In general, however, it may be said that while Christian converts and the priests were roughly handled in the South, yet there was considerable missionary activity and success in the North. Converts were made and Christian congregations were gathered in regions remote from Kiōto and Yedo, which latter place, like St. Petersburg in the West, was being made into a large city. Even outlying islands, such as Sado, had their churches and congregations.

The Anti-Christian Policy of the Tokugawas.

The quarrels between the Franciscans and Jesuits,[16] however, were probably more harmful to Christianity than were the whispers of the Protestant Englishmen or Hollanders. In 1610, the wrath of the government was especially aroused against the bateren, as the people called the padres, by their open and persistent violation of Japanese law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles had been sent to work the mines, Iyeyasŭ believed he had obtained documentary proof in the Japanese language, of what he had long suspected—the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject state.[17] Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo Shōgun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January 27, 1614,[18] in which the foreign priests were branded as triple enemies—of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in this state paper, Iyeyasŭ shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native priests and catechists, were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of combustibles to Macao.

Yet, as many of the foreign and native Christian teachers hid themselves in the country and as others who had been banished returned secretly and continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hideyori would mount to power; but in 1615, Iyeyasŭ, finding a pretext for war,[19] called out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished. On June 9, 1615, the castle was captured and the citadel burned. After thousands of Hideyori's followers had committed hara-kiri, and his own body had been burned into ashes, the Christian cause was irretrievably ruined.

Hidetada, the successor of Iyeyasŭ in Yedo, who ruled from 1605 to 1622, seeing that his father's peaceful methods had failed in extirpating the alien politico-religious doctrine, now pronounced sentence of death on every foreigner, priest, or catechist found in the country. The story of the persecutions and horrible sufferings that ensued is told in the voluminous literature which may be gathered from every country in Europe;[20] though from the Japanese side "The Catholic martyrology of Japan is still an untouched field for a [native] historian."[21] All the church edifices which the last storm had left standing were demolished, and temples and pagodas were erected upon their ruins. In 1617, foreign commerce was restricted to Hirado and Nagasaki. In 1621, Japanese were forbidden ever to leave the country. In 1624, all ships having a capacity of over twenty-five hundred bushels were burned, and no craft, except those of the size of ordinary junks, were allowed to be built.

The Books of the Inferno Opened.

For years, at intervals and in places, the books of the Inferno were opened, and the tortures devised by the native pagans and Buddhists equalled in their horror those which Dante imagines, until finally, in 1636, even Japanese human nature, accustomed for ages to subordination and submission, could stand it no longer. Then a man named Nirado Shiro raised the banner of the Virgin and called on all Christians and others to follow him. Probably as many as thirty thousand men, women and children, but without a single foreigner, lay or clerical, among them, gathered from parts of Kiushiu. After burning Shintō and Buddhist temples, they fortified an old abandoned castle at Shimabara, resolving to die rather than submit. Against an army of veterans, led by skilled commanders, the fortress held out during four months. At last, after a bloody assault, it was taken, and men, women and children were slaughtered.[22] Thousands suffered death at the point of the spear and sword; many were thrown into the sea; and others were cast into boiling hot springs, emblems of the eight Buddhist Hells.

All efforts were now put forth to uproot not only Christianity but also everything of foreign planting. The Portuguese were banished and the death penalty declared against all who should return, The ai no ko, or half-breed children, were collected and shipped by hundreds to Macao. All persons adopting or harboring Eurasians were to be banished, and their relatives punished. The Christian cause now became like the doomed city of Babylon or like the site of Nineveh, which, buried in the sand and covered with the desolation and silence of centuries, became lost to the memory of the world, so that even the very record of scripture was the jest of the infidel, until the spade of Layard brought them again to resurrection. So, Japanese Christianity, having vanished in blood, was supposed to have no existence, thus furnishing Mr. Lecky with arguments to prove the extirpative power of persecution.[23]

Yet in 1859, on the opening of the country by treaty, the Roman Catholic fathers at Nagasaki found to their surprise that they were re-opening the old mines, and that their work was in historic continuity with that of their predecessors. The blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the church. Amid much ignorance and darkness, there were thousands of people who, through the Virgin, worshipped God; who talked of Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit; and who refused to worship at the pagan shrines[24].

Summary of Roman Christianity in Japan.

Let us now strive impartially to appraise the Christianity of this era, and inquire what it found, what it attempted to do, what it did not strive to attain, what was the character of its propagators, what was the mark it made upon the country and upon the mind of the people, and whether it left any permanent influence.

The gospel net which had gathered all sorts of fish in Europe brought a varied quality of spoil to Japan. Among the Portuguese missionaries, beginning with Xavier, there are many noble and beautiful characters, who exemplified in their motives, acts, lives and sufferings some of the noblest traits of both natural and redeemed humanity. In their praise, both the pagan and the Christian, as well as critics biased by their prepossessions in favor either of the Reformed or the Roman phase of the faith, can unite.

The character of the native converts is, in many instances, to be commended, and shows the direct truth of Christianity in fields of life and endeavor, in ethics and in conceptions, far superior to those which the Japanese religious systems have produced. In the teaching that there should be but one standard of morality for man and woman, and that the male as well as the female should be pure; in the condemnation of polygamy and licentiousness; in the branding of suicide as both wicked and cowardly; in the condemnation of slavery; and in the training of men and women to lofty ideals of character, the Christian teachers far excelled their Buddhist or Confucian rivals.

The benefits which Japan received through the coming of the Christian missionaries, as distinct and separate from those brought by commerce and the merchants, are not to be ignored. While many things of value and influence for material improvement, and many beneficent details and elements of civilization were undoubtedly imported by traders, yet it was the priests and itinerant missionaries who diffused the knowledge of the importance of these things and taught their use throughout the country. Although in the reaction of hatred and bitterness, and in the minute, universal and long-continued suppression by the government, most of this advantage was destroyed, yet some things remained to influence thought and speech, and to leave a mark not only on the language, but also on the procedure of daily life. One can trace notable modifications of Japanese life from this period, lasting through the centuries and even until the present time.

Christianity, in the sixteenth century, came to Japan only in its papal or Roman Catholic form. While in it was infused much of the power and spirit of Loyola and Xavier, yet the impartial critic must confess that this form was military, oppressive and political.[25] Nevertheless, though it was impure and saturated with the false principles, the vices and the embodied superstitions of corrupt southern Europe, yet, such as it was, Portuguese Christianity confronted the worst condition of affairs, morally, intellectually and materially, which Japan has known in historic times. Defective as the critic must pronounce the system of religion imported from Europe, it was immeasurably superior to anything that the Japanese had hitherto known.

It must be said, also, that Portuguese Christianity in Japan tried to do something more than the mere obtaining of adherents or the nominal conversion of the people.[26] It attempted to purify and exalt their life, to make society better, to improve the relations between rulers and ruled; but it did not attempt to do what it ought to have done. It ignored great duties and problems, while it imitated too fully, not only the example of the kings of this world in Europe but also of the rulers in Japan. In the presence of soldier-like Buddhist priests, who had made war their calling, it would have been better if the Christian missionaries had avoided their bad example, and followed only in the footsteps of the Prince of Peace; but they did not. On the contrary, they brought with them the spirit of the Inquisition then in full blast in Spain and Portugal, and the machinery with which they had been familiar for the reclamation of native and Dutch "heretics." Xavier, while at Goa, had even invoked the secular arm to set up the Inquisition in India, and doubtless he and his followers would have put up this infernal enginery in Japan if they could have done so. They had stamped and crushed out "heresy" in their own country, by a system of hellish tortures which in its horrible details is almost indescribable. The rusty relics now in the museums of Europe, but once used in church discipline, can be fully appreciated only by a physician or an anatomist. In Japan, with the spirit of Alva and Philip II., these believers in the righteousness of the Inquisition attacked violently the character of native bonzes, and incited their converts to insult the gods, destroy the Buddhist images, and burn or desecrate the old shrines. They persuaded the daimiōs, when these lords had become Christians, to compel their subjects to embrace their religion on pain of exile or banishment. Whole districts were ordered to become Christian. The bonzes were exiled or killed, and fire and sword as well as preaching, were employed as means of conversion. In ready imitation of the Buddhists, fictitious miracles were frequently got up to utilize the credulity of the superstitious in furthering the faith—all of which is related not by hostile critics, but by admiring historians and by sympathizing eye-witnesses.[27]

The most prominent feature of the Roman Catholicism of Japan, was its political animus and complexion. In writings of this era, Japanese historians treat of the Christian missionary movement less as something religious, and more as that which influenced government and polities, rather than society on its moral side. So also, the impartial historian must consider that, on the whole, despite the individual instances of holy lives and unselfish purposes, the work of the Portuguese and Spanish friars and "fathers" was, in the main, an attempt to bring Japan more or less directly within the power of the Pope or of those rulers called Most Catholic Majesties, Christian Kings, etc., even as they had already brought Mexico, South America, and large portions of India under the same control. The words of Jesus before the Roman procurator had not been apprehended:—"My kingdom is not of this world."



CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE

"The frog in the well knows not the great ocean" —Sanskrit and Japanese Proverb.

"When the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch." —Japanese Proverb.

"The little island of Deshima, well and prophetically signifying Fore-Island, was Japan's window, through which she looked at the whole Occident ... We are under obligation to Holland for the arts of engineering, mining, pharmacy, astronomy, and medicine ... 'Rangaku' (i.e., Dutch learning) passed almost as a synonym for medicine," [1615-1868].—Inazo Nitobe.

"The great peace, of which we are so proud, was more like the stillness of stagnant pools than the calm surface of a clear lake."—Mitsukuri.

"The ancestral policy of self-contentment must be done away with. If it was adopted by your forefathers, because it was wise in their time, why not adopt a new policy if it in sure to prove wise in your time."—Sakuma Shozan, wrote in 1841, assassinated 1864.

"And slowly floating onward go Those Black Ships, wave-tossed to and fro." —Japanese Ballad of the Black Ship, 1845.

"The next day was Sunday (July 10th), and, as usual, divine service was held on board the ships, and, in accordance with proper reverence for the day, no communication was held with the Japanese authorities." —Perry's Narrative.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below, Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." —Sung on U.S.S.S. Mississippi, in Yedo Bay, July 10, 1853.

"I refuse to see anyone on Sunday, I am resolved to set an example of a proper observance of the Sabbath ... I will try to make it what I believe it was intended to be—a day of rest."—Townsend Harris's Diary, Sunday, August 31, 1856.

"I have called thee by thy name. I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the LORD, and there is none else; besides me there is no God."—Isaiah.

"I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held."—John.

"That they should seek God, If haply they might feel after him, though he is not far from each one of us."—Paul.

"Other sheep have I which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd"—Jesus.

CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE

The Japanese Shut In.

Sincerely regretting that we cannot pass more favorable judgments upon the Christianity of the seventeenth century in Japan, let us look into the two centuries of silence, and see what was the story between the paling of the Christian record in 1637, and the glowing of the palimpsest in 1859, when the new era begins.

The policy of the Japanese rulers, after the supposed utter extirpation of Christianity, was the double one of exclusion and inclusion. A deliberate attempt, long persisted in and for centuries apparently successful, was made to insulate Japan from the shock of change. The purpose was to draw a whole nation and people away from the currents and movements of humanity, and to stereotype national thought and custom. This was carried out in two ways: first, by exclusion, and then by inclusion. All foreign influences were shut off, or reduced to a minimum. The whole western world, especially Christendom, was put under ban.

Even the apparent exception made in favor of the Dutch was with the motive of making isolation more complete, and of securing the perfect safety which that isolation was expected to bring. For, having built, not indeed with brick and mortar, but by means of edict and law, both open and secret, a great wall of exclusion more powerful than that of China's, it was necessary that there should be a port-hole, for both sally and exit, and a slit for vigilant scrutiny of any attempt to force seclusion or violate the frontier. Hence, the Hollanders were allowed to have a small place of residence in front of a large city and at the head of a land-locked harbor. There, the foreigners being isolated and under strict guard, the government could have, as it were, a nerve which touched the distant nations, and could also, as with a telescope, sweep the horizon for signs of danger.

So, in 1640, the Hollanders were ordered to evacuate Hirado, and occupy the little "outer island" called Deshima, in front of the city of Nagasaki, and connected therewith by a bridge. Any ships entering this hill-girdled harbor, it was believed, could be easily managed by the military resources possessed by the government. Vessels were allowed yearly to bring the news from abroad and exchange the products of Japan for those of Europe. The English, who had in 1617 opened a trade and conducted a factory for some years,[1] were unable to compete with the Dutch, and about 1624, after having lost in the venture forty thousand pounds sterling, withdrew entirely from the Japanese trade. The Dutch were thus left without a rival from Christendom.

Japan ceased her former trade and communications with the Philippine Islands, Annam, Siam, the Spice Islands and India,[2] and begun to restrict trade and communication with Korea and China. The Koreans, who were considered as vassals, or semi-vassals, came to Japan to present their congratulations on the accession of each new Shōgun; and some small trade was done at Fusan under the superintendence of the daimiō of Tsushima. Even this relation with Korea was rather one of watchfulness. It sprang from the pride of a victor rather than from any desire to maintain relations with the rest of the world. As for China, the communication with her was astonishingly little, only a few junks crossing yearly between Nankin and Nagasaki; so that, with the exception of one slit in their tower of observation, the Japanese became well isolated from the human family.

This system of exclusion was accompanied by an equally vigorous policy of inclusiveness. It was deliberately determined to keep the people from going abroad, either in their bodies or minds. All seaworthy ships were destroyed. Under pain of imprisonment and death, all natives were forbidden to go to a foreign country, except in the rare cases of urgent government service. By settled precedents it was soon made to be understood that those who were blown out to sea or carried away in stress of weather, need not come back; if they did, they must return only on Chinese and Korean vessels, and even then would be grudgingly allowed to land. It was given out, both at home and to the world, that no shipwrecked sailors or waifs would be welcomed when brought on foreign vessels.

This inclusive policy directed against physical exportation, was still more stringently carried out when applied to imports affecting the minds of the Japanese. The "government deliberately attempted to establish a society impervious to foreign ideas from without, and fostered within by all sorts of artificial legislation. This isolation affected every department of private and public life. Methods of education were cast in a definite mould; even matters of dress and household architecture were strictly regulated by the State, and industries were restricted or forced into specified channels, thus retarding economic developments."[3]

Starving of the Mind.

In the science of keeping life within stunted limits and artificial boundaries, the Japanese genius excels. It has been well said that "the Japanese mind is great in little things and little in great things." To cut the tap-root of a pine-shoot, and, by regulating the allowance of earth and water, to raise a pine-tree which when fifty years old shall be no higher than a silver dollar, has been the proud ambition of many an artist in botany. In like manner, the Tokugawa Shōguns (1604-1868) determined to so limit the supply of mental food, that the mind of Japan should be of those correctly dwarfed proportions of puniness, so admired by lovers of artificiality and unconscious caricature. Philosophy was selected as a chief tool among the engines of oppression, and as the main influence in stunting the intellect. All thought must be orthodox according to the standards of Confucianism, as expounded by Chu Hi. Anything like originality in poetry, learning or philosophy must be hooted down. Art must follow Chinese, Buddhist and Japanese traditions. Any violation of this order would mean ostracism. All learning must be in the Chinese and Japanese languages—the former mis-pronounced and in sound bearing as much resemblance to Pekingise speech as "Pennsylvania Dutch" does to the language of Berlin. Everything like thinking and study must be with a view of sustaining and maintaining the established order of things. The tree of education, instead of being a lofty or wide-spreading cryptomeria, must be the measured nursling of the teacup. If that trio of emblems, so admired by the natives, the bamboo, pine and plum, could produce glossy leaves, ever-green needles and fragrant blooms within a space of four cubic inches, so the law, the literature and the art of Japan must display their normal limit of fresh fragrance, of youthful vigor and of venerable age, enduring for aye, within the vessel of Japanese inclusion so carefully limited by the Yedo authorities.

Such a policy, reminds one of the Amherst agricultural experiment in which bands of iron were strapped around a much-afflicted squash, in order to test vital potency. It recalls the pretty little story of Picciola, in which a tender plant must grow between the interstices of the bricks in a prison yard. Besides the potent bonds of the only orthodox Confucian philosophy which was allowed and the legally recognized religions, there was gradually formed a marvellous system of legislation, that turned the whole nation into a secret society in which spies and hypocrites flourished like fungus on a dead log. Besides the unwritten code of private law,[4] that is, the local and general customs founded on immemorial usage, there was that peculiar legal system framed by Iyeyasŭ, bequeathed as a legacy and for over two hundred years practically the supreme law of the land.

What this law was, it was exceedingly difficult, if not utterly impossible, for the aliens dwelling in the country at Nagasaki ever to find out. Keenly intellectual, as many of the physicians, superintendents and elect members of the Dutch trading company were, they seem never to have been able to get hold of what has been called "The Testament of Iyeyasŭ."[5] This consisted of one hundred laws or regulations, based on a home-spun sort of Confucianism, intended to be orthodoxy "unbroken for ages eternal."

To a man of western mode of thinking, the most astonishing thing is that this law was esoteric.[6] The people knew of it only by its irresistible force, and by the constant pressure or the rare easing of its iron hand. Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood, and this routine became second nature. Only a few copies of the original instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long avenue of awe.

The Dutchmen at Deshima.

