REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF JAPAN
by Kanzo Uchimura

To<to contents>

Bishop M. C. and Mrs. Flora Best Harris,
American Missionaries

and

Friends of Japan,
THIS LITTLE BOOK,

My Last Attempt in their Language,

is Most Affectionately Dedicated.

K. U.


PREFATORY NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION <to contents>


This little book is a reprint, with many corrections by a friendly
hand, of the main portion of what appeared under the title of
"Japan and Japanese," during the war with China, thirteen
years ago. With all the cooling of my youthful love for my
country, I cannot yet be blind to many fine qualities of her
people; and she is still the land, the only land, to whom I give
"my prayers, my hopes, my service, free." That I may still help to
make the good qualities of my countrymen known to the outside
world, - the qualities other than blind loyalty and bloody
patriotism usually attributed to us - is the aim of this, I presume,
my last attempt in a foreign language.

KANZO UCHIMURA.
Kashiwagi, near Tokyo.5
January 8, 1908.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION <to contents>

These Essays, the last two of which' were already once given to the public, and the
others prepared with no special aim for the present occasion, are now printed
together, with a hope that their appearance in this form at this time may help
somewhat the right appreciation of some of our chief national characters. The
author is fully aware of the truth of a statement once made by Lord Macaulay that
no noble work of literary art was ever composed by any man, "except in a dialect
which he had learned without remembering how or when;" i.e. except in his own
mother-tongue. While yet this may be all very true, the advantage of one writing
about his own country is evident enough; and when, as at present, so much is written about
Japan by travellers who examined it "at the rate of forty miles an hour," anything
that is "of native origin" may not be wholly unwelcome. It certainly is no glory to an
auther to be ever compelled to employ a foreign language in expressing himself to
the world, for thereby he admits the world-narrowness of his own. The Great
Taiko's noble ambition to make Japanese the language of the world is yet to be
realized; and till that is accomplished, an attempt like this is often necessary. With
an entire confidence therefore in our aims and purposes, and no confidence
whatever in our syntax and gerund-laws, these are sent forth for what they are
really worth, and for no more.
The Author.
Kyoto, Japan.
The Day after the Naval Victory
in the Yellow Sea.



SAIGO TAKAMORI - A FOUNDER OF NEW JAPAN

I -THE JAPANESE REVOLUTION OF 1868 <to contents>

WHEN Nippon first, at Heaven's command, arose from the azure main, this was
the charge to the land: "Niphonia, keep within thy gates. Mingle not with the world
till I call thee forth." So she remained for two thousand years and more, her seas
unplowed by the fleets of the nations, and her shores free from their defilement.
That is a most unphilosophical criticism that condemns Japan for her long
seclusion from the world. Wisdom higher than all wisdoms has ordered it so, and
the country was better for having remained so, and the world was, and is, to be
better for her having been kept so. Inaccessibility to the world is not always a curse
to a nation. What benignant father would have his children prematurely thrown
into the world that they might come under its so-called "civilizing influences"?
India with her comparative accessibility to the world became an easy prey to
European selfishness. What did the world with Inca's empires and Montezuma's
peaceful land? They condemn us for our seclusion. We open our gates, and Clives
and Corteses are let loose upon us. Do not armed burglars do the same when they
break into a well-locked house?
Providence was kind therefore in locking us up from the world with seas and
continents on all sides; and when greed more than once tried to force its way into us
before our appointed time came, it was our genuine instinct of self-defence that
refused to open our gates to the world. Our national character was to be fully
formed that the world might not swallow us up when we come in contact with it,
and make of us an amorphous something without anything special to call our own.
Then the world too needed further refinement, before it could receive us into its
membership. I think the Japanese Revolution of 1868 signifies a point in the
world's history when the two races of mankind representing the two distinct forms
of civilization were brought to honourable intercourse one with the other, when the
Prospective West was given a check in its anarchic progress, and the Retrospective
East was wakened from its stagnant slumber. From that time on, there were to be
neither Occidents nor Orients, but all to be one in humanity and righteousness.
Before Japan awoke, one part of the world turned its back to the other. By her and
through her, the two were brought face to face. Japan is to solve, and is solving, the
question of the right relation of Europe with Asia.
So our long seclusion was to end, and men and opportunities were needed to bring
it to an end. China and California on the opposite banks of the Pacific opened at
about the same time, there came a necessity for opening Japan to bring the two
ends of the world together. This was an external opportunity. Internally, the last
and greatest of the feudal dynasties was losing its power, and the nation, tired of
separation and mutual animosities within, felt, for the first time in its history,
importance and desirability of union. But man makes and uses opportunities. I
consider Matthew Calbraith Perry of the United States Navy to be one of the
greatest friends of humanity the world has ever seen. In his diaries we read that he
bombarded the shores of Japan with doxologies, and not with ordnance.* [ See
Narrative of Expedition of the American Squadron to the Chinese Seas and Japan
by Commondore Perry.] His mission was a delicate one of waking up a hermit
nation without doing injury to its dignity, yet keeping its native pride at bay. His
was the task of a true missionary, done with Heaven's gracious help, with many an
invocation to the Ruler of nations. Thrice blessed is the land that had a Christian
commodore sent to it to open it to the world. - To a Christian admiral knocking
from outside, there responded a brave upright general, a "reverer of Heaven and
lover of mankind" from within. The two never saw each other in their lives, and we
never hear of one complimenting the other. Yet we their biographers do know that
despite all the differences in their outward garments, the souls that dwelt in both
were of kindred stuff. Unwittingly they worked in concert, one executing what the
other had initiated. So does the World-Spirit weave his garment of Destiny,
underneath the vision of purblind mortals, yet wonderful to the eye of the
thoughtful historian.
Thus we see that the Japanese Revolution of 1868, like all healthful and
permanent revolutions, had its origin in righteousness and God-made necessity.
The land that had been obstinately closed against greed, opened itself freely
toward justice and equity. Self-sacrifice of the rarest kind, based upon a voice from
the innermost depth of soul, did Bins open its doors to the world. They therefore
sin against the height of the heavens who seek self-aggrandizement in this nation,
as do they also who mistake its high-calling, and allow it to be trampled by the
mammon of this world.

