But the Emperor did not long remain autocratic, 
 nor did many of the reforms prove permanent. 
 Mommu's (697707) democratic edict, declaring 
 that the throne rested on the people, had scarcely 
 been acclaimed by the nation when the Fujiwara 1 
 family began to wield power which soon assumed 
 extraordinary proportions. 
 
 This family was founded by Kamatari. He 
 came into notice by compassing the destruction 
 of the last of the patriarchal clans (the Soga), and 
 fate, with her usual irony, decreed that he him- 
 self should be the founder of a clan beside whose 
 usurpations those of the Soga, or any other Japan- 
 ese clan, look insignificant. Kamatari traced his 
 descent back to the days of Jimmu, but even if 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 34. 
 
 157
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the reckoning commence with himself in the 
 seventh century, the Fujiwara are sufficiently 
 antique. There has been no break in the con- 
 tinuity of their line. They were the repositories 
 of the administrative power for nearly five cen- 
 turies. Their name is borne by ninety-five out 
 of the hundred and forty-five families constituting 
 the Japanese court nobility. Their daughters en- 
 joyed through all ages, and still enjoy, a kind of 
 prescriptive title to be the Emperors' consorts. 1 
 Their sons established a hereditary right to fill 
 the highest offices in the State. The history of 
 Japan, during the twelve hundred years covered 
 by her written annals, may truly be described as 
 the history of four families, the Fujiwara, the 
 Taira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa. 
 
 It is usual to adopt as lines of division the Nara 
 epoch, the Heian (Kyoto) epoch, the Kamakura 
 epoch, and the Yedo epoch, a classification based 
 on the fact that each of these places was in turn 
 the seat of administrative authority. But the 
 course of political change is more intelligently 
 indicated by taking for landmarks the successive 
 usurpations of the four great families. The Fuji- 
 wara governed through the Emperor ; the Taira, 
 the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa may be said 
 to have governed in spite of the Emperor. The 
 Fujiwara based their power on matrimonial al- 
 liances with the Throne ; the Taira, the Mina- 
 moto, and the Tokugawa based theirs on the 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 35. 
 
 15!
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 possession of armed strength which the Throne 
 had no competence to control. There another 
 broad line of cleavage is seen. Throughout the 
 Fujiwara era the centre of political gravity, though 
 shifted from the sovereign to the Court nobles, 
 remained always in the Court. Throughout the 
 era of the Taira, the Minamoto, and the Toku- 
 gawa, the centre of political gravity was transferred 
 to a point altogether outside the Court, the head- 
 quarters of a military feudalism. 
 
 One fact has always to be remembered in con- 
 nection with the usurpations of these families : 
 their ancestors were not ordinary subjects. The 
 Fujiwara traced their origin to the era of gods. The 
 progenitors of the Taira and the Minamoto were 
 sons of Emperors reigning at the commencement 
 of the ninth century. The Tokugawa were a 
 branch of the Minamoto. If a broad survey of 
 Japanese history indicates that the sanctity derived 
 by a sovereign from his divine lineage contributed 
 to the stability of his throne only in so far as it 
 constituted a charter of power for the nominal, 
 but really usurping, agents of his will, the same 
 history indicates that those agents were themselves 
 scions of the Imperial stock. 
 
 In the year 794 the Imperial capital was 
 transferred from Nara to Kyoto 1 by order of the 
 Emperor, Kwammu. It has been conjectured 
 that one of the chief objects of the change was 
 to separate religion and politics. The extrav- 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 36. 
 
 159
 
 JAPAN 
 
 agant patronage bestowed on the Buddhist priests 
 during the Nara epoch had educated in them a 
 spirit of arrogance which Kwammu saw the ne- 
 cessity of checking. Some colour is lent to this 
 theory by a fact, independently interesting, namely, 
 that Kwammu worshipped the " heavenly King " 
 with offerings of burnt sacrifices, thus apparently 
 setting up a new supreme ruler and a new method 
 of propitiating him. But that incident of his 
 career probably indicates nothing more than a 
 close study of Confucianism, which couples wor- 
 ship of Shang Ti, a shadowy " Supreme," with 
 worship of ancestors, nor can any hostility to 
 Buddhism be attributed to a monarch whose zeal 
 in building and endowing Buddhist temples is 
 historical. The more rational explanation of the 
 transfer of the capital to Kyoto is that it was part 
 of a scheme for the better centralisation of ad- 
 ministrative power. 
 
 At the close of the eighth century the three 
 great difficulties of the time were the growth of 
 provisional autocrats who ignored the mandates 
 of the Throne ; the continued revolt of the au- 
 tochthons, and the reappearance of the system 
 of hereditary office-bearers. 
 
 Less than a century had sufficed to nullify 
 many of the Taikiva and Taiho reforms described 
 in the last chapter. One great purpose of those 
 reforms had been to give practical force to the 
 principle of the Throne's eminent domain and to 
 make the land the chief source of the State's 
 
 1 60
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 income. But the reckless expenditure of the 
 Court and of the patrician class necessitated such 
 heavy rates of taxation that the farmers had to bor- 
 row money and rice from officials or Buddhist 
 priests, and since they had nothing to offer by 
 way of security except their lands, it resulted 
 that the temples and the nobles began to acquire 
 great estates of which the Government hesitated 
 to resume possession, as prescribed by law, and 
 the agricultural population gradually fell into 
 a condition of practical serfdom. So miserable 
 was their plight that many preferred to embrace 
 the status of slaves, and others turned to highway 
 robbery and piracy. The Court, absorbed in 
 ceremonial observances, elaborate pastimes, and 
 superstitious extravagances, made no serious effort 
 to check these abuses, or to assert its authority 
 over the provincial magnates, who generally took 
 the precaution of allying themselves with some 
 of the prominent families in the capital. Grad- 
 ually both the provincial magnates and the 
 metropolitan nobles began to openly defy the 
 restrictions imposed by law upon the bearing of 
 arms, attached to their persons large guards of 
 sword-girt soldiers, and maintained autocratic 
 state not much inferior to that of the Court 
 itself. The sovereign might not venture to 
 deprive such men of the administrative posts 
 held by them, and thus the old vice of heredi- 
 tary office-bearers again came into practice, 
 while, at the same time, the administrative im- 
 ii 161
 
 JAPAN 
 
 potence resulting from such anarchy en- 
 couraged the autochthons to vigorous revolt in 
 the north. 
 
 These were the conditions with which 
 Kwammu had to deal when he ascended the 
 throne towards the close of the eighth century. 
 The Taikwa and aihb reforms had failed in cer- 
 tain important respects, and it is not difficult to 
 detect the reason of their want of success. The 
 system they introduced was, on the one hand, 
 incompatible with the ends they were intended 
 to compass, and, on the other, encouraged the 
 tendencies they were designed to eradicate. The 
 administrative principles of the Tang dynasty 
 which the reformers copied, were so permeated 
 with the spirit of pomp and ceremony ; the func- 
 tions of each office conferred such privileges and 
 distinctions on its holder ; the whole body of 
 officialdom, wide as were the intervals between 
 its various grades, was so far removed from the 
 mass of the plebs, that irresistible forces became 
 operative for the resurrection of the patriarchal 
 rights which the fall of the Soga family had 
 buried. Tenchi appreciated that his reforms 
 conld never be permanent unless he radically 
 changed the status of the plebs. But the means 
 he devised for that end probably the only 
 means within his power were quite inade- 
 quate, and he does not seem to have perceived 
 that the immense access of dignity and impor- 
 tance gained by the administrative class under the 
 
 162
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 Chinese system, must surely revive the ambitions 
 which had proved so irksome to his predecessors. 
 He himself sought to better the condition of the 
 commoners by remitting their taxes, but his suc- 
 cessors paid little attention to that important 
 point, and even if the exotic system had not 
 tended to widen the distance between the two 
 sections of the nation, the crushing fiscal burdens 
 imposed on the lower orders must have produced 
 that result. Kwammu, following him at an 
 interval of nearly two centuries, showed equal 
 vigour of purpose, but, for the same reasons, pro- 
 duced an equally ephemeral impression upon the 
 abuses he sought to remedy. He commenced, 
 as stated above, by transferring the capital to 
 Kyoto, and building it on a scale that educated 
 in the minds of the people an overwhelming 
 conception of the might and majesty of the 
 Court. He then undertook to separate religion 
 and politics by removing all priests from adminis- 
 trative posts, and he essayed to check the nation's 
 extravagant expenditures on Buddhism by inter- 
 dicting the building of temples without imperial 
 permission. He forbade the seizure of lands for 
 debt. He abolished offices that had been created 
 for the sake of their occupants, and he ruthlessly 
 removed all incompetent officials. To deal with 
 the northern rebels, he ordered the eight prov- 
 inces watered by the river Tone namely, the 
 Eando section of Japan to organise each a 
 body of from 500 to 1000 men, the sons of local 
 
 163
 
 JAPAN 
 
 administrators and ex-officials, 1 and he directed 
 that they should be constantly trained in military 
 arts. He made a bold effort to free himself from 
 the interference of the great families which were 
 again beginning to usurp the governing power. 
 He essayed to get into close touch with the 
 people, as his great-grandfather, Tenchi, had 
 done. He tried to thrust aside the provincial 
 autocrats and to bring the lower officials within 
 the range of direct responsibility. He exhibited 
 magnanimity 2 rare in any record. In short, he 
 ranks as one of Japan's three greatest sovereigns, 
 Tenchi, Kwammu, and Godaigo, yet he left 
 no permanent mark upon his time, except, per- 
 haps, the subjugation of the northern rebels, 
 the Yezo, whose revolt, continuous during 
 twenty-two years, was finally quelled by his gen- 
 erals after an eight years' campaign. It was 
 partly Kwammu's misfortune, largely his fault, 
 that so far from giving any financial relief to the 
 lower classes, he imposed upon them a heavier 
 burden of taxation than ever ; for to the inevitable 
 outlays caused by the long war against the Yezo, 
 he added large expenditures for the building of 
 temples in spite of his professed desire to check 
 such extravagance, and still larger for the in- 
 dulgence of his passionate love of hunting, a 
 mania that led him to organise no less than one 
 hundred and forty hunting excursions during his 
 reign of twenty-five years. 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 37. 2 See Appendix, note 38. 
 
 164
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 Kwammu's reign deserves this somewhat de- 
 tailed notice because it marks the parting of the 
 ways in mediaeval Japan. His was the last really 
 resolute struggle made during three and a half 
 centuries to stem the influences that were plainly 
 tending towards the substitution of bureaucracy 
 for imperialism, the subordination of the Throne 
 to the nobility. 
 
 Extraordinary importance attached to rank 
 under the system introduced from China. With- 
 out attempting to explain the elaborate classifi- 
 cation prescribed and strictly observed, it will 
 suffice to say that the privilege of entree to the 
 "hall of purity and freshness" in the Palace 
 was confined to officials of a certain grade and 
 their sons, and could scarcely be obtained by 
 any length of service or display of merit in a 
 lower grade. Thus arose a broad division of the 
 patrician order into " palatials " (denjo-bito) and 
 " groundlings " (chige-bito], and so sternly was 
 the distinction preserved that the latter stood to 
 the former in a relation not much superior to 
 serfdom. 1 The power and perquisites attaching 
 to the higher offices were proportionately great, 
 and since it thus became worth while to purchase 
 the patronage of the leading dignitaries at the 
 cost of almost any service, there grew up a large 
 body of fortune-seekers who occupied a position 
 of vassalage towards their patrons. The Em- 
 peror nevertheless remained the nominal fountain 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 39. 
 
 165
 
 JAPAN 
 
 of all rank and office, and His Majesty's favour 
 was courted not solely by displays of poetising 
 skill or administrative ability, but also by the 
 more elementary device of female influence. 
 
 There could be only one Empress. To that 
 high dignity, therefore, not many aspired. But 
 no limit existed as to the number of ladies hav- 
 ing the entree of the Imperial bed-chamber, and 
 since any one of these nyogo (imperial dames), or 
 koi (ladies of the wardrobe), as they were called, 
 might become an " Imperial Resting Place " 
 (Myasudokoro), if she had the good fortune to 
 bear a child to the sovereign, or might attain the 
 splendid title of " national mother " (Kokubo) if 
 her son was nominated heir apparent ; and since, 
 even in the absence of any such incident, she 
 might hope to win her Imperial master's favour 
 by other means, the great nobles vied with each 
 other to get their daughters or sisters into the 
 palace. Some sacrifice had to be made for the 
 purpose. The lady was required to have a 
 guardian prepared to defray all the expenses of 
 her apparel and paraphernalia, and to superin- 
 tend her personal affairs. Without a guardian a 
 girl's prospects were hopeless, and the same was 
 true of a boy. However noble his birth, he 
 ceased to be an object of consideration if, on the 
 death of his parents, no man of position and 
 means undertook responsibility for him. 
 
 But if the general body of the nobles were al- 
 lowed to compete for their daughters' admission 
 
 166
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 to the Imperial chamber, the Fujiwara family 
 took care that the post of Empress should be re- 
 served for ladies of their own lineage. That was 
 their great political device. By progressive exer- 
 cises of arbitrariness they gradually contrived that 
 the choice of a consort for the sovereign should 
 be legally limited to a daughter of their family, 
 five branches of which were specially designated 
 to that honour through all ages, and were con- 
 sequently distinguished by the name Go-sekke 
 (the five assistant houses). When a son was born 
 to a sovereign, the Fujiwara took the child into 
 one of their palaces, and on his accession to the 
 Throne, the particular Fujiwara noble that hap- 
 pened to be his maternal grandfather became 
 Regent of the Empire. 
 
 It is necessary to understand this term " Re- 
 gent/' Prior to the Fujiwara usurpations, the 
 first subject in the Empire had been the Prime 
 Minister (Daijo Daijin]. But the Fujiwara's 
 method of procedure demanded an office with 
 still greater potentialities. Their plan for retain- 
 ing the supreme power in their own hands was 
 not to allow the sceptre to be held by an Em- 
 peror after he had attained his majority, or, if 
 they suffered him to figure as sovereign during 
 a few years of manhood, they compelled him to 
 abdicate at the moment when his independent 
 aspirations began to impair his docility. For 
 purposes of administration in these constantly 
 recurring minorities a new office was required, 
 
 167
 
 JAPAN 
 
 and towards the close of the ninth century the 
 post of Kwampaku (Regent) was created and 
 made hereditary in the Fujiwara family, as the 
 office of Prime Minister had already become. 
 The Regent continued to officiate even when the 
 sovereign was a major. He stood between the 
 Throne and the nation. Every official commu- 
 nication must pass through his hands before 
 reaching the Emperor. Thus the authority of 
 the Mikado (sublime gate) practically passed to 
 the Fujiwara. 1 
 
 If the responsibility of restoring the evil system 
 of hereditary office-holding in the capital rests 
 with the Fujiwara, the abuse, it must be admitted, 
 had never been fully abolished in the provinces. 
 An attempt to abolish it was made, but practical 
 experience suggested that in the administration 
 of remote regions, the interests of the central 
 government, as well as those of the people, were 
 best served by officials having permanent associa- 
 tions with the localities where their duties lay. 
 Hence a provincial governor (Koku-shii), himself 
 commissioned by the Court, received authority to 
 appoint and remove district headmen (Gun-sht). 
 But his nominees were generally creatures of his 
 own, as was natural, and thus the whole province 
 gradually passed beyond the control of the capi- 
 tal. In vain the Court tried to enforce its 
 authority by means of " high constables " (chim- 
 bunsht) and inspectors (ansatsusht). These offi- 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 40. 
 
 168
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 cials were unable to assert themselves against the 
 Governors and District Headmen acting in collu- 
 sion, and it was therefore deemed expedient to 
 make the two last mutually independent by 
 restoring its hereditary character to the office of 
 Headman. The expedient did not achieve its 
 purpose. No expedient could have been service- 
 able under the conditions that existed ; namely, 
 powerlessness on the Court's part to give effect 
 to its mandates, exceeding imperfection of com- 
 munications, and large opportunities for profit- 
 able dishonesty. The Court had long ceased to 
 possess any military force of its own. Having no 
 standing army, it relied for protection solely on 
 guards temporarily drafted from the provincial 
 levies. The nation's perception of this weakness 
 might have been postponed had not the rebellion 
 of the autochthons in the north occurred. But 
 the subjugation of these semi-savages defied the 
 resources of the Court for twenty-two years, and 
 was effected at last by the troops of the Bando 
 provinces whom the Emperor Kwammu had 
 caused to be organised. Here, then, was an 
 object lesson not to be misinterpreted. The power 
 of the sword obviously lay with the provinces, 
 and the Court nobles showed their appreciation 
 of the fact by cementing alliances with the 
 Bando captains. Now the State derived its rev- 
 enue chiefly from taxes levied on the land, and 
 if a provincial governor reported that drought, 
 tempest, or inundation had impaired or destroyed 
 
 169
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the tax-paying capacities of the farmers, no trust- 
 worthy means existed of verifying the report, 
 for an imperial inspector could either be thwarted 
 with impunity or shown a course more profitable 
 than sincerity, and, failing those expedients, 
 a defaulting governor could count on the protec- 
 tion of some great magnate in the capital with 
 whose family he was connected. The Court was 
 thus gradually stripped alike of its authority and 
 of its revenues. 
 
 This page of history deserves attention, for it 
 lays bare the foundations of the feudal system 
 destined to come into existence three centuries 
 later, and to stand intact for eight hundred years. 
 Closely connected with that system is the land 
 question. Japanese rulers, though their practice 
 tended to the adoption of the single tax, do not 
 appear to have been guided by any economical 
 principle in dealing with this problem. Their 
 fundamental idea was to bring a maximum area 
 of land within the range of the tax-collector. 
 It was always a recognised rule, however, that 
 lands granted as official emoluments or in recog- 
 nition of public merit should be exempted from 
 taxation. Hence hereditary office involved per- 
 petual tenure of untaxed land, and every claim 
 established on the Court's favour by great families 
 meant a further reduction of the taxable area 
 with a correspondingly increased impost on the 
 remaining lands. These abuses were well illus- 
 trated at the commencement of the Heian epoch. 
 