The Dutchmen who lived at Deshima for two centuries and a half, and the foreigners who first landed at the treaty ports in 1859, on inquiring about the methods of the Japanese Government, the laws and their administration, found that everything was veiled behind a vague embodiment of something which was called "the Law." What that law was, by whom enacted, and under what sanctions enforced, no one could tell; though all seemed to stand in awe of it as something of superhuman efficiency. Its mysteriousness was only equalled by the abject submission which it received.

Foreign diplomatists, on trying to deal with the seat and source of authority, instead of seeing the real head of power, played, as it were, a game of chess against a mysterious hand stretched out from behind a curtain. Morally, the whole tendency of such a dual system of exclusion and of inclusion was to make a nation of liars, foster confirmed habits of deceit, and create a code of politeness vitiated by insincerity.

With such repression of the natural powers of humanity, it was but in accordance with the nature of things that licentiousness should run riot, that on the fringes of society there should be the outcast and the pariah, and that the social waste of humanity by prostitution, by murder, by criminal execution under a code that prescribed the death penalty for hundreds of offences, should be enormous. It is natural also that in such a state of society population[7] should be kept down within necessary limits, not only by famine, by the restraints of feudalism, by legalized murder in the form of vendetta, by a system of prostitution that made and still makes Japan infamous, by child murder, by lack of encouragement given to feeble or malformed children to live, and by various devices known to those who were ingenious in keeping up so artificial a state of society.

That there were many who tried to break through this wall, from both the inside and the outside, and to force the frontiers of exclusion and inclusion, is not to be wondered at. Externally, there were bold spirits from Christendom who burned to know the secrets of the mysterious land. Some even yearned to wear the ruby crown. The wonderful story of past Christian triumphs deeply stirred the heart of more than one fiery spirit, and so we find various attempts made by the clerical brethren of southern Europe to enter the country. Bound by their promises, the Dutch captains could not introduce these emissaries of a banned religion within the borders; yet there are several notable instances of Roman Catholic "religious"[8] getting themselves left by shipmasters on the shores of Japan. The lion's den of reality was Yedo. Like the lion's den of fable, the footprints all led one way, and where these led the bones of the victims soon lay.

Besides these men with religious motives, the ships of the West came with offers of trade and threats of invasion. These were English, French, Russian and American, and the story of the frequent episodes has been told by Hildreth, Aston,[9] Nitobe, and others. There is also a considerable body of native literature which gives the inside view of these efforts to force the seclusion of the hermit nation, and coax or compel the Japanese to be more sociable and more human. All were in vain until the peaceful armada, under the flag of thirty-one stars, led by Matthew Calbraith Perry,[10] broke the long seclusion of this Thorn-rose of the Pacific, and the unarmed diplomacy of Townsend Harris,[11] brought Japan into the brotherhood of commercial and Christian nations.

Within the isolating walls and the barred gates the story of the seekers after God is a thrilling one. The intellect of choice spirits, beating like caged eagles the bars of their prisons, yearned for more light and life. "Though an eagle be starving," says the Japanese proverb, "it will not eat grain;" and so, while the mass of the people and even the erudite, were content with ground food—even the chopped straw and husks of materialistic Confucianism and decayed Buddhism—there were noble souls who soared upward to exercise their God-given powers, and to seek nourishment fitted for that human spirit which goeth upward and not downward, and which, ever in restless discontent, seeks the Infinite.

Protests of Inquiring Spirits.

There is no stronger proof of the true humanity and the innate god-likeness of the Japanese, of their worthiness to hold and their inherent power to win a high place among the nations of the earth, than this longing of a few elect ones for the best that earth could give and Heaven bestow. We find men in travail of spirit, groping after God if haply they might find Him, following the ways of the Spirit along lines different, and in pathways remote, from those laid down by Confucius and his materialistic commentators, or by Buddha and his parodists or caricaturists. The story of the philosophers, who mutinied against the iron clamps and governmentally nourished system of the Seido College expounders, is yet to be fully told.[12] It behooves some Japanese scholar to tell it.

How earnest truth-seeking Japanese protested and rebelled against the economic fallacies, against the political despotism, against the abominable usurpations, against the false strategies and against the inherent immoralities of the Tokugawa system, has of late years been set forth with tantalizing suggestiveness, but only in fragments, by the native historians. Heartrending is the narrative of these men who studied, who taught, who examined, who sifted the mountains of chaff in the native literature and writings, who made long journeys on foot all over the country, who furtively travelled in Korea and China, who boarded Dutch and Russian vessels, who secretly read forbidden books, who tried to improve their country and their people. These men saw that their country was falling behind not only the nations of the West, but, as it seemed to them, even the nations of the East. They felt that radical changes were necessary in order to reform the awful poverty, disease, licentiousness, national weakness, decay of bodily powers, and the creeping paralysis of the Samurai intellect and spirit. How they were ostracized, persecuted, put under ban, hounded by the spies, thrown into prison; how they died of starvation or of disease; how they were beheaded, crucified, or compelled to commit hara-kiri; how their books were purged by the censors, or put under ban or destroyed,[13] and their maps, writings and plates burned, has not yet been told. It is a story that, when fully narrated, will make a volume of extraordinary interest. It is a story which both Christian and human interests challenge some native author to tell. During all this time, but especially during the first half of the nineteenth century, there was one steady goal to which the aspiring student ever kept his faith, and to which his feet tended. There was one place of pilgrimage, toward which the sons of the morning moved, and which, despite the spy and the informer and the vigilance of governors, fed their spirits, and whence they carried the sacred fire, or bore the seed whose harvest we now see. That goal of the pilgrim band was Nagasaki, and the place where the light burned and the sacred flames were kindled was Deshima. The men who helped to make true patriots, daring thinkers, inquirers after truth, bringers in of a better time, yes, and even Christians and preachers of the good news of God, were these Dutchmen of Deshima.

A Handful of Salt in a Stagnant Mass.

The Nagasaki Hollanders were not immaculate saints, neither were they sooty devils. They did not profess to be Christian missionaries. On the other hand, they were men not devoid of conscience nor of sympathy with aspiring and struggling men in a hermit nation, eager for light and truth. The Dutchman during the time of hermit Japan, as we see him in the literature of men who were hostile in faith and covetous rivals in trade, is a repulsive figure. He seems to be a brutal wretch, seeking only gain, and willing to sell conscience, humanity and his religion, for pelf. In reality, he was an ordinary European, probably no better, certainly no worse, than his age or the average man of his country or of his continent. Further, among this average dozen of exiles in the interest of commerce, science or culture, there were frequently honorable men far above the average European, and shining examples of Christianity and humanity. Even in his submission to the laws of the country, the Dutchman did no more, no less, but exactly as the daimiōs,[14] who like himself were subject to the humiliations imposed by the rulers in Yedo.

It was the Dutch, who, for two hundred years supplied the culture of Europe to Japan, introduced Western science, furnished almost the only intellectual stimulant, and were the sole teachers of medicine and science.[15] They trained up hundreds of Japanese to be physicians who practised rational medicine and surgery. They filled with needed courage the hearts of men, who, secretly practising dissection of the bodies of criminals, demonstrated the falsity of Chinese ideas of anatomy. It was Dutch science which exploded and drove out of Japan that Chinese system of medicine, by means of which so many millions have, during the long ages, been slowly tortured to death.

The Deshima Dutchman was a kindly adviser, helper, guide and friend, the one means of communication with the world, a handful of salt in the stagnant mass. Long before the United States, or Commodore Perry, the Hollanders advised the Yodo government in favor of international intercourse. The Dutch language, nearest in structure and vocabulary to the English, even richer in the descriptive energy of its terms, and saturated withal with Christian truth, was studied by eager young men. These speakers of an impersonal language which in psychological development was scarcely above the grade of childhood, were exercised in a tongue that stands second to none in Europe for purity, vigor, personality and philosophical power. The Japanese students of Dutch held a golden key which opened the treasures of modern thought and of the world's literature. The minds of thinking Japanese were thus made plastic for the reception of the ideas of Christianity. Best of all, though forbidden by their contracts to import Bibles into Japan, the Dutchmen, by means of works of reference, pointed more than one inquiring spirit to the information by which the historic Christ became known. The books which they imported, the information which they gave, the stimulus which they imparted, were as seeds planted within masonry-covered earth, that were to upheave and overthrow the fabric of exclusion and inclusion reared by the Tokugawa Shōguns.