II -BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND INSPIRATION <to contents>

"The Great Saigo," as he is usually called, both for his greatness and to
distinguish him from the younger Saigo, his brother, was born in the 10th year of
Bunsei (1827) in the city of Kagoshima. A stone-monument now marks the spot
where he first saw light, now far from the place where his illustrious colleague,
Okubo, was born two years later, which is also so marked. His family had no
hereditary fame to boast of; only "below middle" in the large han of Satzuma. He
was the eldest of six children, - four brothers and two sisters. In his boyhood there
was nothing remarkable about him. He was a slow, silent boy, and even passed for
an idiot among his comrades. It is said that his soul was first roused to
consciousness of duty by witnessing one of his distant relatives committing
harakiri in his presence, who told the lad just before he plunged a dagger into his
belly, of the life that should be devoted to the cause of his master and country. The
boy wept, and the impression never left him through his life.
He grew up to be a big fat man, with large eyes and broad shoulders very
characteristic of him. "Udo," the big-eyed, was the nickname they gave him. He
rejoiced in his muscular strength; wrestling was the favourite sport with him, and
he liked to roam in the mountains much of his time, a propensity which never left
him till the very end of his life. His attention was early called to the writings of
Wang Yang Ming, who of all Chinese philosophers, came nearest to that most
august faith, also of Asiatic origin, in his great doctrines of conscience and benign
but inexorable heavenly laws. Our hero's subsequent writings show this influence
to a very marked degree, all the Christianly sentiments therein contained testifying
to the majestic simplicity of the great Chinese, as well as to the greatness of the nature
that could take in all that, and weave out a character so practical as his. He also delved
a little into the Zen philosophy, a stoic form of Buddhism, "to kill my too keen sensibilities,"
as he told his friends afterward. So-called European culture he had absolutely none.
The broadest and most progressive of Japanese, his education was wholly Oriental.
But whence came the two dominant ideas of his life, which were (1) the united
empire, and (2) reduction of Eastern Asia? That Yang Ming philosophy, if logically
followed out, would lead to some such ideas is not difficult to surmise. So unlike
the conservative Chu philosophy fostered by the old governments for its own
preservation, it (Yang Ming philosophy) was progressive, prospective, and full of
promise. Its similarity to Christianity has been recognized more than once, and it
was practically interdicted in the country on that and other accounts. "This
resembles Yang-Ming-ism ; disintegration of the empire will begin with this." So
exclaimed Takasugi Shinsaku, a Choshu strategist of Revolutionary fame, when he
first examined the Christian Bible in Nagasaki. That something like Christianity
was a component force in the reconstruction of Japan is a singular fact in this part
of its history.
His situations and surroundings too must have helped him in forming his great
projects of life. Situated in the south-western corner of the country, Satzuma stood
nearest to the European influence, then coming all from that direction. Its
proximity to Nagasaki was a great advantage in this respect, and we are told of
foreign commerce actually carried on on some of its dependent islands, long before
formal permission was given thereto by the central government.
But of all outward influences, two living men had most to do with Saigo. One was
his own feudal master, Saihin of Satzuma, and the other was Fujita Toko of the
Mito han. That the former was no common character, no one can doubt.
Self-possessed and far-sighted, he early saw the inevitable changes that were
coming upon his country, and introduced reforms into his dominion to prepare for
the crises that were near at hand. It was he who fortified his own city of
Kagoshima, which cost so much for the English fleet to break down in 1863. It was
also he, who, notwithstanding his strong anti-foreign sentiments, received with
great respect Frenchmen who visited his shore, against the remonstrance of his
turbulent subjects to the contrary. "A pacific gentleman who avoided not war if
necessary," he was a man after Saigo's own heart, and the subject ceased not in
after years to express his dues to his great and farseeing master. The relation
between the two was that of two intimate friends, so near came they to each other
in their views as to the future of their country.
But the chief and greatest inspiration came from master spirit of the time. In
Fujita Toko of Mito,"the spirit of Yamato had concentrated itself." He was Japan
etherialized into a soul. Sharp in outlines and acutely angled, the farm was that of
the volcanic Fuji, with the soul in it of all sincerity. An intense lover of
righteousness, and an intense hater of the Western Barbarians, he drew around
him the rising generation; and Saigo, hearing of his fame at a distance, lost no
opportunity of seeing and feeling the man when he was in Yedo with his lord. No
two more congenial souls ever met together. "Only that young man shall carry to
posterity the plans that I now store in my bosom," said the master of the pupil.
"There is none to be feared under heaven except one, and that one is Master Toko,"
said the pupil of the master. The united empire, and the extension of its dominion
over the continent "so as to enable the land to stand on equal terms with Europe,"
and the practical ways of leading the nation thereto, seem to have taken final
shapes in Saigo's mind by the new influence he came under. He had now distinct
ideals to live up to, and his life since then was one direct march toward the mark
thus laid before him. The Revolution had its seed-thought sown in Toko's
vehement mind; but this needed transplanting to a less intense and more equable
soul like Saigo's, that it might bring forth an actual revolution. Toko died in the
earthquake of 1855 at the age of fifty, leaving his illustrious pupil to carry out the
ideals first conceived in his mind.
Shall we also deny to our hero a voice direct from Heaven's splendour, as he
roamed over his favourite mountains, oftentimes for days and nights in succession?
Did not a "still small voice" often tell him in the silence of cryptomeria forest, that
he was sent to this earth with a mission, the fulfillment of which was to be of great
consequence to his country and the world? Why did he mention Heaven so many
times in his writings and conversations if he had not such visitations? A slow,
silent, childlike man, he seems to have been mostly alone with his own heart,
where we believe he found One greater than himself and all the universe, holding
secret conversations with him. What cares he if the modern Pharisees call him a
heathen, and dispute as to the whereabouts of his soul in the future existence! "He
that follows the heavenly way abases not himself even though the whole world
speaks evil of him; neither thinks he himself sufficient even though they in unison
praise his name." "Deal with Heaven, and never with men. Do all things for
Heaven's sake. Blame not others; only search into the lack of sincerity in us." "The
law is of the universe and is natural. Hence he only can keep it who makes it his
aim to fear and serve Heaven. ........Heaven loves all men alike. So we must love
others with the love with which we love ourselves." Saigo said these things and
much else like them, and I believe he heard all these directly from Heaven.

