THE LAST JAPANESE BLUE-BOOK.
'SITE recommend a speculation to Messrs. Mudie, the
purchase of all obtainable copies of the "Corre- spondence respecting Japan (No. 3), 1870," just presented to Parliament. It is not often that a Blue-Book is one of the curiosities of literature, worthy to be preserved, and likely to be preserved, for centuries, but this one is. In a volume of less than a hundred pages of large print, strictly official in form, but strictly literary in style, Sir Harry Parkes and his able colleague Mr. Mitford have presented to the Foreign Office a full and an intelligible history of the reorganization of the Japanese Government, supported by the most strangely interesting pikes justificatives it was ever our lot to read ; decrees, debates, political pamphlets, religious tracts, speeches from the throne, manifestoes to the people, all exactly trans- lated from the Japanese, all running over with fact and mean- ing, all unconscious—that is written for native use and not for European eyes—and all marked by a radical divergence from European modes of thought. The extraordinary separate- ness of the Japanese character, its unlikeness to the Oriental, no less than to the European type, comes out in all its fullness, till the English reader pauses in astonishment, to wonder what manner of men these can be who are as unlike himself as if they had been born in another planet, yet think with all his own power ; who believe the Imperial family created Japan, yet reason on the merits of different systems of government like so many Hallams ; who see that Christianity promises all to the lowly, and, therefore, denounce it as a huge imposture, inferior to Buddhism, yet in the same breath admit that Buddhism is dying of luxury and viciousness ; who have just carried through an enormous revolution, but defend the new Government because it is antique ; who plead the superiority of foreigners as a reason for friendship, but declare that the ways of Japan must be original ; who hold their Emperor to be divine, but march behind him armed with repeating rifles ; who, in full Parlia- mentary debate, refuse to abolish the seppuka, or hara kin, the cruel compulsion to suicide by disembowelling, because such suicide is, as one Member said, "the very shrine of the Japanese national spirit, and the embodiment in practice of devotion to principle." Mr. Mitford has given reports of more than fifty speeches upon this point, and in the immense majority the leading, and, indeed, the single idea is, that the " hara kiri "is a virtuous act, a final and conclusive proof that the suicide still believes principle ought to be lord of all, —that he is not lost to shame, but gives a grand "sign of a nature uncorrupted" by himself condemning himself to a capital penalty. The notion that a soldier should forego such a right is treated as infamous, and destructive of the sense of honour, without which, says one speaker, a soldier is but a common man. Seneca would have exulted in the morality of the new Parliament of Japan, which is, for other reasons, a noteworthy assembly. It is composed of the In- tendants of all the feudal Chiefs. When in 1868 an explosion of opinion—the causes of which are still imperfectly under- stood, though the main one was undoubtedly dread of foreign conquest—shattered the power of the Mayors of the Palace, the " Ziogoons," and restored the Mikado to his autocracy, the great feudal chiefs, who felt to the full the impulse of that opinion, resolved that the Throne, to be real, must be powerful,—that the powers stolen six hundred years ago from the State must be restored to its chief. He alone must be the source of power and owner of the soil. Uncompelled apparently by any force, acting, as they declare, solely from a sense of political duty "to the myriads and millions," some 300 Dairaios, each of them a sovereign, surrendered their titles, their lands, their powers, and their revenues into the hands of the Emperor, whose authority was proclaimed autocratic and divine. He reappointed them as his officers, subject to his absolute com- mands, and summoned them to aid him with their counsels in a deliberative assembly. They, however, bred up in the harem, were most of them incompetent ; but they sent up their Premiers instead, the officers sprung from the people who really wield their power ; and these men not only organized a House with fixed rules of debate—remarkable mainly for this, that a motion can only be carried by a three-fifths' majority—a Speaker, a system of interpellation, and a fixed mode of intercourse with the Executive ; but dis- cussed constitutions for the Empire, all given here, and all marked by great—in one instance by very great—political ability. One was feudal, one was semi-feudal, one strictly monarchical, and this one was, as had been expected, accepted by the Mikado, who, in a short speech, announced that hence- forward the Daimios would be only lieutenants, and their estates governed "like cities," by his own officers, fixed por- tions of their revenues being set aside for the purposes of Government. This reform would appear to have been unresisted, and the Mikado to have been replaced in a position in some respects strangely like that of the Cmsar who, as De Quincey pointed out, was absolute because he was incarnate Rome. Throughout all the debates and documents there runs this same idea,—that the first duty of a Japanese is to Japan, that to Japan he owes all, even life and lands, and that Japan in the patriotic sense is incarnate in the Emperor. This idea is most fully expressed in an official pamphlet or manifesto, pub- lished to explain to the people the objects and the motive of the monarchical revolution :— " Is there any man who thinks that he has never received a penny from the Emperor ? Is there any man who thinks that he is not beholden to the Emperor for one tittle of help in his need? Is there any man who believes that it is of his own merit that he passes through the world, and who feels not the favours which he has received from his country? If there be such a man, great is his mistake. He is like the man in the proverb who is grateful for the light borrowed from his lamp, but