Time and space fail us to tell how eager spirits not only groped after God, but sought the living Christ—though often this meant to them imprisonment, suicide enforced by the law, or decapitation. Yet over all Japan, long before the broad pennant of Perry was mirrored on the waters of Yedo Bay, there were here and there masses of leavened opinion, spots of kindled light, and fields upon which the tender green sprouts of new ideas could be detected. To-day, as inquiry among the oldest of the Christian leaders and scores of volumes of modern biography shows, the most earnest and faithful among the preachers, teachers and soldiers in the Christian army, were led into their new world of ideas through Dutch culture. The fact is revealed in repeated instances, that, through father, grandfather, uncle, or other relative—some pilgrim to the Dutch at Nagasaki—came their first knowledge, their initial promptings, the environment or atmosphere, which made them all sensitive and ready to receive the Christian truth when it came in its full form from the living missionary and the vital word of God. Some one has well said that the languages of modern Europe are nothing more than Christianity expressed with differing pronunciation and vocabulary. To him who will receive it, the mastery of any one of the languages of Christendom, is, in a large sense, a revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

Seekers after God.

Pathetic, even to the compulsion of tears, is the story of these seekers after God. We, who to-day are surrounded by every motive and inducement to Christian living and by every means and appliance for the practice of the Christian life, may well consider for a moment the struggle of earnest souls to find out God. Think of this one who finds a Latin Bible cast up on the shore from some broken ship, and bearing it secretly in his bosom to the Hollander, gains light as to the meaning of its message. Think of the nobleman, Watanabe Oboru,[16] who, by means of the Japanese interpreter of Dutch, Takano Choyei, is thrilled with the story of Jesus of Nazareth who helped and healed and spake as no other man spake, teaching with an authority above that of the masters Confucius or Buddha. Think of the daimiō of Mito,[17] who, proud in lineage, learned and scholarly, and surrounded by a host of educated men, is yet unsatisfied with what the wise of his own country could give him, and gathers around him the relics unearthed from the old persecutions. From a picture of the Virgin, a fragment of a litany, or it may be a part of a breviary, he tries to make out what Christianity is.

Think of Yokoi Heishiro,[18] learned in Confucius and his commentators, who seeks better light, sends to China for a Chinese translation of the New Testament, and in his lectures on the Confucian ethics, to the delight and yet to the surprise of his hearers who hear grander truth than they are able to find in text or commentary, really preaches Christ, and prophesies that the time will come when the walls of isolation being levelled, the brightest intellects of Japan will welcome this same Jesus and His doctrine. Think of him again, when unable to purify the Augean stables of Yedo's moral corruption, because the time was at hand for other cleansing agencies, he retires to his home, content awhile with his books and flowers. Again, see him summoned to the capital, to sit at Kiōto—like aged Franklin among the young statesmen of the Constitution in Philadelphia—with the Mikado's youthful advisers in the new government of 1868. Think of him pleading for the elevation of the pariah Eta, accursed and outcast through Buddhism, to humanity and citizenship. Then hear him urge eloquently the right of personal belief, and argue for toleration under the law, of opinions, which the Japanese then stigmatized as "evil" and devilish, but which we, and many of them now, call sound and Christian. Finally, behold him at night in the public streets, assaulted by assassins, and given quick death by their bullet and blades. See his gray head lying severed from his body and in its own gore, the wretched murderers thinking they have stayed the advancing tide of Christianity; but at home there dwells a little son destined in God's providence to become an earnest Christian and one of the brilliant leaders of the native Christianity of Japan in our day.

The Buddhist Inquisitors.

During the nation's period of Thorn-rose-like seclusion, the three religions recognized by the law were Buddhism, Shintō and Confucianism. Christianity was the outlawed sect. All over the country, on the high-roads, at the bridges, and in the villages, towns and cities, the fundamental laws of the country were written on wooden tablets called kosatsŭ. These, framed and roofed for protection from the weather, but easily before the eyes of every man, woman and child, and written in a style and language understood of all, denounced the Christian religion as an accursed "sect," and offered gold to the spy and informer;[19] while once a year every Samurai was required to swear on the true faith of a gentleman that he had nothing to do with Christianity. From the seventeenth century, the country having been divided into parishes, the inquisition was under the charge of the Buddhist priests who penetrated into the house and family and guarded the graveyards, so that neither earth nor fire should embrace the carcass of a Christian, nor his dust or ashes defile the ancestral graveyards. Twice—in 1686 and in 1711—were the rewards increased and the Buddhist bloodhounds of Japan's Inquisition set on fresh trails. On one occasion, at Osaka, in 1839,[20] a rebellion broke out which was believed, though without evidence, to have been instigated in some way by men with Christian ideas, and was certainly led by Oshio, the bitter opponent of Buddhism, of Tokugawa, and of the prevalent Confucianism. Possibly, the uprising was aided by refugees from Korea. Those implicated were, after speedy trial, crucified or beheaded. In the southern part of the country the ceremony of Ebumi or trampling on the cross,[21] was long performed. Thousands of people were made to pass through a wicket, beneath which and on the ground lay a copper plate engraved with the image of the Christ and the cross. In this way it was hoped to utterly eradicate the very memory of Christianity, which, to the common people, had become the synonym for sorcery.

But besides the seeking after God by earnest souls and the protest of philosophers, there was, amid the prevailing immorality and the agnosticism and scepticism bred by decayed Buddhism and the materialistic philosophy based on Confucius, some earnest struggles for the purification of morals and the spiritual improvement of the people.

The Shingaku Movement.

One of the most remarkable of the movements to this end was that of the Shingaku or New Learning. A class of practical moralists, to offset the prevailing tendency of the age to much speculation and because Buddhism did so little for the people, tried to make the doctrines of Confucius a living force among the great mass of people. This movement, though Confucian in its chief tone and color, was eclectic and intended to combine all that was best in the Chinese system with what could be utilized from Shintō and Buddhism. With the preaching was combined a good deal of active benevolence. Especially in the time of famine, was care for humanity shown. The effect upon the people was noticeable, followers multiplied rapidly, and it is said that even the government in many instances made them, the Shingaku preachers, the distributors of rice and alms for the needy. Some of the preachers became famous and counted among their followers many men of influence. The literary side of the movement[22] has been brought to the attention of English readers through Mr. Mitford's translation of three sermons from the volume entitled Shingaku Dōwa. Other discourses have been from time to time rendered into English, those by Shibata, entitled The Sermons of the Dove-like Venerable Master, being especially famous.

This movement, interesting as it was, came to an end when the country began to be convulsed by the approaching entrance of foreigners, through the Perry treaty; but it serves to show, what we believe to be the truth, that the moral rottenness as well as the physical decay of the Japanese people reached their acme just previous to the apparition of the American fleet in 1853.

The story of nineteenth century Reformed Christianity in Japan does not begin with Perry, or with Harris, or with the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1859; for it has a subterranean and interior history, as we have hinted; while that of the Roman form and order is a story of unbroken continuity, though the life of the tunnel is now that of the sunny road. The parable of the leaven is first illustrated and then that of the mustard-seed. Before Christianity was phenomenal, it was potent. Let us now look from the interior to the outside.

On Perry's flag-ship, the Mississippi, the Bible lay open, a sermon was preached, and the hymn "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne" was sung, waking the echoes of the Japan hills. The Christian day of rest was honored on this American squadron. In the treaty signed in 1854, though it was made, indeed, with use of the name of God and terms of Christian chronology, there was nothing upon which to base, either by right or privilege, the residence of missionaries in the country. Townsend Harris, the American Consul-General, who hoisted his flag and began his hermit life at Shimoda, in September, 1855, had as his only companion a Dutch secretary, Mr. Heusken, who was later, in Yedo, to be assassinated by ronins.

Without ship or soldier, overcoming craft and guile, and winning his way by simple honesty and perseverance, Mr. Harris obtained audience[23] of "the Tycoon" in Yedo, and later from the Shōgun's daring minister Ii, the signature to a treaty which guaranteed to Americans the rights of residence, trade and commerce. Thus Americans were enabled to land as citizens, and pursue their avocation as religious teachers. As the government of the United States of America knows nothing of the religion of American citizens abroad, it protects all missionaries who are law-abiding citizens, without regard to creed.[24]

Japan Once More Missionary Soil.

The first missionaries were on the ground as soon as the ports were open. Though surrounded by spies and always in danger of assassination and incendiarism, they began their work of mastering the language. To do this without trained teachers or apparatus of dictionary and grammar, was then an appalling task. The medical missionary began healing the swarms of human sufferers, syphilitic, consumptive, and those scourged by small-pox, cholera and hereditary and acute diseases of all sorts. The patience, kindness and persistency of these Christian men literally turned the edge of the sword, disarmed the assassin, made the spies' occupation useless, shamed away the suspicious, and conquered the nearly invincible prejudices of the government. Despite the awful under-tow in the immorality of the sailor, the adventurer and the gain-greedy foreigner, the tide of Christianity began steadily to rise. Notwithstanding the outbursts of the flames of persecution, the torture and imprisonment of Christian captives and exiles, and the slow worrying to death of the missionary's native teachers, inquirers came and converts were made. In 1868, after revolution and restoration, the old order changed, and duarchy and feudalism passed away. Quick to seize the opportunity, Dr. J.C. Hepburn, healer of bodies and souls of men, presented a Bible to the Emperor, and the gift was accepted.