III -HIS PART IN THE REVOLUTION <to contents>

To write out in full Saigo's part in the Revolution would be to write the whole
history of the same. In one sense we may say, I think, that the Japanese
Revolution of 1868 was Saigo's revolution. Of course no one man can rebuild a
nation. We will not call New Japan Saigo's Japan. That certainly is doing great
injustice to many other great men who took part in this work. Indeed, in many
respects, Saigo had his superiors among his colleagues. As for matters of economic
rearrangement, Saigo was perhaps the least competent. He was not for the details
of internal administration as Kido and Okubo were, and Sanjo and Iwakura were
far his superiors in the work of the pacific settlement of the revolutionized country.
The New Empire as we have it now, would not have been, were it not for all these
men.
But we doubt whether the Revolution was possible without Saigo. A Kido or a
Sanjo we might not have had, and yet the Revolution we would have had, though
perhaps not so successfully. A need there was of a primal force that could give a
start to the whole movement, a soul that could give a shape to it, and drive it in the
direction ordered by Heaven's omnipotent laws. Once started and directed, the rest
was comparatively an easy work, much of it mere drudgeries, that could be done by
smaller men than he. And when we connect the name of Saigo so intimately with
the New Japanese Empire, it is because we believe him to be the starter and
director of a force generated in his big mind, and afterward applied to the course of
events then running in the society of his time.
Soon after his return from the Shogun's capital, after the all-important meeting
with Toko, Saigo identified himself with the anti-Tokugawa party then gaining
force in the western part of the country. His episode with Gessho, a learned
Buddhist priest and a warm advocate of the imperial cause, marks the point in his
career when his avowed aim began to be known to the public. Unable to shelter the
fugitive priest, with whose custody he was entrusted, from the hot pursuit of
Tokugawa men, Saigo proposed death to his guest and was accepted. They two
went to the sea on a moon-lit night, "drew maximum consolation from autumnal
view," and then hand in hand, the two patriots plunged into the sea. The splash
called the attention of the attendants then asleep, and search for the lost began at
once. Their bodies were secured, Saigo revived, but Gessho did not. The man who
had a new empire upon his shoulders thought not his life to be too precious to be
given away for his friend as a pledge of his affection and hospitality! It was this
weakness, - the weakness of "too keen sensibility" which he tried "to kill" by his
Zen Philosophy, - that brought upon his final destruction, as we shall see
afterward.
For this and other complicities in anti-Tokugawa movements, he was twice exiled
to south-sea islands. Returning to Kagoshima after its bombardment by the British
fleet in 1863, he at once resumed his old course, though this time more cautiously
than before. By his advice a pacific settlement was made between Choshu and the
Tokugawa Government; but a year later, when the latter forced unreasonable
demands upon the former, and their flat refusals called forth so-called Choshu
Invasion, Satzuma under Saigo's direction declined to send its quota of troops to
join the expedition. This policy of Satzuma was the beginning of the famous
coalition effected between it and Choshu, of so momentous import in the history of
the Revolution. The total discomfiture of the invading force, and the evident
imbecility of the old government in its dealings with foreign affairs, precipitated its
downfall much earlier than was expected; and on the same day when the coalition
secured an imperial decree for the upsetting of the tottering dynasty, the Shogun
out of his own free-will, laid down his authority of three centuries' standing, and
the rightful sovereigns was reinstated in power seemingly without any opposition.
(Nov. 14, 1867.) The occupation of the city of Kyoto by the army of the coalition and
its allies, "the Grand Proclamation of the Ninth Day of December," and the
evacuation of the Nijo castle by the Shogun followed in rapid succession. On the 3rd
of January 1868, the war began with the battle of Fushimi. The imperialists were
entirely successful, and the rebels, as the Tokugawa Party was called from that time,
retired toward the east. Two grand armies followed the latter, Saigo commanding
the Tokaido branch. No opposition was met, and on the 4th of April the castle of
Yedo was tendered to the imperialists. The Revolution considering its
tremendous after-effects was the cheapest ever bought.
And it was Saigo who bought it so cheaply and made it so effective, his real
greatness showing itself most conspicuously in these two contrary aspects of
our revolution. "The Grand Proclamation of the Ninth Day of December"
is comparable only to the similar proclamation of the Fourteenth of
July 1790 in the French capital, in its sweeping effect upon old institutions.
His self-possession was the stay of the imperialists when the first battle was
opened at Fushimi. A messenger came to him from the field and said, "Pray
send us a reenforcement. We are only one regiment, and the enemy's fire is hot
upon us." "I will," said General Saigo, "when every one of you is dead upon the field."
The messenger returned, and the enemy was repulsed. The side that had
such a general could not but win. This Tokaido army marched up to Shinagawa, and
the general was met by an old friend of his, Katzu by name, who alone among the
Tokugawa men saw its inevitable end, and would resign himself to
sacrifice the supremacy of his master's house that his
country might live thereby. "I believe my friend is at wit's end by this time," said
the commander of the imperial army to the messenger from the old government.
"Only by placing yourself in my position you can understand where I am," responds
the latter. The general bursts into a peal of laughter; he is amused at seeing
his friend in distress ! His mind is now inclined toward peace. He goes back to Kyoto,
and maintains against all oppositions amnesty toward the Shogun and his
followers, and returns to Yedo with terms very favorable to the beleagured party. It
is said that a few days before he finally made up his mind for peace, Katzu took him
up to the Atago Hill for a friendly walk. Seeing "the city of magnificent dimensions"
under his feet, the general's heart was deeply touched. He turned to his friend and said,
"In case we exchange arms, I believe these innocent peoples will have to suffer on
our account," and was silent for some moment. His "sensibility" moved in him;
he must have peace for those innocent ones' sake. "The strong man is most
powerful when unimpeded by the weak." Saigo's strength had considerable
of womanly pity in it. The city was spared, peace was concluded, and the
Shogun was made to lay down his arms and tender his castle to the Emperor.
The Emperor reinstated in his rightful position, the country united under its
rightful sovereign, and the government set moving in the direction he had
aimed at, Saigo retired at once to his home in Satzuma, and there for several years occupied
himself mostly in drilling a few battalions of soldiers. To him the war did not end,
as it did to others of his countrymen. Great social reforms that were also yet to be
introduced into the country needed force, as that other purpose for which in his eye
the united empire was only a step. Called up to the capital, he filled the
all-important office of Sangi (Chief Councillor) with other men of revolutionary
fame. But time came when his associates could follow him no longer. Hitherto they
had come together because they had an aim in common; but where they wanted to
stop, he wanted to begin, and rupture came at last.

