The Chrysanthemum And The Sword

1. The Chrysanthemum And The Sword

The Chrysanthemum And The Sword

Ruth Benedict

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Chrysanthemum

and the

Sword

THE

Chrysanthemum

and the

Sword

Patterns of fapanese Culture

by

RUTH

BENEDICT

LdNDON

SECKER & WARBURG

1947

MARTIN SECKBR h WARBURG LTD,7 JOHN STREET, LONDON. W.C.Z

CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTSPRINTED IN THE U.SJl.

Acknowledgements

Japanese men and women \^o had been bom or educatedin Japan and who were living in the United States duringthe war years were placed in a most difficult position. Theywere distrusted by many Americans. I take special pleasure,therefore, in testifying to their help and kindness during thetime when I was gathering the material for this book. Mythanks are due them in very special measure. I am espe-cially grateful to my wartime colleague, Robert Hashima.Bom in this country, brought up in Japan, he chose to re-turn to the United States in 1941. He was interned in a WarRelocation Camp, and I met him when he came to Wash-ington to work in the war agencies of the United States.

My thanks are also due to the Office of War Information,which gave me the assignment on which I report in thisbook, and especially to Professor George E. Taylor, DeputyDirector for the Far East, and to Commander AlexanderH. Leighton, MC-USNR, who headed the Foreign MoraleAnalysis Division.

1 wish to thank also those who have read this book inwhole or in part: Commander Leighton, Professor QydeKluckhohn and Dr. Nathan Leites, all of whom were in theOffice of War Information during the time I was workingon Japan and who assisted in many ways; Professor Con-rad Arensberg, Dr. Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson andE. H. Norman. I am grateful to all of them for suggestionsand help.

Ruth Benedict

The author wishes to thank the publishers who have givenher permission to quote from their publications: D. Apple-ton-Centuiy G)mpany, Inc., for permission to quote fromBehind the Face of Japan, by Upton Close; Edward Arnoldand Company for permission to quote from Japanese Bud-dhism, by Sir Charles Eliot; The John Day Company, Inc.,for permission to quote from My Narrow Isle, by SumieMishima; J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., for permission toquote from Life and Thought of Japan, by YoshisaburaOkakura; Doubleday and Company for permission toquote from A Daughter of the Samurai, by Etsu InagakiSugimoto; Penguin Books, Inc., and the Infantry Journalfor permission to quote from an article by Colonel HaroldDoud in How the Jap Army Fights; Jarrolds Publishers(London), Ltd., for permission to quote from True Face ofJapan, by K. Nohara; The Macmillan Company for per-mission to quote from Buddhist Sects of Japan, by E. OberlinSteinilber, and from Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation,by Lafcadio Hearn; Rinehart and Company, Inc., for per-mission to quote from Japanese Nation, by John F. Em-bree; and The University of Chicago Press for permissionto quote from Suye Mura, by John F. Embree.

CONTENTS

1. Assignment: Japan 1

2. The Japanese in the War 20

3. Taking One's Proper Station 43

4. The Meiji Reform 76

5. Debtor to the Ages and the World 98

6. Repaying One-Ten-Thousandth 114

7. The Repayment ‘Hardest to Bear' 133

8. Clearing One's Name 145

9. The Circle of Human Feelings 177

10. The Dilemma of Virtue 195

11. Self-Discipline 228

12. The Child Jjeams 253

13. The Japanese Since VJ-Day 297

Glossary 317

Index 321

I

Assignment: Japan

The Japanese were the most alien enemy the United Stateshad ever fought in an all-out strug^e. In no other war witha major foe had it been necessary to take into account suchexceedingly different habits of acting and thinking. LikeCzarist Russia before us in 1905, we were fighting a nationfully aimedand trained which did not belong to the Westerncultural tradition. Conventions of war which Western na-tions had come to accept as facts of human nature obvi-ously did not exist for the Japanese. It made the war in thePacific more than a series of landings on island beaches,more than an unsurpassed problem of logistics. It made it amajor problem in the nature of the enemy. We had to under-stand their behavior in order to cope with it.

The difficulties were great. Diuing the past seventy-fiveyears since Japan’s closed doors were opened, the Japanesehave been described in the most fantastic series of ‘butalso’s’ ever used for any nation of the world. When a seri-ous observer is \mting about peoples other than the Japa-nese and says they are unprecedentedly polite, he is notlikely to add, ‘But also insolent and overbearing.’ Whenhe says people of some nation are incomparably rigid in

1

The Qjrysantbermm and the Swordthdr bdiavior, he does not add, *But also th^ adapt them-selves readily to extreme innovations.* When he says a peo-ple are submissive, he does not explain too that they are noteasily amenable to control from above. When he says theyare loyal and generous, he does not declare, ‘But alsotreacherous and spiteful.’When he says they are genuinelybrave, he does not expatiate on their timidity. When he saysthey act out of concern for others’ opinions, he does notthen go on to tell that tiiey have a truly terrifying con-science. When he describes robot-like discipline in theirArmy, he does not continue by describing the way the sol-diers in that Army take the bit in their own teeth even to thepoint of insubordination. When he describes a people whodevote themselves with passion to Western learning, he doesnot also enlarge on their fervid conservatism. When hewrites a book on a nation with a popular cult of aestheticismwhichgives high honor to actors and to artistsandlavishes artupon the cultivation of chrysanthemxuns, that book doesnot ordinarily have to be supplemented by another which isdevoted to the cult of the sword and the top prestige of thewarrior.

All these contradictions, however, are the warp and woofof books on Japan. They are true. Both the sword and thechrysanthemum are a part of the picture. The Japanese are,to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, bothmilitaristic' and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigidand adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushedaround, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conserva-tive and hospitable to new ways. They are terribly concernedabout what other people will think of their behavior, and

2

Ass^mnent: Japan

they are also ovefOH&e 1^ guilt whea other people knownothing of thdr misstep. Thdr soldiers are disc^lined tothe hilt but are also insubordinate.

Whw it became so important for Amerka to understandJapan, these contradictions and many others equally bla<tant could not be waved aside. Crises were facing us inquick succession. What would the Japanese do? Was capit-ulation possible without invasion? Should we bomb theEmperor’s palace? What could we expect of Japanese pris-oners of war? What should we say in our propaganda toJapanese troops and to the Japanese homeland which couldsave the lives of Americans and lessen Japanese determina-tion to fight to the last man? There were violent disagree-ments among those who knew the Japanese best. Whenpeace came, were the Japanese a people who would requireperpetual martial law to keep them in order? Would ourarmy have to prepare to fight desperate bitter-enders inevery mountain fastness of Japan? Would there have to bea revolution in Japan after the order of the French Revolu-tion or the Russian Revolution before international peacewas possible? Who would lead it? Was the alternative theeradication of the Japanese? It made a great deal of differ-ence what our judgments were.

In June, 1944,1 was assigned to the study of Japan. I wasasked to use all the techniques I could as a cultural anthro-pologist to spell out what the Japanese were like. Duringthat early summer our great offensive against Japan hadjust begun to show itself in its true magnitude. People inthe United States were still saying that the war with Japanwould last fbree years, perhaps ten years, more. In Japan

3

The ChrysmtheTHum and the Srmdth^ talked of its lasting one hundred years. Americans,th^ said, had had local victories, but New Guinea and theSolomons were thousands of miles away from their homeislands. Their official communiques had hardly admittednaval defeats and the Japanese people still regarded them-selves as victors.

In June, however, the situation began to change. Thesecond front was opened in Europe and the military prior-ity which the High Command had for two years and a halfgiven to the European theater paid off. The end of the waragainst Germany was in sight And in the Pacific our forceslanded on Saipan, a great operation forecasting eventualJapanese defeat From then on our soldiers were to facethe Japanese army at constantly closer quarters. And weknew well, from the fighting in New Guinea, on Guadal-canal, in Burma, on Attu and Tarawa and Biak, that wewere pitted against a formidable foe.

In June, 1944, therefore, it was important to answer amultitude of questions about our enemy, Japan. Whetherthe issue was military or diplomatic, whether it was raisedby questions of high policy or of leaflets to be dropped be-hind the Japanese front lines, every insight was important.In the aH-out war Japan was fighting we had to know, notjust the aims and motives of those in power in Toliyo, notjust the long history of Japan, not just economic and mili-tary statistics; we-had to know what their government couldcount on from the people. We had to try to understandJapanese habits of thought and emotion and the patternsmto which these habits fell. We had to know the sanctionsbehind these actions and opinions. We had to put aside for

4

the moment the premises on^ch ^ act as Americans andto keep ourselves as far as possible from leajwg to the easyconclusion that what we would do in a ^ven situation waswhat they would do.

My assignment was difficult America and Japan were atwar and it is easy in wartime to cond^nn wholesale, but farharder to try to see how your enemy looks at life throughhis own eyes. Yet it had to be done. The question was howthe Japanese would behave, not how we would behave if wewere in their place. I had to try to use Japanese behavior inwar as an asset in understanding them, not as a liability.I had to look at the way they conducted the war itself andsee it not for the moment as a military problem but as acultural problem. In warfare as well as in peace, the Japa-nese acted in character. What special indications of theirway of life and thinking did they give in the way they han-dled warfare? Their leaders’ ways of whipping up war spirit,of reassuring the bewildered, of utilizing their soldiers inthe field—all these things showed what they themselves re-garded as the strengths on which they could capitalize. Ihad to follow the details of the war to see how the Japaneserevealed themselves in it step by step.

The fact that our two nations were at war inevitablymeant, however, a serious disadvantage. It meant that I hadto forego the most important technique of the cultural an-thropologist: a field trip. I could not go to Japan and livein their homes and watch the strains and stresses of dailylife, see with my own eyes which were crucial and whichwere not 1 could not watch them in die complicated busi-ness of arriving at a decision. I could not see thdr children

5

being brought up. The one anthropologist’s fidd study ofa Japanese village, John Embree’s l^uye Mura, was invalu-able, but many of the questions about Japan with which wewere faced in 1944 were not raised whm that study waswritten.

As a cultural anthropologist, in spite of these major diflS-culties, I had confidence in certain techniques and postu-lates which could be used. At least I did not have to foregothe anthropologist’s great reliance upon face-to-face con-tact with the people he is studying. There were plenty ofJapanese in this countiy who had been reared in Japan andI could ask them about the concrete facts of their own ex-periences, find out how they judged them, fill in from theirdescriptions many gaps in our knowledge which as an an-thropologist I believed were essential in understanding anyculture. Other social scientists who were studying Japanwere using libraries, analyzing past events or statistics, fol-lowing developments in the written or spoken word of Jap-anese propaganda. I had confidence that many of these an-swers they sought were embedded in the rules and values ofJapanese culture and could be found more satisfactorily byexploring that culture with people who had really lived it

This did not mean that I did not read and that I was notconstantly indebted to Westerners who had lived in Japan.The vast literature on the Japanese and the great number ofgood Occidental observers who have lived in Japan gaveme an advantage which no anthropologist has whenhe goesto the Amazon headwaters or the New Guinea highlands tostudy a non-literate tribe. Having no written language suchtribes have conunitted;no self-revelations to paper. Com-

6

AssignmeiU: Japan

molts by W^toners are few and supofidal. Nobody knowstheir past history. The field worker must discovo widioutany help from previous students the way thdr economiclife works, how stratified their sode^ is, what is uppermostin their religious life. In studying Japan, 1 was the heir ofmany students. Descriptions of small details of life weretucked away m antiquarian papers. Men and womoi fromEurope and America had set down their vivid experiences,and the Japanese themselves had written really extraordi-nary self-revelations. Unlike many Oriental people th^have a great impulse to write themselves out They wroteabout the trivia of their lives as well as about thdr programsof world expansion. They were amazingly fiank. Of coursethey did not present the whole picture. No people does. AJapanese who writes about Japan passes over naUy crucialthings which are as familiar to him and as invisible as theair he breathes. So do Americans when they write aboutAmerica. But just the same the Japanese loved self-revela-tion.

I read this literature as Darwin says he read whoi he wasworking out his theories on the origin of qiecies, notingwhat I had not the means to understand. What would I needto know to imderstand the juxtaposition of ideas in a speechin the Diet? What could lie back of their violent condona-tion of some act that seemed venial and their easy accq>t-ance of one that seemed outrageous? I read, asking the ever-present questioo: What is ‘wrong with this picture*? Whatwould I need to know to rmderstand it?

I wmt to movies, too, which had been writtoi and pro-duced in Japan—propaganda movies, historical movies,

i

The Qjrysmtbmum and the Swotd

movies of conlmporaiy life in Tokyo and in die farm vil-lages. I went over diem afterward with Japanese who hadseen some of these same movies in Japan and who in anycase saw the hero and the heroine and the villain as Japa-nese see them, not as I saw them. Whm I was at sea, it wasclear that th^ were not The plots, the motivations werenot as I saw them, but thqr made sense in terms of the waythe movie was constructed. As with the novels, there wasmuch more difference than met the ^e between what th^meant to me and what they meant to the Japanese-reared.Some of these Japanese were quick to come to the defenseof Japanese conventions and some hated everything Japa-nese. It is hard to say from which group I learned most. Inthe intimate picture they gave of how one regulates one’slife in Japan diey agreed, whether th^ accepted it gladly orrejected it with bitterness.

In so far as the anthropologist goes for his material andhis insights directly to the people of the culture he is study-ing, he is doing what all the ablest Western observers havedone who have lived in Japan. If this were all an anthro-pologist had to offer,he could not hope to add to the valu-able studies which foreign residents have made of the Japa-nese. The . cultural anthropologist, however, has certainqualifications as a result of his training which appeared tomake it worth his while to try to add his own contributionin a field rich in students and observers.

The anthropologist knows many cultures of Asia and thePacific. There are many social arrangements and halnts oflife in Japan which have close parallels even in the primitivetribes of the Pacific islands. Some of these parallels are in

8

Assig^nnmt :

Malaysia, some in New Guinea, some in Polyne^. Itt is in-teresting, of course, to speculate on whediiin’ these showsome ancimt migrations or contacts, but this problem ofposdble historical relationship was not the reason whyknowledge of these cultural similarities was valuable to me.It was rather that I knew in these simpler cultures how theseinstitutions worked and could get clues to Japanese lifefrom the likeness or the difference I found. I knew, too,something about Siam and Burma and China on the main-land of Asia, and I could therefore compare Japan withother nations which are a part of its great cultural heritage.Anthropolo^ts had shown over and over in their studiesof primitive people how valuable such cultural compari-sons can be. A tribe may share ninety per cent of its formalobservances with itsneighborsandyet itmay haverevampedthem to fit a way of life and a set of values which itdoesnotshare with any surrounding peoples. In the process it mayhave had to reject some fundamental arrangements which,however small in proportion to the whole, turn its futurecourse of development in a unique direction. Nothing ismore helpful to an anthropologist than to study contrastshe finds between peoples who on the whole share many traits.

Anthropologists also have had to accustom themselvesto maximum differoices between their own culture and an-other and their techniques have to be sharpened for thisparticular problon. They know from experirace that thereare great differences in the situations which mra in differ-ent cultures have to meet and in the way in which differenttribes and nations d^e the meanings of these situations.In some Arctic villa^ or tropical desot th^ were faced

9

The CbrysarabeTmm and the Swordwith tribal arrangements of kinship mponsibility or finan-cial exchange which in their moments of most unleashedimagination they could not have invented. Th^ have hadto investigate, not only the details of kinship or exchange,but what the consequences of these arrangements were inthe tribe’s behavior and how each generation was condi-tioned from duldhood to carry on as their ancestors haddone brfore than.

This professional concern with differences and their con-ditioning and their consequences could well be used in thestudy of Japan. No one is imaware of the deep-rooted cul-tural differences between the United States and Japan. Wehave even a folklore about the Japanese which says thatwhatever we do th^ do the opposite. Such a conviction ofdifference is dangerous only if a student rests content withsaying simply that these differences are so fantastic that itis impossible to understand such people. The anthropolo-gist has good proof in his experience that even bizarre be-havior does not prevent one’s understanding it. More thanany other social scientist he has professionally used differ-ences as an asset rather than a liability. There is nothingthat has made him pay such sharp attention to institutionsand peoples as the fact that they were phenomenally strange.There was nothing he could take for granted in his tribe’sway of Uving and it made him look not just at a few selectedfacts, but at evoything. In studies of Western nations onewho is untrained in studies of comparative cultures over-looks whole areas of behavior. He takes so much for grantedthat he does not explore the range of trivial habits in dailyliving and all those accepted verdicts on homely mattoa,

which, thrown large on the national screen, have more todo with that nation’s future than tr«ities signed diplo-mate.

The anthropolo^t has had to develop techniques forstudying the commonplace because those things that arecommonplaces in the tribe he was studying were so diffin’-ent from their coimterparts in his own home country. Wh«ihe tried to understand the extreme maliciousness of sometribe or the extreme timidity of another, vhen he tried toplot out the way they would act and feel in a given situa-tion, he found he had to draw heavily on observations anddetails that are not often noted about civilized nations. Hehad good reason to believe they were essential and he knewthe kind of research that would unearth them.

It was worth trying in the case of Japan. For it is onlywhen one has noted the intensely human commonplaces ofany people’s existence that one appreciates at its full im-portance the anthropologist’s pimise that human behaviorin any primitive tribe or in any nation in the forefront ofcivilization is learned in daily living. No matter how bizarrehis act or his opinion, the way a man feels and thinks hassome relation to his experience. The more baffled I was atsome bit of behavior, the more I therefore assumed thatthere existed somewhere in Japanese life someordinaiy con-ditioning of siich strangeness. If the search took me intotrivial details of daily intercourse, so much the better. Thatwas where people learned.

Asa cultural anthropologist also I started from the prem-ise that the most isolated bits of behavior have some sys-tematic relation to each other. I took seriously the way

II

The Cbrysantberntm and the Swordhundmls of details fall into over^tU patterns. A humansociety must make for itself some design for living. It ap-proves certain ways of meeting situations, certain ways ofsizing them up. People in that society regard these solu-tions as foundations of the universe. They integrate than,no matter what the dMculties. Men who have accepted asystem of values by which to live cannot without courtinginefSdencty and chaos keep for long a fenced-off portion oftheir lives where they think and behave according to a con-trary set of values. They tiy to bring about more conform-ity. Thty provide themselves with some common rationaleand some common motivations. Some degree of consistencyis necessary or the whole schane falls to pieces.

Economic behavior, family arrangements, religious ritesand political objectives therefore become geared into oneanother. Changes in one area may occur more rapidly thanin others and subject these other areas to great stress, butthe stress itself arises from the need for consistency. In pre-literate societies committed to the pursuit of power overothers, the will to power is expressed in their religious prac-tices no less than in their economic transactions and in theirrelations with other tribes. In civilized nations which haveold written scriptures, the Church necessarily retains thephrases of past centuries, as tribes without written languagedo not, but it abdicates authority in those fields which wouldinterfere with increasing public approval of economic andpolitical power. The words remain but the meaning is al-tered. Religious dogmas, economic practices and politicsdo not stay damm^ up in neat separate little ponds butdiey overflow thdr supposed boundaries and their waters

12

inextricably one with the otb». Because this is al-ways tru^ the more a student has seemin^y scattered hisinvestigation among facts of economics and sex and reli-gion and the care of the baby, the better he can follow whatis happening in the socieQr he studies. He can draw up hishypotheses and get his data in any area of life with profit.He can learn to see the demands any nation makes, whetherthey are phrased in political, economk, or moral terms, asexpressions of habits and ways of thinking which arelearned in their social experience. This volume therefore isnot a book specifically about Japanese religion or economiclife or politics or the family. It examines Japanese assump-tions about theconductoflife. It describes these assumptionsas they have manifested themselves whatever the activity inhand. It is about what makes Japan a nation of Japanese.

One of the handicaps of the twentieth century is that westill have the vaguest and most biased notions, not only ofwhat makes Japan a nation of Japanese, but of what makesthe United States a nation of Americans, France a nation ofFrenchmen, and Russia a nation of Russians. Lacking tlmknowledge, each country misunderstands the other. We fearirreconcilable differences when the trouble is only betweenTweedledum and Tweedledee, and we talk about commonpurposes when one nation by virtue of its whole experienceand system of values has in mind a quite different course ofaction from the one we meant. We do not give ourselves achance to find .out what their habits and values are. If wedid, we mi^t discover that a course of action is not neoes-sarify vicious because it is not the one we know.

It is not possible to depend entirely upon what eadi na-

13

The Qyrysanthenmm md the Swordtion says of its own habits of thought and action. Writersin every nation have tried to give an account of themselves.But it is not easy. The lenses through which any nationlooks at life are not the ones another nation uses. It is hardto be conscious of the eyes through which one looks. Anycountry takes them for granted, and the tricks of focusingand of perspective which give to any people its nationalview of life seem to that people the god-given arrangementof the landscape. In any matter of spectacles, we do not ex-pect the man who wears them to know the formula for thelenses, and neither can we expect nations to analyze theirown outlook upon the world. When we want to know aboutspectacles, we train an oculist and expect him to be able towrite out the formula for any lenses we bring him. Someday no doubt we shall recognize that it is the job of thesocial scientist to do this for the nations of the contempo-rary world.

The job requires both a certain tough-mindedness and acertain generosity. It requires a tough-mindedness whichpeople of good will have sometimes condemned. Theseprotagonists of One World have staked their hopes on con-vincing people of every comer Jof the earth that all the dif-ferences between East and West, black and white, Christianand Mohammedan, are superficial and that all mankind isreally like-minded. This view is sometimes called the broth-erhood of man. I do not know why beUevmg in the brother-hood of man should mean that one caimot say that theJapanese have their own version of the conduct of life andthat Americans have theirs. It sometimes seems as if thetender-minded could not base a doctrine of good will upon

14

anything less than a world of peofdes each of which is aprint from the same negative. But to demand sudi uni-formity as a condition of respecting another nation is asneurotic as to demand it of one’s wife or one’s children.The tough-minded are content that differences should existThey respect differences. Their goal is a world made safefor differences, where the United States may be Americanto the hilt without threatening the peace of the world, andFrance may be France, and Japan may be Japan on thesame conditions. To forbid the ripening of any of these at-titudes toward Ufe by outside interference seems wanton toany student who is not himself convinced that differ^cesneed be a Damocles’ sword hanging over the world. Norneed he fear that by taking such a position he is helping tofreeze the world into the status quo. Encouraging culturaldifferences would not mean a static world. England did notlose her Englishness because an Age of Elizabeth was fol-lowed by an Age of Queen Anne and a Victorian Era. It wasjust because the English were so much themselves that dif-ferent standards and different national moods could assertthemselves in different generations.

Systematic study of national differences requires a cer-tain generosity as well as tough-mindedness. The study ofcomparative religions has flourished only when men weresecure oiough in their own convictions to be unusually gen-erous. They mi^t be Jesuits or Arabic savants or imbeliev-ers, but they could not be zealots. The study of compara-tive cultures too cannot flourish when men are so defoisiveabout dieir own way of life that it appears to them to be bydefinition the sole solution in the world. Such moi will

15

The Chrysmthenmn md the Siamdnever know the added love of didr own cidturewliMi comesfrom a knowledge of other ways of life. Iliey cut themselvesoff from a pleasant and enridiing experience. Being so de-fensive, th^ have no alternative but to demand that odiornations adopt their own particular solutions. As Americansthey urge our favorite tenets on all nations. And other na-tions can no more adopt our ways of life on dranand thanwe could learn to do our calculations in units of 12’s in-stead of lO’s, or stand on one.foot in repose like certainEast African natives.

This book, then, is about habits that are expected andtakm for granted in Japan. It is about those situations whanany Japanese can count on dourtesy and those situationswhen he cannot, about when he feels shame, when he feelsembarrassment, what he requires of himseff. The ideal au-thority for any statonent in this book would be the pro-verbial man in the street. It would be anybody. That doesnot mean that this anybody would in his own person havebeen placed in each particular circumstance. It does meanthat anybody would recognize that that was how it wasunder those conditions. The goal of such a study as this isto describe deeply entrendied attitudes of thought and be-havior. Even when it falls short, this was nevertheless theideal.

In such a study one quickly reaches the point where thetestimony of great numbers of additional informants pro-vides no further validation. Who bows to whom and when,for instance, needs no statistical study of all Japan; the ap-proved and customary drcumstances can be reported tty al-most any one and after a few confinnations it is not neces-

saiy to get tiie same ioformatton from a mMon Jafnnese.

The studrait who is trying to uncovra: the assumptionsupcm M^iidi Japan builds its way of life has a far harder taskthan statistical validation. The great demand i^n him is toreport how these accepted practices and judgments becomethe iCTses through which the Japanese see existence. He hasto state the way in which their assumptions affect the focusand perspective in which they view life. He has to try tomake this intelligible to Americans who see existence in verydifferrait focus. In this task of analysis the court of autiior-ity is not necessarily Tanaka San, the Japanese ‘anybody.*For Tanaka San does not make his assumptions explicit,and interpretations written for Americans will undoubtedlyseon to him imduly labored.

American studies of societies have not often been plannedto study the premises on which civilized cultures are built.Most studies assume that these prranises are self-evident. So-ciologists and psychologists are preoccupied with the ‘scat-ter’ of opinion and behavior, and the stock technique isstatistical. Th^ subject to statistical analysis masses ofcmsus material, great numbers of answers to questioimairesor to interviewers’ questions, psychological measurementsand the like, and attempt to derive the independoice orintodepoidence of certain factors. In the field of puUicopinion, the valuable technique of polling the country byusing a scientifically selected sample of the population hasbeoi highly perfected in the United States. It is possible todiscover how many people s\q>port or of^se a certaincandidate for public office or a certain policy. Sup-porters and opponents can be classified as rural or urban,

17

The Chrysmahemum and the Swordlow income or hi^ income. Republicans or l>emocrats.In a country with universal suf&age, where laws are actu-ally drafted and enacted by the people’s r^resentatives,such findings have practical importance.

Americans can poll Americans and imderstand the find-ings, but they ctm do this because of a prior step which is soobvious that no one mentions it: they know and take forgranted the conduct of life in the United States. The re-sults of polling tell more about what we already know. Intrying to understand another coimtiy, systematic qualita-tive study of the habits and assumptions of its people is es-sential before a poll can serve to good advantage. By care-ful sampling, a poll can discover how many people are foror against government. But what does that tell us aboutthem unless we know what their notions are about theState? Only so can we know what the factions are disputingabout, in the streets or in the Diet. A nation’s assumptionsabout government are of much more general and perma-nent importance than figures of party strength. In theUnited States, the Government, to both Republicans andDemocrats, is almost a necessary evil and it limits individ-ual freedom; Government employment, too, except per-haps in wartime, does not give a man the standing he getsfrom an equivalent job in private enterprise. This versionof the State is a far cry from the Japanese version, and evenfrom that of many European nations. What we need toknow first of all is just what their version is. Their view isembodied in their folkways, in their comments on success-ful men, in their myth of their national history, in then-speeches on national holidays; and it can be studied in

i8

Assignment: Japan

these indirect manifestations. But it requires systematicstudy.

The basic assumptions which any nation makes aboutliving, die solutions it has sanctioned, can be studied withas much attention and as much detail as we give to findingout what proportion of a population will vote yes and noin an election. Japan was a country whose fundamental as-sumptions were well worth exploring. Certainly I found thatonce I had seen where my Occidental assumptions did notfit into their view of life and had got some idea of the cate-gories and symbols they used, many contradictions West-erners are accustomed to see in Japanese behavior were nolonger contradictions. I began to see how it was that theJapanese themselves saw certain violent swings of behavioras integral parts of a system consistent within itself. I cantry to show why. As I worked with them, they be^ to usestrange phrases and ideas which turned out to have greatimplications and to be full of age-long emotion. Virtue andvice as the Occident understands them had imdergone asea-change. The system was singular. It was not Buddhismand it was not Confucianism. It was Japanese—the strengthand the weakness of Japan.

The Japanese in the War

In Every cultural tradition there are orthodoxies of warand certain of these are shared in all Western nations, nomattra: what the specific differences. There are certain clar-ion calls to all-out war effort, certain forms of reassurancein case of local defeats, certain regularities in the proportionof fatalities to surrenders, and certain rules of behavior forprisoners of war which are predictable in wars betweenWestern nations just because they have a great shared cul-tural tradition which covers even warfare.

All the ways in which the Japanese departed from West-ern conventions of war were data on their view of life andon thdr convictions of the whole duty of man. For thepurposes of a systematic study of Japanese culture and be-havior it did not matter whether or not their deviationsfrom our orthodoxies were crucial in a military sense; anyof them might be important because they raised questionsabout the diaracter of the Japanese to which we needed an-swers.

The very premises which Japan used to justify her warwere die opposite of America’s. She defined the interna-tional situation differently. America laid the war to the ag-io

Tbejapmtsein the Wear

gmsioiis of tiie Axis. Japan, Itafy, and Germany had un-lighteoudy (Voided against int»national peace by tibdracts of conquest Wl^dio; the Axis had adzed power inManchulcuo in Ethiqria or in Poland, it proved dmt th^had embarked on an e^ course of oppressing weak peo>pies. They had sinned against an international code of liveand kt live’ or at least of ‘opm doors* for fiee entopase.Japan saw the cause of the war in another light Thoe wasanaidiy in the world as long as evmy nation had absolutesoverdgnly; it was necessary for her to fight to establish ahierarchy—under Japan, of course, dnee die alone rq)re*seated a nation truly hierarchal from top to bottom andhence understood the necesdty of taking ‘one’s properplace.’ Japan, having attained unification and peace in ho:homeland, having put down banditry and built iq> roadsand electric powm* and steel industries, having, accordingto her official figures, educated 99.5 per cent of her risinggeneration in her public schools, should, according to Jap-anese premises of hierarchy, raise her backward youngerbrother China. Being of the same race as Greater East Ada,die should eliminate the United States, and after her Brit-ain and Russia, from that part of the world and *take herprop» place.’ AH nations were to be one world, fixed in aninternational himarchy. In the next diapter we diaH ex-amine what this hi^ value placed on hierarchy meant inJapaiMse culture. It was an apprcpciate fanta^ for Japanto create. Unfortunately for ho: the countrks ^ occiqneddid not see it in the same light Nevertheless not even de-feat has drawn from her moral r^wdiatum <£\na GreaterEast Ada ideals, and even her pisoneis of war idio were

The ChrysaMbemum md the Stvordleast jingoistic rarely went so far as to arraign the purposesof Japan on the continent and in the Southwest Pacific. Fora long, long time Japan will necessarily keep some of h^inbred attitudes and one of the most important of these isher faith and confidence in hierarchy. It is alien to equality-loving Americans but it is nevertheless necessary for us tounderstand what Japan meant by hierarchy and what ad-vantages she has learned to connect with itJapan likewise put her hopes of victory on a differentbasis firom that prevalent in the United States. She wouldwin, she cried, a victory of spirit over matter. America wasbig, her armaments were superior, but what did that mat-ter? All this, they said, had been foreseen and discounted. ‘Ifwe had been afraid of mathematical figures,’ the Japaneseread in their great newspaper, the MamdU Shimbm, ‘thewar would not have started. The enrany’s ^eat resourceswere not created by this war.*

Even when she was winning, her civilian stateanen, herHi^ Command, and her soldi^ repeated that this was nocontest between armaments; it was a pitting of our faithin things against their faith in spirit When we were win-ning they repeated over and over that in such a contest ma-terial power must necessarily fail This dogma became, nodoubt, a convenient alibi about the time of the defeats atSaipan and Iwo Jima, but it was not manufactured as analibi for ddeats. It was a clarion call during all the monthsof JapaiMse victories, and it had been an accepted sloganlong before Pearl Harbor. In the nineteen-thirties GeneralAraki, fanatical militarist and one-time Ministo* of War,wrote in a pamphlet addressed To the whole Japanese

22

The Japanese in the WarRace* diat ‘tbe true mission’ of Japan was ‘to spiead and^orify the Imperial way to the end of the Four Seas. In-adequacy of str^gth is not our wony. Why should weworry about that which is material?’

Of course, like any other nation preparing for war,they dkl worry. All du-ough the nineteen-thirties the propor-tion of their national income which was devoted to arma-ment grew astronomically. By the time of their attack onPearl Harbor very nearly half the entire national incomewas going to military and naval purposes, and of the totalexpenditures of the govermnent only 17 per cent were avail-able for financing anything having to do with civilian ad-ministration. The difierence between Japan and Westernnations was not that Japan was careless about materialarmament. But ships and guns were just the outward showof the undying Japanese Spirit. Thqr were symbols muchas the sword of ^ samurai had been the symbol of hisvirtue.

Japan was as completely consistent in playing up non-material resources as the United States was in its commit-moit to bigness. Japan had to campaign for all-out produc-tion just as the United States did, but her campaigns werebased on her own premises. The spirit, she said, was all andwas everlasting; material things were necessary, of course,but th^ were subordinate and fell by the way. ‘There arelimits to material resources,’ the Japanese radio would cry:‘it stands to re^n that material things cannot last a thou-sand years.’ And this reliance on spirit was taken literally inthe routine of war; their war catechisms used the slogan—and it was a traditional one, not made to order for this war

The Qrrysambemm and the Smrd

—To matdi our training against their nun;^)eis and ourflesh against their steel.’ Thdr war manuals began with thebold-Q'pe line, *Read this and the war is won.* Their pilotswho flew their midget planes in a suicidal crash into ourwarships were an endless text for the supmoiity of the spir-itual over the material. Th^ named &em the KamikazeCorps, for the kamikaze was the divine wind which hadsaved Japan from Genghis Khan’s invasion in the thirteenthcentury by scattering and overturning his transports.

Even in civilian situations Japanese authorities took lit-erally the dominance of spirit over material circumstances.Were people fatigued by twelve-hour work in the factoriesand all-night bombings? ‘The heavier our bodies, the higherour will, our spirit, rises above them.* ‘The wearier we are,the more splendid the training.’ Were people cold in thebomb shelters in winter? On the radio the Dai Nippon Phys-ical Culture Society prescribed body-warming calisthenicswhich would not only be a substitute for heating facilitiesand bedding, but, better still, would substitute for food nolonger available to keep up people’s normal strragth. ‘Ofcourse some may say that with die present food shortageswe cannot think of doing calisth^cs. No! The more short-age of food there is, the more we must raise our physicalstrength by other means.* That is, we must inoease ourphysical strength by expending s^ more of it. The Amoi-can’s view of bodily eno'gy which always reckons howmuch strength he has to use by whether he had eight or fivehours of sle^ last night, wheth^ he has eaten his regularmeals, whether he has been cold, is here confronted with a

24

The Japanese in the Warcatodus that does not rely on storing up energy. Hiat wouldbe mderialistic.

Japanese broadcasts went even faidier during the war.In battle, spirit surmounted even the physical fact of death.One broadcast described a hero-pilot and the miracle of hisconquest of death:

After the air battles were over, the Japanese planes re-turned to their base in small formations of three or four.A Captain was in one of the first planes to return. Afteralighting from his plane, he stood on the ground and gazedinto the sky through binoculars. As his men returned, hecounted. He looked rather pale, but he was quite steady.After the last plane returned he made out a report and pro-ceeded to Headquarters. At Headquarters he made his re-port to the Commanding Officer. As soon as he had fin-ished his report, however, he suddenly dropped to theground. The officersonthe spot rushedto give assistance butalas! he was dead. On examining his body it was found thatit was already cold, and he had a bullet wound in his chest,which had proved fatal. It is impossible for the body of anewly-dead person to be cold. Nevertheless the body of thedeadcaptain was as cold as ice.TheCaptain must have beendead long before, and it was his spirit that made the i^>ort.Such a miraculous fact must have been achieved by thestrict sense of responsibility that the dead C^tain pos-sessed.

To Americans, of course, this is an outrageous yam buteducated Japanese did not laugh at this broadcast Theyfelt sure it would not be taken as a tall tale by Ustmers inJapan. First they pointed out that the broadcaster had truth-fully said that the captain’s feat was ‘a miraculous fact.’

The Chrysemtheimm and the SwordBut why not? The soul could be trained; obviously the captain was a past-master of self-discipline. If all Japan kn^that ‘a composed sjmt could last a thousand years,’ couldit not last a few hours in the body of an air-force captainwho had made ‘responsibilify’ the central law of his wholelife? The Japanese believed that technical disciplines couldbe used to enable a man to make his spirit supreme. Thecaptain had learned and profited.

As Americans we can completely discount these Japa-nese excesses as the alibis of a poor nation or the childish-ness of a deluded one. If we did, however, we would be,that much, the less able to deal with than in war or in peace.Their tenets have been bred into the Japanese by certaintaboos and refusals, by certain methods of training and dis-cipline, and these tenets are not mere isolated oddities. Onlyif Americans have recognized them can we realize whatthey are saying when, in defeat, they acknowledge that spiritwas not enough and that defending positions ‘with bamboospears’ was a fantasy. It is still more important that we beable to appreciate their acknowledgment that their spiritwas insufficient and that it was matched in battle and in thefactory by the spirit of die American people. As they saidafter dieir defeat: during the war they had ‘engaged in sub-jectivity.*

Japanese ways of saying all kinds of things during thewar, not only about the necessity of hierarchy and the su-pronacy of spirit, were revealing to a student of compara-tive cultures. They talked constandy about security andmorale being only a matter of being forewarned. No matterwhat the catastrophe, whether it was civilian bombing or

1(5

The Japanese in the Wear

d^eat at Saipan or their failure to defend the I^iiKf^ines,the Japanese line to dieir people was that this was fore-know and that there was therefore nothing to worry aboutThe radio went to great lengths, obviously counting on thereassurance it gave to the Japanese people to be told thatth^ were living still in a thoroughly known world. TheAmerican occupation of ICiska brings Japan within the ra-dius of American bombers. But we were well aware of thiscontingency and have made the necessary preparations.’‘The enemy doubtless will make an offensive against us bycombined land, sea and air operations, but this has beentaken account of by us in our plans.’ Prisoners of war, eventhose who hoped for Japan’s early defeat in a hopeless war,were sure that bombing would not weaken Japanese on thehome front ‘because they were forewarned.’ When Ameri-cans began bombing Japanese cities, the vice-president ofthe Aviation Manufacturer’s Association broadcast: ‘En-emy planes finally have come over our very heads. How-ever, we who are engaged in the aircraft production in-dustry and who had always expected this to happen hadmade complete preparations to cope with this. Therefore,there is nothing to worry about’ Only granted all was fore-known, an was fuUy plarmed, could the Japanese go on tomake the claim so necessary to them that everything hadbeen actively wiUed by themselves alone; nobody had putanything over on them. ‘We should not think that we havebeen passively attacked but that we have actively puUed theenemy to^^ud us.’ ‘Enemy, come if you wish. Instead ofsaying, “FinaUy what was to come has come,” we wfll sayrather, “That whkJi we were waiting for has come. Wfe are

17

The Chrysambetmmt and the Svmd

it has come.” * The Navy Minister quoted in the D»tthe teachings of the great warrior of die eighteen-seventies,Takamori Saigo, ‘Ihere are two kinds of opportunities:one which we chance upon, tiie other which we create. Intime of great difficulty, one must not fail to create his op-portunity.’And General Yamashito, whoi American troopsmarched into Manila, ’remarked with a broad smile,’ theradio said, ‘that now the enemy is in our bosom....’ ‘Therapid fall of Manila, shortly after the enemy landings inLingayen Bay, was only possible as a result of GeneralYamashito’s tactics and in accordance with his plans. Gen-eral Yamashito’s operations are now making continuousprogress.’ In other words, nothing succeeds like defeat.

Americans went as far in the opposite direction as theJapanese in theirs. Americans threw themselves into thewar effort because this fight had been forced upon us. Wehad bera attacked, therefore let the enemy beware. Nospokesman, planning how he could reassure the rank andfile of Americans, said of Pearl Harbor or of Bataan,‘Thesewere fully taken account of by us in our plans.’ Our officialssaid instead, ‘The enemy asked for it. We will show themMffiat we can do.’ Americans gear all their living to a con-stantly dballenging world—and arc prepared to accept thechallenge. Japanese reassurances arc based rather on a wayof life that is planned and charted befor^rand and wherethe greatest threat comes from the unforeseen.

Another constant theme in Japai^e conduct of tiie warwas also revealing about Japanese life. Th^ continuallyspoke ofhow‘the Qres of theworld were upon ffiem.’Thae-forc they must show to the full the spirit of Japan. Ameri-

28

The Japanese in tbi Waroms landed on Guadalcanal, and Japaneseiordmi'to troopswere tliat now were under direct observation *by theworld* and should show what tib^ were made of. Japaneseseamm were warned that in case th^ were torpedoed andthe order given to abandon ship, they should nm the life-boats with the utmost decorum or ‘the world will ku^ atyou. The Americans will take movies of you and show themin New York.’ It mattered what account th^ gave of them-selves to the world. And their conc^ with this point alsowas a concern deeply imbedded in Japanese culture.

The most famous question about Japanese attitudes con-cerned His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor. What was thehold of the Emperor on his subjects? Some American au-thorities pointed out that through all Japan’s seven feudalcenturies the Emperor was a shado>vy figurehead. Everyman’s immediate loyalty was due to his lord, the daimyOyand, beyond that, to the military Generalissimo, the Sho-gun. Fealty to the Emperor was hardly an issue. He was keptsecluded in an isolated court whose ceremonies and activi-ties were rigorously circumscribed by the Shogun’s regula-tions. It was treason even for a great feudal lord to pay hisrespects to the Emperor, and for the people of Japan hehardly posted. Japan could only be understood tty its his-tory, these American analysts insisted; how could an Em-po'or who had been brought out from obscurity within thememory of still living people be the real rallying point of aconservative nation like Japan? The Japanesepublicists whoagain and again reiterated the undying hold of the l^perortqwn his subjects woe over-protesting, th^ said, and theirinsistence only proved the weakness of their case. There was

The Qyrysmtheftmn and the Sword

no reason, therefore, that American polii^ during the warshould draw on kid gloves in dealing with the Emperor.There was every reason rather why we should direct ourstrongest attacks against this evil Fuehrer concept thatJapan had recently concocted. It was the very heart of itsmodem nationalistic Shinto religion and if we xmderminedand challenged thesanctiQr of the Emperor, the whole struc-ture of enemy Japan would fall in ruins.

Many capable Americans who knew Japan and who sawthe reports from the front lines and from Japanese sourceswere of the opposite persuasion. Those who had lived inJapan well knew that nothing stung the Japanese people tobitterness and whipped up their morale like any deprecia-tory word against the Emperor or any outright attack onhim. They did not believe that in attacking the Emperor wewould in the eyes of the Japanese be attacking militarism.They had seen that reverence for the Emperor had beenequally strong in those years after the First World Warwhen ‘de-mok-ra-sie’ was the great watchword and milita-rism was so discredited that army men prudently changedto mufti before they went out on the streets of Tokyo. Thereverence of the Japanese for their Imperial chief could notbe compared, these old Japanese residents insisted, withHeil-Hider veneration which was a barometer of the for-tunes of the Nazi party and boimd up with all the evils of afascist program.

Certainly the testimony of Japanese prisoners of war borethem out. Unlike Western soldiers, these prisoners had notbeen instructed about what to say and what to keep silentabout when captured and their responses on all subjects

30

The Japanese in the Wary/erc strSdag^y imregimeiited. This failure to indoctrinatewas of course due to Japan’s no-suirender policy. It wasnot remedied until the last months of the war, and evoith»i only in certain armies or local units. The prisoners’testimony was worth paying attention to for th^ repre-sented a cross-section of opinion in the Japanese Army.They were not troops whose low morale had caused themto sxxrrender—and who might therefore be apical. All buta few were woimded and imconsdous soldiers unable to re-sist when captured.

Japanese prisoners of war who were out-and-out bitter-enders imputed their extreme militarism to the Emperorand were ‘carrying out his will,’ ‘setting his mind at rest,’‘d5dng at the Emperor’s command.’ ‘The Emperor led thepeople into war and it was my duty to obey.’ But those whorejected this present war and future Japanese plans of con-quest just as regularly ascribed their peaceful persuasionsto the Emperor. He was all things to all men. The war-weary spoke of him as ‘his peace-loving Majesty’; they in*sisted that he ‘had always been liberal and against the war.’‘He had been deceived by Tojo.’ ‘During the ManchurianIncident he showed that he was against the military.’ ‘Thewar was started without the Emperor’s knowledge or per-mission. The Emperor does not like war and would not havepermitted his people to be dragged into it. The Emperordoes not know how badly treated his soldiers are.’ Thesewere not statements like ttiose of German prisoners of warwho, however much they complained that Hitler had beenbetrayed by his generals or his high command, neverthelessascribed war and the preparations for war to Hitler as su-

31

The Cbrysmtbermm and the Swordprane indter. Hie JapaiMse fnisoiier war was quite en-plidt that die reverence given the liiqimd Household wassqiarable from militarinn and a^rrasive war polides.

The Emperor was to than, howevo*, insqiaraUe fiomJapan. ‘A Japan without the Emperor is not Japan.’ ‘Japanwithout the Empoxir cannot be imagined.’ ‘The JapaneKEmperor is the symbol of die Japanese people, the coiterof thdr religious lives. He is a super-religious object.’ Norwould he be blamed for the defeat if Japan lost the war.‘The people did not consider the Emperor re^nsible forthe war.’ ‘In the event of defeat the Cabinet and the militaiyleaders would take the blame, not the Emperor.’ ‘Evm ifJapan lost the war out of tea Japanese would still reverethe Emperor.’

All t^ unanimity in reckoning the Emperor above crit-icism appeared phon^ to Americans who are accustomedto exempt no human man from sk^tical scrutiny and criti-dsm. But there was no question that it was the voice ofJapan even in defeat. Those most experienced in interrogat-ing the prisoners gave it as their verdict that it was unneces-sary to enter on each interview sheet: ‘Refuses to speakagainst the Emperor’; all prisoners refused, even those whoco-operated with the Allies and broadcast for us to the Jap-anese troops. Out of all the collected into^ews of prisonersof war, only three were even mildly anti-Emperor and onlyone went so far as to say: ‘It would be a mistake to leavethe Empax>r on the throne.’ A second said the Emperorwas ‘a feeble-minded person, nothing more than a puppet’And the third got no farther than supposing that tiie Em-peror mi^t abdicate in favor of his son and that if the mon-

The Japmese in the Warasdky woe aboitslied young Japanese women would hopeto get a fiteedom th^ mvied in the women of Amoica ~

Japanese commanders, therefore, were playing on an aUbut unanimous Japanese veneration wh»i they distributeddgarettes to the troops *from the Emperor,’ or led than onhis Inrthday in bowing three times to the east and shouting‘Banzai’; when they chanted with all their troops morningand evoiing, ‘even though the unit was subjected to day andni^t bmnbardment,’ the ‘sacred words’ the Emperor him-self had given to the armed forces in the Rescript for Sol-diers and Sailors while ‘the sound of chanting echoedthrough the forest’ The militarists used the appeal of loy-alty to the &nperor in every possible way. They called ontheir men to ‘fulfill the wishes of His Imperial Majesty,’ to‘dispel all the anxieties of your &nperor,’ to ‘demonstrateyour respect for His Imperial benevolence,’ to ‘die for theEmperor.’ But diis obedience to his will could cut bothways. As many prisoners said, the Japanese ‘will fi^t un-hesitatingly, even with nothing more than bamboo potes, ifthe Emperor so decrees. They would stop just as quickty ifhe so decreed’; ‘Japan would throw down arms tomorrowif the Emperor should i^ue such an ordo:’; ‘Even the Kwan-tung Army in Manchuria’—most militant and jingoistk;—‘would lay down their arms’; ‘only his words can maike theJapanese people accept a defeat and be reconciled to livefor reconstruction.’

This unconditional and unrestricted loyalty to the Em-peror was conspicuously at odds with criticisms of all otherpersons and ^ups. Whether in Japanese newspapers andmagazmes or in war prisoners’ testimony, there was criti-

33

Use Cbryscmtherntm and the Sworddsm of the government and of military leaders. Prisonersof war were free with their demmdation of their local com-manders, especially those who had not shared the dangersand hardships of their soldiers. They were especially criti-cal of those who had evacuated by plane and left theirtroops behind to fight it out. Usually they praised someofficers and bitterly criticized others; there was no signthat they lacked the will to discriminate the good from thebad in things Japanese. Even in the home islands news-papers and magazines criticized ‘the government’ Theycalled for more leadership and greater co-ordination ofeffort and noted that they were not getting from the govern-ment what was necessary. They even criticized the restric-tions on freedom of speech. A report on a panel of editors,former members of the Diet, and directors of Japan’s total-itarian party, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association,printed in a Tokyo paper in July, 1944, is a good example.One speaker said: T think there are various ways to arousethe Japanese people but the most important one is freedomof speech. In these few years, the people have not been ableto say frankly what they think. They have been afraid thatthey might be blamed if they spoke certain matters. Theyhesitated, and tried to patch up the surface, so the publicmind has really become timid. We can never develop thetotal power of the people in this way.’ Another speaker ex-panded the same ffieme: T have held symposiums almostevery night with the people of the electoral districts andasked thrai about many things, but they were all afraid tospeak. Freedom of speech has been denied. This is certainlynot a proper way to stimulate their will to fight. The people

34

The Japanese in the Warare so t»dly restricted by the so-called Spedal P»ia] Lawof War Time and National Security Law that they havebecome as timid as the people in the feudaUstic period.Therefore the fitting power which could have been de-veloped remains undeveloped now.’

Even during the war, therefore, the Japanese criticizedthe government, the High Command, and their immediatesuperiors. They did not unquestioningly acknowledge thevirtues of the whole hierarchy. But the Emperor was ex-empt How could this be when his primacy was so recent?What quirk of Japanese character made it possible that heshould so attain a sacrosanct position? Were Japanese pris-oners of war ri^t in claiming that jiist as the people wouldfight to the death ‘with bamboo spears’ as long as he soordered, they would peaceably accept defeat and occupa-tion if that was his command? Was tiiis nonsense meant tomislead us? Or was it, possibly, the truth?

All these crucial questions about Japanese behavior inthe war, from their anti-materialistic bias to their attitudestoward the Emperor concerned the homeland Japan aswell as the fighting fronts. There were other attitudes whichhad to do more specifically with the Japanese Army. Oneof these concerned the expendability of thdr fighting forces.The Japanese radio put well the contrast with the Ameri-can attitudes when it described with shocked incredulitythe Navy’s decoration of Admiral George S. McCain, com-mander of a ta^ force off Formosa.

The official reason for the decoration was not that Com-mander John S. McCain was able to put the Japanese toffight, though we don’t see why not since that is what the

35

The Qjrysambermm md the Sami

I'Cmitz commoDiqu^daiined.... the leasoo gjvm tea

Admiral McCain’s decoration was that he was al^ sue*oessfuUy to rescue two damaged Am^ican warships andescort them safely to their home base. What makes this tntof information important is not that it is a fiction but that

it is the truth So we are not questioning the veracity

of Admiral McCain’s rescuing two ships, but the point wewant you to see is the curious fact that the rescuing of dam-aged ships merits decoration in the United States.

Americans thrill to all rescue, all aid to those pressed to thewall. A valiant deed is all the more a hero’s act if it saves the^damaged.’ Japanese valor repudiates such salvaging. Eventhe safety devices installed in our B-29’s and filter planesraised their cry of ‘Cowardice.’ The press and die ra^o re-turned to the thane over and over again. There vm virtueonly in accepting life and death risks; precautions were un-worthy. This attitude found expression also in the case ofthe wounded and of malarial patients. Such soldiers weredamaged goods and the medical services provided wereutterly inadequate even for reasonable effectiveness of thefighting force. As time went on, supply difficulties of allkinds aggravated this lack of medical care, but that was notthe whole stoiy. Japanese scorn of materialism played apart in it; her soldiers were taught that death itself was avictory of the spirit and our kind of care of the sick was aninterference with heroism—like safety devices in bombingplanes. Nor are the Japanese used to such reliance on phy-sicians and surgeons in dvilian life as Americans are. Pre-occupation with mercy toward the damaged rather thanwith other welfare measures is specially hi^ in the United

3(5

T2>e Japamse in tbe War

Stotes, and is often oomnaented on even by vmtofs fromsome Emropean coimtries in peacetime. It is certainly alimto tbe Japanese. At all events, during tbe war die Japaneseam^ had no trained rescue teams to remove the woundedimder fire and to give first aid; it had no medical system offront ^e, behind*tbe-lines and distant recuperative hos-pitals. Its attention to medical supplies was lamentable. Incertain emergences the hospitaU^ were simply kiUed. Es-pecially in New Guinea and the Phili|^»nes, the Japaneseoftoi had to retreat from a position where there was a hos-pital There was no routine of evacuating the sick andwounded while there was still opportuni^; only when the‘planned withdrawal’ of the battalion was actually takingplace or the enemy was occupying was anything done.Then, the medical officer in charge often shot the inmatesof the hospital before he left or they killed themselves withhand grenades.

If this attitude of the Japanese toward damaged goodswas fundan^tal in their treatment of their own coimtiy-men, it was equally important in their treatment of Ameri-can fnisoners of war. According to our standards the Jap-anese were guilty of atrocities to their own men as well asto their prisoners. The former chief medical officer of thePhilippines, Colonel Harold W. Glattly, said after his threeyears’ intenunent as a prisoner of war on Formosa that‘the Ammcaa prisoners got better medical treatment thanthe Japanese soldiers. Allied medical officers in the prisoncamps were able to take care of thdr men while the Jap-anese didn’t have any doctors. For a while the only medical

37

The Qjrysamhernmn tmd the Swordpersonnel tfa^ had for their o^ men was a corporal andlater on a sergeant.’ He saw a Japanese medical officer onlyonce or twice a year.*

The furthest extreme to which this Japanese theory ofexpendabili^ could be pushed was their no-siurender pol-icy. Any Occidental army which has done its best and findsitself facing hopeless odds surrenders to the enemy. Theystill regard themselves as honorable soldiers and by inter-national agreement their names are sent back to their coim-tries so that their families may know that they are alive.They are not disgraced either as soldiers or as citizens or intheir own families. But the Japanese defined the situationdifferently. Honor was boimd up with fighting to the death.In a hopeless situation a Japanese soldier should kill him-self with his last hand grenade or charge weaponless againstthe enemy in a mass suicide attack. But he should not sur-render. Even if he were taken prisoner when he was woundedand unconscious, he ’could not hold up his head in Japan’again; he was disgraced; he was ’dead’ to his former life.

There were Army orders to this effect, of course, butthere was apparently no need of special official indoctrina-tion at the front. The Army lived up to the code to such anextent that in the North Burma campaign the proportionof the captured to the dead was 142 to 17,166. That was aratio of 1:120. And of the 142 in the prison camps, all ex-cept a small minority were wounded or unconscious whentaken; only a very few had ’surrendered’ singly or in groupsof two or three, hi the armies of Occidental nations it is al-most a truism that troops cannot stand the death of one-

♦ Reported in the Washington Post^ October 15, 1945.

38

The Japanese in the Wmfourth to <me-third of their strength without giving up; sur-rratders run about 4:1. When for the first time in HoUandia,however, any appreciable number of Japanese troops sur-rendered, the proportion was 1 :S and that was a tremen-dous advance over the 1:120 of North Burma.