 170
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 The Emperor Saga (810-825) conferred an estate 
 of " fifteen thousand houses " on the Fujiwara 
 family, and made large grants to princes, prin- 
 cesses, Court ladies and nobles ; and a few years 
 later, the Emperor Seiwa (859-876) so greatly 
 extended the system that twenty-eight kinds 
 of tax-free estates were officially catalogued, in- 
 cluding temple lands, musicians' lands, school 
 lands, and so on. Hence, during the first forty 
 years of the Heian epoch, the rate of taxation 
 for those remaining liable was doubled, and 
 before the close of the ninth century each farmer 
 was paying to the central government one- 
 eleventh of the gross produce of his rice-land, in 
 addition to a corvee of thirty days' labour annu- 
 ally. Further, in many instances the provincial 
 governors levied independent taxes on behalf 
 of Court magnates and imperial relatives with 
 whom they had special relations. The Court 
 itself possessed estates chosen in the most fruitful 
 parts of the empire, but these resources did not 
 suffice for the support of the rapidly growing 
 number of Imperial princes, and it became neces- 
 sary to give them family names so that they 
 might lay aside their princely titles, and be en- 
 abled to take office in the capital or the prov- 
 inces. Thus, in the year 814, the name of 
 " Minamoto " was conferred on four princes, and 
 in 835 the name of " Taira " on a fifth, the prov- 
 inces of Kazusa, Hitachi, and Kozuke being 
 assigned for the support of the former, who 
 
 171
 
 JAPAN 
 
 thenceforth ruled there as governors, while dis- 
 tricts in the south were similarly allotted to the 
 Taira family. In this way the foundations of 
 the feudal system were firmly laid, and the 
 ephemeral reforms directed against hereditary 
 offices and perpetual tenure of land, ceased to be 
 even nominally effective in the capital and the 
 country alike. 
 
 This fall from the administrative and economic 
 standards set up by the sovereigns Tenchi and 
 Kwammu can scarcely be called retrogression, 
 for in truth the nation had never lived up to such 
 standards : they had been from the first incom- 
 patible with the state of its intelligence. And 
 if, on the other side of the account, there stands 
 to the credit of the Heian epoch much progress 
 in the refinements of civilisation, it was a civilisa- 
 tion which tended rapidly to moral degeneration, 
 and must have produced fatal consequences had 
 it not been happily checked in the twelfth cen- 
 tury by the evolution of a robust though com- 
 paratively rude militarism. 
 
 It is often said of the Japanese that they are 
 conspicuously indifferent to religion. If by reli- 
 gion is meant belief in the supernatural, and in 
 the constant interference of supernatural beings 
 in the affairs of every-day life, then such a saying 
 cannot be reconciled with the story of the Heian 
 epoch. Perhaps it should be explained here 
 that the term " Heian epoch " is used chrono- 
 logically in the sense of the interval between the 
 
 172
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 close of the eighth century and the beginning of 
 the twelfth ; and politically in the sense of the 
 era during which the Fujiwara family adminis- 
 tered the national affairs through the Court in 
 Kyoto. 
 
 There are, in fact, six great divisions of Japan- 
 ese history : first, the patriarchal age when the 
 sovereign was only the head of a group of tribal 
 chiefs, each possessing a hereditary share of the 
 governing power ; secondly, a brief period, from 
 the middle of the seventh to the early part of the 
 eighth century, when the tribal chiefs had dis- 
 appeared and the Throne was approximately 
 autocratic ; thirdly, an interval of some eighty 
 years, called the Nara epoch, during which the 
 propagandism of Buddhism, and the development 
 of the material and artistic civilisation that came 
 in that religion's train, engrossed the attention of 
 the nation ; fourthly, the Heian epoch, a period 
 of three centuries, when the Court in Kyoto 
 ruled vicariously through the Fujiwara family ; 
 fifthly, the age of military feudalism, from the 
 beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, when the administrative 
 power was grasped by soldier nobles ; and sixthly, 
 the present, or Meiji, epoch of constitutional 
 monarchy. Among these six eras, the Nara and 
 Heian were richest in religious influences ; the 
 Meiji is poorest. 
 
 It has been shown already that the supernatu- 
 ral had a large place in the thoughts of the early 
 
 173
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Japanese, and that for important guidance they 
 relied on divination, omens, ordeals, and portents 
 of various kinds. With the introduction of 
 Chinese civilisation they added to this catalogue 
 the superstitions of Confucianism as well as those 
 of Taoism, and when Buddhism arrived, its teach- 
 ings accentuated the confusion between the mun- 
 dane and the supernal. This phase of Japanese 
 ethics merits a moment's attention. 
 
 There is a tradition that the first professional 
 fortune-teller in Japan learned his art in Korea. 
 The truth appears to be that, about the third 
 century of the Christian era, the method of divi- 
 nation anciently practised in Japan by scorching 
 the bones of a deer, was replaced by a tortoise- 
 shell-burning process, imported from Korea, while, 
 at the same time, the marks produced by the fire 
 ceased to be arbitrarily interpreted by the diviner 
 and were explained by the aid of elaborate dia- 
 grams. In either case the soothsayer had to pref- 
 ace his divination by several days of supplication 
 to the particular deity within whose province the 
 affair lay, and had to abstain for some period 
 from eating or touching anything unclean in a 
 religious sense. Direct revelations from heaven 
 vouchsafed after long fasting and meditation in a 
 temple or shrine, were also regarded with as 
 much reverential faith by the Japanese as by the 
 Jews of old or the early Christians. This method 
 of obtaining transcendental guidance had been in 
 vogue for centuries before the introduction of
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 Buddhism, but its credit was greatly enhanced by 
 the latter, for the Buddhist priests attributed all 
 their important acts to heavenly inspiration. The 
 most vital affairs of State were regulated by these 
 revelations. Even the title of an usurper to dis- 
 place the legitimate line of emperors was thus 
 determined. Confucianism with its Book of 
 Changes, to which the great philosopher had 
 devoted profoundest study, gave a new impetus 
 to divination. At the beginning of the eighth 
 century in other words, at the very time when 
 radical reforms, legislative, administrative, fiscal, 
 and social, were being introduced from China, 
 an office called the Bureau of the Two Principles 
 was organised in the Department of Home Affairs, 
 and placed under the direction of six diviners 
 who undertook to read the will of heaven by 
 reference to the operations of the male and 
 female principles of nature the yo (yang) and 
 the in (ying). Faith in this form of divination 
 increased constantly. It replaced almost com- 
 pletely the process of burning tortoise-shell, 
 which ultimately was limited to religious services 
 held in the Imperial Court or at the great Shinto 
 shrine. The people, of course, resorted to simpler 
 methods in the affairs of every day. Listening 
 for the first words of a wayfarer at cross-roads 
 or beyond the gate of a dwelling; planting a 
 post, approaching it with steps adapted to a for- 
 mula and constructing an omen from the word 
 coincident with the last step; raising the first
 
 JAPAN 
 
 stone found on the wayside and calculating its 
 weight ; finding signs in water, in the sounds of 
 music, in the bubbles of the rice-caldron, these 
 and a dozen other trivial accidents helped men 
 and women to shirk the exercise of robust judg- 
 ment. The Buddhist doctrine of metempsy- 
 chosis added largely to the mystery of things. 
 People now learned that the spirits of the dead, 
 which had always been accredited with divine 
 influence, might be present in their midst in 
 some unrecognisable form. The ancestor before 
 whose cenotaph a man burned incense might be 
 watching him from the eyes of the ox that had 
 drawn him to the temple, and the baying of a 
 dog at the fall of the moon might be a voice 
 from the grave of an honoured relative. Mirac- 
 ulous manifestations began to be generally cred- 
 ited. A disentombed skull found voice to 
 express gratitude for favours bestowed on it in 
 life. The mouth of a man who insulted a reader 
 of the sutras was suddenly twisted by paralysis. 
 A local headman, levying heavy taxes from the 
 people, was transformed into a beast of burden. 
 A fisherman who threw his nets with merciless 
 frequency, fell into a supernaturally kindled flame. 
 A man who overloaded his horse was beaten to 
 death by hailstones. A crab became the means 
 of bringing riches to its liberator. Multitudes 
 of such tales circulated throughout the country. 
 Even an Emperor (Koken) was stricken with 
 sickness for desecrating the foundations of a
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 temple. It is observable that the ethical teach- 
 ing of these miracles was good, however destruc- 
 tive their effects on the moral fibre of the nation. 
 They were of course accompanied by an under- 
 growth of minor superstitions. A lover sleeping 
 with his robe turned inside out, would certainly 
 dream of the object of his affection. A man 
 longed for by another or destined soon to enjoy 
 a happy meeting, found the string of his under- 
 garment loosen automatically. An itching eye- 
 brow or a troublesome nose had its significance. 
 A knot made on the twig of a tree remained 
 tight or came untied according as a project was 
 to succeed or fail. The house of a person who 
 had set out on a journey must not be swept, nor 
 must hair be combed there, for the space of three 
 days. The traveller prayed at a cross-way or on 
 a hill-top raising a periapt aloft in his hands. A 
 voyage by sea was preceded by worship of the 
 god of the wind. The grass of forgetfulness 
 (wasure-gusa, the Day lily ) was carried as a means 
 of burying sad thoughts in oblivion, and a stum- 
 bling horse indicated homesickness on the part 
 of his rider. All pure white animals or birds, 
 a black fox, a forked lotus root or tree-branch, 
 these were held to be objects of the best omen. 
 People procuring them and presenting them to 
 the palace were liberally rewarded, and sometimes 
 the imperial satisfaction took the form of a 
 general amnesty or a change of the era's title. 
 With the growth of these superstitions faith 
 
 12
 
 JAPAN 
 
 in the efficacy of prayer and incantation grew 
 also. From the welfare of the humblest subject 
 to the safety of the State, everything was sup- 
 posed to be obtainable by worship, and the 
 priests who chaunted litanies and performed re- 
 ligious rites became objects of profound venera- 
 tion. Every chamber in the Palace was open to 
 them. So long as Shinto was the sole creed of 
 the nation, men did not trouble themselves much 
 about malevolent spirits. But with the advent 
 of Buddhism, preaching its many hells peopled 
 by cruel demons, people learned to attribute all 
 the ills and mischances of life to the influence of 
 dead enemies endowed with demoniacal attri- 
 butes, or to supernatural power exercised by 
 the living through the medium of incantations. 
 The maleficent spirits were supposed to be al- 
 ways on the watch for an opportunity to work 
 evil, and it was therefore necessary that constant 
 watch should be kept by the side of a sick per- 
 son. Some protection was obtained by observing 
 certain ceremonies and repeating certain formulas, 
 but the intervention of a priest seemed the only 
 complete safeguard, and thus the intoning of 
 litanies and the rolling of rosaries came to be 
 counted much more efficacious in cases of illness 
 than the services of a physician. Scarcely any 
 incident of every-day life failed to be interpreted 
 as a portent, and men had to be constantly on 
 the watch lest by neglecting some precaution 
 they should cause a harmless sign to be perverted
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 into an omen of evil. Naturally these disquiet- 
 ing fantasies had the effect of rendering people 
 nervous and timid. Even a soldier dreaded to 
 walk alone in the darkness. The feat by which 
 Michinaga, one of the greatest and most unscru- 
 pulous of the Fujiwara nobles, laid the founda- 
 tion of his fame, illustrates this craven mood. 
 At a reunion of princes and nobles in the Palace 
 of the Emperor Kwazan (985-987), some tales 
 of ghostly appearances having been recounted, it 
 was proposed that the listeners should exhibit 
 their courage by proceeding, one at a time, to 
 remote parts of the Palace. The three Fujiwara 
 brothers volunteered to undertake the task, but 
 only one of them, Michinaga, was able to 
 achieve it, and his valour won universal eulogy. 
 Sensual excesses, which were without limit in 
 the Heian epoch, supplemented and strengthened 
 this ever-present dread of the spirits of the dead 
 and of evil, so that idiocy became common and 
 the span of life in the upper classes was shortened 
 to thirty or forty years. The Emperor Daigo 
 (898-930) actually fell into a dangerous illness, 
 owing to a belief that he was pursued by the 
 vengeance of a loyal minister, Michizane, whose 
 unjust punishment he had sanctioned, and as a 
 protection against the same danger his baby son, 
 the prince imperial, was confined day and night 
 in one apartment and guarded by a chosen band 
 of soldiers during the first three years after his 
 birth. When the renowned Fujiwara chief, 
 
 179
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Tokihira, died, men said that he had been de- 
 stroyed by the spirit of this same Michizane, 
 whose disgrace and banishment he had con- 
 trived, 1 and every misfortune that befell a con- 
 spicuous family was ascribed to the angry ghost 
 of some prince, nobleman, or soldier who had 
 been done to death in the numerous political 
 intrigues of the era. The Emperor Sanjo 
 (1012-1015) believed that his calamity of partial 
 blindness was caused by a vengeful spirit which, 
 assuming the form of a winged dog, rode on 
 his neck and flapped its pinions over his eyes. 
 Above the palace of another sovereign a hideous 
 creature, half monkey, half snake, hovered every 
 night, throwing His Majesty into convulsions ; 
 and it was counted a deed of magnificent valour 
 that a Minamoto warrior shot an arrow into the 
 cloud enshrouding the monster. 
 
 The Buddhist priests would probably have 
 striven earnestly to dispel this noxious atmosphere 
 of superstition had it not contributed so much to 
 the growth of their own importance. At the 
 close of the eighth century and in the beginning 
 of the ninth, the creed found two propagandists 
 of the highest genius, Dengyo and Kobo 
 otherwise called Saicho and Kokai, the first 
 preachers of sectarian Buddhism in Japan, 
 Dengyo being the founder of the Yendai sect and 
 Kobo of the Shingon. The doctrines of these 
 two sects presented no violent contrasts. They 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 41. 
 
 180
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 may be described as exoteric and esoteric exegeses 
 of the same scripture ; and in an era when reli- 
 gious tolerance extended to the blending of Shinto 
 and Buddhism, distinctions so obscure as those 
 between the Tendai and the Shingon sects were not 
 likely to reflect any doubts on the infallibility 
 of the original doctrine. The two great ex- 
 pounders contributed equally to the spread of 
 Buddhism, and not only were they assisted dur- 
 ing their life and after their death by zealots of 
 scarcely inferior calibre, but their example of 
 ecstatic devotion exercised an ennobling influence 
 on the conduct of the priests in general. Long 
 fasts, years of asceticism in mountain solitudes, 
 and even self-inflicted tortures contributed, on 
 the one hand, to win respect for the faith, and, 
 on the other, to inculcate the importance of 
 abstinence and self-denial. The chief temple of 
 the Tendai sect (on Hiyei-zan) was erected on 
 the northeast of Kyoto in order to be a barrier 
 against the evil spirits supposed to issue con- 
 stantly from the " Demons' Gate," which was 
 situated in that quarter of the firmament, and the 
 priests, apparently without any exception, spared 
 no pains to promote a belief that their services 
 were essential to avert calamity or insure suc- 
 cess. All classes of the nation accepted that view. 
 Religious ceremonies on a magnificent scale were 
 constantly held at the Imperial Court, as many as 
 a thousand priests sometimes officiating. How- 
 ever straitened might be the finances of the State, 
 
 181
 
 JAPAN 
 
 funds were never spared for these purposes, or 
 for the building of splendid temples. The Fuji- 
 wara family behaved as though it considered that 
 its fortunes depended solely on the intervention 
 of the priests, and the example thus set by the 
 greatest nobles in the land did not fail to pro- 
 duce its effect on their inferiors. This delirious 
 devotion to Buddhism reached its acme at the 
 close of the eleventh century, when, during a 
 reign of only thirteen years, the Emperor Shi- 
 rakawa caused 5,470 religious pictures to be 
 painted, ordered the casting of one hundred and 
 twenty-seven statues of Buddha, each sixteen feet 
 high, of 3,150 life-size images and of 2,930 
 smaller idols, and constructed twenty-one large 
 temples and 446,630 religious edifices of various 
 kinds. This same sovereign, in obedience to 
 the Buddhist commandment against taking life, 
 issued an edict prohibiting the slaughter of any 
 living thing, ordering the release of all hawks, 
 falcons, and other caged birds, forbidding the 
 presentation of fish to the Palace, and requiring 
 the destruction of all fishing nets, which last 
 mandate was carried out in 8,800 cases. It be- 
 came customary also to have services performed 
 at temples on festive occasions. The enormous 
 expense thus entailed may be inferred from the 
 fact that, when a man reached the age of forty, 
 he purchased a further span of life and happiness 
 by causing masses to be said in forty temples; at 
 fifty he enlisted the services of fifty temples ; and 
 
 182
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 at sixty those of sixty. Recovery from serious 
 illness being generally attributed to the mercy of 
 Buddha, men began to receive the tonsure as an 
 evidence of gratitude, and many did so from a 
 mere altruistic conception, namely, that if a per- 
 son entered the priesthood, the future salvation of 
 nine families related to him would be secured. 
 
 All these things refuse to be reconciled with 
 the theory that the religious sentiment is deficient 
 among the Japanese. They have proved them- 
 selves as accessible to supernatural influences as 
 any nation known to history. 
 