No sooner had the new government been established in safety, and the name of Yedo, the city of the Baydoor, been changed into that of Tōkiō, the Eastern Capital, than an embassy[25] of seventy persons started on its course round the world. At its head were three cabinet ministers of the new government and the court noble, Iwakura, of immemorial lineage, in whose veins ran the blood of the men called gods. Across the Pacific to the United States they went, having their initial audience of the President of the Republic that knows no state church, and whose Christianity had compelled both the return of the shipwrecked Japanese and the freedom of the slave.

This embassy had been suggested and its course planned by a Christian missionary, who found that of the seventy persons, one-half had been his pupils.[26]

The Imperial Embassy Round the World.

The purpose of these envoys was, first of all, to ask of the nations of Christendom equal rights, to get removed the odious extra-territoriality clause in the treaties, to have the right to govern aliens on their soil, and to regulate their own tariff. Secondarily, its members went to study the secrets of power and the resources of civilization in the West, to initiate the liberal education of their women by leaving in American schools a little company of maidens, to enlarge the system of education for their own country, and to send abroad with approval others of their young men who, for a decade past had, in spite of every ban and obstacle, been furtively leaving the country for study beyond the seas.

In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of ambassadors, ministers, secretaries and students were opened. They saw themselves as others saw them. They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces, their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless family life in the Christian home. They found, further yet, free churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely the condition of the present. It took but a few whispers over the telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public view like snowflakes melting on the river. The right arm of persecution was broken.

The story of the Book of Acts of the modern apostles in Japan is told, first in the teaching of inquirers, preaching to handfuls, the gathering of tiny companies, the translation of the Gospel, and then prayer and waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit. A study of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, followed in order to find out how the Christian Church began. On the 10th day of March, in the year of our Lord and of the era of Meiji (Enlightened Peace) the fifth, 1872, at Yokohama, in the little stone chapel built on part of Commodore Perry's treaty ground, was formed the first Reformed or Protestant Christian Church in Japan.

At this point our task is ended. We cannot even glance at the native Christian churches of the Roman, Reformed, or Greek order, or attempt to appraise the work of the foreign missionaries. He has read these pages in vain, however, who does not see how well, under Providence, the Japanese have been trained for higher forms of faith.

The armies of Japan are upon Chinese soil, while we pen our closing lines. The last chains of purely local and ethnic dogma are being snapped asunder. May the sons of Dai Nippon, as they win new horizons of truth, see more clearly and welcome more loyally that Prince of Peace whose kingdom is not of this world.

May the age of political conquest end, and the era of the self-reformation of the Asian nations, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, be ushered in.



NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

The few abbreviations used in these pages stand for well-known works: T.A.S.J., for Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan; Kojiki, for Supplement to Volume X., T.A.S.J., Introduction, Translation, Notes, Map, etc., by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain; T.J., for Things Japanese (2d ed.), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; S. and H., for Satow and Hawes's Hand-book for Japan, now continued in new editions (4th, 1894), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; C.R.M., for Mayers's Chinese Reader's Manual; M.E., The Mikado's Empire (7th ed.); B.N., for Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio's A Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, Tōkiō, 1887.

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS

[Footnote 1: The late Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., who applied the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, was the son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the celebrated theologian, geographer, and gazetteer. In memory of his father, Professor Morse founded this lectureship in Union Theological Seminary, New York, on "The Relation of the Bible to the Sciences," May 20,1865, by the gift of ten thousand dollars.]

[Footnote 2: An American Missionary in Japan, p. 209, by Rev. M.L. Gordon, M.D., Boston, 1892.]

[Footnote 3: Lucretia Coftin Mott.]

[Footnote 4: "I remember once making a calculation in Hong Kong, and making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."—Dr. Legge's Letter to the Author, November 27, 1893.]

[Footnote 5: The Religions of China, p. 240, by James Legge, New York, 1881.]

[Footnote 6: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 22, Boston editions of 1859 and 1879.]

[Footnote 7: One of the many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the modern Japanese sword (katana) as compared with the long and heavy (ken) of the "Divine" (kami) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of Japan; Its History and Traditions," T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 58.]

[Footnote 8: The course of lectures on The Religions of Chinese Asia (which included most of the matter in this book), given by the author in Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me., in April, 1894, was upon the Bond foundation, founded by alumni and named after the chief donor, Rev. Ellas Bond, D.D., of Kohala, long an active missionary in Hawaii.]

[Footnote 9: This is the contention of Professor Kumi, late of the Imperial University of Japan; see chapter on Shintō.]

[Footnote 10: In illustration, comical or pitiful, the common people in Satsuma believe that the spirit of the great Saigo Takamori, leader of the rebellion of 1877, "has taken up its abode in the planet Mars," while the spirits of his followers entered into a new race of frogs that attack man and fight until killed—Mounsey's The Satsuma Rebellion, p. 217. So, also, the Heike-gani, or crabs at Shimonoseki, represent the transmigration of the souls of the Heike clan, nearly exterminated in 1184 A.D., while the "Hōjō bugs" are the avatars of the execrated rulers of Kamakura (1219-1333 A.D.).—Japan in History, Folk-lore, and Art, Boston, 1892, pp. 115, 133.]

[Footnote 11: The Future of Religion in Japan. A paper read at the Parliament of Religions by Nobuta Kishimoto.]

[Footnote 12: The Ainos, though they deify all the chief objects of nature, such as the sun, the sea, fire, wild beasts, etc., often talk of a Creator, Kotan kara kamui, literally the God who made the World. At the fact of creation they stop short.... One gathers that the creative act was performed not directly, but through intermediaries, who were apparently animals."—Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12. See also on the Aino term "Kamui," by Professor B.H. Chamberlain and Rev. J. Batchelor, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.]

[Footnote 13: See Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, by Isabella Bird (Bishop), Vol. II.; The Ainu of Japan, by Rev. John Batchelor; B. Douglas Howard's Life With Trans-Siberian Savages; Ripley Hitchcock's Report, Smithsonian Institute, Washington. Professor B. H. Chamberlain's invaluable "Aino Studies," Tōkiō, 1887, makes scholarly comparison of the Japanese and Aino language, mythology, and geographical nomenclature.]

[Footnote 14: M.E., The Mythical Zooelogy of Japan, pp. 477-488. C.R.M., passim.]

[Footnote 15: See the valuable article entitled Demoniacal Possession, T.J., p. 106, and the author's Japanese Fox Myths, Lippincott's Magazine, 1873.]

[Footnote 16: See the Aino animal stories and evidences of beast worship in Chamberlain's Aino Studies. For this element in Japanese life, see the Kojiki, and the author's Japanese Fairy World.]

[Footnote 17: The proprietor of a paper-mill in Massachusetts, who had bought a cargo of rags, consisting mostly of farmers' cast off clothes, brought to the author a bundle of scraps of paper which he had found in this cheap blue-dyed cotton wearing apparel. Besides money accounts and personal matters, there were numerous temple amulets and priests' certificates. See also B.H. Chamberlain's Notes on Some Minor Japanese Religious Practices, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, May, 1893.]

[Footnote 18: M.E., p. 440.]

[Footnote 19: See the Lecture on Buddhism in its Doctrinal Development.—The Nichiren Sect.]

[Footnote 20: The phallus was formerly a common emblem in all parts of Japan, Hondo, Kiushiu, Shikoku, and the other islands. Bayard Taylor noticed it in the Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) Islands; Perry's Expedition to Japan, p. 196; Bayard Taylor's Expedition in Lew Chew; M.E., p. 33, note; Rein's Japan, p. 432; Diary of Richard Cocks, Vol. I., p. 283. The native guide-books and gazetteers do not allude to the subject.

Although the author of this volume has collected considerable data from personal observations and the testimony of personal friends concerning the vanishing nature-worship of the Japanese, he has, in the text, scarcely more than glanced at the subject. In a work of this sort, intended both for the general reader as well as for the scientific student of religion, it has been thought best to be content with a few simple references to what was once widely prevalent in the Japanese archipelago.

Probably the most thorough study of Japanese phallicism yet made by any foreign scholar is that of Edmund Buckley, A.M., Ph.D., of the Chicago University, Lecturer on Shintō, the Ethnic Faith of Japan, and on the Science of Religion. Dr. Buckley spent six years in central and southwestern Japan, most of the time as instructor in the Doshisha University, Kiōto. He will publish the results of his personal observations and studios in a monograph on phallicism, which will be on sale at Chicago University, in which the Buckley collection illustrating Shintō-worship has been deposited.]

[Footnote 21: Mr. Takahashi Gorō, in his Shintō Shin-ron, or New Discussion of Shintō, accepts the derivation of the word kami from kabe, mould, mildew, which, on its appearance, excites wonder. For Hirata's discussion, see T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 48. In a striking paper on the Early Gods of Japan, in a recent number of the Philosophical Magazine, published in Tōkiō, a Japanese writer, Mr. Kenjirō Hirade, states also that the term kami does not necessarily denote a spiritual being, but is only a relative term meaning above or high, but this respect toward something high or above has created many imaginary deities as well as those having a human history. See also T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I., p. 55, note.]

