MORAL IDEALS
Even a slight study of Japanese history
suffices to show that the faculty of moral discrimination
was highly developed in certain directions. In
what land have the ideal and practice of loyalty been
higher? The heroes most lauded by the Japanese
to-day are those who have proved their loyalty by
the sacrifice of their lives. When Masashige
Kusunoki waged a hopeless war on behalf of one branch
of the then divided dynasty, and finally preferred
to die by his own hand rather than endure the sight
of a victorious rebel, he is considered to have exhibited
the highest possible evidence of devoted loyalty.
One often hears his name in the sermons of Christian
preachers as a model worthy of all honor. The
patriots of the period immediately preceding the Meiji
era, known as the “Kinnoka,” some of whom
lost their lives because of their devotion to the
cause of their then impotent Emperor, are accorded
the highest honor the nation can give.
The teachings of the Japanese concerning
the relations that should exist between parents, and
children, and, in multitudes of instances, their actual
conduct also, can hardly be excelled. We can assert
that they have a keen moral faculty, however further
study may compel us to pronounce its development and
manifestations to be unbalanced.
Better, however, than generalizations
as to the ethical ideals of Japan, past and present,
are actual quotations from her moral teachers.
The following passages are taken from “A Japanese
Philosopher,” by Dr. Geo. W. Knox, the larger
part of the volume consisting of a translation of
one of the works of Muro Kyuso who lived
from 1658 to 1734. It was during his life that
the famous forty-seven ronin performed their exploit,
and Kyu-so gave them the name by which they are still
remembered, Gi-shi, the “Righteous Samurai.”
The purpose of the work is the defense of the Confucian
faith and practice, as interpreted by Tei-shu, the
philosopher of China whom Japan delighted to honor.
It discusses among other things the fundamental principles
of ethics, politics, and religion. Dr. Knox has
done all earnest Western students of Japanese ethical
and religious ideas an inestimable service in the
production of this work in English.
“The ‘Way’ of Heaven
and Earth is the ‘Way’ of Gyo and Shun; the ‘Way’ of Gyo and
Shun is the ‘Way’ of Confucius and Mencius,
and the ‘Way’ of Confucius and Mencius
is the ‘Way’ of Tei-Shu. Forsaking
Tei-Shu, we cannot find Confucius and Mencius; forsaking
Confucius and Mencius, we cannot find Gyo and
Shun; and forsaking Gyo and Shun, we cannot find
the ‘Way’ of Heaven and Earth. Do
not trust implicitly an aged scholar; but this
I know, and therefore I speak. If I say
that which is false, may I be instantly punished by
Heaven and Earth."
“Recently I was astounded at
the words of a philosopher: ’The “Way”
comes not from Heaven,’ he said, ’it
was invented by the sages. Nor is it in
accord with nature; it is a mere matter of aesthetics
and ornament. Of the five relations, only
the conjugal is natural, while loyalty, filial
obedience, and the rest were invented by the sages,
and have been maintained by their authority ever since.’
Surely, among all hérésies from ancient days
until now, none has been so monstrous as this."
“Kujuro, a lad of fifteen years,
quarreled with a neighbor’s son over a
game of go, lost his self-control, and before
he could be seized, drew his sword and cut the
boy down. While the wounded boy was under
the surgeon’s care, Kujuro was in custody, but
he showed no fear, and his words and acts were
calm beyond his years. After some days the
boy died, and Kujuro was condemned to hara-kiri.
The officers in charge gave him a farewell feast
the night before he died. He calmly wrote
to his mother, took ceremonious farewell of his
keeper and all in the house, and then said to the guests:
’I regret to leave you all, and should
like to stay and talk till daybreak; but I must
not be sleepy when I commit hara-kiri to-morrow,
so I’ll go to bed at once. Do you stay at
your ease and drink the wine.’ So
he went to his room and fell asleep, all being filled
with admiration as they heard him snore. On the
morrow he rose early, bathed and dressed himself
with care, made all his preparations with perfect
calmness, and then, quiet and composed, killed
himself. No old, trained, self-possessed samurai
could have excelled him. No one who saw
it could speak of it for years without tears....
I have told you this that Kujuro may be remembered.
It would be shameful were it to be forgotten
that so young a boy performed such a deed."
“We are not to
cease obeying for the sake of study, nor must we
establish the laws before
we begin to obey. In obedience we are to
establish its Tightness
and wrongness."
“We learn loyalty and obedience
as we are loyal and obedient. To-day I know
yesterday’s short-comings, and to-morrow I shall
know to-day’s.... In our occupations
we learn whether conduct conforms to right and
so advance in the truth by practice."
“Besides a few works on history,
like the Sankyo Ega Monogatari, which record
facts, there are no books worth reading in our literature.