 Undoubtedly Buddhism contributed immensely 
 to the nation's moral and material progress. But 
 its teachings had an unwholesome effect in the 
 Heian epoch. The character of the Japanese 
 underwent very marked modification during the 
 first sixteen centuries of their history. At the 
 time of their arrival as invaders they were hardy, 
 fierce people, fond of fighting and ready to reduce 
 to slavery every one that they overcame by force 
 of arms. But by degrees the comparatively genial 
 climate of their new home, its soft scenery, the 
 introduction of Chinese civilisation with its end- 
 less codes of ceremony and etiquette, and the spread 
 of a literature which occupied itself chiefly with 
 tender sentiments and scenic charms, produced 
 enervating effects. The rude warriors were trans- 
 formed, first into votaries of pleasure, then into 
 hysterical profligates, and finally into blase pessi- 
 mists. Buddhism greatly assisted the growth of 
 
 183
 
 JAPAN 
 
 this last mood. Partly from sincere belief, partly 
 because the presence of a prince or noble in a 
 cloister contributed materially to its wealth and 
 reputation, the priests preached the doctrine of 
 abandoning this sinful world and devoting life 
 to heaven's service. Their exhortations prevailed 
 even with emperors. 1 When a great personage 
 took the tonsure, he presented usually a sum of 
 money and often a tract of land to the temple 
 which received him, and the priests obtained sim- 
 ilar acknowledgment for preserving and praying 
 before the cenotaphs of the dead. 2 The temples 
 were not merely edifices for worship like Occi- 
 dental churches. In the vicinity of the sacred 
 structure where the image of Buddha was en- 
 shrined, there stood extensive buildings forming 
 the residences of the priests, and containing suites 
 of chambers where illustrious parishioners found 
 accommodation on ceremonial occasions. The 
 greater the prosperity of the temple, the more 
 numerous and magnificent these buildings, so that, 
 in some cases, a monastery constituted a little town 
 inhabited by thousands of monks. Living practi- 
 cally beyond the pale of The civil authority, these 
 communities of priests soon began to form mili- 
 tary organisations, which were used at first for 
 purposes of self-protection, but ultimately for all 
 kinds of lawlessness and aggression. Formidable 
 bands of halberdiers would issue from one monas- 
 tery to attack another, or even to raid and burn 
 
 7 See Appendix, note 42. 2 See Appendix, note 43. 
 
 184
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 the houses of their lay enemies, and if the Govern- 
 ment attempted to check them, or if they saw 
 reason to complain of any administrative interfer- 
 ence, they would march in a body to the Imperial 
 Palace or to the residence of the Prime Minister, 
 and prefer a clamorous protest. On such occasions 
 they were careful to carry with them a " sacred 
 car," or a " divine tree," l for the presence of these 
 emblems secured them effectually against armed 
 opposition. If the authorities declined to grant 
 them redress, they would roll their thousands of 
 rosaries between the palms of their hands with 
 frenzied vehemence, at the same time loudly 
 invoking the curses of heaven and the pains of the 
 nethermost hell on any one, however exalted his 
 rank, who ventured to oppose the will of Buddha. 
 Even the Emperor prostrated himself before this 
 multitudinous imprecation and conceded every- 
 thing demanded by the suppliants. It might be 
 supposed that such acts would have discredited 
 Buddhism in the eyes of the nation. But the 
 priests never raised their hand against the people. 
 Their feuds were with the usurping aristocrats, 
 and especially with the military class ; for the 
 latter, as the Heian epoch wore to its close, be- 
 gan to grasp the administrative power and to 
 exercise it in a manner subversive of much of the 
 progress with which Buddhism had been closely 
 associated from the time of its advent. 
 
 In spite of the vogue acquired by Buddhism, 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 44. 
 
 :8 5
 
 JAPAN 
 
 and in spite of the fact that it had apparently 
 absorbed Shinto, the latter retained its hold on the 
 heart of the nation, and its ceremonials continued 
 to be scrupulously observed in the Imperial Court. 
 Buddhist priests were strictly excluded from the 
 great rites of the indigenous creed. More extrav- 
 agant than ever were the restrictions imposed by 
 the canon of purity, which, with ancestor-worship, 
 may be called the basis of Shinto. Defilement, 
 originally attributed only to uncleanliness or to 
 the commission of sin, was extended in this age 
 of superstition to many inevitable incidents of 
 daily life such as deaths, births, 1 burials, in 
 memoriam ceremonies, the eating of flesh, the 
 tasting of anything acid, the application of the 
 moxa, contact with disease and so on. To have 
 been contaminated in any of these ways disqual- 
 ified a man for association with his friends and for 
 the discharge of his official duties, during a period 
 of varying duration. There was an elaborate chain 
 of vicarious defilement. If, A being defiled, B 
 happened to sit where A had sat, then B and all 
 his family incurred defilement ; and if, thereafter, 
 C went into B's residence, then C too became 
 defiled, but not the members of his family. If, 
 however, the process were reversed by B going 
 into C's house, then the taint fell upon the whole 
 of C's family. At C the chain ended: D might 
 enter C's house with impunity. 2 In the observance 
 of these rules most unnatural violence was done 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 45. 2 See Appendix, note 46. 
 
 T86
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 to the instinct of charity. Servants attacked by 
 serious maladies were sometimes shut into a se- 
 cluded building and left to die without succour, 
 or were even carried to an unfrequented place and 
 abandoned to their fate. A man having driven 
 his sick brother from his house, the patient, fail- 
 ing to obtain admittance to the residence of any 
 friend, was ultimately transported to the crema- 
 tion ground, where he lay till death came ; and 
 an apparently credible record tells how the corpse 
 of a mendicant friar lay unburied for a month in 
 the belfry of a temple, neither priests nor parish- 
 ioners venturing to incur defilement by removing 
 the body. Such indifference to the prompting 
 of mercy is strange to Japanese character. It 
 was an artificial mood bred of the superstitious 
 vapours that obscured men's moral vision in that 
 singular age. 
 
 The effeminacy of the Court nobles was as great 
 as their superstition, and their eccentricities sug- 
 gest that sensual indulgence had reduced them 
 to a state of imbecility. Tadahira, the younger 
 brother of Tokihira, the great Fujiwara chief, 
 painted a cuckoo on his fan, and imitated the 
 cry of the bird whenever he opened the fan. At 
 the time when he distinguished himself by these 
 callow antics he held high military rank. An- 
 other of the Fujiwara nobles (Yasutada) made a 
 habit of carrying hot rice-dumplings in the bosom 
 of his garment, for the sake of their warmth, and 
 throwing them away when they cooled, for the 
 
 187
 
 JAPAN 
 
 sake of displaying his opulence. To play the 
 samisen l was the accomplishment of a legislator ; 
 to turn a couplet the proof of a statesman's ca- 
 pacity. It is impossible to recognise the Japanese 
 of later eras in some of the hysterical creatures 
 with whom history peoples the Heian Court. 
 The stoical samurai, whose first rule of conduct 
 was imperturbability whatever gusts of passion 
 assailed him, had no representative among these 
 voluptuaries of the capital : they were as emo- 
 tional as the weakest of women. The disap- 
 pointment of not meeting his lover, or of brief 
 separation from her, produced an access of weep- 
 ing that drove a man to his couch, and no one 
 thought shame of shedding floods of idle tears 
 in the presence of verdant spring and solemn 
 autumn, or of sobbing in unison with the cricket's 
 chirp and the stag's cry. At no time in the na- 
 tion's story did wifely fidelity fall so low in public 
 esteem. Widows took a second or a third husband 
 without compunction. Divorced women did not 
 forfeit their eligibility for new ties. Wives had 
 often two or three " protectors." Husbands made 
 a boast of the number of mistresses they supported. 
 A wife was put away or a mistress deserted in the 
 ordinary routine of daily doings. An extraordinary 
 and scarcely comprehensible mania for poetical 
 composition contributed to this immorality. It 
 would have been almost a sacrilege to limit the 
 success of a gracefully turned couplet. Men and 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 47. 
 
 188
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 women surrendered themselves to the poetical de- 
 lirium, so that a dainty thought deftly expressed 
 came to be counted a sufficient price for a lady's 
 virtue. Imperial concubines received the ad- 
 dresses of court officials. To rob a man of his 
 wife did not shock society. Brothers and cousins 
 suffered such thefts at each other's hands. Fuji- 
 wara no Tokihira, regent and prime minister, pur- 
 chased his uncle's wife. Mothers received the 
 embraces of their step-sons. Such vices among 
 the patrician classes found a rude reflection in 
 the conduct of the plebeians. Women were 
 expected, or compelled, to be facile under all 
 circumstances, and in the general extermination 
 of shame Buddhist priests took their part by 
 openly violating their vows of celibacy or 
 abandoning the cowl for the sake of pursuing 
 an illicit intrigue. 
 
 This immorality was not accompanied by 
 immodesty. On the contrary, social punctilio 
 exacted the closest observance. A love affair 
 might be notorious, but it must never be scan- 
 dalous or obtrusive. Even the preliminaries of 
 marriage consisted often in an interchange of 
 letters and poems rather than in meetings or 
 conversations. A man estimated the conjugal 
 qualities of a young lady by her skill in finding 
 scholarly similes and her perception of the cadence 
 of words. If, indeed, a woman was so fortunate 
 as to acquire a reputation for learning, she pos- 
 sessed a certificate of universal virtue and amia- 
 
 189
 
 JAPAN 
 
 bility. Therefore polite society tabooed every 
 form of wooing more demonstrative than the use 
 of pen and paper. Nothing could exceed the de- 
 corum of the aristocratic lady. She hid her de- 
 pravity behind a mask of demureness. To allow 
 her face to be seen in public or her voice to be heard 
 by a stranger was a shocking solecism. If she 
 had not a carriage to ride abroad, she covered her 
 face with a hood. She never addressed a man of 
 the lower orders except through a servant, and 
 even then did not permit him to ascend to the 
 level where she sat. With one of a better, though 
 still inferior, grade she conversed directly, divided 
 from him, however, by a paper sliding-door; and 
 the next step of condescension was to talk from 
 behind a screen, hiding her face with a fan. Even 
 her own step-brother must not be met face to 
 face. 
 
 The pastimes of the upper classes reached their 
 highest point of elaboration in this era. At the 
 head of all stood the game of competitive-couplet 
 making (uta-aivase). The manner of this pursuit, 
 as practised in the Nara epoch, has already been 
 briefly described. New importance was given to 
 it by the Empress Koko, at the close of the ninth 
 century. In her Palace of Horikawa she organ- 
 ised poem parties on an unprecedented scale. 
 The proprieties were strictly observed. On one 
 side of the room the ladies were marshalled, on 
 the other the men, and a genuine contest of lit- 
 erary skill ensued, every guest being required to 
 
 190
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 compose a stanza on a given subject. Sometimes 
 Chinese poetic models were followed ; sometimes 
 Japanese ; sometimes both. But it is not to be 
 understood that the rhyming terminals of Chinese 
 verse formed at any time a visible feature of 
 Japanese poetical composition. Here, indeed, is 
 exposed one of the most irrational conceits that 
 the literature of any country furnishes. Many of 
 the Japanese poetasters of the Heian era took 
 infinite pains to compose couplets which, they 
 supposed, would satisfy the rhyming requirements 
 of Chinese verse if the Chinese sounds of the 
 ideographs were accurately given and Chinese 
 syntactical order duly preserved. But the true 
 Chinese pronunciation of an ideograph was never 
 known in Japan, and the Chinese order of words 
 had to be changed to make a sentence intelligible 
 to Japanese ears. Hence a verselet laboriously 
 constructed according to the Chinese laws, lost 
 its rhyming terminals altogether when the ideo- 
 graphs received their true pronunciation, and, in 
 fact, retained nothing of its original character 
 except the sense. To expect that an English 
 verbatim translation of the Bucolics of Virgil 
 must fall naturally into hexameters and pentam- 
 eters, were not more reasonable than to antici- 
 pate that a Japanese rendering of a Chinese 
 couplet should preserve the rhyme and metre of 
 the Chinese original. It was characteristic of 
 the silly artificialism of the time that men's ener- 
 gies should be absorbed in the manufacture of 
 
 191
 
 JAPAN 
 
 such deformities. The genuine Japanese style 
 of couplet was chiefly in vogue, however, though 
 always with increasing loss of the old vigour of 
 thought, and increasing reliance on tricks of dic- 
 tion and trivialities of conception. Several of 
 these poem-composing parties became historical 
 events, not merely for the sake of the couplets 
 produced, but also because of the magnificence 
 and tastefulness of the entertainments. Often a 
 feature of the arrangements was a display of choice 
 flowering plants which served to inspire the poet- 
 asters and to reward the most successful. Loose 
 as were the morals of the time, the language of 
 these verses was seldom indelicate. But in the 
 closing days of the Heian epoch, when luxury 
 and self-indulgence reached their extreme point, 
 a new pastime was introduced, the competi- 
 tive composition of love-letters. In these all 
 phases of carnal affection were depicted or sug- 
 gested by the aid of refined and scholarly 
 phraseology. 1 Nevertheless, in everything that 
 concerned outward appearance, the conventions 
 of decorum were observed with the utmost strict- 
 ness in all Japanese polite pastimes at what- 
 ever era. The costumes and customs of an 
 Occidental ball-room in the nineteenth century 
 would have seemed altogether shocking to 
 mediaeval Japanese. 
 
 Gathering plants of the sweet-flag in June and 
 comparing the length of their roots ; writing verses 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 48. 
 
 192
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 or drawing pictures on fans supplied by the host ; 
 composing poetic conundrums; fitting together the 
 valves of shells on the inside of which poems were 
 inscribed and decorative designs painted ; burning 
 incense, an amusement so elaborate as to amount 
 to a science, its paraphernalia of the most costly 
 and beautiful description ; playing chess or go ; 
 reconstructing celebrated stanzas from one or 
 two clue words ; writing lists of ideographs with 
 a common part ; * fan lotteries ; foot-ball and 
 hawking, these were the chief amusements of 
 the aristocrats in the Heian epoch. Betting was 
 added to give zest to the games. But the stakes 
 did not take the form of money : a work of art, 
 a roll of brocade, a house, a feast, a horse, and so 
 on were objects that a gentleman might play for, 
 though gold or silver as media of exchange must 
 not enter his thoughts. Japanese foot-ball de- 
 rived originally from China bore no resemblance 
 to the rough-and-tumble contests of the Occident. 
 It was simply the art of kicking a ball high and 
 keeping it continuously off the ground. A certain 
 Narimichi, whose official position corresponded 
 to that of a Minister of State, gained undying fame 
 by his skill in this amusement. After devoting a 
 considerable part of seven thousand consecutive 
 days to the practice of the art, rising even from 
 his sick-bed for the purpose, he attained such 
 lightness and deftness of foot that, while kicking 
 the ball, he traversed the shoulders of a row of 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 49. 
 
 '3 193
 
 JAPAN 
 
 servitors, including a tonsured priest, and the men 
 thus trodden on declared that they had felt nothing 
 more than a hawk hopping along their backs, 
 the priest saying that for his part it had seemed 
 simply as though some one had put a hat on 
 his bald pate. That is the historical record! 
 The patience that supported this statesman 
 through nineteen years of perpetual foot-ball 
 practice, and the terms used by the annalists to 
 describe his achievements, are equally suggestive 
 of the mood of the era. 
 
 Love for flowers, which amounts almost to a pas- 
 sion in Japan, had declared itself long before the 
 time now under review, but, like everything else, 
 it assumed an extravagant character in that epoch. 
 Large trees were completely covered with artificial 
 blossoms of the plum or the cherry to recall the 
 spring, ancient pines overhanging miniature lakes 
 were festooned with wistaria blooms in autumn, 
 snow was piled in vast heaps so as to preserve 
 some traces of it under sunny skies. To be un- 
 natural, abnormal, unreasonable, was to possess a 
 special charm. One of the manias of the time 
 was to keep pet dogs and cats. The annals speak 
 of the " delightful voice and winning ways " of 
 the cat, and tell how not only were cats and dogs 
 called by human beings' names, but official titles 
 also were bestowed on them, and religious ser- 
 vices were performed when they died. A pet cat 
 in the Palace bore kittens in the year 999, where- 
 upon the Emperor and the Ministers of State sent 
 
 194
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 presents appropriate to occasions of childbirth, 
 and a Court lady was appointed to nurse the kit- 
 tens. This incident provoked ridicule among 
 the public, but did not seem inconsistent with 
 the ways of thj Court. 
 
 195
 
 Chapter VII 
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH (Continued) 
 
 (End of the Eighth to the Middle of the Twelfth Century) 
 
 IT was in this epoch that Japanese civilisa- 
 tion assumed many of the external features 
 so much and so justly admired by foreigners 
 in modern times. The nation's profound 
 appreciation of natural beauties asserted itself in 
 the embellishment of the new capital, though 
 the prim mathematical regularity of the city's 
 Chinese plan might well have deterred any exer- 
 cise of Japanese taste, which abhors stiffness and 
 formality. Along the sides of the streets willows 
 and cherries were planted. Limpid streams 
 flowed from green hills that held the city in 
 their embrace. Every mansion had its park, 
 and in every park the four seasons found well- 
 devised opportunities for the display of their 
 special charms. From temples whose colossal 
 roofs looked down upon the dwellings of their 
 parishioners, the sweet and sonorous voices of 
 mighty bells tolled the hours, and the sound of 
 chaunted litanies summoned people to bow be- 
 fore altars resplendent with gold and silver. 
 Each month brought an opportunity for the city 
 
 196
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 to make holiday. Sometimes people flocked to 
 watch the spring sun rise above the cherry- 
 blossoms at Sagano ; sometimes they went to see 
 autumn moonlight bathe the maples by the 
 Oi-gawa. Sometimes they lavished great sums 
 on brilliant festivals in honour of the numerous 
 deities, whose places of worship had now become 
 comparatively magnificent in architectural pro- 
 portions and interior decoration. Many of the 
 graces that distinguished all phases of Japanese 
 mediaeval life and all branches of Japanese 
 mediaeval art were still wanting, or only present 
 in embryo, the models and fashions imported 
 wholesale from China not having yet been 
 purged of their formal conventionalism. But 
 the nation had turned its back finally on every- 
 thing rude and archaic, and taken a long stride 
 toward the heights of refinement it ultimately 
 reached. 
 