[Footnote 22: "There remains something of the Shintō heart after twelve hundred years of foreign creeds and dress. The worship of the marvellous continues.... Exaggerated force is most impressive.... So the ancient gods, heroes, and wonders are worshipped still. The simple countryfolk clap their hands, bow their heads, mumble their prayers, and offer the fraction of a cent to the first European-built house they see."—Philosophy in Japan, Past and Present, by Dr. George Wm. Knox.]

[Footnote 23: M.E., p. 474. Honda the Samurai, pp. 256-267.]

[Footnote 24: Kojiki, pp. 127, 136, 213, 217.]

[Footnote 25: See S. and H., pp. 39, 76.

"The appearance of anything unusual at a particular spot is hold to be a sure sign of the presence of divinity. Near the spot where I live in Ko-ishi-kawa, Tōkiō, is a small Miya, built at the foot of a very old tree, that stands isolated on the edge of a rice-field. The spot looks somewhat insignificant, but upon inquiring why a shrine has been placed there, I was told that a white snake had been found at the foot of the old tree." ...

"As it is, the religion of the Japanese consists in the belief that the productive ethereal spirit, being expanded through the whole universe, every part is in some degree impregnated with it; and therefore, every part is in some measure the seat of the Deity."—Legendre's Progressive Japan, p. 258.]

[Footnote 26: De Verflauwing der Grenzen, by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, Amsterdam, 1892; translated by Rev. T. Hendrik de Vries, in the Methodist Review, New York, July-Sept., 1893.]

CHAPTER II

SHINTŌ; MYTHS AND RITUAL

[Footnote 1: The scholar who has made profound researches in all departments of Japanese learning, but especially in the literature of Shintō, is Mr. Ernest Satow, now the British Minister at Tangier. He received the degree of B.A. from the London University. After several years' study and experience in China, Mr. Satow came to Japan in 1861 as student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill under Rev. S.R. Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese. To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight. Besides unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing. His papers in the T.A.S.J., on The Shintō Shrines at Ise, the Revival of Pure Shintō, and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the original and later forms of Shintō.]

[Footnote 2: The scholar who above all others has, with rare acumen united to laborious and prolonged toil, illuminated the subject of Japan's chronology and early history is Mr. W.G. Aston of the British Civil Service. He studied at the Queen's University, Ireland, receiving the degree of M.A. He was appointed student-interpreter in Japan, August 6, 1864. He is the author of a Grammar of the Written Japanese Language, and has been a student of the comparative history and speech and writing of China, Korea, and Japan, during the past thirty years. See his valuable papers in the T.A.S.J., and the learned societies in Great Britain. In his paper on Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., pp. 39-75, he recapitulates the result of his researches, in which he is, in the main, supported by critical native scholars, and by the late William Bramsen, in his Japanese Chronological Tables, Tōkiō, 1880. He considers A.D. 461 as the first trustworthy date in the Japanese annals. We quote from his paper, Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 73.

1. The earliest date of the accepted Japanese Chronology, the accuracy of which is confirmed by external evidence, is A.D. 461.

2. Japanese History, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist previous to A.D. 500. (A cursory examination leads me to think that the annals of the sixth century must also be received with caution.)

3. Korean History and Chronology are more trustworthy than those of Japan during the period previous to that date.

4. While there was an Empress of Japan in the third century A.D., the statement that she conquered Korea is highly improbable.

5. Chinese learning was introduced into Japan from Korea 120 years later than the date given in Japanese History.

6. The main fact of Japan having a predominant influence in some parts of Korea during the fifth century is confirmed by the Korean and Chinese chronicles, which, however, show that the Japanese accounts are very inaccurate in matters of detail.]

[Footnote 3: Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world of learning such signal service by his works on the Japanese language, and especially by his translation, with critical introduction and commentary, of the Kojiki, is an English gentleman, born at Southsea, Hampshire, England, on the 18th day of October, 1830. His mother was a daughter of the well-known traveller and author, Captain Basil Hall, R.N., and his father an Admiral in the British Navy. He was educated for Oxford, but instead of entering, for reasons of health, he spent a number of years in western Mid southern Europe, acquiring a knowledge of various languages and literatures. His coming to Japan (in May, 1873) was rather the result of an accident—a long sea voyage and a trial of the Japanese climate having been recommended. The country and the field of study suited the invalid well. After teaching for a time in the Naval College the Japanese honored themselves and this scholar by making him, in April, 1886, Professor of Philology at the Imperial University. His works, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, his various grammars and hand-books for the acquisition of the language, his Hand-book for Japan, his Aino Studies, Things Japanese, papers in the T.A.S.J. and his translation of the Kojiki are all of a high order of value. They are marked by candor, fairness, insight, and a mastery of difficult themes that makes his readers his constant debtors.]

[Footnote 4: "If the term 'Altaic' be held to include Korean and Japanese, then Japanese assumes prime importance as being by far the oldest living representative of that great linguistic group, its literature antedating by many centuries the most ancient productions of the Manchus, Mongols, Turks, Hungarians, or Finns."—Chamberlain, Simplified Grammar, Introd., p. vi.]

[Footnote 5: Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 13-14; Mr. Pom K. Soh's paper on Education in Korea; Report of U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1890-91.]

[Footnote 6: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 74; Bramsen's Chronological Tables, Introd., p. 34; T.J., p. 32.]

[Footnote 7: The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I., p. 531.]

[Footnote 8: "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean." This proverb, so freely quoted throughout Chinese Asia, and in recent years so much applied to themselves by the Japanese, is of Hindu origin and is found in the Sanskrit.]

[Footnote 9: This is shown with literary skill and power in a modern popular work, the title of which, Dai Nippon Kai-biyaku Yurai-iki, which, very freely indeed, may be translated Instances of Divine Interposition in Behalf of Great Japan. A copy of this work was presented to the writer by the late daimiō of Echizen, and was read with interest as containing the common people's ideas about their country and history. It was published in Yedo in 1856, while Japan was still excited over the visits of the American and European fleets. On the basis of the information furnished in this work General Le Gendre wrote his influential book, Progressive Japan, in which a number of quotations from the Kai-biyaku may be read.]

[Footnote 10: In the Kojiki, pp. 101-104, we have the poetical account of the abdication of the lord of Idzumo in favor of the Yamato conqueror, on condition that the latter should build a temple and have him honored among the gods. One of the rituals contains the congratulatory address of the chieftains of Idzumo, on their surrender to "the first Mikado, Jimmu Tennō." See also T.J., p. 206.]

[Footnote 11: "The praying for Harvest, or Toshigoi no Matsuri, was celebrated on the 4th day of the 2d month of each year, at the capital in the Jin-Gi-Kuan or office for the Worship of the Shintō gods, and in the provinces by the chiefs of the local administrations. At the Jin-Gi-Kuan there were assembled the ministers of state, the functionaries of that office, the priests and priestesses of 573 temples, containing 737 shrines, which were kept up at the expense of the Mikado's treasury, while the governors of the provinces superintended in the districts under their administration the performance of rites in honor of 2,395 other shrines. It would not be easy to state the exact number of deities to whom these 3,132 shrines were dedicated. A glance over the list in the 9th and 10th books of the Yengishiki shows at once that there were many gods who were worshipped in more than half-a-dozen different localities at the same time; but exact calculation is impossible, because in many cases only the names of the temples are given, and we are left quite in the dark as to the individuality of the gods to whom they were sacred. Besides these 3,132 shrines, which are distinguished as Shikidai, that is contained in the catalogue of the Yengishiki, there were a large number of enumerated shrines in temples scattered all over the country, in every village or hamlet, of which it was impossible to take any account, just as at the present day there are temples of Hachiman, Kompira, Tenjin sama, San-no sama and Sengen sama, as they are popularly called, wherever twenty or thirty houses are collected together. The shrines are classed as great and small, the respective numbers being 492 and 2,640, the distinction being twofold, firstly in the proportionately larger quantity of offerings made at the great shrines, and secondly that the offerings in the one case were arranged upon tables or altars, while in the other they were placed on mats spread upon the earth. In the Yengishiki the amounts and nature of the offerings are stated with great minuteness, but it will be sufficient if the kinds of articles offered are alone mentioned here. It will be seen, by comparison with the text of the norito, that they had varied somewhat since the date when the ritual was composed. The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven silk (ashiginu), thin silk of five different colors, a kind of stuff called shidori or shidzu, which is supposed by some to have been a striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity of the raw materials of which the cloth was made, models of swords, a pair of tables or altars (called yo-kura-oki and ya-kura-oki), a shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a quiver, a pair of stag's horns, a hoe, a few measures of sake or rice-beer, some haliotis and bonito, two measures of kituli (supposed to be salt roe), various kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a sake jar, and a few feet of matting for packing. To each of the temples of Watarai in Ise was presented in addition a horse; to the temple of the Harvest god Mitoshi no kami, a white horse, cock, and pig, and a horse to each of nineteen others.

