The Reawakening of Japan
I
OF Japan of old — the Japan of the samurai, of Utamaro, and of lacquer ware — the West has always shown a sympathetic albeit patronizing appreciation. The spirit of old Japan as reflected in the tranquil and mystic atmosphere of Kyoto and Nara finds numerous admirers abroad. It is this old Japan that not only her well-wishers but her enemies are anxious to see preserved or revived. Many a foreign observer on Japan would remark with a sigh: ‘What a pity that things of the past, things of real beauty and joy forever, should be so mercilessly sacrificed at the altar of modernism!’
Heretofore this criticism apparently fell flat among the Japanese, who were so feverishly busy learning from the West — making what it made, trying to think what it thought, and even sinning where it sinned. And what clever pupils they proved, too! To-day Japan is outwardly as modern a state as any in Europe and America. Her industry is carrying everything before it in the markets of the world, enabling her to feed fifteen times the population of Sweden on an arable area of equal size. She boasts of a navy and a merchant marine the third largest in the world. And all that has been brought about within less than three quarters of a century following the rude awakening caused Japan by the sudden appearance in her waters of Commodore Perry’s dark, threatening squadron.
Having thus almost blindly followed in the footsteps of the West, and having achieved a measure of physical progress undreamed of by their forefathers, the Japanese people began to pause and ponder.
What is all this mad driving and striving for? Where has it landed them? Where are the nations of the West whom they were running after? Would that be a consummation devoutly to be wished?
These are the questions they are asking themselves.
The strain in Japan’s foreign relations consequent upon the Manchurian trouble and the unfair restrictions now being placed upon her trade everywhere have no doubt accelerated this introspective mood of the Japanese nation. But that is not by any means the cause of the reawakening which is so distinctly and vociferously in evidence throughout Japan. At first sight, the same forces are at work there as in the Occident. It is an agitation for a thoroughgoing revision of the system of capitalistic liberalism with all that it has brought upon the life of the Japanese people. To the extent that it aims at removing the evils of capitalism, it has something in common with the social and political agitation in Europe and America. But in that it is a national, not a class, movement, this new campaign in Japan is fundamentally distinct from that of either socialism or communism. Unlike these, moreover, it is at bottom a revolt of mind against matter.
The Oriental outlook is essentially idealistic. All surface indications to the contrary notwithstanding, the mind of the Japanese has never been Westernized. True, under the pressure of menace from abroad, they were obliged, much against their grain, to adopt the ways of the ‘ barbarous ’ West in order to be able to stand their ground against the aggressors. To the exclusion of all other considerations, and at the sacrifice of much that was precious in their traditions, the entire nation was bent upon attaining proficiency in the arts, both of war and of peace, such as the West sets store by. Throughout these long years of restless endeavors, however, the Japanese people have never lost themselves entirely. Amid the glare and glitter of modern civilization, the grip upon them of the spirit of the past has remained as potent as ever.
When, therefore, the inherent weakness of Western civilization began to make itself felt in Japan also; when money and machine seemed rapidly to undermine all that the nation held sacred for centuries; when, above all, communists and fanatics, all products of the materialistic individualism of the Occident, went so far as to harbor designs upon the person of the Emperor, the very spirit of Japan incarnate, the disillusionment was spontaneous. That the reaction should take the form of a challenge to the Western civilization, that the cry of ‘Back to Asia’ should be adopted as a slogan, that the demand for a second Restoration should daily become more insistent, seems likewise not unnatural. It is only another instance of history repeating itself. In those turbulent years preceding the Restoration, the skies resounded with the cries of ‘Honor the Emperor!’ — ‘Down with the Shogunate!’ — ‘Expel the foreign barbarians!’ The air is thick in Japan to-day with leaflets upholding Nipponism, denouncing political parties as usurpers of the imperial power, and above all advocating a strong foreign policy.