is heedless of the thanks which he owes to the moon and to the sun. If, then, a man wishes to fulfil his duties as a man, and having been born in the country of the gods desires not to turn his back upon the spirits of that country, let him above all things bear in mind the privilege of being born a Japanese, and set his heart upon repaying the debt of gratitude which he owes to his country. We have said that the institu- tions of the country of the gods excel those of other countries. The heavenly ancestors of the Emperor of old created this country, and established the duties of men in their mutual relations. Since that time the line of Emperors has never been changed. Generation has succeeded generation in the rule of this country, and the Imperial heart has ever been penetrated by a tender love for the people. In their turn the people have reverenced and served generation alter generation of Emperors. In foreign countries the lines of princes have been fre- quently changed; the people owe their Sovereign a debt of gratitude which extends over two or three generations ; the relations of sovereign and subject last for 100 or 200 years ; the prince of yesterday is the foe of to-day ; the Minister of yesterday is the rebel of to-morrow. In our country we have no such folly. Since the creation of the world we have remained unmoved ; since the creation of the world the Imperial line has been unchanged and the relations of sovereign and subject have been undisturbed ; hence it is that the spirit of gratitude has intensified and grown deeper and deeper. The especial point in which the institu- tions of our country excel those of the rest of the world is the creed which has been established by the heavenly ancestors of the Emperor, and which comprises the mutual duties between lord and servant. Even in foreign countries where lords and servants have over and over again changed places, these mutual duties are handed down as a matter of weighty importance. How much the more does it behove us to pay a debt of deep and inexhaustible gratitude which extends over ages."
This idea that obedience to the State is a duty, a religious as well as social obligation, has taken fast hold of the Japanese, till it has become, as regards the Emperor, something almost akin to worship. His journey to Yeddo, a strange royal progress, the first after an interval of six hundred years, during which the Emperors had been, like the long-haired Kings of the Franks, the secluded objects of a distant worship, seems to have moved the Japanese heart to its depths. As he entered the gate in the Phcenix car, or palanquin of state,—
" There were fully sixty of them immediately surrounding the H6-6-ren, and the effect of the group, with the brilliant sun lighting up the sheen of the silk and the glitter of the lacquer, was very gorgeous and indescribably strange, comparable to nothing ever seen in any other part of the world. And now a great silence fell upon the people. Far as the eye could see on either side the roadsides wore densely packed with the crouching populace, in their ordinary position when any official of rank passes by. And as the train has moved between them, Kugds and Daimios, troops and warriors and statesmen, they had looked on in comparative quiet, a murmur of conversation in an undertone and con- stant slight restlessness of movement betokening the general interest. But as the Phosnix Car, with its strange crest shimmering in the sun- light, and with its halo of glittering attendants, came on, circling it like the sun-rays, the people, without order or signal, turned their faces to the earth, the Foreign-Office officials, who had hitherto stood upright beside us few Europeans, sank into the same position, and no man moved or spake for a space, and all seemed to hold their breath for very awe as the mysterious Presence, on whom few are privileged to look and live, was passing slowly by. The hush was as that which preceded the 'still, small voice' which the Prophet heard on Horeb ; and though we might not do reverence to the Emperor like his subjects, wo could not but respect the reverence of his people, nor with all our better knowledge and higher civilization could we refuse to own that a Power was in our midst before which bowed millions of our fellow-men."
One would think that Japan, with its vast and warlike population, its pagan ideal of patriotism as higher than morality, its habit of obedience, and the power its people display of utilizing European discoveries like steamers and breech-loaders—a power in which the Japanese stand alone among the nations of the East—would feel itself strong and safe enough. There is a root of weakness, however, some- -- where. The Revolution was caused mainly by fear of invasion, the pamphleteers speak incessantly of the necessity of strength in the Government to check foreign advance, the Members of Parliament refer to the "still prowling bar- barian," and the Foreign Office of Japan, in a curious paper of inquiries submitted to the Parliament of Yeddo, openly acknow- ledges that it must either protect the foreigners or fight them, and does not see its way to either, but inclines to peace and the adoption of Western civilization. The Europeans in Yeddo say the root of distrust is the visible superiority of the British soldier, who for his part utterly despises his Japanese rival, but that suggestion is hardly sufficient when the over- whelming disproportion of numbers is taken into account. We have no explanation to offer, but we have two suspicions, one borne out by every line of this volume, the other derived only from the experience of the Indian Empire. May it not be that the shadow cast by the \Vest on all Eastern races, the deep melancholy which the sense of their inferiority to the West in energy casts on all the tribes with which we have yet come in contact, is taking the heart out of Japan ? And may it not also be that the Japanese, with all his capacity for discipline, and his proclivity to suicide, has not a high capacity for war, any more than the sepoy, who is at least as brave, and in his own way quite as tenacious of his honour ?
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