"During the fortnight which preceded the celebration of the service, two smiths and their journeymen, and two carpenters, together with eight inbe [or hereditary priests] were employed in preparing the apparatus and getting ready the offerings. It was usual to employ for the Praying for Harvest members of this tribe who held office in the Jin-Gi-Kuan, but if the number could not he made up in that office, it was supplied from other departments of state. To the tribe of quiver-makers was intrusted the special duty of weaving the quivers of wistaria tendrils. The service began at twenty minutes to seven in the morning, by our reckoning of time. After the governor of the province of Yamashiro had ascertained that everything was in readiness, the officials of the Jin-Gi-Kuan arranged the offerings on the tables and below them, according to the rank of the shrines for which they were intended. The large court of the Jin-Gi-Kuan where the service was held, called the Sai-in, measured 230 feet by 370. At one end were the offices and on the west side were the shrines of the eight Protective Deities in a row, surrounded by a fence, to the interior of which three sacred archways (torii) gave access. In the centre of the court a temporary shed was erected for the occasion, in which the tables or altars were placed. The final preparations being now complete, the ministers of state, the virgin priestesses and priests of the temples to which offerings were sent by the Mikado, entered in succession, and took the places severally assigned to them. The horses which formed a part of the offerings were next brought in from the Mikado's stable, and all the congregation drew near, while the reader recited or read the norito. This reader was a member of the priestly family or tribe of Nakatomi, who traced their descent back to Ameno-koyane, one of the principal advisers attached to the sun-goddess's grandchild when he first descended on earth. It is a remarkable evidence of the persistence of certain ideas, that up to the year 1868 the nominal prime-minister of the Mikado, after he came of age, and the regent during his minority, if he had succeeded young to the throne, always belonged to this tribe, which changed its name from Nakatomi to Fujiwara in the seventh century, and was subsequently split up into the Five Setsuke or governing families. At the end of each section the priests all responded 'O!' which was no doubt the equivalent of 'Yes' in use in those days. As soon as he had finished, the Nakatomi retired, and the offerings were distributed to the priests for conveyance and presentation to the gods to whose service they were attached. But a special messenger was despatched with the offerings destined to the temples at Watarai. This formality having been completed, the President of the Jin-Gi-Kuan gave the signal for breaking up the assembly." Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J., Vol. VII, pp. 104-107.]

[Footnote 12: S. and H., p. 461.]

[Footnote 13: Consult Chamberlain's literal translations of the name in the Kojiki, and p. lxv. of his Introduction.]

[Footnote 14: The parallel between the Hebrew and Japanese accounts of light and darkness, day and night, before the sun, has been noticed by several writers. See the comments of Hirata, a modern Shintō expounder.—T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 72.]

[Footnote 15: Westminster Review, July, 1878, p. 19.]

CHAPTER III

"THE KOJIKI" AND ITS TEACHINGS

[Footnote 1: Kojiki, pp. 9-18; T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 20.]

[Footnote 2: M.E., p. 43; McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, Art. Shintō; in T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, is to be found Mr. Satow's digest of the commentaries of the modern Shintō revivalists; in Mr. Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki, the text with abundant notes. See also Mr. Twan-Lin's Account of Japan up to A.D. 1200, by E.H. Parker. T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I.]

[Footnote 3: "The various abstractions which figure at the commencement of the 'Records' (Kojiki) and of the 'Chronicles' (Nihongi) were probably later growths, and perhaps indeed were inventions of individual priests."—Kojiki, Introd., p. lxv. See also T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I, p. 56. "Thus, not only is this part of the Kojiki pure twaddle, but it is not even consistent twaddle."]

[Footnote 4: Kojiki, Section IX.]

[Footnote 5: Dr. Joseph Edkins, D.D., author of Chinese Buddhism, who believes that the primeval religious history of men is recoverable, says in Early Spread of Religious Ideas, Especially in the Far East, p. 29, "In Japan Amaterasŭ, ... in fact, as I suppose, Mithras written in Japanese, though the Japanese themselves are not aware of this etymology." Compare Kojiki, Introduction, pp. lxv.-lxvii.]

[Footnote 6: Kojiki, p. xlii.]

[Footnote 7: T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 67.]

[Footnote 8: E. Satow, Revival of Pure Shintō, pp. 67-68.]

[Footnote 9: This curious agreement between the Japanese and other ethnic traditions in locating "Paradise," the origin of the human family and of civilization, at the North Pole, has not escaped the attention of Dr. W.F. Warren, President of Boston University, who makes extended reference to it in his interesting and suggestive book, Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole; A Study of the Prehistoric World, Boston, 1885.]

[Footnote 10: The pure Japanese numerals equal in number the fingers; with the borrowed Chinese terms vast amounts can be expressed.]

[Footnote 11: This custom was later revived, T.A.S.J., pp. 28, 31. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. II., p. 57; M.E., pp. 156, 238.]

[Footnote 12: See in Japanese Fairy World, "How the Sun-Goddess was enticed out of her Cave." For the narrative see Kojiki, pp. 54-59; T.A.S.J., Vol. II., 128-133.]

[Footnote 13: See Chomei and Wordsworth, A Literary Parallel, by J.M. Dixon, T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., pp. 193-205; Anthologie Japonaise, by Leon de Rosny; Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese; Suyematsŭ's Genji Monogatari, London, 1882.]

[Footnote 14: Oftentimes in studying the ancient rituals, those who imagine that the word Kami should be in all cases translated gods, will be surprised to see what puerility, bathos, or grandiloquence, comes out of an attempt to express a very simple, it may be humiliating, experience.]

[Footnote 15: Mythology and Religious Worship of the Japanese, Westminster Review, July, 1878; Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J., Vols. VII., IX.; Esoteric Shintō, by Percival Lowell, T.A.S.J, Vol. XXI.]

[Footnote 16: Compare Sections IX. and XXIII. of the Kojiki.]

[Footnote 17: This indeed seems to be the substance of the modern official expositions of Shintō and the recent Rescripts of the Emperor, as well as of much popular literature, including the manifestoes or confessions found on the persons of men who have "consecrated" themselves as "the instruments of Heaven for punishing the wicked," i.e., assassinating obnoxious statesmen. See The Ancient Religion, M.E., pp. 96-100; The Japan Mail, passim.]

[Footnote 18: Revival of Pure Shintō, pp. 25-38.]

[Footnote 19: Japanese Homes, by E.S. Morse, pp. 228-233, note, p. 832.]

[Footnote 20: Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12.]

[Footnote 21: Geological Survey of Japan, by Benj. S. Lyman, 1878-9.]

[Footnote 22: The Shell Mounds of Omori; and The Tokio Times, Jan. 18, 1879, by Edward S. Morse; Japanese Fairy World, pp. I78, 191, 196.]

[Footnote 23: Kojiki, pp. 60-63.]

[Footnote 24: S. and H., pp. 58, 337, etc.]

[Footnote 25: This study in comparative religion by a Japanese, which cost the learned author his professorship in the Tei-Koku Dai Gaku or Imperial University (lit. Theocratic Country Great Learning Place), has had a tendency to chill the ardor of native investigators. His paper was first published in the Historical Magazine of the University, but the wide publicity and popular excitement followed only after republication, with comments by Mr. Taguchi, in the Keizai Zasshi (Economical Journal). The Shintōists denounced Professor Kumi for "making our ancient religion a branch of Christianity," and demanded and secured his "retirement" by the Government. See Japan Mail, April 2, 1892, p. 440.]

[Footnote 26: T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI., p. 282.]

[Footnote 27: Kojiki, p. xxviii.]

[Footnote 28: For the use of salt in modern "Esoteric" Shintō, both in purification and for employment as of salamandrine, see T.A.S.J., pp. 125, 128.]

[Footnote 29: In the official census of 1893, nine Shintō sects are named, each of which has its own Kwancho or Presiding Head, recognized by the government. The sectarian peculiarities of Shintō have been made the subject of study by very few foreigners. Mr. Satow names the following:

The Yui-itsu sect was founded by Toshida Kane-tomo. His signature appears as the end of a ten-volume edition, issued A.D. 1503, of the liturgies extracted from the Yengishiki or Book of Ceremonial Law, first published in the era of Yengi (or En-gi), A.D. 901-922. He is supposed to be the one who added the kana, or common vernacular script letters, to the Chinese text and thus made the norito accessible to the people. The little pocket prayer-books, folded in an accordeon-like manner, are very cheap and popular. The sect is regarded as heretical by strict Shintōists, as the system Yuwiitsu consists "mainly of a Buddhist superstructure on a Shintō foundation." Yoshida applied the tenets of the Shingon or True Word sect of Buddhists to the understanding and practice of the ancient god-way.