To the Japanese therefore Americans who had becomeprisoners of war were disgraced by the mere fact of sur-render. They were ‘damaged goods’ even when wounds ormalaria or dysentery had not also put them outside the cat-^ory of ‘complete men.’ Many Americans have describedhow dangerous a thing American laughter was in the prisoncamps and how it stung their warders. In Japanese eyesthey had suffered ignominy and it was bitter to them thatthe Americans did not know it. Many of the orders whichAmerican prisoners had to obey, too, were those which hadalso been required of their Japanese keepers by their ownJapanese officers; the forced marches and the close-padcedtrrmsshipments were commonplaces to them. Americanstell, too, of how rigorously sentries required that the pris-oners should cover up evasions of rules; the great crimewas to evade openly. In camps where the prisoners workedoff-bounds on roads or installations during the day the rulethat no food be brought back with them from the coxmtiy-side was sometimes a dead letter—if the fruit and vegetableswere covered up. If they could be seen, it was a flagrant of-fense which meant that the Americans had flaunted the sen-try’s authority. Open challenging of authority was terriblypunished ev«i if it were mere ‘answering back.’ Japaneserules are veiy strict against a man’s answering back even incivilian life and thdr own army practices penalized it heav-

39

The Chrysmtthemmn mid the Smmiity. It is DO exonoation of the atrodtks aod wantcm crud*ties did occur in die prison camps to (Ustingutdi be-tween these and those acts whidi were the consequences ofcultural habituadons.

Especially in the earlior stages of die conflict die shameof capture was reinforoed by a very real bdief among theJapanese that the oiemy tortured and killed any prisoners.One rumor of tanks that had been driven across die bodiesof those captured on Guadalcanal qiread through almostall areas. Some Japanese who tried to give thonselves up,too, were regarded with so much suspicion by our troopsthat they were killed as a precaution, and this suspicion wasoften justified. A Japanese for v^om there was nothing leftbut death was often proud that he could take an enemywith him when he died; he might do it evoi after he wascaptured. Having determined, as one of them put it, ‘to beburned on the altar of victory, it would be a disgrace to diewith no heroic deed achieved.’ Such possibilities put ourArmy on its guard and diminished the number of sur-renders.

The shame of surrender was burned deeply into the con-sdousness of the Japanese. They accepted as a matter ofcourse a behavior which was alien to our conventions ofwarfare. And ours was just as alien to them. They spokewith shocked disparagement of Amoican prisoners of warwho asked to have their names rqiorted to their govern-ment so that their families would know th^ were aUve. Therank and file, at least, wne quite unprepared for the sur-render of American troops at Bataan for they had assumedthat they wouM fight it out the Japanese way. And th^

40

The Japanese in the War

ooubl not aa3e{>t the fact that Amencam^had to ^laoie mbraig pristMWts of war.

The most melodramatic differoice in bdiavior betweoiWeston soldiers and the Japanese was imdoubtedly the co-optation the latter gave to the Allied forces as prisoners ofwar. knew no rules of life whidi applied in this newsituation; they were dishonored and their life as Japanesewas ended. Only in the last months of the war did more thana handful imagine any return to their homeland, no matterhow the war ended. Some men asked to be killed, 'but ifyour customs do not permit this, I will be a model prisoner.’They were better than model prisoners. Old Army handsand long-time extreme nationalists located ammunitiondumps, carefulfy explained the disposition of Japaneseforces, wrote our propaganda and flew with our bombingpilots to guide them to military targets. It was as if theyhad turned over a new page; what was written on the newpage was the opposite of what was written on the old, butthey spoke the lines with the same faithfulness.

This is of course not a description of all prisoners of war.Some few were irreconcilable. And in any case certain favor-able conditions had to be set up before such behavior waspossible. American Army commanders were very under-standably hesitant to accept Japanese assistance at facevalue and there were camps where no attempt was madeto use any services they mi^t have given. In camps wherethis was done, however, the original suspicion had to bewithdrawn and more and more dependence was placed onthe good faith of the Japanese prisoners.

Americans had not expected this right-about-face from

41

The Chrysmthemtm md the Sworiprisoners of war. It was not according to our code. But theJapanese behaved as if, having put everything th^ had intoone line of conduct and failed at it, diey naturally took up adiff»?»it line. Was it a way of acting which we could counton in post’War days or was it behavior peculiar to soldierswho had be^ individually captured? Like the other peculi-arities of Japanese behavior 'Minch obtruded themselvesupon us during the war, it raised questions about the wholeway of life to which they were conditioned, the way theirinstitutions functioned and the habits of thought and ac-tion th^ had learned.

Taking On^s Proper Station

Any Attempt to understand the Japanese must begin withtheir version of what it means to ‘take one’s proper sta-tion.’ Their reliance upon order and hierarchy and ourfaith in freedom and equali^ are poles apart and it is hardfor us to give hierarchy its just due as a possible social mech-anism. Japan’s confidence in hierarchy is basic in her wholenotion of man’s relation to his fellow man and of man’s re-lation to the State and it is only by describing some of theirnational institutions like the family, the State, religious andeconomic life that it is possible for us to understand theirview of life.

The Japanese have seen the whole problem of mtema-tional relations in terms of their version of hierarchy justas they have seen their internal problems in the same lightFor the last decade they have pictured themselves as attain-ing the apex of that pyramid, and now that this position be-longs instead to the Western Nations, their view of hier-archy just as certainly underlies their acceptance of the pres-ent dispoisation. Their international documents have con-stantly stated the weight they attach to it. The preamUe tothe Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy whidi Japan

43

The Qyrysmtbemwn and the Swordsigned in 1940 reads: The Govemmente of Japan, Gar-many and Italy consider it as the condition precedent toany lasting peace that all nations of the world be ^ven eachits proper station ..and the Imperial Rescript given onthe signing of the Pact said the san» thing again:

To enhance our great righteousness in all the earth andto make of the world one household is the great injunctionbequeathed by our Imperial Ancestors and we lay this toheart day and night. In the stupendouscrisis now confront-ing the world it appears that war and confusion will be end-lessly aggravated and mankind suffer incalculable disasters.We fervently hope that disturbances will cease and peace berestored as soon as possible.... We are therefore deeplygratified that this pact has been concluded between theThree Powers.

The task of enabling each nation to find its proper placeand all individuals to live in peace and security is of diegreatest magnitude. It is unparalleled in history. This goalis still far distant....

On the very day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, too, theJapanese envoys handed to Secretary of State Cordell HuUa most explicit statement on this point:

It is the immutable policy of the Japanese Government... to enable each nation to find its proper place in theworld.... The Japanese Government cannot tolerate theperpetuation of the present situation since it runs directlycounter to Japan’s fundamental policy toenableeach nationto enjoy its proper station in the world.

This Japanese memorandum was in response to Secre-tary Hull’s a few days jnrevious which had invoked Ameri-can principles just as basic and honored in the United Statesas hierarchy is in Japan. Secretary Hull eniunerated four:

44

Tak^ One's Proper ^miminviolidsffify ai sovemgaty and of tmitoiial int^ty; non*interventicm in other nations’ internal affiurs; idiwoe oninternational co-operation and condliation ; and die prin-dpte oS equality. These are all major points in tte Anraicanfaith in equal and inviolable ri^ts and are the priiKaf^on which we believe daily life should be based no less thaninternational relations. Equality is the hipest, most moralAmmcan basis for hopes for a better world. It means to usfreedom from tyranny, from interfm:moe, and from un-wanted impositions. It means equality before the law andthe ri^t to better one’s condition in life. It is the basis forthe rights of man as they are organized in the world weknow. We uf^old the virtue of equality even when we vio-late it and we fight hierarchy with a righteous indignation.

It has beoi so ever since America was a nation at all. Jef-fi^on wrote it into the Declaration of Independence, andthe Bill of Rights incorporated in the Constitution is basedon it. These formal phrases of the public documents of anew nation were important just because they reflected a wayof life that was taking shape in the daily living of men andwomen on this continent, a way of life that was strange toEuropeans. One of the great documrats of internationalreporting is the volume a young Frenchman, Alexis deTocqueville, wrote on this subject of equality after he hadvisited the United States in the early eigjhteen-thirties. Hewas an intelligent and sympathetic observer who was ableto see mudi good in this alien world of America. For it wasalien. The young de Tocqueville had been bred in the aris-tocratic society of France which within the memory of stillactive and influential n^n had first been jolted and shodced

45

The Chrysanthemum and the Swordby the French Revolution ai^ then by the new and drasticlaws of Napoteon. He was generous in his appredatioo of astrange new order of life in America but he saw it throughthe ^es of a French aristocrat and his book was a report tothe Old World on things to come. Ihe United States, he be-lieved, was an advance post of developments which wouldtake place, though with differnices, in Europe also.

He reported therefore at length on this new world. Herepeofde really considered themselves the equals of others.Their social intercourse was on a new and easy footing.They fell into conversation as man to man. Americans didnot care about the little attritions of a hierardial etiquette;they did not demand them as their due nor offer them toothers. They liked to say they owed nothing to any man.There was no family here in die old aristocratic or Romansense, and the social hierarchy which had dominated theOld World was gone. These Americans trusted equality asthty trusted nothing else; even liberty, he said, they oftenin practice let fly out of the window while they looked theother way. But they lived equality.

It is invigorating for Americans to see their forebearsthrough the eyes of this stranger, writing about our way oflife more than a century ago. There have been many changesin our country but the main outlines have not altered. Werecognize, as we read, that America in 1830 was alreadyAmmca as we know it. There have been, and there still are,those in this country who, like Alexander Hamilton in Jef-ferson’s day, are in favor of a more aristocratic ordering ofsociety. But even the Hamiltons recognize that our way oflife in this country is not aristocratic.

4(5

Taking One's Proper &ation

When we stated to Japan therefore just before Pearl Har-bor the high moral bases cm which the United States basedher policy in the Pacific we were voicing our most trustedprinciples. Every step in the direction in which we pointedwould according to our convictions improve a still imper-fect world. The Japanese, too, when Aey put their trustin ‘proprar station* were turning to the rule of life which hadbeen ingrained in them by their own social experience. In-equality has been for centuries the rule of their organizedlife at just those points where it is most predictable andmost accepted. Behavior that recognizes hierarchy is asnatural to them as breathing. It is not, however, a simpleOccidental authoritarianism. Both those who exercisecontrol and those who are under others’ control act in con-formity to a tradition which is unlike our own, and nowthat the Japanese have accepted the hi^ hierarchal placeof American authority in their country it is even more neces-sary for us to get the clearest possible idea of their conven-tions. Only so can we picture to ourselves the way in whichthey are likely to act in their present situation.

Japan for all its recent Westernization is still an aristo-cratic society. Every greeting, every contact must indicatethe kind and degree of social distance between men. Everytime a man sa3rs to another ‘Eat’ or ‘Sit down’ he uses differ-ent words if he is addressing someone familiarly or is speak-ing to an inferior or to a superior. There is a different ‘you’that must be used in each case and the verbs have differentstems. The Japanese have, in other words, what is calleda ‘respect language,’ as many other peoples do in the Pa-cific, and they accompany it with proper bows and kneel-

47

The Obrysantbemim md the Swordings. All sudi behavior is govmied by meticulous rules andconventions; k is not meidy necessaiy to know to whomone bows but it is necessary to know how much'oiM bows.A bow that is r^t and proper to one host would be re-sorted as an insult by another who stood in a slightfy differ-ent relationship to tire bower. And bows range all the wayfrom kneeling with forehead lowered to the hands placedflat upon the floor, to tiie mere indination of head andshoulders. One must learn, and learn early, how to suit theobdsance to each particular case.

It is not merely class differences which must be constantlyrecognized by appropriate behavior, though these are im-portant. Sex and age, family ties and previous dealings be-tween two persons all enter into the necessary calculations.Even between the same two persons different degrees ofrespect will be called for on different occasions: a dvilianmay be on familiar terms with another and not bow to himat all, but when he wears a military uniform his friend indvilian clothes bows to him. Observance of hierarchy is anart which requires the balandng of innumerable factors,some of which in any particular case may cancel each otherout and some of which may be additive.

There are of course persons between whom there is rd-atively little ceremony. In the United States these peopleare one’s own family circle. We shed even the sUght formal-ities of our etiquette when we come home to the bosom ofour family. In Japan it is precisely in tiie family where re-spect rules are learned and meticulously observed. White themother still carries the baby strai^)ed to her back she willpush his head down with her hand, and his first lessons as a

48

Takif^ One’s Proper Stationtoddler are to obsmv reflect bdiavior to his fatlMv or oldertnother. The wife bows to her husband, the child bows tohis father, younger brothos bow to elder brothers, the sisterbows to all her brothers of whatever age. It is no emptygesture. It means that the (me who bows acknowledges thelight of the other to have his way in things he might wellprefer to manage himself, and the one who receives die bowacknowledges in his turn certain responsibilities incumbentupcm his station. Hierarchy based on sex and generationand primogeniture are part and parcel of family life.

Filial piety is, of course, a high ethical law which Japanshares with China, and Chinese formulations of it were earlyadopted in Japan along with Chinese Buddhism, Confucianethics and secular Chinese culture in the sixth and seventhcenturies a.d. The character of filial piety, however, was in-evitably modified to suit the different structure of the familyin Japan. In China, even today, one owes loyalty to one’svast extended clan. It may number tois of thousands ofpeople over whom it has jurisdiction and from whom it re-ceive support. Conditions differ in different parts of thatvast co’mtiy but in large parts of China all people in anyvillage are members of the same clan. Among all of China’s450,000,000 inhabitants there are only 470 surnames andaU people with the same surname count themselves in somedegree clan-brothers. Over a whole area all people maybe exclusively of one clan and, in addition, families livingin far-away cities are their clan fellows. In populous areaslike Kwangtung all the clan members unite in keeping upgreat clan-halls and on stated days they venerate as manyas a thousand ancestral tablets of dead clan members stem-

49

The Qjrysamhemwn and the Smrd

ming from a common forebear. Eacb clan owns property,lands and temples and has clan fimds which arc to payfor the education of any promising clan son. It keeps trackof dispersed members and publishes elaborate genealogieswhich are brought up to date every decade or so to show thenames of those who have a right to share in its privileges. Ithas ancestral laws which might even forbid them to sur-render family criminals to the State if the clan was not inagreement with the authorities. In Imperial times these greatcommunities of semi-autonomous clans were governed inthe name of the larger State as casually as possible by easy-going mandarinates headed by rotating State appointeeswho were foreigners in the area.

All this was different in Japan. Until the middle of thenineteenth century onlynoble families and \iBxnox{samurca)families were allowed to use surnames. Surnames were fun-damental in the Chinese clan system and without these, orsome equivalent, clan organization cannot develop. One ofthese equivalents in some tribes is keeping a genealogy. Butin Japan only the upper classes kept genealogies and even inthese they kept the record, as Daughters of the AmericanRevolution do in the United States, backward in time fromthe present living person, not downward in time to includeevery contemporary who stemmed from an original ances-tor. It is a very different matter. Besides, Japan was a feudalcountry. Loyalty was due, not to a great group of relatives,but to a feudal lord. He was resident overlord, and the con-trast with the temporary bureaucratic mandarins of China,who were always strangers in their districts, could not havebeen greater. What was important in Japan was that one

50

Taking One's Proper Station

was of the fief of Satsuma or the fief of Hizen. A man’s tieswere to his fi^.

Another way of institutionalizing clans is through theworship of remote ancestors or of clan gods at shrines orholy places. This would have been possible for the Japanese‘common people* even without surnames and genealo^es.But in Japan there is no cult of veneration of remote an-cestors and at the shrines where ‘connnon people’ worshipall villagers join together without having to prove theircommon ancestry. They are called the ‘children’ of theirshrine-god, but they are ‘children’ because th^ live in histerritory. Such village worshipers are of course related toeach other as villagers in any part of the world are aftergenerations of fixed residence but they are not a tight clangroup descended from a common ancestor.

The reverence due to ancestors is paid at a quite differentshrine in the family living room where only six or seven re-cent dead are honored. Among all classes in Japan obeisanceis done daily before this shrine and food set out for parentsand grandparents and close relatives remembered in theflesh, who are represented in the shrine by little miniaturegravestones. Even in the cemetery the markers on the gravesof great-grandparents are no longer relettered and the iden-tity even of the third ancestral generation sinks rapidly intooblivion. Family ties in Japan are whittled down almost toOcddental proportions and the French family is perhapsthe nearest eqxiivalent.

‘Filial piety’ in Japan, therefore, is a matter within a lim-ited face-to-face family. It means taking one’s proper stationaccording to generation, sex, and age within a group which

51

The Qfrysambemum and the Swordincludes hardly more than one’s father and fiuher’s fadier,their brothers and their descendants. Evm in importanthouses, i»iiere largo* groiqis may be included, the familysplits iq> into sq>arate lines and younger sons establishbranch families. Within this narrow face-to-face groiq> therules that regulate ’proper station’ are meticulous. There isstrict subservience to elders imtil th^ elect to go into formalretirement (inkyo). Evoi today a father of grown sons, ifhis own father has not retired, puts through no transactionwithout having it approved by the old grandfather. Paroitsmake and break their children’s marriages even when thechildren are thirty and forty years old. The father as malehead of the household is served first at meals, goes first tothe family bath, and receives with a nod the deep bows ofhis family. There is a popular riddle in Japan which mightbe translated into our conundrum form: ‘Why is a son whoivants to^offer advice to his parents like a Buddhist priestK^ho wants to have hair on the top of his head?’ (Buddhistpriests had a tonsure.) The answer is, ‘However much he(vants to do it, he can’t.’

Proper station means not only differences of ^neration}ut differences of age. When the Japanese want to expressitter confusion, they say that something is ‘neither elderbrother noryounger brother.’ It is like our saying that some-hing is neither fish nor fowl, for to the Japanese a manhould keep his character as elder brother as drastically asi fish should stay in water. The eldest son is the heir. Trav-elers speak of‘that air of responsibility which the eldest sono early acquires in Japan.’ The eldest son shares to a highl^ree in the prm'ogatives of the father. In the okl days his

5a

Taking One's Proper &(aimyotu^or broths would have been inevitaUy dependentiqxni hiin in time; nowadays, especialty in towns and vil-lages, it is he who vtdll stay at home in the old rut while hisyoungor brothos will p^haps press forward and get moreeducation and a better income. But old habits of hierardiyare strong.

Even in political commentary today the traditional pre-rogatives of elder brothers are vividfy stated in discussionsof Greater East Asia policy. In the spring of 1942 a lieu-toaant Colonel, speaking for the War Office, said on thesut:ject of the Co-prosperity Sphere: ‘Japan is their dderbrother and ffiey are Japan’s younger brothers. This factmust be brought home to the inhabitants of the occupiedterritories. Too much consideration shown for the inhab-itants might engender in their minds the tendency to pre-smne on Japan’s kindness with pemidous dfects on Jap-anese rule.’ The elder brother, in other words, deddes whatis good for his younger brother and should not show ‘toomuch consideration’ in enforcing it.

Whatever one’s age, one’s position in the hierarchy de-pmds on whether one is male or fraiale. The Japanesewoman walks bdiind her husband and has a lower status.Evm womoi who on occasions when they wear Americanclothes walk alongside and precede him through a door,again fall to the rear when they have donned their kimonos,llie Japanese daught^ of the family must get along as bestshe can while the presents, the attentions, and the moneyfor education go to her brothers. Even when hi^er schoolswere established for young women the prescribed courseswere heavity loaded with instruction in etiqtKtte and bodily

53

The Qjrysmthemum and the Swordmov^ent. Serious intdlectual training was not on a parwith boys’, and one principal of such a school, advocatingfor his upper middle class stu(knts some instruction inEuropean languages, based his recommendation on the de-sirability of their being able to put their husband’s booksback in the bookcase right side up after they had dustedthem.

Nevertheless, the Japanese women have great freedom ascompared to most other Asiatic coimtries and this is notjust a phase of Westernization. There never was female foot-binding as in the Chinese upper classes, and Indian womentoday exclaim over Japanese women going in and out ofshops, up and down the streets and never secreting them-selves. Japanese wives do the family shopping and carry thefamily purse. If money fails, it is they who must select some-thing from the household and carry it to the pawnshop. Awoman runs her servants, has great say in her children’smarriages, and when she is a mother-in-law commonly runsher household realm with as firm a hand as if she had neverbeen, for half her fife, a nodding violet.

The prerogatives of generation, sex, and age in Japan aregreat. But those who exercise these privileges act as trusteesrather than as arbitrary autocrats. The father or the elderbrother is responsible for the household, whether its mem-bers are living, dead, or yet imbom. He must make wdghtydecisions and see that thty are carried out. He does not,however, have unconditional authority. He is expected toact responsibly for the honor of the house. He recalls to hisson and younger brother the legacty of the family, both inmaterial and in spiritual things, and he challenges them to

54

Talking Om's I^oper Station

be worUiy. Even if he is a peasant he invokes noblesse obligeto the family forebears, and if he belongs to more exaltedclasses the weight of responsibility to the house becomesheavier and heavier. The claims of the family come beforethe claiins of the individual.

In any affair of importance the head of a family of anystanding calls a family council at which the matter is de-bated. For a conference on a betrothal, for instance, mem-bers of the family may come from distant parts of Japan.The process of coming to a decision involves all the im-ponderables of personality. A younger brother or a wifemay sway the verdict. The master of the house saddles him-self with great difficulties if he acts without regard for groupopinion. Decisions, of course, may be desperately unwel-come to the individual whose fate is being settled. His elders,however, who have themselves submitted in their lifetimesto decisions of family coimdls, are impregnable in demand-ing of their juniors what they have bowed to in their day.The sanction behind their demand is very different fromthat which, both in law and in custom, gives the Prussianfather arbitrary rights over his wife and children. What isdemanded is not for this reason less exacting in Japan, butthe effects are differrait The Japanese do not learn in then-home life to value arbitrary authority, and the habit of sub-mitting to it easily is not fostered. Submission to the will ofthe family is demanded in the name of a supreme value inwhich, howev^ onerous its requirements, all of them havea stake. It is demanded in the name of a common loyalty.

Every Japanese learns the habit of hierarchy first in thebosom of his family and what he learns there he applies in

55

The Qjrysmthenam cmd the Swordfidds of economic life and of govemmmit He leamsthat a p«:aon gives all deference to those who outrank himin assigned ‘proper place,’ no matter whether or not theyare the really dominant persons in the group. Evra a hus-band who is dominated by his wife, or an elder brotherwho is dominated by a younger brother, receives no lessformal deference. Formal boundaries between prerogativesare not broken down just because some other person isoperating bdund the scenes. The facade is not changed tosuit the facts of dominance. It remains inviolable. There iseven a certain tactical advantage in operating without thetrapjmgs of formal status; one is in that case less vulnerable.The Japanese learn, too, in their family experience that thegreatest weight that can be given to a decision comes fromthe family conviction that it maintains the family honor.The decision is not a decree enforced by an iron fist at thewhim of a tyrant who happens to be head of the family. Heis more nearly a trustee of a material and spiritual estatewhich is important to thm all and which demands of themall that they subordinate their personal wills to its require-ments. The Japanese r^udiate the use of the mailed fist,but they do not for that reason subordinate themselves anythe less to the demands of the family, nor do they for thatreason give to those with assigned status any less extremedeference. Hierarchyinthefan^y is maintained even thoughthe family elders have little opportuni^ to be strong-armedautocrats.

Such a bald statement of hierarchy in the Japanese familydoes not, when Americans read it with their different stand-

Taking One's Proper Skatumante of intopersonal behavior, do justice to the acceptanceof strong and sanctioned emotional ties in Japanese fami-lies. There is very considorable solidarity in the housdioldand how th^ achieve it is one of the subjects of this book.Meanwhile it is important in trying to undoistand their de-mand for hierarchy in the wider fields of govemmrat andeconomic life to reco^iize how thoroughly the habit islearned in the bosom of the family.

The hierarchal arrangements of Japanese,life have been asdrastic in relations between the classes as they have been inthe family. In all her national history Japan has been astrong class and caste society, and a nation which hasa coituries-long habit of caste arrangements has certainstrengths and certain weaknesses which are of the utmostimportance. In Japan caste has been the rule of life throughall her recorded history and even back in the seventh cen-tury A.D. she was already adapting the ways of life she bor-rowed from casteless China to suit her ovm hierarchal cul-ture. In that era of the seventh and eighth centuries, the Jap-anese Emperor and his court set themselves the task ofenriching Japan with the customs of the high civilizationthat had greeted the amazed eyes of their envoys in thegreat kingdom of China. They went about it with incom-parable ^ergy. Before that time Japan had not even had awritten language; in the seventh century she took the ideo-graphs of China and used them to write her own totally dif-ferent language.- She had had a reli^on which named fortythousand ^)ds who presided over moimtains and villagesand gave people good fortune—a folk religion which with all

57

The Chrysanthemum and the Swordits subsequentchangeshas survived as modem Shinto. In theseventh centuiy, Japan adopted Buddhism wholesale fromOiina as a religion ‘excellent for protecting the State.’ * Shehad had no great permanent architecture, either pubUc orprivate; the Emperors built a new captal city, Nara, on themodel of a Chinese capital, and great ornate Buddhist tem-ples and vast Buddhist monasteries were erected in Japanafter the Chinese pattern. The Emperors introduced titlesand ranks and laws their envoys reported to them fromChina. It is difficult to find an3rwhere in ffie history of theworld any other such successfully planned importation ofcivilization by a sovereign nation.

Japan, however, from the very first, failed to reproduceChina’scastelesssocialorganization.Theofficial titles Japanadopted were in China given to administrators who hadpassed the State examinations, but in Japan th^ were givento hereditary nobles and feudal lords. They became part ofthe caste arrangements of Japan. Japan was laid out in agreat number of semi-sovereign fiefs whose lords were con-stantly jealous of each other’s powers, and the social ar-rangements that mattered were those that had to do withthe prerogatives of lords and vassals and retainers. No mat-ter how assiduously Japan imported civilization from Chinashe could not adopt ways of life which put in the place ofher hierarchy anything like China’s administrative bureau-cracy or her syston of extended clans which united peoplefrom the most difi^ent walks of life into one great clan. Nordid Japan adopt the Chinese idea of a secular Emperor. The

^ Quoted from a contemporary chronicle of the Nara period by SirGeorge Sansom, Japan: A Short Cultural History^ p. 131.

58

Taking One's Proper StatimJapanese name for the Imperial House is ‘Those who dwellabove the douds’ and only persons of this family can beEmperor. Japan has never ^ a change of dynasty, asChina so often had. The Emperor was inviolable and hisperson was sacred. The Japanese Emperors and their courtswho introduced Chinese culture in Japan no doubt couldnot even imagine what the Chinese arrangements were inthese matters and did not guess what changes they weremaking.

In spite of all Japan’s cultural importations from China,therefore, this new dvilization only paved the way for cen-turies of conflict as to which of these hereditary lords andvassals was in control of the country. Before the eighth cen-tury had aided the noble Fujiwara family had seized domi-nance and had thrust the Emperor into the backgroimd.When, as time went on, the Fujiwaras’ dominance was dis-puted by feudal lords and the whole country plunged intodvil war, one of these, the famous Yoritomo Minamoto,vanquished all rivals and became actual ruler of the coun-try under an old military title, the Shogun, which in fullmeans literally ‘Barbarian-subduing Generalissimo.’ Thistide, as was usual in Japan, Yoritomo made hereditary indie Minamoto family for as long as his descendants couldhold the other feudal lords in check. The Emperor becamean impotent figure. His chief importance was that the Sho-gun still depended upon him for his ritual investiture. Hehad no dvil power. The actual power was held by a militarycamp, as it was called, which tried to hold its dominance byarmed force over unruly fiefs. Each feudal lord, the daimyo,had his armed retainers, the samurai, whose swords were

59

The Chrysambeimm and the Swordat his disposal, and they always ready in periods ofdisorder to dispute the ‘proper {dace* of a rival fief or cS dieruling Shogun.

In the sixteenth century dvil war had become endemic.After decades of disorder the great leyasu won out ovot allrivals and in 1603 became the first Shogun of the House ofTokugawa. Hie Shogunate remained in leyasu’s line fortwo centuries and a half and was ended only in 1868 whenthe ‘dual rule’ of Emperor and Shogun was abolished at thebeginning of the modem period. In many wa3rs this longTokugawa Era is one of the most remarkable in history. Itmaintained an armed peace in Japan up to the very last g^-eration before it ended and it put into effect a centralizedadministration that admirably served the Tokugawas’ pur-poses.

leyasu was faced with a most difficult problem and he didnot choose an easy solution. The lords of some of the strong-est fiefs had been against him in the civil war and had bowolto him only after a final disastrous defeat. These were theso-called Outside Lords. These lords he left in control oftheir fiefs and of their samurai, and indeed of all the feudallords of Japan they continued to have the greatest autonomyin their domains. Nevertheless, he excluded them from thehonor of being his vassals and from all important func-tions. These important positions were reserved for the In-side Lords, leyasu’s supporters in the dvil var. To maintainthis difficult regime the Tokugawas relied upon a strategyof keeping the feudal lords, the daimyos, from accumulatingpower and of preventing any possible combination amongthorn uiiidi might threaten the Shogun’s control. Not only

do

Taking One's Proper Statkmdid the Tokugawas not abolish the feudal sdieme; for thepuipose of maintaining peace in Japan and dominance ofthe House of Tokugawa, th^ attempted to sttec^thm itand make it more rigid.

Japanese feudal society was elaborately stratified andeach man’s status was fixed by inheritance. The Tokug^'^^solidified this system and regulated thedetails of each caste’sdaily behavior. Every family head had to post on his door-way his class position and the required facts about his he-reditary status. The clothes he could wear, the foods hecould buy, and the kind of house he could legally live inwere regulated according to this inherited rank. Below theImperial Family and the court nobles, there were four Jap-anese castes ranked in hierarchal order: the warriors (sam-urai), the farmers, the artisans, and the merchants. Belowthese, again, were the outcasts. The most numerous andfamous of these outcasts were the Eta, workers in tabooedtrades. They were scavengers, buriers of the executed, skin-ners of dead animals and tanners of hides. They were Japan’suntouchables, or, more exactly, their uncountables, for eventhe mileage of roads through their villages went uncountedas if the land and the inhabitants of the area did not exist atall. They were desperately poor, and, though guaranteedthe exerdse of their trades, th^ were outside the formalstructure.

The merchants ranked just above the outcasts. Howeverstrange this seo^ to Americans, it was highly realistic in afeudal sodety. A merchant class is always disruptive offeudalism. As business men become respected and prosper-ous, feudalism decays. When the Tokugawas, by ^ most

6i

The Chrysarnbemwn and the Sworddrastic laws any tuition has ever oiforoed, decreed the isola-tion of Japan in the seventeoith century, cut die ground

from un^ the feet of the merchants. Japan had had anoverseas trade all up and down the coast of China and Ko-rea and a class of traders had been inevitably developing.The Tokugawas stopped all this by making it an offenseworthy of capital punishmrat to biuld or operate any boatlarg^ than a certain size. The small boats allowed could notcross to the continent or carry loads of trade goods. Domes-tic trade was severely restricted, too, by customs barrierswhich were set up on the borders of each fief with strict rulesagainst letting goods in or out. Other laws were directedtoward emphasizing the merchants’ low social position.Sumptuary laws regulated the clothes they could wear, theumbrellas th^ coidd carry, the amount th^ could spendfor a wedding or a funeral. Th^ could not live in a samuraidistrict. They had no legal protection against the swords ofthe samurai, the privileged warriors. The Tokugawa policyof keeping the merchants in inferior stations failed of coursein a money economy, and Japan at that period was run on amoney economy. But it was attempted.

The two classes which are appropriate to a stable feudal-ism, the warriors and the farmers, the Tokugawa regimefroze into rigid forms. During the dvil wars that were finallyended by Ieyasu,the great war-lord, Hideyoshi, had alreadycompleted, by his famous ’sword himt,’ the separation ofthese two classes. He had disarmed the peasants and givento the samiuai the sole right to wear swords. The warriorscould no longer be farmers nor artisans nor merchants. Noteven the lowest of them could any longer legally be a pro-

6z

Taking One's proper Stationducer; he was a member of a parasitic ckiss whidi drew itsannual rice stipend from taxes levied upon the peasants.The daimyo handled this rice and distributed to each sam-urai retainer his allotted income. There was no questionabout where the samurai had to look for support; he waswholly dependent upon his lord. In earlier eras of Japanesehistory strong ties between the feudal chief and his warriorshad been forged in almost ceaseless war between the fids; inthe Tokugawa era of peace the ties became economic. Forthe warrior-retainer, imlike his European counterpart, wasnot a sub-seigneur owning his own land and serfs nor washe a soldier of fortune. He was a pensioner on a set stipendwhich had been fixed for his family line at the beginning ofthe Tokugawa Era. It was not large. Japanese scholars haveestimated that the average stipend of aU samurai was aboutwhat farmers were earning and that was certainly bare sub-sistence.* Nothing could be more to the family’s disadvan-tage than division of this stipend among heirs and in conse-quence the samurai limited their families. Nothing could bemore galling to them than prestige dependent on wealth anddisplay, so th^ laid great stress in their code on the supe-rior virtues of frugality.

A great gulf separated the samurai from the othra* threeclasses: the farmers, the artisans and the merchants. Theselast three were ‘common people.’ The samurai were not.The swords the samurai wore as their prerogative and signof caste were not mere decorations. They had the right toirse them on the common people. They had traditionally

♦ Quoted by Herbert Norman, Japan's Emergence as a Modern State^p.l7,n. 12.

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The Qjrysarabemum and the Sworddone so before' Tokugawa times and the laws of ^isumerdiy saiKtioned old customs when th^ decreed: ‘Com-mon people ^o behave unbecomingly to the samurai orwho do not show respect to their superiors may be cutdown on the spot’ It was no part of I^^u’s design thatmutual dq>endence should be built up between commonpeople and the samurai retainers. His policy was based onstrict himarchal regulations. Both classes headed up to thedaimyo and reckoned directly with him; thqr were on dif-ferent stairways, as it were. Up and down each stairwaythere was law and regulation and control and reciprocity.Between the people on two stairways there was merely dis-tance. The separateness of the two classes was necessarilybridged by drcumstances over and over again but it wasnot a part of the system.

During the Tokugawa Era samurai retainers were notmere sword-swingers. They became increasingly the stew-ards of their overlords’ estates and specialists in peacefularts like the classical drama and the tea ceremony. All pro-tocol lay in their sphere and the daimyo’s intrigues werecarried out by their skilled manipulations. Two hundredyears of peace is a long time and mere individual sword-swinging had its limits. Just as the merchants, in spite of thecaste regulations, developed a way of life that gave highplace to urbane and artistic and (deasurable pursuits, so thesamurai, in spite of their ready swords, developed arts ofpeace.

The farmos, in spite of their legal defenselessness againstthe samurai, the heavy levies of rice made upon them andall the restrictions imposed upon them, had certain securities

(54

Tgkmg Om^s Proper Stationguaranteed d^n. Th^ were guaranteed the possesnon oftheir famis and to have land gives a man prestige in Japan.Um^ the Tokugawa regime, land could not be p«nia-nendy aliomted and this law was a guarantee for the individ-ual cultivator, not, as in European feudalism, for the feudallord. The farmer had a permanent ri^t to something whichhe valued supremely and he appears to have worked hisland with the same diligence and unstinting care with ^chhis descendants cultivate their rice fields today. Neverthe-less, he was the Atlas who supported the whole parasiticupper class of about two million persons, including thegovernmoit of theShogun, the establishments of the daimyoand the stipends of the samurai retainers. He was taxed inkind, that is, he paid to the daimyo a percentage of hiscrops. Whereas in Siam, another wet-rice country, the tradi-tional tax is 10 per cent, in Tokugawa Japan it was 40 percent. But in reality it was higher than this. In some fi^s itwas 80 percent and always there was corvee or work requi-sitions, which bore down on the strength and time of thefarmer. Like the samurai, the farmers also limited theirfamilies and the population of the whole of Japan stood atalmost the same figure during all the Tokugawa centuries.For an Asiatic country during a long period of peace thesestatic population figures tell a great deal about the r^ime.It was Spartan in its restrictions, both on the tax-supportedretainers and on the producing class, but between eadr de-penctent and his superior, it was relatively dependable. Aman knew his obligations, his prerogatives and his stationand if these were infringed upon the poorest mig|ht protestThe farmos, even in the direst poverty, carried timir pro-

6$

The Chrysmtheimm md^the Sxpordtests not only to the feudal lord but to the Shogunate author-ities. There were at least a thousand of these revolts duringthe two and a half Tokugawa centuries. They were not oc-casioned by the traditional heavy rule of ‘40 per cent to theprince and 60 per cent to the cultivators’; they were allprotests against additional levies. When conditions were nolonger bearable, the fanners might march in great numbersagainst their overlords but the procedure of petition andjudgment was orderly. The fanners drew up formal petitionsfor redress which they submitted to the daimyo’s chamber-lain. When this petition was intercepted or the daimyo tookno notice of their complaints they sent their representativesto the capital to present their written complaints to the Sho-gunate. In famous cases they could insure its delivery onlyby inserting it into some high officiars palanquin as he rodethrough the streets of the capital. But, no matter what risksthe fanners took in delivering the petition, it was then in-vestigated by the Shogunate authorities and about half ofthe judgments were in favor of the peasants.*

Japan’s requirements of law and order were not satisfied,however, with the Shogunate’s judgment on the farmers’claims. Their complaints might be just and it might be ad-visable for the State to honor them, but the peasant leadershad transgressed the strict law of hierarchy. Regardless ofany decision in their favor, they had broken the essentiallaw of their allegiance and this could not be overlooked.They were therefore condemned to death. The righteous-ness of their cause had nothing to do with the matter. Even

♦ Borton» Hugh, Peasant Uprisings in Japan of the Tokugawa Period^Transactions of the Asiatic Sodety of Japan, 2nd Series, 16 (1938).

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Taidng One’s Proper Nationthe peasants accepted this inevitability. The condemnedmen were thdr heroes and the people came in numbers tothe execution where the leaders were boiled in oil or be-headed or crucified, but at the execution the crowds did notriot. This was law and order. They might afterward buildthe dead men shrines and honor them as martyrs, but theyaccepted the execution as part and parcel of the hierarchallaws by which they lived.

The Tokugawa Shoguns, in short, attempted to sohdifythe caste structure within each fief and to make each classdependent on the feudal lord. The daimyo stood at the apexof the hierarchy in each fief and he was allowed to exercisehis prerogatives over his dependents. The Shogun’s greatadministrative problem was to control the daimyo. In everyway he prevented them from forming alliances or fromcarrying out schemes of aggression. Passport and customsofficials were maintained at the frontiers of the fiefs to keepstrict watch for ‘outgoing women and incoming guns’ lestany daimyo try to send his women away and smug^e armsin. No daimyo could contract a marriage without the Sho-gun’s permission lest it might lead to a dangeroxis politicalalliance. Trade between the fiefs was hindered even to theextent of allowing bridges to become impassable. The Sho-gun’s spies too kept him well informed on the daimyo’sexpenditures and if the feudal coffers were filling up, theShogun required him to undertake expensive public worksto bring him in line again. Most famous regulation of allwas that the daimyo live half of each year in the capital and,even when he returned to his fief for his residence there, hehad to leave his wife behind him in Yedo (Tokyo) as a hos-

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The. Qjrysmtbmum and the Sword

tagp in the hands of the l^oguns. hi all d^se ways tibe ad*ministration made certain that it maintain the upper handand enforce its dominant position in the hia:ardiy.

Shogun was not, of course, the final ketone in thisaidi for he held sway as the appointee of the Emperor. TheEmperor with his court of hereditary nobles {kt^) was iso-latedinKyotoand waswithoutactual power. The Emperor’sfinancial resources were less than those of even lesser dai*myos and the very ceremonies of the court were strictly dr-cumscribed by Shogunate regulations. Not even the mostpowerful Tokugawa Shoguns, however, took any steps todo away with this dual rule of Emperor and actual ruler. Itwas no new thing in Japan. Since the twelfth century a Gen-mlissimo (Shogun) had ruled the country in the name of athrone shorn of actual authority. In some centuries divisionof function had gone so far that the real power which dieshadowy Emperor delegated to a hereditary secular chiefwas exercised in turn by a hereditary advisor of that chief.There has always been delegation upon delegation of orig-inal authority. Even in the last and desperate days of theTokugawa regime. Commodore Perry did not suspect theexistence of an Emperor in the background and our firstenvoy, Townsend Harris, who negotiated the first commer-cial treaty with Japan in 1858, had to discover for himselfthat there was an Emperor.

The truth is that Japan’s conception of her Emperor isone that is found over and over among the islands of thePacific. He is the Sacred Chief who may or may not takepart in administration. In some Pacific islands he did and insome he ddegated his authority. But always his person was

d8

Taking One’s Proper Nation$acred. Among New Zealand tribes the Sacred Chief was sosacrosanct that he might not feed himsrif andeven thespoonwith which he was fed must not be allowed to touch hissacred teeth. He had to be carried when he went abroad, forany land upon which he set his sacred foot became auto-matically so holy that it must pass into the Sacred Chief’spossession. His head was particularly sacrosanct and noman could touch it. His words reached the tribal gods. Insome Pacific islands, like Samoa and Tonga, the SacredChief did not descend into the arena of life. A Secular Chiefperformed all the duties of State. James Wilson, who visitedthe island of Tonga in the Eastern Pacific at the end of theeighteenth century, wrote that its government ‘resemblesmost the government of Japan where the sacred majesty isa sort of state prisoner to the captain-general.’* TheTonganSacred Chiefs were isolated from public affairs, but they per-formed ritual duties. They had to receive the first fruits ofthe gardens and conduct a ceremony before any man couldeat of them. When the Sacred Chief died, his death wasannounced by the phrase, ‘The heavens are void.’ He wasburied with ceremony in a great royal tomb. But he tookno part in administration.

The Emperor, even whm he was politically impotent and‘a sort of State prisoner to the Captain-general,’ filled, ac-cording to Japanese definitions, a ‘proper station’ in thehierarchy. The Emperor’s active participation in mundaneaffairs was to them no measure of his status. His court at

♦ Wilson, James, A missionary voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean per^formed in the years 1796,1797 and 1798 in the ship Duff. London, 1799, p,384. Quoted by Edward Winslow Gifford, Tongan Society. Bemke P.Bisbc^ Museum, Bulletin 61. Hawaii, 1929.

dp

The Chrysanthemum and the SwordKyoto was a value presaved all through the long oen>tunes of the rule of the Barbarian-subduing Generalissimos.His functions were superfluous only from a Western pointof view. The Japanese, who at every point were accustomedto rigorous definition of hierarchal rdle, looked at the mat-ter difierently.

The extreme explicitness of the Japanoe hierarchal sys-tem in feudal times, from outcast to Emperor, has left itsstrong impress on modem Japan. After all, the feudal re-gime was legally ended only about seventy-five years ago,and strong national habits do not pass away within oneman’s lifetime. Japanese statesmen of the modem period,too, laid their careful plans, as we shall see in the next chap-ter, to preserve a great deal of the system in spite of radicalalterations in their country’s objectives. The Japanese, morethan any other sovereign nation, have been conditioned to aworld where the smallest details of conduct are mapped andstatus is assigned. During two centuries when law and orderwere maintained in such a world with an iron hand, the Jap-anese learned to identify this meticulously plotted hierarchywith safety and security. So long as they stayed within knownboimdaries, and so long as they fulfilled known obliga-tions, they could tmst their world. Banditry was controlled.Civil war between the daimyo was prevented. If subjectscould prove that others had overstepped their rights, theycould appeal as the farmers did when they were exploited.It was personally dangerous but it was approved. The bestof the Tokugawa Shoguns even had a Complaint Box intowhich any citizen could drop his protest, and the Shogunalone had a key to his box. There were genuine guarantees

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Taking One's Proper Stationin Japan that aggressions would be rectified if th^ wereacts that were not allowed on the existing map of conduct.One trusted the map and was safe only when one followedit. One showed one’s courage, one’s integrity in conform-ing to it, not in modifying it or in revolting against it. Withinits stated limits, it was a known and, in their ^es, a depend-able world. Its rules were not abstract ethical principles of adecalogue but tiny specifications of what was due in thissituation and what was due in that situation; what was dueif one were a samurai and what was due if one were a com-mon man; what was proper to elder brother and what wasproper to younger brother.

The Japanese did not become a mild and submissive peo-ple under this system, as some nations have under a strong-handed hierarchal regime. It is important to recognize thatcertain guarantees were given to each class. Even the out-casts were guaranteed a monopoly of their special tradesand their self-governing bodies were recognized by the au-thorities. Restrictions upon each class were great but therewere order and security too.

The caste restrictions also had a certain flexibility theydo not have, for instance, in India. Japanese customs pro-vided several explicit techniques for manipulating the sys-tem without doing violence to the accepted ways. A mancould change his caste status in several ways. When moneylenders and merchants became wealthy, as they inevitablydid imder Japan> money economy, the rich used varioustraditional devices to infiltrate the upper classes. They be-came ‘land owners’ by the use of liens and rmts. It is truethat the peasants’ land was inalienable but farm rents were

71

The Chrysanthefmm md the Swordexcessively high in Japan and it was profitable to leave thepeasants on their land. Mon^ lenders settled on the landand collected their rents, and such ‘ownership’ of land gaveprestige as well as profit in Japan. Their children marriedsamurai. They became gentry.

Another traditional manipulation of the caste system wasthrough the custom of adoption. It provided a way of ‘buy-ing’ samurai status. As merchants became richer in spite ofall Tokugawa restrictions, they arranged for their sons’adoption into samiuai families. In Japan one seldom adoptsa son; one adopts a husband for one’s dau^ter. He isknown as an ‘adopted husband.’ He becomes the heir of hisfather-in-law. He pays a high price, for his name is strickenfrom his own family register and entered on his wife’s. Hetakes her name and goes to live with his mother-in-law. Butif the price is high, the advantages are also great. For theprosperous merchant’s descendants become samurai and theimpoverished samurai’s family gets an alliance with wealth.No violence is done to the caste system which remains justwhat it always was. But the system has been manipulated toprovide upper-class status for the wealthy.

Japan therefore did not require castes to marry onlyamong themselves. There were approved arrangementswhich allowed intermarriage among them. The resultinginfiltration of prosperous traders into the lower samuraiclass played a large part in furthering one of the greatestcontrasts between Western Europe and Japan. When feudal-ism broke down in Europe it was due to the pressure of agrowing and increasingly powerful middle class and thisclass dominated the modem industrial period. In Japan no

7»

Taking One's Ttoper Statimsuch strong middle class arose. The merchants and nKm^lenders *bou^t’ upper-class status by sanctioned m^ods.Merchants and lower samurai became allies. It is a curiousand surprising thing to point out that at the time whenfeudalism was in its death throes in both civilizations, Japansanctioned class mobility to a greater degree than conti-nental Europe did, but noevidencefor suchastat^entcouldbe more convincing than the lack of any sign of a class warbetween aristocracy and bomgeoisie.

It is easy to point out that the common cause made bythese two classes was mutually advantageoiis in Japan, butit would have been mutually advantageous in France too. Itwas advantageous in Western Europe in those individualinstances where it occurred. But class rigidity was strong inEurope and the conflict of classes led in France to the expro-priation of the aristocracy. In Japan they drew closer to-gether. The alliance that overthrew the effete Shogunatewas an alliance between the merchant-flnanciers and thesamurai retainers. The modem era in Japan preserved thearistocratic system. It could hardly have happened withoutJapan’s sanctioned techniques for class mobility.

If the Japanese loved and tmsted their meticulously ex-plicit map of behavior, they had a certain justification. Itguaranteed security so long as one followed the rules; itallowed protests against unauthorized aggressions and itcoulid be manipulated to one’s own advantage. It requiredthe fulfillment of reciprocal obligations. When the Toku-gawa regime crumbled in the first half of the nineteenth cen-tury, no group in the nation was in favor of tearing up themap. There was no French Revolution. There was not even

73

The Qyryscmthewmn and the Swordan 1848. Yet the times were desperate. From the commonpeople to the Shogunate, every class had fallen into debt tothe money lenders and merchants. The mere numbers of thenon-productive classes and the scale of customary officialexpenditures had proved insupportable. The daimyo as thegrip of poverty ti^tened upon them were unable to pay thejSxed stipends to their samurai retainers and the whole net-work of feudal ties became a mockery. They tried to keepafloat by increasing the already heavy taxes upon the peas-ants. These were collected years in advance and the farmerswere reduced to extreme want. The Shogunate too wasbankrupt and could do little to keep the status quo. Japanwas in dire domestic extremity by 1853 when Admiral Perryappeared with his men of war. His forced entry was followedin 1858 by a trade treaty with the United States which Japanwas in no position to refuse.

The cry that went up from Japan, however, was Isshin—to dig back into the past, to restore. It was the opposite ofrevolutionary. It was not even progressive. Joined with thecry ‘Restore the Emperor’ was the equally popular cry‘Expel the Barbarians.’ The nation supported the programof going back to a golden age of isolation and the few leaderswho saw how impossible such a course would be were assas-sinated for their pains. There seemed not the slightest likeli-hood that this non-revolutionary country of Japan wouldalter its course to conform to any Occidental patterns, stillless that in fifty years it would compete with Western nationson their own grounds. Nevertheless, that is what happened.Japan used her own strengths, which were not at all theOccidental strengths, to achieve a goal which no powerful

74

Taking One's Proper Nationhigh-placed group and no popular opinion in Japan de-manded. No Westerner in ^e eighteen-sixties would havebelieved if he had seen the future in a crystal ball. Thereseemed to be no cloud the size of a man’s hand on the hori-zon to indicate the trunult of activity which swept Japanduring the next decades. Nevertheless, the impossible hap-pened. Japan’s backward and hierarchy-ridden populationswung to a new course and held it.

The Meiji Reform

The Battlecry that ushered in the modem era in Japanwas Sormo Joi, ‘Restore the Emperor and expel the Bar-barian.’ It was a slogan that sought to keep Japan imcon-taminated by the outside world and to restore a golden ageof the tenth century before there had been a ‘dual rule’ ofEmperor and Shogun. The Emperor’s court at Kyoto wasreactionary in the extreme. The victory of the Emperor’sparty meant to his supporters the humiliation and expulsionof foreigners. It meant reinstatement of traditional ways oflife in Japan. It meant that ‘reformers’ would have no voicein affairs. The great Outside Lords, the daimyo of Japan’sstrongest fiefs who spearheaded the overthrow of the Sho-gunate, thought of the Restoration as a way in which they,instead of the Tokugawa, could rule Japan. They wanted amere change of persormel. The farmers wanted to keep moreof the rice they raised but they hated ‘reforms.’ The samuraiwanted to keep their pensions and be allowed to use theirswords for greater ^ory. The merchants, who financed theRestoration forces, wanted to expand mercantilism but theynever arraigned the feudal system.

When the anti-Tokugawa forces triumphed and ‘dual

76

rule* was ended in 1868 by the Restoration of the Empoor,the victors were committed, by Western standards, to afiercely conservative isolationist pohqr. From the first theregime followed the opposite course. It had beem in powerhardly a year when it abolished the daimyo’s ri^t of taxa-tion in all fiefs. It called in the land-registers and appropri-ated to itself the peasants’ tax of‘40 per cent to thedaimyo.’This expropriation was not without compensation. Thegovernment allotted to each daimyo the equivalent of halfUs normal inconie. At the same time also the governmentfreed the daimyo of the support of his samurai retainers andof the expenses of public works. The samurai retainers, likethe daimyo, received pensions from the government. Withinthe next five years all legal inequality among the classes wassiunmarily abolished, insignia and distinctive dress of casteand class were outlawed—even queues had to be cut,—theoutcasts were emancipated, the laws against alienation ofland withdrawn, the barriers that had separated fief fromfief were removed and Buddhism was disestablished. By1876 the daimyo and samurai pensions were commuted tolump sum payments which were to become due in five tofifteen years. These payments were either large or smallaccording to the fixed income these individuals had drawnin Tokugawa days and the money made it possible for themto start enterprises in the new non-feudal economy. ‘It wasthe final stage in the sealing of that peculiar union of mer-chants and financial princes with the feudal or landedprinces which was already evident in the Tokugawa period.’ *

These remarkable reforms of the infant Meiji regime

* Norman, p. 96.

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The Cbrysantbenmm and the Swordwere not popular. There was far more general enthusiasmfor an invasion of Korea from 1871 to 1873 than for anyof these measiues. The Meiji government not only persistedin its drastic course of reform, it killed the project of theinvasion. Its program was so strongly opposed to the wishesof a great majority of those who had fought to establish itthat by 1877 Saigo, their greatest leader, had organized afull-scale rebellion against the government. His army r^re-sented all the pro-feudal longings of Imperial supporterswhich had from the first year of the Restoration been be-trayed by the Meiji regime. The govermnent called up a non-samurai voluntary army and defeated Saigo’s samurai. Butthe rebellion was an indication of the extent of the dissatis-faction the regime aroused in Japan.

The farmers’ dissatisfaction was equally marked. Therewere at least 190 agrarian revolts between 1868 and 1878,the first Meiji decade. In 1877 the new govermnent madeits first tardy moves to lessen the great tax burden upon thepeasants, and they had reason to feel that the regime hadfailed them. The farmers objected in addition to the estab-lishment of schools, to conscription, to land surveys, tohaving to cut their queues, to legal equality of the outcasts,to the drastic restrictions on official Buddhism, to calendarreforms and to many other measures which changed theirsettled ways of life.

Who, then, was this ‘government’ which undertook suchdrastic and impopular reforms? It was that ‘peculiar union’in Japan of the lower samiurai and the merchant class whichspecial Japanese institutions had fostered even in feudaltimes. Th^ were the samurai retainers who had learned

78

statecraft as chamberlains and stewards for the daimyos,who had run the feudal monopolies in mines, tKttiles, paste-boards and the like. They were merchants who had boughtsamurai status and spread knowledge of productive tech-niques in that class. This samurai-merchant alliance rapidlyput to the fore able and self-confident administrators whodrew up the Meiji policies and planned their execution. Thereal problem, however, is not from what class they came buthow it happened that they were so able and so realistic. Ja-pan, just emerging from medievalism in the last half of thenineteenth century and as weak then as Siam is today, pro-duced leaders able to conceive and to carry out one of themost statesmanlike and successful jobs ever attempted inany nation. The strength, and the weakness too, of theseleaders was rooted in traditional Japanese character and itis the chief object of this book to discuss what that characterwas and is. Here we can only recognize how the Meiji states-men went about their undertaking.

They did not take their task to be an ideological revolu-tion at all. They treated it as a job. Their goal as they con-ceived it was to make Japan into a country which must bereckoned with. They were not iconoclasts. They did notrevile and beggar the feudal class. They tempted them withpensions large enough to lure them into eventual supportof the regime. They &ally ameliorated the peasants’ condi-tion; their ten-year tardiness appears to have been duerather to the pitiful condition of the early Meiji treasurythan to a class rejection of peasants’ claims upon the regime.

The energetic and resourceful statesmen who ran theMeiji government rejected, however, all ideas of ending

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The Chrysamhemum and the Swordhierarchy in Japan. The Restoration had sim|dified thehierarchal order by placing the Emperor at its apex andeliminating the Shogun. The post-Restoration statesmen,by abolishing the fiefs, eliminated the conflict between loy-alty to one’s own sdgneur and to the State. These changesdid not unseat hierarchal habits. They gave th^ a newlocus. ‘Their Excellencies,’ the new leaders of Japan, evenstrengthened centralized rule in order to impose their ownworkmanlike programs upon the people. They alternateddemands from above with gifts from above and in this waythey managed to survive. But they did not imagine that theyhad to cater to a public opinion which might not want toreform the calendar or to establish public schools or to out-law discrimination against the outcasts.

