BOOKS
Faces to the West
By J. V. DAVIDSON-HOUSTON 14 R, BECKMANN'S work* is important and timely. Its form is that of a comparative sIndY of the reactions of these two countries to we impact of the West. The book opens by comparing the traditional societies of China and Japan. For nearly 3,000 Years China developed by evolution rather than bY revolution, and the Taoist doctrine that man should live in harmony with nature encouraged conservatism and a non-scientific attitude. Later C°nfticius codified (some would say ossified) existing standards of public and private morality; i„svbile Buddhism, imported from India during the 'Ian dynasty, had little general influence beyond encouraging a philosophy of passivity. Over- centralisation of government was a source of ss.cakness in a vast empire with poor communica- `1,clos, whose administration was in the hands of e:assr ical scholars instead of a hereditary upper cfss. Capitalism and industrialism did not nnrish in Taoist/Confucian soil, and merchants ranked below artisans and farmers in the social scale. Chinese history followed a cyclical pattern. Al1 burdens, natural or man-made, fell eventually nn the peasant, who periodically revolted and c,,aused the establishment of a new dynasty; but `ne scholar-mandarins carried on and the system never changed. China's attitude to the rest of the 7cirld was conditioned by a sense of cultural, rather than racial, superiority; there was only one ct!vilised government, and it was hoped that in ,,Inle all the barbarian nations would come under l_no beneficent sway of the Son of Heaven. It is ."1,43r surprising that China was incapable of 40 sorbing the shock of Western impact. c_ besPite the fact that Japan owed most of her culture to China, her social and political history G°111d hardly have been more different. e ise,sgraPhy has had much to du with this, and it 0, a PitY that the author has omitted discussion tr; th.at asPect. Unlike their neighbours on the _ainland, the Japanese were from early times `48anised into fiercely independent clans; and aoei!? when, in the fifth century, the Yamamoto ela4.L1eved supremacy and gave Japan an Emperor a ining divine descent, it was a feudal and not socentralised system which developed. Japanese b:,lerY was not headed by scholarly mandarins sa: bY military potentates supported by armed norn. nrai, whose intense loyalty to their lord was ont balanced, as in feudal Europe, by obligations no the Part of the superior. The military virtues rather physical courage, self-control, suicide busier than disgrace, all embraced in the term lido. part , Women, who often played an important _ ____ . japai "I Lhinese public life, were relegated in grou 1 t° a permanently inferior position. Thus P loyalties became more important than *TtiE Qeoro ‘MODERNISATION OF CHINA AND JAPAN. By
c'e Beckmann. (Harper and Row, 63s.) individual relationships, and the family was more closely knit into the national system than was the case in China. Primogeniture caused the rise of a landed Samurai aristocracy, while equality of inheritance prevented such a development on the mainland. As in China, ancestor-worship, Buddhism and Confucian teaching all went into the religious melting-pot, but a very different faith came out: Shinto, which was later to develop into worship of the State. Chinese in- fluence in Japan reached its peak during the splendid T'ang dynasty, and there were attempts to imitate the Chinese administrative system. The tradition of aristocratic privilege, however, was already too deep-rooted to admit any but cultural penetration.
Japan's subsequent history was also very different from China's. By the end of the twelfth century the Imperial authority had so declined that one of the great feudal lords, Yoritomo, was 'able to force the Emperor to declare him Shogun (hereditary Commander-in-Chief); and a succession of such dictators virtually ruled Japan for the next six hundred and fifty years.
The author describes the deterioration of the economic system with the growth of population. The feudal lords, in debt to the despised but growing merchant class, began to dismiss their Samurai followers, who became farmers, traders or soldiers of fortune. As in China, the brunt was in the long run borne by the peasants, and during the eighteenth century there was extensive dis- content and disorder.
Up to this time contacts with the West had been limited to visits by Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish traders and missionaries; but the nine- teenth century saw British, American and Russian power at work in China, and the Japanese prepared to meet the threat. It is not surprising that the two Far Eastern empires reacted in very different ways.
Until 1840 European and American merchants had lived on sufferance at Canton, but the im- possibility of reconciling Chinese arrogance with Western assertiveness led first to the Opium War and then to the Anglo-French occupation of Peking. Here the author is refreshingly fair to the British point of view and does not adopt the 'holier-than-thou' attitude of some other American writers. Foreign pressure and the decline of the Manchu dynasty combined to lay China prostrate. Peasant revolts, culminating in the Taiping Rebellion, hastened the fall of the Empire. As in Japan, there was a party which advocated adopting Western technique to put China on a level with her adversaries, but the Manchu reactionaries resisted all change, and the result was the Boxer Rising. This disaster was followed by the virtual division of the country into foreign spheres of influence, and a very limited attempt at reform by the Empress
Jowager. But China was becoming modernised in spite of herself : railways, the telegraph, modern weapons and contact with foreign ideas made the collapse of the old order inevitable, and China's first real revolution came in 1911. The mass of the people took no part in politics, and the so-called Republic was the chronic victim of struggles for power between self- seeking warlords and politicians imbued with foreign revolutionary ideas. There was a reaction against Confucian doctrine and against Christianity (which was identified with Western imperialism). Industrial advance was matched by agricultural decline and a further deterioration in the peasant's status. The Russian revolution made an appeal which was to prove fatal.
In contrast, Japan passed from feudalism to modern centralised government and industrial eminence in the course of fifty years. A group of Samurai intellectuals, convinced that Japan could avert the fate of China only by adopting Western technique, carried out the remarkable coup elm against the Shogun and in 1868 the Emperor emerged from his chrysalis as the head of a constitution, modern in form but traditional in operation. The Meiji Restoration stimulated the desire for imperial expansion; there followed the victory over China in 1895, over Russia in 1905, the capture of Germany's Far Eastern possessions in 1914, and the inevitable progress to Pearl Harbor. Parallel with this there were Socialist and other Radical movements directed against the oligarchy and taking advantage of the discontent of the urban and peasant workers.
In China the last forty years have seen the emergence of the Nationalist and Communist parties as contenders for power. Both en- deavoured to adapt Western technique to Chinese conditions, and after a temporary truce during the struggle with Japan the Communists emerged victorious. The mass of the population, still politically untutored, ceased to support Chiang Kai-shek's 'dynasty' and accepted Mao Tse-tung as the only alternative, The historical cycle now presents a China once more united, militant, and fired with imperialist ambitions, although still unable to solve the problem of feeding her swelling population.
Modern Japan has also witnessed a struggle between Radicals and vested interests, although the alliance of the latter with the militarists repressed all left-wing movements until the defeat of 1945. A question of great moment is the extent to which the American occupation has succeeded in transforming Japan. The Emperor was made to deny his divinity, and democratic forms were accepted. The Socialists and Communists were thus enabled to operate more freely, but personal and factional loyalties, rather than principles, still seem to dominate Japanese politics. At present the Conservatives are in the ascendant, but articulate opinion is torn between the desire for American economic help and the fear of involvement in war.
We thus have the spectacle of two populous nations in which the masses are still ignorant of democracy as understood in the West. The real rulers of China have traditionally been scholar- pedants, those of Japan feudal aristocrats; but in each country the intellectuals have been influenced by Confucian and Buddhist doctrines, which are very different from the traditions of Christendom. Of one thing we may be sure: in neither country will social or political organisa- tion develop along the lines familiar to us in Europe Mr. Beckmann's work is supported by a mas- sive bibliography which should satisfy the most exacting student.
Previous page
