JAPANESE PATRIOTISM
By THE RIGHT REV. S. HEASLETT •
1HE Japanese use two words about the whole range of their I National Polity and their mental attitude to it. They are murui—unique and muhi—incomparable. Just as they speak of " peerless " Fuji, so they think of their " peerless " National Polity. As I walked along the corridor of the gaol in February, 1942, with my chief examiner, he said, while swinging the key of my cell, " Patriotism soars above all." In their belief, no foreigner can fully and adequately understand the peerless polity, nor have any other people, ancient or modern, developed a comparable theory.
There are three words used by the Japanese which, if they could be expressed in adequate English, the soul of a people would lie bare before us. They are Terme) Heika, His Majesty the Emperor ; Ai-koku-shin, love-country-spirit ; and Yamatodamashii, Japan's soul. (Yamato is the classic and poetical name for that part of Kiushu where the Emperor Jimmu TennO is said to have established his court in the year B.C. 66o.) Around these three words there has been built up a theory of the Soul of Japan, unique and incomparable, which they firmly hold, no Westerner can really understand.
Tenn6 Heika, His Majesty the Emperor. The Constitution reads, " The Emperor is sacred and inviolate," The word translated " sacred " is made up of two ideographs, Shin and Sei. In the Japanese translation of the New Testament Shin is the translation of God, and Sei is the translation of Holy. These two words do not carry the same meaning as they do to an instructed Christian. They do carry the highest Japanese conception of God and holy. Very early in my life in Japan I caught a glimpse of what this word means to the people of Yamato. In the opening years of this century the Emperor Meiji paid a visit to Osaka. As he passed on horse- back through the streets the solemn silence was suddenly broken by an elderly Japanese womail standing quite near to me. She clapped her hands three times and bowed her body almost to the ground in a reverent obeisance. That is the exact action that all worshippers use in front of a Shinto shrine. To the woman, a divine being was passing.
The last notable occasion on which I saw an outward sign of this attitude to the reigning House was in St. Andrew's Church, Tokyo, where a memorial service was being held for Prince Arthur of Connaught (a prince highly honoured, by the Japanese). The Emperor's youngest brother, Prince Takamatsu, represented His Majesty at the service. The audience included many Japanese of high rank in the Government, Army, Navy and Diplomatic Services. As I, with the British Ambassador, led Prince and Princess Takamatsu up the aisle to their seats in the front of the church, every Japanese present turned right or left to face the procession, and each bowed double in solemn obeisance as the Royal Party passed. This act had the quality of religious reverence in it. An unforgettable pcene—the moving, slight, dignified, youthful figure, the bowed bodies of grave men. In the 4o years that separated these two incidents the flame of devotion to the Imperial House has waxed and waned in expression according to the prevalent political situation. It has never burned more brightly than today.
Ai-koku-shin, love-country-spirit, i.e., patriotism. This is a com- paratively modern term expressing something as old as the race.
It came into common use after the Restoration of 1868, to meet a new situation. From the time of the first Shogun Yoritomo (A.D. 1186) until Feudalism reached its zenith under the Tokugawa Shogunate, ending in 1868, loyalty to Elan and Daimys was " patriotism." Even today, when you ask a Japanese "Okuniwa? " (what is your country?) he always replies, " I am a man of . . . (mentioning the fief or the clan into which he was born). But with the Emperor Meiji on the throne in Tokyo and the whole Empire corning under his personal rule, a new idea dawned in men's minds. Japan became Dai Nippon Teikoku, " The Great Empire of Japan." Loyalty to the clan or daimyo was expanded and enriched into a patriotism that embraced the whole land and centred in the Emperor, and Ai-koku-shin is its expression.
I have listened to sermons and addresses on this subject and even been carried away with the eloquence and passion of the speakers, but when I've tried to analyse and express it in prose it has eluded me. The sensation was not unlike that of a plain man trying to understand a mystic. One who knew the Japanese well wrote, " Their patriotism is more truly a passion than an idea. It is an emotion rather than a conception." The house in Akasaka District, Tokyo, in which General Nogi, with his wife, committed hara-kiri on the death of the Emperor Meiji is never without visitors summer and winter. It is a shrine. It is the expression of an emotion, felt but not analysable. The spirits of the two live there.
Yamatodamashit is built around these two ideas of the Sacred Ruler and the divine land. " Was the land not created by the ancient gods for a dwelling and a possession of the Sacred Ruler and his descendants to ages eternal? Does not all. honour and power dwell in him? And what he wills and bestows on his people is it not right? "
" From the people arises gratitude, duty, responsibility, awe and reverence." This is the essence of Yamatodamashii. " He bestows gifts, we return loyalty. There is no distinction between our attitude to him whether we are alive or dead. We are his." Here are two illustrations that may help the reader to understand something of the Japanese obsession centring in the divinity of the Emperor and the sacred nature of his land.
During the General Synod of our Church in Sendai in 1937, special evangelistic services were arranged for the people of the city. One of the preachers was the head master of a Middle School, an ordained priest who had studied for many years in U.S.A. He was an eloquent and able preacher and the acknowledged leader of the nationalistic party in the Church. His theme was " Christianity and Patriotism." The audience was mainly non-Christian. For illus- tration of the Emperor's virtues he gave a vivid picture of His Majesty during a recent review of the troops standing on a raised dais while the rain poured down on his unsheltered head, until all the troops had passed by. The point of his illustration lay in the report, recorded in the press, that the Emperor had stood so motionless and absorbed in his armed forces that when the review ended the place on the dais where his feet had stood was dry, the rest soaked in rain. The audience sat motionless and entranced. There was a quietness, an intensity, an emotion of awe such as I have never anywhere else experienced.
When, after 1931, and later after 1937, on the aggression of the army against China, our lives became difficult. All foreigners were suspect, and our life was uneasy. During this period when it became evident that we must soon leave the country, a number of people of varying social status came and proposed that I should become, by adoption into a family, a naturalised Japanese. They said "Nihon no tsuchi ni natta kudasai," in effect, " So you will become Japanese earth when you die." Even the little police examiner who
grilled me frequently in gaol urged this on me. Japanese earth. part of the sacred soil." That was to be my reward, the greatest the', could conceive.
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