One of these gifts from above was the Constitution ofJapan, which was given by the Emperor to his people in1889. It gave the people a place in the State and establishedthe Diet It was drawn up with great care by Their Excel-lencies after critical study of the varied constitutions of theWestern World. The writers of it however, took ‘every pos-sible precaution to guard against popular interference andthe invasion of public opinion.’* The very bureau whichdrafted it was a part of the Imperial Household Departmentand was therefore sacrosanct.

Meiji statesmen were quite conscious about their objec-tive. During the eighteen-eighties Prince Ito, framer of theConstitution, sent the Marquis Kido to consult Herbert

* Quoted from a Japanese authority who bases his remarks on state-ments by Baron Kaneko who was one of the dralfters. See Norman, ibid.^

Spenoor in Engbuid on the {noblems lying ahead of Japanand after lengthy conversations Spencer wrote Ito his judg-ments. On the subject of hierarchy Spencer wrote that Japanhad in her traditional arrangements an incomparable basisfor national well-being which should be maintained andfostered. Traditional obligations to superiors, he said, andbeyond all to the Emperor, were Japan’s great opportunity.Japan could move forward solidly under its ‘superiors’ anddefend itself against the difficulties inevitable in more in-dividualistic nations. The great Meiji statesmen woe wellsatisfied with this confirmation of their own convictions.They meant to retain in the modem world the advantages ofobserving ‘proper station.’ They did not intend to under-mine the habit of hierarchy.

In every field of activity, whether political or religious oreconomic, the Meiji statesmen allocated the duties of‘proper station’ between the State and the people. Theirwhole scheme was so alien to arrangements in the UnitedStates or England that we usually fail to recognize its basicpoints. There was, of course, strong rule from above whichdid not have to follow the lead of public opinion. This gov-ernment was administered by a top hierarchy and thiscould never include elected persons. At this level the peoplecould have no voice. In 1940 the top government hierarchyconsisted of those who had ‘access’ to the Emperor, thosewho constituted his immediate advisors, and those whosehigh appointmente bore the privy seal. These last includedCabinet Ministers, prefectural governors, judges, chiefs ofnational bureaus and other like responsible officers. Noelected official had any such status in the hierarchy and it

8i

The ChrysoMhemum and the Stvordwould have been out of the question for elected membersof the Diet, for instance, to have any voice in selecting orapproving a Cabinet Minister or head of the Bureau ofFinance or of Transportation. The elected Lower House ofthe Diet was a voice of the people which had the not incon-siderable privilege of interrogating and criticizing the HigherOfficials, but it had no real voice in appointments or in de-cisions or in budgetary matters and it did not initiate legis-lation. The Lower House was even checked by a non-electedUpper House, half of them nobility and another quarterImperial appointees. Since its power to approve legislationwas about equal to that of the Lower House, a further hier-archal check was provided.

Japan therefore ensured that those who held high gov-ernment posts remain ‘Their Excellencies,’ but this does notmean that there was not self-government in its ‘properplace.’ In all Asiatic nations, under whatever regime, au-thority from above always reaches down and meets in somemiddle ground local self-government rising from below. Thedifferences between different countries all concern mattersof how far up democratic accountability reaches, how manyor few its responsibilities are and whether local leadershipremains responsive to the whole community or is pre-empted by local magnates to the disadvantage of the peo-ple. Tokugawa Japan had, like China, tiny units of five toten families, called in recent times the tonari gumi, whichwere the smallest responsible imits of the population. Thehead of this group of neighboring families assumed leader-ship in tiieir'own affairs, was responsible for their good be-havior, had to turn in reports of any doubtful acts and sur-

82

render any wanted individual to the government. Meijistatesmen at first abolished these, but they were later re-stored and called the tonari gumi. In the towns and citiesthe government has sometimes actively fostered them, butthey seldom function today in villages. The hamlet (bu-raku) units are more important. The buraku were not abol-ished nor were they incorporated as units in the govern-ment. They were an area in which the State did not function.These hamlets of fifteen or so houses continue even todayto fimction in an organized fashion through their aimuallyrotating headmen, who Took after hamlet property, super-vise hamlet aid given to families in the event of a death ora fire, decide the proper days for co-operative work in agri-culture, housebuilding or road repair, and aimounce byringing the fire bell or beating two blocks together in a cer-tain rhythm the local holidays and rest days.’* These head-men are not responsible, as in some Asiatic nations, also forcollecting the State taxes in their community and they donot therefore have to carry this onus. Their position is quiteimambivalent; they function in the area of democratic re-sponsibility.

Modem dvil government in Japan ojBdally recognizeslocal administration of cities, towns and villages. Elected‘elders’ choose a responsible headman who serves as therepresentative of the community in all dealings with theState, which is represented by the prefectural and nationalgovernments. In the villages the headman is an old resi-dent, a member of a land-owning farm family. He serves ata financial loss but the prestige is considerable. He and the

* Embree, John F., The Japanese Nation, p. 88.

83

The Chrysemtbeffmn and the Swordelders are responsibte for village finances, pubUc health,maintenance of the schools and especially for property rec-ords and individual dossiers. The village ofiice is a busyplace; it has charge of the spending of the State’s appropri-ation for primary school education for all children and ofthe raising and spending of its own much larger local shareof school expenses, management and rent of village-ownedproperty, land improvement and afforestation, and recordsof all property transactions, which become legal only whenth^ are properly entered at this office. It must also keep anup-to-date record of residence, marital status, birth of chil-dren, adoption, any encounter with the law and other factson each individual who still maintains official residence inthe community, besides a family record which shows similardata about one’s family. Any sudi information is forwardedfrom any part of Japan to one’s official home office and isentered on one’s dossier. Whoever one applies for a posi-tion or is tried before a judge or in any way is asked foridentification, one writes one’s home commiinity office orvisits it and obtains a copy to submit to the interestedperson. One does not face lightly the possibility of hav-ing a bad entiy inscribed on one’s own or one’s family’sdossier.

The city, town, and village therefore has considerable re-sponsibility. It is a community responsibility. Even in theninete^r-twenties, when Japan had national political par-ties, which in any country means an alternation of t^urebetween ‘ins’ and ‘outs,’ local administration generally re-mained untouched by this devdopment and was directedby elders acting for the whole community. In three respects,

84

however, local administrations do not have autonomy; alljudges are nationally appointed, all police and school teach-ers are onployees of the State. Since most civil cases inJapan are still settled by arbitration or through go-be-tweens, the courts of law figure very little in local adminis-tration. Police are more important. Police have to be onhand at public meetings but these duties are intnmittentand most of their time is devoted to keeping the personaland property records. The State may transfer policemenfrequently from one post to another so that they may re-main outsiders without local ties. School teachers also aretransferred. The State regulates every detail of the schools,and, as in France, every school in the country is studying onthe same day the same lesson from the same textbook. Everyschool goes through the same calisthenics to the same radiobroadcast at the same hour of the morning. The cormnunitydoes not have local autonomy over schools or police orcourts of justice.

The Japanese government at all points thus greatly differsfrom the American, where elected persons carry the highestexecutive and legislative responsibili^ and local control isexercised through local direction of police and police-courts. It does not, however, differ formally from the gov-ernmental set-up of such thoroughly Occidental nations asHolland and Belgium. In Holland, for instance, as in Japan,the Queoi’s Ministry drafts all proposed laws; the Diet hasin practice not initiated legislation. The Dutch Crownlegally appoints even mayors of towns and cities and thusits formal ri^t reaches further down into local areas of con-cern than it did in Japan before 1940; this is true even though

85

The CTnysmthemum and the Srvordin practice the Dutch Crown usually approves a local nomi-nation. The direct responsibility to the Crown of the policeand of the cotirts is also Dutch. Though, in Holland, schoolsmay be set up at will by any sectarian group, the Japaneseschool system is duplicated in France. Local responsibilityfor canals, polders and local improvements, also, is a dutyof the communiQr as a whole in Holland, not of a mayorand officials politically elected.

The true difference between the Japanese form of govern-ment and such cases in Western Europe lies not in form butin functioning. The Japanese rely on old habits of deferenceset up in their past experience and formalized in their ethicalsystem and in their etiquette. The State can depend upon i*that, when their Excellencies function in their ‘proper place,’their prerogatives will be respected, not because the policyis approved but because it is wrong in Japan to overrideboundaries between prerogatives. At the topmost level ofpolicy ‘popular opinion’ is out of place. The governmentasks only ‘popular support.’ When the State stakes out itsown official field in the area of local concern, also, its jiuis-diction is accepted with deference. The State, in all its do-mestic functions, is not a necessary evil as it is so generallyfelt to be in the United States. The State comes nearer, inJapanese eyes, to being the supreme good.

The State, moreover, is meticulous in recognizing ‘properplace’ for the will of the people. In areas of legitimate popu-lar jurisdiction it is not too much to say that the JapaneseState has had to woo the people even for their own good.The State agricultural extension agent can act with aboutas little authoritarianism in improving old methods of agri-

8(5

culture as his counterpart can in Idaho. The State officialadvocating State-guaranteed farmers’ credit associations orfarmers* co-operatives for buying and selling must hold long-drawn-out round-tables with the local notables and thenabide by their decision. Local affairs require local man-agement The Japanese way of life allocates proper author-ity and define its proper sphere. It gives much greater def-erence—and therefore freedom of action—to ‘superiors*than Western cultures do, but they too must keep their sta-tion. Japan’s motto is: Everything in its place.

In the field of religion the Meiji statesmen made muchmore birarre formal arrangements than in government.They were however carrying out the same Japanese motto.The State took as its realm a worship that specifically up-holds the symbols of national unity and superiority, and inall the rest it left freedom of worship to the individual. Thisarea of national jurisdiction was State Shinto. Since it wasconcerned with proper respect to national symbols, assaluting the flag is in the United States, State Shinto was,they said, ‘no religion.’ Japan therefore could require it ofall citizens without violating the Occidental dogma of re-ligious freedom any more than the United States violatesit in requiring a salute to the Stars and Stripes. It was a meresign of allegiance. Because it was ‘not religion,’ Japan couldteach it in the schools without risk of Occidental criticism.State Shinto in the schools becomes the history of Japanfrom the age of the gods and the veneration of the Emperor,‘ruler from ages eternal.’ It was State-supported, State-regukted. All other areas of religion, even denominationalor cult Shinto, to say nothing of Buddhist and Christian

87

The Qyrysamhemum and the Sword

sects, were left to individual initiative much as in the UnitedStates. The two areas were even administratively and finan-cially separated; State Shinto was in the charge of its ownbureau in the Home Ofilce and its priests and ceremoniesand shrines were supported by the State. Cult Shintoand Buddhist and Christian sects were the concern of aBureau of Religion in the Department of Education andwere supported by voluntaiy contributions of members.

Because of Japan’s official position on the subject onecannot speak of State Shinto as a vast Established Church,but one can at least call it a vast Establishment. There wereover 110,000 shrines ranging all the way from the great IseShrine, temple of the Sun Goddess, to small local shrineswhich the officiating priest cleans up for the occasion of aspecial ceremony. The national hierarchy of priests paral-leled the political and the lines of authority ran from thelowest priest through the district and prefectmal priests totheir priestly Excellencies at the top. They performed cere-monies for the people rather than conducting worship bythe people, and there was in State Shinto nothing parallel-ing our familiar church-going. Priests of State Shinto—since it was no religion—were forbidden by law to teachany dogma and there could be no church services as West-erners understand them. Instead, on the frequent days ofrites official representatives of the community came andstood before the priest while he purified them by wavingbefore them a wand with hemp and paper streamers. Heopened the door of the inner shrine and called down thegods, with a high-pitched cry, to come to partake of a cere-monial meal. The priest prayed and each participant in

88

order of rank presented with deep obeisance that omni-piesent object in old and new Japan: a twig of their sax^edtree with pendant strips of white paper. Hie priest thensent back the gods with another cry and closed the doors ofthe inner shrine. On the festival ^ys of State Shinto theEmperor in his turn observed rites for the people and gov-ernment offices were closed. But these holidays were notgreat popular fSte-days like the ceremonies in honor oflocal shrines or even Buddhist holidays. Both of these arein the ‘free’ area outside of State Shinto.

In this area the Japanese people carry on the great sectsand fSte-days which are close to their hearts. Buddhism re-mains the religion of the great mass of the people and thevarious sects with their different teachings and foundingprophets are vigorous and omnipresent. Even Shinto hasits great cults which stand outside of State Shinto. Somewere strongholds of pure nationalism even before the gov-ernment in the nineteen-thirties took up the same position,some are faith-healing sects often compared to ChristianScience, some hold by Confudan tenets, some have special-ized in trance states and pilgrimages to sacred mountainshrines. Most of the popular fete-days, too, have been leftoutside of State Shinto. The people on such days throng tothe shrines. Each person purifies himself by rinsing out hismouth and he summons the god to descend by pulling abell rope or clapping his hands. He bows in veneration,sends back the god by another pull of the bell cord or clap-ping of hands, and goes oflf for the main business of the daywhich is buying knickknacks and tidbits from the vendorswho have set up their stalls, watching wrestling matches or

89

The Oyrysamhenwm and the Smrdracordsm or kagura dances, which are liberally enlivenedby clowns, and generally enjoying the great throng. AnEnglishman who had lived in Japan quoted William Blake’sverse which he always remembered on Japanese fSte-days:

If at the church they would give us some ale.

And a pleasant fire our souls to regale.

We’d sing and we’d pray all the livelong day.

Nor ever once wish from the church to stray.

Exc^t for those few who have professionally dedicatedthemselves to religious austerities, religion is not austerein Japan. The Japanese are also addicted to religious pil-grimages and these too are greatly enjoyed holidays.

Meiji statesmen, therefore, carefully marked out the areaof State functioning in government and of State Shinto inthe field of religion. They left other areas to the people butthey ensured to themselves as top officials of the new hier-archy dominance in matters which in their eyes directlyconcerned the State. In setting up the Armed Forces theyhad a similar problem. They rejected, as in other fields, theold caste system but in the Army they went farther than incivilian life. They outlawed in the Armed Services even therespect language of Japan, though in actual practice oldusage of course persists. The Army also promoted to offi-cer’s rank on the basis of merit, not of family, to a degreewhich could hardly be put into effect in other fields. Itsreputation among Japanese in this respect is high and ap-parently deservedly so. It was certainly the best meansavailable by which to enlist popular support for the newArmy. Companies and platoons, too, were formed fromneighbors of the same region and peacetime^military serv-

90

ice was spmt at posts close to one’s home. This meant noionly diat local ties were conserved but that every man whcwent through Army training spent two years dining whiclthe relationship between officers and men, between second-year men Wid first-year men, superseded that betweersamurai and farmers or between rich and poor. The Arm)functioned in many ways as a democratic leveler and it waiin many ways a true people’s army. Whereas the Army irmost other nations is depended upon as the strong arm tcdefend the status quo, in Japan the Army’s sympathy witlthe small peasant has lined it up in repeated protests againsithe great financiers and industrialists.

Japanese statesmen may not have approved of all thiconsequences of building up a people’s army but it was noiat this level where they saw fit to ensure ^my supremac)in the hierarchy. That objective they made sure of by ar-rangements in the very highest spheres. They did not writethese arrangements into the Constitution but continued ascustomary procedure the already recognized independenceof the High Conunand from the civil government. The Min-isters of the Army and the Navy, in contrast for instanceto the head of the Foreign Office and domestic bureaus, haddirect access to the Emperor himself and could thereforeuse his name in forcing through their measures. They didnot need to inform or consult their civilian colleagues of theCabinet In addition the Armed Services held a whip handover any Cabinet. They could prevent the formation of aCabinet they distrusted by the simple expedient of refusingto release generals and admirals to hold military portfoliosin the Cabinet Without such high officers of the active serv-

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The Chrysmthenaan and the Sword

ce to fill the positions of Anny and Navy Ministers thereould be no cabinet; no dvilians or retired ofBlcers couldlold these posts. Similarly, if the Armed Services were dis->leased at any act of the Ministry, th(^ could cause its dis-olution by recalling their Cabinet representatives. On thisdghest policy level the top military hierarchy made surehat it need brook no interference. If it needed any further;uarantees it had one in the Constitution: ‘If the Diet fails0 approve the budget submitted, the budget of the previ-lus year is automatically available to the Government forhe current year.’ The exploit of the Army in occupyingdanchuria when the Foreign Office had promised that theIrmy would not take this step was only one of the instancesffien the Army hierarchy successfully supported its com-manders in the field in the absence of agreed Cabinet policy.Ils in other fields, so with the Army: where hierarchal priv-eges are concerned the Japanese tend to accept all the con-jquences, not because of agreement about the policy butecause they do not coimtenance overriding boundariesetween prerogatives.

In the field of industrial development Japan pursued aourse which is xmparalleled in any Western nation. Againleir Excellencies arranged the game and set the rules. Theyot only planned, they built and financed on governmentloney the industries they decided they needed. A Stateureaucracy organized and ran them. Foreign technicians'ere imported and Japanese were sent to learn abroad,hen when, as they said, these industries were ‘well organ-jsd and business was prosperous,’ the government dis-osed of them to private firms. They were sold gradually

91

at ‘ridiculously low prices’* to a chosen financial oligarchy,the famous Zaibateu, chiefly the Mitsui and Mitsubislufamilies. Her statesmen judged that industrial developmentwas too important to Japan to be entrusted to laws of sup-ply and demand or to free enterprise. But this policy was inno way due to socialistic dogma; it was precisely the Zai-batsu who reaped the advantages. What Japan accom-plished was that with the minimum of fumbling and wastagethe industries she deemed necessary were established.

Japan was by these means able to revise ‘the normalorder of the starting point and succeeding stages of capital-ist production.’! Instead of begiiming with the productionof consumer goods and light industry, she first undertookkey heavy industries. Arsenals, shipyards, iron works, con-struction of railroads had priority and were rapidly broughtto a hi^ stage of technical efficiency. Not all of these werereleased to private hands and vast military industries re-mained under goverrunent bureaucracy and were financedby special government accounts.

In this whole field of the industries to which the govern-ment gave priority, the small trader or the non-bureaucraticmanager had no ‘proper place.’ Only the State and thegreat trusted and politically favored financial houjses oper-ated in this area. But as in other fields of Japanese life therewas a free area in industry too. These ware the ‘left-over*industries which operated with minimum capitalizationand maximum utilization of cheap labor. These light indus-

* Nonnan, op. p. 131. This discussion is based on the illuminatinganalysis given by Nonnan.

t/Wd., p. 125.

93

The Qrrysambemum and the Svpordtries could exist without modem technology and th^ do.Th^ fimction through what we used to call in the UnitedStates home sweat>shops. A small-time manufacturer buysthe raw material, lets it out to a family or a small shop withfour or five workers, takes it back again, repeats by lettingit out again for another step in processing and at last sellsthe product to the merchant or exporter. In the nineteen-thirties no less than 53 per cent of all persons industriallyemployed in Japan were working in this way in shops andhomes having less than five workers.* Many of theseworkers are protected by old paternalistic customs of ap-prenticeship and many are mothers who in Japan’s greatrides sit in their own homes ov^ their piecework with theirbabies strapped on their backs.

This duality of Japanese industry is quite as important inlapanese ways of life as duality in the field of governmentar religion. It is as if, when Japanese statesmen decidedthat they needed an aristocracty of finance to match theirhierarchies in other fields, they built up for them the strate-gic industries, selected the politically favored merchanthouses and afiiliated them in their ‘proper stations’ withthe other hierarchies. It was no part of their plan for govern-ment to cut loose from these great financial houses and theZaibatsu profited by a kind of continued paternalism whichgave them not only profit but high place. It was inevitable,granted old Japanese attitudes toward profit and mon^,hat a financial aristocracy should fall under attack fromhe people, but the government did what it could to build

♦ Professor Uyeda, quoted by Miriam S. Farley, Pigmy Factories. FarEastern Survey, VI (1937), p. 2.

P4

it up according to accepted ideas of hierarchy. It did notentirely succeed, for the Zaibatsu has been under attackfrom the so-called Young Oflacers’ groups of the Army andfrom rural areas. But it still remains true that the greatestbitterness of Japanese public opinion is turned not againstthe Zaibatsu but against the narikin. Narikin is often trans-lated ‘nouveau riche’ but that does not do justice to theJapanese feeling. In the United States nouveaux riches arestrictly ‘newcomers’; they are laughable because they aregauche and have not had time to acquire the proper polish.This liability, however, is balanced by the heartwarmingasset that they have come up from the log cabin, they haverisen from driving a mule to controlling oil millions. Butin Japan a narikin is a term taken from Japanese chess andmeans a pawn promoted to queen. It is a pawn rampagingabout the board as a ‘big shot.’ It has no hierarchal rightto do any such thing. The narikin is believed to have ob-tained his wealth by defrauding or exploiting others andthe bitterness directed toward him is as far as possible fromthe attitude in the United States toward the ‘home boy whomakes good.’ Japan provided a place in her hi^iurchy forgreat wealth and kept an alliance with it; when wealth isachieved in the field outside. Japans public opinion isbitter against it.

The Japanese, therefore, order their world with constantreference to hierarchy. In the family and in personal rela-tions, age, generation, sex, and class dictate proper behav-ior. In government, religion, the Army, and industry, areasare carefully separated into hierarchies where neither thehigher nor the lower may without penalty overstep their

9$

The Ohryscmthmaan and the Sword

pmogatives. As long as 'proper station’ is maintaii^ theJapanese carry on without protest. They feel safe. Tlieyare of course often not ‘safe’ in the sense that their bestgood is protected but they are ‘safe’ because they have ac-c^ted hierarchy as legitimate. It is as characteristic of theirjudgment on life as trust in equali^ and free enterprise isof the American way of life.

Japan’s nemesis came when she tried to export her for-mula for ‘safety.’ In her own country hierarchy fitted popu-lar imagination because it had moiilded it. Ambitions couldonly be such as could take shape in that kind of a world.But it was a fatal commodity for export. Other nations re-sented Japan’s grandiloquent claims as an impertinence andworse. Japan’s ofiicers and troops^ however, in each occu-pied country continued to be shocked that the inhabitantsdid not welcome them. Was Japan not offering them aplace, however lowly, in a hierarchy and was not hierarchydesirable even for those on the lower steps of it? Their WarServices continued to get out series of war films which fig-ured China’s ‘love’ for Japan under the image of desperateand disordered Chinese girls who found happiness by fall-ing in love with a Japanese soldier or a Japanese engineer.It was a far cry from the Nazi version of conquest yet it wasno more successful in the long run. They could not exactfrom other nations what they had exacted of themselves.It was their mistake that they thought they coidd. They didnot recognize that the system of Japanese morality whichhad fitted them to ‘accept their proper station’ was some-thing they could not count on elsewhere. Other nations didnot have it. It is a genuine product of Japan. Her writers

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The Meiji Reform

take this system of ethics so much for granted that th^ donot describe it and a description of it is necessary beforeone can imderstand the Japanese.

Debtor to the Ages and the World

In the English Language we used to talk about being‘heirs of the ages.’ Two wars and a vast economic crisis havediminished somewhat the self-confidence it used to bespeakbut this shift has certainly not increased our sense of in-debtedness to the past. Oriental nations turn the coin to theother side: they are debtors to the ages. Much of what West-erners name ancestor worship is not truly worship and notwholly directed toward ancestors: it is a ritual avowal ofman’s great indebtedness to all that has gone before. More-over, he is indebted not only to the past; every day-by-daycontact with other people increases his indebtedness in thepresent. From this debt his daily decisions and actions mustspring. It is the fimdamental starting point. Because West-erners pay such extremely slight attention to their debt tothe world and what it has given them in care, education,well-being or even in the mere fact of their ever having beenbom at all, the Japanese feel that oim motivations are in-adequate. Virtuous men do not say, as they do in America,that they owe nothing to any man. They do not discoimtthe past. Righteousness in Japan depends upon recognitionof one’s place in the great network of mutual indebtedness

that embraces both one’s forebears and one’s contempo-raries.

It is simple to put in words this contrast between Eastand West but it is difficult to appreciate what a differenceit makes in living. Until we understand it in Japan we shallnot be able to pliunb either the extreme sacrifice of self withwhich we became familiar during the war or the quickresentments which Japanese are capable of in situationswhere we think resentments are not called for. To be a debtorcan make a man extremely quick to take offense and theJapanese prove it. It also puts upon him great responsibil-ities.

Both the Chinese and the Japanese have many wordsmeaning ‘obligations.’ The words axe not synonyms andtheir specific meanings have no literal translation into Eng-lish because the ideas they express are alien to us. The wordfor ‘obligations’ which covers a person’s indebtedness fromgreatest to least is on. In Japanese usage it is translated intoEnglish by a whole series of words from ‘obligations’ and‘loyalty’ to ‘kindness’ and ‘love,’ but these words distort itsmeaning. If it really meant love or even obligation the Jap-anese would certainly be able to speak of on to their chil-dren, but that is an impossible usage of the word. Nor doesit mean loyalty, which is expressed by other Japanese words,which are in no way synonymous with on. On is in all itsuses a load, an indebtedness, a btuden, which one carriesas best one may. A man receives on from a superior and theact of accepting an on from any man not definitely one’ssuperior or at least one’s equal gives one an uncomfortablesense of inferiority. When they say, ‘I wear an on to him*

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The Qjryscmtbmmn and the Sawd

th^ are saying, *I carry a load of obl%ations to him,* andthey call this creditor, this benefactor, their *on man.*‘Remonbaing one*s on* may be a pure outpouring of re-dprocal devotion. A little story in a Japanese second-gradeschool reader entitled ‘Don*t forget the on* uses the wordin this sense. It is a story for little children in thdr ethicsclasses.

Hachi is a cute dog. As soon as he was bora he was takenaway by a stranger and was loved like a child of the house.For that reason, even his weak body became healthy andwhen his master went to his work every morning, he wouldaccompany him (master) to the street car station and inthe evening around the time when he (master) came home,he went again up to the station to meet him.

In due time, the master passed away. Hachi, whether heknew of this or not, kept looking for his master every day.Going to the usual station he would look to see if his masterwas in the crowd of people who came out whenever thestreet car arrived.

In this way days and months passed by. Oneyear passed,two years passed, three years passed, even when ten yearshad passed, the aged Hachi’s figure can be seen every day mfront of the station, still looking for his master.

The moral of this little tale is loyalty which is only an-other name for love. A son who cares de^ly for his mothercan speak of not forgetting the on he has received from hismother and mean that he has for her Hachi’s single-mindeddevotion to his master. The term, however, refers specifi-cally not to his love, but to aU that his mother did for himas a baby, her sacrifices when he was a boy, all that she hasdone to further his interests as a man, all that he owes herfrom the mere fkct that she exists. It implies a return upon

loo

this inddjtedaess and therefore it means love. But the pri-mary meaning is the debt, whereas we think of love assomething freely ^ven unfettered by obligation.

On is always used in this sense of limitless devotion whoiit is used of one’s first and greatest indebtedness, one’s ‘Im-perud on' This is one’s debt to the Emperor, which oneshould receive with unfathomable gratitude. It would beimpossible, they feel, to be glad of one’s country, of one’slife, of one’s great and small concerns without thinking alsoof receiving diese benefits. In all Japanese history this ulti-mate person among living men to whom one was indebtedwas the highest superior within one’s horizon. It has beenat different periods the local seigneur, the feudal lord, andthe Shogun. Today it is the Emperor. Which superior itwas is not nearly so significant as the centuries-long pri-macy in Japanese habit of ‘r^embering the on' ModemJapan has used every means to center this sentiment uponthe Emperor. Every partiality they have for their ovra wayof living increases each man’s Imperial on; every cigarettedistributed to the Army on the front lines in the ^nperor’sname during the war underscored the on each soldier worefor him; every sip of sake doled out to them before goinginto battle was a further Imperial on. Every kamikaze pilotof a suicide plane was, they said, repaying his Imperial on;all the troops who, they claimed, died to a man defendingsome island of the Pacific were said to be disdiarging theirlimitless on to the Emperor.

A man wears an on also to lesser people than the Em-peror. There is of course the on one has received from one’sparents. This is the basis of the famous Orimtal filial pi^

loi

The Chrysmthemum md the Sword

which places parents in such a strategic position of authorityover their children. It is phrased in terms of the debt theirchildren owe th^ and strive to r^ay. It is therefore thechildren who must work hard at obedience rather than asin Germany—another nation where parents have authorityover their children—where the parents must work hard toexact and enforce this obedience. The Japanese are veryrealistic in their version of Oriental filial piety and theyhave a saying about on one receives from parents which canbe freely translated *Only after a person is himself a parentdoes he know how indebted he is to his own parents.’ Thatis, the parental on is the actual daily care and trouble towhich fathers and mothers are put. The Japanese limitationof ancestor veneration to recent and remembered forebearsbrin^ this emphasis on actual dependency in childhoodvery much to the fore in their thinking, and of course it isa very obvious truism in any culture that every man andwoman was once a helpless infant who would not have sur-vived without parental care; for years until he was an adulthe was provided with a home and food and clothing. Japa-nese feel strongly that Americans minimize all this, andthat, as one writer says, ‘In the United States rememberingon to parents is hardly more than being good to your fatherand mother.’ No person can leave on to his children, ofcourse, but devoted care of one’s children is a return onone’s indebtedness to one’s parents when one was oneselfhelpless. One makes part payment on on to one’s own par-ents by giving equally good or better rearing to one’s chil-dren. The obligations one has to one’s children are merelysubsumed under ‘on to one’s parents.’

Debtor to the Ages md the World

Onehasparticularontoo toone’s teacher and to one’smas*ter {rmhi). They have both helped bring one along the wayand one wears an on to them which may at some futuretime make it necessary to accede to some request of theirswh^ they are in trouble or to give preference, perhaps to ayoung relative of theirs, after they are dead. One shouldgo to great lengths to pay the obligation and time does notlessen the debt. It increases rather than decreases with theyears. It accumulates a kind of interest. An on to anyoneis a serious matter. As their common saying has it: ‘Onenever returns one ten-thousandth of an on.' It is a heavyburden and ‘the power of the on' is regarded as alwaysrigihtly overriding one’s mere personal preferences.

The smooth working of this ethics of indebtedness de-pends upon each man’s being able to consider himself agreat debtor without feeling too much resentment in dis-charging the obligations he is under. We have already seenhow thoroughly hierarchal arrangements have been organ-ized in Japan. The attendant habits diligently pursued makeit possible for the Japanese to honor their moral indebt-edness to a degree that would not cross the mind of an Oc-cidental. This is easier to do if the superiors are regardedas well-wishers. There is interesting evidence from theirlanguage that superiors were indeed credited with being‘loving’ to their dependents. Ai means ‘love’ in Japan andit was this word ai which seemed to the missionaries of thelast century the only Japanese word it was possible to usein their translations of the Christian concept of ‘love.’ Theyused it in translating the Bible to mean God’s love for manand man’s love for God. But ai means specifically the love

103

The Qrrysimtbefmim cmd the Smrd

of a superior for his dependents. A Westerns mi^t per-haps feel that it meant ‘paternalism,’ but in its Japaneseusa^ it means more than that It was a word that meantaffection. In contemporary Japan m is still used in thisstrict sense of love from above to below, but perhaps partlydue to the Christian usage, and certainly as a consequenceof official efforts to break down caste distinctions, it maytoday be used also of love between equals.

In spite of all cultural alleviations, however, it is never-theless a fortunate circumstance in Japan when on is ‘worn*with no offense. People do not like to shoulder casually thedebt of gratitude which on impUes. They are always talkingof ‘making a person wear an on’ and often the nearest trans-lation is ‘imposing upon another’—though in the UnitedStates ‘imposing’ means demanding something of another,and in Japan the phrase means giving him something ordoing him a kindness. Casual favors from relative strangersare the ones most resented, for with nei^bors and in old-established hierarchal relationships a man knows and hasaccepted the complications of on. But with mere acquaint-ances and near-equals men chafe. They would prefer toavoid getting entangled in all the consequences of on. Thepassivity of a street crowd in Japan when an accident occursis not just lack of initiative. It is a recognition that any non-official interference would make the recipient wear an on.One of th6 best-known laws of pre-Meiji days was: ‘Shoulda quarrel or dispute occur, one shall not unnecessarily med-dle with it,’ and a poson who helps another person in suchsituations in Japan without clear authorization is suspectedof taking an imjustifiable advantage. The fact that the re-

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Debtor to the ^es and the Worlddpient will be greatly indebted to him acts, not to makeany man anxious to availhimself of this advantage to him-sehT but to make him very chary of helping. Especially inunformalized situations the Japanese are extremely waryof getting oitangled in on. Even the offer of a dgarette froma person with whom a man has previously had no ties makeshim uncomfortable and the polite way for him to expressthanks is to say: ‘Oh, this poisonous feeling (kino dokuy‘It’s easier to bear,’ a Japanese said to me, ‘if you come rightout and acknowledge how bad it makes you feel You hadnever thought of doing anything for him and so you areshamed by receiving the on.' *Kino doku' therefore is trans-lated sometimes as ‘Thankyou,’i.e.,for thedgarettes, some-times as ‘I’m sorry,’ i.e., for the indebtedness, sometimesas ‘I feel like a heel,’ i.e., because you beat me to this act ofgenerosity. It means all of these and none.

The Japanese have many ways of saying ‘Thank you’which express this same uneasiness in receiving on. Theleast ambivalent, the phrase that has been adopted in mod-em city department stores, means ‘Oh, this difficult thing’(arigato). The Japanese usually say that this ‘difficult thing’isxthe great and rare benefit die customer is bestowing onthe store in buying. It is a compliment. It is used also whenone receives a present and in coundess circumstances. Otherjust as common words for ‘thank you’ refer like kino dokuto the difficulty of receiving. Shopkeepers who run theirown shops most commonly say literally: ‘Oh, this doesn’tend,’ (sumimas&i), i.e., ‘I have received on from you andunder modem economic arrangements I can never repayyou; I am sorry to be placed in such a position.’ In English

105

The Cbryscmbeffmn cmd the Swordsumimasen is translatied "thank you,’ Tm grateful,’ orTm sorry,’ ‘I apologize.’ You use the word, for instance,in preference to all other thank-you’s if anyone chases thehat you lost on a windy street. When he returns it to youpoliteness requires that you acknowledge your own internaldiscomfort in receiving. ‘He is offering me an on and I neversaw him before. I never had a chance to offer him the firston. I feel guilty about it but I feel better if I apologize tohim. Sumimasen is probably thecommonest word for thank-you in Japan. I tell him that I recognize that I have re-ceived on from him and it doesn’t end with the act of tak-ing back my hat But what can I do about it? We arestrangers.’

The same attitude about indebtedness is expressed evenmore strongly from the Japanese standpoint by anotherword for thank-you, katajikenai, which is written with thecharacter ‘insult,’ ‘loss of face.’ It means both ‘I am in-sulted’ and ‘I am grateful.’ The all-Japanese dictionary saysthat by this term you say that by the extraordinary benefityou have received you are shamed and insulted because youare not worthy of the benefaction. In this phrase you ex-plicitly acknowledge your shame in receiving on, and shame,haji, is, as we shall see, a thing bitterly felt in Japan. Kata-Jikenai, ‘I am insulted,’ is still used by conservative shop-keepers in thanking their customers, and customers use itwhen they ask to have their purchases charged. It is theword found constantly in pre-Meiji romances. A beautifulgirl of low class who serves in the court and is chosen bythe lord as his mistress, says to him Katajikenai", that is, ‘Iam shamed in xmworthily accepting this on; I am awed by

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Debtor to the Ages and the Worldyour gradousness.’ Or the samurai in a feudal brawl whois let go scot-free by the authorities says Katajikenai, 1 havelost face that I accept this on; it is not prop^ for me toplace myself in such a humble position; I am sorry; 1humbly thank you.’

These phrases tell, better than any generalizations, the. ‘power of the on.’ One wears it constantly with ambiva-lence. In accepted structuralized relations the great indebt-edness it implies often stimulates a man only to put for-ward in repayment all that is in him. But it is hard to be adebtor and resentments come easily. How easily is de-scribed vividly in the famous novel Botchan by one of Ja-pan’s best-known novelists, Soseki Natsume. Botchan, thehero, is a Tokyo boy who is teaching school for the firsttime in a small town in the provinces. He finds very soonthat he despises most of his fellow teachers, certainly hedoes not get along with them. But there is one young teacherhe warms to and while they are out together this new-foundfriend whom he calls Porcupine treats him to a glass of icewater. He pays one sen and a half for it, something like one-fifth of a cent.

Not long afterward another teacher reports to Botchanthat Porcupine has spoken slightingly of him. Botchan be-lieves the trouble-maker’s report and is instantly concernedabout the on he had received from Porcupine.

‘To wear an on from such a fellow even if it is for so tri-fling a thing as ice water, affects my honor. One sen or halfa sen, I sh^ not die in peace if I wear this on... The factthat I receive somebody’s on without protesting is an act ofgood-will, taking him at his par value as a decent fellow.

107

Instead of insisting on paying for my own ice water, I todkthe on and expressed gratitude. That is an acknowledge-ment which no amount of money can purchase. I haveneither title nor official position but I am an independentfellow, and to have an independent fellow accept the favorof on is far more than if he ^ve a million yen in letom. I letPorcupine blow one sen and a half,and gave him my thankswhich is more costly than a million yen.’

The next day he throws a sen and a half on Porcupine’sdesk, for only after having ceased to wear the on for theglass of ice water can he begin to settle the current issue be-tween them: the insulting remark he has been told of. Thatmay involve blows, but the on has to be wiped out first be-cause the on is no longer between fri^ds.

Such acute sensitivity about trifles, such painful vulner-abiliQr occurs in American records of adolescent gangs andin case-histories of neurotics. But this is Japanese virtue.Not many Japanese would cany the matter to this extreme,they think, but of course many people are lax. Japanesecommentators writing about Botchan describe him as ’hot-tempered, pure as crystal, a champion of the riglit.’ Theauthor too identifies himself with Botchan and the characteris indeed always recognized by critics as a portrait of him-self. The story is a tde of high virtue because the personwho receives on can lift himself out of the debtor’s posi-tion only by regarding his gratitude as worth ‘a million yen’and acting accordingly. He cm take it only from ‘a decentfellow.’ In Botchan’s angm* he contrasts his on to Porcupinewith an on he had received long since from his old nurse.She was blindly partial to him and felt that none of the restof his family appreciated him. She used to bring him se-

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Debtxir u> the Ages and the Worldcretfy litde gifts of candy and colored pencils and <»icegave him three yen. *Her constant attention to me chilledme to the marrow.’ But though he was ‘insulted’ at the offerof the three yen he had accepted it as a loan and he hadnever repaid it in all the years between. But that, he says tohimself, contrasting the way he feels about his on to Porcu-pine, was because regard her as part of myself* This is theclue to Japanese reactions to on. They can be borne, withwhatever mixed feelings, so long as the 'on man’ is actuallyoneself; he is fixed in ‘my’ hierarchal scheme, or he is doingsomething I can imagine myself doing, like returning myhat on a windy day, or he is a person who admires me.Once these identifications break down, the o/i is a festeringsore. However trivial the debt incurred it is virtue to resentit

Eveiy Japanese knows that if one makes the on too heavyunder any circumstances whatsoever one will get into trou-ble. A good illustration is from the ‘Consulting Depart-ment’ of a recent magazine. The Department is a kind of‘Advice to the Lovelorn’ and is a feature of the Tokyo Psy-choarudytic Journal. The advice offered is hardly Freudiwbut it is thorou^y Japanese. An elderly man wrote ask-ing for counsel:

1 am the father of three boys and one My wife died

sixteen years ago. Because I was sorry for my children, Idid not remarry, and my children considered this fact asmy virtue.Now my children are all married. Eight years agowhen my son married, I retired to a house a few blocksaway. It is embarrassing to state, but for three years I haveplayed with a girl in the dark [a prostitute under contract ina public house]. She told me her cumumtances and I felt109

Sony for ha. I bou^t her freedom for a smll sum, tookher to my home, taught etiquette, and kept her as amaid. Her sense of responsibility is strong and she is admi-rably economicaL Howeva, my sons and daughter-in-lawand my daughter and son-in-law look down on me for thisand treat me as a strangrar. I do not blame them; it is myfault

The parents of the girl did not seem to understand thesituation and since she is of marriageable age they wrotewanting her returned. I have met the parents and explainedthe circumstances. They are very poor but are not gold-diggers. They have promised to consider her as dead and toconsent that she continue in her situation. She herself wantsto remain by my side till my death. But our ages are asfather and ^u^ter and therefore I sometimes considersending her home. My children consider that she is aftermy property.

I have a chronic illness and I think I have only one ortwo years to live. I would appreciate your showing me whatcourse to take. Let me say in conclusion that though thegirl was once only a ‘girl in the dark,’ that was because ofcircumstances. Her ci^acter is good and her parents arenot golddiggers.

The Japanese doctor regards this as a clear case of theold man’s having put too heavy an on upon his children.He says:

You have described an event of daOy occurrence....

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I gather fromyour letter that you are asking from me the answer youwant, and that this makes me havesome antagonism to you.I of course appredate your long unmarriedness, but youhave used this to make your children wear the on and also tojustify yourself in your present line of action. I don’t likethis. I’m not saying that you are sly, but your personality isno

very weak. It would have been better to have explained toyour children that you had to live with a woman,—if youcouldn’t help having one,—and not to have let them wearthe on (for your remaining unmarried). The children natu-rally are against you because you have laid such emphasis onthis on. After all human beings'don’t lose their sexual desiresand you can’t help having desire. But one tries to overcomethe desire. Your children expected you to because they ex-pected you to live up to the ideal they had formed of you.On the contrary, they were betrayed and I can see how theyfeel, though it is egoistic on their part. They are married andsexually satisfied and they’re selfish to deny this to theirfather. You’re thinking this way and your children theother way (as above). The two ways of thinking don’t meet.

You say that the girl and her parents are good people.That is what you want to think. One knows that people’sgood and evil depend on the circumstances, the situation,and because they are not at the moment seeking an advan-tage one can’t say they’re ‘good people.’ I think the girl’sparents are dumb to let her serve as concubine of a manabout to die. If they’re going to consider their daughter’sbeing a concubine, they ought to seek some profit or advan-tage from it. It’s only your fantasy to see it otherwise.

I don’t wonder the children are worried about the girl’sparents seeking some property; I really think they are. Thegirl is young and may not have this in mind, but her parentsshould have.

There are two courses open to you:

1) As ‘a complete man’ (one so well rounded that noth-ing is impossible to him) cut off the girl and settlewith her. But I don’t think you could do that; yourhuman feelings wouldn’t permit.

2) ‘Come back to being a common man’ (give up yourpretensions) and break up the children’s iUusionabout you as an ideal man.

Ill

The Chryscmtbermm mi the Sword

About the property, make a will immediately and statewhat the girl’s and tte children’s shares are.

In conclusion, remembo' that you are old, you are get-ting childish, as I can see by your handwriting. Your think-ing is anodonal rather than rational. You wantthis girlasamother substitute, though you phrase this as wanting tosave her from the gutter. I don’t think any infant can live ifits mother leaves—therefore, I advise you to takethe secondcourse.

This letter says several things about on. A person oncehaving elected to make even his children wear an extraheavy on can change his course of action only at his ownrisk. He should know that he will suffer for it. In addition,no matter what the cost to him of the on his children re-ceived, he may not lay it up for himself as merit to be drawnupon; it is wrong to use it ‘to justify yourself in your presentline of action.’ His children are ‘naturally’ resentful; be-cause their father started something he couldn’t maintain,they were ‘betrayed.’ It is foolish for a father to imaginethat just because he has devoted himself entirely to themwhile they needed his care, the now-grown children aregoing to be extra solicitous for him. Instead th^ are con-scious only of the on they have incurred and ‘naturally theyare against you.’

Americans do not judge such a situation in this light. Wethink that a father who dedicated himself to his motherlesschildren should in later years merit some warm spot in theirhearts, not that they are ‘naturally against him.’ In order toappreciate it as the Japanese see it, we can, however, regardit as a financial transaction for in that sphere we have com-parable attitudes. It would be perfectly possible for us to

II2

Debtor to the Ages and the World

say to a father who has lent mon^ to his children in a for-mal transaction which they have to live up to with interest,*th^ are natiually against you/ In these terms too we canunderstand why a person who has accepted a cigarettespeaks of his ‘shame’ instead of saying a straightforward‘Thank you.’ We can understand the resentment with whichthey speak of a person’s making another wear an on. We canat least get a clue to Botchan’s grandiose magnification ofthe debt of a glass of ice water. But Americans are not ac-customed to applying these financial criteria to a casualtreat at the soda counter or to the years’ long devotion ofa father to his motherless children or to the devotion of afaithful dog like Hachi. Japan does. Love, kindness, gen-erosity, which we value just in proportion as they are givenwithout strings attached, necessarily must have their stringsin Japan. And every such act received makes one a debtor.As their common saying has it: ‘It requires (an impossibledegree of) inborn generosity to receive on.’

Repaying One-Ten-Thousandtb

ON IS A Debt and must be repaid, but in Japan all repay-ments are regarded as falling into another category entirely.The Japanese find our morals, which confuse these two cat-egories in our ethics and in our neutral words like obliga-tion and duty, as strange as we would find financial deal-ings in some tribe whose language did not separate ‘debtor’from ‘creditor’ in money transactions. To them the primaryandever-present indebtedness called on is worlds apart fromthe active,,bowstring-taut repayment which is named in awhole series of other concepts. A man’s indebtedness (on)is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedi-cates himself actively to the job of gratitude.

It will help Americans to understand this matter of vir-tue in Japan if we keep in mind the parallel with financialtransactions and think of it as having behind it the sanc-tions against defaulting which property transactions havein America. Here we hold a man to his bond. We do notcount extenuating circumstances when a man takes whatis not his. We do not allow it to be a matter of impulsewhether or not a man pays a debt to a bank. And the debtoris just as responsible for the accrued interest as he is for the

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Repaying One-Ten-Thommdtb

original money he borrowed. Patriotism and love of ourfamilies we regard as quite different from all this. Love,with us, is a matter of the heart and is best when freelygiven. Patriotism, in the sense of putting our country’s in-terests above everything else, is regarded as rather quixoticor certainly as not compatible with fallible human natureimtil the United States is attack6d by the armed forces ofan enemy. Lacking the basic Japanese postulate of greatindebtedness automatically incurred by every man andwoman bom, we think that a man should pity and help hisneedy parents, should not beat his wife, and should providefor his children. But these things are not quantitatively reck-oned like a debt of money and they are not rewarded assuccess in business is. In Japan they are regarded quite asfinancial solvency is in America and the sanctions behindthem are as strong as they are in the United States behindbeing able to pay one’s bills and the interest on one’s mort-gage. They are not matters that must be attended to only atcrises such as a proclamation of war or the serious illnessof a parent; they are one’s constant shadow like a smallNew York farmer’s worry about his mortgage or a WallStreet financier’s as he watches the market climb when hehas sold short.

The Japanese divide into distinct categories, each withits different rules, those repayments on on which are limit-less both in amount and in duration and those which arequantitatively equivalent and come due on special occa-sions. The limitless repayments on indebtedness are calledgimu and they say of it: ‘One never repays one ten-thou-sandth of (this) on.' One’s gimu groups together two dififer-

115

SCHEMATIC TABLE OF

JAPANESE OBUOATIONS AND THEIR RECIPROCALS

1. On: obligations passively incurred. One ‘receives an on*; one‘wearsanoii»’ i.e.» on are obligations from the point of view of the passive re-cipient

ko on. On received from the Emperor.

oya on. On received from parents.

mski no on. On received from one*s lord.

shi no on. On received from one’s teacher.

on received in all contacts in the course of one’s life.

Note : All these persons from whom one receives on becomeone’s on Jin, ^on man.*

II. Reciprocals of on. One ‘pays* these debts, one ‘returns these obligations*to the on man, i.e., these are obligations regarded from the point of viewof active repayment.

A. Gimu. The fullest repayment of these obligations is still no more

than partial and there is no time limit.

chu. Duty to the Emperor, the law, Japan.

ko. Duty to parents and ancestors (by implication, todescendants).

nimmu. Duty to one’s work.

B. Giri, These debts are regarded as having to be repaid with mathe-

matical equivalence to the favor received and there are timelimits.

1. CiW-to-the-world.

Duties to liege lord.

Duties to affinal family.

Duties to non-related persons due to on received, e.g.,on a gift of money, on a favor, on work contrib-uted (as a ‘work party’).

Duties to persons not sufficiently closely related(aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces) due to on receivednot from them but from common ancestors.

2. Gi>’/-to-one’s-name. This is a Japanese version of dieEhre,

One’s duty to ‘clear’ one’s reputation of insult orimputation of failure, i.e., the duty of feuding orvendetta. (N.B. This evening of scores is not r^-oned as aggression.)

One’s duty to admit no (professional) failure orignofance.

One’s duty to fulfill the Japanese proprieties, e.g.,observing all respect behavior, not living aboveone’s station in life, curbing all displays of emotionon inappropriate occasions, etc.

Il6

Repaying One-Ten-Tbousandtbeat types of obligations: repayment of one’s on to parents,ixdiidi is ko, and r^ymmt of one’s on to the Emperor,which is chu. Both Uiese obligations of gimu ate compul-sory and are man’s universal lot; indeed Japan’s elemni-taiy schooling is called ‘gimu education’ because no otherword so adequately renders the meaning of ‘required.’ Theaccidents of life may modify the details of one’s gimu, butgimu is automatically incumbent upon all mra and is aboveall fortuitous circumstances.

Both forms of gimu are unconditional In thus makingthese virtues absolute Japan has departed from the Chineseconcepts of duty to the State and of filial piety. The Chineseethical system has been repeatedly adopted in Japan eversince the seventh century and chu and ko are Chinese words.But the Chinese did not make these virtues unconditional.China postulates an overriding virtue which is a conditionof loyalty and piety. It is usually translated ‘benevolence’(Jen) but it means almost everytiiing Occidentals mean bygood interpersonal relations. A parent must have Jen. Ifa ruler does not have it it is righteous for his people to rebelagainst him. It is a condition upon which one’s gift of loy-alty is predicated. The Emperor’s tenure and that of hisofiSdals depended on their doing jen. Chinese ethics appliesthis touchstone in all human relations.

This Chinese ethical postulate was never accepted inJapan. The great Japanese student, Kanichi Asakawa,speaking of this contrast in medieval times, says: ‘In Japanthese ideas were obviously incompatible with her imperialsovereignty and were therefore never accepted in entirety

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

even as theories.’* In fact jen became in Japan an outlawvirtue and was entirely demoted from the higb estate it hadin Chinese ethics. In Japan it is pronounced jin (it is writtenwith the same character the Chinese use) and ‘doing jin*or its variant ‘doing jingi’ is very far indeed from being avirtue required even in tibe highest quarters. It has been sothoroughly banished from their ethical ^tem that it meanssomething done outside the law. It may indeed be a praise-worthy act like putting one’s name on a subscription listfor public charity or granting mercy to a criminal. But it isemphatically a work of supererogation. It means that theact was not required of you.

‘Doing jingi’ is used in another sense of ‘outside the law,’too; it is used of virtue among gangsters. The honor amongthieves of the raiding and slashing swashbucklers of theTokugawa period—they were one-sword men as contrastedwith the two-sworded swashbuckling samurai—was ‘doingjingi’; when one of these outlaws asked shelter of anotherwho was a stranger, that stranger, as an insurance againstfuture vengeance from the petitioner’s gang, would grantit and thereby ‘do jingi.’ In modem usage ‘doing jingi’ hasfallen even lower. It occurs frequently in discussions of pun-ishable acts: ‘Common laborers,’ their newspapers say,‘still do jingi and they must be pxmished. Police should seeto it that jingi is stopped in the holes and comers where itflourishes in Japan.’ They mean of course the ‘honor amongthieves’ which flourishes in racketeering and gangsterdom.Especially the small labor contractor in modem Japan issaidjto‘do jingi’ when,like the Italian labor padroneatAmer-

* Documents of Iriki, 1929, p. 380, n. 19.

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Repaying One-Ten-Tbousandth

icaa ports at the turn of the century, he enters into outside-the-law relationships with unskilled laborers and gets richoff fanning them out at a profit. The degradation of theChinese concept of Jen could hardly go farther.* The Jap-anese, having entirely reinterpreted and demoted the crucialvirtue of the Chinese system and put nothing else in itsplace that might make gimu conditional, filial piety becamein Japan a duty one had to fulfill even if it meant condon-ing a parent’s vice and injustice. It could be abrogated onlyif it came into conflict with one’s obligation to the Emperor,but certainly not when one’s parent was unworthy or whenhe was destroying one’s happiness.

In one of their modem movies a mother comes uponsome money her married son, a village schoolmaster, hascollected from the villagers to redeem a yoimg schoolgirlabout to be sold by her parents to a hoxise of prostitutionbecause they are starving in a rural famine. The schoolmas-ter’s mother steals the money from her son although she isnot poor; she runs a respectable restaurant of her own. Herson knows that she has taken it but he has to shoulder theblame himself. His wife discovers the truth, leaves a suicidenote taking all responsibility for the loss of the money, anddrowns herself and their baby. Publicity follows but themother’s part in the tragedy is not even called in question.The son has fulfilled the law of filial piety and goes offalone to Hokkaido to build his character so that he canstrengthen himself for like tests in coming years. He is a

♦ When the Japanese use the phrase *knowing jin,’ they are somewhatcloser to Chinese usage. Buddhists exhort people to ’know jin* and thismeans to be merciful and benevolent. But, as the all-Japanese dictionarysays, ’knowing jin refers to ideal man rather than to acts.’

up

The Chryscatthenmm and the Swordvirtuous hero. My Japanese companion vigorously {»‘o-tested my obvious American verdict that the person respon-sible for the whole tragedy was the thieving mother. Filialpiety, he said, was often in conflict with other virtues. Ifthe hero had been wise enough, he might have found a wayto reconcile them without loss of self-respect. But it wouldhave been no possible occasion for self-respect if he blamedhis mother even to himself.

Both novels and real life are full of the heavy duties offilial piety after a yoimg man is married. Except in ‘modan*(modem) circles it is taken for granted in respectable fami-lies that the parents select their son’s wife, usually throughthe good offices of go-betweens. The family, not the son, ischiefly concerned about the matter of a good selection, notonly because of the money transactions involved but be-cause the wife will be entered in the family genealogy andwill perpetuate the family line through her sons. It is thecustom for the go-betweens to arrange a seemingly casualmeeting between the two young principals in the presenceof their parents but they do not converse. Sometimes theparents choose to make for their son a marriage of con-venience in which case the girl’s father will profit financiallyand the boy’s parents by alliance with a good family. Some-times they choose to select the girl for her personally ac-ceptable qualities. The good son’s repayment of parental ondoes not allow him to question his parents’ decision. Afterhe is nuuried his repayment continues. Especially if the sonis the family heir he will live with his parents and it is pro-verbial that the mother-in-law does not like her daughter-in-law. She finds all manner of fault with her, and she may

Repaying One-Ten-Thmsandthsend her away and break up the marriage even when theyoung husband is happy with his wife and asks nothingbetter than to live with her. Japanese novels and personalhistories are just as apt to stress the suffering of the hus-band as of the wife. The husband of course is doing ko insubmitting to the break-up of his marriage.