 Architectural designs were obtained in the 
 main from China. During the Nara epoch 
 the construction of temples had chiefly occupied 
 attention, but in the Heian era the palaces of 
 the sovereign and the mansions of ministers and 
 nobles were built on a scale of unprecedented 
 grandeur. It is true that all the structures of 
 the time had the defect of a box-like appear- 
 ance. Massive, towering roofs, which impart 
 an air of stateliness even to a wooden building 
 and yet, by their graceful curves, avoid any sug- 
 gestion of ponderosity, were still confined to 
 
 197
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Buddhist edifices. The architect of private 
 dwellings attached more importance to satin- 
 surfaced boards and careful joinery than to any 
 appearance of strength or solidity. Spaciousness 
 and elegance, however, were not altogether want- 
 ing. The main gate of the Palace was flanked 
 on either side by guard-houses having a forest of 
 pagoda-like minarets, which served as watch- 
 towers, and there stood on its east and west, in- 
 side, two buildings, where officials assembled 
 before proceeding to the place of audience, 
 which consisted of twelve halls, symmetrically 
 disposed and each having its own status. Be- 
 yond these there was the " hall of pleasure and 
 plenty," where social entertainments were held ; 
 the " hall of the word of truth " for rites of wor- 
 ship ; the " hall of military virtue " for soldierly 
 exercises ; the " hall of central tranquillisation " 
 for venerating the spirits of the imperial ances- 
 tors ; and, finally, the residence of the sovereign, 
 comprising sixteen halls and five galleries. 1 At 
 the entrance to the principal of these sixteen 
 halls the Shishinden or " purple hall of the 
 north star " there were planted a cherry-tree 
 and an orange-tree, the " guardian cherry of the 
 left " and the " guardian orange of the right." 
 The floor of all these edifices was raised some six 
 feet above the ground, and was reached by flights 
 of wooden steps placed at frequent intervals. 
 The general plan excepted, there was little to 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 50. 
 
 198
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 distinguish the Imperial Palace from the man- 
 sion of a great nobleman or minister of State. 
 The latter consisted of a principal hall, where 
 the master of the house lived, ate, and slept 
 there being no practically recognised distinctions 
 of dining-room, sitting-room and bedroom, 
 and of three suites of chambers, disposed on the 
 north, the east, and the west of the principal hall. 
 In the northern suite the lady of the house 
 dwelt, 1 the eastern and western suites being al- 
 lotted to the other members of the family. It 
 was essential that no room should face the north, 
 lest supernal influences of malign tendency should 
 pervade the household. Corridors joined the 
 principal hall to the subordinate edifices, for as 
 yet the idea had not been conceived of having 
 more than one chamber under the same roof. 
 
 In front of this row of linked buildings a garden 
 was laid out. Much care and sometimes large 
 sums of money were lavished on its construction. 
 But the general plan was almost uniform. Little 
 of the great variety of landscape, breadth of 
 design, and subtlety of arrangement that ulti- 
 mately distinguished Japanese parks could be 
 seen in the gardens of the Heian epoch. Any 
 one who has made a study of Chinese paintings 
 must have recognised that they fall into one of 
 two broad categories, literary pictures and artistic 
 pictures. The former are to the latter what 
 the stiff formality of the square ideograph is to 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 51. 
 
 199
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the graceful softness of the cursive script. In the 
 literary picture, the rocks assume fantastic shapes ; 
 the cliffs marshal themselves in strange, unnatural 
 phalanxes ; the trees, gnarled and distorted, grow 
 in perplexing places, and the whole scene suggests 
 rigid irregularity and conventional quaintness. 
 Something of that was visible in the gardens of 
 the Heian time. The general design had only 
 one orthodox type. A lake, not ungracefully 
 shaped, occupied the centre, surrounding an arti- 
 ficial island to which wooden bridges gave access. 
 Trees of various kinds, notably pines, trained with 
 infinite patience into strange curves of stem and 
 wayward disposition of branch, overhung the lake, 
 presenting strong contrasts of foliage. A water- 
 fall, or the semblance of one if the reality could 
 not be achieved, fed the lake from the south, and 
 on its eastern and western shores, respectively, 
 stood an " angling grotto " and a " hermitage of 
 spring waters," whither the family and their 
 friends repaired on summer evenings, gaining ac- 
 cess to these buildings by corridors which formed 
 the boundaries of the garden and were recessed 
 at intervals by waiting-rooms for domestics and 
 guards. In the most orthodox park a limpid 
 stream flowed, with ribbon-like windings, from 
 the row of buildings to the eastern and western 
 sides of the lake, and was spanned here and there 
 by bridges of varied form. Round the margin 
 of the lake and at the feet of the " angling grotto " 
 lay rocks of many hues, beaten into fantastic 
 
 200
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 shapes by centuries of collision with rushing 
 waters. The arrangement of these rocks did not 
 yet suggest the complete concealment of art which 
 was attained in later ages. Although the great 
 painter, Kose no Kanaoka (850-890), whose per- 
 ception of the glories of decorative art was almost 
 a revelation, devoted his genius to the planning 
 of parks and rockeries, his designs did not break 
 away altogether from the hard stiff style of the 
 Chinese horticulturists, nor give much promise 
 of the delightfully natural originality that dis- 
 tinguished the work of his successors in subse- 
 quent eras. Nevertheless he certainly showed his 
 countrymen that the Chinese " garden of the 
 sacred fountain " (shinsen-yen}, which they had 
 hitherto regarded as an inviolable model, might 
 be replaced by other conceptions, and within the 
 two centuries immediately following his death, 
 Kyoto was enriched with a number of detached 
 palaces and noblemen's villas sufficiently grand 
 and beautiful to be recorded in the pages of his- 
 tory. Of these the most famous was the " tiled 
 hall " (Kawara-in] of the Minamoto chief, Toru ; 
 so famous, indeed, that its owner received the 
 pseudonym of the " tyled first-minister" (Kawara- 
 no-Sadaijin}. This villa has a special interest be- 
 cause its park showed the first definite attempt to 
 reproduce in miniature one of the country's most 
 celebrated scenic gems, the " salt-shore " (shio- 
 hama] of the province of Mutsu. Fidelity of imi- 
 tation was carried to the extent of boiling down 
 
 2OI
 
 JAPAN 
 
 eight hundred gallons of sea-water daily, and put- 
 ting the salt into the park lake so that the traces 
 of its water might be realistically briny. Kyoto 
 had no less than ten " detached palaces " by the 
 beginning of the twelfth century, and on days of 
 festival their western gates were thrown open for 
 the admission of all visitors without distinction 
 of rank. But it did not occur to any annalist or 
 writer of the era to pen detailed descriptions of 
 these buildings or their surroundings. All that 
 can be certainly affirmed is that nature in her 
 normal aspects began at this time to be taken as 
 the best guide by planners of parks and gardens. 
 
 The area occupied by the buildings and the 
 park was enclosed, in the case of a princely or 
 noble mansion, by a high earthen wall having a 
 fosse at its foot ; but people of inferior rank had 
 to be content with a wooden fence. Social status 
 influenced the form of the principal entrance-gate 
 also. The " four-footed gate," that is to say, a 
 two-leaved gate having a roof supported by four 
 pillars, was the most aristocratic ; a " two-footed " 
 gate, still with two leaves, came next in order of 
 respectability, and a postern was the humblest 
 of all. 
 
 The interior arrangement and furniture of an 
 aristocrat's mansion showed much refinement in 
 this era, though the architect suffered himself to 
 be trammelled by rules which he afterwards vio- 
 lated with advantage. The principal hall dis- 
 tinguished externally from the minor edifices by 
 
 202
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 having a four-faced roof without gables, whereas 
 they had roofs of only two faces with gables at 
 the ends was usually of the same dimensions, 
 42 feet square. Its centre was occupied by a 
 " parent chamber," 30 feet square, around which 
 ran an ambulatory (hisashi} and a veranda (yen- 
 gawa), each 6 feet wide. The " mother cham- 
 ber " and the ambulatory were ceiled, sometimes 
 with interlacing strips of bark or broad laths, so 
 as to produce a plaited effect ; sometimes with 
 plain boards. The veranda had no ceiling. 
 Sliding doors, a characteristic feature of modern 
 Japanese houses, had not yet come into use, and 
 no means were provided for closing the veranda, 
 so that, at night, the space included in the 
 " mother chamber " and the ambulatory was 
 alone habitable. The ambulatory, however, was 
 surrounded by a wall of latticed timber or plain 
 boards, the lower half of which could be removed 
 altogether, whereas the upper half, being sus- 
 pended from hinges, could be swung upward and 
 outward. It was thus possible to regulate the 
 amount of light and air admitted. Privacy was 
 obtainable by hanging blinds of split bamboo in 
 the place of the latticed wall, and communica- 
 tion from the ambulatory to the veranda was by 
 doors, three on each side of the room, opening 
 outward. As for the " mother chamber," it was 
 separated from the ambulatory by similar bamboo 
 blinds, with silk cords for raising or lowering 
 them, or by curtains. Round the outer edge of 
 
 203
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the veranda ran a railing, broken at three places 
 to give access to wooden steps by which the 
 garden was reached, and the main entrance had 
 a porch to shelter palanquins and ox-carriages. 
 
 Such was the general scheme of all aristocratic 
 dwellings. It was derived in great part from the 
 plan of Buddhist temples. The idea of dividing 
 the interior space into several rooms had not yet 
 been conceived. Neither was the floor covered 
 with thick rectangular mats of uniform size, fit- 
 ting together so exactly as to form a perfectly 
 level surface. That extensive use of tatami, as 
 this essentially Japanese kind of mat is called, 
 came into fashion at a later period. In the 
 Heian epoch floors were boarded, mats being 
 sometimes laid in a limited part of the room 
 only, and always in the space which served for 
 a bed. The aristocratic sleeping-place of the 
 time was a species of movable matted dais. Its 
 sides were lacquered, and posts rose from each 
 corner to support a canopy and curtains of silk 
 and fine gauze, a mosquito net in fact. This 
 drapery was held in place round the base of the 
 dais by means of weights in the form of Dogs of 
 Fo, chiselled in bronze or silver, and the mats 
 had broad borders of brocade for patrician dwell- 
 ings and of coarse cotton cloth for humbler folks. 
 Toward the close of the epoch it became cus- 
 tomary to cover the floors entirely with mats, 1 
 especially in rooms reserved for the habitation of 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 52. 
 
 204
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 women, and the lattice-work panels and hinged 
 doors surrounding the " parent chamber " were 
 replaced by sliding doors which, being mere 
 skeletons of interlacing ribs covered with thin 
 white silk, 1 acted like windows for admitting 
 light. Then, also, the partitioning of wide in- 
 terior spaces into several rooms began to be prac- 
 tised, and the partitioning was effected by means 
 of sliding doors similar to those mentioned above, 
 or covered with thicker paper which now be- 
 gan to offer a field for the brush of decorative 
 artists. As years passed and as the scale of living 
 grew more and more luxurious in Kyoto, the 
 dimensions of great noblemen's mansions became 
 extravagant, and at the beginning of the eleventh 
 century an imperial edict limited the size of a 
 house to two hundred and forty yards square, at 
 the same time imposing other restrictions as to 
 the materials of roofs and walls. These vetoes 
 proved quite ineffective. 
 
 House-furniture was then, and always remained, 
 a comparatively insignificant affair. The Japan- 
 ese never had to trouble themselves much about 
 such things as curtains, carpets, chairs, sofas, or 
 tables. When an aristocrat wanted to read, for 
 example, a small cushion was placed on the 
 floor for his seat, having on the left an arm-rest, 
 in front a lectern, on the right a bookcase. All 
 these objects were made of rich lacquer. A 
 screen also stood close at hand ; not the six-leaved 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 53. 
 
 205
 
 JAPAN 
 
 folding screen of later times, but a silk curtain 
 depending from a horizontal bar, which was sup- 
 ported by a slender pillar fixed in a heavy socket. 
 A metal mirror mounted on an elaborate tripod- 
 stand, a clothes-horse, usually of gold lacquer, 
 and a species of low two-shelved table on which 
 stood a censer and a box of incense-implements, 
 completed the furniture of the apartment in 
 warm weather, but in winter there was added a 
 box for burning charcoal metal braziers not 
 having yet come into fashion. For lighting 
 purposes the commonest device was a rush-wick 
 laid in a shallow vessel of oil from which the 
 end of the wick projected. This vessel was 
 either supported on a bamboo tripod, or fixed to 
 an upright rod moving in a vertical socket, so 
 that the height of the light could be regulated 
 at will. The annals speak of " combustible 
 earth " and " combustible water," in other words, 
 coal and oil, as having been presented to the 
 Court in the middle of the seventh century by 
 the inhabitants of a part of Japan correspond- 
 ing to the present province of Echigo, 1 but it 
 does not appear that coal was ever employed 
 in ancient times. Tallow candles seem to have 
 been in use from the ninth century. They 
 were set on a pricket stand. In short, the 
 Japanese of the Heian epoch were as well sup- 
 plied with lighting apparatus as any of their 
 successors until modern times. 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 54. 
 
 2O6
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 For riding abroad ox-carriages and palanquins 
 were used. The palanquin, essentially a Chinese 
 institution, was originally reserved for the sover- 
 eign, the Empress, and the chief ritualist, an 
 imperial prince, but that rule ultimately lost 
 its exclusive force. In general form the palan- 
 quin bore a strong resemblance to the sedan-chair 
 of the eighteenth century in England. The 
 shafts, however, were of great length, and a long 
 curtain of thin silk completely draped the body, 
 concealing the inmate from public gaze. Some- 
 times richest gold lacquer covered the wood- 
 work of this vehicle ; sometimes the body, shafts, 
 and roof were of glossy black, contrasting finely 
 with the snow-white curtain and the gilded 
 mountings. A very much more elaborate and 
 brilliant equipage was the ox-carriage. Its portly 
 wheels and strong shafts were generally black, 
 but the body glowed with richly tinted lacquer, 
 and was set off by ornaments of silver elaborately 
 chased and chiselled. Delicate bamboo blinds, 
 coloured green and having bands of red brocade 
 and tassels of silk, hung at the four sides, and the 
 ox, generally a jet-black beast of fine proportions, 
 was handsomely caparisoned with red harness. 
 One of these carriages, moving along at a stately 
 pace and escorted by a strong body of officers in 
 flowing robes of silk and brocade and men at 
 arms with picturesque costumes and glittering 
 accoutrements, presented a spectacle in harmony 
 with the luxurious extravagance of the time. 
 
 207
 
 JAPAN 
 
 " Carriage folk " stood on a special social pedestal 
 then just as they do now. Everybody kept a 
 carriage if he could possibly afford the luxury, 
 and everybody that could not afford it tried to 
 borrow one for public occasions. Now and then 
 economical sovereigns made efforts to check the 
 spend|hrift tendency of the aristocrats in these 
 matters, but no permanent success was achieved. 
 
 There was an elaborate code of procedure for 
 the guidance of equipages meeting en route. 
 Whether to dismount from horseback, whether 
 to stop one's carriage, whether to get out of it 
 and stand on the road ; whether even to unyoke 
 the ox whether to limit the etiquette to an 
 attendant's obeisance, all these and other points 
 were regulated by accurate canons. 
 
 As to costume, comparing the Heian epoch 
 with the Nara, there is found in the former a 
 marked tendency to increased elaboration and 
 fuller dimensions. The head-dress, in the case 
 of princes and principal military officials, became 
 again an imposing structure glittering with jewels ; 
 the sleeves grew so large that they hung to the 
 knees when a man's arms were crossed, and the 
 trousers also were made full and baggy, so that 
 they resembled a divided skirt. Unprecedented 
 importance attached to the patterns of the rich 
 silks and brocades used for garments. The sover- 
 eign's robe of State was necessarily ornamented 
 with a design of nine objects, the sun, the 
 moon, the stars, a mountain, a dragon, etc., 
 
 208
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 but no restrictions applied in the case of subjects. 
 The designer was free to conventionalise his mo- 
 tives or to follow nature closely, and the embroid- 
 erer's needle came to the assistance of the weaver's 
 shuttle. From this era may be said to have com- 
 menced the manufacture of the tasteful and gor- 
 geous textile fabrics for which Japan afterwards 
 became famous. The decorative design on a 
 garment did not serve as a badge of rank. Colour 
 indicated social status. The sovereign wore a 
 yellow robe in the Palace and a red one when he 
 went abroad. Deep purple and crimson followed 
 these colours in order of dignity. A fop's ideal 
 was to wear several suits, one above the other, 
 disposing them so that their various colours 
 showed in harmoniously contrasting lines at the 
 folds on the bosom and at the edges of the long 
 sleeves. A successful costume created a sensation 
 in Court circles. Its wearer became the hero 
 of the hour, and under the pernicious influence 
 of such ambition men began even to powder their 
 faces and rouge their cheeks like women. 
 
 The costume of women reached the acme of 
 unpracticality and extravagance in this epoch. 
 Long flowing hair was essential. Unless her 
 tresses trailed on the ground when she sat down, 
 a lady's toilet was counted contemptible, and if 
 her locks swept two feet below her heels as she 
 walked, her style was perfect. Then, what with 
 developing the volume and multiplying the num- 
 ber of her robes, and wearing above her trousers 
 14. 209
 
 JAPAN 
 
 a many-plyed train which followed her like a 
 gigantic enlargement of the fan that never for a 
 moment left her hand, she always seemed to be 
 struggling to emerge from a cataract of habili- 
 ments that threatened at any moment to over- 
 whelm her. The records say, and the paintings of 
 contemporary artists show, that twenty garments, 
 one above the other, went to the costume of a 
 fine lady a la mode of the tenth and eleventh cen- 
 turies. Of course the object of this extravagance 
 was not to produce an appearance of bulk. On 
 the contrary, the aim of a well-dressed woman 
 was to have her robes cut so deftly and to don 
 them so skilfully that they conveyed the impres- 
 sion, not of a mass of stuffs, but of a play of har- 
 monious colours. There was nothing garish or 
 rainbow-like in the combination. The ground 
 colour that is to say, the colour of the outer gar- 
 ment seemed at first to be all-pervading ; but 
 closer inspection showed that where these multi- 
 tudinous robes lay folded across the bosom and 
 where their pendent sleeves telescoped into one 
 another, each ply receded by a fraction of an inch 
 from the ply below it, so that the whole pro- 
 duced the effect of a slightly oblique section 
 made across numerous superimposed layers of 
 differently tinted silks. Much attention was di- 
 rected also to the art of transmitted colour. By 
 using material thin enough to give passage to a 
 breath of the underlying garment's hue, and by 
 carefully studying, not the science of colours, but 
 
 210
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 their practical values in combination and in con- 
 trast, the aristocratic lady of the Heian epoch 
 dressed herself so that she seemed to move in an 
 atmosphere of delightful tints, tender and rich 
 but never crude or obtrusive. Fashion, being 
 governed by the instincts of art rather than the 
 suggestions of fancy, was not capricious. There 
 were few changes of shape or style. All that 
 was necessary was to have robes of appropriate 
 colour for each season robes resembling the 
 bloom of the plum and the cherry in spring ; 
 that of the azalea and the scrabra in summer ; 
 that of the bush-clover, the yellow or white 
 chrysanthemum, the dying maple leaf and the 
 flower of the ominameshi (Patrinia scabiosefolia) 
 in autumn, and that of the pine spray and the 
 withered leaf in winter. There were colours 
 that might be worn at all times of the year, but 
 the four seasons had their distinctive tints. In a 
 contemporary record of a fete at the Palace of 
 the Emperor Shirakawara in the year 1117, it is 
 stated that forty ladies made their appearance 
 costumed in the most novel and beautiful styles. 
 Some wore as many as twenty-five suits, showing 
 glimpses of purple, of crimson, of grass-green, of 
 wild-rose yellow and of sapan-wood brown, their 
 sleeves and skirts decorated with golden designs. 
 Others, by subtle commingling of willow sprays 
 and cherry blossoms and by embroidered patterns 
 picked out with gems, represented the poem of 
 the jewels and the flowers. Others had costumes 
 
 211
 
 JAPAN 
 
 to recall that "water is nature's mirror; " or that 
 " the sun of spring disperses doubt and care," or 
 that " love lurks in summer's hazes." 
 