IV-THE COREAN AFFAIR <to contents>

Saigo was too much of a moralist to go to war merely for conquest's sake. His
object of the reduction of Eastern Asia came necessarily out of his views of the then
state of the world. That Japan might be a compeer with the Great Powers of
Europe, she needed a considerable extension of her territorial possessions, and
enough aggressiveness to keep up the spirit of her people. Then too, we believe he
had somehow an idea of the great mission of his country as the leader of Eastern
Asia. To crush the weak was never in him; but to lead them against the strong and
so crush the proud, was his whole soul and endeavour. The single fact that his
ideal hero was said to be George Washington, and that he showed intense dislike
toward Napoleon and men of his type, should be enough evidence that Saigo was
never a slave of low ambitions.
Yet with all his high notions of his country's mission, he would not go to war
without sufficient cause for it. To do so would be against Heaven's law that he
made so much of. But when an opportunity presented itself without his own
making, it was very natural that he took it as a heaven-sent one for his country to
enter upon a career assigned her from the beginning of the world. Corea, her
nearest continental neighbor, proved herself insolent to several of the Japanese
envoys sent out by the new government. Moreover, she showed distinct enmity
against the Japanese residents there, and made a public proclamation to her
people highly derogatory to the dignity of her friendly neighbor. Should such go
unheeded? argued Saigo and men of his inclination. The insolence was not yet
sufficient to precipitate war. But let an embassy consisting of a few men of the
highest rank be sent to the Peninsular Court to demand justice for her insolence;
and should she still insist in her haughty attitude, and add insult, and very
possibly, personal injury, to the new embassy, let that be the signal to the nation to
dispatch its troops into the continent, and extend its conquest as far as Heaven
would permit. And since great responsibility and utmost danger would attend such
an embassy, he (Saigo) himself would like to be appointed to that office. The
conqueror will first lay down his life to open a way of conquest to his countrymen!
Never in History was conquest undertaken in this fashion.
The slow, silent Saigo was all fire and activity when the question of the Corean
embassy was discussed in the cabinet. He implored his colleagues to appoint him
as the chief envoy, and when it was fairly settled that his request would be granted,
his gladness was that of a child leaping for joy possessed with the object of its
heart's desire. Here is a letter which he wrote to his friend Itagaki (now count) by
whose special endeavour the appointment was privily settled in the court.

"Itagaki Sama,
I called upon you yesterday, but you were absent, and I was sent back without
expressing my thanks to you. By your effort I am to have all I wished. My illness is
all gone now. Transported with gladness, I new through the air from Minister
Sanjo's to your mansion; my feet were so light. No mire fear of 'side thrust' I
suppose. Now that my aim is secured, I may retire to my residence in Aoyama and
wait for the happy issue. This is only to convey my gratitude to you.
Saigo."
At this juncture, Iwakura returned with Okubo and Kido from their tour around
the world. They saw civilization in its centre, its comfort and happiness. They no
more thought of foreign war than Saigo did of Parisian or Viennese ways of living.
So, resorting themselves to duplicities and ambiguities of all kinds, they in concert
did all in their power to overthrow the decision reached in the cabinet council
during their absence, and taking advantages of Minister Sanjo's illness, they
succeeded at last in carrying their ways through. The Corean Embassy Act was
repealed, Nov. 28, l873. Saigo, who to all outward appearances had known no
anger thus far, was now wild over the measures of the "long-sleeved," as he called
the coward courtiers. That the act was repealed was not what offended him most;
but the way in which it was rescinded, and the motives that led thereto, were
objectionable to him beyond his power of forbearance. He made up his mind that he
would do nothing with the rotten government, threw his written resignation upon
the cabinet-table, gave up his residence in Tokio, and retired at once to his home in
Satzuma, never again to join the government that was set up mostly through his
endeavour.
With the suppression of the Corean Affair ceased all the aggressive measures of
the government, and its whole policies since they have been directed toward what
its supporters called "internal development." And agreeably to the heart's wish of
Iwakura and his "peace-party," the country has had much of what they called
civilization. Yet withal also came much effeminacy, fear of decisive actions, love
of peace at the cost of plain justice, and much else that the true samurai laments.
"What is civilization but an effectual working of righteousness, and not
magnificence of houses, beauty of dresses, and ornamentation of outward
appearance." This was Saigo's definition of civilization, and we are afraid
civilization in his sense has not made much progress since his time.