One ‘modan’ Japanese now in America took into herown rooms in Tokyo a pregnant young wife whose mother-in-law had forced her to leave her grieving young husband.She was sick and] brokenhearted but she dhd not blame herhusband. Gradually she became interested in the baby shewas soon to bear. But when the child was bom, the mothercame accompanied by her silent and submissive son toclaim the baby. It belonged of course to the husband’sfamily and the mother-in-law took it away. She disposed ofit immediately to a foster home.

All this is on occasion included in filial piety, and is properrepayment of indebtedness to parents. In the United Statesall such stories are taken as instances of outside interferencewith an individual’s rightful happiness. Japan cannot con-sider this interference as ‘outside’ because of her postulateof indebtedness. Such stories in Japan, like our stories ofhonest men who pay off their creditors by incredible per-sonal hardships, are tales of the truly virtuous, of personswho have earned their right to respect themselves, who haveproved themselves strong enough to accept proper personalfrustrations. Such frustrations, however virtuous, may nat-urally leave a residue of resentment and it is well worth not-ing ttot the Asiatic proverb about the Hateful Things, whichin Burma, for instance, lists ‘fire, water, thieves, governors

I2I

The Cbrysmthemum and the Smrdand malicious men,’ in Japan itemizes ’earthquake, thunderand the Old Man (head of the house; the father).’

Filial piety does not, as in China, encompass the line ofancestors for centuries back nor the vast proliferating liv-ing clan descended from them. Japan’s veneration is of re-cent ancestors. A gravestone must be rdettered annuallyto keep its identity and when living persons no longer re-member an ancestor his grave is neglected. Nor are tabletsfor them kept in the family shrine. The Japanese do notvalue piety except to those remembered in the flesh and theyconcentrate on the here and now. Many writers have com-mented on their lack of interest in disembodied speculationor in forming images of objects not present, and their ver-sion of filial piety serves as another instance of this whenit is contrasted with China’s. The greatest practical im-portance of their version, however, is in the way it limitsthe obligations of ko among living persons.

For filial piety, both in China and Japan, is far more thandeference and obedience to one’s own parents and fore-bears. All that care of the child which Westerners phrase asbeing contingent on maternal instinct and on paternal re-sponsibility, th^ phrase as contingent on piety to one’sancestors. Japan is very explicit about it: one repays one’sdebts to one’s forebears by passing on to one’s children thecare one oneself received. There is no word to express ‘ob-ligation of the father to his children’ and all such duties arecovered by ko to the parents and their parents. Filial pietyenjoins all the numerous responsibilities which rest uponthe head of a family to provide for his children, educate hissons and yotmger brothers, see to the management of the

122

Repaying One-Ten-Tbousmdtb

estate, give shelter to relatives who need it and a thousandsimilar everyday duties. The drastic limitation of the insti-tutionalized family in Japan sharply limits the number ofpersons toward whom any man has this gimu. If a son diesit is an obligation of filial piety to bear Ae burden of sup-porting his widowand her children. So also is the occasionalproviding of shelter to a widowed daughter and her family.But it is not a gimu to take in a widowed niece; if one doesso, one is fulfilling a quite different obligation. It is gimu torear and educate your own children. But if one educates anephew, it is customary to adopt him legally as one’s ownson; it is not a gimu if he retains the status of nephew.

Filial piety does not require that assistance even to one’simmediate needy relatives in the descending generations begiven with deference and loving-kindness. Yoimg widowsin the family are called ‘cold-rice relatives,’ meaning thatthey eat rice when it is cold, are at the beck and call of everymember of the inner family, and must accept with deepobedience any decisions about their affairs. They are poorrelations, along with their children, and when in particularcases they fare better than this it is not because the head ofthe family owes them this better treatment as a gimu. Noris it a gimu incumbent upon brothers to cany out theirmutual obligations with warmth; men are often praised forhaving fully lived up to obligations to a younger brotherwhen it is freely admitted that the two hate each other likepoison.

Greatest antagonism is between mother-in-law anddaughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law comes into the house-hold as a stranger. It is her duty to learn how her mother-

123

The Chrysemthefmm and the Sword

in-law likes to have things done and then to leam to doth«n. In many cases the mother-in-law quite explicitly takesthe position tihat the young wife is not nearly good enoughfor her son and in other cases it can be inferred that she hasconsiderable jealousy. But, as the Japanese saying goes,‘Thehated daughter-in-law keeps on bearing beloved grand-sons’ and ko is therefore always present. The yoimg dau^-ter-in-law is on the surface endlessly submissive but genera-tion after generation these mild and charming creaturesgrow up into mothers-in-law as exacting and as critical astheir own mothers-in-law were before thm. They caimotexpress their aggressions as young wives but they do nottherefore become genuinely mild human beings. In laterlife they turn, as it were, an accumulated weight of resent-ment against their own daughters-in-law. Japanese girlstoday op^y talk about the great advantage of marryinga son who is not an heir so that they will not have to livewith a dominating mother-in-law.

To ‘work for ko’ is not necessarily to achieve loving-kindness in the family. In some cultures this is the crux ofthe moral law in the extended family. But not in Japan. Asone Japanese writer says, ‘Just because he esteems thefamily hig|hly, the Japanese has anything but a high estima-tion of the individual members or of the family tie betweenthem.’* That is not always true, of cotu^, but it gives thepicture. The emphasis is upon obligations and repaying thedebt and the elders take great responsibili^ upon them-selves, but one of these responsibilities is to see to it thatthose below them make the requisite sacrifices. If they re-

* Nohara, K., The True Face of Japan, London, 1936, p. 45.

114

Repaying One^Ten-Tbousandthsent these, it makes little difference. They must ob^ tbdrelders’ dedsions or they have failed in gimu.

The marked resentments between members of the familywhich are so ^ical of filial piety in Japan are absent in theother great obligation which like filial piety is a gimu:feal^ to the Emperor. Japanese statesmen planned well insecluding their Emperor as a Sacred Chief and in removinghim from the hurlyburly of life; only so in Japan could heserve to unify all people in imambivalent service to the State.It was not enough to make him a father to his people, forthe father in the household, despite aU the obligations ren-dered him, was a figure of whom one mi^t have ‘anythingbut a high estimation.’ The Emperor had to be a SacredFather removed from all secular considerations. A man’sfealty to him, chu, the supreme virtue, must become anecstatic contemplation of a fantasied Good Father un-tainted by contacts with the world. Early Meiji statesmoiwrote after they had visited the nations of the Occident thatin all these countries history was made by the conflict be-tween ruler and people and that this was imworthy of theSpirit of Japan. They returned and wrote into the Constitu-tion that the Ruler was to ‘be sacred and inviolable’ and notreckoned responsible for any acts of his Ministers. He wasto serve as supreme symbol of Japanese unity, not as re-sponsible head of a State. Since the Emperor had not servedas an executive ruler for some seven centuries it was simpleto perpetuate his back-stage role. Meiji statesmen neededonly to attach to him, in the minds of all Japanese, that un-conditional highest virtue, chu. In feudal Japan chu hadbeen obligation to the Secular Chief, the Shogun, and its

12$

The Chrysantbemmt and the SmrdIch:^ history warned Meiji statesmen what it was necessaryto do in the new dispensation to accomplish their objective,the spiritual unification of Japan. In those centuries the Sho-gun had be^ Generalissimo and chief administrator and inspite of the chu that was due him plots againsthis supremacyand against his life were frequent Fealty to him often cameinto conflict with obligations to one’s own feudal overlord,and the higher loyalty frequently was less compelling thanthe lower. Fealty to one’s own overlord was, after all, basedon face to face ties and fealty to the Shogun might wellseem cold in comparison. Retainers too fought in troubledtimes to unseat the Shogun and to establish their own feudallord in his place. The prophets and leaders of the MeijiRestoration had for a century fought against the TokugawaShogunate with the slogan that chu was due to the Emperorsecluded in the shadowy background, a figure whose linea-ments every person could draw for himself according to hisown desires. The Meiji Restoration was the victory for thisparty and it was precisely this shifting of chu from Shogunto symbolic Emperor which justified the use of the term‘restoration’ for the year 1868. The Emperor remained se-cluded. He invested Their Excellencies with authority buthe did not himself run the government or the army or per-sonally dictate policies. The same sort of advisors, thoughth^ WCTe better chosen, went on running the government.The real upheaval was in the spiritual realm, for chu be-came every man’s repayment to the Sacred Chief—highpriest and symbol of the unity and perpetuity of Japan.

The ease with which chu was transferred to the Emperorwas aided of course by the traditional folklore that the Im-

it6

Repaying One-Ten-Thousandth

perial House was descended from die Sun Goddess. Butthis folkloristic daim to divinity was not so cradal as West-erners thought it was. Cotainly Japanese intellectuals whoentirely rejected these claims did not therefore question chuto the Emperor, and even the mass of the populace who ac-cepted divine birth did not mean by that wiat Westernerswould mean. Kami, the word rmdered as ‘god,’meansliterally ‘head,’ i.e., pinnacle of the hierarchy. The Japanesedo not fix a great gulf between human and divine as Oc-cidentals do, and any Japanese becomes kami after death.Chu in the feudal eras had been due to heads of the hier-archy who had no divine qualifications. Far more impor-tant in transferring chu to the Emperor was the unbrokendynas^ of a single imperial house during the whole historyof Japan. It is idle for Westerners to complain that this con-tinuity was a hoax because the rules of succession did notconform to those of the royal families of England or ofGermany. The rules were Japan’s rules and according toher rules the succession had been unbroken ‘from ages eter-nal.’ Japan was no China with thirty-six different dynastiesin recorded history. She was a coimtry which, in all thechanges she had embraced, had never tom her soda! fabricin shreds; the pattou had been permanent It was this argu-ment, and not divine ancestry, which the anti-Tokugawaforces exploited during the hundred years before the Res-toration. They said that chu, which was due him who stoodat the apex of the hierarchy, was due the Emperor alone.They built him up as high priest of the nation and that roledoes not necessarily mean divinity. It was more crucial thandescent from a goddess.

117

The Qyrysemtbenmm and the Srpord

new laws, from street stop-lights to income taxes, are re-sented all over the country as interferences with individualliberty in one’s own alFairs. Federal regulations are doublysuspect for they interfere also with the freedom of the in-dividual state to make its own laws. It is felt that they areput over on the people by Washington bureaucrats andmany citizens regard the loudest outcry against these lawsas less than what is rightly due to their self-respect. TheJapanese judge therefore that we are a lawless people. Wejudge that they are a submissive people with no ideas ofdemocracy. It would be truer to say that the citizens’ self-respect, in the two countries, is tied up with different atti-tudes ; in our country it depends on his management of hisown affairs and in Japan it depends on repaying what heowes to accredited benefactors. Both arrangements havetheir own difftculties: ours is that it is difficult to get regula-tions accepted even when they are to the advantage of thewhole country, and theirs is that, in any language, it is diffi-cult to be in debt to such a degree that one’s whole life isshadowed by it. Every Japanese has probably at some pointinvented ways of living within the law and yet circumvent-ing what is asked of him. They also admire certain formsof violence and direct action and private revenge whichAmericans do not But these qualifications, and any othersthat can be urged, still do not bring in question the hold thatchu has upon the Japanese.

When Japan capitulated on August 14, 1945, the worldhad an almost unbelievable demonstration of its working.Many Westerners with experience and knowledge of Japanhad held that it would be impossible for her to surrender;

130

Eepayir^ One-Tm-Thousmdth

it would be naive, they insisted, to imagine that her armiesscattered over Asia and the Pacific Islands would peace-fully yield up their arms. Many of Japan’s armed forces hadsuffered no local defeat and they were convinced of theri^teousness of their cause. The home islands, too, werefull of bitter-enders and an occupying army, its advanceguard being necessarily small, would run the risk of mas-sacre when it moved beyond range of naval guns. Duringthe war the Japanese had stopped at nothing and they are awarlike people. Such American analysts reckoned withoutchu. The Emperor spoke and the war ceased. Before hisvoice went upon the radio bitter opponents had thrown acordon around the palace and tried to prevent the proclama-tion. But, once read, it was accepted. No field commanderin Manchiuia or Java, no Tojo in Japan, put himself in op-position. Our troops landed at the airfields and were greetedwith courtesy. Foreign correspondents, as one of themwrote, might land in the morning fingering their small armsbut by noon they had put these aside and by evening theywere shopping for trinkets. The Japanese were now ‘easingthe Emperor’s heart’ by following the ways of peace; aweek earlier it had been by dedicating themselves to repulsethe barbarian even with bamboo spears.

There was no mystery about it except to those Western-ers who could not grant how various are the emotions thatsway men’s conduct. Some had proclaimed that there wasno alternative to practical extermination. Some had pro-claimed that Japan could save itself only if the liberals seizedpower and overthrew the government Either of these anal-yses made sense in terms of a Western nation fighting an aU-

131

The Cbrysantbeimm and the Swordout and popularly supported war. Th^ were wrong, how-ever, because they attributed to Japan courses of actionuitidi are essentially Occidental. Some Western prophetsstill thought after months of peaceful occupation that allwas lost because no Western-type revolution had occurredor because ‘the Japanese did not know they were defeated.*This is good Occidoital social philosophy based on Occi-dental standards of what is right and proper. But Japan isnot the Ocdd^t. She did not use that last strength of Occi-dental nations: revolution. Nor did she use sullen sabotageagainst the enemy’s occupying army. She used her ownstrength: the ability to demand of herself as chu the enor-mous price of unconditional surrender before her fightingpower was broken. In her own eyes this enormous paymentnevertheless bought something she supronely valued: theright to say that it was the Emperor who had given the ordereven if that order was capitulation. Even in defeat the high-est law was still chu.

The Repayment ^Hardest to Bear"

‘Gnu,* runs the Japanese saying, is ‘hardest to bear.’ Aperson must repay giri as he must repay gimu, but it is aseries of obligations of a different color. Thore is no possibleEnglish equivalent and of all the strange categories ofmoral obligations which anthropologists find in the cultureof the world, it is one of the most curious. It is specificallyJapanese. Both chu and ko Japan shares with China andin spite of the changes she has made in these concepts th^have certain family likeness to moral imperatives familiarin other Eastern nations. But giri she owes to no ChineseConfucianism and to no Oriental Buddhism. It is a Jap-anese category and it is not possible to understand theircourses of action without taking it into account No Jap-anese can talk about motivations or good repute or the di-lemmas which confront men and womoi in his hon»country without constantly speaking of giri.

To an Ocddental, giri includes a most heterogeneous listof obligations (see chart on p. 116) ranging from gratitudefor an old kindness to the duty of revenge. It is no wondorthat the Japanese have not tried to expound giri to West-

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The Chrysanthemum and the Swordemers; their own all-Japanese dictionaries can hardly de-fine it. One of these renders it—I translate:—‘righteousway; the road hiunan beings should follow; something onedoes unwillingly to forestall apology to the world.* Thisdoes not give a Westerner mudi idea of it but the word‘unwUin^y’ points up a contrast with gimu. Gimu, no mat-ter how many difficult demands it makes upon a person, isat least a group of duties he owes within the immediate cir-cle of his intimate family and to the Ruler who stands as asymbol for his country, his way of life, and his patriotism.It is due to persons because of strong ties drawn tight at hisvery birth. However unwilling specific acts of compliancemay be, gimu is never defined as ‘unwilling.’ But ‘repayinggiri’ is full of malaise. The difficxildes of being a debtor areat their maximum in ‘the circle of giri.’

Giri has two quite distinct divisions. What I shall call‘giri to the world’—literally ‘repaying giri’—is one’s obliga-tion to repay on to one’s fellows, and what I shall call ‘girito one’s name’ is the duty of keeping one’s name and repu-tation unspotted by any imputation, somewhat after thefashion of German ‘honor.’ Giri to the world can roughlybe described as the fulfillment of contractual relations—ascontrasted with gimu which is felt as the fulfillment of in-timate obligations to which one is bom. Thus giri includesall the duties one owes to one’s in-law’s family; gimu,those to one’s own immediate family. The term for father-in-law is father-in-giri; mother-in-law is mother-in-giri,and brother- and sister-in-law are brother-m-giri and sister-in-giri. This terminology is used either for spouse’s sibling orfor sibling’s spouse. Marriage in Japan is of course a con-

The Repayment ^Hardest to Bear’

tract between families and carrying out these contractualobligations throughout life to the opposite family is ‘work-ing for giri.’ It is heaviest toward the generation which ar-ranged the contract—the parents—and heaviest of all onthe young wife toward her mother-in-law because, as theJapanese say, the bride has gone to live in a house whereshe was not bom. The husband’s obligations to his parents-in-law are different, but they too are dreaded, for he mayhave to lend them money if they are in distress and mustmeet other contractual responsibilities. As one Japanesesaid, ‘If a grown son does things for his own mother, it is be-cause he loves her and therefore it couldn’t be giri. Youdon’t work for giri when you act from the heart.’ A personfulfills his duties to his in-laws punctiliously, however, be-cause at all costs he miist avoid the dreaded condemnation;*a man who does not know giri.’

The way they feel about this duty to the in-law family isvividly clear in the case of the ‘adopted husband,’ the manwho is married after the fashion of a woman. When a familyhas daughters and no sons the parents choose a husbandfor one of their daughters in order to carry on the familyname. His name is erased from the register of his ownfamily and he takes his father-in-law’s name. He enters his^e’s home, is subject ‘in giri’ to his father- and mother-in-law, and when he dies is buried in their burying ground.In all these acts he follows the exact pattern of the womanin the usual mamage. The reasons for adopting a husbandfor one’s dau^ter may not be simply the absence of a sonof one’s own; often it is a deal out of which both sides hopeto gain. These are called ‘political marriages.’ The girl’s

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The Chrysambemm and the Swordfamily may be poor but of good family and the boy maybring ready cash and in return move up in the class hier-archy. Or the girl’s family may be wealthy and able to edu-cate the husband who in return for this benefit signs awayhis own family. Or the girl’s father may in this way asso-ciate with himself a prospective partner in his firm. In anycase, an adopted husband’s giri is especially heavy—as isproper because the act of changing a man’s name to an-other family register is drastic in Japan. In feudal Japanhe had to prove himself in his new household by taking hisadopted father’s side in battle, even if it meant killing hisown father. In modem Japan the ‘political marriages’ in-volving adopted husbands invoke this strong sanction ofgiri to tie the young man to his father-in-law’s business orfamily fortunes witli the heaviest bonds the Japanese canprovide. Especially in Meiji times this was sometimes ad-vantageous to both parties. But resentment at being anadopted husband is usually violent and a common Japa-nese saj^g is ‘If you have three go of rice (about a pint),never be an adopted husband.’ The Japanese say this re-sentment is ‘because of the giri.’ They do not say, as Amer-icans probably would if we had a like custom, ‘because itkeeps him from playing a man’s rdle.’ Giri is hard enoughanyway and ‘unwilling’ enougfi, so that ‘because of thegiri’ seems to the Japanese a sufiKdent statement of theburdensome relation.

Not only duties to one’s in-laws are giri; duties even touncles and aunts and nephews and nieces are in the samecategory. The fact that in Japan duties to even such rela-tively close relatives do not rank as filial pie^ (ko) is one of

i3<5

TU Repayment ^Hardest to Bear'tbe great differences in family rdations between Japan aiulChina. In Qiina, many such relatives, and mudi more dis-tant ones, would share pooled resources, but in Japan theyare giri or ‘contractual’ relatives. The Japanese point outthat it oft^ happens that these persons have never person-ally done a favor (on) for the person who is asked to cometo their aid; in helping them he is i^>a}mig on to their com-mon ancestors. This is the sanction behind caring for one’sown children too—which of course is a gimu—but eventhough the sanction is the same, assistance to these moredistant relatives rates as giri. When one has to help them,as when one helps one’s in-laws, one says, T am tangledwith giri.’

The great traditional giri relationship which most Jap-anese think of even before the relation with in-laws, is thatof a retainer to his liege lord and to his comrades at arms.It is the loyalty a man of honor owes to his superior and tohis fellows of his own class. This obligation of giri is cele-brated in a vast traditional literature. It is identified as thevirtue of the samurai. In old Japan, before the vmificationof the country effected by the Tokugawas, it was often con-sidered a greater and dearer virtue even than chu, whichwas at that time the obligation to the Shogun. When in thetwelfth century a Minamoto Shogun demanded of oneof the daimyo the surrender of an enemy lord he was shelter-ing, the daimyo wrote back a letter which is still preserved.He was deeply resentful of the imputation upon his giri andhe refused to offend against it even in the name of chu.‘Public affairs,’ he wrote, ‘(are a thin^ over which I havelittle personal control but giri between men of honor is

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‘ The Chrysmthemum and the Samdan eternal verity’ which transcended die Shogun’s authority.He refused ‘to commit a faithless act against his honoredfriends.’* This transcendent samurai virtue of old Japansuffuses great munbers of historical folktales which areknown today all over Japan and are worked up into nohdramas, kabuki theater and kagura dances.

One of the best known of these is the tale of the huge in-vincible ronin (a lordless samurai who lives by his ownwits), the hero Benkei of the twelfth century. Entirely with-out resources but of miraculous strength he terrorizes themonks when he takes shelter in the monasteries and cutsdown every passing samurai in order to make a collectionof their swords to pay for outfitting himself in feudal fash-ion. Finally he challenges what appears to him to be a mereyoungster, a sUght and foppish lord. But in him he meetshis match and discovers that the youth is the sdon of theMinamotos who is scheming to recover the Shogunate forhis family. He is indeed that beloved Japanese hero, Yo-shitsime Minamoto. To him Benkei gives his passionategiri and undertakes a hundr^ exploits in his cause. At last,however, they have to escape with their followers from anoverwhelming enemy force. They disguise themselves asmonkish pilgrims traveling over Japan to collect subscrip-tions for a temple and to escape detection Yoshitsimedresses as one of the troop while Benkei assumes its head-ship. They run into a guard the enemy has set along theirpath and Benkei fabricates for them a long list of temple‘subscribers’ which he pretends to read from his scroll. Theenemy almost lets them pass. At the last moment, however,

• Quoted by Kanichi Asakawa, Documents of Iriki, 1929.

The Repayment ^Hardest to Bear’

their suspicions are aroused by the aristocratic grace of Yo-shitsune which he cannot conceal even in his disguise as anunderling. They call back the troop. Benkei inunediatelytakes a step which completely clears Yoshitsune from sus-picion : he berates him on some trivial issue and strikes Viimacross the face. The enemy is convinced; it is beyond pos-sibility that if this pilgrim is Yoshitsune, one of his retainersshould lift his hand against him. It would be an unima^-nable breach of giri. Benkei’s impious act saves the lives ofthe little band. As soon as they are in safe territory, Benkeithrows himself at Yoshitsune’s feet and asks him to slayhim. His lord graciously offers pardon.

These old tales of times when giri was from the heart andhad no taint of resentment are modem Japan’s daydreamof a golden age. In those days, the tales tell them, there wasno ‘unwillingness’ in giri. If there was conflict with chu, aman could honorably stick by giri. Giri then was a lovedface-to-face relation dressed in all the feudal trimmings. To‘know giri’ meant to be loytil for life to a lord who caredfor his retainers in return. To ‘repay giri’ meant to offer evenone’s life to the lord to whom one owed everything.

This is, of course, a fantasy. Feudal history in Japan tellsof plenty of retainers whose loyalty was bought by the dai-myo on the opposite side of the battle. Still more important,as we shall see in the next chapter, any slur the lord castupon his retainer could properly and traditionally makethe retainer leave his service and even enter into negotia-tions with the enemy. Japan celebrates the vengeance &emewith as much delight as she celebrates loyal^ to the death.And they were both giri; loyalty was giri to one’s lord and

139

The Chrysanthemum md the Swordvengeance for an insult was giri to one’s name. In Japanthey are two sides to the same shield.

Neverdieless the old tales of loyal^ are pleasant day-dreams to the Japanese today for now ‘repaying giri’ is nolonger loyalty to one’s legitimate chieftain but is fulfilling' all sorts of obligations to all sorts of people. Today’s con-stantly used phrases are full of resentment and of emphasison the pressure of public opinion which compels a personto do giri against his wishes. They say, ‘I am arranging thismarriage merely for giri’; ‘merely because of giri I wasforced to give him the job’; ‘I must see him merely for giri.’They constantly talk of being ‘tangled with giri,’ a phrasethe dictionary translates as ‘I am obliged to it.’ They say,‘He forced me with giri,* ‘he cornered me with giri,’ andthese, like the other usages, mean that someone has arguedthe speaker into an act he did not want or intend by raisingsome issue of payment due upon an on. In peasant villages,in transactions in small shops, in high circles of the Zaibatsuand in the Cabinet of Japan, people are ‘forced with giri’and ‘cornered with giri.’ A suitor may do this by taxinghis prospective father-in-law with some old relationship ortransaction between the two families or a man may use thissame weapon to get a peasant’s land. The man who is be-ing ‘cornered’ will himself feel he must comply; he says,‘If I do not hold the shoulder of my on-man (man fromwhom I received on), my giri is in bad repute.’ All theseusages carry the implication of unwillingness and of com-pliance for ‘mere decency’s sake,’ as the Japanese diction-ary phrases it.

The rules of giri are strictly rules of required repayment;

140

The Repayment '•Hardest to Bear'th^ are not a set of moral rules like the Ten Command-ments. When a man is forced with giri, it is assumed that hemay have to override his sense of justice and they often say,T could not do ri^t (gi) because of giri.’ Nor do the rulesof giri have anything to do with loving your neighbor asyourself; they do not dictate that a man shall act generouslyout of the spontaneity of his heart. A man must do giri, theysay, because, ‘if he does not, people will call him “a personwho does not know giri” and he will be shamed before theworld.’ It is what people will say that makes it so necessaryto comply. Indeed, ‘giri to the world’ often appears in Eng-lish translation as ‘conformity to public opinion,’ and thedictionary translates ‘It can’t be helped because it is giri tothe world’ as ‘People will not accept any other course ofaction.’

It is in this ‘circle of giri’ that the parallel with Americansanctions on paying money one has borrowed helps us mostto understand the Japanese attitude. We do not considerthat a man has to pay back the favor of a letter received ora gift given or of a timely word spoken with the stringencythat is necessary in keeping up his payments of interest andhis repayment of a bank loan. In these financial dealingsbankruptcy is the penalty for failure—a heavy penalty. TheJapanese, however, regard a man as bankrupt when he failsin repaying giri and every contact in life is likely to incurgiri in some way or other. This means keeping an accountof little words and acts Americans throw lightly about withno thou^t of incurring obligations. It means walking warilyin a complicated world.

There is another parallel between Japanese ideas of giri

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The Chrysanthemum and the Swordto the world and American ideas of repaying money. Re-payment of giri is thought of as repayment of an exactequivalent. In this giri is quite unlike gimu, which can neverbe even approximately satisfied no matter what one does.But giri is not unlimited. To American eyes the repaymentsare fantastically out of proportion to the original favor butthat is not the way the Japanese see it. We think their giftgiving is fantastic too, when twice a year every householdwraps up something m ceremonious fashion as return on agift received six months earlier, or when the family of one’smaidservant brings gifts through the years as a return onthe favor of hiring her. But the Japanese taboo returninggifts with larger gifts. It is no part of one’s honor to return‘pure velvet.’ One of the most disparaging things one cansay about a gift is that the giver has ‘repaid a minnow witha sea bream (a large fish).’ So too in repaying giri.

Whenever possible written records are kept of the net-work of exchanges, whether they are of work or of goods.In the villages some of these are kept by the headman, someby one of the work-party, some are family and personalrecords. For a funeral it is customary to bring ‘incensemoney.’ Relatives may also bring colored cloth for funeralbanners. The neighbors come to help, the women in thekitchen and the men in digging the grave and making thecoffin. In the village of Suye Mura the headman made upthe book in which these things were recorded. It was avalued record in-the family of the deceased for it showedthe tributes of their neighbors. It is also a list which showsthose names to which the family owes reciprocal tributeswhich will be honored when a death occurs in other fami-

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The Repayment '‘Hardest to Bear'lies. These are long-term reciprocities. There are also short-term exchanges at any village fimeral just as at any kind offeast. The helpers who make the cofi^ are fed and theytherefore bring a measure of rice to the bereaved family aspart payment on their food. This rice too is entered in theheadman’s record. For most feasts also the guest bringssome rice-wine in part payment for the party drinks.Whether the occasion is birth or death, a rice-transplant-ing, a housebuilding or a social party, the exchange of giriis carefully noted for future repa)ment.

The Japanese have another convention about giri whichparallels Western conventions about money repayment. Ifrepayment is delayed beyond due term it increases as if itdrew interest. Doctor Eckstein tells a story of this in hisdealings with the Japanese manufacturer who financed histrip to Japan to gather material for his biography of Nogu-chi. Doctor Eckstein returned to the United States to writethe book and eventually sent the manuscript to Japan. Hereceived no acknowledgement and no letters. He was natu-rally troubled for fear something in the volume might haveoffended the Japanese, but his letters remained unanswered.Some years later the manufacturer telephoned him. He wasin the United States, and shortly afterward he arrived atDoctor Eckstein’s home bringing with him dozens of Japa-nese cherry trees. The gift was lavish. Just because it hadbeen held in abeyance so long it was proper that it shouldbe handsome. ‘Surely,’ his benefactor said to Doctor Eck-stein, ‘you would not have wanted me to repay you quickly.'

A man who is ‘cornered with giri’ is often forced into re-payments of debts which have ^own with time. A man may

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The Chrysanthemum and the Swordfor assistance to a snudl n^xdiant because he is thenephew of a teacher the merchant had as a boy. Since as ayoung man, the student had been unable to rq)ay his giri tohis teacher, the debt has accumulated during the passingyears and the merchant has to give ^unwillingly to forestallapology to the world.*

Clearing Onis Nafne

Gnu to one’s name is the duty to keep one’s reputationunspotted. It is a series of virtues—some of which seem toan Occidental to be opposites, but which to the Japanesehave a suflSdent unity because they are those duties whichare not rq>ayments on benefits received; they are ‘outsidethe circle of on* They are those acts which keep one’s repu-tation bright without reference to a specific previous in-debtedness to another person. They include therefore main-taining an the miscellaneous etiquette requirements of‘proper station,’ showing stoicism in pain and defendingone’s reputation in profession or craft Giri to one’s namealso demands acts which remove a slur or an insult; the slurdarkens one’s good name and should be got rid of. It maybe necessary to take vengeance upon one’s detractor or itmay be necessary to commit suicide, and there are all sortsof possible courses of action between these two extremes.But one does not shrug off lightly anything that is compro-mising.

The Japanese do not have a separate term for what I callhere ‘gjri to one’s name.’ They desoibe it simply as giri out-side the circle of on. Hiat is the basis dT classification, and

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The Chrysmthefnmn md the Srpordnot the fact that gin to the world is an obligation to returnkindnesses and that giri to one's name prominently includesrevenge. The fact that Western languages sq)arate the twointo categories as opposite as gratitude and revenge doesnot impress the Japanese. Why should one virtue not covera man’s behavior when he reacts to another’s benevolenceand when he reacts to his scorn or malevolence?

In Japan it does. A good man feels as strongly about in-sults as he does about the benefits he has received. Eitherway it is virtuous to repay. He does not separate the two, aswe do, and call one aggression and one non-aggression. Tohim aggression only begins outside ‘the circle of giri’; solong as one is maintaining ^ and clearing one’s name ofsliu^, one is not guilty of aggression. One is evening scores.‘The world tips,’ they say, so long as an insult or slur or de-feat is not requited or eliminated. A good man must try toget the world back into balance again. It is hiunan virtue,not an all-too-human vice. Giri to one’s name, and eventhe way it is linguistically combined in Japan with gratitudeand loyalty, has been a Western virtue in certain periods ofEuropean histoty. It flourished mightily in the Renaissance,especially in Italy, and it has much in common with elvalor Espmol in classic Spain and with die Ehre in Germany.Something veiy like it underlay dueling in Europe a hun-dred years ago. Wherever this virtue of wiping out stains onone’s honor has been in the ascendant, in Japan or in West-ern nations, the very core of it has always been that it tran-scended profit in any material sense. One was virtuous inproportion as one offered up to ‘honor’ one’s possessions,one’s family, and one’s own life. This is a part of its very

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Gearing One's Name

definition and is the basis of the claim that these countriesalways put forward that it is a ‘spiritual’ value. It certainlyinvolves them in great material losses and can hardly bejustified on a profit-and-loss basis. In this lies the great con-trast between this version of honor and the cut-throat com-petition and overt hostility that crops up in life in the UnitedStates; in America it may be that no holds are barred insome political or financial deal but it is a war to get or tohold some material advantage. It is only in exceptionalcases, as, for instance, in the feuds of the Kentucky Moun-tains, where codes of honor prevail which fall in the cate-gory of giri to one’s name.

Giri to one’s name and all the hostility and watchful wait-ing that accompany it in any culture, however, is not a vir-tue that is characteristic of the Asiatic mainland. It is not,as the phrase goes. Oriental. The Chinese do not have it,nor the Siamese, nor the Indians. The Chinese regard aUsuch sensitivity to insults and aspersions as a trait of ‘small’people—morally small. It is no part of their ideal of nobil-ity, as it is in Japan. Violence which is wrong when a manstarts it out of the blue does not become right in Chineseethics when a man indulges in it to requite an insult. Theythink it is rather ridiculous to be so sensitive. Nor do theyreact to a slur by resolving by all that is good and great toprove the aspersion baseless. The Siamese have no placeat all for this kind of sensitivity to insult. Like the Chinesethey set store by making their detractor ridiculous but theydo not imagine that their honor has been impugned. Theysay ‘The best way to show an opponent up for a brute is togive in to him.’

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The Cbrysantbemtim and the SwordThe full significance of giri to one’s name cannot be un-derstood without [dadng in context all the non-aggressivevirtues which are induded in it in Japan. Vengeance is onlyone of the virtues it may require upon occasion. It includesalso plenty of qufet and temperate behavior. The stoicism,the self-control that is required of a self-respecting Japaneseis part of his giri to his tuime. A woman may not ay out inchildbirth and a man should rise above pain and danger.When floods sweep down upon the Japanese village eadiself-respecting person gathers up the necessities he is to takewith him and seeks h^er ground. There is no outcry, norunning hither and thither, no paruc. When the equinoctialwinds and rain come in hurricane strength there is similarself-control. Such behawor is a part of the respect a personhas for himself in Japan even granted he may not live up toit. They think American self-respect does not require self-control. There is noblesse oblige in this self-control in Japanand in feudal times more was dierefore required of the sam-urai than of the common people but the virtue, though lessexigent, was a rule of life among all classes. If the samuraiwere required to go to extremes in rising above bodily pain,the common people had to go to extremes in accepting theaggressions of the armed samuraiThe tales of samurai stoicism are famous. They wore for-bidden to give way to hunger but that was too trivial tomention. They were enjoined when they were starving topretend th^ had just eaten; they must pick their teeth witha toothpick. *Baby birds,’ the maxim went, ‘cry for ^eirfood but a samurai holds a toothpck between his teeth.’In the past war this became an Army maxim for the en-

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Ckaring One^s Name

listed soMier. Nor must th^ give way to pain. Hie Japa-nese attitude was like the boy soldier’s rejoinder to Napo-leon ; ‘Wounded? Nay, sire, Tm killed.’ A samurai diouldgive no sign of suffering till he fell dead and he must bearpain without wincing. It is told of Count Katsu who diedin 1899 that whra he was a boy his testicles were tom by adog. He was of samurai family but his family had been re-duced to beggary. While the doctor operated upon him,his fatho* held a sword to his nose. ‘If you utter one cry,’he told him, ‘you will die in a way that at least will not beshameful.’

Giri to one’s name also requires that one live accordingto one’s station in life. If a man fails in this giri he has noright to respect himself. This meant in To^gawa timesthat he acc^ted as part of his self-respect the detailed sump-tuary laws which regulated practically everything he woreor had or used. Americans are shocked to the core by lawswhich define these things by inherited class position. Self-respect in America is bound up with improving one’s statusand fixed^sumptuary laws are a denial of the very basis ofour society. We are horrified by Tokugawa laws whichstated that a farmer of one class could buy such and such adoll for his child and the farmer of another class could buya different doU. In America, however, we get the same re-sults by invoking a different sanction. We accept with nocriticism the fact that the factory owner’s child has a set ofdectric trains and that the sharecroi^>er’s child contents it-self with a corncob doll. We accept differences in incomeand justify them. To earn a good salary is a part of oursystem of self-respect. If dolls are regulated by income that

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The Qyrysmthermm md the Swordis no violation of our moral ideas. The person who has gotrich buys better dolls for his children. In Japan getting richis under suspicion and maintaining proper station is not.Even today the poor as well as the rich invest their self-respect in observing the conventions of hierarchy. It is avirtue alien to America, and the Frenchman, de Tocque-ville, pointed this out in the eighteen-thirties in his bookalready quoted. Bom himself in eighteenth-century France,he knew and loved the aristocratic way of life in spite of hisgenerous comments about the egalitarian United States.America, he said, in spite of its virtues, lacked true dignity.‘True dignify consists in always taking one’s proper sta-tion, neither too high nor too low. And this is as muchwithin the reach of the peasant as of the prince.’ De Tocque-ville would have understood the Japanese attitude thatclass differences are not themselves humiliating.

‘True dignity,’ in this day of objective study of cultures,is recognized as something which different peoples can de-fine differently, just as they always define for themselveswhat is humiliating. Americans who cry out today that Ja-pan cannot be given self-respect until we enforce our egal-itarianism are guilty of ethnocentrism. If what these Amer-icans want is, as they say, a self-respecting Japan they willhave to recognize her bases for self-respect. We can recog-nize, as de Tocqueville did, that this aristocratic ‘trae dig-nity’ is passing from the modem world and that a differentand, we believe,-a finer dignity is taking its place. It will nodoubt happen in Japan too. Meantime Japan will have torebuild her self-respect today on her own basis, not on ours.And she will have to purify it in her own way.

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Giri to one’s name is also living up to many sorts of com-mitments besides those of proper station. A borrower maypledge his giri to his name when he asks for a loan; a gen-eration ago it was common to phrase it that ‘I agree to bepublicly laughed at if I fail to rq)ay this sum.’ If he failed,he was not literally made a laughingstock; there were nopublic pillories in Japan. But when the New Year camearound, the date on which debts must be paid off, the in-solvent debtor might commit suicide to ‘clear his name.’New Year’s Eve still has its crop of suicides who have takenthis means to redeem their reputations.

All kinds of professional commitments involve giri toone’s name. The Japanese i^uirements are often fantasticwhen particular circiunstances bring one into the publiceye and criticism might be general. There are for instancethe long list of school principals who committed suicidebecause fires in their schools—with which they had nothingto do—threatened the picture of the Emperor which washung in every school. Teachers too have been burned todeath dashing into burning schools to rescue these pictures.By their deaths they showed how high they held flieir girito their names and their chu to the Emperor. There are alsofamous stories of persons who were guilty of a slip of thetongue in ceremonious public readings of one of the Im-perial Rescripts, either the one on Education or the one forSoldiers and Sailors, and who have cleared their names bycommitting smdde. Within the reign of the present Em-peror, a man who had inadvertently named his son Hiro-hito—the given name of the Emperor was never spokenin Japan—killed himself and his child.

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T^e Cbryscmtbenmn and the Sword

Giri to one’s name as a professional person is very exi-g»it in Japan but it need not be maintained by what anAmerican understands as high professional standards. Theteacher says, T cannot in giri to my name as a teacher admitignorance of it,’ and he means that if he does not know towhat species a frog belongs nevertheless he has to pretendhe does. If he teaches English on the basis of only a fewyears’ school instruction, nevertheless he caimot admit thatanyone might be able to correct him. It is specifically to thiskind of defensiveness that *giri to one’s name as a teacher’refers. The business man too, in ^ to his name as a busi-ness man, cannot let anyone know that his assets are seri-ously depleted or that the plans he made for his organiza-tion have failed. And the diplomat cannot in giri admit thefailure of his policy. In aU such giri usages there is extremeidentification of a man with his work and any criticism ofone’s acts or one’s competence becomes automatically acriticism of one’s self.

These Japanese reactions to imputations of failure andinadequacy can be duplicated over and over again in theUnited States. We all know persons who are maddened bydetraction. But we are seldom so defensive as the Japanese.If a teacher does not know to what species a frog belongs,he thinks it is better behavior to say so than to claim knowl-edge, even though be might succumb to the temptation tohide his ignorance. If a business man is dissatisfied with apolicy he has promoted he thinks he can put out a new anddififfli^t directive. He does not consider that his self-respectis conditional upon his maintaining that he was right allalong and that if he admitted he was wrong he should either

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resign Cft retire. &i Japan, however, this d^ensiveness goesvery deep and it is the part of wisdom—as it is also univrar*sal etiquette—not to tell a person to his face in so manywords that he has made a professional error.

This sensitivity is especially conspicuous in situationswhere one person has lost out to another. It may be onlythat another person has been preferred for a job or that theperson concerned has failed in a competitive examination.The loser ‘wears a shame’ for such failures, and, though thisshame is in some cases a strong incentive to greater efforts,in many others it is a dangerous depressant. He loses con-fidence and becomes melancholy or angry or both. Hisefforts are stymied. It is especially important for Americansto recognize that competition in Japan thus does not havethe same degree of socially desirable effects that it does inour own scheme of life. We rely strongly on competition asa ‘good thing.’ Psychological tests show that competitionstimulates us to our best work. Performance goes up underthis stimulus; when we are given something to do all byovirselves we faU short of the record we make when thereare competitors present. In Japan, however, their testsshow just the opposite. It is especially marked after child-hood is ended, for Japanese children are more playful aboutcompetition and not so worried about it. With young menand adults, however, performance deteriorated with com-petition. Subjects who had made good progress, reducedtheir mistakes and gained speed when they were working Itythemselves, began to make mistakes and were far slowerwhen a competitor was introduced. They did best whrath^ were measuring their improvement against their own

IS3

The Qyryscmthenamt and the Swordsions—negotiating marriage, offering one’s services for hire,leaving a job and arranging countless everyday matters.This go-between r^rts to both parties, or in case of animportant deal like a marriage each side employs its ownintermediary and they negotiate the details between them-selves before reporting to their side. By dealing in this wayat second hand the principals need take no cognizance ofclaims and charges that would have to be resented in girito their names if they were in direct communication. Thego-between too gains prestige by acting in this official capac-ity, and gets the respect of the conununity by his successfulmanipulation. The chances of a peaceful arrangement arethe greater because the go-between has an ego investmentin smooth negotiations. The intermediary acts in the sameway in feeling out an employer about a job for his client orin relaying to the employer the employee’s decision toleave his job.

Etiquette of all kinds is organized to obviate shame-caus-ing situations which might call in question one’s giri toone’s name. These situations which are thus minimized gofar beyond direct competition. The host, they think, shoiddgreet his guest with certain ritual welcoming and in hisgood clothes. Therefore anyone who finds a farmer in hiswork clothes at home may have to wait a bit. The farmergives no sign of recognition until he has put on suitableclothes and arranged the proper courtesies. It makes nodifference even if ffie host has to change his clothes in theroom where the guest is waiting. He simply is not presentuntil he is there in^the proper guise. In the rural areas, too,boys may visit girls at night after the household is asle^

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Clearing One's Name

and die girl is in bed. Girls can dther accept or reject theiradvances, but the boy wears a towel bound about his faceso that if he is rejected he need feel no shame next day. Thedisguise is not to prevent the girl from recognizing him;it is purely an ostrich technique so that he will not have toadmit that he was shamed in his proper person. Etiquetterequires too that as little cognizance as possible be taken ofany project until success is assured. It is part of the dutiesof go-betweens arranging a marriage to bring the prospec-tive bride and groom together before the contract is com-pleted. Everything is done to make this a casual meeting forif the purpose of tihe introduction were avowed at this stageany breaking-off of the negotiations would threaten thehonor of one family or of both. Since the young couplemust each be escorted by one or both of their parents, andthe go-betweens must be the hosts or hostesses, it is mostproperly arranged when they all ‘run into each other’ casu-ally at the annual chrysanthemum show or at a cherry-blossom viewing or in a well-known park or place of rec-reation.

In all such ways, and in many more, the Japanese avoidoccasions in which failure might be shameful. Though theylay such emphasis on the duty to clear one’s name of insult,in actual practice this leads them to arrange events so thatinsult need be felt as seldom as possible. This is in greatcontrast to many tribes of the Pacific Islands where clearingone’s name holds much the same pre-eminent place that itdoes in Japan..

Among these primitive gardening peoples of New Guineaand Melanesia the mainspring of tribal or personal action

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The Qjrysantbefmm and the Swordis the insult which it is necessaiy to resent. They cannothave a tribal feast without one village’s setting it in motionby saying that another village is so poor it cannot feed toiguests, it is so stingy it hides its taro and its coconuts, itsleaders are so stupid they could not organize a feast if theytried. Then the challenged village clears its name by over-whelming all comers with its lavish display and hospitality.Marriage arrangements and financial transactions are setgoing in the same way. When they go on the warpath toothe two sides have a tremendous insult exchange beforethey set their arrows to their bows. They handle the small-est matter as if it were an occasion that called for mortalfight. It is a great incentive to action and such tribes oftenhave a great deal of vitality. But nobody has ever describedthem as courteous.

The Japanese on the contrary are paragons of politenessand this pre-eminent politeness is a measure of the lengthsto which they have gone in limiting the occasions when itis necessaiy to clear one’s name. They retain as an incom-parable goad to achievement the resentmentinsultoccasionsbut they limit the situations where it is called for. It shouldoccur only in specified situations or when traditional ar-rangements to eliminate it break down under pressure. Un-questionably the use of this goad in Japan contributed tothe dominant position she was able to attain in the Far Eastand to her policy of Anglo-American war in the last decade.Many Occidental discussions of Japan’s sensitivity to in-sult and her eagerness to avenge herself, however, would bemore appropriate to the insult-using tribes of New Guineathan they are to Japan, and many Westerners’ forecasts of

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Qeaurmg One’s Name

how Japan would behave after defeat in this war were wideof the mark because they did not recognize the specialJapanese limitations upon giri to one’s name.

The politeness of the Japanese should not lead Ameri-cans to minimize their sensitivity to slurs. Americans bandypersonal remarks very lightly; it is a kind of game. It ishard for us to realize the deadly seriousness that attaches toli^t remarks in Japan. In his autobiography, published inAmerica just as he wrote it in English, a Japanese artist,Yoshio Markino, has described vividly a perfectly properJapanese reaction to what he interpreted as a sneer. Whenhe wrote the book he had already lived most of his adultlife in the United States and in Europe but he felt as stronglyas if he were still living in his home town in rural Aichi.He was the yoimgest child of a landowner of good stand-ing and had been most lovingly reared in a charming home.Toward the end of his childhood his mother died, and, notlong after, his father became bankrupt and sold all hisproperty to pay his debts. The family was broken up andMarkino had not a sen to help him in realizing his ambi-tions. One of these ambitions was to learn English. He at-tached himself to a near-by mission school and did janitorwork in order to learn the language. At eighteen he hadstill never been outside the round of a few provincial townsbut he had made up his mind to go to America.

I visited upon one of the missionaries to whom I hadmore confidence than any other. I told him my intentionto go to America in hope that he might be able to give mesome useful information. To my great disappointment heexclaimed, ‘What, You are intending to go to America?’

I5P

His wifewas in the same room, and they bodi sneered at me!At the moment I felt as if all the blood in my head wentdown to my feet! I stood on tl» same point for a few sec-onds in silence, then came back to my room without saying‘goodbye.’ I said to myself, ‘Everything is quite finished.*

On the next morning I ran away. Now I want to write thereason. I always believe that insincerity is the greatest crimein this world, and nothing could be more insincere than tosneer!

I always forgive the other’s anger, because it is the humannature to get into bad temper. I generally forgive if onetells me a lie, because the human nature is very weak andvery often one cannot have a steady mind to face the difll-culty and tell all the truth. I also forgive if one makes anyfoundless rumor or gossip against me, because it is a veryeasy temptation when some others persuade in that way.

Even murderers I may forgive according to their condi-tion. But about sneering, there is no excuse. Because onecannot sneer at innocent people without intentional insin-cerity.

Let me give you my own definition of two words. Mur-derer: one who assassinates some human flesh, Sneerer:one who assassinates others’ SOUL and heart.

Soul and heart are far dearer than the flesh, thereforesneering is the worst crime. Indeed, that missionary and hiswife tried to assassinate my soul and heart, and I had agreat pain in my heart, which cried out, ‘Why you?’*

The next morning he departed with his entire possessionstied in a handkerchief.

He had been ‘assassinated,’ as he felt, by the missionary’sincredulity about a permiless provincial boy’s going to theUnited States to become an artist. His name was besmirched

• Markino, Yoshio, When I was a Child, 1912, pp. 159-160. Italics in theoriginal.

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Qearwg One*s Ntom

until he had cleaicd it by canying out his purpose and aftn*the missionary’s ‘sneer’ he had no alternative but to teavethe place and prove his ability to get to America. In Eng-lish it reads curiously that he charges the missionary with‘insincerity’; the American’s exclamation seems to us quite‘sincere’ in our s^ise of the word. But he is using the wordin its Japanese meaning and they regularly deny sincerityto anyone who belittles any person whom he does not wishto provoke to aggression. Such a sneer is wanton and proves‘insincerity.’

‘Evoi murderers I may forgive according to their condi-tion. But about sneering there is no excuse.’ Since it is notproper to ‘forgive,’ one possible reaction to a slur is re-venge. Markino cleared his name by getting to America butrevenge ranks high in Japanese tradition as a ‘good thing’under circumstances of insult or defeat. Japanese who writebooks for Western readers have sometimes used vividfigures of speech to describe the Japanese attitudes aboutrevenge. Inazo Nitobe, one of the most benevolent men inJapan, writing in 1900, says: ‘In revenge there is somethingthat satisfies one’s sense of justice. Our sense of revenge is asexact as our mathematical faculty and until both terms ofthe equation are satisfied we carmot get over the sense ofsomething left undone.”" Yoshisaburo Okakura in a bookon The Life and Thought of Japan uses a particularly Jap-anese custom as a parallel:

Many of the so-called mental peculiarities of the Jap-anese owe their origin to the love of purity and its comple-mentary hatred of defilement. But, pray, how could it be* Nitobe, Inazo, Bushido, The Soul of Japan, 1900, p. 83.

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otherwise, being trained, as we actually are, to look uponslights inflicted, either on our family honour or on the na>tional pride, as so many defilements and wounds that wouldnot be clean and heal up again, unless by a thorough wash-ing through vindication? You may consider the cases ofvendetta so often met with in the public and private life ofJapan, merely as a kind of morning tub which a people takewith whom love of cleanliness has grown into a passion.*

And he continues, saying that thus the Japanese ‘live clean,undefiled lives which seem as serene and beautiful as acherry tree in full bloom.’ This ‘morning tub,’ in otherwords, washes off dirt other people have thrown at you andyou cannot be virtuous as long as any of it sticks to you.The Japanese have no ethic which teaches that a man can-not be insulted unless he thinks he is and that it is only‘what comes out of a man’ that defiles him, not what issaid or done against him.

Japanese tradition keeps constantly before the publicthis ideal of a ‘morning bath’ of vendetta. Coimtless inci-dents and hero tales, of which the most popular is the his-torical Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin, are known to every-body. They are read in their school books and played inthe theater, made up into contemporary movies, and printedin popular publications. They are a part of the living cul-ture of Japan today.

Many of these tales are about sensitivity to casual fail-ures. For instance, a daimyo called on three of his retain-ers to name the maker of a certain fine sword. They dis-agreed and >^en experts were called in it vm found that

* Okakura, Yoshisaburo, The Life and Thought of Jiynuu London, 1913,

Nagoya Sanza had been the only one who had correctlyidentffied it as a Muramasa blade. The ones who werewrong took it as an insult and set out to kill Sanza. One ofthem found Sanza asleep and stabbed him with Sanza’sown sword. Sanza, however, lived, and his attacker there-after dedicated himself to his revenge. In the end he suc-ceeded in killing him and his giri was satisfied.

Other tales are about the necessity of avenging oneselfupon one’s lord. Giri meant in Japanese ethics equally theretainer’s loyalty to his lord to the death, and his riglit-about-face of extravagant enmity when he felt himself in-sulted. A good example is from the stories about leyasu,the first Tokugawa Shogun. It was reported to one of hisretainers that leyasu had said of him, ‘He is the sort of fel-low who will die of a fishbone stuck in his throat.’ The im-putation that he would die in an undignified manner wasnot to be borne, and the retainer vowed that this was some-thing he would not forget in life or death. leyasu was at thetime unifying the country from the new capital Yedo (To-kyo) and was not yet secure from his enemies. The retainermade overtures to the hostile lords, oflFering to set fire toYedo from within and lay it waste. Thus his giri would besatisfied and he would be avenged upon leyasu. Most Oc-cidental discussions of Japanese loyalty are thoroughly un-realistic because they do not recognize that giri is notmerely loyalty; it is also a virtue that under certain circum-stances enjoins treachery. As they say, ‘A man who is beatenbecomes a rebel.’ So does a man who is insulted.

These two themes from the historical tales—revenge uponsomeone who has been right when you were wrong, and

The Chrysambenmn and the Sword

revenge for a slur, evoi from one’s lord—are conononidaoesin tbe best-known literature of Japan, and have mmiy

variations. When one examines contonpotaiy life-historiesand novels and events, it is clear that, however much theJapanese appreciate revenge in their traditions, stories ofvengeance are today certainly as rare as in Western na-tions, perhaps raro*. This does not mean that obsessionsabout one’s honor have grown less but rather that the re-action to failiues and slurs is more and more often defen-sive instead of offensive. People take the shame as seriouslyas ever, but it more and more often paralyzes their energiesinstead of starting a figfht The direct attack of vengeancewas more ix>ssible in lawless pre-Meiji da}^. In the modemera law and order and the difficulties of managing a moreinterdependent economy have sent revenge underground ordirected it against one’s own breast. A man may take a pri-vate revenge against his enemy by playing a trick upon himwhich he never avows—somewhat after the fashion of theold story of the host who served his enemy with excrementwhich could not be detected in the delicious food and askedno more than to know he had done it. The guest neverknew. But even this kind of imderground aggression is rar^today than turning it against oneself. There one has twochoices: to use it as a goad to drive oneself to the ’impos-sible,’ or to let it eat out one’s heart.

The vulnerability of the Japanese to fadiires and slursand rejections makes it all too eaty for them to hany them-selves instead of others. Their novels describe over and overagain the dead end of melancholy alternating with out-bm*st8 of anger in which educated Japanese have so oftoi

id4

lost themselves in the last decades. The protagonists of thesestories are bored—bored with the round of life, bored withthdr families, bored with the city, bored with the coimtry.But it is not the boredom of reaching for the stars, whereall effort seems trivial compared with a great goal picturedin their mind’s eye. It is not a boredom bom of the contrastbetwera reality and the ideal. When the Japanese have avision of a great mission they lose their boredom. They loseit completely and absolutely, no matter how distant thegoal. Their particular kind of ennui is the sickness of anover-vulnerable people. They turn inward upon themselvestheir fear of rejection and they are stymied. The picture ofboredom in the Japanese novel is quite a different state ofmind from that with which we are familiar in the Russiannovel where the contrast between the real and the idealworlds is basic in all the tedium their heroes experience. SirGeorge Sansom has said that the Japanese lack this senseof a contrast between the real and the ideal. He is not speak-ing of how this imderlies their boredom but of how theyformulate their philosophyand their general attitude towardlife. Certainly this contrast with basic Occidental notionsgoes far beyond the particular case in point here, but it hasspecial relevance to their besetting depressions. Japanranks with Russia as a nation given to depicting boredomin her novels and the contrast with the United States ismarked. American novels do not do much with the theme.Our novelists trace the misery of their characters to a char-acter-d^cien(ty or to the buffets of a cruel world; they veryseldom depict pure and simple ennui. Personal maladjust-mmt must have a cause, a build-up, and rouse the reader’s

The Oyrysmthemum and the Swordmoral cxindemnation of some flaw in the hero or heroine, orof some evil in the social order. Japan also has her proletar-ian novels protesting desperate economic conditions in thecities and terrible happenings on commercial fishing boats,but their character novels uncover a world where people’semotions most often come to them, so one author says, likedrifting chlorine gas. Neither the character nor the authorthinks it necessary to analyze the circumstances or thehero’s life history to accoimt for the cloud. It goes and itcomes. People are vulnerable. They have turned inward theaggression their old heroes used to visit upon their enemiesand their depression appears to them to have no explicitcauses. They may seize upon some incident as its source,but the incident leaves a curious impression of being hardlymore than a symbol.

