WHAT JAPAN STANDS FOR.*
THE usual crowd of books is being evoked by the crisis in the Far East. Many writers have already dealt with the expan- sion of the Russian Empire; now it is her plucky'little foe that is being described in work after work. The four books lying before us are all, in their different ways, worthy of study, and between them afford a fairly complete and adequate picture of life in the most fascinating of Oriental countries,—the only one which has as yet made a serious effort to rank itself on a level with the nations of the West. Three of them, however, call for slight notice at present Mr. Brownell's Heart of Japan. is so deservedly popular that we need only express our pleasure at seeing that this delightful and sympathetic study of inner Japanese life has already passed into a second edition. Miss Hartshorne's book, dated from Philadelphia, deals mainly with the impressions that she derived from a three years' stay in Japan, and succeeds, thanks to its charming style and thorough love of the Land of the Rising Sun, in bringing before the reader a very picturesque and satisfactory panorama of that kaleidoscopic country, with its chivalry and festivals, its love of beauty, and its quaint simplicity of manners. Mr. Rittner, with the aid of some admirable photographs—best, perhaps, among a series of illustrations which all demand grateful comment—under- takes to "put on record some impressions of the development of the Japanese" during the last decade, so full of remarkable advances in the change from Eastern to Western civilisation and ideals. Less thorough than Mr. Ransome's recent account of Japan in Transition, Mr. Rittner's book tells very much the same story, and utters some useful truths,—notably in the very outspoken chapter on missionary work in China and Japan, which deserves to be closely pondered. Mr. Watson's book, however, stands on a different plane, and calls for more extended comment, since it aims at nothing less than a reasoned exposition of that Japanese Revolution which future historians may possibly consider as the greatest event in the world-history of the past generation.
It is singularly difficult for a Westerner to understand Japan : and several of these authors agree in holding that the longer one studies Japan, the readier one is to acknow- ledge ignorance. 'At first, says Miss Hartshorne, one thinks it easy to explain Japan to the peOple at home, in letters that one writes "on thin Japanese paper, unfolding yard after yard of the neat rolls, and measuring now and then, perhaps, to see how much one has really written." But as one grows more into the spirit of Japanese life the task of explanation becomes more and more difficult, until one stops to think despairingly " How shall I make them understand ? " The same story is told by Mr. Watson,—and indeed by most of the best writers on Japan. The globe-trotter is quite satisfied that be thoroughly understands Japan in the month or six weeks that he gives to its fascinations : the man who really tries to understand it admits that "Japan is incomprehensible." And yet it is so important that we should try to know her! To that end Mr. Watson has grappled in a serious spirit with the problem, and has produced a book which—in spite of its some- what excessive devotion to a Carlylean quaintness of diction— comes as near as anything yet written to tearing the heart out of the mystery. Like Carlyle, he takes the Revolution as his protagonist, and endeavours to show us, through a medley of shifting lights, what Japan is really aiming at. She is at present in the throes of transition, and it is little wonder if many observers find the confusing effects of a phantasmagoria
in her daily life. It is Orientalism and the Middle Ages jostling the Twentieth Century and England ; a medley, a revolution, a convulsion in being ; the evolution of man in a generation." The Japanese feudal system, with its governing creed of. " Bushido," or the laws of chivalry, is but thirty years away—sometimes you feel that it only disappeared last year—and into the intervening generation Japan has crowded all that Europe felt and thought and evolved in six hundred laborious years. Can we wonder that this extraordinary country is a little puzzling to the student from the outside, that, as an Englishman who had lived a quarter of a century • • (1) Japan Aspects and Destinies. By W. Petrie Watson. Illustrated. London : Grant Richards. [12s. 6d. net.]—(2) Impressions of Japan. By tieo. H: Ratner. Illustrated. London : John Murray. [10s. tid. net.) --. (3) Jaywn • and her People. • By -Anna -C. Hartshorne. Ihustrated. 2 vols. London : Regan Paul, Trench, and Co. r21s.)(41 _The Heart of Japan. B C. L. Brownell. Illustrated. Second Edition. London : Methuen & Co. 16)0
in the land expressed- it, " When you've been six weeks in Japan, you know everything. In six months you begin to doubt. In six years you are sure of nothing" P Mr. Watson approaches his subject, then, with becoming modesty, and puts forward his conclusions as the tentative results of careful observation. He has a genial sense of humour, which en- livens his pages with illustrations of the inevitable comic side of the Revolution.; whilst his keen insight into human motives and the underlying current of lofty patriotism keep .him well away from the common error of failing to take the Japanese seriously because many of their characteristics irresistibly suggest to us the games of children.
Mr. Watson's chapter on " The Spirit of the Revolution," standing near the end of his book as the sequel to a number of apparently unconnected passages in which he has skilfully touched the many-sided aspects of the change which has come over Japan in the last thirty years, strikes us as one of the best and most instructive things that have yet been written on this matter. We have heard' of many revolutions before : from ancient Athens to modern Paris, the history of the world is full of them. But this Japanese Revolution is unique in its kind, as we may easily see if we consider for a moment what has been the guiding spirit of other revolutions. It was brought about neither by political nor ecclesiastical considerations : it was not the rising of a people against temporal or spiritual oppressors, like the Reformation, the birth of the Dutch Republic, the English or the French Revolutions,—and when we have said this we have eliminated practically all the causes that led to the great revolutions which History counts as her milestones. And yet no revolution was ever so far-reaching in its effects, so thoroughgoing in its methods: in Japan we have witnessed not merely a change of government, but the complete remodelling of a whole social and political civilisa- tion. "It has brought a nation and a sovereignty from the Feudal Age to the Twentieth Century in four decades." Mr. Watson presents an interesting and persuasive theory of this Revolution when he calls it " the accession of the Despotism of Reason." This is the Japanese Revolution in brief, —the subordination of every department of the State to the domination of Reason, as interpreted by the secular experience of the blindly seeking nations of Europe:-
"We—Europe—from a thousand years of pain and bloodshed had evoked and embodied Reason in a certain number of proved principles and final methods—such principles as the necessity of toleration, the sanctity of public justice, the mutual responsibility of State units—such methods as government by majorities, centralisation of • authority, delegation of administration to trained experts, and so on—we had evoked and embodied Reason in a certain number of proved principles and final methods, but along with these we held and hold an equal if not greater number of dubious usages and habitudes. What the Japanese revolutionaries did was to select our proved prin- ciples and final methods and ignore all else—that is, to make appeal to the heart of Reason so far as we, Europe, after a thousand years, had it revealed to us."
As Mr. Watson observes, there is more than a touch of romance in this conception of Japan's advance,—the light- hearted but deep-thoughted child of the East borrowing our age-long experience to raise herself to an equality with our hard-proved and fiercely tempered nations. The Russo- Japanese War is a striking sequel to this Revolution, in which the despotism of Reason, we may say, is opposed to the ancient tradition which takes the place of Reason in the Empire of the Czar. Perhaps Mr. Watson goes a little far in seeing, in the war which he prophesied as absolutely necessary, " an encounter of two enormous Ideas ; two Time-spirits ; two theories of progress ; two interpretations of the art of civilisa- tion." But there is a great deal in his argument, which at least has the merit of giving a satisfactory explanation of our
Japanese Alliance in, that we have, half unconsciously, taken• once more the desirable side in the world-old battle between Truth and Error, Reason and Authority.
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