 But if the ladies of the Heian epoch took 
 nature's guidance in choosing colours and deco- 
 rative patterns for their costumes, they relied 
 solely on art in making up their faces. The 
 eyebrows were either plucked out by the roots 
 or shaved off, and in their stead two black spots 
 were painted on the forehead ; the teeth were 
 stained until they shone like ebony ; the face and 
 neck were covered with white powder, and the 
 cheeks were rouged. 1 
 
 The rule still held that ladies must never show 
 their faces in public. Those that had no car- 
 riages for riding abroad enveloped their heads in 
 a species of silk hood. This hood helped them 
 to manage their long hair also. The back hair 
 was disposed under the hood, and the ends were 
 pushed into the girdle. Generally when a lady 
 went abroad on foot, she wore a wide-rimmed 
 picturesque hat, and an umbrella was held over 
 her head by an attendant. 
 
 It is to be noted that men showed greater 
 extravagance than women in the matter of cos- 
 tume and ornaments. The romantic Emperor 
 Kwazan carried a mirror on his hat, and in the 
 reign (9871011) of his successor, one of the 
 Fujiwara magnates had crystal notches for his 
 arrows. Bows, arrows, and swords became mere 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 55. 
 
 112
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 ornaments. The sheath of the sword, the quiver, 
 and even the bow were magnificently lacquered 
 and sometimes studded with gems. Gold lacquer 
 was used even for ornamenting the sleeves. No 
 self-respecting aristocrat failed to have a looking- 
 glass on his person or to apply perfume to his 
 clothes. A dignified bearing was sought by 
 severity of line, and in the beginning of the 
 twelfth century this foible had been carried so 
 far that a well-dressed man looked as if his gar- 
 ments had been cut out of boards, and his move- 
 ments were carefully studied to enhance that 
 effect. He expended as much thought on his 
 head-gear as a modern lady of the West does 
 upon her hat, for though the orthodox shapes of 
 head-covering did not present much variety, there 
 were many little points upon which care and 
 taste might be exercised. Colours, as has been 
 already shown, served to distinguish ranks under 
 the system inaugurated in the seventh century, 
 but that rule having lost much of its force in 
 the Heian epoch, families commenced to design 
 badges for purposes of distinction. A long skirt 
 also began to be used in this era as a mark of 
 social status, but the innovation did not receive 
 extravagant development until the succeeding 
 period. 
 
 The viands of the time and the method of 
 cooking and serving them, though not so varied 
 and elaborate as those of modern days, neverthe- 
 less indicated a high state of refinement. It is 
 
 213
 
 JAPAN 
 
 not possible, of course, to speak with much detail 
 of this subject, but, reducing the matter to arith- 
 metic, it appears that rice was prepared in ten 
 different ways ; that there were nineteen staples 
 of fish diet and twenty-two ways of cooking 
 them ; that there were three relishes ; nine edible 
 sea-weeds ; twenty-four kinds of vegetable ; seven- 
 teen varieties of fruit ; eleven kinds of cake ; six 
 kinds of flesh of animals and birds, and three 
 kinds of beverages. 1 Religious superstition inter- 
 fered with diet as with everything else. The 
 flesh of deer, boar, and cattle ceased to be eaten, 
 but as the sport of flying hawks at wild duck and 
 pheasants survived even the veto of Buddhism, 
 the flesh of those birds as well as of barn-door 
 fowl appeared constantly on the tables of the 
 upper classes. Milk, however, and a species of 
 cheese or butter obtained from it, went entirely 
 out of vogue. Many combinations of edibles 
 were tabooed from superstitious motives. For 
 example, scsamum must not be eaten with onion ; 
 vinegar with clams ; parsley with the flesh of the 
 wild boar ; ginger with plums and so on. Nearly 
 every month, too, had its list of forbidden foods. 
 A strange custom had its origin in the impor- 
 tance attached to cleanliness in the art of cooking. 
 Before dinner was served, the cook, dressed in 
 ceremonial robes, came into the guest-chamber, 
 made his obeisance, placed a cooking-board on 
 the ground, and holding a knife in his right hand 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 56. 
 
 2I 4
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 and a pair of long chopsticks in his left, pro- 
 ceeded to kill a fish and prepare it for the fire, 
 never allowing anything to touch it except the 
 knife and the sticks. Seen for the first time, the 
 spectacle was frank enough to be disgusting ; but 
 its revolting features were soon forgotten in con- 
 sideration of the dexterity, grace, and solemn 
 dignity of the officiating cook's movements and 
 demeanour. Sometimes the host himself took 
 a conventional part in this function by way of 
 special compliment to his guests. 
 
 Considering how much the Japanese borrowed 
 from China during the interval from the seventh 
 to the twelfth century, it is not surprising to find 
 that, like the Chinese, they used a large table for 
 dining purposes. But they did not employ chairs 
 or stools, nor were dishes handed round. They 
 sat on cushions, and all the viands for each diner 
 were ranged before him in utensils reserved for 
 him alone. Even salt, vinegar, and soy were not 
 in common, every convive having his own special 
 supply. According to Chinese custom the prin- 
 cipal viand is piled in a large bowl or dish from 
 which all help themselves at will. Such a method 
 could never have been reconciled with the Japan- 
 ese instinct of cleanliness. Besides, the Japanese 
 considered that a good dinner must be picturesque 
 as well as palatable. The shaping and decorating 
 of trays and stands, and the arranging of the 
 viands upon them became a deeply studied art. 
 Fine porcelains were not yet procurable, for 
 
 215
 
 JAPAN 
 
 China, under the Sung emperors, had not begun 
 to manufacture on a large scale the delicate, trans- 
 lucid ware for which she afterwards became 
 famous, and Japan's ceramic ability was on a 
 still lower level. Cups and bowls of solid celadon 
 stone-ware filled the place of honour at aristo- 
 cratic feasts, and tea, 1 on the rare occasions of 
 its use, was drunk from cups of unglazed pottery, 
 as was sake also, though a favourite decanter for 
 serving it took the form of a section of fresh, 
 green bamboo. Effects of purity and due subor- 
 dination were studied by fashioning many of the 
 trays and stands out of milk-white pine, cut to 
 the thinness of a wafer, the viands themselves 
 being so disposed as to give a play of colour and 
 an air of variety. Lacquered utensils also had a 
 place at the board, but were always in a minority. 
 The menus of two dinners given by Fujiwara 
 Ministers of State in the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries have been handed down by annalists. 
 One of them shows that arithmetical symmetry 
 was considered as well as the pleasures of the 
 palate. There were eight entrees rice-dump- 
 lings, three varieties of oranges, chestnuts (boiled), 
 dried persimmons, pears and jujubes ; eight 
 "dry viands" steamed clam, dried bird's flesh, 
 dried fish in slices (eaten with soy and vinegar), 
 roasted sea-bream, fried suzuki (percalabrax}, 
 grilled salmon, roasted cuttle-fish and lobsters ; 
 and eight " moist viands " carp, trout, salt-trout 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 57. 
 
 2l6
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 boiled, pheasant (steamed with mushrooms), 
 salmon-trout, boiled sea-bream, cuttle-fish soup, 
 and suzuki soup. All these seem to have been 
 served at once. When a guest took his place, he 
 found that his section of the table bore a phalanx 
 of vessels and utensils marshalled with symmetri- 
 cal regularity. Immediately before him were a 
 pair of chopsticks and a spoon ; beyond these lay 
 an empty cup, and, ranged in a line from left to 
 right, having the cup for the centre, were a plate 
 of sliced pears, a vessel of vinegar, a decanter of 
 sake, and a pot of soy. Beyond these and parallel 
 to them a row of four dishes were set, containing 
 jelly-fish, trepang and beche-de-mer. These con- 
 stituted the hors d'auvre. Beyond them, mar- 
 shalled in two horizontal ranks of four plates 
 each, were the entrees ; and on the right and left, 
 respectively, were the eight " dry viands " and 
 the eight " moist viands," each group in two 
 vertical ranks of four plates per rank. 
 
 Nothing in the way of table-decoration, as 
 practised in Europe and America, seems to have 
 been attempted. Flower and other decorative 
 devices did, however, make their appearance in 
 the banqueting-hall in accordance with peculiar 
 customs. From ancient times, when offerings 
 of scalloped paper and a mirror were presented 
 at a shrine, etiquette required that they should 
 be suspended from a branch of the Cly era japonic a, 
 since to touch them with the hand was to defile 
 them. By refinement of conception habitual to 
 
 217
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the Japanese, this idea was extended to presents ; 
 they were fastened to a branch of some flowering 
 tree. Then the same fancy received obscure 
 
 
 
 development at the hands of poetasters, who, in 
 sending a couplet to a friend or a lover, accom- 
 panied it by a blossom suitable to the season. If 
 an article was too large to be hung from a flower- 
 spray, convention must be complied with by tying 
 the spray to the article. 1 The same custom found 
 another form of expression in the despatch of 
 letters : they were placed in a split bamboo held 
 aloft by the messenger as he ran. Social etiquette 
 delighted in this language of allegory. Thus, in 
 the epoch under review it was customary to place 
 in a hall, at times of feasting or couplet-compos- 
 ing, a miniature ship carved in the perfumed 
 wood of the agallochum. It stood upon a tray 
 strewn with sand among which glistened frag- 
 ments of rock-crystal, coral, jade, carnelians, and 
 other brightly coloured minerals. This was the 
 ship of fortune arriving at the isle of elysium. 
 In later times it often took the form of the 
 mountain of paradise with the symbols of lon- 
 gevity, the crane, the tortoise, and the pine. 
 
 The development of singing, dancing, and 
 music is among the most remarkable features of 
 the Heian epoch. It would be an extravagance 
 to say that the era produced any great scholars in 
 the Occidental sense of the term, for the range 
 of accessible knowledge was extremely narrow. 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 58. 
 
 218
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 Men profoundly versed in the Chinese philo- 
 sophical writings were not wanting, but, as a 
 general rule, refined accomplishments were the 
 test of high education. From princes, ministers 
 of State, and military magnates down to office- 
 clerks and house-stewards, everybody studied sing- 
 ing, dancing, and the art of composing stanzas. 
 Songs and dances of comparatively simple charac- 
 ter had been in vogue from ancient times, as has 
 been already seen. Now, however, not only 
 were large drafts made upon the repertories of 
 Korea and China, but extensive modifications and 
 elaborations were devised by the Japanese them- 
 selves. Imperial progresses, public feasts, reli- 
 gious ceremonies, private entertainments, every 
 conspicuous incident of existence was treated as 
 an occasion for playing instruments, treading 
 measures, or extemporising verses. From perus- 
 ing the literature of the epoch the student rises 
 with a bewildered impression that society's per- 
 petual occupation was to dance among forests of 
 blossom or in the glow of the moonlight ; to float 
 over the water in boats with sculptured dragons 
 or phoenixes at the prow, fair girls exquisitely 
 costumed at the poles, and for passengers noble- 
 men and high officials playing flutes and guitars 
 and beating drums ; to marshal gorgeous pageants 
 in worship of the gods ; to write verses for hang- 
 ing on blossomy trees and plants or for reading at 
 competitive fetes, and to issue or accept invitations 
 to feasts or sports. There were twenty varieties 
 
 219
 
 JAPAN 
 
 of musical instruments several kinds of flute, 
 five kinds of drum, a species of pandean pipe, 
 two kinds of flageolet, a species of harmonica, an 
 oboe, a horizontal harp, a vertical harp, two 
 kinds of guitar, and a cymbal, etc. Many of 
 these became so famous for the beauty of their 
 tone that special appellations 1 were given to 
 them, and although neither their sound nor the 
 music produced with them would have delighted 
 Occidental ears, the Japanese were wont to say 
 that if a skilled performer with a perfectly pure 
 heart played on one of these famous instruments, 
 the very dust on the ceiling could not choose but 
 dance. 
 
 It would be an interminable task to attempt 
 any exhaustive description of the dances in vogue 
 during the Heian epoch. Only eight varieties 
 of genuine old Japanese dance existed, but these 
 were supplemented by twenty-five Chinese, 
 twelve of Indian origin transmitted by China, 
 eighteen Korean, and eleven Japanese adapta- 
 tions. When seventy-four varieties of dance are 
 thus indicated, it must not be understood that 
 there were a corresponding number of salient dif- 
 ferences of style. It is true that the movements 
 in every case were carefully trained, and that each 
 combination constituting a particular dance could 
 be distinguished by practised observers. But the 
 main feature of variety had to be sought in the 
 pantomime. Nearly all dances performed in 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 59. 
 
 220
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 Japan were pantomimic. The Japanese seem 
 to have possessed, from the dawn of their national 
 existence, a profound appreciation of the beauty 
 and grace of cadence and emphasis in modulated 
 muscular efforts, but the great majority of their 
 dances had some mimetic import, and were not 
 suggested solely by the pleasure of rhythmic and 
 measured movement. That is the chief reason 
 why these dances seldom produce in a foreign 
 observer the sense of exquisite delight that they 
 excite in the Japanese. The uninitiated stranger 
 feels, when he sees them, like one watching a 
 drama where an unknown plot is acted in an 
 unintelligible language. In its origin the Japan- 
 ese dance was an invocation addressed, as has been 
 already explained, to the Sun Goddess to lure her 
 from her cave. It was accompanied by a formula 
 altogether subordinate to the dance, and serving 
 chiefly to mark the cadence and the measure. 
 Thereafter every offering made to the gods had 
 to be supplemented by some music of motion, 
 and gradually the dance and its accompaniment 
 of metrical chant came to be prolonged after the 
 conclusion of the offering, so that they ultimately 
 constituted an important part of the ceremony of 
 worship, as well as a prominent feature of the sub- 
 sequent feast. Then followed their division into 
 " chants of the worship-dance " (tori-mono-uta) 
 and " chants of the fete-dance " (mayebari}, both 
 being included in the term Kagura, which mime 
 may still be seen by any one visiting the shrine 
 
 221
 
 JAPAN 
 
 of Kasuga at Nara, and is, indeed, constantly per- 
 formed at Shinto festivals elsewhere. Towards 
 the close of the tenth century, the chants that 
 accompanied the kagura as then danced, were 
 committed to writing, and found to number 
 thirty-eight. They are almost wholly devoid of 
 poetic inspiration and depend entirely on rhythm 
 and cadence of syllabic pulsations, five beats fol- 
 lowed by seven, five again by seven, and then 
 seven by seven. Here are some examples : 
 
 SPECIMEN OF' THE MAYEEARI (OR CHANT 
 OF THE FETE DANCE) 
 
 Deeply dipping deep 
 
 In the rain-fed river's tide, 
 
 Robe and stole we dye. 
 
 Rain it raineth, yet, 
 
 Rain it raineth, yet, 
 
 Rain it raineth, yet, 
 
 Dies the colour never-more ; 
 
 Never fades the deep-dyed hue. 
 
 SPECIMEN OF TORIMONO-UTJ (OR CHANT 
 OF THE WORSHIP-DANCE) 
 
 Sacred offerings pure, 
 
 Not for mortal beings spread, 
 
 But for her, sky-throned, 
 
 Majestic Toyooka. 
 
 Offerings for the Gods divine, 
 
 Offerings for the Gods. 
 
 These verses, it will be seen, have no pretence 
 to be called poetry : they merely supply the mo- 
 
 222
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 tive of the dance in rhythmical language. The 
 motions accompanying the first would suggest 
 the dipping of cloth in lye, the dropping of rain, 
 and immutability. The motions accompanying 
 the second would indicate adoration, humility, and 
 reverent presentation. In fact, all the Kagura 
 dances may be described as solemn hand-wavings 
 and body-swayings, without any movement of the 
 feet except such as is necessary to preserve equi- 
 librium, and without the least approach to strong 
 emotional activity suggesting religious exaltation. 
 The musical accompaniment was a weird, mo- 
 notonous strain performed on a Japanese hori- 
 zontal harp (koto\ a shrill flute, and a drum. 
 From the sedate Kagura the next step was to the 
 Saibara, which may be described as street sonnets 
 set to Chinese music with appropriate mimetic 
 dances. In these the performers were usually men 
 and women of the highest degree, the orchestra 
 consisted of two kinds of flutes, and the dancers 
 beat out the measure with ivory batons, commonly 
 carried by nobles and ministers in that era. Sixty- 
 one of these ancient dance-songs have been pre- 
 served. Like the Kagura they embody suggestions 
 of simple scenes and simple actions, the only dif- 
 ference being greater variety of gesture, greater 
 intricacy of movement, and more picturesque 
 costumes. For example, a party of youths and 
 maidens, robed in many-coloured garments and 
 carrying toy nets and baskets, glide upon the scene, 
 imitating the undulating movement of the waves, 
 
 223
 
 JAPAN 
 
 the slow sweep of the ebbing tide, the graceful 
 searches for sea treasures, and, finally, the in- 
 ward roll of the returning sea, chanting as they 
 move : 
 
 Salt-waved Ise's sea, 
 
 Ebbing, ebbing, leaves behind 
 
 Strips of salt sea-shore. 
 