The most extreme aggressive action a modem Japanesetakes against himself is suicide. Suicide, properly done, will,according to their tenets, clear his name and reinstate hismemory. American condemnation of suicide makes self-destruction only a desperate submission to despair, but theJapanese respect for it allows it to be an honorable and pur-poseful act. In certain situations it is the most honorablecoiurse to take in giri to one’s name. The defaulting debtoron New Year’s Day, the ofiicial who kills himself to ac-knowledge that he assumes responsibility for some unfor-tunate occurrence, the lovers who seal their hopeless lovein a double suicide, the patriot who protests the govern-ment’s postponement of war with China are all, like the boywho fails in an examination or the soldier avoiding capture,turning upon themselves a final violence. Some Japanese

16(5

authorities say that this liability to suicide is new in Japan.It is not easy to judge, and statistics show that observers inrecent years have often overestimated its frequency. Therewere proportionately more suicides in Denmark in the lastcentury and more in pre-Nazi Germany than there haveever been in Japan. But this much is certain: the Japaneselove the theme. They play up suicide as Americans play upcrime and they have the same vicarious enjoyment of it.They choose to dwell on events of self-destruction insteadof on destruction of others. They make of it, in Bacon’sphrase, their favorite ‘flagrant case.’ It meets some needthat cannot be flUed by dwelling on other acts.

Suicide is also more masochistic in modem Japan thanit appears to have been in the historical tales of feudaltimes. In those stories a samurai committed suicide with hisown hand at the command of the government to save him-self from dishonorable execution, much as a Western enemysoldier would be shot instead of hanged, or he took thiscourse to save himself the torture he expected if he fell intothe enemy’s hands. A warrior was allowed harakiri muchas a Prussian officer in disgrace was sometimes allowed toshoot himself in private. Those in authority left a bottle ofwhiskey and a pistol on a table in his room after he knewthat he had no hope of saving his honor otherwise. For theJapanese samurai, taking his owa life under such circum-stances was only a choice of means; death was certain. Inmodem times suicide is a choice to die. A man turns vio-lence upon himself, often instead of assassinating someoneelse. The act of suicide, which in feudal times was the finalstatement of a man’s courage and resolution, has become

1(57

The Cbrysafitbemum and the Swordtoday a chosen self-destruction. During the last two gaiOA-tions, when Japanese have felt that *the world tips,’ that‘both terms of the equation’ are not equivalent, that th^need a ‘morning tub’ to wipe off defil^nents, th^ have in-creasinglly destroyed themselves instead of others.

Even suicide as a final argument to win victory for one’sown side, thou^ it occurs both in feudal and in modemtimes, has changed in this same direction. A famous story ofTokugawa days tells of the old tutor, high in the Shogunatecouncil, who bared his body and placed his sword in readi-ness for immediate harakiri in the presence of the wholecouncil and the Shogunate regent. The threat of suicide car-ried the day and he thereby insured the succession of hiscandidate to the position of Shogun. He got his way andthere was no suicide. In Occidental terminology, the tutorhad blackmailed the opposition. In modem times, how-ever, such protest suicide is the act of a martyr not of a nego-tiator. It is carried out after one has failed or to put oneselfon record as opposing some already signed agreement likethe Naval Parity Act. It is staged so that only die completedact itself, and not the threat of suidde, can influmce publicopinion.

This growing tendency to strike at oneself when giri toone’s name is threatened need not involve such extremesteps as suicide. Aggressions directed inward may merelyproduce d^ression and lassitude and that typical Japaneseboredom that was so prevalent in the educated class. Thereare good sociological reasons why this mood should havebeen widespread among this particular class for the intelli-gentsia was overcrowded and very insecurely placed in the

1(58

hia:aTcliy. Ooty a small prc^rtioa of them could satisfythdr ambitions. In <be nineteen-tibirties, too, th^ weredoubly vulnerable because the authorities feared they wmthinking 'dangerous thoughts’ and held them under suspi-cion. The Japanese intellectuals usually account for theirfrustration complaints about the confusions of Western-ization, but the explanation does not go far enough. Thetypical Japanese swing of mood is from intense dedicationto intense boredom, and the psychic shipwreck which manyintellectuals suffered was in the traditional Japanese manner.Many of than saved themselves from it, too, in the middlenineteen-thirties in traditional fashion: they embraced na-tionalistic goals and turned the attack outward again, awayfrom their own breasts. In totalitarian aggression againstoutside nations they could 'find themselves’ again. Theysaved thonselves from a badmiood and felt a great newstrength withinathem. They could not do it in personal re-lationships but th^ believed they could as a conqueringnation.

Now that the outcome of the war has proved this con-fidoice mistaken, lassitude is again a great psychic threat inJapan. They cannot easily cope with it, whatever their in-tentions. It goes very deep. 'No bombs any more,’ one Jap-anese said in Tokyo; 'the relief is wonderful. But we arenot fighting any more and there is no purpose. Everyone isin a daze, not caring much how he does things. I am likethat, my wife is like that and the people in the hospital. Allvray slow about everything we do, dazed. People complainnow that the govonment is slow cleaning up after the warand in providing relief, but I think the reason is that all the

I dp

The Chrysantbmmm and the Swordgovenunent officials Mt the same way as we did.’ Hits list-lessness is the kind of danger in Japan that it was inFiance after liberation. In Germmiy in the first six or ei^tmonths after surrender it was not a problem. In Japan it is.Americans can understand this reaction well enough but itseems almost unbelievable to us that it should go alongwith such friendliness to the conqueror. Almost immedi-ately it was clear that the Japanese people accepted the de-feat and all its consequences with extreme good will. Amer-icans were welcomed with bows and smiles, with handwav-ings and shouts of greeting. These people were not sullennor angry. They had, in the phrase the Emperor used in an-nouncing surrender, ‘accepted the impossible.’ Why thendid these people not set their national house in order? Underthe terms of occupation, they were given the opportunityto do it; there was no village-by-village foreign occupationand the administration of affairs was in their hands. Thewhole nation seemed to smile and wave greeting rather thanto manage their affairs. Yet this was the same nation whichhad accomplished miracles of rehabilitation in the earlydays of Meiji, which had prepared for military conquestwith such energy in the nineteen-thirties and whose soldiershad fought with such abandon, island by island, throughoutthe Pacific.

They are indeed the same people. They are reacting incharacter. The swing of mood that is natural to them is be-tween intense ^ort and a lassitude that is sheer markingtime. The Japanese at the present moment are chiefly con-scious of defending their good name in defeat and they feelthey can do this by being friendly. As a corollary, many feel

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th^ can do it most safely by being dependent And it is aaeasy step to feeling that effort is suspectmid that it is betterto mark time. Lassitude spreads.

Yet the Japanese do not enjoy ennui. To ‘rouse oneselffrom lassitude,’ to ‘rouse others from lassitude’ is a constantcall to the better life in Japan, and it was often on the lipsof their broadcasters even in wartime. They campaignagainst their passivity in their own way. Their newspapersin the spring of 1946 keep talking about what a blot it is onthe honor of Japan that ‘with the eyes of the whole worldupon us,’ they have not cleaned up the shambles of bomb-ing and have not got certain public utilities into operation.They complain about the lassitude of the homeless familieswho congregate to sleep at night in the railway stationswhere the Americans see them in their misery. The Jap-anese understand such appeals to their good name. Theyhope too that as a nation they will be able to put forwardutmost efforts again in the future to work for a respectedplace in the United Nations Organization. That would beworking for honor again, but in a new direction. If thereis peace among the Great Powers in the future, Japan couldtake this road to self-respect.

For in Japan the constant goal is honor. It is necessaryto command respect. The means one uses to that end aretools one takes up and then lays aside as circumstances dic-tate. When situations change, the Japanese can change theirbearings and set themselves on a new course. Changingdoes not appear to them the moral issue that it does toWesterners. We go in for ‘principles,’ for convictions onideological matt^. When we lose, we are still of the same

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The Chrysambemum and the Swardmind. Defeated Europeans everywhere banded together inunderground movements. Except for a few diehards, theJapanese do not need to organize resistance movementsand underground opposition to the occupying forces ofthe American Army. Th^ feel no moral necessity to holdto the old line. From the first months, single Americanstraveled safely on the sardine-packed trains to out-of-the-way comers of the coimtry and were greeted with courtesyby erstwhile nationalistic officials. There have been no ven-dettas. When our jeeps drive through the villages the roadsare lined with children shouting ‘Hello’ and ‘Good-bye,’and the mother waves her baby’s hand to the Americansoldier when he is too small to do it by himself.

This right-about-face of the Japanese in defeat is hardfor Americans to take at face value. It is nothing we coulddo. It is even harder for us to understand than the changeof attitude in their prisoners of war in our internmentcamps. For the prisoners regarded themselves as dead toJapan, and we judged that we really did not Tcnow what‘dead’ men might be capable of. Very few of those Western-ers who knew Japan predicted that the same change of frontcharacteristic of the prisoners of war might be found inJapan, too, after the defeat Most of them believed thatJapan ‘knew only victory or defeat,’ and that d^eat wouldbe in her eyes an insult to be avenged by continued desper-ate violence. Some believed that the national characteristicsof the Japanese forbade their acceptance of any toms ofpeace. Such studmts of Japan had not understood giri. Theyhad singled out from among all the alternative prooediuresthat give one an honorable name, die one conspicuous tra-

17a

ditional tedhnique of vengeance and aggression. Th^ didnot allow for the Japanese habit of hddng another tack.Th^ conjfhsed Japanese ethics of aggression with Europeanforms, according to which any person or nation who fightshas first to be convinced of the eternal righteousness of itscause and draw strength from reservoirs of hatred or ofmoral indignation.

The Japanese derive their aggression in a different way.They need terribly to be respected in the world. They sawthat military might'had earned respect for great nations andth^ embarked on a course to equal them. They had to out-H^od Herod because their resources were slight and theirtechnology was primitive. When they failed in their greateffort, it meant to them that aggression was not the road tohonor after all. Giri had always meant equally the use ofaggression or the observance of respect relations, and indefeat the Japanese turned from one to the other, appar-ently with no sense of psychic violence to themselves. Thegoal is still their good name.

Japan has behaved in similar fashion on other occasionsin her history and it has always been confusing to Western-ers. The curtain had hardly risen after Japan’s long feudalisolation when in 1862 an Englishman named Richardsonwas murdered in Satsuma. The fief of Satsuma was a hot-bed of agitation against the white barbarians, and Satsumasamurai were known as the most arrogant and warlike of allJapan. The British sent a punitive expedition and bom-barded Kagoshima, an important Satsuma port. The Jap-anese had made firearms all through the Tokugawa Era,but th^ were copied from antique Portuguese guns, and

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The Chryscmthemimt and the SrpordKagoshima was of course no matdi for British warships.The consequences of this bombardment, however, were sur-prising. Satsuma, instead of vowing eternal vengeance uponthe British, sought British friendship. They had seen thegreatness of their opponents and they sought to learn fromthem. They entered into trade relations with them and in thefollowing year they established a college in Satsuma where,as a contemporary Japanese wrote. The mysteries of Oc-cidental science and learning were taught.... The friend-ship which had sprung out of the Namamuga Affair con-tinued to grow.’* The Namamuga Affair was Britain’spunitive expedition against them and the bombardment oftheir port.

This was not an isolated case. The other fief which viedwith Satsuma as the most warlike and virulent haters offoreigners was Choshu. Both fiefs were leaders in fomentingthe restoration of the Emperor. The officially powerlesscourt of the Emperor issued an imperial rescript naming thedate of May 11, 1863, at which time the Shogun was di-rected to have expelled all barbarians from the soil of Ja-pan. The Shogunate ignored the order but not Choshu. Itopened fire from its forts upon Western merchant shipspassing off its coast through the Strait of Shimonoseki. TheJapanese guns and ammunition were too primitive to injurethe shipsbut to teach Choshualesson an international West-ern war squadron soon demolished the forts. The samestrange consequences of bombardment followed as in Sat-suma, and this in spite of the fact that the Western powersdemanded an indemnity of three million dollars. As Nor-

• Norman, E. H., op. ctt., pp. 44-45, and n. 85.

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Gearing One's Name

man says of the Satsuma and Choshu incidents, ‘Whateverdie complexity of motive behind the volte-face executed bythese leading anti-foreign clans, one cannot but respect therealism and equanimity which this action attests.’*

This kind of situational realism is the bright face of Jap-anese giri to one’s name. Like the moon, giri has its brightface and its dark face. It was its dark aspect which madeJapan take events like the American Exclusion Act and theNaval Parity Treaty as such extravagant national insultsand which goaded her to her disastrous war program. It isits bright aspect which made possible the good will withwhich she accepted the consequences of surrender in 1945.Japan is still acting in character.

Modem Japanese writers and publicists have made a se-lection from among the obligations of giri and presentedthem to Westerners as the cult of bushido, literally The Wayof the Samurai. This has been misleading for several rea-sons. Bushido is a modem official term which has not thedeep folk-feeling behind it that ‘cornered with giri,’ ‘merelyfor giri,’ ‘working strongly for giri’ have in Japan. Nordoes it cover the complexities and the ambivalences of giri.It is a publicist’s inspiration. Besides, it became a sloganof the nationalists and militarists and the concept is dis-credited with the discrediting of those leaders. That will byno means mean that the Japanese will no longer ‘knowgiri.’ It is more important than ever for Westerners to under-stand what giri means in Japan. The identification of bu-shido with the Samurai was also a source of misunderstand-ing. Giri is a virtue common to all classes. Like all other♦ Op. Cit.y p. 45.

175

The Chrysamhenmm md the Swordobligations and disciplines in Japan giri is ‘heavier* as onegoes up the social scale but it is required at all levels of so-de^. At least the Japanese think it is heavier for the sam-urai. A non-Japanese observer is just as likely to feel thatgiri requires most of the common people because the re-wards for conforming seem to him less. To the Japanese itis suffident reward to be respected in his world and ‘a manwho does not know giri’ is still a ‘miserable wretch.’ He isscorned and ostracized by his fellows.

The Circle of Human Feelinp

An Ethical Cora like Japan’s, which requires such ex-treme repayment of obligations and such drastic renuncia-tions, might consistently have branded personal desire asan evil to be rooted out from the human breast This is theclassical Buddhist doctrine and it is therefore doubly sur-prising that the Japanese code is so hospitable to the pleas-ures of the five senses. In spite of the fact that Japan is oneof the great Buddhist nations of the world, her ethics at thispoint contrast sharply with the teachings of Gautama Bud-dha and of the holy books of Buddhism. The Japanese donot condom self-gratification. They are not Puritans.Tl^ consider physical pleasures good and worthy of cul-tivation. They are sought and valued. Nevertheless, theyhave to be kept in their place. They must not intrude uponthe serious affairs of life.

Such a code keeps life at a particularly high tension. AHindu finds it far easier to see these consequences of Japa-nese accq>tance of the pleasures ofthe senses than an Amo:-ican does. Americans do not believe that pleasures have to beteamed; a man may refuse to indulge in sensual pleasures.

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The Chrsyanthemmn and the Sword

but he is resisting a known temptation. Pleasures, how>ever, are learned much as duties are. In many cultures thepleasures themselves are not taught and it therefore be-comes particularly easy for peojde to devote themselves toself-sacrificing duty. Even physical attraction between menand women has sometimes been minimized till it hardlythreatens the smooth course of family life, which in suchcountries is based on quite other considerations. The Jap-anese make life hard for themselves by cultivating physicalpleasures and then setting up a code in which these pleasuresare the very things which must not be indulged as a seriousway of life. They cultivate the pleasures of the flesh likefine arts, and then, when they are fully savored, th^ sacri-fice them to duty.

One of the best loved minor pleasures of the body in Ja-pan is the hot bath. For the poorest rice farmer and themeanest servant, just as much as for the rich aristocrat, thedaily soak in superlatively heated water is a part of the rou-tine of every late afternoon. The commonest tub is a woodenbarrel with a charcoal fire under it to keep the water heatedto 110 degrees Fahrenheit and over. People wash and rinsethemselves all over before they get into the tub and thengive themselves over to their enjoyment of the warmth andrelaxation of soaking. They sit in the bath with their kneesdrawn up in fetal position, the water up to their chins.They value the daily bath for cleanliness’ sake as Ameri-cans do, but they add to this value a fine art of passive in-dulgence which is hard to duplicate in the bathing habits ofthe rest of the world. The older one is, they say, the more itgrows on one.

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The Circle of Human Feelings

There are all sorts of ways of mioimizing &e cost andtrouble of providing these baths, but baths th^ must have.In the cities and towns there are great public baths likeswimming pools where one may go and soak and visit withone’s chance neighbor in the water. In the farm villagesseveral women will take turns preparing the bath in theyard—it is no part of Japanese modesty to avoid the publicgaze while bathing—and their families will use it in turn.Always any family even in fine homes go into the familytub in strict succession: the guest, the grandfather, thefather, the eldest son and so on down to the lowest servantof the family. They come out lobster-red, and the familygathers together to enjoy the most relaxed hour of the daybefore the evening meal.

Just as the hot bath is so keenly appreciated a pleasure,so ‘hardening oneself’ traditionally included the most ex-cessive routine of cold douches. This routine is often called‘winter exercises’ or ‘the cold austerity’ and is still done,but not in the old traditional form. That called for goingout before dawn to sit imder waterfalls of cold mountainstreams. Even pouring freezing water over oneself on win-ter nights in their unheated Japanese houses is no slightausterity and Percival Lowell describes the custom as it ex-isted in the eighteen-nineties. Men who aspired to specialpowers of curing or prophecy—but who did not then be-come priests—practiced the cold-austerity before they wentto bed and rose again at two a jii. to do it again at the hourwhen ‘the gods were bathing.’ They repeated when th^rose in the morning and again at midday and at nightfall.*

• Lowell, Peidval, Occult Japan, 1895, pp. 106-121.

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TTje Qnysmtbemm and ihe Sword

The before-dawn austoity was particularly popular withpeople who were merely in earnest about leamiDg to play amusical instrumeat or to pr^me for some odier secularcareer. To hardm oneself, one may expose oneself to anycold and it is regarded as particularly virtuous for duldrenpracticing calligraphy to finish their practice periods withtheir fingers numbed and chilblained. Modem elementaryschools are unheated and a great virtue is made of this forit hardens the children for later (hfficulties of life. Western-ers have been more impressed with the constant colds andsnotty noses which the custom certainly does nothing toprevent.

Sleeping is another favored indulgence. It is one of themost accomplished arts of the Japanese. They sleep widicomplete relaxation, in any position, and under circum-stances we regard as sheer impossibilities. This has sur-prised many Western students of the Japanese. Americansmake insomnia almost a tynonym for psychic tenseness,and according to our standards there are high tensions inthe Japanese character. But th^ make child’s play of goodsleeping. They go to bed em*Iy, too, and it is hard to find an-other Oriental nation that does that The villagers, all asleepshortly after nightfall, are not following our maxim of stor-ing up energy for the morrow for they do not have thatkind of calculus. One Westerner, who knew than well,wrote: ’When one goes to Japan one must cease to believethat it is a bounden duty to pr^>are for work tomorrow bysle^ and rest tonight. One is to consida sle^ apart fromquestions of recuperation, rest and recreation.’ It shouldstand, just as a proposal to work should, too, ’on its own

i8o

The Grcle of ihmm Feelmgs

kgn, having no leferaioe to any knowa fact c^lifeor death.’*Americana are used to rating slee|Hng as something one doesto keep up one’s strmgth and the first drought of most ofus when we wake up in the morning is to calculate howmany hours we ri^ept that ni^t. The length of our slumberstdls us how much energy and effidency we will have thatday. The Japanese sleep for other reasons. They like sleep-ing and when the coast is clear they gladly go to sleep.

By the same token they are rutUess in sacrificing sleep.A student preparing for examinations works night and day,uncurbed by any notion that sleep would equip him betterfor the test In Army training, sleep is simply something tosacrifice to disdpline. Colonel Harold Doud, attached to theJapanese Army from 1934 to 1935, tells of bis conversationwith a Captain Teshima. During peacetime maneuvers thetroops ’twice went three days and two nights without sleepexcept what could be snatched during ten-minute halts andbrief lulls in the situation. Sometimes the men slept whilewalking. Our junior lieutenant caused much amusement bymardiing squarely into a lumber pile on the side of theroad while soimd asleep.* When camp was finally struck,still no one got a chance to sleep; they were all assigned toouqpost and patrol duty. ’ “But why not let some of themsle^?” I asked. “Oh no!” he said. “That is not necessary.They already know how to sleep. Thty need training inhow to stay awake.” ’f That puts the Japanese view in anutshelL

* Watson, W. Petrie, The Future of Japan^ 1907.

t How the Jap Army Fights, articles from the Infantry Journal publishedas Penguin Books, 1942, pp 54-55.

l8l

The Chrysmtbemum and the SwordEating, like warmA and sleeping, is both a relaxationfreely enjoyed as pleasure, and a discipline imposed forhardening. As a ritual of leisure the Japanese indulge inendless coiu^ meals at which one teaspoonful of food isbrought in at a time and the food is praised as much for itslooks as for its flavor. But otherwise discipline is stressed.‘Quick eating, quick defecating, those together make one ofthe highest Japanese virtues,’ Eckstein quotes a Japanesevillager as saying.* ‘Eating is not regarded as an act of anyimportance.... Eating is necessary to sustain life, thereforeit should be as brief a business as possible. Children, espe-cially boys, are not as in Europe, urged to eat slowly but areencouraged to eat as quickly as possible’ (italics mine).tlnthe monasteries of the Buddhist faith where priests are imderdiscipline, they ask in their grace before meals that theymay remember that food is just a medicine; the idea is thatthose who are hardening themselves should ignore food as apleasme and regard it only as a necessity.

According to Japanese ideas, involuntary deprivation offood is an especially good test of how ‘hardened’ one is.Like foregoing warmth and sleeping, so, too, being withoutfood is a chance to demonstrate that one can ‘take it,’ and,like the samurai, ‘hold a toothpick between one’s teeth.’If one meets this test when one goes without food, one’sstrength is raised by one’s victory of the spirit, not loweredby the lack of calories and vitamins. The Japanese do notrecognize the one-to-one correspondence which Americanspostulate between body nourishment and body strength.

* Eckstein, G., In Peace Japan Breeds War, 1943, p. 153.t Nohara, KL, The True Face of Japan, London, 1936, p. 140.

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The Circle of Human Feelir^s

Hwrdbre, Radio Tokyo could tell people in raid shdtnaduring the war that calisthenics would make hungry peoplestrong and vigorous again.

Romantic love is another ‘human feeling* which the Jap-anese cultivate. It is thoroughly at home in Japan, no matterhow much it runs counter to their forms of marriage andtheir obligations to the family. Their novels are full of it,and, as in French literature, the principals are already mar-ried. Double love-suicides are favorite themes in readingand conversation. The tenth-century Tale of Genji is aselaborate a novel of romantic love as any great novel anycountry in the world has ever produced, and tales of theloves of the lords and the samurai of the feudal period areof this same romantic sort. It is a chief theme of their con-temporary novels. The contrast with Chinese literature isvery great. The Chinese save themselves a great deal oftrouble by underplaying romantic love and erotic pleasures,and their family life has consequently a remarkably eventenor.

Americans can, of course, understand the Japanese betterthan they can the Chinese on this score but this under-standing nevertheless goes only a little way. We have manytaboos on erotic pleasure which the Japanese do not have.It is an area about which they are not moralistic and we are.Sex, like any other ‘human feeling,’ they regard as thor-ou^y good in its minor place in life. There is nothing evilabout ‘human feelings’ and therefore no need to be moralis-tic about sex pleasiues. They still comment upon the factthat Americans and British consider pornographic some oftheir cherished books of pictures and see the Yoshiwara—

183

The Chrysambemim md the Sivordthe district of g»sha girls and prostitutes—in such a luridli^t The Japanese, even during earlyyearsof Western con-tact, were very sensitive about this foreign critki^ andpassed laws to bring their practices more nearly into con-formity with Western standards. But no legal regulationshave been able to bridge the cultural differences.

Educated Japanese are thorou^y aware that En^h andAmericans see inunorality and obscenity where th^ do not,but they are not as conscious of the chasm between our con-ventional attitudes and their tenet that ‘human feelings’should not intrude upon serious affairs of life. It is, how-ever, a major source of our difficulty in understanding Jap-anese attitudes about love and erotic pleasure. They fenceoff one province which belongs to the wife from anotherwhich belongs to erotic pleasure. Both provinces are equallyopen and aboveboard. The two are not divided from eachother as in American life by the fact that one is what a manadmits to the public and the other is surreptitious. Th^ areseparate because one is in the circle of a man’s major obli-gations and the other in the circle of minor relaxation. Thisway of mapping out ‘proper place’ to each area makes thetwo as separate for the ideal father of a family as it does forthe man about town. The Japanese set up no ideal, as wedo in the United States, which pictures love and marriageas one and the same thing. We approve of love just inproportion as it is the basis of one’s choice of a spouse.‘Being in love’ is our most approved reason for marriage.Aftra* marriage a husband’s physical attraction to anotherwoman is humiliating to his wife because he bestows else-where son»thing that rightly belongs to her. The Japanese

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The Grek of Human Feelmgsjudge dififecently. In the choice of a spouse the young manshould bow to ^ parent’s choice and marry blind. He mustobserve great formaliQr in his relations with his wife. Evoiin the give and take of family life thdr childroi do not seean erotically affectionate gesture |»ss between them. ‘Hiereal aim of marriage is regarded in this country,’ as a con-temporary Japanese says in one of their magazines, ‘as theprocreation of children and thereby to assure the continuityof the family life. Any purpose other than this must simplyserve to pervert the true meaning of it.’

But this does not mean that a man remains virtuous bylimiting himself to such a life. If he can afford it he keepsa mistress. In strong contrast to China he does not add to hisfamily this woman who has caught his fancy. If he did that,it would confuse the two areas of life which should be keptseparate. The girl may be a geisha, highly trained in musicand dance and massage and the arts of entertainment, orshe may be a prostitute. In any case he signs a contract withthe house where she is employed and this contract protectsthe girl from abandonment and ensures her a financial re-turn. He sets her up in an establishment of her own. Only inhighly exceptional cases when the girl has a child whom theman wishes to bring up with his own children does he bringher into his home, and then she is designated as one of theservants, not as a concubine. The child calls the legal wife‘mother,’ and ties between the real mother and her childare not acknowledged. The whole Oriental arrangement ofpolygamy, which is so pronounced a traditional pattern inChina, is thus quite un-Japanese. The Japanese keep familyobligations and ‘human feelings’ even spatially apart

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The Chrysambemum and the SwordOnly the upper class can afford to ke^ mistrrases, bidmost men have at some time visited gdshas or prostitutes.Such visits are not in the least surreptitious. A man’s wifemay dress and prepare him for his evening of relaxation.The house he visits may send the bill to his wife and she paysit as a matter of course. She may be unhappy about it butthat is her own affair. A visit to the geisha house is moreexpensive than a visit to a prostitute but the payment a manmakes for the privilege of such an evening does not includethe ri^t to make her a sexual partner. What he gets is thepleasure of being entertained by beautifully dressed andpimctiliously mannered girls who have been meticulouslytrained for their rdle. To gain access to a particular geisha,the man would have to become her patron and sign a con-tract according to which she would become his mistress, orhe would have to captivate her by his charms so that shegave herself to him of her own free will. An evening withgeisha girls, however, is no asexual affair. Their dances,theirrepartee, their songs, their gestures are traditionally sug-gestive and carefully calculated to express all that an upper-class wife’s maynot. They are‘in the circle of human feelings’and give relief from ‘the circle of ko* There is no reason notto indulge oneself but the two spheres belong apartProstitutes live in licensed houses, and after an eveningwith a geisha a man may visit a prostitute if he wishes. Thefee is low and men with little mon^ have to content them-selves with this form of relaxation and forego geishas. Thepictures of the girls of the house are displayed outside andmen commonly spend a long time quite publicly studyingthe picture and making their choices, llese girls have a

186

The Circle of Human Feelings

low status and they are not put on a pinnacle as the geishasare. They are most of them daughters of the poor who havebeen sold to the establishment by their families vlien th^were hard-pressed for money, and they are not trained ingeisha arts of entertainment. In earlier days, before Japanrealized Western disapproval of the custom and ended it,the girls themselves used to sit in public showing thdur im-passive faces to customers choosing thdh human wares.Their photographs are a substitution.

One of these girls may be chosen by a man who be-comes her exclusive patron and sets her up as a mistr^after making a contract with the house. Such girls are pro-tected "by the terms of the agreement. A man may, how-ever, take a servant girl or salesgirl as a mistress withoutsigning a contract and these Voluntary mistresses’ are theones who are most defenseless. They are precisely thosegirls who are most likely to have been in love with theirpartners, but they are outside all the recognized circles ofobligation. When the Japanese read our tales and poemsof young mourning women ‘with my baby on my knee’abandoned by their lovers, they identify these mothers ofillegitimate children with their ‘voluntary mistresses.*

Homosexual indulgences are also part of traditional‘human feelings.’ In Old Japan these were the sanctionedpleasures of men of high status such as the samurai and thepriests. In the Meiji period when Japan made so many ofher customs illegal in her effort to win the approval ofWesterners, she ruled that this custom should be punishableby law. It still falls, however, among those ‘human feelings’about which moralistic attitudes are inappropriate. It must

be kq>t in its proper [rface and must not interfere with car-rying on the family. Therrfore die danger of a man or awoman’s ‘becoming’ a homosexual, as the Western phrasehas it, is hardly conceived, though a man can choose to be-come a male geisha professionally. The Japanese are espe-cially shocked at adult passive homosexuals in the UnitedStates. Adult men in Japan would seek out boy partners,for adults consider the passive rdle to be beneath their dig-ni^. The Japanese draw their own lines as to what a mancan do and retain his self-respect, but they are not the oneswe draw.

The Japanese are not moralistic about autoerotic pleas-ures, eitha*. No people have ever had such paraphernaliafor the purpose. In this field, too, the Japanese tried to fore-stall foreign condemnation by eliminating some of the moreobvious publicity these objects received, but they do notthemselves feel that they are instruments of evil. The strongWestemattitudeagainst masturbation, even stronger in mostof Europe than in the United States, is deeply imprinted onour consciousness before we are grown up. A boy hears thewliiq>ered words that it makes a man crazy or that it makeshim bald. His mother has been watchful when he was abatty, and perhaps she has made a great issue of it and phys-ically punished him. Perhaps she tied his hands. Perhapsshe told him God would punish him. Japanese babies andJapanese children do not have these experiences and asadults thty cannot therefore r^roduce our attitudes. Auto-erotidsm is a pleasure about which they feel no guilt andth^ think it is sufficiently controlled by assigning it to itsminor place in a decorous life.

188

The Grcle of Httmm FeelingsIntoxicatioti is anotli» of the permissible ^hmoan feel-ings.’ The Japanese consider our Amoican total abstinmoepledges as one of the strange vagaries the Occident Sotoo they regairi our local agitations to vote our home areadry. Drinkkg sake is a pleasure no man in his right mindwould deny himself. But alcohol belongs among the minorrelaxations and no man in his right mind, either, would be-come obsessed by it According to their way of thinking onedoes not fear to ‘become’ a drunkard any more than onefears to ‘become’ a homosexual, and it is true that the com-pulsive drunkard is not a social problem in Japan. Alcoholis a pleasant relaxation and one’s family and even the pub-lic does not consider a man repulsive when he is under the in-fluence of liquor. He is not likely to be violent and certainlynobody thinks he is going to beat up his children. A cryingjag is quite common and relaxation of the strict rules ofJapanese posture and gestures is universal. At urban sakeparties men like to sit in each other’s laps.

Conventional Japanese strictly separate drinking fromeating. As soon as a man tastes rice at a village party wheresake is served it means that he has stopped drinldng. Hehas stepped over into another ‘circle’ aiul he keeps tiiemseparate. At home he may have sdce after his meal but hedoes not eat and drink at the same time. He gives himsdfup in turn to one or the other enjoymaitThese Japanese views on ‘human feelings’ have severalconsequ^ces. It cuts the ground out from under the Occi-dental philosophy of two powers, the flesh and the ^mt,continiially fighting for supiemacty in each hxunan life. InJapanese philosophy the flesh is not evil. Enjoying its pos-

189

sible pleasuies is no sin. Hie spirit and the body ane notopposing forces in the universe and the Japanese cany thistenet to a logical conclusion: the world is not a battlefieldbe-tween good and evil. Sir George Sansom writes: ‘Through-out their histoiy the Japanese seem to have retained in somemeasure this incapacity to discern, or this reluctance tograpple with, the problem of evil.’* They have in fact con-stantly repudiated it as a view of life. They believe that manhas two souls, but they are not his good impulses fightingwith his bad. They are the ‘gentle’ soul and the ‘rough’ souland there are occasions in every man’s—and every nation’s—life when he should be ‘gentle’ and when he should be‘rou^.’ One soul is not destined for hell and one for heaven.They are both necessary and good on different occasions.

Even their gods are conspicuously good-evil in this samefashion. Their most popular god is Susanowo, ‘His SwiftImpetuous Male Augustness,’ brother of the Sun Goddess,whose outrageous behavior toward his sister would in West-ern mythology identify him as a devil. His sister tries tothrow him out of her rooms because she suspects his mo-tives in coming to her. He behaves wantonly, scattering ex-crement over her dining hall where she and her followersare celebrating the ceremony of the First-fruits. He breaksdown the divisions of the rice fields—a terrible offense. Asworst offense of all—and most enigmatic to a Westerner—he flings into her chamber through a hole he makes in theroof a piebald horse which he ‘had flayed with a backwardflaying.’ Susanowo, for all these outrages, is tried by thegods, heavily fined and banished from heaven to the Land

* Sansom, op* dt*, 1931, p. 51.

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The Circle of Human Feelingsof Darkness. But he remains a favorite god of the Japanesepantheon and he duly receives his worship. Such god-char-acters are common in world mythologies. In the higher eth-ical religions, however, they have been excluded because aphilosophy of cosmic conflict between good and evil makesit more congenial to separate supernatural beings intogroups as different as black and white.

The Japanese have always been extremely expUdt in deny-ing that virtue consists in fighting evil. As their philosophersand religious teachers have constantly said for centuriessuch a moral code is alien to Japan. They are loud in pro-claiming that this proves the moral superiority of their ownpeople. The Chinese, they say, had to have a moral codewhich raised jen, just and benevolent behavior, to an abso-lute standard, by applying which all men and acts could befound wanting if they fell short. ‘A moral code was good forthe Chinese whose inferior natures required such artificialmeans of restraint’ So wrote the great eighteenth-centuryShintoist, Motodri, and modem Buddhist teachers andmodem nationalistic leaders have written and spoken onthe same theme. Human nature in Japan, they say, is natu-rally good and to be trusted. It does not need to fight anevil half of itself. It needs to cleanse the windows of its souland act with appropriateness on every different occasion. Ifit has allowed itself to become ‘dirty,’ impurities are readilyremoved and man’s essential goodness shines forth again.Buddhist philosophy has gone farther in Japan than in anyother nation in teaching that every man is a potential Bud-dha and that rules of virtue are not in the sacred writings butin what one imcovers within one’s own enlightened and in-

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

Dooent soul. Why should one distrust what coe finds dusre?No evil is inherent m man’s souL They have no theologywhidi oies with tiie Psalmist, ‘Bdiold, I was shq)en in iniq-uity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.* They teadi nodoctrine of the Fall of Man. ’Human feelings* are blessingswhidi a man should not cond^nn. Neither die {diilosoi^ernor die peasant does condemn them.

To American ears such doctrines seem to lead to a philos-ophy of self-indulgence and license. The Japanese, however,as we have sera, define the supreme task of life as fulfillingone’s obligations. They fully accept the fact that repayingon means saraificing one’s personal desires and pleasures.The idea that the pursuit of happiness is a serious goal oflife is to them an amazing and immoral doctrine. Happinessis a relaxation in which one indulges when one can, but todignify it as something by which the State and family shouldbe judged is quite unthinkable. Ihe fact that a man oftensuffers intensely in living up to his obligations of chu and koand ^ is no more than they expect. It makes life hard butthey are prepared for that Th^ constandy give up pleasureswhich th^ consider in no way eviL That requires strragthof will. But such strragth is the most admired virtue inJapan.

It is consistent with this Japanese position that the ’happyending’ is so rare in their novels and plays. American popu-lar audiences crave solutions. Th^ want to believe that peo-ple live happily ever after. They want to know that peopleare rewarded for their virtue. If th^ must weep at the radof a play, it must be because there was a flaw in the hero’scharacter or because he was victimized by a bad social order.

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The Circle of Human Feelings

But it is far j^asanter to have evoything come outfor the hero. Japanese popular atuiienoes sit dissolved intears watching the hero come to his tragic end and the lovelyheroine slain because of a turn of the vlieel of fortuiK. Sudiplots are the high points of an evening’s entertainment Theyare what people go to the dieater to see. Even their modemmovies are built on the thane of the suffoings of the heroand the heroine. They are in love and give up thdr lovos.Th^ are happily married and one or the other commitssuidde in the proper performance of his duQr. The wife whohas devoted herself to rescuing her husband’s career andarousing him to cultivate his great gifts as an actor hideshorself in die great city on the eve of his success to free himfor his new life and dies uncomplainingly in poverty on theday of his great triumfdi. There need be no happy aiding.Pity and sympathy for die self-sacrificing hao and heroinehas full ri^t of way. Their suffering is no judgment of Godupon them. It shows that they fulfilled their duty at all costsand allowed nothing—not abandonment or sickness ordeath—to divert them from the tme path.

Thdr modem war films are in the same tradition. Ameri-cans who see these movies often say that thty are the bestpacifist propaganda they eva saw. This is a characteristicAmerican reaction because the movies are wholly ooiuemedwith the sacrifice and suffering of war. Th^ do not fday upmilitary parades and bands and prideful showings of fleetmaneuvers or big gims. Whether th^ deal with the Russo-Japanese War or the China Incident, they starkly insist uponthe monotonous routine of mud and marching, the suffer-ings of lowly fighting, the inconclusiveness of campaigns.

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The Chrysmtbemim and the SwordThdr curtain scenes are not victory or evra banzai charges.They are overnight baits in some featureless Chinese towndeep in mud. Or show maimed, halt and blind repre-sentatives of three generations of a Japanese family, survi-vors of three wars. Or they show die family at home, afterthe death of the soldier, mourning the loss of husband andfather and breadwinner and gathering themselves togetherto go on without him. The stirring background of Anglo-American ‘Cavalcade’ movies is all absent Th^ do noteven dramatize the theme of rehabilitation of wounded vet-erans. Not even the purposes for which the war was fou^tare mentioned. It is enough for the Japanese audience thatall the people on the screen have repaid on with everythingthat was in them, and these movies therefore in Japan werepropaganda of the militarists. Their sponsors knew thatJapanese audiences were not stirred by them to pacifism.

The Japanese view of life is just what their formulas of chuand ko and giri and jin and human feeUngs say it is. Theysee the ‘whole duty of man’ as if it were parceled out intoseparate provinces on a map. In their phrase, one’s life con-sists of ‘the circle of chu’ and ‘the circle of ko’ and ‘the dr-cle of giri’ and ‘the circle of jin’ and ‘the circle of humanfeelings’ and many more. Each circle has its special de-tailed code and a man judges his fellows, not by ascribingto them integrated personalities, but by saying of them that‘they do not know ko’ or ‘they do not know giri.’ Insteadof accusing a man of being imjust, as an American would,they specify the circle of behavior he has not lived up to.Instead of accusing a man of being selfish or unkind, theJapanese specify the particular province within which heviolated the code. They do not invoke a categorical im-perative or a golden rule. Approved behavior is relative tothe circle within which it appears. When a man acts ‘forko,’ he is acting in one way; when he acts ‘merely for giri’or ‘in the circle of jin,’ he is acting—so Westerners wouldjudge—in quite different character. The codes, even foreach ‘circle,’ are set up in such a way that, when conditions

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' The Qyryscmhemum and the Smrd

diaoge within it, the most differait bdhavior may be prop-erly called for. Giti to one’s lord demanded utmost loyaltyuntil the lord insulted his retainer; afterward no treadieiywas too great Until August 1945, chu demanded of theJapanese people that thty fight to the last man against theenemy. When the Bnperor changed the requironents of chuby broadcasting Japan’s capitulation, the Japanese outdidthemselves in expressing their co-operation with the visitors.

This is baffling to Westerners. According to our experi-ence, people act ‘in character.’ We separate the sheep fromthe goats by whether they are loyal or whether they aretreacherous, whether they are co-operative or whether theyate stiff-necked. We label people and expect their next be-havior to be like their last. They are generous or stingy,willing or su^cious, conservative or liberal. We expectthem to believe in one particular political ideology and con-sistently to fight the opposite ideology. In our war experi-ence in Europe there were collaborationists and there wereresistance people, and we doubted, quite rightly, that afterVE-Day collaborationists would have changed their spots.In domestic controversies in the United States, we recog-nize, for instance. New Dealers and anti-New Dealers, andwe judge that as new situations arise these two camps willcontinue to act in character. If individuals move from onesMe of the fence to the other—as when an unbeliever be-comes a Catholic or a ‘red’ becomes a conservative—suchax:han^ has to be duly labeled as a conversion and a newpersonality built up to fit

This Western faith in integrated behavior is of course notalways justified, but it is no illusion. In most cultures, prim-

ip<S

itive or dvilusd, men and womoi picture then^ves asacting as particular kinds of parsons. If they are interestedin powor, they reckon their failings and successes in tomsof others’ submission to their will If th^ are interested inbeing loved, they are frustrated in impersonal situations.They fancy thonselves as sternly just or as having an ‘artis-tic temperament* or as being a good homebody. They gen-erally achieve a Gestalt in their own charactos. It bringsorder into human existence.

Ocddoitals cannot easily credit the ability of the Jap-anese to swing from one behaviorto anotherwithoutpsychiccost Such extreme possibilities are not included in our ex-perience. Yet in Japanese life the contradictions, as th^seem to us, are as deeply based in their view of life as ouruniformities are in ours. It is especially important for Oc-cidentals to recognize that the ‘circles’ into which the Jap-anese divide life do not include any ‘circle of eviL’ This isnot to say that the Japanese do not recognize bad behavior,but they do not see human life as a stage on which forcesof good contend with forces of evil. They see existence as adrama whickcalls for careful balancing of the claims of one‘circle’ against another and of one course of procedureagainst another, each circle and each course of procedurebeing in itself good. If everyone followed his true instincts,everyone would be good. As we saw, th^ regard even Qii-nese moral precepts as proving that the Chinese need thatkind of thing. It proves the inferiority of the Chinese. Jap-anese, th^ say, have no need of over-all ethical command-moits. In Sir George Sansom’s phrase which we have al-ready quoted, th^ ‘do not grapple with the problem oS

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The Chrysmthemum and the SwordeviL’ According to thdr view, thqr adequately account forbad behavior by less cosmic means. Though every soul orig-inally shines with virtue like a new sword, nevertheless, ifit is not kept polished, it gets tarnished. This ‘rust of mybody,’ as th^ phrase it, is as bad as it is on a sword. A manmust give his character the same care that he would give asword. But his bright and gleaming soul is still there imderthe rust and all that is necessary is to polish it up again.

This Japanese view of life makes their folk tales and nov-els and plays seem particularly inconclusive to Westerners—unless we are able, as often happens, to recast the plot tofit our demands for consistency of character and for con-flict of good and evil. But that is not the way the Japaneselook at these plots. TTieir comment is that the hero is caughtin a conflict of ‘giri against human feelings,’ ‘chu againstko,’ ‘giri against gimu.’ A hero fails because he is allowinghis human feeUngs to obscure his obligations of giri, or hecannot pay both the debt he owes as chu and the debt heowes as ko. He cannot do right (gi) because of giri. He iscornered by giri and sacrifices his family. The conflicts soportrayed are still between obligations both of which are inthemselves binding. They are both ‘good.’ The choice be-tween them is like the choice that faces a debtor who owestoo many debts. He must pay some and ignore others forthe time being, but the fact that he pays one debt does notfree him of the jest of his debts.

This way of viewing the hero’s life is in great contrast tothe Western view. Our heroes are good precisely in thatthey have ‘chosen the better part,’ and are pitted against op-ponents who are bad. ‘Virtue triumphs,’ as we say. There

The Dilemma of Virtue

sboiild be a happy ending. The good should be rewarded.The Japanese, however, have an insatiable appetite for thestory of the ‘flagrant case’ of the hero who finally settles in-compatible debts to the world and to his name by choosingdeath as a solution. Such tales would in many cultures bestories teaching resignation to a bitter fate. But in Japanthat is exactly what they are not. They are tales of initiativeand ruthless determination. The heroes put forth everyeffort to pay some one obligation incumbent upon them,and, in so doing, they flout another obligation. But in theend they settle with Ae ‘circle’ they flouted.

The true national epic of Japan is the Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin. It is not a tale that rates high in the world’sliterature but the hold it has on the Japanese is incompa-rable. Every Japanese boy knows not only the main storybut the subordinate plots of the tale. Its stories are con-stantly told and printed and they are retold in a popularmodem movie series. The graves of the forty-seven havebeen for generations a favorite pilgrimage where thousandswent to pay tribute. They left their visiting cards, too,and the ground around the graves was often white withthem.

The theme of the Forty-Seven Ronin centers around girito one’s lord. As the Japanese see it, it portrays the conflictsof giri with chu, of giri with righteousness—in which giriis of course virtuously triumphant,—and of ‘merely giri’with limitless giri. It is an historical tale of 1703, the greatdays of feudalism when men were men, according to themodem Japanese daydream, and there was no ‘unwilling-ness* in giri. The forty-seven heroes offer up everything to

m

The Chrysambemum md the Swordit, their reputations, their fathers, their wives, their sisters,tiieir righteousness (gi). Finally they offer up to chu theirown lives, dying by dieir own hands.

The Lord Asano was appointed by the Shogimate as oneof two daimyo in charge of the ceremony at which all thedaimyo made their periodical obeisance to the Shogun. Thetwo masters of ceremonies were provincial lords and there-fore they had to apply for instructions in reqxxired etiquetteto a very great daimyo of the Court, the Lord Kira. Un-fortunately Lord Asano’s wisest retainer, Oishi—the heroof the tale—who would have counseled him prudently, wasaway in the home province and Asano was naive enoughnot to arrange to pay a sufficient ‘gift’ to his great instruc-tor. The retainers of the other daimyo who was being in-structed by Kira were men of the world and showered theteacher with rich gifts. The Lord Kira therefore instructedLord Asano with bad grace and purposely described to himan entirely wrong costume for his wear at the ceremony.The Lord Asano appeared thus clad on the great day andwhen he realized the insult put upon him he drew his swordand wounded Kira on the forehead before they could beseparated. It was his virtue as a man of honor—his giri tohis name—to avenge Kira’s insult but it was against his chuto draw his sword in the Shogun’s palace. The Lord Asanohad conducted himself virtuously in giri to his name but hecould only come to terms with chu by killing himself ac-cording to the rules of seppuku. He retired to his house anddressed himself for the ordeal, waiting only for the returnof his wisest and most faithful retainer Oishi. When th^had exchanged a long look of farewdl, Lord Asano, having

i The Dilemma of Virtueseated himsdf in required fashion, thrust his swoni into hisbelly and died by his own hand. No relative being willing tosucceed to the place of the dead lord who had violated diuand incurred the displeasure of the Shogunate, Asano’s fiefwas confiscated and his retainers became masterless ronin.

According to the obligations of girl, Asano’s samiuairetainers owed it to their dead master to commit seppuku ashe had done. If in giri to their lord they did what he haddone in gki to his name, this would voice their protest againstKira’s insult to their lord. But Oishi was secretly determinedthat seppuku was too small an act by which to express theirgiri. They must complete the vengeance their own lord hadbeen unable to carry through when retainers separated himfrom his high-placed enemy. They must kill Lord Kira. Butthis could only be accomplished by violating chu. LordKira was too near to the Shogunate to make it possible forthe ronin to get official permission from the State to carryout their revenge. In mdre usual cases, any group contem-plating vengeance registered their plan with the Shogunate,stating the final date before which they would complete theact or abandon the enterprise. This arrangement allowedcertain fortunate people to reconcile chu and giri. Oishiknew that this course was not open to him and his fellows.He therefore called together the ronin who had been Asano’ssamurai retainers but he spoke no word of his plan of kill-ing Kira. There were more than three himdred of theseronin and, as the story was taught in Japanese schools in1940, they all agreed to commit seppuku. Oishi knew, how-ever, that not all of them had unlimited giri—in the Japanesephrase, ‘giri plus sincerity’—and could therefore be trusted

The CbrysoMhemiem md the Swordin the dangerous exploit of a vendetta against Kira. To sep-arate those with ‘merely’ giri from those with giri plussincerity he used the test of how they were to divide theirlord’s personal income. In Japanese eyes this was as muchof a test as if they had not already agreed to commit suicide;their families would benefit. There was violent disagree-ment among the ronin about the basis of the division ofproperty. The chief steward was the highest paid of the re-tainers and he led the faction which wanted the incomedivided according to previous salary. Oishi led the factionwhich wanted it divided equally among them all. As soon asit was well established which ones of the ronin had ‘merely’giri, Oishi agreed to the chief steward’s plan for partitionof the estate and allowed those who had won to leave thecompany. The chief steward left and has earned thereby thefame of being a ‘dog samurai,’ a ‘man who did not knowgiri,’ and a reprobate. Oishi judged only forty-seven to bestrong enough in giri to be made privy to his plan of ven-detta. These forty-seven who joined him pledged by thatact that no good faith, no affection, no gimu shouldstand in the way of the completion of their vow. Giri was tobe their supreme law. The forty-seven cut their fingers andjoined in a blood compact.

Their first task was to throw Kira off the scent. Theydisbanded and pretended to be lost to all honor. Oishi fre-quented the lowest public-houses and engaged in undignifiedbrawls. Under cover of this abandoned life he divorced hiswife—a usual and thoroughly justified step for any Japanesewho was about to run foul of the law since it kept his wifeand children from being held accoimtable along with him

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in the final act Oishi’s wife parted from him in great grief,but his son joined the ronin.

AH Tokyo was speculating on the vendetta. AH who re-spected the ronin were of course convinced that they wouldattempt to kiU Lord Kira. But the forty-seven disclaimedany such intention. They pretended to be men who ‘did notknow giri.’ Their fathers-in-law, outraged at such dishonor-able conduct, turned them out of their homes and dissolvedtheir marriages. Their friends ridiculed them. One day aclose friend met Oishi drunk and reveling with women, andeven to him Oishi denied his giri to his lord. ‘Revenge?’ hesaid. ‘It is siUy. One should enjoy Ufe. Nothing is better thanto drink and play around.’ His friend disbelieved him, andpuUed Oishi’s sword out of its sheath, expecting its shiningbriUiance to disprove what its owner had said. But thesword was rusted. He was forced to beUeve and in the openstreet he kicked and spat upon the drunken Oishi.

One of the ronin, needing money to cover his part in thevendetta, had his wife sold as a prostitute. Her brother, alsoone of the ronin, discovered that knowledge of the vendettahad come into her hands and proposed to kill her with hisown sword, arguing that with this proof of his loyalty Oishiwould enroU him among the avengers. Another ronin kiUedhis father-in-law. Another sent his sister to serve as maidand concubine to Lord Kira himself so that the ronin mighthave advice from inside the palace telling them when toattack; this act made it inevitable that she should commitsuicide when vengeance was accomplished, for she had toclear herself by death of the fault of having appeared to beon the side of Lord Kira.

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The Chrysmthennan and the Sword

On a snowy night, December fourteenth, Kira held a sakeparQr and the guards were drunk. The ronin raided thestron^old, overcame the guards, and went straight to LordKira’s bedroom. He was not there, but his bed was stillwarm. The ronin knew he was hiding somewhere in the en-closure. At last they discovered a man crouched in an out-house used for storing charcoal. One of the ronin drove hisspear through a wall of the hut, but when he withdrew itthere was no blood upon it. The spear had indeed piercedKira, but as it was withdrawn he had wiped off the bloodwith his kimono sleeve. His trick was of no avail. The roninforced him to come out. He claimed, however, that he wasnot Kira; he was only the chief steward. At this point oneof the forty-seven remembered the wound their Lord Asanohad given Kira in the Shogun’s palace. By this scar theyidentified him and demanded his immediate seppuku. Herefused—which proved of course that he was a coward. Withthe sword their own Lord Asano had used in his seppuku,they cut off his head, ceremonially washed it, and havingfinished their work, set off in procession to cany the doublybloodied sword and the severed head to Asano’s grave.

All Tokyo was filled with enthusiasm for the deed of theronin. Their families and fathers-in-law who had doubtedthem rushed to embrace them and to do obeisance. Greatlords urged hospitality upon them along the way. They pro-ceeded to the grave and placed there not only the head andthe sword but a written address to their lord which is stillpreserved.

We have come this day to do homage here.... We couldnot have dared to present ourselves before you unless we104

had carried out the vengeance which you began. Every daythat we waited seemed three autumns to us.... We haveescorted my Lord Kira hither to your tomb. This swordyou valued so greatly last year and entrusted to us we nowbring back. We pray you to take it and strike the head ofyour enemy a second time and dispel your hatred forever.This is the respectful statement of forty-seven men.

Their giri was paid. They had still to pay their chu. Onlyin their death could the two coincide. They had broken theState rule against undeclared vendetta but they were not inrevolt against chu. Whatever was demanded of them in thename of chu they must fulfill. The Shogunate ruled that theforty-seven should commit seppuku. As fifth-grade chil-dren’s Japanese Readers say:

Since they acted to avenge their lord, their unswervinggiri had to be regarded as an example for ages eternal....Therefore the Shogunate after deliberation commandedseppuku, a plan which killed two birds with one stone.

That is, in killing themselves with their own hands the roninpaid the supreme debt both to giri and to gimu.

This national epic of Japan varies somewhat in differentversions. In the modem movie version, the bribery themeat the outset is changed to a sex theme: Lord Kira is dis-covered making advances to Asano’s wife, and because ofhis attraction to her he humiliates Asano by giving himfalse instructions. Bribery is thus eliminated. But all theobli^tions of giri are told in blood-curdling detail. ‘Forgiri they forsook their wives, parted with their children andlost (killed) their parents.’