For the most part they are sweet stories of the Buddhas,
of which one soon wearies. But the evil is traditional,
long-continued, and beyond remedy. And other
books are full of lust, not even to be mentioned,
like the Genji Monogatari, which should never
be shown to a woman or a young man. Such books
lead to vice. Our nobles call the Genji
Monogatari a national treasure, why, I do not
know, unless it is that they are intoxicated with its
style. That is like plucking the spring blossom
unmindful of the autumn’s fruit. The
book is full of adulteries from beginning to end.
Seeing the right, ourselves should become good, seeing
the wrong, we should reprove ourselves.
The Genji Monogatari, Chokonka, and Seishoki
are of a class, vile, mean, comparable to the books
of the sages as charcoal to ice, as the stench
of decay to the perfume of flowers."
“To the samurai, first of all
is righteousness; next life, then silver and
gold. These last are of value, but some put them
in the place of righteousness. But to the
samurai even life is as dirt compared to righteousness.
Until the middle part of the middle ages customs
were comparatively pure, though not really righteous.
Corruption has come only during this period of
government by the samurai. A maid servant
in China was made ill with astonishment when
she saw her mistress, soroban (abacus) in hand, arguing
prices and values. So was it once with the
samurai. They knew nothing of trade, were
economical and content."
“Even in the days of my youth,
young folks never mentioned the price of anything;
and their faces reddened if the talk was of women.
Their joy was in talk of battles and plans for war.
And they studied how parents and lords should
be obeyed, and the duty of samurai. But
nowadays the young men talk of loss and gain, of dancing
girls and harlots and gross pleasures. It is a
complete change from fifty or sixty years ago....
Said Aochi to his son: ’There is such
a thing as trade. See that you know nothing of
it. In trade the profit should always go
to the other side.... To be proud of buying
high-priced articles cheap is the good fortune of
merchants, but should be unknown to samurai.
Let it not be even so much as mentioned....
Samurai must have a care of their words, and are
not to speak of avarice, cowardice, or lust.’"
A point of considerable interest to
the student of Japanese ethical ideals is the fact
that the laws of Old Japan combined legal and moral
maxims. Loyalty and morality were conceived as
inseparable. Ieyasu (abdicated in 1605, and died
in 1616), the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, left
a body of laws to his successors as his last will,
in accordance with which they should rule the land.
These laws were not made public, but were kept strictly
for the guidance of the rulers. They are known
as the Testament or “Honorable Will” of
Ieyasu, and consist of one hundred rules. It
will serve our purpose here to quote some of those
that refer to the moral ideal.
“No one is to act simply for
the gratification of his own desires, but he
is to strive to do what may be opposed to his desires,
i.e., to exercise self-control, in order
that everyone may be ready for whatever he may
be called upon by his superiors to do.”
“The aged, whether widowers or
widows, and orphans, and persons without relations,
every one should assist with kindness and liberality;
for justice to these four is the root of good government.”
“Respect the gods
(or God), keep the heart pure, and be diligent in
business during the
whole life.”
“When I was young I determined
to fight and punish all my own and my ancestors’
enemies, and I did punish them; but afterwards, by
deep consideration, I found that the way of heaven
was to help the people, and not to punish them.
Let my successors follow out this policy, or
they are not of my line. In this lies the strength
of the nation.”
“To insure the Empire peace,
the foundation must be laid in the ways of holiness
and religion, and if men think they can be educated,
and will not remember this, it is as if a man were
to go to a forest to catch fish, or thought he
could draw water out of fire. They must
follow the ways of holiness.”
“Japan is the country of the
gods (or God ’Shinkoku’).
Therefore, we have among us Confucianism, Buddhism,
and Shintoism, and other sects. If we leave
our gods it is like refusing the wages of
our master and taking them from another.”
“In regard to dancing women,
prostitutes, brothels, night work, and all other
improper employments, all these are like caterpillars
or locusts in the country. Good men and writers
in all times have written against them.”
“It is said that the Mikado,
looking down on his people, loves them as a mother
does her children. The same may be said of me
and my government. This benevolence of mind
is called Jin. This Jin may be said to consist
of five parts; these are humanity, integrity, courtesy,
wisdom, and truth. My mode of government is according
to the way of heaven. This I have done to
show that I am impartial, and am not assisting
my own relatives and friends only."
These quotations are perhaps sufficient,
though one more from a recent writer has a peculiar
interest of its own, from the fact that the purpose
of the book from which the quotation is taken was the
destruction of the tendencies toward approval of Western
thought. It was published in 1857. The writer,
Junzo Ohashi, felt himself to be a witness for truth
and righteousness, and, in the spirit of the doctrine
he professed, sealed his faith with a martyr’s
suffering and death, dying (in August, 1868) from
the effect of repeated examination by torture for
a supposed crime, innocence of which he maintained
to the end. It is interesting to note that two
of his granddaughters, “with the physics and
astronomy of the West, have accepted its religion.”