V-SAIGO AS A REBEL <to contents>

We need say but very little about this last and most lamentable part of Saigo's life.
That he turned a rebel against the government of his time was a fact. What motive
led him to take that position has been conjectured in many ways. That his old
weakness, "too keen sensibility," was the main cause of his uniting with the rebels
seems quite plausible. Some five thousand young men who worshipped him as the
only man in the world, went into an open rebellion against the government,
seemingly without his knowledge, and much against his will. Their success
depended wholly upon his lending his name and influence to their cause. A
strongest of men, he was almost helpless before the suppliant entreaty of the needy.
Twenty years ago he had promised his life to his guest as a pledge of his
hospitality; and now again he might have been induced to sacrifice his life, his
honour, his all, as a pledge of his friendship to his admiring pupils. This view of
things is taken by many who knew him best.
That he was strongly disaffected with the government of his time needs no
controversy; but that he a level-headed man should go to war for the mere sake of
enmity is hard to conjecture. Are we mistaken when we maintain, that in his case
at least, the rebellion was a result of disappointment in the grand aims of his life?
Though not directly caused by him, it found him in unspeakable anguish of soul,
because the revolution of 1868 produced the result so contrary to his ideal. Should
the rebellion chance to be a success, might he not realize yet the great dreams of
his life? Doubtingly, yet not entirely without some hope, he united with the rebels
and shared with them the fate he seemed to have instinctively foreseen. But
history may wait a hundred years more before it can settle this part of his life.
He remained a passive figure all through the war, Kirino and others looking
after all the manoeuvers in the field. They fought from February to September,
1877, and when their hopes were all shattered, they forced their way back to
Kagoshima, there to be buried in their "fathers' grave-yard." There beleaguered in
the Castle Hill, all the government forces gathered at its foot, our hero was playing
go in the best of spirit. Turning to one of his attendants he said, "Aren't you the one
the latchet of whose wooden shoes I mended one day, as I was returning from my
farm, drawing my packhorse behind me?" The man remembered the occasion,
confessed his insolence, and sincerely asked for forgiveness. "Nothing!" replied
Saigo, "Too much leisure made me to poke you a little." The fact was, the General
did yield once to the impudent demands of two youths, who, as was the custom in
Satzuma, used the right of the samurai to have his wooden-shoes mended by any
farmer he happened to meet. The farmer in this case happened to be the great
Saigo, who without a word of complaint, did the menial service, and went away in
all humility. We are exceedingly thankful for this piece of reminiscence given of
him by the very man who attended upon him in his last hours. Saint Aquinas was
not more humble than this our Saigo.
On the morning of 24th of September l877, general assault was made upon the
Castle Hill by the government force. Saigo was on the point of rising with his
comrades to meet the enemy, when a bullet struck his hip. Soon the little party
was annihilated, and Saigo's remains fell into his enemy's hand. "See that no
rudeness is done to them," cried one of the enemy's generals. "What a mildness in
his countenance!" said another. They that killed him were all in mourning. In tears
they buried him, and with tears his tomb is visited by all to this day. So passed
away the greatest, and we are afraid, the last of the samurai.

VI-HIS WAYS OF LIVING AND VIEWS OF LIFE <to contents>

History has yet to wait for the just estimate of Saigo's public service to his
country; but it has enough materials at its command for forming right views of the
kind of man he really was. And if the latter aspect of his life will help much to clear
up the former, I believe my readers will pardon me for dwelling at some length
upon his private life and opinions.
First of all, we know of no man who had fewer wants in life than he. The
commander-in-chief of the Japanese army, the generalissimo of the Imperial
Bodyguard, and the most influential of the cabinet-members, his outward
appearance was that of the commonest soldier. When his monthly income was
several hundred yen, he had enough for his wants with fifteen, and every one of his
needy friends was welcome to the rest. His residence in Bancho, Tokio, was a
shabby-looking structure the rent three yen a month. His usual costume was
Satzuma-spun cotton stuff, girdled with a broad calico obi, and large wooden clogs
on his feet. In this attire he was ready to appear at any place, at the Imperial
dinner-table, as anywhere else. For food he would take whatsoever was placed
before him. Once a visitor found him in his residence, he and several of his soldiers
and attendants surrounding a large wooden bowl, and helping themselves to
buck-wheat macaroni cooled in the receptacle. That seemed to be his favorite
banquet, eating with young fellows, himself a big child of the simplest nature.
Careless about his body, he was also careless about his possessions. He gave up a
fine lot of land in his possession in the most prosperous section of the city of Tokio
to a national bank just then started, and when asked its price, he refused to
mention it; and so it remains to this day in the possession of the said corporation,
worth several hundred thousand dollars. A large income from his pension was
spent wholly for the support of a school which he started in Kagoshima. One of his
Chinese poems reads,

"Does the world know our family law?
We leave not substance to our children."