The theme of the conflict between gimu and giri is thebasis of many other tales and movies. One of the best his-

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The Qjrysanthemim md the Smrdtorical movies is placed in the time of the third TokugawaShogun. This Shogun had been named to his office whenhe was a yoimg and untried man, and his courtiers weredivided among themselves about the succession, some ofthem supporting a near relative of the same age. One of thedefeated daimyo nursed this ‘insult’ in his bosom in spiteof the capable administration of the Third Shogun. Hebided his time. At last the Shogun and his entourage noti-fied him that they were to make a tour of certain fiefs. Itwas incumbent upon this daimyo to entertain the party andhe seized the opportunity to even all scores and fulfill his girito his name. His home was already a stronghold and he pre-pared it for the coming event so that all egress could beblocked and the stronghold sealed. Then he provided meansby which the walls and ceilings could be knocked down onthe heads of the Shogun and his party. His plot was stagedin the grand style. His entertainment was meticulous. Forthe enjoyment of the Shogun he had one of his samuraidance before him and this samurai was under instructionsto plunge his sword into the Shogun at the climax of thedance. In giri to his daimyo the samurai could in no wiserefuse his lord’s order. His chu, however, forbade him tolift his hand against the Shogun. The dance on the screenfully portrays the conflict. He must and he must not. Healmost brings himself to strike the blow but he cannot.In spite of giri, chu is too strong. The dance degeneratesand the Shogun’s party becomes suspicious. They rise fromtheir seats just as the desperate daimyo orders the demoli-tion of the house. There is danger that the Shogun, thoughhe has escaped the dancer’s sword, will be killed in the ruins

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of the stronghold. At this point the sword dancer comesforward and guides the Shogun’s parly through under-ground passages so that they escape safely into the open.Chu has conquered giri. The Shogun’s spokesman in grati-tude urges their guide to go with them in honor to Tokyo.The guide, however, looks back into the falling house. Ttis impossible,’ he says. T stay. It is my gimu and my giri,’He turns from them and dies in the ruins. ‘In his death hesatisfied both chu and giri. In death they coincided.’

The tales of olden times do not give central place to theconflict between obligations and ‘human feelings.’ In recentyears it has become a principal theme. Modem novels tellof love and human kindness which have to be discarded be-cause of gimu or giri, and this theme is played up insteadof being minimized. Like their war movies, which readilyseem to Westerners to be good pacifist propaganda, thesenovels often seem to us a plea for greater latitude to liveaccording to the dictates of one’s own heart. They are cer-tainly testimony to this impulse. But over and over Japa-nese who discuss the plot of novels or movies see a differentmeaning. The hero we sympathize with because he is in loveor cherishes some personal ambition, they condemn asweak because he has allowed these feelings to come betweenhim and his gimu or his giri. Westerners are likely to feel itis a sign of strength to rebel against conventions and seizehappiness in spite of obstacles. But the strong, according toJapanese verdict, are those who disregard personal happi-ness and fulfill their obligations. Strengdi of character,they think, is shown in conforming not in rebelling. Theplots of their novels and movies, consequently, often have

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The Qyrpanthenmm and, the Swordquite a different meaning in Japan from that which we giveto them when we see them frtrough Western ^es.

Japanese make the same kind of appraisal when th^pass judgment on their own lives or on those of people theyhave known. They judge that a man is weak if he pa}rs at-tention to his personal desires when they conflict with thecode of obligations. All kinds of situations are judged inthis way, but the one which is most opposite to Westernethics concerns a man’s attitude toward his wife. His wifeis only tangential to ‘the circle of ko’ but his parents arecentral. Therefore his duty is clear. A man of strong moralcharacter obeys ko and accepts his mother’s decision todivorce his wife. It only makes the man ‘stronger’ if heloves his wife and if she has borne him a child. In the Japa-nese phrase, ‘ko may make you put your wife and childrenin the category of strangers.’ Then your treatment of thembelongs at best in ‘the circle of jin.’ At worst they becomepeople who have no claims upon you. Even when a mar-riage is happy, a wife is not centrally placed in the circlesof obligations. A man should therefore not elevate his rela-tion to her so that it seems to be on a level with his feelingstoward his parents or his coimtry. It was a popular scandalin the nineteen-thirties when a prominent liberal spoke pub-licly about how happy he was in returning to Japan, andmentioned reunion with his wife as one of the reasons forhis pleasure. He should have spoken of his parents, ofFujiyama, of his dedication to the national mission of Ja-pan. His vwfe did not belong on this leveL

The Japanese themselves have shown in the modem erathat they were not satisfied to leave their code of morals so

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heavy with en^^diasis on kee^wg different levels sqnrateand different ‘dicles’ distinct. A great part of Japanese in-doctrination has been devoted to making chu supreme.Just as statesmen simplified the hierarchy by putting the Em-peror at the apex and eliminating the Shogun and the feudallords, so in the moral realm they worked to simplify th®^tem of obligations by bringing all lower virtues underthe category of chu. By this means they sou^t not only toimify the coxmtry imder ‘Emperor worship,’ but to lessen theatomism of Japanese morals. They sought to teach that infulfilling chu one fulfilled all other duties. Th^ sought tomake it, not one circle on a chart, but the keystone of a moralarch.

The best and most authoritative statement of this pro-gram is the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors givenby the Emperor Meiji in 1882. This Rescript and the one onEducation are the true Holy Writ of Japan. Neither of theJapanese religions makes a place for holy books. Shinto hasnone and the cults of Japanese Buddhism either make adogma out of disillxision with textual scriptures or substi-tute for them the repetition of phrases like ‘Glory to Amida’or ‘Glory to the Lotus of the ^ok.’ The Meiji Rescripts ofadmonition, however, are true Holy Writ. They are readas sacred rituals before hushed audiences formally bowedin reverence. They are treated as torah, taken from a shrinefor reading and returned with obeisance before the audi-ence is dismissed. Men appointed to read them have killedthemselves b^use they misread a sentoice. The Rescriptto Soldiers and Sailors was primarily for men in the service.They were the ones who learned it verbatim and meditated

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The Chrysmthefmm and the Swordupon it quietly for ten minutes each morning. It was read tothem ritually on important national holidays, when thenew conscripts entered the barracks, when those left whohad finished their period of training and on similar occa-sions. It was also taught to aU boys in middle schools andcontinuation classes.

The Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors is a document ofseveral pages. It is carefully arranged under headings and isclear and specific. Nevertheless, it is a strange puzzle to aWesterner. Its precepts seem to him contradictory. Good-ness and virtue are held up as true goals and described inways Westerners can appreciate. And then the Rescriptwarns its hearers not to be like heroes of old who died indishonor because, ‘losing sight of the true path of publicduly, they kept faith in private relations* This is the officialtranslation and though it is not literal it fairly representsthe words of the original. ‘You should, then,’ the Rescriptcontinues, ‘take serious warning by these examples’ of old-time heroes.

The ‘warning’ conveyed is not intelligible without a knowl-edgpof the Japanese map of obligations. The whole Rescript^ows an official attempt to minimize giri and to elevatechu. Not once in the whole text does the word giri appear inthe soise in which it is a household word in Japan. Insteadof naming giri, it emphasizes that there is a Higher Law,which is chu, and a Lower Law which is ‘keeping faith inprivate relations.’ The Higher Law, the Rescript is at painsto prove, is sufficient to validate all the virtues. ‘Righteous-ness,’ it says, ‘is the fulfillment of gimu.’ A soldier filled withchu inevitably has ‘true valor’ which means ‘in daily inter-

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course to set gentleaiess first and to aim to win the love andesteem of others.’ Such precepts, if followed, the Rescriptargues by implication, will suffice without invoking giri.Obligations other than gimu are Lesser Law and a manshould not acknowledge them without the most carefulconsideration.

If you wish... to keep your word (in private relations)and (also) to fulfill your gimu... you must carefully con-sider at the outset whether you can accomplish it or not.If you ... tie yourself to unwise obligations, you may findyourself in a position where you can neither go forwardsnor backwards. If you are convinced that you cannot pos-sibly keep your word and maintain righteousness (whichthe Rescript has just defined as the fulfillment of gimu), youhad better abandon your (private) engagement at once. Eversince the ancient times there have been repeated instances ofgreat men and heroes who, overwhelmed by misfortune,have perished and left a tarnished name to posterity, simplybecause in their effort to be faithful in small matters theyfailed to discern right and wrong with reference to funda-mental principles, or because, losing sight of the true path ofpublic duty, they kept faith in private relations.

All this instruction about the superiority of chu to giriis written, as we have said, without mentioning giri, butevery Japanese knows the phrase, ‘I could not do righteous-ness (gi) because of giri,’ and the Rescript paraphrases it inthe words, ‘If you are convinced you cannot keep yourword (your personal obligations) and fulfill righteousness...’ With Imperial authority it says that in such a situationa man should abandon giri, remembering that it is a LesserLaw. The Higher Law, if he obeys its precepts, will still keephim virtuous.

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Tliis Holy Writ exalting chu is a basic document in Ja-pan. It is difficult to say, however, whether its oblique de-traction of giri weakened the popular hold of this obligation.Japanese frequently quote other parts of the Rescript—‘Ri^teousness is the fulfillment of gimu,’ ‘If only the heartbe sincere, anything can be accomplished’—to explain andjustify their own and others’ acts. But, though they wouldoften be appropriate, the admonitions against keeping faithin private relations seem seldom to come to their lips. Giriremains today a virtue with great authority and to say of aman that ‘he does not know giri’ is one of the most drasticcondemnations in Japan.

Japanese ethics are not easily simplified by introducing aHigher Law. As they have so often boasted, the Japanese donot have at hand a generalized virtue to use as a touchstoneof good behavior. In most cultures individuals respect them-selves in proportion as they attain some virtue like goodwill or good husbandry or success in their enterprises. Theyset up as a goal some life objective like happiness or powerover others or liberty or social mobility. The Japanese followmore particularistic codes. Even when they talk aboutHigher Law, tai setsu, whether in feudal times or in theRescript to Soldiers and Sailors, it is only in the sense thatobligations to someone high in the hierarchy should over-rule obligations to someone who is lower down. They arestill particularistic. To thraii Hi^er Law is not, as it has gen-erally been to Westerners, a loyalty to loyalfy, as against aloyally to a particular person or a particular cause.

When modem Japanese have attempted to make someone moral virtue suprmie over all the ‘circles,’ th^ have

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usually selected ‘sincerity.’ Count Okuma, in discussingJapanese ethics, said that sincerity (makoto) ‘is the preceptof all precepts; the foundation of moral teachings can beimplied in that one word. Our ancient vocabulary is void ofethical terms except for one solitary word, makoto.’* Mod-em novelists, too, who in the early years of this centurycelebrated the new Western individualism, became di^t-isfied with the Occidental formulas and tried to celebratesincerity (usually magokoro) as the only true ‘doctrine.’

This moral stress on sincerity has the backing of the Re-script for Soldiers and Sailors itself. The Rescript beginswith an historical prologue, a Japanese equivalent to Amer-ican prologues which name Washington, Jefferson, and theFounding Fathers. In Japan this section reaches a climax byinvoking on and chu:

We (the Emperor) are the head and you are the body.We depend on you as our arms and legs. Whether we shillbe able to protect our country, and repay the on of ourancestors, depends upon your fulfilling your obligations.

Then follow the precepts: (1) The supreme virtue is to fulfillthe obligations of chu. A soldier or sailor, however skilled,in whom chu is not strong, is a mere puppet; a body ofsoldiers wanting in chu is in crisis a mere rabble. ‘Therdbre,neither be led astray by current opinions nor metMle in poli-tics, but with singleness do chu, remembering thatg/ (right-eousness) is weightier than a mountain while death is lighterthan a feather.’ (2) The second injunction is to observe out-ward appearance and behavior, Le., in reference to rank in

• Count Shinenobu Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan, English versionedited by Marcus B. Huish, London, 1909, II :37.

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The Chrysamhemum md the Swordthe Army. ‘Regard the orders of saperiors as issuing di-rectly from Us’ and treat inferiors with consideration. (3)The third is valor. True valor is contrasted with ‘bum-blood barbaric acts’ and is defined as ‘never despising aninferior or fearing a superior. Those who thus aj^reciatetrue valor should in their daily intercoxuse set gentlenessfirst and aim to win the love and esteem of others.’ (4) Thefoiuth injunction is the warning against ‘keeping faith inprivate relations,’ and (5) the fifth is an admonition to befmgaL ‘If you do not make simplicity your aim, you will be-come effeminate and frivolous and acquire fondness forluxurious and extravagant ways; you will finally grow self-ish and sordid and sink to the last degree of baseness, sothat neither loyalty nor valour will avail to save you fromthe contempt of the world.... Being harassed with anx-iety lest it should break out. We hereby reiterate Our warn-ing.’

The final paragraph of the Rescript calls these five pre-c^ts ‘the Grand Way of Heavrai and Earth and the univer-sal law of humanity.’ They are ‘the soul of Our soldiers andsailors.’ And, in turn, ‘the soul’ of these five precepts ‘is sin-cerity. If the heart be not sincere, words and deeds, howevergood, are all mere outward show and all avail nothing. Ifonly the heart be sincere, anything can be accomplished.’The five precepts will thus be ‘easy to observe and practice.’It is characteristically Japanese that sincerity shoxild betadced on at the end after all the virtues and obligationshave been spelled out. The Japanese do not, as the Chinesedo, base all virtues on the promptings of the benevolentheart; they first set up the code of duties and then add, at the

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end, the requirement that one carry these out with all one’sheart and with all one’s soul and with all one’s strength andwith all one’s mind.

Sincerity has'die same kind of meaning in the teachings ofthe great Buddhist sect of Zen. In Suzuki’s great compra-dium of Zen he gives a dialogue betwe^ the pupil and theMaster:

Monk: I understand that when a lion seizes upon his op-ponent, whether it is a hare or an elephant, hemakes an exhaustive use of his power; pray tell mewhat is this power?

Master: The spirit of sincerity (literally, the power of not-deceiving).

Sincerity, that is, not-deceiving, means ‘puttingforth one’s whole being,’ technically known as ‘thewhole being in action’... in which nothing is keptin reserve, nothing is expressed under disguise,nothing goes into waste. When a person lives likethis, he is said to be a golden-haired lion; he is thesymbol of virility, sincerity, whole-heartedness; heis divinely human.

Special Japanese meanings of this word ‘sincerity’ havealready been referred to in passing. Makoto does not meanwhat sincerity does in English usage. It means both far l»sand far more. Westerners have always been quick to seethat it means far less than it does in their language, and theyhave often said that when a Japanese says anyone is insin-cere, he means only that the other person doesn’t agreewith him. There is a certain truth in this, for calling a man‘sincere’ in Japan has not reference to whether he is acting‘genuinely’ according to the love or hate, determination or

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amazement whidi is uppermost in his soul The kind of ap-proval Americans express saying, ‘He was sincerely gladto see me,’ ‘He was sincerely pleased,’ is alien in Japan. Theyhave a whole series of proverbial expressions casting scornon such a ‘sincerity.’ TTiey say derisively, ‘Behold the frogwho when he opens his moudi displays his whole inside’;‘like a pomegranate who when it gapes its mouth shows allthat’s in its heart’; it is a shame to any man to ‘blurt out hisfeelings’; it ‘exposes’ him. These associations with ‘sincerity’which are so important in the United States have no placein the meaning of the word ‘sincerity’ in Japan. When theJapanese boy accused the American missionary of insin-cerity, it never occurred to him to consider whether theAmerican ‘genuinely’ felt amazement at the poor lad’s planto go to America without even a shoestring. When Japanesestatesmen in the last decade accused the United States andEngland of insincerity—as they constantly did—they didnot even think whether the Western nations were acting inways they did not in reality feel. They were not even accus-ing them of being hypocrites—which would have been aminor accusation. Similarly when the Rescript for Soldiersand Sailors says ‘sincerity is the soul of these precepts,’ itdoes not mean that the virtue that will put all other virtuesinto effect is a genuineness in the soul which will make a manact and speak in conformity to his own inner promptings. Itcertainly does not mean that he is enjoined to be genuine, nomatter how much his convictions may differ from others’.

Nevertheless makoto has its positive meanings in Japan,and since the Japanese so strongly stress the ethical rdle ofthis concept it is urgently necessary for Westerners to grasp

lid

the sense in which they use it Hie basic Japanese sense ofniakoto is well illustrated in the Tale of the Forty-SevenRonin. ‘Sincerity’ in that story is a plus sign added on togiri. ‘Giri plus makoto’ is contrasted wilh ‘merely giri,’ andmeans ‘giri as an example for ages eternal.’ In the contem-porary Japanese phrase, ‘makoto is what makes it stick.*The ‘it’ in this phrase refers, according to context, to anyprecept of the Japanese code or any attitude stipulated inthe Japanese Spirit.

Usage in the Japanese Relocation Camps during the warwas exactly parallel to that in The Forty-Seven Ronin, and itshows clearly how far the logic is ext^ded and how oppo-site to American usage the meaning can become. The stockaccusation of the pro-Japan Issei (American immigrantsbom in Japan) against the pro-United States Nisei (second-generation immigrants) was that they lacked makoto. Whatthe Issei were saying was that these Nisei did not have thatquality of the soul which made the Japanese Spirit—as of-ficially defined in Japan during the war—‘stick.’ The Isseidid not mean at all that their children’s pro-Americanismwas hypocritical. Far from it, for their accusations of insin-cerity were only the more convinced when the Nisei volun-teered for the United States Army and it was quite apparentto anybody that their support of their adopted country wasprompted by a genuine enthusiasm.

A basic meaning of ‘sincerity’ as the Japanese use it, isthat it is the zeal to follow the ‘road’ mapped out by theJapanese code and the Japanese Spirit. Whatever specialmeanings makoto has in particular contexts can always beread off as praise of some agreed-on aspects of Japanese

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The Chrysmthemm and the SwordSpirit and well-acc^ted gui<te posts on the map of virtues.Once one has accepted the fact that ‘sincraity’ does not havethe American meaning it is a most useful word to note in allJapanese texts. For it almost unfailingly identifies thosepositive virtues the Japanese actually stress. Makoto is con-stantly used to pmse a person who is not self-seeking. Thisis a reflection of the great condemnation Japanese ethicspronounces on profit-making. Profit—when it is not a natu-ral consequence of hierarchy—is judged to be the result ofexploitation, and the go-between who has turned aside tomake a profit out of his job becomes the hated money-lender. He is always declared to ‘lack sincerity.’ Makoto,too, is constantly used as a term of praise for the man whois free of passion, and this mirrors Japanese ideas of self-discipline. A Japanese worthy of being called sincere, too,never verges on the danger of insulting a person he does notmean to provoke to aggression, and this mirrors their dogmathat a man is responsible for the marginal consequences ofhis acts as well as for the act itself. Finally, only one who ismakoto can ‘lead his people,’ put his skills to effective useand be free of psychic conflict. These three meanings, and ahost of others, state quite simply the homogeneity of Jap-anese ethics; they reflect the fact that a man can be effectiveand unconflicted in Japan only when he is carrying out thecode.

Since these are the meanings of Japanese ‘sincerity,’ thisvirtue, in spite of the Rescript and of Count Okuma, doesnot simplify Japanese ethics. It does not put a ‘foundation’under their morality, nor give it a ‘soul.’ It is an exponentwhidi, jn'operly placed after any number, raises it to a higher

2I8

power. A ^ will square 9 or 159 or h or x, quite indifferently.And likewise makoto raises to a higher power any article inthe Japanese code. It is not, as it were, a separate virtue Initthe enthusiasm of die zealot for his creed.

Whatever the Japanese have tried to do to their code, itremains atomistic, and the principle of virtue remains thatof balancing one play, in itself good, against another playwhich is also in itself good. It is as if they had set up theirethics like a bridge game. The good player is the one whoaccepts the rules and plays within them. He distinguisheshimself from the bad player because of the fact that he isdisciplined in his calculations and can follow other players’leads with full knowledge of what they mean under the rulesof the game. He plays, as we say, according to Hoyle, andthere are endless minutiae of which he must take account atevery move. Contingencies that may come up are coveredin the rules of the game and the score is agreed upon inadvance. Good intentions, in the American sense, becomeirrelevancies.

In any language the contexts in which people speak oflosing or gaining self-respect throw a flood of light on theirview of life. In Japan ‘respecting yourself’ is always to showyourself the careful player. It does not mean, as it does inEnglish tosage, consciously conforming to a worthy stand-ard of conduct—not truckling to another, not lying, notgiving false testimony. In Japan self-respect (jicho) is liter-ally ‘a self that is weighty,’ and its opposite is ‘a self that islight and floating.’ When a man says ‘ You mustrespect your-self,’ it means, ‘You must be shrewd in estimating all the fac-tors involved in the situation and do nothing that will arouse

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The Chryscmtbemwn and the Swordcriticism or lessen yonrchancesof success.’ ‘Respectingyour>selT often implies exactly the of^site behavior from thatwhich it means in the United States. An employee says, ‘Imust respect myself (jicho),’ and it means, not that he muststand on his rights, but that he must say nothing to his em-ployers thatwill gethiminto trouble. ‘Youmust respect your-seir had this same meaning, too, in political usage. It meantthat a ‘person of weight’ could not respect himself if he in-dulged inanyfliing so rash as ‘dangerous thoughts.’ It had noimplication, as it would in the United States, that even ifthoughts are dangerous a man’s self-respect requires that hethink according to his own lights and his own conscience.

‘You must respect yourself’ is constantly on parents’ lipsin admonishing their adolescent children, and it refers toobserving proprieties and living up to other people’s expec-tation. A girl is thus admonished to sit without moving, herlegs properly placed, and a boy to train himself and learnto watch for cues from others ‘because now is the time thatwill decide your future.’ When a parent says to them, ‘Youdid not behave as a self-respecting person should,’ it meansthat they are accused of an impropriety rather than of lackof courage to stand up for the right as they saw it.

A fanner who cannot meet his debt to the moneylendersays of himself‘I should have had self-respect,’ but that doesnot mean that he accuses himself of laziness or of fawningupon his creditor. It means that he should have foreseenthe emergencty and been more circumspect. A man of stand-ing in the community says, ‘My self-respect requires this,’and he does not mean that he must live up to certain prin-ciples of truthfulness and probity but that he must manipu-

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late the afiair with full consideration for the position of hisfamily; he must dirow the whole weight of his status intothe matter.

A business executive who says of his firm ‘We must showself-respect’ means that prudence and watchfulness mustbe redoubled. A man discussing a necessity to avenge him-self speaks of ‘revenging with self-respect,’ and this has noreference to heaping coals of fire upon the head of his enmyor to any moral rules he intends to follow; it is equivalent tosaying ‘I shall exact a perfect revenge,’ i.e., one meticulouslyplanned and taking into accoxmt every factor in the situa-tion. Strongest phrase of all in Japanese is ‘to double self-respect with self-respect’ and that means to be circumspectto the nth degree. It means never to jump to a hasty con-clusion. It means to calculate wa3rs and means so that nomore and no less effort is used than is strictly necessary toattain the goal.

All these meanings of self-respect fit the Japanese view oflife as a world in which you move with great care ‘accord-ing to Hoyle.’ This way of defining self-respect does not al-low a man to claim an alibi for his failure on the ground ofgood intentions. Each move has its consequences and oneshould not act without estimating them. It is quite properto be generous, but you must foresee that the recipient ofyoxxr favors will feel that he has been made ‘to wear an on.’You must be wary. It is quite allowable to criticize another,but you mustdo so only if you intend to take on all the con-sequences of his resentment. A sneer such as the Americanmissionary was accused of by the yoxmg artist is out of thequestion precisely because the missionaiy’s intentions were

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good; he did not take account of the full meaning of hismove on the chessboard. It was in the Japanese view com-pletely undisciplined.

The strong identification of circumspection with self-respect includes, therefore, watchfulness of all the cues oneobserves in other people’s acts, and a strong sense that otherpeople are sitting in judgment ‘One cultivates self-respect(one mustjicho),’they say, ‘because of society.’ ‘If there wereno society one would not need to respect oneself (cultivatejicho).’ These are extreme statements of an external sanc-tion for self-respect. They are statements which take no ac-count of internal sanctions for proper behavior. Like thepopular sayings of many nations, they exaggerate the case,for Japanese sometimes react as stron^y as any Puritan to aprivate accumulation of guilt. But their extreme statementsnevertheless point out correctly where the emphasis falls inJapan. It falls on the importance of shame rather than onthe importance of guilt.

In anthropological studies of different cultures the dis-tinction between those which rely heavily on shame andthose that rely heavily on guilt is an important one. A so-ciety that inculcates absolute standards of morality and re-lies on men’s developing a conscience is a guilt culture bydefinition, but a man in such a society may, as in the UnitedStates, suffer in addition from shame when he accuses him-self of gaucheries which are in no way sins. He may be ex-ceedin^y chagrined about not dressing appropriately forthe occasion or about a slip of the tongue. In a culture whereshame is a major sanction, people are chagrined about actswhich we expect people to feel guilty about. This chagrin

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can be vesy intense and it cannot be relieved, as guilt can be,ty confession and atonement A man who has sinned canget rdief by unburdooing himself. This device of confessionis used in our secular therapy and by many religious grouj^which have otherwise little in common. We know it Iningsrelief. Wh^e shame is the major sanction, a man does notexperience relief when he makes his fault public even to aconfessor. So long as his bad behavior does not ‘get out intothe world’ he need not be troubled and confession appearsto him merely a way of courting trouble. Shame culturestherefore do not provide for confessions, even to the gods.They have ceremonies for good luck rather than for expia-tion.

True shame cultures rely on external sanctions for goodbehavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on an internalizedconviction of sin. Shame is a reaction to other people’s crit-icism. A man is shamed either by being openly ridiculed andrejected or by fantasying to himself that he has been maderi^culous. In either case it is a potent sanction. But it re-quires an audience or at least a man’s fantasy of an audi-ence. Guilt does not. In a nation where honor means livingup to one’s own picture of oneself, a man may suffer fromguilt though no man knows of his misdeed and a man’s feel-ing of guilt may actually be relieved by confessing bis

The early Puritans who settled in the United States triedto base their whole morality on guilt and all psychiatristsknow what trouble contemporary Americans have with thdrconsciences. But shame is an increasingly heavy biuden inthe United States and guilt is less extremely felt than in ear-lier generations. In the United States this is interpreted as a

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The Qhtysantbemwn and the Svpordrelaxation of morals. There is much truth in this, but that isbecause we do not expect shame to do the heavy work ofmorality. We do not harness the acute personal chagrinwhich accompanies shame to our fundamental system ofmorality.

The Japanese do. A failure to follow dieir explicit sign-posts of good behavior, a failure to balance obligations orto foresee contingencies is a shame Qiaji). Shame, they say,is the root of virtue. A man who is sensitive to it will carryout all the rules of good behavior. ‘A man who knowsshame’ is sometimes translated ‘virtuous man,’ sometimes‘man of honor.’ Shame has the same place of authority inJapanese ethics that ‘a clear conscience,’ ‘being right withGod,’ and the avoidance of sin have in Western ethics.Logically enough, therefore, a man will not be punished inthe afterlife. The Japanese—except for priests who knowthe Indian sutras—are quite unacquainted with the idea ofreincarnation dependent upon one’s merit in this life, and—except for some well-instructed Christian converts—theydo not recognize post-death reward and punishment or aheaven and a hell.

The primacy of shame in Japanese life means, as it doesin any tribe or nation where shame is deeply felt, that anyman watches the judgment of the public upon his deeds. Heneed only fantasy what their verchct will be, but he orientshimself toward the verdict of others. When everybody isplaying the game by the same rules and mutually support-ing each other, the Japanese can be light-hearted and easy.They can play the game with fanaticism when they feel it isone which carries out the ‘mission’ of Japan. Hity are most

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vulnerable whra they attempt to export their virtues intoforeign lands where ^eir own formal signposts of good be-havior do not hold. Th^ failed in their ‘good will’ missionto Greater East Asia, and the resentment many of them feltat the attitudes of Chinese and Filipinos toward them wasgenuine enough.

Individual Japanese, too, who have come to the UnitedStates for study or business and have not been motivatedby nationalistic sentiments have often felt deeply the ‘fail-ure’ of their careful education when they tried to live in aless rigidly charted world. Their virtues, they felt, did notexport well. The point they try to make is not the universalone that it is hard for any man to change cultures. Theytry to say something more and they sometimes contrast thedifficulties of their own adjustment to American life withthe lesser difficulties of Chineseor Siamese they have known.The specific Japanese problem, as they see it, is that theyhave been brought up to trust in a security which dependson others’ recognition of the nuances of their observance ofa code. When foreigners are oblivious of all these proprie-ties, the Japanese are at a loss. They cast about to find simi-lar meticulous proprieties according to which Westernerslive and when they do not find them, some speak of the an-ger they feel and some of how fri^tened they are.

No one has described these experiences in a less exactingculture better than Miss Mishima in her autobiography.My Narrow Isle.* She had sought eagerly to come to anAmerican college and she had fou^t down her conserva-tive family’s unwillingness to accept the on of an American

* Mishima, Sumie Seo, My Narrow Isk, 1941, p. 107.

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The Cbrysantbefnmn and the Swordfelbwship. She went to Welle^ey. The teadiers and thegirls, she sa)^, were wonderfully kind, but that made it, soshe felt, all the more difScult. ‘My pride m p^ect man-neredness, a universal characteristic of the Japanese, wasbitterly wounded. I was angry at myself for not knowinghow to behave properly here and also at the surroundingswhich seemed to mock at my past training. Except for thisvague but deep-rooted feeling of anger there was no emo-tion left in me.’ She felt herself ‘a being fallen from someother planet with senses and feelings that have no use inthis other world. My Japanese training, requiring everyphysical movement to be elegant and every word utteredto be according to etiquette, made me extremely sensitiveand self-conscious in this enviromnent, where I was com-pletely blind, socially speaking.’ It was two or three yearsbefore she relaxed and began to accept the kindness offeredher. Americans, she decided, lived with what she calls ‘re-fined familiari^.’ But ‘familiari^ had been killed in me assauciness when I was three.’

Miss Mishima contrasts the Japanese girls she knew inAmerica with the Chinese girls and her comments show howdifferently the United States affected them. The Chinesegirls had ‘self-composure and sodableness quite absent inmost Japanese girls. These upper-class Chinese girls seemedto me the most urbane creatures on earth, every one of themhaving a graciousness nearing regal dignity and looking asif th^ were the true mistresses of the world. Their fearless-ness and superb self-composure, not at all disturbed even inthis great civilization of machinery and speed, made a greatcontrast with the timidity and oversensitiveness of us Jap-

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The Dilemma of Virtue

anese girls, showing some fundamental difference in socialbackgroxmd.’

Miss Mishima, like many other Japanese, felt as if shewere an expert tennis player entered in a croquet tourna-ment. Her own expertness just didn’t count. She felt thatwhat she had learned did not carry overinto the new environ-ment The discipline to which she had submitted was useless.Americans got along without it

Once Japanese have accepted, to however small a degree,the less codified rules that govern behavior in the UnitedStates they find it difficult to imagine their being able tomanage again the restrictions of their old life in Japan.Sometimes they refer to it as a lost paradise, sometimes as a‘harness,’ sometimes as a ‘prison,’ sometimes as a ‘little pot’that holds a dwarfed tree. As long as the roots of the minia-ture pine were kept to the confines of the flower pot, theresult was a work of art that graced a charming garden. Butonce planted out in open soil, the dwarfed pine could neverbe put back again. They feel that they themselves are nolonger possible ornaments in that Japanese garden. Theycould not again meet the requirements. They have experi-enced in its most acute form the Japanese dilemma of virtue.

Self-Discipline

The Self-disciplines of one culture are always likely toseem irrelevandes to observers from another country. Thedisciplinary techniques themselves are clear enough, but whygo to all the trouble? Why voluntarily hang yourself fromhooks, or concentrate on your navel, or never spend yourcapital? Why concentrate on one of these austerities anddemand no control at all over some impulses which to theoutsider are truly important and in need of training? Whenthe observer belongs to a coimtiy which does not teachtechnical methods of self-discipline and is set down in themidst of a people who place great reliance upon them, thepossibility of misunderstanding is at its height.

In the United States technical and traditional methods ofself-discipline are relatively undeveloped. The American as-sumption is that a man, having sized up what is possible inhis personal life, will discipline himself, if that is necessary,to attain a chosen goal. Whether he does or not, depends onhis ambition, or his conscience, or his ‘instinct of workman-ship,’ as Veblen called it. He may aoc^t a Stoic regime inorder to play on a football team, or give up all relaxationsto train himself as a musician, or to make a success of his

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business. He may eschew evil and frivolity because of hisconscience. But in the United States self-discipline itself, asa technical training, is not a thing to learn like arithmeticquite apart from its application in a particular instance.Such techniques, when thty do occur in the United States,are taught by certain European cult-leaders or by Swamiswho teach inventions made in India. Even the religious self-disciplines of meditation and prayer, as they were taughtand practiced by Saint Theresa or Saint John of the Cross,have barely survived in the United States.

The Japanese assumption, however, is that a boy takinghis middle-school examinations, or a man playing in a fenc-ing match, or a person merely living the life of an aristocrat,needs a self-training quite apart from learning the specificthings that will be required of him when he is testai. Nomatter what facts he has crammed for his examination, nomatter how expert his sword thrusts, no matter how meticu-lous his punctilio, he needs to lay aside his books and hissword and his public appearances and undergo a special kindof training. Not all Japanese submit to esoteric training, ofcourse, but, even for those who do not, the phraseology andthe practice of self-discipline have a recognized place in fife.Japanese of all classes judge themselves and others in termsof a whole set of concepts which depend upon their notionof generalized technical self-control and self-governance.

Their concepts of self-discipline can be schematically di-vided into those which give competence and those whichgive something more. This something more I shall call ex-pertness. The two are divided in Japan and aim at accom-plishing a different result in the human ptyche and have a

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The Chrysantbeimm md the- Smrddifferent rationale and are recognized by different signs.Many instances of the first type, self-disciplinary compo*tence, have already been d^cribed. The Army oflfcer vsliosaid of his men who had been ragaged in peacetime maneu-vers for sixty hours with only ten-minute opportunities forsleep, that ‘they know how to sleep; they need training inhow to stay awake,’ was, in spite of what seem to us extranedemands, aiming only at competent behavior. He was stat-ing a well-accepted principle of Japanese psychic economythat the will should be supreme over the almost infinitelyteachable body and that the body itself does not have lawsof well-being which a man ignores at his own cost. Thewhole Japanese theory of ‘human feelings’ rests on this as-sumption. When it is a matter of the really serious affairs oflife, the demands of the body, no matter how essential tohealth, no matter how approved and cultivated as thingsapart, should be drastically subordinated. No matter at whatprice of self-discipline, a man should manifest the JapaneseSpirit

It does violence, however, to Japanese assumptions tophrase their position in this way. For ‘at the price of wlwt-ever self-discipline’ means in ordinary American usage al-most the same thing as ‘at the price of whatever self-sacri-fice.’ Often too it means ‘at the price of whatever personalfrustration.’ The American theory of discipline—whetherimposed from the outside or introjected as a censoringconscience—is that from childhood men and women haveto be socialized by discipline, either freely accepted or im-posed by authority. This is a frustration. The individualresents this curtailment of his wishes. He has to saoifice,

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and inevitable aggressive emotions are awakened withinhim. This view is not only that of many professional psy-chologists in America. It is also the philosophy within whidieach generation is brought up by parents in the home, andthe psychologists’ analysis has therefore a great deal oftruth in our own society. A child ‘has to’ be put to bed at acertain hour, and he learns from his parents’ attitude thatgoing to bed is a frustration. In countless homes he showshis resentment in a nightly battle royal. He is already ayoung indoctrinated American who regards sleeping assomething a person ‘has to’ do and he kicks against thepricks. His mother rules, too, that there are certain thingshe ‘has to’ eat. It may be oatmeal or spinach or bread ororange juice, but the American child learns to raise a pro-test against foods he ‘has to’ eat. Food that is ‘good for’him he concludes is not food that tastes good. This is anAmerican convention that is foreign in Japan, as it is alsoin some Western nations like Greece. In the United States,becoming adult means emancipation from food frustra-tions. A grown-up person can eat the food that tastes goodinstead of the food that is good for him.

These ideas about sleep and food, however, are small incomparison with the whole Occidental concept of self-sacri-fice. It is standard Western doctrine that parents make greatsacrifices for their children, wives sacrifice their careers fortheir husbands, husbands sacrifice their freedom to becomebreadwinners. It is hard for Americans to conceive that insome societies men and women do not recognize the neces-sity of self-sacrifice. It is nevertheless true. In such societiespeople say that parents natiurally find their children de-

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The Chryscmtbeffmm md the Svmd

I%htful, that women prefer marriage to any other course,and that a man earning his family’s support is pursuing hisfavorite occupation as a hunter or a gardener. Why talk ofself-sacrifice? When society stresses these interpretationsand allows people to live according to them, the notion ofself-sacrifice may hardly be recognized.

In other cultures all those things a person does for otherpeople at such ‘sacrifice’ in the United States are consid-ered as reciprocal exchanges. They are either investmentswhich will later be repaid or they are returns for value al-ready received. In such coxmtries even the relations betweenfather and son may be treated in this way, and what thefather does for the sondiuing the boy’s early life, the sonwill do for the father during the old man’s later life andafter his death. Every business relation too is a folk con-tract, which, while it often ensures equivalence in kind, justas commonly binds one party to protect and the other toserve. If the benefits on toth sides are regarded as advan-tages, neither party regards his duties as a sacrifice.

The sanction behind services to others in Japan is ofcourse reciprocity, both in kind and in hierarchal exchangeof complementary responsibilities. The moral position ofself-sacrifice is therefore very different from that in theUrrited States. The Japanese have always objected specifi-cjdly to the teachings of Christian missionaries about sacri-fice. They argue that a good man should not think of whathe does for others as frustrating to himself. ‘When we dothe things you call self-sacrifice,’ a Japanese said to me, ‘itis because we wish to give or because it is good to give. Weare not sorry for ourselves. No matter how many things

we actually give up for others, we do not think that thisgiving elevates us spiritually or that we should be “re-warded” for it’ A people who have organized their livesaround such elaborate reciprocal obligations as the Japa-nese naturally find self-sacrifice irrelevant They push them-selves to the limit to fulfil extreme obligations, but the tradi-tional sanction of reciprocity prevents them from feelingthe self-pity and self-ri^teousness that arises so easily inmore individualistic and competitive coimtries.

Americans, in order'to understand ordinary self-disci-plinary practices in Japan, therefore, have to do a kind ofsurgical operation on our idea of ‘self-disdpline.’ We haveto cut away the accretions of ‘self-sacrifice’ and ‘frustra-tion’ that have clustered around the concept in our cultine.In Japan one disciplines oneself to be a good player, andthe Japanese attitude is that one undergoes the trainingwith no more consciousness of sacrifice than a man whoplays bridge. Of course the training is strict, but that is in-herent in the nature of things. The young child is bom happybut without the capacity to ‘savor life.’ Only through men-tal training (or self-discipline; shuyo) can a man or womangain the power to live fuUy and to ‘get the taste’ of life. Thephrase is usually translated ‘only so can he enjoy life.’ Self-discipline ‘builds up the belly (the seat of control)’; it en-larges Ufe.

‘Competent’ self-discipline in Japan has this rationalethat it improves a man’s conduct of his own life. Any im-patience he may feel while he is new in the training will pass,t6ey say, for eventually he will enjoy it—or give it up. Anapprentice tends properly to his business, a boy learns judo

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The Chrysamhemtm and the Sword

(jujitsu), a young wife adjusts to the demands of hermother-in-law; it is quite imderstood that in the first stagesof training, the man or woman unused to the new require-ments may wish to be free of this shuyo. Their fathers maytalk to them and say, ‘What do you wish? Some training isnecessary to savor life. If you give this up and do not trainyourself at all, you will be unhappy as a natural conse-quence. And if these natural consequences should occur,I should not be inclined to protect you against public opin-ion.’ Shuyo, in the phrase they use so often, polishes away‘the rust of the body.’ It makes a man a bright sharp sword,which is, of course, what he desires to be.

All this stress on how self-discipline leads to one’s ownadvantage does not mean that the extreme acts the Japanesecode often requires are not truly serious frustrations, andthat such frustrations do not lead to aggressive impulses.This distinction is one which Americans understand in gamesand sports. The bridge champion does not complain of theself-sacrifice that has been required of him to learn to playwell; he does not label as ‘frustrations’ the hotirs he has hadto put in in order to become an expert. Nevertheless, phy-sicians say that in some cases the great attention necessarywhen a man is playing either for high stakes or for a cham-pionship, is not unrelated to stomach ulcers and excessivebodily tensions. The same thing happens to people in Japan.But the sanction of reciprocity, and the Japanese convictionthat self-discipline is to one’s own advantage, make manyacts seem easy to them which seem insupportable to Amer-icans. They pay much closer attention to behaving com-petently and they allow themselves fewer alibis than Amer-

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icans. Th^ do not so often project their dissatisfactionswith life upon scapegoats, and they do not so often indulgein self-pity because they have somehow or other not gotwhat Americans call average happiness. They have beentrained to pay much closer attention to the ‘rust of the body’than is common among Americans.

Beyond and above ‘competent’ self-discipline, there isalso the plane of ‘expertness.’ Japanese techniques of thislatter sort have not been made very intelligible to Westernreaders by Japanese authors who have written about them,and Occidental scholars who have made a specialty of thissubject have often been veiy cavalier about them. Some-times they have called them ‘eccentricities.’ One Frenchscholarwritesthattheyareall ‘in defiance of common sense,’and that the greatest of all disciplinary sects, the Zen cult,is ‘a tissue of solemn nonsense.’ The purposes their tech-niques are intended to accomplish, however, are not im-penetrable, and the whole subject throws a considerablelight on Japanese psychic economy.

A long series of Japanese words name the state of mindthe expert in self-discipline is supposed to achieve. Some ofthese terms are used for actors, some for religious devotees,some for fencers, some for public speakers, some for paint-ers, some for masters of the tea ceremony. They all have thesame general meaning, and I shall use only the word muga,which is the word used in the flourishing upper-class cult ofZen Buddhism. The description of this state of expertnessis that it denote those experiences, whether secular or reli-gious, when ‘there is no break, not even the thickness of ahair’ between a man’s will and his act. A discharge of elec-

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The Qnryscmtbemum and the Swordtridty passes directly from the positive to the negative pole.In people who have not attained expertness, there is, as itwore, a non-conducting screen which stands between thewill and the act. They call this the ‘observing self,’ the ‘inter-fering self,’ and when this has been removed by special kindsof training the expert loses all sense that ‘I am doing it*The circuit runs free. The act is effortless. It is ‘one-pointed.*The deed completely reproduces the picture the actor haddrawn of it in his mind.

The most ordinary people seek this kind of ‘expertness’ inJapan. Sir Charles Eliot, the great English authority onBuddhism, tells of a schoolgirl who applied

to a well-known missionary in Tokyo and said that shewished to become a Christian. When questioned as to herreasons she replied that her great desire was to go up in anaeroplane. On being invited to explain the connection be-. tween aeroplanes and Christianity, she replied that she hadbeen told that before she went up in an aeroplane she musthave a very calm and well-regulated mind and that thiskind of mind was only acquired by religious training. Shethought that among the religions Christianity was probablythe best and so she came to ask for teaching.*

The Japanese not only connect Christianity and airplanes;th^ connect training for ‘a calm and well-regulated mind’witih an examination in pedagogy or with speech-makingor with a statesman’s career. Technical training for one-pointedness seems to them an unquestioned advantage inalmost any undertaking.

Many civilizations have developed techniques of thiskind, but the Japanese goals and methods have a marked

* Eliot, Sir Charles, Japanese Buddhism^ p. 286.

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character all their own. This is especially interesting be-cause many of the techniques are derived from India wherethey are known as Yoga. Japanese techniques of self-hypno-tism, concentration, and control of the senses still show kin-ship with Indian practices. There is similar emphasis onemptying the mind, on immobility of the body, on ten thou-sands of repetitions of the same phrase, on fixing the atten-tion on a chosen symbol. Even the terminology used inIndia is still recognizable. Beyond these bare bones of thecult, however, the Japanese version has little in commonwith the Hindu.

Yoga in India is an extreme cult of asceticism. It is a wayof obtaining release from the round of reincarnation. Manhas no salvation exc^t this release, nirvana, and the obsta-cle in his path is human desire. These desires can be elimi-nated by starving them out, by insulting them, and bycourting self-torture. Through these means a man mayreach sainthood and achieve spirituality and union with thedivine. Yoga is a way of renouncing the world of the fleshand of escaping the treadmill of human futility. It is also away of laying hold of spiritual powers. The journey towardone’s goal is the faster the more extreme the asceticism.

Such philosophy is alien in Japan. Even though Japan isa great Buddhist nation, ideas of transmigration and of nir-vana have never been a part of the Buddhist faith of thepeople. These doctrines are personally accepted by someBuddhist priests^ but they have never affected folkways orpopular thought. No animal or insect is spared in Japan be-cause killing it would kill a transmigrated human soul, andJapanese ftmeral ceremonies and birth rituals are iimocent

^37

of any notions of a round of reincamations. Transmigra-tion is not a Japanese pattern of thought. The idea of nir-vana, too, not only means nothing to the general publicbut the priesthoods themselves modify it out of existence.Priestly scholars declare that a man who has been ‘en-lightened’ (saton) is already in nirvana; nirvana is here andnow in the midst of time, and a man ‘sees nirvana’ in a pinetree and a wild bird. The Japanese have always been unin-terested in fantasies of a world of the hereafter. Their my-thology tells of gods but not of the life of the dead. Theyhave even rejected Buddhist ideas of differential rewardsand punishments after death. Any man, the least farmer,becomes a Buddha when he dies; the very word for thefamily memorial tablets in the household shrine is ‘the Bud-dhas.’ No other Buddhist coimtry uses such language, andwhen a nation speaks so boldly of its ordinary dead, it isquite understandable that it does not picture any such dif-ficult goal as attainment of nirvana. A man who becomes aBuddha anyway need not set himself to attain the goal ofabsolute surcease by lifelong mortification of the flesh.

Just as alien in Japan is the doctrine that the flesh andthe spirit are irreconciliable. Yoga is a technique to elimi-nate desire, and desire has its seat in the flesh. But the Japa-nese do not have this dogma. ‘Human feelings’ are not ofthe Evil One, and it is a part of wisdom to enjoy the pleas-ures of the senses. The one condition is that they be sacri-ficed to the serious duties of life. This tenet is carried to itslogical extreme in the Japanese handling of the Yoga cult:not only are all self-tortures eliminated but the cult in

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Japan is not even one of asceticism. Even the ‘Enlightened’in their retreats, thou^ they were called hermits, commonlyestablished themselves in comfort with their wives andchildren in charming spots in the country. The companion-ship of tiieir wives and even the birth of subsequent chil-dren were regarded as entirely compatible with their sanc-tity. In the most popular of all Buddhist sects priests manyanyway and raise families; Japan has never foimd it easyto accept the theory that the spirit and the flesh are incom-patible. The saintliness of the ‘enlightened’ consisted intheir self-disciplinary meditations and in their simplifica-tion of life. It did not consist in wearing unclean clothingor shutting one’s eyes to the beauties of nature or one’s earsto the beauty of stringed instruments. Their saints mightfill their days with the composition of elegant verses, theritual of tea ceremony and ‘viewings’ of the moon and thecheny blossoms. The Zen cult even directs its devotees toavoid ‘the three insufficiencies: insufficiency of clothing,of food, and of sleep.’

The final tenet of Yoga philosophy is also alien in Japan:that the techniques of mysticism which it teaches transportthe practitioner to ecstatic union with the Universe. Wher-ever the techniques of mysticism have been practiced in theworld, whether by primitive peoples or by Mohammedandervishes or by Indian Yogis or by medieval Christians,those who practice them have almost universally agreed,whatever their creed, that they become ‘one with the divine,’that they experience ecstasy ‘not of this world.’ The Jap-anese have the techniques of mysticism without the mysti-

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cism. This does not mean that they do not achieve trance.TTiey do. But th^ regard ev«i trance as a technique whichtrains a man in ‘one-pointedness.’ They do not describe itas ecstasy. The Zea cult does not even say, as mystics inother countries do, that the five senses are in abeyance intrance; they say that the ‘six’ senses are brought by thistedmique to a condition of extraordinary acuteness. Thesixth sense is located in the mind, and training makes it su-preme over the ordinary five, but taste, touch, sight, smell,and hearing are given their own special training duringtrance. It is one of the exercises of group Zjso. to perceivesoundless footsteps and be able to follow them accuratelyas they pass from one place to another or to discriminatetempting odors of food—purposely introduced—withoutbreaking trance. Smelling, seeing, hearing, touching, andtasting ‘help the sixth sense,’ and one learns in this state tomake ‘every sense alert.’

This is very unusual training in any cult of extra-sensoryexperience. Even in'trance such a Zen practitioner does nottry to get outside of himself, but in the phrase Nietzsche usesof the ancient Greeks, ‘to remain what he is and retain hiscivic name.’ There are many vivid statements of this view ofthe matter among the sayings of the great Japanese Bud-dhist teachers. One of the best is that of Dogen, the greatthirteenth-century founder of the Soto cult of Zen, which isstill the largest and most influential of the Zen cults. Speak-ing of his own enlightenment (satori), he said, ‘I recognizedonly that my eyes were horizontal above my perpendicular

nose There is nothing mysterious (in Zen experience).

Time passes as it is natural, the sun rising in the east and the

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moon setting in the west.’* Nor do Zen writings allow thattrance experience gives power other than self-disciplinedhuman power; ‘Yoga claims that various supernatural pow-ers can be acquired by meditation,’ a Japanese Buddhistwrites, ‘but Zen does not make any such absurd claims.’tThe Japanese thus wipe the slate clean of the assumptionson which Yoga practices are based in India. Japan, witha vital love of finitude which reminds one of the ancientGreeks, understands the technical practices of Yoga as be-ing a self-training in perfection, a means whereby a manmay obtain that ‘expertness’ in which there is not the thick-ness of a hair between a man and his deed. It is a training inefficiency. It is a training in self-reliance. Its rewards are hereand now, for it enables a man to meet any situation withexactly the right expenditure of effort, neither too much nortoo little, and it gives him control of his otherwise waywardmind so that neither physical danger from outside nor pas-sion from within can dislodge him.

Such training is of course just as valuable for a warrioras for a priest, and it was precisely the warriors of Japanwho made the Zen cult their own. One can hardly find else-where than in Japan techniques of mysticism pursued with-out the reward of the consummating mystic experience andappropriated by warriors to train them for hand-to-handcombat. Yet this has been true from the earliest period ofZsa influence in Japan. The great book by the Japanesefounder, Ei-sai, in the twelfth century was called The Pro-tection of the State by the Propagation of Zen, and Zen has

♦ Nukariya, Kaiten, The Religion of the Samurai London, 1913, p. 197.t Ibid., p. 194.

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trained warriors, statesmen, fencers, and university stu-dents to achieve quite mundane goals. As Sir Charles Eliotsays, nothing in the history of the Zen cult in China gaveany indication of the future that awaited it as a militarydiscipline in Japan. ‘Zen has become as decidedly Japaneseas tea ceremonies or No plays. It might have been supposedthat in a troubled period like the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies this contemplative and mystic doctrine, whichfinds truth not in scripture but in the immediate experienceof the human mind, would have flourished in monastic har-bours of refuge among those who had left the storms of theworld, but not that it would have been accepted as thefavourite rule of life for the military class. Yet such it be-came.’*

Many Japanese sects, both Buddhist and Shintoist, havelaid great emphasis on mystic techniques of contemplation,self-hypnotism, and trance. Some of them, however, claimthe result of this training as evidences of the grace of Godand base their philosophy on tariki, ‘help of another,’ i.e.,of a gracious god. Some of them, of which Zen is the para-mount example, rely only on ‘self-help,’y/r/A:/. The potentialstrength, they teach, lies only within oneself, and only byone’s own efforts can one increase it. Japanese samuraifound this entirely congenial, and whether as monks, states-men, or educators—for they served in all these rdles—theyused the Zen techniques to buttress a rugged individualism.Zen teachings were excessively explicit. ‘Zen seeks only theli^t man can find in himself. It tolerates no hindrance tothis seeking. Clear every obstacle out of your way.... If

* Eliot, Sir Charles, Japanese Buddhism^ p. 186.

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on your way you meet Buddha, kill him! If you meet thePatriarchs, kill them! If you meet the Saints, kill them alLThat is the only way of reaching salvation.’*

He who seeks after truth must take nothing at second-hand, no teaching of the Buddha, no scriptures, no theol-ogy. ‘The twelve chapters of the Buddhist canon are a scrapof paper.’ One may with profit study them, but they havenothing to do with the lightning flash in one’s own soulwhich is all that gives Enlightenment. In a Zen book ofdialogues a novice asks a Zen priest to expound the Sutraof the Lotus of the Good Law. The priest gave him a bril-liant exposition, and the listener said witheringly, ‘Why, Ithought Zen priests disdained texts, theories, and systemsof logical explanations.’ ‘Zen,’ returned the priest, ‘doesnot consist in knowing nothing, but in the belief that toknow is outside of all texts, of all documents. You did nottell me you wanted to know, but only that you wished anexplanation of the text.’t

The traditional training given by Zen teachers was in-tended to teach novices how ‘to know.’ The training mightbe physical or it might be mental, but it must be finally vali-dated in the inner consciousness of the learner. Zen train-ing of the fencer illustrates this well. The fencer, of course,has to learn and constantly practice the proper swordthrusts, but his proficiency in these belongs in the field ofmere ‘competence.’ In addition he must learn to be muga.He is made to stand first on the level floor, concentratingon the few inches of surface which support his body. This

* Quoted by E. Steinilber-Oberlin, The Buddhist Sects of Japan* London,1938, p. 143.t Ibid*, p. 175.

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The ChryscmtheTmm and the Smrd

tiny surface of standing room is gradually raised till he haslearned to stand as easily on a four-foot pillar as in a courtyard. When he is perfectly secure on that pillar, he ‘knows.’His mind will no longra* betray him by dizziness and fear oifalling.

This Japanese use of pillar-standing transforms the famil>iar Western medieval austeri^ of Saint Simeon Stylit^into a purposeful self-discipline. It is no longer an austerity.All kinds of physical exercises in Japan, whether of the Zencult, or the common practices of the peasant villages, im-dergo this kind of transformation. In many places of theworld diving into freezing water and standing imder moun-tain waterfalls, are standard austerities, sometimes to mor-tify the flesh, sometimes to obtain pity from the gods, some-times to induce trance. The favorite Japanese cold-austeritywas standing or sitting in an ice-cold waterfall before dawn,or dousing oneself three times during a winter night withi(ty water. But the object was to train one’s conscious selftill one no longer noticed the discomfort. A devotee’s pur-pose was to train himself to continue his meditatiomwith-out interruption. When neither the cold shock of the wato:nor the shivering of the body in the cold dawn registeredin his consciousness he was ‘expert.’ There was no other re-ward.

Mental training had to be equally self-appropriated. Aman might associate himself wi& a teacher, but the teachercould not ‘teach’ in the Occidental sense, because nothinga novice learned from any source outside himself was ofany importance. The teacher might hold discussions withthe novice, but he did not lead him gently into a new in-

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tellectual realm. The teacl^r was considered to be mosthelpful when he was most rude. If, without warning, themaster broke the tea bowl the novice was raising to his lips,or tripped him, or struck his knuckles with a brass rod, theshock might galvanize him into sudden insight. It brokethrong his complacency. The monkish books are filledwith incidents of this kind.