The Suiga sect teaches a system which is a combination of Yuwiitsu and of the modern philosophical form of Confucianism as elaborated by Chu Hi, and known in Japan as the Tei-shu philosophy. The founder was Yamazaki Ansai, who was born in 1618 and died in 1682. By combining the forms of the Yoshida sect, which is based on the Buddhism of the Shingon sect, with the materialistic philosophy of Chu Hi, he adapted the old god-way to what he deemed modern needs.

In the Deguchi sect, the ancient belief is explained by the Chinese Book of Changes (or Divination). Deguchi Nobuyoshi, the founder, was god-warden or kannushi of the Geiku or Outer Palace Temple at Ise. He promulgated his views about the year 1660, basing them upon the book called Eki by the Japanese and Yi-king by the Chinese. This Yi-king, which Professor Terrien de Laeouporie declares is only a very ancient book of pronunciation of comparative Accadian and Chinese Syllabaries, has been the cause of incredible waste of labor, time, and brains in China—enough to have diked the Yellow River or drained the swamps of the Empire. It is the chief basis of Chinese superstition, and the greatest literary barrier to the advance of civilization. It has also made much mischief in Japan. Deguchi explained the myths of the age of the gods by divination or eki, based on the Chinese books. As late as 1893 there was published in Tōkiō a work in Japanese, with good translation info English, on Scientific Morality, or the practical guidance of life by means of divination—The Takashima Ekidan (or Monograph on the Eki of Mr. Takashima), by S. Sugiura.

The Jikko sect, according to its representative at the World's Parliament of Religions at Chicago, is "the practical." It lays stress less upon speculation and ritual, and more upon the realization of the best teachings of Shintō. It was founded by Hasegawa Kakugiō, who was born at Nagasaki in 1541. Living in a cave in Fuji-yama, "he received inspiration through the miraculous power of the mountain." It believes in one absolute Deity, often mentioned in the Kojiki, which, self-originated, took the embodiment of two deities, one with the male nature and the other female, though these two deities are nothing but forms of the one substance and unite again in the absolute deity. These gave birth to the Japanese Archipelago, the sun and moon, the mountains and streams, the divine ancestors, etc. According to the teachings of this sect, the peerless mountain, Fuji, ought to be reverenced as the sacred abode of the divine lord, and as "the brains of the whole globe." The believer must make Fuji the example and emblem of his thought and action. He must be plain and simple, as the form of the mountain, making his body and mind pure and serene, as Fuji itself. The present world with all its practical works must be respected more than the future world. We must pray for the long life of the country, lead a life of temperance and diligence, cooperating with one another in doing good.

* * * * *

Statistics of Shintōism.

From the official Resume Statistique de l'Empire du Japon, 1894. In 1801 there were nine administrative heads of sects; 75,877 preachers, priests, and shrine-keepers, with 1,158 male and 228 female students. There were 163 national temples of superior rank and 136,652 shrines or temples in cities and prefectures; a total of 193,153, served by 14,700 persons of the grade of priests. Most of the expenses, apart from endowments and local contributions, are included in the first item of the annual Treasury Budget, "Civil List, Appanage and Shintō Temples."]

CHAPTER IV

THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN

[Footnote 1: "He was fond of saying that Princeton had never originated a new idea; but this meant no more than that Princeton was the advocate of historical Calvinism in opposition to the modified and provincial Calvinism of a later day."—Francis L. Patton, in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, Article on Charles Hodge.]

[Footnote 2: We use Dr. James Legge's spelling, by whom these classics have been translated into English. See Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Mueller.]

[Footnote 3: The Canon or Four Classics has a somewhat varied literary history of transmission, collection, and redaction, as well as of exposition, and of criticism, both "lower" and "higher." As arranged under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206-A.D. 23) it consisted of—I. The Commentary of Tso Kinming (a disciple who expounded Confucius's book, The Annals of State of Lu); II. The Commentary of Kuh-liang upon the same work of Confucius; III. The Old Text of the Book of History; IV. The Odes, collected by Mao Chang, to whom is ascribed the test of the Odes as handed down to the present day. The generally accepted arrangement is that made by the mediaeval schoolmen of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1341), Cheng Teh Sio and Chu Hi, in the twelfth century: I. The Great Learning; II. The Doctrine of the Mean; III. Conversations of Confucius; IV. The Sayings of Mencius.—C.R.M., pp. 306-309.]

[Footnote 4: See criticisms of Confucius as an author, in Legge's Religions of China, pp. 144, 145.]

[Footnote 5: Religions of China, by James Legge, p. 140.]

[Footnote 6: See Article China, by the author, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Chicago, 1881.]

[Footnote 7: This subject is critically discussed by Messrs. Satow, Chamberlain, and others in their writings on Shintō and Japanese history. On Japanese chronology, see Japanese Chronological Tables, by William Bramsen, Tōkiō, 1880, and Dr. David Murray's Japan (p. 95), in the series Story of the Nations, New York.]

[Footnote 8: The absurd claim made by some Shintōists that the Japanese possessed an original native alphabet called the Shingi (god-letters) before the entrance of the Chinese or Buddhist learning in Japan, is refuted by Aston, Japanese Grammar, p. 1; T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 77. Mr. Satow shows "their unmistakable identity with the Corean alphabet."]

[Footnote 9: For the life, work, and tombs of the Chinese scholars who fled to Japan on the fall of the Ming Dynasty, see M.E., p. 298; and Professor E.W. Clement's paper on The Tokugawa Princes of Mito, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., and his letters in The Japan Mail.]

[Footnote 10: "We have consecrated ourselves as the instruments of Heaven for punishing the wicked man,"—from the document submitted to the Yedo authorities, by the assassins of Ii Kamon no Kami, in Yedo, March 23, 1861, and signed by seventeen men of the band. For numerous other instances, see the voluminous literature of the Forty-seven Rōnins, and the Meiji political literature (1868-1893), political and historical documents, assassins' confessions, etc., contained in that thesarus of valuable documents, The Japan Mail; Kinse Shiriaku, or Brief History of Japan, 1853-1869, Yokohama, 1873, and Nihon Guaishi, translated by Mr. Ernest Satow; Adams's History of Japan; T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p. 145; Life and Letters of Yokoi Heishiro; Life of Sir Harry Parkes, London, 1893, etc., for proof of this assertion.]

[Footnote 11: For proof of this, as to vocabulary, see Professor B.H. Chamberlain's Grammars and other philological works; Mr. J.H. Gubbins's Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words, with Introduction, three vols., Tōkiō 1892; and for change in structure, Rev. C. Munzinger, on The Psychology of the Japanese Language in the Transactions of the Gorman Asiatic Society of Japan. See also Mental Characteristics of the Japanese, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIX., pp. 17-37.]

[Footnote 12: See The Ghost of Sakura, in Mitfoid's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. II, p. 17.]

[Footnote 13: M.E., 277-280. See an able analysis of Japanese feudal society, by M.F. Dickins, Life of Sir Harry Parkes, pp. 8-13; M.E., pp. 277-283.]

[Footnote 14: This subject is discussed in Professor Chamberlain's works; Mr. Percival Lowell's The Soul of the Far East; Dr. M.L. Gordon's An American Missionary in Japan; Dr. J.H. De Forest's The Influence of Pantheism, in The Japan Evangelist, 1894.]

[Footnote 15: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., p. 96.]

[Footnote 16: The Forty Seven-Rōnins, Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I.; Chiushiugura, by F.V. Dickens; The Loyal Rōnins, by Edward Greey; Chiushiugura, translated by Enouye.]

[Footnote 17: See Dr. J.H. De Forest's article in the Andover Review, May, June, 1893, p. 309. For details and instances, see the Japanese histories, novels, and dramas; M.E.; Rein's Japan; S. and H.; T.A.S.J., etc. Life of Sir Harry Parkes, p. 11 et passim.]

[Footnote 18: M.E. pp. 180-192, 419. For the origin and meaning of hara-kiri, see T.J., pp. 199-201; Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I., Appendix; Adams's History of Japan, story of Shimadzŭ.]

[Footnote 19: M.E., p. 133.]

[Footnote 20: For light upon the status of the Japanese family, see F.O. Adams's History of Japan, Vol. II., p. 384; Kinse Shiriaku, p. 137; Naomi Tamura, The Japanese Bride, New York, 1893; E.H. House, Yone Santo, A Child of Japan, Chicago, 1888; Japanese Girls and Women, by Miss A.M. Bacon, Boston, 1891; T.J., Article Woman, and in Index, Adoption, Children, etc.; M.E., 1st ed., p. 585; Marriage in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIII., p. 114; and papers in the German Asiatic Society of Japan.]