II
As it was in the foreign policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate that the Imperialists found the most effective lever for the overthrow of the old régime, so the new movement of to-day seized, as a starting point, upon the weakkneed attitude of the party government in its dealings with powers abroad. Only in that light and in no other can the Manchurian affair, and more especially the unanimity with which the nation then stood behind the army, be made intelligible. The impression abroad seems to be that the Kwantung Army simply ran away with the entire nation — and that was in a sense the case. But how could a handful of soldiers have dragged by the nose a whole nation of ninety millions, had it not been that in their action, in the Manchurian imbroglio, the people at once found the much-needed something around which to rally themselves? The storm that had long been brewing came at last. Indeed, the people had not expected it, but they were not surprised. The crystallization of national sentiment was almost instantaneous.
‘We must see it through,’ was on the lips of everyone, although perhaps the majority only saw as through a glass darkly the real significance of the gigantic task which had been undertaken. And see it through they surely did. The Manchurian chapter could be regarded as closed with the establishment of the new state of Manchukuo.
If the Manchurian venture, as is contended abroad, were merely a case of aggression by a strong nation against its weaker neighbor, if it had been a simple lust of expansion that led the Japanese to shake heaven and earth in the prosecution of their enterprise, nothing would be more unaccountable than the state of things prevailing both in Manchuria and at home, now that the international storm has blown over.
In the ‘puppet’ state of Manchukuo, it is of course the Japanese who are ruling the roost. It is these very Japanese, however, that are more jealous than the natives themselves in guarding the interests of the new state and its people. Like the wealthy man in the story who, having rescued a drowning child, ended by bequeathing it all his wealth, they are advocating that both the Kwantung Leased Territory and the South Manchuria Railway should be given up in favor of the newborn state. It is against the encroachments by Japanese capital and the exploitation by Japanese carpetbaggers that they are keeping the sharpest lookout.
At home in Japan, on the other hand, the unrest, political, social, and economic, has not in the least abated. The feeling is general that the national crisis has only just begun, and that the worst is yet to come. And it is averred that nothing short of a fundamental reorganization of the political and economic structure of the state would suffice to weather the storm. As all efforts are bent in Manchuria to the creation of a state where the Confucian ‘Kingly Way’ may prevail and where there may be no exploitation of man by man, so in Japan a return to the ‘Way of the Tenno (the Heavenly Ruler) ’ and the eradication of all the baneful aspects of the materialistic civilization are impetuously demanded. Thus the Manchurian affair must be regarded only as a sort of prelude to the real movement.
The world has been accusing Japan of something of which she is entirely innocent — that is, aggression as the term is understood in the capitalist imperialistic West, a thing which simply does not exist in the philosophy of the East. The Japanese, too, have tried their best, or their worst, to defend themselves in the language of their accusers, knowing full well, as they do, that it is futile to argue where there is such an unbridgeable cleavage of thought and mentality. They felt from the outset that the best defense and the ultimate justification lay in the motives that animated them and the final results that would be attained. They are aware, not without compunction, that in the meantime deplorable excesses have been committed both at home and on the continent; they are prepared for further annoying occurrences and developments; but all that is taken calmly as the inevitable throes attending the new birth which is taking place in Japan.
III
The whole situation in Japan to-day is rather too involved to be reduced to simple terms, nor are the various elements of the nation as yet thinking with one mind or working toward the same objective. On one point, however, there seems to be a consensus of opinion, and that is that the blind imitation of the West has to cease and that there must be a cool and mature reëxamination of the materialistic institutions of the West in the light of the idealism of the East, so that there may be evolved a distinct civilization hitherto not known.
Even as she is, Japan is the only country on the globe where the old and the new can exist side by side with any degree of harmony. In the West, unfortunately, the break with the past is definite and final, while the rest of Asia still remains largely impenetrable to modern civilization. Japan has been looked upon as the meeting ground of the two. The aspiration today is for a higher rôle than that of a mere bridge or a halfway house. Not only shall the East and the West meet in Japan, but they shall meet and grow into a compact and coherent whole whose radiance shall brighten the remotest corners of the earth. That is taken to be the supreme mission of new Japan.
While it is, therefore, unlikely that the abandonment of the new and the return to the old which is to be effected in Japan will be so thorough or radical as either the poetic sympathizers abroad or the headstrong patriots at home would wish, the outcome of the internal struggle now going on in the island Empire ought to evoke more interest than is at present evinced on the part of the nations of the West. For light always came from the East.