The most favored technique for inducing the novice’sdesperate attempt ‘to know’ were the koan, literally ‘theproblems.’ There are said to be seventeen hundred of theseproblems, and the anecdote books make nothing of a man’sdevoting seven years to the solution of one of them. Theyare not meant to have rational solutions. One is ‘To con-ceive the clapping of one hand.’ Another is ‘To feel theyearning for one’s mother before one’s own conception.’Others are, ‘Who is carrying one’s lifeless body?’ ‘Who is itwho is walking toward me?’ ‘All things return into One;where does this last return?’ Such Zen problems as thesewere used in China before the twelfth or thirteenth cen-tury, and Japan adopted these techniques along with thecult. On the continent, however, they did not survive. InJapan they are a most important part of training in ‘expert-ness* Zen handbooks treat them >vith extreme seriousness.‘Koan enshrine the dilemma of life.’ A man who is ponder-ing one, they say, reaches an impasse like ‘a pursued ratthat has run up a blind tunnel,’ he is like a man ‘with a ballof red-hot iron stuck in his throat,’ he is ‘a mosquito tryingto bite a lump of iron.’ He is beside himself and redoubleshis efforts. Finally the screen of his ‘observing self’ betweenhis mind and his problem falls aside; with the swiftness of

045

The Chryscmtbmnm and the Sworda flash of lightning the two—mind and problem-come toterms. He ‘knows.’

After these descriptions of bow-string-taut mental effortit is an anticlimax to search the incident books for greattruths gained with all this expenditure. Nangaku, for in-stance, spent ei^t years on the problem, ‘Who is it who iswalking toward me?’ At last he understood. His wordswere: ‘Even when one afiirms that there is something here,one omits the whole.’ Nevertheless, there is a general pat-tern in the revelations. It is suggested in the lines of dia-logue:

Novice: How shall I escape from the Wheel of Birth andDeath?

Master: Who puts you under restraint? (i.e., binds youto this Wheel.)

What they learn, they say, is, in the famous Chinese phrase,that they ‘were looking for an ox when they were riding onone.’ They learn that ‘What is necessary is not the net andthe trap but the fish or the animal these instruments weremeant to catch.’ They learn, that is, in Occidental phrase-ology, that both horns of the dilemma are irrelevant. Th^learn that goals may be attained with present means if theeyes of the spirit are opened. Anything is possible, and withno help from anyone but oneself.

The significance of the koan does not lie in the truthsthese seekers after truth discover, which are the world-widetruths of the mystics. It lies in the way the Japanese con-ceive the search for truth.

The koan are called ‘bricks with which to knock uponthe door.’ ‘The door’ is in the wall built around unenlight-

24(5

aied human nature, which worries about whether presentmeans are suflScient and fantasies to itself a cloud of watch-ful witnesses who will allot praise or blame. It is the wall ofhaji (shame) which is so real to all Japanese. Once the brickhas battered down the door and it has fallen open, one isin free air and one throws away the brick. One does not goon solving more koan. The lesson has been learned and theJapanese dilemma of virtue has been solved. They havethrown themselves with desperate intensity against an im-passe; for ‘the sake of the training’ they have become as‘mosquitoes biting a lump of iron.’ In the end they havelearned that there is no impasse—no impasse between gimuand giri, either, or between giri and human feelings, be-tween ri^teousness and giri. They have found a way out.They are free and for the first time they can fully ‘taste’ life.They are muga. Their training in ‘expertness’ has been suc-cessfully achieved.

Siizuki, the great authority on Zen Buddhism, describesmuga as ‘ecstasy with no sense of lam doing it,’’ ‘effortless-ness.’* The ‘observing self’ is eliminated; a man ‘loses him-self,’ that is, he ceases to be a spectator of his acts. Siizukisays: ‘With the awaking of consciousness, the will is splitinto two:... actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable, forthe actor(-self) wants to be free from the limitations’ of theobserver-self. Therefore in Enlightenment the disciple dis-covers that there is no observer-self, ‘no soul entity as anunknown or unknowable quantity.’! Nothing remains but

* Suzuki, Professor Daisetz Teitaro, Essays in Zen Buddhism^ vol. 3,p. 318 (Kyoto, 1927, 1933, 1934).

t Quoted by Sir Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism^ p. 401.

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the goal and the act that accomplishes it The studait ofhuman behavior could rephrase this statement to refermore particularly to Japanese culture. As a child a personis drastically trained to observe his own acts and to judgethem in the light of what people will say; his observer-selfis terribly vulnerable. To deliver himself up to the ecstasyof his soul, he eliminates this vulnerable self. He ceases tofeel that ‘Ac is doing it.’ He then feels himself trained in hissoul in the same way that the novice in fencing feels him-self trained to stand without fear of falling on the four-footpillar.

The painter, the poet, the public speaker and the warrioruse this training in muga similarly. They acquire, not In-finitude, but a clear undisturbed perception of finite beautyor adjustment of means and ends so that they can use justthe right amount of effort, ‘no more and no less,’ to achievetheir goal.

Even a person who has imdergone no training at all mayhave a sort of muga experience. When a man watching Nohor Kabuki plays completely loses himself in the spectacle,he too is said to lose his observing self. The palms of hishands become wet. He feels ‘the sweat of muga.’ A bomb-ing pilot approaching his goal has ‘the sweat of muga’ be-fore he releases his bombs. ‘He is not doing it.’ There is noot^rver-self left in his consciousness. An anti-aircraft gun-ner, lost to all the world beside, is said similarly to have ‘thesweat of muga’ and to have eliminated the observer-self.The idea is that in all such cases people in this conditionare at the top of their form.

Such concepts are eloquent testimony to the heavy bur-

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den the Japanese make out of self-watchfulness and self-surveillance. They are free and efhcient, they say, whenthese restraints are gone. Whereas Americans identify theirobserver-selves with the rational principle within them andpride themselves in crises on ‘keeping their wits aboutthem,’ the Japanese feel that a millstone has fallen fromaroimd their necks when they deliver themselves up to theecstasy of their souls and forget the restraints self-watchful-ness imposes. As we have seen, their culture dins the needfor circumspection into their souls, and the Japanese havecountered by declaring that there is a more efficient planeof human consciousness where this burden falls away.

The most extreme form in which the Japanese state thistenet, at least to the ears of an Occidental, is the way theysupremely approve of the man ‘who lives as already dead.’The literal Western translation would be ‘the living corpse,’and in all Occidental languages ‘the living corpse’ is an ex-pression of horror. It is the phrase by which we say that aman’s self has died and left his body encumbering the earth.No vital principle is left in him. The Japanese use ‘living asone already dead’ to mean that one lives on the plane of‘expertness.’ It is used in conunon everyday exhortation.To encourage a boy who is worrying about his final exami-nations from middle school, a man will say, ‘Take them asone already dead and you will pass them easily.’ To en-courage someone who is undertaking an important businessdeal, a friend- will say, ‘Be as one already dead.’ When aman goes through a great soul crisis and cannot see his wayahead, he quite commonly emerges with the resolve to live‘as one already dead.’ The great Christian leader Kagawa,

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The Cbryscmthemum mi the Sword

since VJ-Day made a member of the House of Lords, saysin his fictionalized autobiography: ‘Like a man bewitchedby an evil spirit he spent every day in his room weeping.His fits of sobbing verged on hysteria. His agony lasted fora month and a half but life finally gained the victory....He would live endued with the strength of death.... Hewould enter into the conflict as one already dead.... Hedecided to become a Christian.’* During the war Japanesesoldiers said, ‘I resolve to live as one already dead and thusrepay ko^n to the Emperor,’ and this covered such be-havior as conducting one’s own funeral before embarking,pledging one’s body ‘to the dust of Iwo lima,’ and resolving‘to fall with the flowers of Burma.’

The philosophy which xmderlies muga underlies also ‘liv-ing as already dead.’ In this state a man eliminates all self-watchfulness and thus all fear and circumspection. He be-comes as the dead, who have passed beyond the necessity oftaking thought about the proper course of action. The deadare no longer returning on; they are free. Therefore to say,‘I win live as one already dead’ means a supreme releasefrom conflict. It means, ‘My energy and attention are freeto pass directly to the fulfillment of my purpose. My ob-server-self with all its burden of fears is no longer betweenme and my goal. With it have gone the sense of tensenessand strain and the tendency toward depression that troubledmy earlier strivings. Now all things are possible to me.’

In Western phraseology, the Japanese in the practice ofmuga and of‘living as one already dead’ eliminate the con-science. What they call ‘the observing-self,’ ‘the interfering

* Kagawa, Toyohiko, Before the Dawn, p. 240.

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Self-Discipline

self,’ is a censor judging one’s acts. It points up vividly thedifference between Western and Eastern psychology thatwhen we speak of a conscienceless American we mean a manwho no longer feels the senseof sin which should accompanywrongdoing, but that when a Japanese uses the equivalentphrase he means a man who is no longer tense and hindered.The American means a bad man; the Japanese means agood man, a trained man, a man able to use his abilities tothe utmost He means a man who can perform the mostdifficult and devoted deeds of imselfishness. The great Amer-ican sanction for good behavior is guilt; a man who be-cause of a calloused conscience can no longer feel this hasbecome antisocial. The Japanese diagram the problem dif-ferently. According to their philosophy man in his inmostsoul is good. If his impulse can be directly embodied in hisdeed, he acts virtuously and easily. Therefore he undergoes,in ‘expertness,’ self-training to eliminate the self-censorshipof shame (haji). Only then is his ‘sixth sense’ free of hin-drance. It is his supreme release from self-conscioxisnessand conflict.

This Japanesephilosophy of self-discipline is abracadabraonly so long as it is separated from their individual life ex-periences in Japanese culture. We have already seen howheavily this shame (haji) which they assign to ‘the observingself* weighs upon the Japanese, but the true meaning of theirphilosophy in their psychic economy is stiU obscure withouta description of Japanese child-rearing. In any culture tra-ditional moral sanctions are transmitted to each new gener-ation, not merely in words, but in all the elders’ attitudestoward their chUdren, and an outsider can hardly under-

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The Qnryscmtbemmn and the Swordstand any nation’s major stakes in life without studying theway children are brought up time. Japanese child-rearingmakes clearer many of their national assumptions about lifewhich we have so far described only at the adult level.

The Child Learns

Japanese babies are not brought up in the fashion that athou^tful Westerner might suppose. American parents,training their children for a life so much less circumspectand stoical than life in Japan, nevertheless begin immedi-ately to prove to the baby that his own little wishes are notsupreme in this world. We put him immediately on a feed-ing schedule and a sleeping schedule, and no matter how hefusses before bottle time or bed time, he has to wait. A littlelater his mother strikes his hand to make him take his fingerout of his mouth or away from other parts of his body. Hismother is frequently out of sight and when she goes out hehas to stay behind. He has to be weaned before he prefersother foods, or if he is bottle fed, he has to give up his bottle.There are certain foods that are good for him and he musteat them. He is punished when he does not do what is right.What is more natural for an American to suppose than thatthese disciplines are redoubled for the little Japanese babywho, when he is a finished product, will have to subordinatehis own wishes and be so careful and punctilious an observerof such a demanding code?

The Japanese, however, do not follow this course. The

arc of life in Japan is plotted in opposite fashion to that inthe United States. It is a great shaUow U-curve with maxi-mum freedom and indulgence allowed to babies and to theold. Restrictions are slowly increased after babyhood tillhaving one’s own way reaches a low just before and aftermarriage. This low line continues many years during theprime of life, but the arc gradually ascends again until afterthe age of sixty men and women are almost as unhamperedby shame as little children are. In the United States westand this curve upside down. Firm disciplines are directedtoward the infant and these are gradually relaxed as thechild grows in strength until a man runs his own life whenhe gets a self-supporting job and when he sets up a house-hold of his own. The prime of life is with us the high pointof freedom and initiative. Restrictions begin to appear asmen lose their grip or their energy or become dependent Itis diflScult for Americans even to fantasy a life arranged ac-cording to the Japanese pattern. It seems to us to fly in theface of reality.

Both the American and the Japanese arrangement of thearc of life, however, have in point of fact secured in eachcountry the individual’senergetic participation in his cultureduring the prime of life. To secure this end in the UnitedStates, we rely on increasing his freedom of choice duringthis period. The Japanese rely on maximizing the restraintsupon him. The feet that a man is at this time at the peak ofhis physical strength and at the peak of his earning powersdoes not make him master of his own life. They have greatconfidence that restraint is good mental training (shuyo) andproduces results not attained by freedom. But the Japanese

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increase of restraints upon the man or woman during theirmost active producing periods by no means indicates thatthese restraints cover the whole of life. Childhood and oldage are ‘free areas.’

A people so truly permissive to their children very likelywant babies. The Japanese do. They want them, firstof all, as parents do in the United States, because it is apleasure to love a child. But they want them, too, for reasonswhich have much less weight in America. Japanese parentsneed children, not alone for emotional satisfaction, but be-cause they have failed in life if they have not carried on thefamily line. Every Japanese man must have a son. He needshim to do daily homage to his memory after his death atthe living-room shrine before the miniature gravestone. Heneeds him to perpetuate the family line down the genera-tions and to preserve the family honor and possessions.For traditional social reasons the father needs his son al-most as much as the young son needs his father. The sonwill take his father’s place in the on-going future and thisis not felt as supplanting but as insuring the father. For afew years the father is trustee of the ‘house.’ Later it will behis son. If the father could not pass trusteeship to his son,his own rdle would have been played in vain. This deepsense of continuity prevents the dependency of the fullygrown son on his father, even when it is continued so muchlonger than it is in the United States, from having the auraof shame and humiliation which it so generally has in West-ern nations.

A woman too wants children not only for her emotionalsatisfaction in them but because it is only as a mother that

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she gains status. A childless wife has a most insecure posi-tion in the family, and even if she is not discarded she cannever look forward to being a mother-in-law and exercisingauthority over her son’s marriage and over her son’s wife.Her husband will adopt a son to carry on his line but accord-ing to Japanese ideas the childless woman is still the loser.Japanese women are expected to be good childbearers. Theaverage annual birth-rate during the first half of the nineteen-thirties was 31.7 per 1000 which is high even when com-pared to prolific countries of Eastern Europe. In the UnitedStates in 1940 the rate was 17.6 per 1000. Japanese mothers,too, begin their childbearing early, and girls of nineteenbear more children than women of any other age.

Childbirth is as private in Japan as sexual intercourse andwomen may not cry out in labor because this would publi-cize it. A little pallet bed has been prepared for the babywith its own new mattress and bedcover. It would be a badomen for the child not to have its own new bed, even if thefamily can do no more than have the quilt covers and thestuffing cleaned and renovated to make them ‘new.’ Thelittle bed quilt is not as stiff as grown-ups’ covers and it islighter. The baby is therefore said to be more comfortablein its own bed, but the deeply felt reason for its separate bedis still felt to be based on a kind of sympathetic magic: anew human being must have its own new bed. The baby’spallet is drawn up close to the mother’s, but the baby doesnot sleep with its mother until it is old enough to show initi-ative. When it is perhaps a year old, they say the babystretches out its arms and makes its demand known. Thenthe baby sleeps in its mother’s arms under her covers.

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For three days after its birth the baby is not fed, for theJapanese wait until the true milk comes. After this the babymay have the breast at any time either for food or comfort.The mother enjoys nursing too. The Japanese are convincedthat musing is one of a woman’s greatest physiologicalpleasures and the baby easily learns to share her pleasure.The breast is not only nourishment: it is delight and com-fort. For a month the baby lies on his little bed or is held inhis mother’s arms. It is only after the baby has been takento the local shrine and presented there at the age of aboutthirty days that his life is thought to be firmly anchored inhis body so that it is safe to carry him around freely in pub-lic. After he is a month old, he is carried on his mother’sback. A double sash holds him under his arms and underhis behind and is passed around the mother’s shoulders andtied in front at the waist. In cold weather the mother’s pad-ded jacket is worn right over the baby. The older childrenof the family, both boys and girls, cany the baby, too, evenat play when they are running for base or playing hop-scotch. The villagers and the poorer families especially de-pend on child nurses, and ‘living in public, as the Japanesebabies do, they soon acquire an intelligent, interested look,and seem to enjoy the games of the older children uponwhose backs they are carried as much as the players them-selves.’* The spread-eagle strapping of the baby on theback in Japan has much in common with the shawl-carry-ing common in the Pacific Islands and elsewhere. It makesfor passivity and babies carried in these ways tend to growup, as the Japanese do too, with a capacity for sleeping any-

* Bacon, Alice Mabel, Japanese Women and Girts, p. 6.

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The Chrysmthemim md the Svpord

where, anyhow. But the Japanese strapping does not m-courage as complete passivity as shawl and bag canying.The baby ‘learns to cling like a kitten to the back of who-ever carries it... The straps that tie it to the back aresufS.cient for safety; but the baby ... is dep^dent on itsown exertions to secure a comfortable position and it soonlearns to ride its bearer with considerable skill instead ofbeing merely a bimdle tied to the shoulders.’*

The mother lays the baby on its bed whenever she isworking and carries it with her wherever she goes on thestreets. She talks to it. She hums to it. She puts it throughthe etiquette motions. If she returns a greeting herself, shemoves the baby’s head and shoulders forward so that it toomakes salutation. The baby is always counted in. Everyafternoon she takes it with her into the hot bath and playswith it as she holds it on her knees.

For three or four months the baby wears diapers, veryheavy cloth pads upon which Japanese sometimes blametheir bow-leggedness. When the baby is three or fourmonths old, the mother begins his nursery training. Sheanticipates his needs, holding him in her hands outside thedoor. She waits for him, usually whistling low and monoto-nously, and the child learns to know the purpose of thisauditory stimulus. Everyone agrees that a baby in Japan,as in China too, is trained very early. If there are slips, somemothers pinch the baby but generally they only change thetone of their voices and hold the hard-to-train baby out-side the door at more frequent intervals. If there is with-holding, the mother gives the baby an enema or a purge.

* Op. cii., p. 10.

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Mothers say that they are making the baby more comfort-able ; when he is trained he will no longer have to wear thethick imcomfortable diapers. It is true that a Japanese babymust find diapers unpleasant, not only because they areheavy but because custom does not decree that they bechanged whenever he wets them. The baby is neverthelesstoo young to perceive the connection between nurserytraining and getting rid of uncomfortable diapers. He ex-periences only an inescapable routine implacably insistedupon. Besides, the mother has to hold the baby away fromher body, and her grip must be firm. What the baby leamsfrom the implacable training prepares him to accept inadulthood the subtler compulsions of Japanese culture.*

The Japanese baby usually talks before it walks. Creep-ing has always been discouraged. Traditionally there was afeeling that the baby ought not to stand or take steps till itwas a year old and the mother used to prevent any such at-tempts. The government in its cheap, widely circulatedMother's Magazine has for a decade or two tau^t thatwalking should be encouraged and this has become muchmore general. Mothers loop a sash under the baby’s armsor support it with their hands. But babies still tend to talkeven earlier. When they begin to use words the stream ofbaby talk with which adults like to amuse a baby becomesmore purposive. They do not leave the baby’s acquiringof language to chance imitation; th^ teach the baby wordsand grammar and respect language, and both the baby andthe grown-ups enjoy the game.

* Geoffrey]Gorer has also emphasized the rdle of Japanese toilet train-ing in Themes in Japanese Culture^ Transactions of the New York Acad-emy of Science, vol. 5, pp. 106-124, 1943.

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The Chrysanthemum and the Sw&rd

When children can walk th^ can do a lot of mischief in aJapanese home. Th^ can poke their fingers through paperwalls, and they can fall into the open fire pit in the middleof the floor. Not content with this, the Japanese ev«i ex-aggerate the dangers of the house. It is ‘dangerous’ andcompletely taboo to step on the lintel. The Japanese househas, of course, no cellar and is raised off the ground onjoists. It is seriously felt that the whole house can be thrownout of shape even by a child’s step upon the lintel. Not onlythat, but the child must learn not to step or to sit where thefloor mats join one another. Floor mats are of standardsize and rooms are known as ‘three-mat rooms’ or ‘twelve-mat rooms.’ Where these mats join, children are often told,the samurai of old times used to thrust their swords upfrom below the house and pierce the occupants of the room.Only the thick soft floor mats provide safety; even thecracks where they meet are dangerous. The mother putsfeelings of this sort into the constant admonitions she usesto the baby: ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Bad.’ The third usual ad-monition is ‘Dirty.’ The neatness and cleanness of the Jap-anese house is proverbial and the baby is admonished torespect it.

Most Japanese children are not weaned till shortly beforeanew baby is bom, but thegovemment’sil/otAer’jAfagozwiehas in late years approved of weaning the baby at eightmonths. Middle-class mothers often do this, but it is farfrom being the common custom in Japan. True to the Jap-anese feeling that nursing is a great pleasure to the mother,those circles which are gradxially adopting the custom regardthe shorter nursing period as a mother’s sacrifice to the wel-

a<So

fare of hear child. When th^ acc^t the new dictum that ‘thechild who nurses long is weak,’ they blame the moth^ forher self-indulgence if she has not weaned her baby. ‘Shesays she can’t wean her baby. It’s only that she hasn’t madeup her own mind. She wants to go on. She is getting the bet-ter part’ With such an attitude, it is quite understandablethat eight-month weaning has not become widespread.There is a practical reason also for late weaning. The Japa-nese do not have a tradition of special foods for a just-weaned baby. If he is weaned young, he is fed the water inwhich rice has been boiled, but ordinarily he passes directlyfrom his mother’s milk to the iisual adult fare. Cow’s milkis not included in Japanese diet and they do not preparespecial vegetables for children. Under the circiunstancesthere is a reasonable doubt whether the government is cor-rect in teaching that ‘the child who nurses long is weak.’

Children are usually weaned after they can imderstandwhat is said to them. They have sat in their mother’s lap atthe family table during meals and been fed bits of the food;now they eat more of it. Some children are feeding prob-lems at this time, and this is easy to understand when theyare weaned because of the birth of a new baby. Mothersoften offer them sweets to buy them off from begging tonurse. Sometimes a mother will put pepper on her nipples.But all mothers tease them by telling them they are prov-ing that they are mere babies if they want to nurse. ‘Lookat your little cousin. He’s a man. He’s little like you and hedoesn’t ask to nurse.’ ‘That little boy is laughing at youbecause you’re a boy and you still want to nurse.’ Two-,three-, and four-year-old children who are still demanding

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The Chrysmtbemum mid the Sword

their mother’s breast will often drop it and feign indiffer-ence when an older diild is heard approaching.

This teasing, this urging a child toward adulthood, is notconfined to weaning. From the time the child can imder-stand what is said to it, these techniques are common in anysituation. A mother will say to her boy baby when he cries,‘You’re not a girl,’ or ‘You’re a man.’ Or she will say,‘Look at that baby. He doesn’t cry.’ When another babyis brought to visit, she will fondle the visitor in her ownchild’s presence and say, ‘I’m going to adopt this baby. Iwant such a nice, good child. You don’t act your age.’ Herown child throws itself upon her, often pommeling herwith its fists, and cries, ‘No, no, we don’t want any otherbaby. I’ll do what you say.’ When the child of one or twohas been noisy or has failed to be prompt about something,the mother will say to a man visitor, ‘Will you take thischild away? We don’t want it’ The visitor acts out his role.He starts to take the child out of the house. The babyscreams and calls upon its mother to rescue it He has afull-sized tantrum. When she thinks the teasing has worked,she relents and takes back the child, exacting its frenziedpromise to be good. The little play is acted out sometimeswith children who are as old as five and six.

Teasing takes another form too. The mother will turn toher husband and say to the child, ‘I like your father betterthan you. He is a nice man.’ The child gives full expressionto his jealousy and tries to break in between his father andmother. His mother says, ‘Your father doesn’t shout aroundthe house and run around the rooms.’ ‘No, no,’ the childprotests, ‘I won’t either. I am good. Now do you love me?’

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Whoi the i^y has gone on long enough, the father andmotho* look at one another and smile. They may tease ayoung dau^ter in this way as well as a young son.

Such experiences are rich soil for the fear of ridicule andof ostracism >^ch is so marked in the Japanese grown-up.It is impossible to say how soon little children understandthat they are being made game of by this teasing, but under-stand it th^ do sooner or later, and when they do, the senseof being laughed at fuses with the panic of the child threat-ened with loss of all that is safe and familiar. When he is agrown man, being laughed at retains this childhood aura.

The panic such teasing occasions in the two- to five-year-old child is the greater because home is really a haven ofsafe^ and indulgence. Division of labor, both physical andemotional, is so complete between his father and motherthat th^ are seldom presented to him as competitors. Hismother or his grandmother runs the household and admon-ishes the child. Th^ both serve his father on their kneesand put him in the position of honor. The order of prece-dence in the home hierarchy is clear-cut. The child haslearned the prerogatives of elder generations, of a male ascompared with a female, of elder brother as compared withyounger brother. But at this period of his life a child is in-dulged in all these relationships. This is strikingly true if heis a boy. For both girls and boys alike the mother is thesource of constant and extreme gratifications, but in thecase of a three-year-old boy he can gratify against her evenhis furious an^. He may never manifest any aggressiontoward his father, but all that he felt when he was teasedhis parents and his resentments ag^iinst bemg ‘given away*

The Qjryscmtbemum and the Smrdcan be expressed in tantrums directed against his motborand his grandmother. Not all little boys, of course, havethese tantrums, but in both villages and upper-class homesthey are looked upon as an ordinary part of child life be-tween three and six. The baby pommels his mother, screams,and, as his final violence, tears down her precious hair-do.His mother is a woman and even at three years old he issecurely male. He can gratify even his aggressions.

To his father he may show only respect. His father is thegreat exemplar to the child of high hierarchal position, and,in the constantly used Japanese phrase, the child must learnto express the proper respect to him ‘for training.’ He is lessof a disciplinarian than in almost any Western nation. Dis-cipline of the children is in the woman’s hands. A simplesilent stare or a short admonition is usually all the indica-tion of his wishes he gives to his little children, and theseare rare enough to be qmckly complied with. He may maketoys for his children in his free hours. He carries them abouton occasion long after they can walk—as the mother doestoo—and for his children of this age he casually assumesnursery duties which an American father ordinmily leavesto his wife.

CMdren have great freedom with their grandparents,though they are also objects of respect. Grandparents arenot cast in the rdle of disciplinarians. They may take thatr61e when they object to the laxness of the children’s up-bringing, and this is the occasion of a good deal of friction.The child’s grandmother is usually at hand twenty-fourhours of the day, and the rivalry for the children betweenfather’s mother and mother is proverbial in Japanese homes.

From chil<rs point of vww he is courted both ofthem. From the grandmotl^’s point of view, she ctftenuses him in her domination of her daughter-in-law. Theyoung mother has no greater obligation in life than satis-*lying her mother-in-law and she cannot protest, howevermuch the grandparents may spoil her children. Grand-mother gives them candies after Mother has said th^ shouldnot have any more, and says pointedly, ‘My candies aren’tpoison.’ Grandmother in many hoiiseholds can make thechildren presents which Mother cannot manage to get themand has more leisure to devote to the children’s amusements.

The older brothers and sistera are also taught to indulgethe younger children. The Japanese are quite aware of thedanger of what we call the baby’s ‘nose being put out ofjoint’ when the next baby is bom. The dispossessed childcan easily associate with the new baby the fact that he hashad to give up his mother’s breast and his mother’s bedto the newcomer. Before the new baby is bom the mothertells the child that now he will have a real live doll and notjust a ‘pretend’ baby. He is told that he can sleep now withhis father instead of his mother, and this is pictured as aprivilege. The children are drawn into preparations for thenew baby. The children are usually genuinely excited andpleased by the new baby but lapses occur and are regardedas thoroughly expectable and not as particularly threaten-ing. The dispossessed child may pick up the baby and startoff with it, saying to his mother, ‘We’ll give this baby away.’‘No,’ she answers, ‘it’s our baby. See, we’ll be good to it.It likes you. We need you to help with the baby.’ The littlescene sometimes recurs over a considerable time but moth-

26s

The Chryscaubemum and the Sworders seem to worry little about it. One {provision for thesituation occurs automatically in large families: the alter-nate children are united by closer ties. The oldest diild willbe favored nurse and protector of the third child and thesecondbhild of the foiulh. The yoimger children reciprocate.Until children are seven or eight, what sex the children aregenerally makes little difference in this arrangement.

All Japanese children have toys. Fathers and mothersand all the drcle of friends and relatives make or buy dollsand all their appurtenances for the children, and amongpoorer people they cost practically nothing. Little childrenplay housekeeping, weddings, and festivals with them, afterarguing out just what the ‘right’ grown-up procedures are,and sometimes submitting to mother a disputed point.When there are quarrels, it is likely that the mother willinvoke noblesse oblige and ask the older child to give into the yoimger one. Hie common phrase is, ‘Why not lose towin?’ She means, and the three-year-old quickly comes tounderstand her, that if the older child gives up his toy to theyounger one the baby will soon be satisfied and turn tosomething else; then the admonished child will have wonhis toy back even though he relinquished it. Or she meansthat by accepting an impopular rdle in the master-servantsgame the children are proposing, he will nevertheless ‘win’the fun they can have. ‘To lose to win’ becomes a sequencegreatly respected in Japanese life even when people aregrown-up.

Besides the techniques of admonition and teasing, dis-tracting the child and turning his mind away from its objecthas an honored place in duld-rearing. Even the constant

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The Qsild Leams

giving of candies is generally thought of as part of the tech-nique of distraction. As the child gets nearer to school agetechniques of‘curing’are used. If a httle boy has tantrums oris disobedient or noi^ his mother may take him to a Shintoor Buddhist shrine. The mother’s attitude is, *lVe will goto get help.’ It is often quite a jaunt and the curing priesttalks seriously with the boy, asl^g his day of birth and histroubles. He retires to pray and comes back to pronouncethe cure, sometimes removing the naughtiness in the formof a worm or an insect. He purifies him and sends him homefreed. ‘It lasts for a while,’ Japanese say. Even the mostsevere pimishment Japanese children ever get is regarded as‘medicine.’ This is the burning of a little cone of powder,the moxa, upon the child’s skin. It leaves a lifelong scar.Cauterization by moxa is an old, widespread Eastern Asi-atic medicine, and it was traditionally used to cure manyaches and pains in Japan too. It can also cure tantrums andobstinacy. A little boy of six or seven may be ‘cured’ in thisway by his mother or his grandmother. It may even beused twice in a difficult case but very seldom indeed is achild given the moxa treatment for naughtiness a thirdtime. It is not a punishment in the smse that ‘I’ll spankyou if you do that’ is a punishment. But it hurts far worsethan spanking, and the child leams that he cannot benaughty with impunity.

Besides these means of dealing with obstrq)erous chil-dren, there are conventions for teaching necessary physicalskills. There is great emphasis on the instructor’s puttingchildren with his own hands physically through the mo-tions. The child should be passive. Before the child is two

2tf7

The Qfrysambemmn and the Sword

years old, the father folds its legs for it in the correct sittingposition, legs folded back and instep to the floor. The childfinds it difficult at first not to fall over backward, especiallysince an indispensable part of the sitting training is the em-phasis on immobility. He must not fid^ or shift position.The way to learn, th^ say, is to relax and be passive, andthis passivity is underscored by the father’s placing of hislegs. Sitting is not the only physical position to be learned.There is also sleeping. Modesty in a woman’s sleeping posi-tion is as strong in Japan as modesty about being seennaked is in the United States. Though tiie Japanese did notfeel shame in nudity in the bath until the government triedto introduce it during their campaign to win the approvalof foreigners, their feeling about sleeping positions is verystrong. The girl child must learn to sleep straight with herlegs together, though the boy has greater freedom. It is oneof the first rules which separate the training of boys andgirls. Like almost all other requirements in Japan, it isstricter in upper classes than in lower, and Mrs. Sugimotosays of her own samurai upbringing; ‘From the time I canremember I was always careful alxjut lying quiet on mylittle wooden pillow at night... Saminai daughters weretauglht never to lose control of mind or body—even insleep. Boys might stretch themselves into the character dai,carelessly outspread; but girls must curve into the modest,dignifiedcharacterA:t«q/i, which means “spirit of control.’’ ’*Women have told me how their mothers or nurses arrangedtheir Umbs for them when thty put them to bed at night

* Sugimoto, Etsu Inagaki, A Daughter of the iSamiira/. Doubleday Pageand Company, 1926, pp. 15,24.

idS

The Child Learns

111 the traditional teaching of writing, too, ti^ instructortook tiie child’s hand and made the ideographs. It wi» ‘togive him the feel.’ The child lemmed to experience the con-trolled, rhythmic movements before he could recognize thecharacters, much less write them. In mo^m mass educa-tion this method of teaching is less pronounced but it stilloccurs. The bow, the handling of chopsticks, shooting anarrow, or tying a pillow on the back in lieu of a baby mayall be tau^t by moving the child’s hands and physicallyplacing his body in the correct position.

Except among the upper classes childroi do not wait togo to school before th^ play freely with other children ofthe neighborhood. In the villages they form little play gangsbefore th^ are three and even in towns and cities th^ playwith startling freedom in and out of vehicles in the crowdedstreets. They are privileged beings. They hang around theshops listening to grown-ups, or play hopscotch or hand-ball. They gather for play at the village shrine, safe in theprotection of its patron spirit. Girls and boys play togetheruntil they go to school, and for two or three years after, butclosest ties are likely to be between children of the same sexand especially between children of the same chronologicalage. These age-groups (donen), especially in the villages, arelifelong and survive all others. In the village of Suye Mura,‘as sexual interests decrease parties of donen are the truepleasures left in life. Suye (tiie village) says, “Donen arecloser than a wife.” ’*

These pre-school children’s gangs are very free with eachother. Many of their games are unabashedly obscene from

♦ Embree, John F., Suye Mura, p. 190.

2(5p

The Chrysmtbefmm and the Sworda Western point of view. Hie diildren know tlM facts oflife both because of the freedom of grown-ups’ conversa-tion and because of the close quarters in which a Japanesefamily lives. Besides, their mothers ordinarily call attri-tion to their children’s genitals when they play with themand bathe them, certainly to those of their boy children.The Japanese do not condemn childish sexuality excqitwhen it is indulged in the wrong places and in wrong com-pany. Masturbation is not regarded as dangerous. The chil-dren’s gangs are also very free in hurling criticisms at eachother—critidsms which in later life would be insults—andin boasting—boasts which would later be occasions of deepshame. ‘Qiildren,’ the Japanese say, their eyes smiling be-nignantly, ‘know no shame (haji).* Thty add, ‘That is whythty are so happy.’ It is the great gulf fixed between the lit-tle child and the adult, for to say of a grown person, ‘Heknows no shame’ is to say that he is lost to decency.

Children of this age criticize each other’s homes and pos-sessions and they boast especially about their fathers. ‘Myfather is stronger than yours,’ ‘My father is smarter thanyours’ is common coin. They come to blows over their re-spective fathers. This kind of behavior seems to Americanshardly worth noting, but in Japan it is in great contrast tothe conversation children hear all about them. Every adult’sreference to his own home is phrased as ‘my wretchedhouse’ and to his neighbor’s as ‘your august house’; everyreference to his family, as ‘my miserable family,’ and to hisneighbor’s as ‘your honorable family.’ Japanese agree thatfor many years of childhood—from the time the children’splay gangs form till the third year of elementary school,

»7o

when the children are nine—th^ occupy themselves con-stantly with these individualistic claims. Sometimes it is,‘I will play overlord and you’ll be my retainers.’ ‘No, Iwon’t be a servant. I will be overlord.’ Sometimes it is per-sonal boasts and derogation of the others. ‘They are freeto say whatever they want. As they get older they jSnd thatwhat they want isn’t allowed, and then they wait till they’reasked and they don’t boast any more.’

The child leams in the home his attitudes toward the su-pernatural. The priest does not ‘teach’ him and generally achild’s experiences with organized religion are on those oc-casions when he goes to a popular festival and, along withall others who attend, is sprinkled by the priest for purifica-tion. Some children are taken to Buddhist services, butusually this too occurs at festivals. The child’s constantand most deep-seated experiences with religion are alwaysthe family observances that center around the Buddhistand the Shinto shrines in his own home. The more con-spicuous is the Buddhist shrine with the family grave tab-lets before which are offered flowers, branches of a certaintree, and incense. Food offerings are placed there daily andthe elders of the family announce all family events to theancestors and bow daily before the shrine. In the eveninglittle lamps are lighted there. It is quite common for peopleto say that they do not like to sleep away from home be-cause they feel lost without these presences which presideover the house. The Shinto shrine is usually a simple shelfdominated by a charm from the temple of Ise. Other sortsof offerings may be presented here. Then too there is theKitchen-god covered with soot in the kitchen, and a host

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The Qfrysmthemum and the Smrdof charms may be fastraied on doors and ik^Hs. They ateall protections and make home safe. In the villages the vil-lage shrine is similarly a safe place because braievolent godsprotect it with their presence. Mothers like to have theirchildren play there where it is safe. Nothing in the child’sexperience makes him fear the gods or shape his conduct tosatisfy just or censorious gods. They should be graciousfyentertained in return for their benefits. Th^ are not author-itarian.

The serious business of fitting a boy into the circumspectpatterns of adult Japanese life does not really begin till afterhe has been in school for two or three years. Up to that timehe has been taught physical control, and when he was ob-streperous, his naughtiness has been ’cured’ and his attentiondistracted. He has been unobtrusively admonished and hehas been teased. But he has been allowed to be willful, evento the extent of using violence against his mother. His littleego has been fostered. Not much changes when he first goesto school. The first three grades are co-educational and theteacher, whether a man or a woman, pets the children andis one of them. More emphasis at home and in school, how-ever, is laid on the dangers of getting into ‘embarrassing’situations. Children are still too young for ‘shame,’ but theymust be taught to avoid being ‘embarrassed.’ The boy in thestory who cried ‘Wolf, wolf’ when there was no wolf, forinstance, ‘fooled people. If you do anything of this kind,people do not trust you and that is an embarrassing fact.’Many Japanese say that it was their schoolmates wholauded at them first when they made mistakes—not then-teachers or their parents. The job of their elders, indeed, is

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not, at tfais point, tiianselves to use ridicule on the childim,but gradually to integrate the fact of ridicule with the morallesson of living up to giri-to-the-world. Obligations whidiw«e, when the children were six, the loving devotion of afaithful dog—the story of the good dog’s on, quoted earlier,is from the six-year-olds’ reader—now gradu^y become awhole series of restraints. ‘If you do this, if you do that,’their ^ers say, ‘the world will lau^ at you.* The rules areparticularistic and situational and a great many of themccmc^ what we should call etiquette. They require subor-dinating one’s own will to the ever-increasing duties tonei^bors, to family and to country. The child must re-strain himself, he must recognize his indebtedness. He passesgradually to the status of a debtor who must walk circum-^)ecdy if he is ever to pay back what he owes.

This change of status is communicated to the growiag boyby a new and serious extension of the pattern of babyhoodteasing. By the time he is eight or nine his family may insober truth reject him. If his teacher reports that he hasbeen disobedient or disrespectful and gives him a blackmark in deportment, his family turn against him. If he isoiticized for some mischief by the storekeeper, ‘the familyname has been disgraced.’ His family are a solid phalanx ofaccusation. Two Japanese I have known were told by theirfathers before they were ten not to come h(unc again andwere too shamed to go to relatives. They had been punishedby their teachers in the schoolroom. In both cases they livedin outhouses, where their mothers found them and finallyarranged for their return. Boys in later elementary schoolare sometimes confined to the house for kinshin, ‘rq)^t-

273

The Chryscmthemtm and the Svpordance,’ and must occupy themselves with that Japanese ob-session, the writing of diaries. In any case the family showsthat now it looks upon the boy as their rq>resentative in theworld and they proceed against him because he has incurredcriticism. He has not lived up to his giri-to-the-world. Hecannot look to his family for support. Nor can he look tohis age group. His schoolmates ostracize him for oScasesand he has to apologize and make promises before he isreadmitted.

‘It is worth emphasizing,* as Geoffrey Gorer says, ‘thatthe degree to which this is carried is very uncommon socio-logically. In most societies where the extended family orother fractional social group is operative, the group willusually rally to protect one of its members who is imdercriticism or attack from members of other groups. Providedthat the approval of one’s own group is maintained, onecan face the rest of the world with the assurance of full sup-port in case of need or attack. In Japan however it appearsthat the reverse is the case; one is only sure of support fromone’s own group as long as approval is given by othwgroups; if outsiders disapprove or criticize, one’s own groupwill turn against one and act as the punishing agents, untilor unless the individual can force the other group to with-draw its criticism. By this mechanism the approval of the“outside world’’ takes on an importance probably unparal-leled in any other society.’*

The girl’s training up to this point does not differ in kindfrom the boy’s, however different in detail. She is more re-

* Oorer, Oeoffrey» Japanese Character Structure, mimeographed. TheInstitute for International Studies, 1943, p. 27.

274

TZ>e Child Leams

strained than her brother in the home. More duties are putupon her—thou^ the little boy too may be numemaid—and she always gets the little end of the horn in matters ofpresents and attention. She does not have the characteristicboys’ tantrums, either. But she has been wonderfully freefor an Asiatic little girl. Dressed in bright reds, she hasplayed in the streets with the boys, she has fought with themand often held up her own end. She, too, as a child ‘knew noshame.’ Between six and nine she gradually leams her re>sponsibilities to ‘the world’ much as her brother does and bymuch the same experiences. At nine the school classes aredivided into girls’ and boys’ sections, and boys make a greatdeal of their new male solidarity. They exclude girls and ob-ject to having people see them talking to them. Girls, too,are warned by their mothers that such association is im-proper. Girls at this age are said to become sullen and with-drawn and hard to teach. Japanese women have said thatit is the end of ‘childish fun.’ Childhood ends for girls in anexclusion. They have no path marked out for them now formany, many years but ‘to double jicho with jicho.’ The les-son will go on and on, both when they are betrothed andwhen they are married.

Boys, however, have not yet, when they have learnedjicho and giri-to-the-world, acquired all that is incumbentupon an adult Japanese male. ‘From the age of ten,’ Japa-nese say, ‘he leams giri-to-his-name.’ They mean of coursethat he leams that it is a virtue to resent insult. He mustlearn the rules too: when to close with the adversary andwhen to take indirect means to clear his honor. I do notthink they mean that the boy has to learn the aggressiveness

175

that the insult behavior in^es; boys have hem a&ovvtid

in earty diildhood so much aggressivmess toward theirmothers and who have fou^t out with their age matesso many kinds 'of slurs and counterclaims, hardly have tolearn to be aggressive when th^ are toi. But the code ofgiri-to-oneVname, when boys are included under its pro^visions in their teens, channels their aggressiveness into ac-cepted forms and provides them with specified ways of deal-ing with it As we have seen, the Japanese often turn thisaggressiveness against thranselves instead of using violenceagainst others. Even school boys are no exception.

For those boys who continue their schooling beyond thesix-year elementary school—some 15 per cent of the popu-lation, thou^ the proportion in the male population islarger—the time when they are becoming responsible for^-to-their-name falls when th^ are suddenly exposed tothe fierce competition of middle-school entrance examina-tions and the competitive ranking of every student in everysubject. There is no gradual experience which leads up tothis, for competition is minimized almost to the vanishingpoint in el^entaiy school and at home. The sudden newexperience helps to make rivalry bitter and preoccupying.Competition for place ^d suspdon of favoritism are rife.This competition, however, does not figure so largely in thelife stories as does the middle-school convention of olderboys tormenting the lower classmen. The upper classes ofmiddle-school order the younger classes about and put themthrou^ various kinds of haz^g. Th^ make them do sillyandhumiliatingstonts. Resentmentsareextremelycotruncm,for Japanese boys do not take such things in a spirit of fun.

A younger boy who has been made to grovel before an up-per-classman and nm servile errands hates his tormentorand plans revenge. The fact that the revenge has to be post-poned makes it all the more absorbing. It is giri-to-his-nameand he regards it as a virtue. Sometimes he is able, throughfamily pull, to get the tormentor discharged from a jobyears later. Sometimes he perfects himself in jujitsu orsword play and publicly humiliates him on a city streetafter they have both left school. But unless he sometimeevens the score he has that ‘feeUng of something left undone*which is the core of the Japanese insult contest.

For those boys who do not go on to middle school, thesame kind of experience may come in their Army training. Inpeacetime one boy in four was drafted, and the hazing offirst-year recruits by second-year recruits was even moreextreme than in the middle and upper schools. It had noth-ing to do with officers in the Army, and only exceptionallyeven with non-commissioned officers. The first article of theJapanese code was that any appeal to officers caused one tolose face. It was fought out among the recruits. The officersaccepted it as a method of ‘hardening’ troops but they werenot involved. Second-year men passed on to the first-yearsthe resentments they had accumulated the year before andproved their ‘hardness’ by their mgenuity in devising humil-iations. The draftees have often been described as comingout of their Army training with changed personalities, as‘true jingo nationalists,’ but the change is not so much be-cause thty are taught any theory of the totalitarian stateand certainly not because of any inculcation of chu to theEmperor. The mcpetimce of being put throu^ humiliating

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The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

stunts is much more important. Young mat trained in familylife in the Japanese manner and deadly serious about theiramour-propre may easily become brutalized in such a situa-tion. They cannot stand ridicule. What they interpret asrqection may make them good torturers in their turn.

These modem Japanese situations in middle school andin the Army take their character, of course, from old Jap-anese customs about ridicule and insult. The middle andupper schools and the Army did not create the Japanese re-action to them. It is easy to see that the traditional code ofgiri-to-one’s-name makes hazing practices rankle more bit-terly in Japan than they do in America. It is also consistentwith old patterns that the fact that each hazed group willpass on the punishment in time to a victim group does notprevent a boy’s preoccupation with settling scores vdth hisactual tormentor. Scapegoating is not the constantly recur-ring folkway in Japan that it is in many Western nations. InPoland, for instance, where new apprentices and even youngharvesters are severely hazed, resentment is not ventedagainst the hazers, but upon the next crop of apprenticesand harvesters. Japanese boys will also have this satisfac-tion, of course, but they are primarily concerned with theimmediate insult contest. The tormented ‘feel good’ whenthey are able to settle scores with the tormentors.

In the reconstruction of Japan those leaders who havetheir country’s future at heart would do well to pay particu-lar attention to hazing and the custom of making boys dosilly stunts in the post-adolescent schools and'in die Army.They would do well to emphasize school spirit, even the‘old school tie,’ in order to break down the u{^)^-under

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classmen distinctions. In the Army they would do well toforbid hazing. Evoa though the second-year recruits shouldinsist on Spartan discipline in their relations with the first-years, as Japanese officers of all ranks did, such insistence isno insult in Japan. The hazing behavior is. If no older boy inschool or Army could with imptmity make a yoimger onewag his tail like a dog or perform like a cicada or stand onhis head while the others ate, it would be a change moreeffective in the re-education of Japan than denials of theEmperor’s divinity or elimination of nationalistic materialfrom textbooks.

Women do not learn the code of giri-to-one’s-name andthey do not have the modem experiences of boys’ middleschools and Army training. Nor do they go through anal-ogous experiences. Their life cycle is much more consistentthan their brothers’. From their earliest memories they havebeen trained to accept the fact that boys get the precedenceand the attention and the presents which are denied tothem. The rule of life which they must honor denies themthe privilege of overt self-assertion. Nevertheless, as babiesand as little children, they have shared with their brothersthe privileged life of little children in Japan. They have beenspecially dressed in bri^t reds as little girls, a color theygive up as adults until they are allowed it again whenthey reach thdr second privileged period at the age of sixty.In the home they may courted like their brothers in thecontest between mother and grandmother. Their brothersand sisters, too, demand that a sister, like any other mem-bo: of the family, like them ‘best.’ The children ask her toshow her preference by letting them sleep with her, and she

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can often distribute her favors from the grandmothers tothe two-year-old bal^. Japanese do not like to deep alone,and a child’s pallet can be laid at night close up beside thatof a chosen elder’s. The proof that ‘you like me best’ thatday is very often that the beds of the two are pulled up closetogether. Girls are allowed compensations even at the pe-riod when th^ are excluded from boys’ play groups at nineor ten. They are flattered by new kinds of hair-do, and atthe age of fourteen to eighteen their coiffure is the mostelaborate in Japan. They reach the age when th^ may wearsilk instead of cotton and when every effort is made to pro-vide th^ with clothes that enhance their charms. In theseways girls are given certain gratifications.

The responsibility for the restraints that are reqxiired ofthem, too, is placed squarely upon them, and not vested inan arbitrarily authoritarian parent. Parents exercise theirprerogatives not by corporal punishments but by their calm,unswerving expectation that the girl will live up to what isrequired of her. It is worthwhile quoting an extreme ex-ample of such training because it gives so well the kind ofnon-authoritarian pressure which is also characteristic ofless strict and privileged upbringing. From the age of sixlittle Etsu Inagaki was taught to memorize the Chineseclassics by a learned Confucian scholar.

Throughout my two-hour lesson he never moved theslightestfractionof an inch except for his hands and his lips.And I sat before him on the matting in an equally correctand unchanging position. Once I moved. It was in the midstof a lesson. For some reason I was restless and swayed mybody slightly, allowing my folded knee to slip a trifle fromthe proper angle. The faintest shade of surprise crossed my280

instoictor’sface; then very quietly he closed his book, sayinggently but with a stem air: ‘Little Miss, it is evident thatyour mental attitude today is not suited for study. Youshould retire to your room and meditate.’ My little heartwas almost killed with shame. There was nothing I coulddo. I humbly bowed to the picture of Confucius and thento my teacher, and, backing respectfully from the room* Islowly went to my father to report as I always did, at theclose of my lesson. Father was surprised, as the time wasnot yet up, and his unconscious remark, ‘How quickly youhave done your work!’ was like a death knell. The memoryof that moment hurts like a braise to this very day.*

And Mrs. Sugimoto summarizes one of the most charac-teristic parental attitudes in Japan when she describes agrandmother in another context:

Serenely she expected everyone to do as she approved;there was no scolding nor arguing, but her expectation,soft as silk floss and quite as strong, held her little familyto the paths that seemed right to her.

One of the reasons why this ‘expectation, soft as silk flossand quite as strong,’ can be so effective is that training is soexplicit for every art and skill. It is the habit that is taught,not just the rules. Whether it is proper use of chopsticks inchildhood or proper ways of entering a room, or is the teaceremony or massage later in life, the movements are per-formed over and over literally under the hands of grown-ups till they are automatic. Adults do not consider that chil-dren will ‘pick up’ the proper habits when the time toemploy them comes around. Mrs. Sugimoto describes howshe set her husband’s table after she was betrothed at foxir-

♦ Sugimoto* Etsu Inagaki, A Daughter of the Samurai. Doubleday Pageand Company, 1926, p. 20.

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The CJsryscmtbenmm and the Sword

teen. She had never seen her future husband. He was inAmerica and she was in Echigo, but over and ova:, underher mother’s and her grandmodier’s ^es, ’I myself cookedthe food which Brother told us Matsuo especially liked. Histable was placed next to mine and I arranged for it to be al-ways served before my own. Thus I learned to be watchfulfor the comfort of my prospective husband. Grandmotherand Mother always spoke as if Matsuo were present, and Iwas as careful of my dress and conduct as if he had reallybeen in the room. Thus I grew to respect him and to respectmy own position as his wife.’*

A boy too receives careful habit training by example andimitation, though it is less intensive than the girl’s. Whenhe has ‘learned,’ no alibi is accepted. After adolescence,however, he is left, in one important field of his life, largelyto his own initiative. His elders do not teach him habits ofcourting. The home is a circle from which all overt amorousbehavior is excluded, and the segregation of xmrelated boysand girls has been extreme since he was nine or ten. TheJapanese ideal is that his parents will arrange a marriagefor him before he has really been interested in sex, and it istherefore desirable that a boy should be ‘shy’ in his behav-ior with girls. In the villages there is a vast amount of teas-ing on the subject which often does keep boys ‘shy.’ Butboys try to learn. In the old days, and even recently in moreisolated villages of Japan, many girls, sometimes the greatmajority, were pregnant before marriage. Such pre-maritalexperience was a ‘free area’ not involved in the serious busi-ness of life. The parents were expected to arrange the mar-

* A Daughter of the Samurai, p. 92.

^8^

riages without reference to these affairs. But nowadays, asa Japanese said to Doctor Embree in Suye Mura, ‘Even aservant girl has enough education to know that she mustkeep her virginity.’ Discipline for those boys who go tomiddle school, too, is sternly directed against any kind ofassociation with the opposite sex. Japanese education andpublic opinion tries to prevent pre-marital familiarity be-tween the sexes. In their movies, th^ reckon as ‘bad’those young men who show some signs of being at easewith a young woman; the ‘good’ ones are those who, toAmerican eyes, are brusque and even uncivil to an attrac-tive girl. Being at ease with a girl means that these boyshave ‘played around,’ or have sought out geishas or prosti-tutes or caf6 girls. The geisha house is the ‘best’ way tolearn because ‘she teaches you. A man can relax and justwatch.’ He need not be afraid of exhibiting clumsiness, andsex relations with the geisha girl are not expected of him.But not many Japanese boys can afford the geisha house.They can go to caf6s and watch how men treat the girlsfamiliarly, but such observation is not the kind of trainingthey have learned to expect in other fields. Boys keep theirfear of gaucherie for a long time. Sex is one of the few areasof their lives where they have to learn some new kind of be-havior without the personal tutelage of accredited elders.Families of standing provide ‘bride books’ and screens withmany detailed pictures for the young couple when theymarry, and, as one Japanese said, ‘You can learn frombooks, the way you learn the rules for making a garden.Your father doesn’t teach you how to make a Japanesegarden; it’s a hobby you learn when you’re older.’ The

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The Cbrysamhetmm and the Swordand be very familiar. Th^ are seldom violent or aggressivewhen they are drunk, though a few ‘hard-to-get-along-withmen’ may get quarrelsome. Apart from such ‘free areas’ asdrinking, men should never be, as they say, unexpected. Tospeak of anyone, in the serious conduct of his life, as unex-pected, is the nearest the Japanese come to a curse wordexcept for the word ‘fool.’

The contradictions which all Westerners have describedin Japanese character are intelligible from their child rear-ing. It produces a duality in their outlook on life, neitherside of which can be ignored. From their experience ofprivilege and psychological ease in babyhood they retainthrou^ all the disciplines of later life the memory of aneasier life when they ‘did not know shame.’ They do nothave to paint a Heaven in the future; they have it in theirpast. They rephrase their childhood in their doctrine of theinnate goodness of man, of the benevolence of their gods,and of the incomparable desirability of being a Japanese.It makes it easy for them to base their ethics on extreme in-terpretations of the ‘Buddha-seed’ in every man and of everyman’s becoming a kami on death. It gives them assertive-ness and a certain self-confidence. It underlies their frequentwillingness to tackle any job, no matter how far above theirability it may seem to be. It underlies their readiness to pittheir judgment even against their own Government, and totestify to it by suicide. On occasion, it gives them a capacityfor mass megalomania.