And so he left nothing to his widow and children; but the nation took care of them,
though he died a rebel. Modern Economic Science may have much to say against
this "carelessness" of his.
He had one hobby, and that was the dog-kind. Though he accepted nothing else
that was taken as a present to him, anything that related to dogs he received with
all thankfulness. Chromos, lithographs, pencil-sketches of the canine tribe were
always very pleasing to him. It is said that when he gave up his house in Tokio, he
had a large boxful of pictures of dogs. One of his letters to General Oyama was very
particular about collars for his hounds "Many thanks for the specimens of the
dog-collars you kindly sent me," he writes. "I think they are superior to imported
articles. Only if you could make them three inches longer, they would fit my
purpose exactly. Make four or five of them, I beseech you. And once more, a little
broader and five inches longer, I pray, etc." His dogs were his friends all through
his life. He often spent days and nights with them in the mountains. The loneliest
of man, he had dumb brutes to share his loneliness.
He disliked disputings, and he avoided them by all possible means. Once he was
invited to an Imperial feast, at which he appeared in his usual plain costume. As
he retired, he missed his clogs left at the palace-entrance, and as he would not
trouble anybody about them, he walked out barefooted; and that in a drizzling rain.
When he came to the castle-gate, the sentinel called him to halt, and demanded of
him an explanation of his person, - a doubtful figure he appeared in his commonest
garb. "General Saigo," he replied. But they believed not his words, and allowed him
not to pass the gate. So he stood there in the rain waiting for somebody who might
identify him to the sentinel. Soon a carriage approached with Minister Iwakura in
it. The barefooted man was proved to be the general, was taken into the minister's
coach, and so carried away. - He had a servant, Kuma by name, a well-known
figure in his modest household for many years. The latter, however, once
committed an offence grave enough to have his position forfeited. But the
indulgent master was solicitous about his servant's future if discharged from his
service. So he simply kept him in his house; but for many years he gave him not a
single order to be executed. Kuma survived his master many years, and was one of
the deepest mourner for the ill-fated hero.
A witness has this to say of Saigo's private life: "I lived with him thirteen years;
and never have I seen him scolding his servants. He himself looked to the making
and unmaking of his bed, to the opening and shutting of his room-windows, and to
most other things that pertained to his person. But in cases others were doing
them for him, he never interfered; neither did he decline help when offered. His
carelessness and entire artlessness were those of a child."
Indeed he was so loathe to disturb the peace of others that he often made visits
upon their houses, but dared not to call for notice from inside; but stood in the
entrance thereof and there waited till somebody happened to come out and find
him!
Such was his living; so lowly and so simple; but his thinking was that of a saint
and a philosopher, as we have had already some occasions to show.
"Revere Heaven; love people," summed up all his views of life. All wisdom was
there; and all un-wisdom, in love of self. What conceptions he had of Heaven;
whether he took it to be a Force or a Person, and how he worshiped it except in his
own practical way, we have no means of ascertaining. But that he knew it to be
all-powerful, unchangeable, and very merciful, and its Laws to be all-binding
unassailable, and very beneficent, his words and actions abundantly testify. We
have already given some of his expressions about Heaven and its Laws. His
writings are full of them, and we need not multiply them here. When he said,
"Heaven loveth all men alike; so we must love others with the love with which we
love ourselves," he said all that is in the Law and Prophets, and some of us may be
desirous to inquire whence he got that grand doctrine of his.
And this Heaven was to be approached with all sincerity; else the knowledge of its
ways was unattainable. Human wisdoms he detested ; but all wisdoms were to
come from the sincerity of one's heart and purpose. Heart pure and motive high,
ways are at hand as we need them, in the council-hall as on the battle-field. He
that schemes always is he that has no schemes when crises are at hand. In his own
words, "Sincerity's own realm is one's secret chamber. Strong there, a man is strong
everywhere." Insincerity, and its great child, Selfishness, are the prime causes of
our failures in life. Saigo says, "A man succeeds by overcoming himself, and fails by
loving himself. Why is it that many have succeeded in eight and failed
in the remaining two? Because when success attended them, love of self grew in them;
and vigilance departing, and desire for ease returning, their work became onerous
to them, and they failed." Hence we are to meet all the emergencies of life with
our lives in our hands. "I have my life to offer," he often uttered when he had
some action to propose in his responsible position. That entire self-abnegation was
the secret of his courage is evident from the following remarkable utterance of his:
"A man that seeks neither life, nor name, nor rank, nor money, is the hardest man
to manage. But with only such life's tribulations can be shared, and such only can
bring great things to his country."
A believer in Heaven, its laws and its time, he was also a believer in himself, as
one kind of faith always implies the other kind. "Be determined and do," he said,
"and even gods will flee from before you." Again he said: "Of opportunities there
are two kinds : those that come without our seeking and those that are of our own
make. What the world calls opportunity is usually the former kind. But the true
opportunity comes by acting in accordance with reason, in compliance with the
need of the time. When crises are at hand, opportunities must be caused by us." A
MAN, therefore, a capable man, he pried above all things. "Whatever be the ways
and institutions we speak about," were his words, "they are impotent unless there
are men to work them. Man first; then the working of means. Man is the first
treasure, and let every one of us try to be a man."
A "reverer of Heaven" cannot but be a reverer and observer of righteousness.
"An effectual working of righteousness" was his definition of civilization. To him
there was nothing under heaven so precious as righteousness. His life, of course,
and his country even, were not more precious than righteousness. He says: "Unless
there is a spirit in us to walk in the ways of righteousness, and fall with the
country if for righteousness' sake, no satisfactory relation with foreign powers can
be expected. Afraid of their greatness and hankering after peace, and abjectly
following their wishes, we soon invite their contemptuous estimate of ourselves.
Friendly relations will thus begin to cease, and we shall be made to serve them at
last." In a similar strain he says: "When a nation's honour is in any way injured,
the plain duty of its government is to follow the ways of justice and righteousness
even though the nation's existence is jeopardized thereby. * * * * * A government
that trembles at the word 'war,' and only makes it a business to buy slothful peace,
should be called a commercial regulator, and it should not be called a government."
And the man who uttered these words was the object of universal esteem by all the
ambassadors of the foreign courts then represented in our capital. None esteemed
him more than Sir Harry Parkes of her Britannic Majesty's Legation, who as an
adept in the art of Oriental diplomacy, was for a long time a shrewd upholder of
the British interests on our shores. "Be just and fear not" was Saigo's method of
running a government.
With such a singleness of view, he was naturally very clear-sighted as to the
outcome of the movements then going on around him. Long before the Revolution,
when the new government was yet a day-dream even to many of its advocates, it
was an accomplished reality to Saigo. It is said that, when, after many years of
banishment, he was sent to in his isle of exile to call him back to his old position of
responsibility, he told the messenger, with diagrams on the beach-sand, all the
manoeuvres he had framed in his mind for the upbuilding of the new empire; and
so true to the situation was the prescience then offered that the listener told his
friends afterwards, that in his view, Saigo was not a man but a god. And we have
seen his perfect self-possession during the Revolution, - a natural result of his clear
vision. When it had fairly begun, there was much anxiety in some quarters as to
the position of the Emperor in the new government, seeing that for well-nigh ten
centuries his real situation had been a very undefinable one. Mr. Fukuba, a
well-known court-poet, asked Saigo on this wise:
"The Revolution I desire to have; but when the new government is set up, where
shall we place our holy Emperor?"
To which Saigo's very explicit reply was as follows:
"In the new government we shall place the Emperor where he should be; that is
make him personally see to the affairs of the state, and so fulfill his
heaven-appointed mission."
No tortuosities in this man. Short, straight, clear as sunlight, as the ways of
righteousness always are.
Saigo left us no books. But he left us many poems, and several essays. Through
these occasional effusions of his, we catch glimpses of his internal state, and we
find it to be the same as was reflected in all his actions. Pedantry there is not in all
his writings. Unlike many Japanese scholars of his degree of attainment, his words
and similes are the simplest that can be imagined. For instance, can anything be
simpler than this:
"Hair I have of thousand strings,
Darker than the lac.
A heart I have an inch long,
Whiter than the snow.
My hair may divided be,
My heart shall never be."