 Wave-washed sea-weed gather we ? 
 
 Sighing sea-shells gather we ? 
 
 Gems the sea-waves wore? 
 
 Differing little from the Saibara were the 
 Azuma-mai, or dances of the eastern provinces ; 
 the Fuzoku-uta, or genre chants; the Royei, or 
 lays of delight, and the Imayo, or songs of life. 
 The two last had their origin in the intoning of 
 the Sutras by Buddhist priests, and many of them 
 deal with religious subjects. But the vast major- 
 ity are purely secular. If one introduces a sin- 
 ner lamenting that heaven has rejected him, 
 another shows a lover perplexed about the path 
 to the object of his affections. The irony of fate 
 decided that these particular dances should be the 
 ones chosen by the Shirabiyoshi in the twelfth 
 century. These Shirabiyoshi were the prototypes 
 of the modern Geisha (professional danseuses). 
 Their name white measure-markers was de- 
 rived from the fact that they originally appeared 
 in snow-white robes, carrying a white-sheathed 
 sword, and wearing a man's head-dress. They 
 were not the first females who made dancing a 
 business. In the middle of the ninth century 
 
 224
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 dancing-girls gave their services to amuse the 
 Court, and the Emperor Uda (888-897) to k 
 one of them to his arms. But the "white 
 measure-markers" were much more than ordi- 
 nary danseuses. Their accomplishments were of 
 the mind as well as of the muscles. If they 
 could translate the motive of a couplet into an 
 exquisitely graceful pantomime, they could also 
 suggest novel motives and weave them into 
 verses at once sweet and scholarly. Besides, no 
 sacrifice overtaxed their complaisance. They 
 became the rage in the closing days of the 
 Heian epoch, and their favourite measure was 
 the quasi-religious Imayo. It was as though 
 love-sonnets should be sung to hymn music. 
 The number of the Imayo was legion, but the 
 manner of dancing them did not materially differ 
 from that of the Saibara. 
 
 SPECIMENS OF IMAYO. 
 
 Pass we by the sea-side road, 
 High swell the wave-hills ; 
 Climb we by the hill-side track, 
 High the cloud-clad pass ; 
 Wend we by the northern road, 
 High piled the snow-drifts ; 
 Come, come by Ise's high way, 
 One way, only one. 
 
 Sad sadness of the sweet past, 
 Sweet the sad gone-by ; 
 Mem'ry of a severed love, 
 Dead but ne'er to die. 
 15 225
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Parents part and children part, 
 But of woes the worst, 
 The parting of lovers while 
 Love is still athirst. 1 
 
 There was also a large miscellany of dances 
 with accompaniment of street-songs (rika) and 
 popular ballads (zokuyo), the motives of which 
 generally betrayed extreme triviality of concep- 
 tion and the mimetic execution showed little 
 fidelity. Many of them nevertheless found fa- 
 vour at Court and in aristocratic circles, where 
 their frank silliness made a pleasant contrast to 
 the stately measure of the classic dance. The 
 "cloud-land coxcombs," who painted their faces 
 after the manner of women and carried a look- 
 ing-glass in their sleeves, had no difficulty in 
 appreciating such flights of fancy as 
 
 Ancient rat youthful rattie, 
 Rats of Saiji's fane, 
 Gnaw the cassock, gnaw the stole, 
 Gnaw the vestments well. 
 Tell the priest, tell the prelate, 
 Ah ! the prelate tell. 
 
 Combs ten, combs seven, 
 Combs I counted yestereve, 
 Counted one by one. 
 One by one have vanished, combs, 
 Count to-day combs none. 
 
 To these varieties of dance-motives have to be 
 added two which had wide vogue among all 
 
 1 Sec Appendix, note 60. 
 
 226
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 classes of the nation, namely, the Saru-gaku, or 
 " monkey mime," and the Den-gaku, or " bu- 
 colic mime." The monkey mime was suggested 
 by a courtier, who went about the Palace garden 
 one night with the skirts of his robe tucked up, 
 simulating cold and dancing to a refrain that will 
 not bear translation. It was, in short, a comic 
 dance adapted to any and every motive, its sole 
 purpose being to create laughter. There were 
 thirty celebrated Saru-gaku (or San-gaku, as it is 
 also called), all of which were reputed to be 
 capable of drawing tears of laughter from a con- 
 firmed misanthrope. The stanzas recited by 
 Saru-gaku performers in early times have not 
 been preserved. They seem to have been of a 
 trivial, jesting character, unworthy of record and 
 entertaining only in connection with the dance. 
 Neither is it quite certain that the account here 
 given of the origin of the Saru-gaku is correct. 
 Some authorities maintain that the dance dates 
 from the time of Prince Shotoku (572-621); 
 that its real name was, not " monkey (saru) 
 mime," but " three (sari) instruments music ; " 
 that it derived the appellation from the fact of 
 three kinds of Korean hand-drum having been 
 then, for the first time, used to accompany songs, 
 and that the prefix "three " (sari) was afterwards 
 changed into saru (monkey) owing to mispro- 
 nunciation, or because the dance received an 
 essentially comic character. Yet another theory 
 assigns to the prefix san the significance of " dis- 
 
 227
 
 JAPAN 
 
 orderly," and attributes that designation to the 
 irregular nature of the costume worn by the 
 dancer. This perplexity illustrates a notable 
 defect of the ideographic script : two different 
 ideographs, one meaning " disorderly " and the 
 other " three," are phonetically identical, and 
 might easily be interchanged by a writer relying 
 on sound only. It matters very little, however, 
 how the dance originated or by what name it 
 was called at first. The only point of interest is 
 that, in the Heian epoch, it took the form of 
 grotesque posturing and pacing to the accompani- 
 ment of a comic couplet, the playing of a flute 
 and the beating of a hand-drum. The " bucolic 
 mime " (Dengaku) belonged to a still lower rank 
 of art than the Saru-gaku. It scarcely rose to the 
 level of a definite combination of graceful move- 
 ments, but was rather a display of mere muscular 
 activity, in short, a species of acrobatic perform- 
 ance, including pole-balancing, stilt-walking, and a 
 kind of sword-and-ball exercise by men mounted 
 on high clogs. It nevertheless deserves the name 
 of dance, because the movements of the performer 
 were measured, and because there was a musical 
 accompaniment of flute and drum. Thus de- 
 scribed, the " monkey mime " and the " bucolic 
 mime " seem very trivial and unworthy of atten- 
 tion, but it will be seen by and by that their 
 developments are of some importance. 
 
 If lengthy reference is here made to dancing 
 and singing in the Heian epoch, it is because 
 
 228
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 these pastimes occupied an extraordinary share 
 of popular attention. The few sober men of the 
 time came to the conclusion that a " divine fox " 
 had bewitched the nation. This delirious mood 
 looks even stranger when contrasted with the 
 zeal for religion and the obedience to superstition 
 that prevailed. Sovereigns, nobles, and princes, 
 who did not shrink from impoverishing them- 
 selves to endow temples, set up idols, or have 
 masses said for their welfare, and who were ready 
 at all times to shave their heads and enter a clois- 
 ter, nevertheless had no hesitation about indulg- 
 ing in voluptuous excesses of every kind. Perhaps 
 the explanation is that morality did not enter 
 seriously into the programme of education. The 
 " Scripture of Filial Piety " and the " Analects of 
 Confucius " were studied in the schools, but 
 neither of these volumes touched the question 
 of a supreme being or of a life beyond the grave, 
 and though the Buddhist priests preached a noble 
 doctrine, their own lives did not conform to their 
 precepts. Thus the displays of munificent piety 
 that characterised the era seem to have been an 
 hysterical aftermath of extreme self-indulgence 
 rather than an outgrowth of earnest conviction. 
 
 The education here spoken of must not be 
 interpreted in the ordinary sense of the term. 
 There was no such thing as national education 
 in the Nara and Heian epochs. A few schools 
 existed in Kyoto, but they were founded and sup- 
 ported by the great families and destined solely 
 
 229
 
 JAPAN 
 
 for the instruction of the latter's children, rela- 
 tives and vassals. The Wake family, the Fuji- 
 wara family, the Ariwara family, the Minamoto 
 family, and the Tachibana family, each had its 
 own school in the capital, but for the vast bulk 
 of the nation no educational facilities of any kind 
 existed. What the schools taught, too, was the 
 art of employing the Chinese language deftly for 
 composing stanzas and writing essays. Science 
 and philosophy were not in the curricula. And 
 even that meagre education ceased to be obtain- 
 able as Ky5to fell into disorder towards the 
 closing years of the Heian epoch. For in pro- 
 portion as the Fujiwara nobles, who usurped the 
 administrative authority, abandoned themselves to 
 pleasure and neglected their official duties, their 
 own followers set an example of lawlessness 
 which provoked a retaliatory mood on the part 
 of its victims, and, at the same time, not only 
 did the provincial authorities become more and 
 more independent of the central government, but 
 the people also, rendered desperate by excessive 
 taxation, took to robbery and piracy on an exten- 
 sive scale. Gangs of bandits infested the prov- 
 inces and invaded the capital itself, not hesitating 
 even to besiege the house of a great noble. For 
 several years a notorious leader of robbers lived 
 openly in Kyoto. At one time the officers of the 
 Imperial guards trooped to the Palace en masse to 
 clamour for rice ; at another, armed soldiers inti- 
 midated and despoiled the citizens. A police 
 
 230
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 force existed under the control of an official, who 
 wielded large power. The members of the 
 board (Kebiishi) over which he presided performed 
 the functions not only of administrative police 
 but also of magistrates and judges ; the decrees of 
 the board ranked with imperial ordinances, and 
 persons violating them were treated as though 
 they had disobeyed the sovereign's commands. 
 But this organisation showed itself quite unable 
 to preserve order. It could not check the law- 
 lessness of the bandits that invaded Kyoto and 
 Nara ; still less could it accomplish anything 
 against the multitude of these depredators that 
 infested the Island of Four Provinces (Shikoku). 
 The bandits were, in truth, a sign of the time. 
 Brigandage, in default of serfdom, suggested it- 
 self to many as the only possible refuge from the 
 intolerable burden of taxation imposed to supply 
 funds for the extravagant luxury of the aristo- 
 crats. Fourteen hundred houses lay untenanted 
 at one time in Kyoto, their inmates having fled 
 to the provinces to live by plunder. The system 
 of five-family guilds, under which the guild 
 became collectively responsible if any of its 
 members absconded without paying his taxes, 
 ceased to have practical efficacy, for the guilds 
 made their escape en masse. Once outside a circle 
 of small radius surrounding Kyoto, the fugitives 
 were effectually beyond the reach of the central 
 government's authority, for not only did the 
 provincial nobles ignore Kyoto's mandates, but 
 
 231
 
 JAPAN 
 
 also means of communication were so bad that 
 the Court could not hope, by its own unaided 
 strength, to follow and arrest a fugitive. It is 
 true that some of the barriers erected to check 
 the freedom of men's movements had been 
 removed, but these artificial obstructions counted 
 for very little compared with the absence of roads 
 and inns, the dangers from bandits and pirates 
 and the want of any organised system of convey- 
 ances. In the middle of the tenth century, 
 a famous litterateur describes how a journey from 
 Tosa to Kyoto took more than fifty days, and 
 a century later a high official spent a hundred and 
 twenty days getting from Hitachi to the capital. 
 The only important place easily accessible from 
 Kyoto was Naniwa, the modern Osaka. It was, 
 in effect, the port of Kyoto, and a man could 
 travel thither by boat, calling en route at four 
 towns, and paying a visit finally at the shrine of 
 the three Sea-Gods at Sumiyoshi, where, if he 
 intended to pursue his journey, he prayed very 
 fervently for protection. Many a citizen of 
 Kyoto made the trip down the Yodo River to 
 Naniwa merely for pleasure. Houses of enter- 
 tainment abounded in the towns on the way, and 
 before a ship dropped anchor she was surrounded 
 by boats carrying courtesans, dancing girls, musi- 
 cians, and other agents of amusement. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the courtesan of 
 those days descended to any depth of moral degra- 
 dation when she espoused her abandoned calling. 
 
 232
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 The aesthetic enthusiasm and voluptuous delirium 
 of the era created an atmosphere in which polite 
 accomplishments could eclipse any environment, 
 and ministers to pleasure had honour irrespective 
 of their methods. In this respect the morality 
 of the era resembled that of Greece in the days 
 when Praxiteles carved a statue of Phryne and 
 Apelles painted Lais. There did not indeed exist 
 a social vacancy which the Tujo 1 could fill, such 
 as was created in Athens by the seclusion and 
 ignorance to which wives were condemned. The 
 Japanese wife took her due place in society, and 
 owed as much to her literary attainments as to 
 her beauty and tact. But the marital tie did not 
 possess, even approximately, the value attached 
 to it in Christian communities. A woman might 
 occupy the leading place in a household and be 
 the principal star in any social galaxy from that 
 of the Imperial Court downward, without having 
 the status of a lawful spouse. Students of Japan- 
 ese history, when they observe the great part played 
 by females in the politics and Court life of the 
 Heian epoch, cannot fail to observe also that the 
 ethical rule applied to women's conduct was almost 
 as lax as that applied to men's. The beautiful Aki, 
 with hair that exceeded her stature by ten feet, 
 who bewitched the Emperor Ichijo ; the fair 
 danseuse Tamabuchi, whom the staid Emperor 
 Uda loved ; the female augurs who held the 
 threads of the Fujiwara intrigues ; the group of 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 61. 
 
 233
 
 JAPAN 
 
 brilliant writers Sei, Murasaki, Daini no Sammi, 
 Izumi, Koshikibu, and Udaisho whose names 
 are never to be forgotten so long as Japanese 
 literature exists, not one of these celebrities can 
 be said to have worn the white flower of a virtuous 
 life. In the hands of the Fujiwara nobles women 
 were an essential instrument, since it was by giv- 
 ing a daughter to be the mistress of a sovereign, 
 if not his consort, that the political supremacy 
 of the family was maintained in each generation. 
 A woman might always be required to sacrifice 
 her virtue in the interests of others, and naturally 
 she did not shrink from sacrificing it voluntarily 
 in her own interests. She fought the battle of 
 life with every weapon that nature had given her. 
 Yoritomo, the great Minamoto leader, before he 
 came to power and during his exile in the prov- 
 ince of Izu, loved a girl of good family who bore 
 him a son. But her father, fearing Yoritomo's 
 enemies, caused the child to be thrown into a 
 river and married the girl to another man under 
 another name. Yoritomo then paid his addresses 
 to a younger daughter of Hojo Tokimasa, but was 
 loved in turn by the elder daughter, Masa, who 
 ultimately succeeded in winning his affections. 
 By and by Yoritomo showed signs of transferring 
 his heart elsewhere. Masa did not remonstrate 
 with him. She sent a body of soldiers to raid 
 the new love's house and drive her family across 
 the border. Yet this Masa was a very high type 
 of woman. Conspicuous for frugality, keen fore- 
 
 234
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 sight, and wise judgment, she brought up her 
 children admirably, and despite her own fierce 
 ruthlessness towards a female rival, she spared 
 no pains to soften the rude, sanguinary ways of 
 military feudalism in the Kamakura epoch. In 
 later life, when she passed through Kyoto after 
 worshipping at the shrines of Kumano, the ex- 
 Emperor conferred on her a rank seldom won 
 even by the most prominent statesman, and asked 
 her to visit him, but she ridiculed the idea, de- 
 claring that though a rustic like her might go to 
 pray at a shrine, she had no place in courts and 
 among courtiers. If women could attain to such 
 distinction in spite of the taint of irregular sexual 
 connections and often by their aid, virtue might 
 well cease to be esteemed. It goes without say- 
 ing that incontinence was not counted a dis- 
 graceful feature in the life of a good man. The 
 Emperor Ichijo, who lived in the midst of most 
 sensuous surroundings and was himself a slave to an 
 extra-marital affection, nevertheless had sufficient 
 nobility of character to pass a winter's night in an 
 almost nude condition in order that he might be 
 able to sympathise fully with the sufferings of the 
 poor. There was, indeed, a much lower depth 
 of immorality to which men had learned to de- 
 scend in that epoch, unnatural love. To the 
 everlasting disgrace of the Buddhist priesthood, 
 that vice had the sanction of their practice, and 
 no condemnations of it are found in the literature 
 of the time. All these circumstances prepare the 
 
 235
 
 JAPAN 
 
 student to find that the frail sister of mediaeval 
 Japan was in no sense a social outcast. She had 
 ready access to the houses of ministers of state 
 and other chief officials or prominent noblemen. 
 Her singing and dancing were features at refined 
 entertainments. She delighted aristocratic society 
 with her clever manipulation of puppets, and she 
 composed poems which found a permanent place 
 in literature. 1 Men learned to call her " castle- 
 conqueror " (keisei) rather fazn. fille-de-joie . 
 
 The reader of course perceives that these de- 
 scriptions of the manners and customs of the 
 Japanese have been confined almost entirely to 
 the upper classes. It must be confessed that with 
 regard to the lower orders in the early ages, very 
 little information is available. Independent refer- 
 ence will be made to the development of trade and 
 industry, and in connection with that subject some 
 light will be thrown on the life of the farmer, the 
 mechanic, and the merchant. But in truth these 
 people played a very subordinate part in the his- 
 tory of the nation. Except for the sake of the 
 taxes they paid and the forced labour they per- 
 formed, they were of small account. The arti- 
 san, however, especially the art artisan, became 
 a person of great and growing importance from 
 the time of the Empress Suiko (593-628) on- 
 ward, since upon him devolved the task of build- 
 ing and decorating the grand temples and spacious 
 mansions which began from that time to be called 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 63. 
 
 236
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 into existence. Thus the painter, the sculptor, the 
 architect, the lacquerer, and the worker in metals, 
 all were recipients of honour, patronage, and even 
 rank, and in that way was laid the foundation of a 
 class of men who gave to their country many beau- 
 tiful works, and ultimately won for her the distinc- 
 tion of being as richly dowered with the art instinct 
 and with competence to give it faithful expression 
 as was even ancient Greece in her best days. 
 