Gradually, after they are six or seven, responsibility forcircumspection and ‘knowing shame’ is put upon them andupheld by the most drastic of sanctions; that their own

28d

family will turn against them if they default. The pressure isnot that of a Prussian discipline, but it is inescapable. Intheir early privileged period the ground has been preparedfor this development both by the persistent inescapabletraining in mu^ry habits and posture, and by the parents’teasing which threatens the child with rejection. These earfyexperiences prepare the child to accept great restraints uponhimself when he is told that ‘the world’ will laugh at himand reject him. He clamps down upon the impulses he ex-pressed so freely in earlier life, not because they are evil butbecause they are now inappropriate. He is now enteringupon serious life. As he is progressively denied the privilegesof childhood he is granted the gratifications of greater andgreater adulthood, but the experiences of that earlier periodnever truly fade out. In his philosophy of life he draws freelyupon them. He goes back to them in his permissivenessabout ‘human feelings.’ He re-experiences them all throughhis adulthood in his ‘free areas’ of life.

One striking continuity connects the earlier and the laterperiod of the child’s life; the great importance of being ac-cepted by his fellows. This, and not an absolute standard ofvirtue, is what is inculcated in him. In early childhood, hismother took him into her bed when he was old enough toask, he counted the candies he and his brothers and sisterswere given as a sign of how he ranked in his mother’s affec-tion, he was quick to notice when he was passed over and heasked even his older sister, ‘Do you love me bestT In thelater period he is asked to forego more and more personalsatisfactions, but the promised reward is that he will be ap-proved and accepted by ‘the world.’ The punishment is that

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The Qyrysambemam and the Sword

‘the worid’ will laug^ at him. Ihis is of course a sanctioninvoked in child training in most cultures, but it is excep-tionally heavy in Japan. Rejection by ‘the world’ has beendramatized for the child by his parents’ teasing when th^threatened to get rid of him. All his life ostracism is motedreaded than violence. He is allergic to threats of ridiculeand rgection, even when he merely conjiues them up in hisown mind. Because there is little privacy in a Japanese com-munity, too, it is no fantaty that ‘the world’ knows prac-tically everything he does and can reject him if it disap-proves. Even the construction of the Japanese house—thethin walls that permit the passage of sounds and which arepushed open during the day—makes private life extremelypublic for those who caimot afford a wall and garden.

Certain symbols the Japanese use help to make clear thetwo sides of their character which are based on the discon-tinuity of their child rearing. That side which is built up inthe earliest period is the ‘self without shame,’ and they testhow far they have kept it when they look at their own facesin the mirror. The mirror, they say, ‘reflects eternal purity.*It does not foster vanity nor reflect the ‘interfering self.’ Itreflects the depths of the soul. A person should see there his‘self without shame.’ In the mirror he sees his own eyes asthe ‘door’ of his soul, and this helps him to live as a ‘selfwithout shame.’ He sees there the idealized parental image.There are descriptions of mai who always cany a minorwith them for this purpose, and even of one who set up aspecial minor in his household shrine in which to contem-plate himself and examine his soul; he ‘enshrined himselT;he ‘worshipped himself.’ It was unusual, but it was only a

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small step to take, for all household Shinto shrines havemirrors on than as sacred objects. During the war thenese radio carried a special paean of approval for a class-room of girls who had bought themselves a mirror. Therewas no thought of its being a sign of vanity. It was describedas a renewed dedication to calm purposes in the depths oftheir souls. Looking into it was an external observancewhich would testify to the virtue of their spirit

Japanese feelings about the mirror are derived from thetime before the ‘observing self’ was inculcated in the child.Thty do not see the ‘observing self’ in the looking glass.There their selves are spontaneously good as they Avere inchildhood, without the mentor of ‘^bame.’ The same sym-bolism they attribute to the mirror is the basis too of toeirideas of ‘expert’ self-discipline, in which they train them-selves with such persistence to eliminate the ‘observing self’and get back the directness of early childhood.

In spite of all the influences their privileged early child-hood has upon the Japanese, the restraints of the succeed-ing period when shame becomes the basis of virtue are notfelt solely as deprivations. Self-sacrifice, as we have seen, isone of the Christian concepts they have often challenged;they repudiate the idea that they are sacrificing themselves.Even in extreme cases, the Japanese speak, instead, of‘volun-tary’ death in payment of chu or ko or giri, and this doesnot seem to them to fall in the category of self-sacrifice. Sucha voluntary death, thty say, achieves an object you yourselfdesire. Otherwise it would be a ‘dog’s dea^’ which meansto them a worthless death; it does not mean, as in English,death in the gutter. Less extreme courses of conduct, too,

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The Chrysanthemum and the Swordwhich in English are called self-sacrificing, in Japanese be-long rather in the category of sdf-respect. Self-respect (ji-cho) always means restraint, and restraint is valuable just asself-respect is. Great things can only be achieved throughself-restraint, and the American emphasis on freedom as aprerequisite for achievement has never seemed to them,with their different experiences, to be adequate. They acceptas a principal tenet in their code the idea that through self-restraint they make their selves more valuable. How elsecould they control their dangerous selves, full of impulsesthat might break out and confoxmd a proper life? As oneJapanese expresses it:

The more coats of varnish that are laid on the foundationby laborious work throughout the years, the more valuableb^mes the lacquer work as a finished product. So it iswith a people... It is said of the Russians: ‘Scratch aRussian and you find a Tartar.’ One might with equal jus-tice say of the Japanese: ‘Scratch a Japanese, scrape off thevarnish, and you find a pirate.’ Yet it should not be forgot-ten that in Japan varnish is a valuable product and an aidto handicraft. There is nothing spurious about it; it is nota daub to cover defects. It is at least as valuable as the sub-stance it adorns.*

The contradictions in Japanese male behavior which areso conspicuous to Westerners are made possible by the dis-continuity of their upbringing, which leaves in their con-sciousness, even ^ter all the ‘lacquering’ they imdergo, thedeep imprint of a time when they were like little gods intheir little world, when they were free to gratify even theiragressions, and when all satisfactions seemed possible. Be-

* Nohara, Komakichi, The True Face of Japan. London, 1936, p. SO.

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cause of this deeply implanted dualism, they can swing asadults from excesses of romantic love to utter submissionto the family. They can indulge in pleasure and ease, nomatter to what lengths they go in accepting extreme obliga-tions. Their training in circumspection makes them in actionan often timid people, but they are brave even to foolhardi-ness. They can prove themselves remarkably submissive inhierarchal situations and yet not be easily amenable to con-trol from above. In spite of all their politeness, they can re-tain arrogance. They can accept fanatic discipline in theArmy and yet be insubordinate. They can be passionatelyconservative and yet be attracted by new ways, as they havesuccessively demonstrated in their adoption of Chinese cus-toms and of Western learning.

The dualism in their characters creates tensions to whichdifferent Japanese respond in different ways, though each ismaking his own solution of the same essential problem ofreconciling the spontaneity and acceptance he experiencedin early childhood with the restraints which promise secu-rity in later life. A good many have difficulty in resolvingthis problem. Some stake everything on ruling their liveslike pedants and are deeply fearful of any spontaneous en-coimter with life. The fear is the greater because spontaneityis no fantasy but something they once exp«ienced. Theyremain aloof, and, by adhering to the rules they have madetheir own, feel that they have identified themselves with allthat speaks with authority. Some are more dissociated. Theyare afraid of their own aggressiveness which they dam up intheir souls and cover with a bland surface behavior. Theyoftea keep their thoughts busy with trivial minutiae in order

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The Chrysmahemum and the Swordto stave off awarei^ of real feelings. are me*chaniod in the perfonnance of a disd^dined routme ^xdiichis fundamentally meanin^bss to than. Others, who havebeai more caught by thdr earty childhood, feel a consuminganxiety in the face of all that is demanded of them as adultsand try to increase their dependence when it is no longerappropriate. Th^ feel that any failure is an aggressionagainst author!^ and any striving therefore throws thaninto great agitation. Unforeseen situations which cannot behandled by rote are frightening to them.*

These are characteristic dangers to which the Japaneseare exposed when their anxiety about rejection and censureare too much for them. When they are not overpressed,they show in their lives both the capacity for enjoying lifeand the carefulness not to step on others’ toes whidi hasbeen bred into them in their upbringing. It is a very con-siderable achievement. Their early childhood has giventhem assertiveness. It has not awakened a burdening senseof guilt. The later restraints have been imposed in the nameof solidarity with their fellows, and the obligations are re-ciprocal. Hiere are designated Tree areas’ where impulselife can still be gratified, no matter how much other peoplemay interfere with their wishes in certain matters. Jap-anese have always been famous for the pleasure they getfrom innocent things: viewing the chary blossoms, ibemoon, c^irysanthanums, or new fallen snow ; keying in-sects caged in the house for their’song’; writing little verses;

* Cases based on Rorschach tests given to Japanese in War RdocationCamp by Doctor Dorothea Leighton, and analyzed by Frances Holter.

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making gardens; arranging j9ow^, and drinking c^rano-nial tea. These are not activities of a deeply troubled andag^assive people. They do not take their pleasiu^s sadlyeither. A Japanese rural communi^, in those happier daysbefore Japan embarked on its disastrous Mission, could bein its leisure time as cheerful and sanguine as any living peo-ple. In its hours of work it could be as diligent.

But the Japanese ask a great deal of themselves. To avoidthe great threats of ostracism and detraction, they must giveup personal gratifications they bave learned to savor. Theymust put these impulses under lock and key in the impor-tant affairs of life. The few who violate this pattern run therisk of losing even their respect for themselves. Those whodo respect themselves (jicho) chart their course, not be-tween ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ but between ‘expected man’ and‘unexpected man,’ and sink their own personal demandsin the collective ‘expectation.’ These are the good men who‘know shame (haji)’ and are endlessly circumspect. Theyare the men who bring honor to their families, their villages,and their nation. The tensions that are thus generated areenormous, and they express themselves in a high level ofaspiration which has made Japan a leader in the Orient anda great power in the world. But these tensions are a heavystrain upon the individual. Men must be watchful lest theyfail, or lest anyone belittle their performances in a courseof action which has cost them so much abnegation. Some-times people explode in the most aggressive acts. They areroused to these aggressions, not when their principles ortheir freedom is challenged, as Americans are, but whenth^ detect an insult or a detraction. Then their dangerous

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The Chrysmthmmm and the Sword

selves erupt, against the dettactor if diat is possible, other-wise against themselves.

The Japmiese have paid a hi^ price for their way of life.Th^ have denied themselves simple freedoms which Amer-icans coimt upon as unquestioningly as the air th^ breathe.We must remember, now that the Japanese are looking tode-mok-ia-sie since their defeat, how intoxicating it can beto them to act quite simply and innocently as one pleases.No one has expressed this better than Mrs. Sugimoto indescribing the plant as-you-please garden she was given atthe mission school in Tokyo where she was sent to learnEnglish. The teachers let each girl have a plot of wild groundand any seeds she asked for.

This plant-as-you-please garden gave me a wholly newfeeling of personal right.... The very fact that such hap-piness could exist in the human heart was a surprise to me.... I, with no violation of tradition, no stain on the familyname, no shock to parent, teacher or townspeople, no harmto anything in the world was free to act*

All the other ^Is planted flowers. She arranged to plant-potatoes.

No one knows the sense of reckless freedom which thisabsurd act gave me.... The spirit of freedom came knock-ing at my door.

It was a new world.

At my home there was one part of the garden fliat wassupposed to be wild.... But someone was always busytrimming the pines or cutting the hedge, and every morningJiya wiped off the stepping stones, and, after sweeping be-neath the pine trees, carefully scattered fresh pine needlesgathered from the forest.

* A Daughter of the Samurai, pp. 13S-136.

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The Child Leams

This simulated wildness stood to her for the simulated free*dom of will in which she had been trained. And all Japanwas full of it. Every great half-sunken rock in Japanese gar-dens has been carefully chosen and transported and laid ona hidden platform of small stones. Its placing is carefullycalculated in relation to the stream, the house, the shrubs,and the trees. So, too, chrysanthemums are grown in potsand arranged for the annual flower shows all over Japanwith each perfect petal separately disposed by the grower’shand and often held in place a tiny invisible wire rackinserted in the living flower.

Mrs. Sugimoto’s intoxication when she was offered achance to put aside the wire rack was happy and innocent.The chrysanthemum which had been grown in the little potand which had submitted to the meticulous disposition ofits petals discovered pure joy in being natural. But todayamong the Japanese, the freedom to be ‘unexpected,* toquestion the sanctions of haji (shame), can upset the deli-cate balance of their way of Ufe. Under a new dispensationthey will have to learn new sanctions. And change is costly.It is not easy to work out new assumptions and new virtues.The Western world can neither suppose that the Japanesecan take these on sight and make them truly their own, normust it imagine that Japan cannot ultimately work out afreer, less rigorous ethics. The Nisei in the United Stateshave already lost the knowledge and die practice of theJapanese code, and nothing in their ancestry holds themrigidly to the conventions of the country from which theirparents came. So too the Japanese in Japan can, in a newera,set up a way of life which does not demand the old re-

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The Chrysmtbemmt and the Swordquironents of individual restraint Chrysanthattanis canbe beautifxil without wire racks and such drastic pruning.

In this transition to a greater psychic freedom, the Jap-anese have certain old traditional virtues which can help tokeep them on an even keel. One of these is that self-respon-sibili^ which th^ phrase as their accountability for ‘therust of my body/—that figure of speech which identifiesone’s body with a sword. As the wearer of a sword is re-sponsible for its shining brillian4ty,so each man must acceptresponsibility for the outcome of his acts. He must adcnowl-edge and accept all natural consequences of his weakness,his lack of persistraioe, his inefiectualness. Self-responsi-bility is far more drastically interpreted in Japan than infree America. In this Japanese sense the sword becomes, nota tymbol of aggression, but a simile of ideal and self-respon-sible man. No balance wheel can be better than this virtuein a dispensation which honors individual freedom, andJapanese child-rearing and philosophy of conduct have in-culcated it as a part of the Japanese Spirit. Today the Jap-anese have proposed ‘to lay aside the sword’ in the Westonsense. In their Japanese sense, they have an abiding strengthin their concern with keeping an inner sword free from therustwhich always threatens it In their phraseology of virtuethe sword is a tymbol they can keep in a freer and morepeaceful world.

The Japanese Since VJ~Day

Americans have gcKxi reason to be proud of their part inthe administration of Japan since VJ-Day. The policy ofthe United States was laid down in the State-War-Navydirective which was transmitted by radio on August 29, andit has bera administered with skill by General MacArthur.The excellent grounds for such pride have often been ob-scured by partisan praise and criticism in the Americanpress and on the radio, and few people have known enoughabout Japanese culture to be sure whether a given poli<^was desirable or undesirable.

The great issue at the time of Japan’s surrender was thenature of the occupation. Were the victors to use the exist-ing government, even the Emperor, or was it to be liqui-dated? Was there to be a town-by-town, province-ly-prov-ince administration, with MiUtaiy Government officers ofthe United States in command? The pattern in Italy andGermany had been to set up local A.M.G. headquarters asintegral parts of the combat forces, and to place authorityfor local domestic matters in the hands of the Allied ad-ministrators. On VJ-Day, those in charge of A.M.G. in thePacific ^ expected to institute such a rule in Japan. The

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The Chrysanthemum and the SwordJapanese also did not know what responsibility for thdrown affairs th^ would be allowed to retain. The PotsdamProclamation had stated only that ‘points in Japanese ter-ritory to be designated the Allies shall be occupied tosecure the basic objectives we are here setting forth,* andthat there must be eliminated for all time ‘the author!^and influence of those who have deceived and misled thepeople of Japan into embarking on world conquest’

Ihe State-War-Navy directive to General MacArthurembodied a great decision on these matters, a decisionwhich General MacArthur’s Headquarters fully supported.The Japanese were to be responsible for the administrationand reconstruction of their coimtry. ‘The Supreme Com-mander will exercise his authority through Japanese gov-ernmental machinery and agencies, including the Emperor,to the extent that this satisfactorily furthers United Statesobjectives. The Japanese government will be permitted,under his instructions (General MacArthm’s), to exercisethe normal powers of government in matters of domesticadministration.* General MacArthur’s administration ofJapan is, therefore, quite unlike that of Germany or Italy.It is orclusively a headquarters brganimtion, utilizing Jap-anese oflScialdom from top to bottom. It addresses its com-munications to the Imperial Japanese Government, not tothe Japanese people or to the residents of some town orprovince. Its business is to state goals for the Japanese gov-ernment to work toward. If a Japanese Minister believesthem impossible, he can offer to resign, but, if his case isgood, he may get the directive modified.

This kind of administration was a bold move. The advan-

The Japanese Snce VJ-Daytages of this policy from the point of view of the UnitedStates aie clear enough As General Hilldring said at thetime:

Tbeadvantages which are gained throng the utilizationof the national government are enormous. If there were noJapanese Government available for our use, we would haveto operate directly the whole complicated machine requiredfor the administration of a country of seventy million peo-ple. These people differ from us in language, customs, andattitudes. By cleaning up and using the Japanese Govern-ment machinery as a tool we are saving our time and ourmanpower and our resources. In other words, we are re-quiring the Japanese to do their own house-cleaning, butwe are providing the specifications.

When this directive was being drawn up in Washington,however, there were still many Americans who feared thatthe Japanese would be sullen and hostile, a nation of watch-ful avengers who mi^t sabotage any peaceful program.These fears ^d not prove to be justified. And the reasonslay in the curious culture of Japan more than in any univer-ssd truths about defeated nations or politics or economics.Probably among no other peoples would a policy of goodfaith have paid off as well as it did in Japan. In Japaneseeyes it r^oved from the stark fact of defeat the symbols ofhumiliation and challenged them to put into effect a newnational policy, acceptance of which was possible preciselybecause of the culturally conditioned character of the Japa-nese.

In the United States we have argued endlessly about hardand soft peace terms. The real issue is not between hard andsoft. The probl^ is to use that amoimt of hardness, no

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more and no less, wliich will break up old and dangerouspatterns of aggressiveness and set new goals. The means tobe chosen depend on the character of the people and uponthe traditional social order of the nation in question. Prus-sian authoritarianism, embedded as it is in the family and inthe daily civic life, makes necessary certain kinds of peaceterms for Germany. Wise peace directives would differ fromthose for Japan. Germans do not regard themselves, likethe Japanese, as debtors to the world and to the ages. Th^strive, not to repay an incalculable debt, but to avoid beingvictims. The father is an authoritarian figure, and, like anyother person who has superior status, it is he who, as thephrase is, ‘enforces respect.’ It is he who feels himself threat-«ied if he does not get it. In German life each generation ofsons revolt in adolescence against their authoritarian fa-thers and then regard themselves as surrendering finally atadulthood to a drab and unexciting life which they identifyas that of their parents. The high point of existence remains,for life, those years of the Sturm und Drang of adolescentrebellion.

The problem in Japanese culture is not crass authoritar-ianism. The father is a person who treats his young childrenwith a respect and fon^ess which has seemed to almost allWestern observers to be exceptional in Occidental experi-ence. Because the Japanese child takes for granted certainkinds of real comradeship with his father and is overtlyproud of him, the father’s simple change of voice can makethe child cany out his wishes. But the father is no martinetto his young children, and adolescence is not a period of re-volt against parental author!^. Rather it is a pmod when

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difldroi become the responsible and obedient lefnesata-tives of their family before the judging eyes of the world.They show respect to their fathers, as the Japanese say, ‘forthe practice,* ‘for the training,* that is, as a respect-object heis a depersonalized symbol of hierardiy and of the propo:conduct of life.

This attitude ^ch is learned by the child in his eariiestexperiences with his father becomes a pattern throughoutJapanese society. Men who are accorded the highest marksof respect because of their hierarchal position do not char-acteristically themselves wield arbitrary pow^. The officialswho head the hierarchy do not typically exercise the actualauthority. From the Emperor down, advisers and hiddenforces woric in the background. One of the most accuratedescriptions of this aspect of Japanese society was given bythe leader of one of the super-patriotic societies of the typeof the Black Dragon to aTokyo English-newspaper reporterin the early 1930s. ‘Society,* he said, meaning of courseJapan, ‘is a triangie controlled by a pin in one corosx.**The triangle, in other words, lies on the table for all to see.Tt» pin is invisible. Sometimes the triangle lies to theri^t,sometimes to the left. It swings on apivot which never avowsitself. Everything is done, as Westerners so often say, *withmirrors.* Every effort is made to minimize the appearanceof artatraiy authority, and to make every act a{^)ear to bea gesture of loyalty to the status-tymbol who is so con-stantly divorced from real exercise of power. When theJapanese do identify a source of unmasked power, they re-ga^ it, as they have always regarded the montylmder

* Quoted by Upton Close, Behind the Face of Japan, 1942, p. 13S.

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and the narikin, as exploitive and as unworthy of their^stem.

The Japanese, viewing their world m this way, can stagerevolts against exploitation and injustice without ever be-coming revolutionists. Th^ do not offer to tear the fabricof their world in pieces. Th^ can institute the most thor-oughgoing changes, as th^ did in the Meiji era, withoutcasting any aspersion upon the system. They called it aRestoration, a *dipping back’ into the past They are notrevolutionists, and Western writers who have based theirhopes upon ideological mass movements in Japan, who dur-ing the war magnified the Japanese underground and lookedto it for leadership in capitulation, and who since VJ-Dayhave prophesied the triumph of radical policies at the polls,have gravely misunderstood the situation. Th^ have beenwrong in the prophecies they have made. The conservativePremier, Baron Shidehara, spoke more accurately for theJapanese when he formed his cabinet in October, 1945;

The Government of the new Japan has a democraticform which respects the will of the people.... In our coun-try from olden days the Emperor made his will the will ofthe people. This is the spirit of Emperor Mdji’s Constitu-tion, and the demooatic government I am speaking of canbe considered truly a manifestation of this spirit.

Such a phrasing of democracy seems less than nothing toAmerican readers, but there is no doubt that Japan canmore readily attend the area of civil liberties and build upthe welfare of her people on the basis of such an identifica-tion than on the basis of Occidental ideology.

Japan will, of course, experiment with Western political

JOi

mechanics of democracy, but the Western arrangementswill not be trusted tools with which to fashion a betterworld, as they are in the United States. Popular electionsand the legislative authority of elected persons will createas many difficulties as they solve. When such difficultiesdevelop, Japan will modify the methods upon which we relyto achieve democracy. Then American voices will be raisedto say that the war has been fought in vain. We believe inthe rightness of our tools. At best, however, popular elec-tions will be peripheral to Japanese reconstruction as apeaceful nation for a long time to come. Japan has notchanged so fundamentally since the 1890s, when she ffistexperimented with elections, that some of the old difficul-ties Lafcadio Hearn described then will not be likely torecur:

There was really no personal animosity in those furi-ous election contests which cost so many lives; there wasscarcely any personal antagonism in those parliamentarydebates of which the violence astonished strangers. The po-litical struggles were not really between individuals but be-tween clan interests or party interests; and the devoted fol-lowers of each clan or party understood the new politicsonly as a new kind of war—a war of loyalty to be foughtfor the leader’s sake.*

In more recent elections in the nineteen-twenties, villagersused to say before they cast their ballots, ‘My neck is washedclean for the sword,’ a phrase which identified the contestwith the old attacks of the privileged samurai upon the com-mon people. All the connotations of elections in Japan will

* Japan: An Imerpretation, 1904, p. 453.

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The Chrysmthetmm and the Sworddiffer even today from those in the United States, and thiswill be true quite apart from whether j£q>an is or & not pur-suing dangerous aggressive polides.

Japan’s real stimgth which ^e can use in remaking ha-self into a peaceful nation lies in her ability to say of acourse of action. That failed,’ and then to throw ha oia-gies into other channels. The Japanese have an ethk ofalternatives. Thty tried to adiieve their ‘propa place’ inwar, and they lost That course, now, they can discard, be-cause their whole training has conditioned them to possiblechanges of direction. Nations with a more absolutist ethicmust convince themselves that th^ are fighting for prin-dples. When they surrender to the victors, they say, ‘Rightwas lost when we were defeated,’ and their self-respect de-mands that they work to make this ‘right’ win next time. Orthey can beat their breasts and confess their guilt. The Japa-nese need do neither. Five days afta VJ-Day, before anAmerican had landed on Japan, the great Tokyo papa, theMainicM Shimbm, could speak of defeat and of the politicalchanges it would bring, and say, ‘But it was all to the goodfor the ultimate salvation of Japan.’ The editorial stressedthat no one should forget for a moment that they had beracompletely defeated. Because their effort to build up a Ja-pan based on sheer might had met with utter failure, thtymust henceforth tread the path of a peaceful nation. TheAxihi, another great Tokyo newspaper, that same weekcharacterized Japan’s late ‘excessive faith in military force’as ‘a serious error’ in its national and intonational policy.‘The old attitude, from which we could gain so littie andsuffered so much, should be discarded for a new one which

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is rooted in international co-operation and love of peace.*Tte Westerner observes this shift in what he r^ards asprinciples and suspects it It is, however, an integral part ofthe conduct of life in Japan, whether in personal or in inter-national relations. The Japanese sees that he has made an‘error’ in embarking on a course of action which does notachieve its goaL When it fails, he discards it as a lost cause,for he is not conditioned to pursue lost causes. ‘It is no use,*he says, ‘biting one’s navel.’ Militarism was in the nineteen-thirties the accepted means by which they thought to gainthe admiration of the world—an admiration to be based ontheir armed might—and they accepted all the sacrifices sucha {Mx>gram required. On August 14,1945, the Emperor, thesanctioned voice of Japan, told them that they had lost.They accepted all that such a fact implied. It meant the pres-ence of American troops, so they welcomed them. It meantthe failure of their dynastic enterprise, so they were willingto consider a Constitution which outlawed war. Ten daysafter VJ-Day, their newspaper, the Yomiuri-Hochi, coiildwrite about the ‘Beginning of a New Art and New Culture,*and could say, ‘There must be a firm conviction in our heartsthat military defeat has nothing to do with the value of anation’s culture. Military defeat should serve as an impetus... (for) it has taken no less than national defeat for theJapanese people to lift their minds truly to the world, to seethings objectively as they really are. Every irrationality thathas warped Japanese thinking must be eliminated by frankanalysis.... It takes courage to look this defeat in the faceas a stark fact, (but we must) put our faith in Nippon’s cul-ture of tomorrow.’ They had tried one course of action and

305

been defeated. Today they would try the peaceful arts oflife. ‘Japan,’ their editorials repeated ‘must be respectedamong the nations of the world,’ and it was the duty of theJapanese to deserve this respect on a new basis.

These newspaper editorials were not just the voice of afew intellectuals; the common people on a Tokyo street andin a rranote village make the same right-about-face. It hasbeen incredible to American occupying troops that thesefriendly people are the ones who had vowed to fight to thedeath with bamboo spears. The Japanese ethic containsmuch which Americans repudiate, but American experiencesdxxring the occupation of Japan have been an excellentdemonstration of how many favorable aspects a strangeethic can have.

American administration of Japan under General Mac-Arthur has accepted this Japanese ability to sail a newcourse. It has not impeded that course by insisting on usingtechniques of humiliation. It would have been culturallyacceptable according to Western ethics if we had done so.For it is a tenet of Occidental ethics that humiliation andpunishment are socially effective means to bring about awrongdoer’s conviction of sin. Such admission of sin is thena first step in his rehabilitation. The Japanese, as we haveseen, state the issue in another way. Tlieir ethic makes aman responsible for all the implications of his acts, and thenatural consequences of an error should convince him of itsundesirability. These natural consequences may even bedefeat in an all-out war. But these are not situations whichthe Japanese must reseat as humifiating. In the Japaneselexicon, a person or a nation humiliates another by detrac-

3o<5

ridicuk, contempt, belittling, and insisting on symbolsof di^onor. When the Japanese believe themselves hiunili-ated, revenge is a virtue. No matter how strongly Westernethics condemn such a tenet, the effectiveness of Americanoccupation of Japan depends on American self-restrainton this point For the Japanese separate ridicule, which thq^terribly resent, from ‘natural consequences,’ which accord-ing to the terms of their surrender include such things as de-militarization and even Spartan imposition of indemnities.

Japan, in her one great victory over a major power,showed that even as a victor she could carefully avoid humil-iating a defeated enemy when it finally capitulated and whenshe did not consider that that nation had sneered at her.There is a famous photograph of the surrender of the Rus-sian Army at Port Arthur in 1905 which is known to everyJapanese. It shows the Russians wearing their swords. Thevictors and the vanquished can be distinguished only bytheir uniforms for the Russians were not stripped of theirarms. The well-known Japanese account of that surrendertells that when General Stoessel, the Russian commander,signified his willingness to receive Japanese propositions ofsurrender, a Japanese captain and interpreter went to hisheadquarters taking food. ‘All the horses except GeneralStoessel’s own had been killed and eaten so that the presentof fi% chickens and a hundred fresh eggs which the Japa-nese brought with them was welcome indeed.’ The meetingof General Stoessel and General Nogi was arranged for thefollowing day. *The two generals clasped hands. Stoesselexpressed his admiration for the courage of the Japaneseand... General Nogi praised the long and brave defense

307

of the Russians. Stoessel expressed Im sympathy with Nogt

for the loss of his two sons in the campaign Stoessd

presorted his fine white Arab horse to General Nogi, butNogi said that, mudi as he would like to recdve it as hisown from the Goioal’s hands, it must first be presented tothe Emperor. He promised, however, that if it came back tohim, as he had every reason to believe it would, he wouldtake care of it as if it had always been his.** Everyone inJapanknew the stable whichGeneral Nop built for GeneralStoessel’s horse in his front yard—a stable often describedas more pretoitious than Nogi’s own house, and after Gen-eral Nogi’s death a part of the Nogi national dirine.

It has been said that the Japanese have changed betweenthat day of die Russian surrender and the years of their oocupation of the Philippines, for instance, when their wantondestructiveness and cruelty were known to all the world.To a people with the extreme situational ethics of the Japa-nese, however, this is not the necessary conclusion. In thefirst place, the enemy did not capitulate after Bataan;there was only a local surrender. Even when the Japanese,in their turn, surrendered in the Philippines, Japan was stillfighting. In the second place, the Japanese never consideredthat the Russians had ‘insulted’ them in the early years ofthis century, whereas every Japanese was reared in ^ nine-teen-twenties and -thirties to regard United States policy as‘taking Japan cheap,’ or in their phrase, ‘making hor asfaeces.* This had bden Japan’s reaction to the Exclusion Act,to the part the United States played in die Trea^ of Ports-

* Quoted from a Japanese account, by Upton Oose, Behind the Face ofiapaot 1942, p. 294. This version of the Russian surrender does not have tobe literally true to have cultural importance.

308

mouth and in the Naval Parity a^reonents. The Japanesehad been oicouiaged to regard in the same way the grow-ing economic idle of the United States in the Far East andour radal attitudes toward the non-white peoples of theworld. The victory over Russia and the victory over theUnited States in the Philippines, therefore, illustrate Japa-nese behavior in its two most opposed aspects: when in-sults are involved and when they are not

The final victory of the United States again changed thesituation for the Japanese. Their ultimate defeat broughtabout as is usual in Japanese life, the abandonment of thecourse th^ had been pursuing. The peculiar ethic of theJapanese allowed them to wipe the slate clean. UnitedStates poli(^ and General MacArthur’s administration haveavoided writing fresh symbols of humiliation upon thatwashed slate, and have held simply to insisting on thosethings which in Japanese ^es are ‘natural consequences’ ofdefeat It has worked.

The retention of the Emperor has been of great impor-tance. It has been handled well. It was the Emperor whocalled first upon General MacArthur, not MacArthur uponhim, and this was an object lesson to the Japans the forceof which it is hard for Westerners to appreciate. It is saidthat when it was suggested to the Emperor that he disavowhis divinity, he protested that it would be a personal em-barrassment to strip himself of something he did not have.The Japanese, he said truthfully, did not consider him a godin the Western srase. MacAjrthur’s Headquarters, how-ever, urged upon him that the Occidental idea of his claimto divinity was bad for Japan’s international repute, and the

309

^peror agreed to acc^t the embarrassment the disavowalwould cost him. He spoke on New Year’s Day, and askedto have all comments on his message translated for himfrom the world press. When he had read them,he sent a mes-sage to General MacArthur’s Headquarters saying that hewas satisfied. Foreigners had obviously not understood be-fore, and he was glad he had spoken.

The policy of the United States has also allowed the Jap-anese certain gratifications. The State-Army-Navy directivespecifies that ‘encouragement shall be given and favorshown to the development of organizations in labor, in-dustry and agriculture, organized on a democratic basis.’Japanese labor has organized in many industries, and theold farmers’ unions which were active in the 1920s and 1930sare asserting themselves again. To many Japanese this initi-ative which they can now take to better their condition is aproof that Japan has won something as a consequence ofthis war. One American correspondent tells of a striker inTokyo who looked up at a G.I. and said, beaming broadly,‘Japan win, no?’ Strikes in Japan today have many parallelsto the old Peasants’ Revolts where the farmers’ plea wasalways that the taxes and corvees to which they were sub-ject interfered with adequate production. They were notclass warfare in the Western sense, and they were not an at-tempt to change the system itself. Throughout Japan todaystrikes do not slow up production. The favorite form is forthe workers ‘to' occupy the plant, continue work and makemanagement lose face by increasing production. Strikers ata Mitsui-owned coal mine barred all management person-nel from the pits and stepped daily output up from 250 tons

310

to 620. Workos at Ashio copper mines operated duringa “strike,” increased production, and doubled their ownwages.’*

The administration of any defeated country is, of course,difBcult, no matter how much good sense the accepted pol-icy shows. In Japan the problems of food and shelter andreconversion are inevitably acute. They would be at leastequally acute under an administration which did not makeuse of Japanese governmental personnel. The problem ofdemobilized soldiers, which was so much dreaded by Amer-ican administrators before the war ended, is certainly lessthreatening than it would have been if Japanese officialshad not bmi retained. But it is not easily solved. The Jap-anese are aware of the difficulty and their newspapers spokefeelingly last fall about how bitter the brew of defeat was tothe soldiers who had suffered and lost, and it begged themnot to let this interfere with their ‘judgment.’ The repatri-ated army has in general shown remarkable ‘judgment,’ butimemployment and defeat throw some soldiers into the oldpattern of secret societies for nationalistic goals. They caneasily resent their present status. The Japanese no longeraccord them their old privileged position. The woundedsoldier used to be clothed all in white and people bowedto him on the street. Even a peacetime Army recruit wasgiven a send-off party and a welcome-home party by hishamlet There were drinks and refreshments and dancingand costumes, and he sat in the place of honor. Now therepatriated soldier gets no such attentions. His family makesa place for him, but that is all. In many cities and towns he

• Jlme, February 18. 1946.

3II

The Chrysambermm and the Smrd

is cold-shouldered. It is easy, knowing how Mtterfy dieJapanese take such a change of behavior, to imagine hissatisfaction in joining up with his old comrades to bringback the old days when the glory of Japan was entrusted tosoldiers’ hands. Some of his war comrades will tell him, too,how luckier Japanese soldiers are already fighting with theAllies in Java and in Shansi and in Manchuria; why shouldhe despair? He too will fight again, they will tell him. Na-tionalistic secret societies are old, old institutions in Japan;they ‘cleared the name’ of Japan. Men conditioned to feelthat ‘the world tips* so long as anything is left undone toeven scores were always possible candidates for such un-dercover societies. The violence which these societies,such as the Black Dragon and the Black Ocean, espoused isthe violence which Japanese ethics allows as giri to one’sname, and the long effort of the Japanese Government toemphasize gimu at the expense of giri to one’s name willhave to be continued in the coming years if this violence isto be eliminated.

It will require more than an appeal to ‘judgment.’ It willrequire a reconstruction of Japanese economy which willgive a livelihood and ‘proper place’ to men who are now intheir twenties and thirties. It will require improvement hithe lot of the farmer. The Japanese return, whenever thereis economic distress, to their old farm villages, and the tinyfarms, encumbered with debts and in many places withrents, cannot feed many more mouths. Industry too mustbe set going, for the strong feeling against dividing the in-heritance with younger sons eventually sends all but theeldest out to seek their fortune in the d^.

312

The Japanese have a long hard road before them, nodoubt, but if rearmament is not provided for in the Statebudget th^ have an opportunity to raise their nationalstandard of living. A nation like Japan which spent half itsnational income on armament and the armed forces for adecade before Pearl Harbor can lay the foundation of ahealthy economy if it outlaws such expenditures and pro-gressively reduces its requisitions from the farmers. As wehave seen, the Japanese formula for division of farm prod-ucts was 60 per cent for the cultivator; 40 per cent he paidout in taxes and rents. This is in great contrast to rice coun-tries like Burma and Siam where 90 per cent was the tradi-tional proportion left to the cultivator. This huge requisitionupon fbe cultivator in Japan was what ultimately made pos-sible the financing of the national war machine.

Any European or Asiatic country which is not armingduring the next decade will have a potential advantage overthe countries which are arming, for its wealth can be usedto build a healthy and prosperous economy. In the UnitedStates we hardly take this situation into account in our Asi-atic and European policies, for we know that we would notbe impoverished in this country by expensive programs ofnational defense. Our country was not devastated. We arenot primarily an agricultural country. Our crucial problemis industrial overproduction. We have perfected mass pro-duction and mechanical equipment imtil our populationcannot find employment unless we set in motion great pro-grams of armament or of luxury production or of welfareand research services. The need for profitable investment ofcapital is also acute. This situation is quite dMerent outside

The Chrysanthemum and the Swordthe United States. It is different even in Western Europe. Inspite of all demands for reparations, a Germany which isnot allowed to rearm could in a decade or so have laid thefoundations of a sound and prosperous economy whichwould be impossible in France if her policy is to build upgreat military power. Japan could make the most of a simi-lar advantage over China. Militarization is a current goalin China and her ambitions are supported by the UnitedStates. Japan, if she does not include militarization in herbudget, can, if she will, provide for her own prosperitybefore many years, and she could make herself indispensablein the commerce of the East. She could base her economyon the profits of peace and raise the standard of living ofher people. Such a peaceful Japan could attain a place ofhonor among the nations of the world, and the UnitedStates could be of great assistance if it continued to use itsinfluence in support of such a program.

What the United States cannot do—what no outside na-tion could do—is to create by fiat a free, democratic Japan.It has never worked in any dominated country. No for-eigner can decree, for a people who have not his habits andassumptions, a maimer of life after his own image. The Jap-anese caimot be legislated into accepting the authority ofelected persons and ignoring ‘proper station’ as it is set up intheir hierarchal system. They caimot be legislatedinto adopt-ing the free and easy human contacts to which we are ac-customed in the United States, the imperative demand to beindependent, the passion each individual has to choose hisown mate, his own job, the house he will live in and theobligations he will assume. The Japanese themselves, how-

3t4

The Japanese Since VJ-Day

ever, are quite articulate about changes in this directionwhich they regard as necessary. Their public men havesaid since VJ-Day that Japan must encourage its mm andwomen to live their own Uves and to trust their own con-sciences. They do not say so, of course, but any Japaneseunderstands that they are questioning the rdle of ‘shame’(haji) in Japan, and that they hope for a new growth of free-dom among their countrymen: freedom from fear of thecriticism and ostracism of ‘the world.’

For social pressures in Japan, no matter how voluntarilyembraced, ask too much of the individual. They requirebitn to conceal his emotions, to give up his desires, and tostand as the exposed representative of a family, an organi-zation or a nation. The Japanese have shown that they cantake all the self-discipline such a course requires. But theweight upon them is extremely heavy. They have to represstoo much for their own good. Fearing to venture upon alife which is less costly to their psyches, they have been ledby militarists upon a course where the costs pile up inter-minably. Having paid so high a price, they became self-righteous and have been contemptuous of people with a lessdemanding ethic.

The Japanese have taken the first great step toward socialchange by identifying aggressive warfare as an ‘error’ anda lost cause. They hope to buy their passage back to a re-spected place among peaceful nations. It will have to be apeaceful world. If Russia and the United States spend thecoming years in arming for attack, Japan will use her know-how to figlit in that war. But to admit that certainty doesnot <^11 in question the inherent possibility of a peaceful Ja-

315

The Chrysantbamm and the Sipordpan. Japan’s motivations are situational. She will seek herplace within a world at peace if drcumstances permit If notwithin a world organized as an armed camp.

At present the Japanese know militarism as a U^t thatfailed. Th^ will watch to see whether it has also failed inother nations of the world. If it has not Japan can relighther own warlike ardor and show how well she can contrib-ute. If it has failed elsewhere, Japan can set herself to jH’ovehow well she has learned the lesson that imperialistic dy-nastic enterprises are no road to honor.

oi, love; specifically a superior’s love of a dependent.arigatOy thank you; ‘this diflScult thing.’burakuy a hamlet of some fifteen houses; a district in a village.bushidoy ‘the way of the samurai.’ A term popularized duringthis century to designate traditional Japanese ideals of con-duct. Doctor Inazo Nitobe in Bushido^ The Soul of Japartyitemizes as Bushido: rectitude or justice, courage, benevo-lence, politeness, sincerity, honor, loyalty, and self-control.chUy fealty to the Emperor.daimyoy a feudal lord.doneriy age-mates.

etOy a pariah class in pre-Meiji times.

geishay a courtesan especially trained and given high prestige.giy righteousness.

gimuy a category of Japanese obligations. Vide Chart, p. 116.giriy SL category of Japanese obligations. Vide Chart, p. 116.gOy a unit of measure of capacity; less than one cup.hajiy shame.

haraki'ri or seppukUy suicide according to the samurai code. Sep-puku is the more elegant term.

♦ Literal translations are in quotation marks.

When no accent is indicated, give all syllables equal value. The accentswhich are marked are rough approximations meant only to help English-speaking readers.

Vowels and diphthongs are sounded as follows:

a as in art i as in police

ai as in aisle f as in tin

e as in get o as in poleei as in veil u as in rudeg is always hard, as in go,

317

hysterU nervousness and instabUity. Generally used of women.Inkyo, the state of formal retirement from active life.

IsseU an American of Japanese ancestry bom in Japan. VideNisei.

Isshln, to restore, to dip back into the past A slogan of theMeiji Restoration.

Jen (Chinese), good human relations, benevolence.jicho\ self-respect; circumspection. To double jicho with jicho,*to be superlatively circumspect.

jin (written with the same character as Chinese Jen), obligationwhich is outside the obligatory code. But vide ‘knowingyin,’p. 119, footnote.

Jingi (variant of jin), an obligation outside the obligatory code.JirVki, ‘self-help,’ spiritual training dependent solely on one’sown disciplined human powers. Vide tariki.

Judo, a form of jujitsu. Japanese wrestling.jujitsu, Japanese wrestling.kabuki, popular drama. Vide noh.kagura, traditional dances performed at Shinto shrines.kami, head, source. Shinto term for deity.kamikc^ze, ‘divine wind.’ The hurricane which drove back andoverturned Genghis Khan’s invading fleet in the thirteenthcentury. The pilots of suicide planes in World War II werecalled the Kamikaze Corps.kataJikSnaV, thank you; T am insulted.’kino ddku, thank you; ‘this poisonous feeling.’kinshin, repentance. A period of withdrawal to remove ‘the rustof the body.’ko, filial piety.

koan (pronounce ko-OH), problems having no rational answer,set by the Zen cult for those in training.ko-on, obligation to the Emperor, the State.magokoro, ‘sincerity.’makoto, ‘sincerity.’

318

Glossary

Meiji Era, the period of the rei^ of the Emperor Meiji, 1868-1912. It designates the beginning of the modem era in Japan.

moxa, powdered leaves of a certain plant, which are burned in acone on the surface of the body for curative purposes. It curesailments and naughtiness.

muga^ theelimination of the observer-self achieved by those whohave taken training.

narlkin\ nouveau riche. ‘A pawn promoted to queen’ (chess).nirva'na (Sanskrit), final emancipation of the soul from trans-migration; state of not-being; absorption into the divine.Nisei, an American of Japanese ancestry bom in the UnitedStates. Vide Issei.noh, classic drama. Vide kabuki.nushi, master.

on (pronounce own), a category of incurred obligations. VideChart, p. 116.oya, parents.

ronin, in feudal times samurai retainers who, because of dis-grace or because of the death or dishonor of their overlord,had become masterless men.

sake (pronounce sa-ke), a rice-beer which is the principal alco-holic drink of the Japanese.

samurai, in feudal times the warriors, two-sword men. Belowthem were the common people: farmers, artisans, and mer-chants.

satori, Buddhist enlightenment.

seppu*ku or harakVri, suicide by piercing the abdomen. In feudaltimes it was the exclusive privilege of the nobles and samurai.shogun, in pre-Meiji times the actual ruler of Japan; successionwas hereditary as long as a family could remain in power. TheShogun was always invested by the Emperor.shuyo, self-discipline; mental training.sonno joi, ‘Restore the Emperor and expel the barbarians (West-erners).’ A slogan of the Meiji Restoration.

319

Glossary

sumbnasen'y thank you; Fm sorry; ‘this never ends.’

sutra (Sanskrit), short collections of dialogues and aphorisms.The disciples of Gautama Buddha wrote such sutras in theconversational idiom of their day ^ali).

M setsu. Higher Law.

tari'ki, ‘help of another.* Spiritual blessing which is an act ofgrace. Fi^jiriki.

tonari gwni, small neighborhood ^oups of about five to tenfamilies.

yoga (Sanskrit), a form of ascetic philosophy and practice prev-alent in India from earliest historical times. ^

zaibatsu, big business; influential members of the economichierarchy.

Zen, a Buddhist cult introduced from China and important inJapan since the twelfth century. It was an upper-cl^s cult ofthe rulers and warriors and stiU contrasts with the great tarikiBuddhist cults with their huge membership.

Index

Adoption, 72, 123, 135ai, 103-104

Anthropology, methods of culturalstudy in, 6-19arigato, 105

Armed Services, 78,90-92,95,311-312

Asakawa, Kanichi, 117-118 n.Austerities, 90, 179-182, 239, 244Autoerotidsm, 188, 270, 284

Bathing, 178, 258Belgium, 85Benkei, 138-139Birth rate, 256

Boasting in childhood, 270-271Boredom, 165, 168-171Borton, Hugh, 66 n.

JBotchan, a novel, 107-109, 113Buddhism, 58, 77, 87, 89-90, 177,191, 209, 235-247, 271-272buraku, 83bushUh, 175, 317

Caste, 57-58, 61-67, 70-75, 77, 149Childbirth, 256

China, contrasts and comparisonswith Japan, 49-50, 117-118, 122,133, 137, 147, 183, 185, 191, 197,208, 214, 226

China, Japanese borrowings from,49, 57-59, 245China Incident, 53, 96, 193Choshu affair, 174-175chu, 116-117, 125-132, 192, 195-196, 198-201, 205-207, 209-210,212-213

Circumspection, 219, 290, 293, 315Cold-rice relatives, 123

Comp^tion, 153-155, 276Constitution, Meiji, 80Contradictions in Japanese charac-ter, 1-2, 195-197, 290-291

daimyo, 29, 59, 63-64, 67, 70, 74,76-77, 137-140, 162, 200, 206Dead, family shrines for the, 51,271‘Dead, one who lives as already,'249-250

Dispossession of child at birth ofnext baby, 265-266•Dog’s death,’ 289donen, 269Dossiers, 84

Doud, Captain Harold, 181Dynastic succession in Japan, 127

Eating, 182

Eckstein, Doctor O., 143, 182 n.Eisai, early Zen priest, 241Eliot, Sir Charles, 236 n., 242 n.,247 n.

Embiee, John F., 6, 83, 269, 283,284 n., 285

Emperor, 29-33, 35, 58-59, 66-70,76,91,101,125-132,151,309-310eta, 61

Evil, problem of, 189-192,197-198,251

Expendability of Japanese armedforces, 35-39

Family, 48-57, 102, 109-112, 119-125, 134-137, 155, 185,255, 263-264, 300-301Farago, Ladislas, 154 n.

Farley, Miriam S., 94 n.

Farmcas, 63-66, 74. 76, 78-79, 91

321

Feudalism, 5S-75

Filial piety, 49, 101-102, 116-124,192, 208, 264

Forewarning, importance of, 26-28France, contrasts and comparisonswith, 51, 86, 170

Frustration and aggression, 230-234

Funerals, 142-143

Geisha, 184-187, 283, 285Genealogies in pre-Meiji Japan, 50Ger^i, Tale of, 183Germany, contrasts and compari-sons with, 30-31,55,96,134,146,167, 170, 300gi, 141, 200, 211Gifford E. W.. 69 n.

Gift-giving in Japan, 142gimu, 115-134, 198-199, 205-207,210-211,312

girl, 116, 133-176, 192, 195-196,198-207, 210-212, 273-277, 312GlatUy, Colonel Harold W., 37go, 136

Go-between, 155, 157, 218Gorer, Geoffrey, 259 n., 274Government, Japanese criticisms ofduring war, 34-35; structure of,81-87

Guilt, 222-223. 251, 292

haji, 106, 224, 247, 251, 270, 286,293, 315

Hamilton, Alexander, 46harakiri, 167Harris, Townsend, 68Hateful Things, proverb of theThree, 121-122Hazing. 276-277Hearn, Lafeadio, 303 n.

Hideyoshi, 62

Hierarchy in Japan, 21-22* 43-75,77-97, 103, 145, 149-150, 212,218, 263, 291, 304, 314Hilldiing, General, 799

Holland, 85, 86Holter, Frances, 292 n.Homosexuality, 187-188Hull, Cordell, 44^5hysteri, 284

leyasu, 60, 163India, 147, 177, 237-241Industrialization of Japan, 92-93inkyo, 52

Intoxication, 189, 285-286

Issei, 111

isshin, 74

Italy, 146

Ito, Prince, 80

yVif (Chinese). 117-119, 191Jicho, 219-222, 290, 293; ‘to doublejicho with jicho,* 221, 275jin, 118, 119 n., 195jingi, 118-119jiriki, 242judo, 233jujitsu, 233

kabuki, 138, 248

Kagawa, Toyohiko, 249, 250 n.

kagura, 138

kami. 111, 286

kamikaze, 24

katajikenai, 106

Kido, Marquis, 80

kino doku, 105

kinshin, 273

ko, 116-124,136,192, 195, 198,208koan, 245-247k(M>n, 101, 129, 250

Leighton, Doctor Dorothea, 292 n.Lory, Hillis, 129 n.

Lowell, Percival, 179 n.

MacArthur, General Douglas, 297,306, 309-311

McCain, Admiral George S., 35magokoro, 213

322

bidex

makoto, 213-219Manchuria, 92

Markino, Yoshio, 159, 160 n., 221Marriage, 120-121, 134-136, 156-157, 184-186, 208, 283-285Masochism, 164, 167, 276Medical care in Japanese Army, 36-38

Meiji Era, 7^97, 126, 136, 187, 302Merchants and financiers, 61-62,64, 71-74, 76, 78-79, 91-95Minamoto, Yoritomo, 59Minamoto, Yoshitsune, 138Mirror, symbol of, 288, 289Mishima, Sumie Seo, 225-227Mother-in-law, 120-121, 123-124,135, 264-265MotoOri, Norihaga, 191Movies, Japanese, 8, 96, 119, 168,193-194,205-207moxa, 267

muga, 235, 243, 247-248

Namamuga affair, 173-175narikin, 95, 302Natsume, Soseki, 107Nietzsche, 240nirvana, 237-238Nisei, 217, 296Nito^, Inazo, 161, 317Nogi, General, 307-308noh, 138, 242, 248Nohara, Komakichi, 124 n., 182n.,290 n.

Norman, Herbert, 63 n., 80 n., 93 n.,174 n.

Nursing. 257, 260-261nushi, 116

Okakura, Yoshisaburo, 161, 162 n.Okuma, Count Shinenobu, 213 n.,218

on, 99-117, 120, 130, 134, 137, 145,155, 192, 194, 213, 221, 225,273on-Jin, 99, 109, 116, 140Outcasts, 61, 77

Outside Lords, 60, 76oya^ 116

Pacific islands, parallels with Jap-anese culture in the, 8-9, 68-69,157-158. 259

Peasant revolts. 66-67, 78, 310Perry, Commodore, 68, 74Police, 85Poland, 278Polygamy, 185

Population, voluntary limitation of,63. 65

Prisoners of war, Japanese, extremeco-operation with Americanforces, 41-42, 172; interviewswith, 30-35, 41Prostitutes, 1^186

Rescripts, Imperial, 209-214, 218Respect, etiquette of, 47-49, 264Restoration, Meiji, 74, 76-97, 126,302

Ridicule, 28-29, 223, 261-263, 273,276-279, 287-288, 307ronin, 138, 162, 199-205, 217Ronin, Tale of the Forty-Seven, 162,199-205. 217Rorschach tests, 292 n.

Russia, 165

Russo-Japanese War, 307-308‘Rust of the body,’ 198, 203, 234-235, 296

Saigo, Takamori, 28, 78sake, 285

samurai, 50, 59, 62-65, 72, 73, 76-19, 118, 137-139, 148, 149, 162,187, 242, 303

Sansom, Sir George, 58 n., 165,197satori, 238, 240, 243, 247Scapegoat, 278

Schools, 84-85, 117, 154-155, 276-277

Self-respect, 219-222, 275, 290, 293Self-sacrifice, 230-233, 289

Index

Mppuku, 200-301, 204-205ScK, 183-188; io adolescence, 282-285

Shame, 106,222-227.251,270. 272,286, 288-289, 293Shidehara, Baron, 302Shinto, 58, 87-90, 209, 271Shogun, 29.59-^, 67-70,74,76,80,126, 137, 174skuyo, 233-234, 244, 254Siam, 65, 79, 147, 313‘Sincerity,’ 160-161, 201, 213-219‘Sixth’ sense. 240, 251Sleeping, 180-181, 230, 257, 268sonno joU 74, 76Spain, 146Spencer, Herbert, 81Spirit v^. matter in Japanese ideol-o^, 22-26, 36, 181, 182, 230Statistical studies in the social sci-ences, 17

Stoessel, General, 307-308Strikes since VJ-Day, 310Stylhes, Saint Simeon, 244Sugimoto, Etsu Inagaki, 268 n.,280-282, 294-295

Suicide, 151, 160-168, 199-201,204-205, 289sumimasen, 105

Surnames, in pre-Meiji Japan, 50Surrender policy of Japanese inWorld War II. 38-40Susanowo, 190sutra, 224

Suzuki, D. T., 215, 247 n.

tai setsUf 212Talk, learning to, 259Tantrums, 262, 264, 267, 276tariki, 242

Taxation, 65-66, 74, 77, 83, 313Teasing a child, 261-263, 273, 287-288

‘Thank you’ in Japanese, 105-107Time, 311 n.

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 45,46, 150Toilet training, 254, 259, 287tonari gumi, 82Trance, 240Transmigration, 238Tripartite Pact, 43-44

United States, cultural contrastsandanalogies, 1,18,20,21,23,28,36,45-46, 48, 95-96, 98, 102, 112-115, 129-130, 141, 147,149, 152-154, 165-166, 177, 181-184, 188-189,192r-194, 196, 198, 207, 216,219, 223,228-235, 249,251, 253-255, 278, 293, 306, 313Uyeda, Professor, 94 n.

Walk, learning to, 259War, budgetary expenditure forarmament in pre-war Japan, 23,313

War, Japan’s reasons for engagingin, 20-21, 43-44, 47, 173War Relocation Camps, 217Watson, W. Petrie, 181 n.

Weaning, 260, 261Wilson, James, 69 n.

Women, 53-55, 148, 208, 255, 256,264, 274, 279-285

Vamashito, Gmeral, 28Yoga, 237-241

Zaibatsu, 91, 93-95Zen cult, 215, 235-247