Or this, very characteristic of him:

"Only one way, 'Yea and Nay;'
Heart ever of steel and iron.
Poverty makes great men;
Deeds are born in distress.
Through snow, plums are white,
Through frosts, maples are red;
If but Heaven's will be known,
Who shall seek slothful ease!"

The following bit of a mountain-song of his is perfectly natural to him:

"Land high, recesses deep,
Quietness is that of night.
I hear not human voice,
But look only at the skies."

We have space here only for a part of his essay entitled, "On the Production of
Wealth."
"In the book of 'Sa-den' it is written: 'Virtue is a source of which wealth is an
outcome.' Virtue prospers, and wealth comes by itself. Virtue declines, and in the
same proportion wealth diminishes. For wealth is by replenishing the land and
giving peace to the people. The small man aims at profiting himself; the great man,
at profiting the people. One is selfishness, and it decays. The other is
public-spiritedness, and it prospers. According as you use your substance, you have
prosperity or decay, abundance or poverty, rise or fall, life or death. Should we not
be on our guard therefore?
"The world says: 'Take and you shall have wealth, and give and you shall lose it.'
Oh what an error! I seek a comparison in agriculture. The covetous farmer sparing
of his seeds sows but niggardly; and then sits and waits for the harvest of autumn.
The only thing he shall have is starvation. The good farmer sows good seeds, and
gives all his cares thereto. The grains multiply hundredfold, and he shall have
more than he can dispose of. He that is intent upon gathering knows only of
harvesting, and not of planting. But the wise man is diligent in planting; therefore
the harvest comes without his seeking.
* * * * *
"To him who is diligent in virtue, wealth comes without his seeking it. Hence what
the' world calls loss is not loss, and what it calls gain is not gain. The wise man of
old thought it as gain to bless and give to the people, and loss to take from them.
Quite otherwise at present.
* * * * *
"Ah, can it be called wisdom to walk contrary to the ways of the sages, and yet
seek wealth and abundance for the people? Should it not be called unwisdom to
walk contrary to the law (true) of gain and loss, and yet devise means to enrich the
land? The wise man economizes to give in charity. His own distress troubles him
not; only that of his people does. Hence wealth flows to him as water gushes from
the spring. Blessings are rained down, and the people bathe in them. All this comes,
because he knows the right relation of wealth to virtue, and seeks the source, and
not the outcome."
"An old-school economy," I hear our modern Benthamites say. But it was the
economy of Solomon, and of One greater than Solomon, and it can never be old so
long as the universe stands as it did all these centuries. "There is that scattereth,
and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth
to poverty." "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you." Is not Saigo's essay a fit commentary on these
divine words?
If I am to mention the two greatest names in our history, I
unhesitatingly name Taiko and Saigo. Both had continental ambitions, and the
whole world as their field of action. Incomprehensively great above all their
countrymen both of them were, but of two entirely different kinds of greatness.
Taiko's greatness, I imagine, was somewhat Napoleonic. In him there was much of
the charlatan element so conspicuous in his European representative, though I am
sure in very much smaller proportion. His was the greatness of genius, of inborn
capacity of mind, great without attempting to be great. But not so Saigo's. His was
Cromwellian, and only for the lack of Puritanism, he was not a Puritan, I think.
Sheer will-power had very much to do in his case, - the greatness of moral kind, the
best kind of greatness. He tried to rebuild his nation upon a sound moral basis, in
which work he partially succeeded.