 Brief allusion has already been made to the 
 semmin , or " despised people, " who did not 
 belong to the agricultural, the industrial, or 
 the trading class, being regarded as social out- 
 casts. Since some affinities may be traced be- 
 tween their condition and occupations and those 
 of the Roman servi, the term "serfs" has been 
 applied to the semmin in these pages, and the facts 
 relating to them may conveniently be set down 
 here. 
 
 It has been postulated by ethnologists that 
 slavery never constitutes a vital element of any 
 social system in which a theocratic organisation 
 is established. Communities where the military 
 order has obtained the ascendancy are the natural 
 home of caste divisions which relegate the indus- 
 trial and agricultural functions to serfs and slaves. 
 A partial vindication of that theory is traceable 
 in the story of the Japanese, among whom the 
 tiller of the soil, the mechanic, and the trader 
 ranked as plebeians, or commoners, in comparison 
 with the military patricians. But if the polity of 
 
 237
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Japan partook largely of the military character, it 
 was purely theocratic in its alleged beginnings, 
 and thus the social problems connected with it 
 refuse to be solved by precedents derived from 
 simpler organisations. The "commoners" (hei- 
 min ) certainly were not serfs or slaves, according 
 to any acknowledged rendering of those terms, 
 and even the "despised people," while some of 
 them may unquestionably be classed as slaves, do 
 not find their exact counterpart in any system 
 that has come under the notice of Western his- 
 torians. As far back as the middle of the fifth 
 century of the Christian era, Japanese annals refer 
 to semmin. They speak of a nobleman who, 
 being convicted of plotting against the Court 
 ( 460 A. D. ), was condemned to death, his pos- 
 terity for eighty generations being degraded to 
 the rank of common labourers. Thenceforth 
 various incidents, legal enactments and ordinances 
 exhibit six causes which operated to produce 
 semmin; namely, crime, subjugation, debt, special 
 circumstances of birth, naturalisation, and kid- 
 napping. Treason in every form and armed con- 
 quest were sources of State slaves corresponding 
 to the Roman servt publici. A rebel or a con- 
 spirator against the sovereign suffered death 
 frequently shared by his sons and brothers and 
 all the rest of his family as well as his property 
 were confiscated. As for conquest, the rights 
 conferred by it held against Japanese as well as 
 against aliens. Raids made by Japanese generals 
 
 238
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 into the Korean peninsula resulted in the capture 
 of numerous Koreans who, being carried to 
 Japan, were drafted into the ranks of the sem- 
 min y and employed in various menial capacities. 
 Probably sections of the aboriginal inhabitants of 
 Japan suffered the same fate after subjugation by 
 the invaders. With regard to debt as a source of 
 serfdom, in very early eras its influence must 
 have been considerable, for, at the close of the 
 seventh century the sovereign found it necessary 
 to impose restrictions. Proclamation was then 
 made that where a creditor prescribed serfdom as 
 a penalty for failure to discharge a monetary obli- 
 gation, interest must not be charged. Later on, 
 the first code promulgated at the beginning of 
 the eighth century sanctioned the principle that 
 an insolvent debtor's person might become the 
 property of the creditor, but imposed legal limits 
 of interest, namely, that interest payable every 
 sixtieth day must not exceed one-eighth of the 
 principal, and that, even though a period of four 
 hundred and eighty days had elapsed without 
 discharge of the debt, the interest must not ag- 
 gregate a larger sum than the original obligation. 
 The issue of serf parents remained a serf, but, 
 by a curious stretch of liberality, an immigrant 
 from a foreign land who had been a serf in his 
 own country, acquired his freedom on touch- 
 ing Japanese soil, though, if he subsequently 
 suffered degradation, any of his relatives fol- 
 lowing him to Japan shared his fate. The ab- 
 
 239
 
 JAPAN 
 
 duction and kidnapping of men and women and 
 their sale into serfdom were practices against 
 which laws had to be enacted in the eighth cen- 
 tury. The crime was punished by a maximum 
 penalty of three years' penal servitude. But here 
 evidence is found of the large recognition ac- 
 corded to rights of relationship, for the closer the 
 degree of consanguinity between the person sold 
 and the seller, the milder the penalty. A man 
 selling his own parent or cousin became liable to 
 two and a half years' penal servitude, but the sale 
 of one's own child or grandchild involved only 
 one year of punishment, and if the sale was that 
 of a daughter, the law did not undertake to re- 
 habilitate her. 
 
 As to the price at which a serf was valued, 
 there is documentary evidence preserved among 
 the archives of the Nara Court (eighth century). 
 Three males, aged respectively 34, 22, and 15, 
 were sold, the first two for a thousand sheaves of 
 rice each ; the third for seven hundred sheaves. 
 Three females, aged 22, 20, and 15, sold at the 
 same time, were appraised, the first two at eight 
 hundred sheaves each, the last at six hundred. 
 A hundred sheaves of rice represent a koku (5.13 
 bushels) which now sells for about i 2 yen. Thus 
 an adult male serf was valued at about \2Q yen, 
 and a female at about 100 yen. 
 
 The cooperation of these various causes must 
 have produced a considerable number of semmin, 
 and, indeed, the best statistics available indicate 
 
 240
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 that the ratio was five per cent of the total popu- 
 lation. Thus, since the population in the middle 
 of the eighth century was estimated 3,694,33 1, the 
 ratio of the male and female elements being at 
 4.6 to 5.4, there must then have been 84,970 
 male serfs and 99,737 female. 
 
 The treatment of serfs in Japan did not display 
 cruelties like those practised in ancient Rome. 
 There were five classes: guards of the Imperial 
 sepulchres, servants employed in Administrative 
 offices, domestic servants, -State serfs, and private 
 serfs. Men belonging to the first two classes 
 differed little from ordinary subjects, and were 
 often rehabilitated. They had establishments of 
 their own and could acquire property. Domestic 
 serfs may be described, not incorrectly, as poor 
 relatives who, generation after generation, earned 
 a livelihood by performing menial household 
 duties in families to which they were bound by 
 ties of kith and kin. It seems a misnomer to 
 call such persons " serfs," but they were so classed 
 in old Japan. State serfs were captives made in 
 war, or the domestic serfs that is to say, the 
 indigent relatives of men convicted of offences 
 involving degradation and confiscation. The lot 
 of these serfs was ameliorated, rather than aggra- 
 vated, by transfer to the State. Private serfdom 
 seems to have been the worst condition of all. 
 The private serf was bought and sold like any 
 ordinary chattel, the only proviso being that the 
 transaction must be duly registered. But the lash 
 16 241
 
 JAPAN 
 
 was not used to compel work, nor is there any 
 record that the idea of chaining a serf ever sug- 
 gested itself to a Japanese householder or official. 
 It would appear, too, that the prospect of an 
 aged person's dying without having tasted the 
 sweets of freedom, revolted ancient legislators. 
 They enacted that, if a State serf attained the age 
 of sixty-six, or became incapacitated by disease, he 
 should be promoted to be an official employe, and at 
 seventy-six he was rehabilitated. Even a man who 
 had been degraded for treason, was restored to his 
 old status when he reached the age of eighty. 
 Other causes of manumission were emancipation 
 (which carried with it exemption from taxation 
 during a period of three years from the date of 
 rehabilitation), judgment of a law court, extinc- 
 tion of a master's family, meritorious service, and 
 adoption of the Buddhist priesthood, for a Bud- 
 dhist priest had no social status, and consequently 
 a serf entering the priesthood ceased to be subject 
 to social discrimination. But despite this disposi- 
 tion to lighten the lot of the serf, stringent meas- 
 ures were adopted to preserve the distinctions of 
 caste. Nothing save the pride of rank prevented 
 intermarriages between the patricians and the 
 commoners (heimin). If, however, either a patri- 
 cian or a commoner married a serf, the offspring 
 of the union became a serf. Even among the 
 serfs themselves, difference of grade originally 
 constituted a barrier to marriage. 1 These harsh 
 
 1 See Appendix, note 64. 
 
 242
 
 THE HEIAN EPOCH 
 
 enactments received modification at the beginning 
 of the ninth century. Thenceforth the issue of 
 a mixed marriage received the status of which- 
 ever parent stood higher in the social scale. But 
 the spirit of exclusiveness underwent no change, 
 and there is also evidence that, in the long medi- 
 aeval era of incessant war, the practice of kid- 
 napping young persons of both sexes and selling 
 them into serfdom constituted one of the promi- 
 nent abuses of the age. 
 
 243
 
 Appendix 
 
 245
 
 Appendix 
 
 NOTE i . The total area of these islands and islets is 
 162,000 square miles, in round numbers, of which 16,000 
 square miles have been added since the centralisation of the 
 Government in 1867. Taken in order of magnitude, the 
 five principal islands are Hondo, or Nippon (86,373 square 
 miles); Yezo (30,148 square miles); Kiushu (13,778 square 
 miles); Formosa (13,429 square miles), and Skikoku (6,86 1 
 square miles). Previously to the acquisition of Formosa, the 
 area of the Japanese empire was equal to that of the British 
 Isles, Holland, and Belgium combined. With the addition of 
 Formosa and the Pescadores, it has become approximately 
 equal to the area of the British Isles, Holland, Belgium, and 
 Denmark. 
 
 NOTE 2. The Koji-ki^ or annals of ancient matters. 
 
 NOTE 3. The Nihon-gi (history of Japan) and the 
 Koga-sbu (ancient records). 
 
 NOTE 4. Personal names were taken from the terminology 
 of natural objects. Thus an Emperor was called " large wren," 
 and noblemen were designated " mackerel," " red fish," " fire- 
 fly," " weazel," "bonito," "earth-worm," "dragon," "whale," 
 etc. No change in this system occurred until the introduction 
 of Chinese learning and Buddhism, when curiously incongruous 
 appellations began to be adopted ; as " Head-fisherman Amida " 
 (Amabe no Amida), " Silk-embroiderer Confucius " (Kinunui no 
 Koshi}, "Bow-maker Buddha" (Yuge no Shako), " Field-dog- 
 keeper Laotsze " (Agata no Tsukai no Roshi), and others equally 
 startling, even courtesans taking the names of deities. In the 
 ninth century the Emperor Nimmiyo set a new example. He 
 gave himself a name signifying "just and righteous" (seiryo), 
 being thus the first to import an abstract idea into personal 
 
 247
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 nomenclature. The fashion of the nanori (self-given name) 
 was thus inaugurated. A few years previously, another sover- 
 eign (Kwammu, 782806) caused an eminent scholar to assign 
 posthumous names to the former occupants of the Throne, and 
 the result was that the Rulers of Japan came to be known in 
 history by names of which many were borrowed from the annals 
 of China or Tartary, and none was borne during his lifetime 
 by the sovereign thus designated. In mediaeval times, strange 
 confusion was caused by extending the old methods of nomen- 
 clature without regard to the motives that had governed them. 
 It thus fell out that many of the official titles which had been 
 prefixed to personal names in the early ages and used in lieu of 
 patronyms, took permanent place in the language as family 
 appellations, and were employed without the slightest discrimi- 
 nation as to their fitness. To this abuse was due the common 
 adoption of such names as Otomo (Great subject), Okura (Im- 
 perial treasury), Inukai (Master of hounds), Hatori (Weaver), 
 and so on. A still more indiscriminate extension of this habit 
 is attributable to the levelling of time-honoured social distinc- 
 tions that took place during the military epoch, when soldiers 
 ruled the country and provincial captains supplanted the Court 
 nobles in the metropolis. The old official titles then began to 
 do duty as personal names, so that (to convert the facts into 
 their English equivalents) the sons of private soldiers received 
 baptismal names such as " Lord Chamberlain " or " Com- 
 modore " ; the child of a farmer might be dubbed " Prince " or 
 " Lord Chamberlain," and a courtesan or danseuse went by the 
 name of " High Prelate " or u Field Marshal," even differences 
 of sex being lost sight of in the general confusion. Another 
 method of naming was inaugurated in very early times : the 
 sovereign bestowed a patronym, much as titles were given in 
 the West. In constructing such a name, the feat that it com- 
 memorated was translated into symbolical language as when 
 a great archer was called u noble target," or some natural 
 object of special beauty or grandeur was taken, or else a part 
 of the donor's name was joined to a part of the recipient's. 
 The greatest family that Japan ever possessed the Fujiwara 
 (wistaria plain) had the honour of obtaining its designation 
 from an Emperor. There are only 292 family names in Japan, 
 
 248
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 and of these 39 are derived from the nomenclature of the 
 vegetable kingdom, 44 from that of other natural objects, 14 
 from that of geographical divisions, and the rest from ancient 
 official titles, moral or physical qualities, and miscellaneous 
 sources. The method that finally came into commonest vogue 
 may be thus described. Parents in naming their sons generally 
 adopted a numerical suffix, taro (great male) for the eldest'; 
 jiro (second male) for the next ; saburo (third male) for the next, 
 and so on and, by way of prefix, chose the name of some 
 natural object, as kin (gold), gin (silver), tetsu (iron), matsu 
 (pine), ume (plum), take (bamboo), etc. Thus there resulted 
 such names as Kintaro, or Matsujiro, or Ginzaburo, which had 
 the advantage of conveying information about the number of a 
 man's elder brothers as well as about himself. Another method 
 of constructing boys' names was to use the numerical compo- 
 nent as prefix, appending to it the designation of an office, as suke 
 (assistant official), hiyo-yei (military guard), yemon (gate guard), 
 etc. Thus were obtained Tarosuke, Jiro-biyoyei (abbreviated to 
 Jirobei), Saburo-yemon, and so on. It will be easily understood 
 that names of the latter kind were originally confined to persons 
 eligible for the offices indicated : they are, in fact, an outcome 
 of the ancient custom which merged the personality of the 
 individual in his official position, and bestowed on families a 
 hereditary title to certain posts. For a similar reason, family 
 names, since they had their origin in offices of State, might not 
 be borne by commoners ; that is to say, they were limited to 
 the comparatively small section of the nation which could trace 
 its descent from the chiefs of the first colonists and had been 
 admitted to that rank for special reasons. The rule held until 
 modern times. Hence, if a man possessed a family name, it 
 was possible to be at once assured that he belonged to the patri- 
 cian order. Japanese names are a source of considerable per- 
 plexity to foreigners, because, in addition to the family name 
 (tt/V or miyoji) and the personal name (zokumiyo), there was a 
 child-name (psana) ; there was an " adopted name " or " true 
 name " (nanori or jitsumiyo) ; there was a posthumous name 
 (okurina or kaimei), and there was sometimes an art name (^o). 
 The " adopted " or " true " name was nothing more than a 
 second personal name independent of any of the suffixes or 
 
 249
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 prefixes mentioned above which was taken by a patrician lad 
 on emerging from childhood, the posthumous name was given 
 by the Buddhist priests and inscribed on the tomb, and the art 
 name was taken by a painter, an author, a musician, an artisan, 
 or a professional expert of any kind. 
 
 Just as in the West it has always been a point of etiquette 
 to avoid using the name of a person of rank to whom one 
 addresses oneself, so in Japan, the post of an official, or the 
 palace of a nobleman, or some other impersonal designation 
 was always used in speaking to illustrious individuals. But 
 that is a matter connected with the genius of the language 
 rather than with the question of nomenclature. 
 
 NOTE 5. These gohei (sacred offerings), as they are called, 
 have never ceased to be an important part of the paraphernalia 
 of worship. They maybe seen to-day suspended at the shrines, 
 near the sepulchres of the dead and before the family altar. It 
 is supposed by some that they originally served merely as means 
 of accentuating the outlines of the rope fences enclosing a 
 deified tree, and that, like all other objects employed for cere- 
 monial purposes, they were subsequently endued with sanctity 
 of their own. Another, and more probable, theory is that they 
 were pieces of the cloth offered to the deities. 
 
 NOTE 6. Admirable translations of many of these rituals 
 have been made by Sir Earnest Satow, Mr. W. G. Aston, and 
 Dr. Florenz. 
 
 NOTE 7. " Rock-house " (iiva-iye) or " demon's closet " 
 (oni no setsuin) was the term applied to these caves by later 
 generations. 
 
 NOTE 8. It is doubtful whether in the oldest form of 
 building the pillars were not sunk in the ground without stone 
 foundations. 
 
 NOTE 9. It would seem that a refined sense of tone 
 existed among the early Japanese, for the records say that the 
 Emperor Ojin, who reigned at the close of the third century, 
 used ship-building wood for the body of the IVa-kin and that 
 the instrument gave particularly melodious notes. 
 
 NOTE 10. Examples of adaptability of Chinese ideographs 
 are innumerable. Thus, dempo (transmitted intelligence) is the 
 exact equivalent of " telegram ; " Kaikwan-zei (sea-gate tax) 
 
 250
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 well expresses " customs duty ; " rigaku (natural-law science 
 accurately represents " physics ; " Kikwa-ho (country-change 
 law) conveys without mistake the idea of " naturalization law," 
 and such instances might be multiplied ad infinitum. 
 
 NOTE ii. A legend of the Empress Komyo says that, in 
 obedience to a voice audible to herself alone, she vowed to wash 
 with her own hands the bodies of a thousand beggars. The 
 task had been completed as far as 999, when there presented 
 himself a loathsome leper, covered with revolting sores. The 
 courageous woman did not hesitate. She proceeded to wash 
 the leper, and when he told her that if there were found in the 
 world any woman sufficiently merciful to draw the venom from 
 his sores with her mouth he should be healed, she did him that 
 service. Thereupon the place was filled with dazzling efful- 
 gence , an exquisite aroma diffused itself around, and the leper, 
 declaring himself the Buddha, disappeared. 
 
 NOTE 12. The Emperor Temmu (673-686) ordered that 
 every house in the land should have an altar for the worship of 
 Buddha, and his successors called temples and idols into existence 
 by edicts. 
 
 NOTE 13. The Emperor Shomu (724-748) was the 
 inaugurator of this custom. After a reign of twenty-four 
 years, he shaved his head and retired to a cloister. 
 
 NOTE 14. Dokyo, the favourite Minister of the Empress 
 
 Dowager Koken. 
 
 NOTE 15. Only certain portions of the document are 
 quoted here. 
 