“The West knows not the ’Ri’
of the virtues of the heart which are in all
men unchangeably the same. Nor does it know that
the body is the organ of the virtues, however
careful its analysis of the body may be.
The adherents of the Western Philosophy indeed study
carefully the outward appearances, but they have no
right to steal the honored name of natural philosophy.
As when ‘Ki’ is destroyed, ‘Ri’
too disappears, so, with their analysis of ‘Ki,’
they destroy ‘Ri,’ and thus this learning
brings benevolence and righteousness and loyalty
and truth to naught. Among the Westerners
who from of old have studied details minutely, I have
not heard of one who was zealous for the Great
Way, for benevolence, righteousness, loyalty,
and truth, and who opposed the absurdities of
the Lord of Heaven (God).’ ’Let
then the child make its parent, Heaven; the retainer,
his lord; the wife, her husband; and let each
give up life for righteousness. Thus will each
serve Heaven. But if we exalt Heaven above parent
or lord, we shall come to think that we can serve
it though they be disobeyed, and like wolf or
tiger shall rejoice to kill them. To such fearful
end does the Western learning lead."
The foregoing quotations reveal the
exalted nature of the ideals held by at least some
of the leaders of ethical thought in Japan. Taken
as a whole, the moral ideals characterizing the Japanese
during their entire historical period have been conspicuously
communal. The feudal structure of society has
determined the peculiar character of the moral ideal.
Loyalty took first rank in the moral scale; the subordination
of the inferior to the superior has come next, including
unquestioning obedience of children to parents, and
of wife to husband. The virtues of a military
people have been praised and often gloriously exemplified.
The possession of these various ideals and their attainment
in such high degree have given the nation its cohesiveness.
They make the people a unit. The feudal training
under local daimyos was fitting the people for the
larger life among the nations of the world on which
they are now entering. Especially is their sense
of loyalty, as exhibited toward the Emperor, serving
them well in this period of transition from Oriental
to Occidental social ideals.
Let us now examine some defective
moral standards and observe their origin in the social
order. Take, for instance, the ideal of truthfulness.
Every Occidental remarks on the untruthfulness of the
Japanese. Lies are told without the slightest
apparent compunction; and when confronted with the
charge of lying, the culprit often seems to feel little
sense of guilt. This trait of character was noted
repeatedly by the early negotiators with Japan.
Townsend Harris and Sir Rutherford Alcock made frequent
mention of it. When we inquire as to the moral
ideal and actual instruction concerning truthfulness,
we are amazed to find how inadequate it was.
The inadequacy of the teaching, however, was not the
primal cause of the characteristic. There is
a far deeper explanation, yet very simple, namely,
the nature of the social order. The old social
order was feudal, and not industrial or commercial.
History shows that industrial and commercial nations
develop the virtue of truthfulness far in advance of
military nations. For these virtues are essential
to them; without them they could not long continue
to prosper.
So in regard to all the aspects of
business morality, it must be admitted that, from
the Occidental standpoint, Old Japan was very deficient.
But it must also be stated that new ideals are rapidly
forming. Buying and selling with a view to making
profit, though not unknown in Old Japan, was carried
on by a despised section of the community. Compared
with the present, the commercial community of feudal
times was mean and small. Let us note somewhat
in detail the attitude of the samurai toward the trader
in olden times, and the ideals they reveal.
The pursuit of business was considered
necessarily degrading, for he who handled money was
supposed to be covetous. The taking of profit
was thought to be ignoble, if not deceitful. They
who condescended to such an occupation were accordingly
despised and condemned to the lowest place in the
social scale. These ideas doubtless helped to
make business degrading; traders were doubtless sordid
and covetous and deceitful. In the presence of
the samurai they were required to take the most abject
postures. In addressing him, they must never stand,
but must touch the ground with their foreheads; while
talking with him they must remain with their hands
on the ground. Even the children of samurai always
assumed the lordly attitude toward tradesmen.
The sons of tradesmen might not venture into a quarrel
with the sons of samurai, for the armed children of
the samurai were at liberty to cut down and kill the
children of the despicable merchant, should they insult
or even oppose them.
All this, however, has passed away.
Commerce is now honored; trade and manufacture are
recognized not only as laudable, but as the only hope
of Japan for the future. The new social order
is industrial and commercial. The entire body
of the former samurai, now no longer maintaining their
distinctive name, are engaged in some form of business.
Japan is to-day a nation of traders and farmers.
Accompanying the changes in the social order, new standards
as to honesty and business integrity are being formulated
and enforced.