 NOTE 16. The Soga family. This was the clan that dis- 
 tinguished itself by its unique fidelity to the cause of Buddhism, 
 and assisted Prince Shotoku to destroy its own great rival, the 
 Mononobe clan, which inveterately opposed the foreign faith. 
 The Soga survived the Mononobe for thirty years only. Their 
 disloyal arbitrariness towards the Throne provoked a revolt 
 which ended fatally for themselves. 
 
 NOTE 17. Taikwa signifies u great change." It was the 
 first year-name in Japan, the period 645-649 A. D. being called 
 Taikwo. 
 
 NOTE 1 8. The student will hear this memorable 
 reformation described sometimes as the Taikwa (great change) 
 
 251
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 and sometimes as the Taibo (or Dalb'o) reform, the former term 
 being derived from the name of the year-period (645649) when 
 the new legislation commenced ; the latter from that of the 
 period (701703) when it terminated. 
 
 NOTE 19. A residence built for himself by the Soga chief 
 Iruka is said to have been surrounded with a palisade and pro- 
 vided with storehouses for weapons and armour, and each gate 
 had buckets hung near it as a precaution against fire. The 
 residence of the same Minister's father was encircled with 
 moats and had arrow-magazines. 
 
 NOTE 20. In the reign of the Empress Jito (690696), 
 for example, no less than seven waves of immigrants are said 
 to have flowed to the shores of Japan, and all these strangers 
 were hospitably welcomed and their services utilised. 
 
 NOTE 21. The Empress Koken (749758) issued an 
 edict that every house throughout the realm should be provided 
 with a copy of the Classic of Filial Piety, and should regard it 
 as the primer of morality; and from her time onwards successive 
 sovereigns employed their influence to popularise Confucian- 
 ism, bestowing liberal rewards upon women who distinguished 
 themselves by fidelity to their husbands, upon children con- 
 spicuous for piety to their parents, or upon servants noted for 
 loyalty to their masters. 
 
 NOTC 22. The Mara of the present day lies mainly to the 
 eastward of the old capital, but the temples occupy their original 
 site. 
 
 NOTE 23. A couplet written at that era embodied the 
 popular conception of a journey : " The grandest rice-bowl 
 used at home becomes for the traveller an oak-leaf." 
 
 NOTE 24. Temmu (673-686). 
 
 NOTE 25. The method of treating children's hair in the 
 Nara epoch was picturesque. At the age of three the little 
 one's hair was cut short but of equal length all over. It was 
 then allowed to grow until it reached the shoulders, at which 
 length it was kept, the hair over the forehead, however, being 
 trimmed so as to form a fringe hanging to the eyebrows. A 
 few years later, a boy's hair was looped up on each side in the 
 shape of a gourd-flower, and a girl's was suffered to grow 
 thenceforth without restraint. 
 
 252
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE 26. Japanese antiquarians assert that both men and 
 women of rank wore long veils in early times, and were equally 
 averse to exposing their complexions. 
 
 NOTE 27. Another evidence of the fidelity with which 
 Chinese fashions were copied. 
 
 NOTE 28. It has been alleged that by striking the palms 
 together when about to worship, a Japanese intends to attract 
 the attention of the deity. The explanation is fanciful and 
 groundless. 
 
 NOTE 29. It is built with logs of wood, hexagonal in 
 section, laid horizontally, so that the walls present a deeply 
 corrugated appearance. Though repaired from time to time, 
 this storehouse retains the exact form given to it by its archi- 
 tects nearly twelve centuries ago. 
 
 NOTE 30. Out of this rule grew the appellation shinzo 
 (new building) still commonly applied to Japanese wives in the 
 middle classes. 
 
 NOTE 31. Mr. Basil H. Chamberlain, in the admirable 
 preface to his " Classical Poetry of the Japanese," explains 
 this point with great clearness, and M. D. E. Aston, in his 
 exhaustive treatise on "Japanese Literature," shows why rhyme 
 would scarcely be possible to a poet using the Japanese language, 
 namely, that as all Japanese words end in one of the five vowels, 
 constant iteration of the same sound would be inevitable. 
 
 NOTE 32. This is illustrated by the fact that the Japanese 
 use the same word (ta) to express " song and poem." 
 
 NOTE 33. A stringed instrument played with both hands; 
 the fingers of the right hand being armed with ivory tips, and 
 the fingers of the left being used to press the strings. 
 
 NOTE 34. "Fujiwara" signifies "Wistaria plain." 
 The name was conferred by the sovereign on Kamatari in rec- 
 ognition of his services. 
 
 NOTE 35. The consort of the late Emperor Komei 
 (1847-66) was a Fujiwara, and the bride of the present Prince 
 Imperial is also a Fujiwara. 
 
 NOTE 36. Kyoto continued to be the Imperial capital 
 during 1,074 years, until the Meiji Restoration of 1867, when 
 the Court was transferred to Yedo (now Tokyo). Seventy- 
 seven Emperors held their courts successively in Kyoto. 
 
 253
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 During an interval so protracted, the city, of course, under- 
 went many changes, but to this day its general plan remains 
 on the lines of its earliest projection. It was built after the 
 general scheme of Nara, but on a much grander scale. The 
 outline was rectangular, 17,530 feet from north to south, and 
 15,080 feet from east to west. Moats and palisades surrounded 
 the whole the system of crenelated walls and flanking 
 towers not having been yet introduced and the Imperial 
 Palace, its citadel, administrative departments, and assembly 
 halls occupied the centre of the northern portion. The Palace 
 was approached from the south, its main gate opening upon a 
 long street 280 feet wide which ran right down the centre of 
 the city. Thus the city was divided into two equal parts, of 
 which the eastern was designated " left metropolis, " and the 
 western, " right metropolis." The superficial division was 
 into districts, of which there were nine, all equal in size except 
 those on the east and west of the Palace. An elaborate system 
 of subdivision was adopted. The unit, or house, was a space 
 measuring 100 feet by 50. Eight of these units made a row ; 
 four rows, a street ; four streets, a division ; four divisions, a 
 district. The entire capital contained 1,216 streets and 38,912 
 houses, with a population of about two hundred thousand. 
 The arrangement of the streets was strictly regular. They lay 
 parallel and at right angles, like the lines on a checker-board. 
 The Imperial citadel measured 3,840 feet from east to west, 
 and 4,600 feet from north to south. On each side were three 
 gates ; in the middle stood the Palace, surrounded by the build- 
 ings of the various administrative departments, and in front 
 were the assembly and audience halls. The nine districts 
 were divided from each other by main streets, varying in width 
 from 170 feet to 80 feet. They intersected the city from east to 
 west ; were numbered from I to 9, and were themselves inter- 
 sected in turn by similar streets running north and south, and 
 by lanes at regular intervals. The buildings were in general 
 lowly and unpretentious. Even in the case of the Palace, the 
 architects observed the austere canons of the Shinto cult, which 
 prescribed purity and simplicity as the essential attributes of 
 refinement; and in the case of the citizens' dwellings, every 
 effort to obtain lightness, airiness, or ornamentation was reserved 
 
 254
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 for chambers opening upon inner courts, or looking out on 
 miniature back-gardens, so that the front effect was sombre and 
 monotonous. Many of the houses were roofed with shingles, 
 but some had slate-coloured tiles, and the Palace itself was ren- 
 dered conspicuous by green glazed tiles imported from China. 
 The conception of such a city at such an epoch half a cen- 
 tury before Lodbrok the Dane sailed up the Seine, and fifty- 
 five years before the birth of Alfred the Great bears eloquent 
 testimony to the highly civilised condition of Japan and to the 
 Emperor Kwammu's greatness of mind and resources. 
 
 NOTE 37. Such persons were named ronin, literally, 
 " wave men ; " that is to say, individuals without any fixed 
 status or employment. They are met here for the first time 
 in Japanese history, where they thenceforth figure as a perpet- 
 ual element of unrest. 
 
 NOTE 38. He employed able men without any regard 
 for the part they had acted in his own life. He gave the com- 
 mand of the Bando troops to Tamura-no-maro, whose father 
 had intrigued to procure the Throne for a different prince, and 
 he appointed as tutor to the Heir apparent a man who had 
 twice endeavoured to thwart his purposes. 
 
 NOTE 39. It is noticeable that this spirit of exclusiveness 
 did not take any account of alien origin. Tamura-no-Maro, 
 who commanded the Emperor Kwammu's Bando soldiery, was 
 descended from a naturalised Chinaman. Yet, on returning 
 to Kyot5 after the final defeat of the Yezo, he received the 
 Emperor's daughter in marriage, and became the father of the 
 next sovereign, Heizei. 
 
 NOTE 40. The extreme possibilities of this system were 
 illustrated in the case of the Fujiwara chief Michinaga. He 
 held the office of Regent during the reigns of three Emperors 
 (987-1037); his three daughters became the consorts of three 
 successive sovereigns, and he was grandfather simultaneously of 
 a reigning Emperor and of an heir apparent. Nothing was 
 allowed to interfere with the consummation of this nobleman's 
 designs. Desiring that his daughter, Aki, should enter the 
 Palace where his elder brother's daughter, Sada, already held 1 
 position of Empress, and unwilling that his child should have 
 inferior rank, he devised for Aki a special title, carrying with
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 it all the privileges of an Imperial consort. There were thus 
 two Empresses, each living in a palace of her own. 
 
 NOTE 41. The memory of this unfortunate statesman, 
 Sugawara-no-Michizane, is surrounded by a halo of romance 
 which affords an insight into Japanese character. He belonged 
 to an ancient family of professional litterateurs, and had none of 
 the titles which in that age were commonly considered essen- 
 tial to official preferment. By extraordinary scholarship, singu- 
 lar sweetness of disposition, and unswerving fidelity to justice 
 and truth, he won a high reputation, and had he been content 
 with the fame that his writings brought him, and with promot- 
 ing the cause of scholarship through the medium of a school 
 which he endowed, he might have ended his days in peace. But, 
 in an evil hour, he accepted office, and thus found himself 
 required to discharge the duties of statesmanship at a time of 
 extreme difficulty, when an immense interval separated the rich 
 and the poor, when political power was usurped by some and 
 abused by others, when the arbitrariness and extortions of the 
 local governors had become a burning question, when the 
 nobles and princes were crushing the people with merciless 
 taxes, and when the finances of the Court were in extreme 
 disorder. Michizane, a gentle conservative, was not fitted to 
 cope with these difficulties, and his situation at Court was com- 
 plicated by the favour of an ex-Emperor (Uda) who had abdi- 
 cated but still sought to take part in the administration, and by 
 the jealousy of the Fujiwara representative, Tokihira, a young, 
 impetuous, arrogant, but highly gifted nobleman. These two 
 men, Michizane and Tokihira, became the central figures in 
 a very unequal struggle, the forces on the one side being the 
 whole Fujiwara clan headed by the unscrupulously daring and 
 ambitious Tokihira; those on the other, a few scholars, the 
 love and respect of the lower orders and the benevolent toler- 
 ance of the self-effacing Michizane. The end was inevitable. 
 Michizane, falsely accused of conspiring to obtain the Throne 
 for his grandson an Imperial prince had married his daughter 
 was banished to Dazaifu, and his family and friends were 
 either killed or reduced to serfdom. The story is not remark- 
 able. It contains no great crises or dazzling incidents. Yet 
 if Michizane had been the most brilliant statesman and the 
 
 256
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 most successful general ever possessed by Japan, his name 
 could not have been handed down through all generations of 
 his countrymen with greater veneration and affection. 
 
 NOTE 42. The Emperor Seiwa (859876) was the first, 
 and his example was followed by Uda (888-897). But there 
 was a difference. Seiwa, after surrendering the sceptre, de- 
 voted himself sincerely to prayer and pilgrimages : Uda took the 
 title of H~o (high pontiff) and, as the head of all the Buddhist 
 prelates, led a life of splendour scarcely inferior to his previous 
 state. 
 
 NOTE 43. The posthumous name given to the deceased 
 by the Buddhist priests was inscribed with letters of gold on 
 a black lacquered tablet, and was entrusted to the care of the 
 temple where the body was buried. 
 
 NOTE 44. The " divine tree " was the emblem of Shinto. 
 It will therefore be understood that these menacing demon- 
 strations, though inaugurated by the Buddhist priests, were 
 employed sometimes by Shinto ministers also. Instances of the 
 latter nature were comparatively rare, however. 
 
 NOTE 45. This included the birth of a domesticated ani- 
 mal or bird, barn-door fowl excepted. 
 
 NOTE 46. These rules are quoted from a book of eti- 
 quette published at the beginning of the tenth century. 
 
 NOTE 47. A species of guitar with three strings ; essen- 
 tially a woman's instrument. 
 
 NOTE 48. This game was called iro-bumi-awase (com- 
 posing love-letters), and the method of procedure corresponded 
 to that of the uta-cnvase (composing poems). It found great 
 favour during the reign of Horikawa (1087-1107). 
 
 NOTE 49. Every Chinese ideograph has a basic element, 
 
 which is called the radical; and a phonetic part which suggests 
 the sound. Numbers of ideographs being mononymous, have 
 the same phonetic part, with different radicals, and numbers 
 have the same radical with different phonetic parts. Given a 
 certain radical, to construct from memory as many as possible 
 of the ideographs composed with it ; or given a certain pho 
 netic, to draw up an exhaustive list of the mononyms i 
 longs to, such was the method of the old-time calligraph, 
 competitions. 
 
 '7 257
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE 50. Every one of these halls and galleries had its 
 appellation, as, the " hall of everlasting benevolence," the " hall 
 of sweet savour," the "hall of perpetual peace," the " hall of 
 virtue and justice," and so on. 
 
 NOTE 51. Hence the wife of a nobleman was usually 
 called Kita-no-kata, or "the northern personage." 
 
 NOTE 52. The dimensions of a mat were invariably six 
 feet by three. It served as a unit of superficial measurement. 
 Instead of saying that a room measured so many feet each way, 
 people said that so many mats could be spread there. Two mats 
 made a tsubo (six feet by six feet), the unit of area for lands and 
 buildings alike. The convenience of this method of measure- 
 ment is great. If a house is said to have so many feet of front- 
 age and so many feet of depth, little idea of its accommodation 
 is conveyed to ordinary minds, and even the dimensions of a 
 room, when stated in feet, are difficult to picture to the imagina- 
 tion. But when a Japanese hears that a house has fifty tsubo, 
 for example, of superficies, he knows that one hundred mats 
 can be spread there, and as he is quite familiar with the space 
 enclosed in a room of six mats, or eight mats, or ten mats and 
 so on, he obtains at once a clear conception of the number of 
 rooms that such a house may contain and their size. He 
 speaks, also, of the cost of building at so much a tsubo, and can 
 thus estimate at once the expense of erecting a house with a 
 given amount of accommodation. 
 
 NOTE 53. The paper of that time was not sufficiently 
 tough to be fitted for such a purpose. 
 
 NOTE 54. Echigo is now the chief centre of kerosene 
 production in Japan. 
 
 NOTE 55. The custom of putting red and gold on the lip 
 had not yet been introduced. 
 
 NOTE 56. Tea and two varieties of sake. The sake, or 
 rice-beer, of that time was brewed just as it is at present. But, 
 after brewing, it was often mixed with ashes of the Cleroden- 
 dron tricotomum to give it a bitter taste. It then received the 
 name of " black sake" 
 
 NOTE 57. It is uncertain when tea was introduced into 
 Japan. As early as the reign of Shomu (724-748), a tea-drink- 
 ing entertainment took place in the Palace. The Buddhist
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 priests seem to have obtained the leaf from China, and to have 
 remained almost the exclusive users of the beverage until the 
 beginning of the ninth century, when the Emperor Saga was so 
 pleased with tea given to him by a Buddhist prelate that he 
 ordered the plant to be cultivated in five provinces near the 
 capital. But he did not succeed in making it popular. Its 
 very name was forgotten for nearly three centuries. 
 
 NOTE 58. A spray of flowers thus attached to a present 
 was called kokoro-bana (blossom of the heart ; /'. ^., flower 
 of good wishes). Originally real flowers were used, but subse- 
 quently artificial blossoms were substituted or even ribbons. 
 In a still later age, it became customary to decorate with a 
 paper butterfly the handle of a vessel used for pouring out sake 
 on occasions of congratulation, and it is believed that the mod- 
 ern habit of attaching coloured paper to a gift had its origin in 
 the " heart-blossom." 
 
 NOTE 59. The annals of the Heian epoch contain the 
 names of five celebrated flutes, four guitars, and nine harps. 
 The names given to them were such as "Verdant leaves," 
 " Rippling current," " Summer landscape," " Restful peace," 
 " Autumn wind," " Pine-scented breeze," " Memories of the 
 past," and so on. 
 
 NOTE 60. Sung by the celebrated Shizuka when, after her 
 parting from Yoshitsune, she had to dance before his brother 
 and enemy Yoritomo. 
 
 NOTE 6 1. Fille de joie. The term makes its appearance 
 for the first time in books written at the beginning of the tenth 
 century. 
 
 NOTE 62. A striking illustration of the part played by 
 women and of the morality of this Court is furnished in the 
 closing scene of the Heian epoch. The Emperor Toba gave 
 his heart to a concubine, Toku (afterwards called Bifuku- 
 mon-in). The heir-apparent, Sutoku, though nominally Toba's 
 son by his consort Soshi, was suspected to be the son of his 
 grandfather, Shirakawa, who had been a lover of Soshi. Toba, 
 at the instigation of his mistress Toku, caused the heir-apparent 
 to step aside in favour of Toku's son. But the latter died 
 childless at an early age. Sutoku then seeking to recover his 
 birthright, was opposed by the lady Toku, who maintained that 
 
 259
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 her son had been done to death by Sutoku's incantations. 
 These complications inaugurated the struggle between the two 
 great clans of Minamoto and Taira, and plunged the nation into 
 a succession of sanguinary wars. 
 
 NOTE 63. The names of these courtesans are appended 
 to poems in three of the Japanese classical anthologies. 
 
 NOTE 64. The reader will observe that a serf marriage 
 was legally recognised. It was not a mere contubernium, as in 
 Rome. In many respects, as indeed might be expected, the 
 condition of the serf in Japan resembled that of the slave in 
 Athens. 
 
 260
 
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