UESUGI YOZAN - A FEUDAL LORD


I-THE FEUDAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT<to contents>

IS the "Kingdom of Heaven" an impossibility in this poor earth of ours? Mankind
has yearned after it as a thing not wholly unattainable, and History from its very
beginning seems to be a succession of some undefinable attempts for the
realization of such a kingdom upon this earth. Christians have taken up the echo
of the Hebrew prophets, and for the nineteen Christian centuries they ceased not
to pray for the coming of such a kingdom among men. Indeed some impatient souls
among us imagined that such was possible, and History knows of no higher
examples of holy courage and noble self-sacrifice than a few bold attempts of
making such a kingdom a practicability among the fallen sons of Adam.
Savonarola's Florentine Republic, Cromwell's English Commonwealth, and Penn's
"Holy Experiment" upon the banks of the Delaware, were a few such attempts, -
the noblest pieces of human valor ever enacted upon the face of the globe. Yet the
ideal was only approximately realized. With all our improved machineries of
governments, we ourselves seem to be as far removed from the haven as our
ancestors were ten centuries ago. Indeed, so stationary appears our real situation
that a wise man among us startles us by stating that the human species has
progressed in only one direction, and that is downward.
Of course, tyrannies of all kinds we hate and detest. Despotic tyranny is now
known only under the Tropics, and even there it will be soon done away with. But
it is a foolishness to imagine that tyranny of any sort can make no entrance into
ballot-boxes. Tyranny is among us so long as we are in league with devils, and it
will not cease to exist among us till the last-named gentlemen are driven out
entirely from our midst. Hence we say, of the two kinds of tyranny mankind has
suffered from, namely the despotic kind and the ballot-box kind, the latter is only
the lesser of two evils, and no more. The better or the best is yet to come, though
when and how we are cautioned not to utter.
But let us all believe, and that unflinchingly, that no system can take the place of
virtue. Yea more, when virtue does exist, systems are hindrance rather than helps.
"The improved machineries" are intended more for binding robbers than for
helping saints. We consider the representative system of government to be a sort of
improved police system. Rogues and rascals are well kept down thereby, but no
hosts of policemen can take the place of a saint or a hero. ''Neither very bad nor
very good," must be said of this system.
Feudalism has had its defects, and for those defects' sake, we had it exchanged for
constitutionalism. But we fear the fire that was intended to burn rats burned the
barn also, and together with feudalism has gone away from us loyalty, chivalry,
and much of manliness and humaneness connected with it. Loyalty in its genuine
sense is possible only when the master and the subject are in direct contact with
each other. You bring a "system" between the two, and loyalty is not, as the master
is now no more a master but a governor, and the subject no more a subject but a
people. Then come wranglings for constitutional rights, and men go to parchments
for settling their disputes and not to hearts, as they used to in days of old.
Self-sacrifice and all its beauty come when I have my master to serve, or my
subject to care for. The strength of feudalism lies in this personal nature of the
relation between the governor and the governed. In its essence it is really the
family system applied to a nation. In its perfected form, therefore, it can be no
other than the ideal form of government, as no law or constitution is better or
higher than the Law of Love. Do we not read in the best of books that in the
promised kingdom of the future, we shall be called "My people," that "Thy rod and
Thy staff" shall comfort us? So we sincerely hope that feudalism is gone from us
not for ever. After a few more hundred or thousand years of constitutional wranglings,
when men shall have learnt that they are all children of one Father, and hence are
brothers, we do sincerely hope that feudalism will return to us once more, this time
in its perfect and glorified shape, and the true samurai shall be installed once more
in power "to spare the vanquished, and to crush the proud," and "the law of peace to found."
But while we are waiting for the coming of such a kingdom, let us refresh
ourselves by an account of something very much like it, once enacted upon this
terraqueous globe, and that in heathen Japan. Yes, before wisdom came from the
West, the land did know the ways of peace, and in its own secluded manner, "the
ways of man" were walked in, and "death was encountered with a hero's resolve."

II-THE MAN AND HIS WORK<to contents>

Yozan was a mere lad of seventeen when he came to the inheritance of the
territory of Yonezawa in the now province of Uzen. Born of the Akizuki family, a
rather inconsiderable daimio of Kiushu, he was adopted by the Uesugi, higher in
rank and larger in territorial possession. But as we shall presently see, the
adoption was a thankless privilege on his part, as he was thus involved in
responsibilities, the like of which were not to be found in the whole land. The boy
was recommended by his aunt to the elder lord of Yonezawa as "rather reticent and
meditative, filial piety very characteristic of him." Unlike the common sons of the
noble, he was singularly submissive to his tutor, Hosoi by name, who as a scholar
and man of high principle, was raised to this responsible position from a state of
total obscurity. The favorite story of a dutiful pupil often repeated to him by his
worthy tutor was on this wise: "Tokugawa Yorinobu, the powerful lord of Kii,
always looked with tender care upon a scar that was left upon his thigh, caused by
a sharp pinch given by his teachers for some disobedience to the latter's will. 'This,'
the great lord is reported to have often declared, 'is the warning my revered
teacher has left on me, that on looking at it always, I may always examine myself,
and be true to myself and to my people. But alas, the scar is fading with my age,
and with it my vigilance too." The young Yozan always wept when this story was
repeated to him, - a sensitiveness of the rarest occurence at the time when princes
were reared in the closest seclusion, and were, as a rule, no more conscious of their
duty toward their inferiors, than of the reason that kept them in power and
opulence. That saying of a Chinese sage "Be ye as tender to your people as to a
wound in your body" seemed to have impressed him to the very bottom of his heart,
and the text became to him his own, and guided him in all his future dealings with
his people.
The man so sensitive cannot but be religiously so as well. On the day of his
installment in his office, he sent in the following oath to the temple of Kasuga, his
guardian god through his life:
"I. The exercises, literary and military, which I have prescribed to myself shall I
pursue without negligence.
"II. To be a father and a mother to my people shall be my first and chief endeavour.
"III. The words that follow shall I not forget day and night :
No extravagance, no danger.
Give in charity, but waste not.
"IV. Inconsistencies of words with actions, injustice in reward and punishment,
unfaithfulness and indecency, - from these shall I diligently guard myself.
"The above shall I strictly observe in future, and in case of my negligence of the
same, let divine punishment overtake me at once, and the family fortune be for
ever consumed.
These,
Uesugi, of the Office of Danjo,*[ His official title.]
Fujiwara Harunori.
The First day of the Eighth Month
of the Fourth Year of Meiwa (1767)."
The work this man was to face was one, which no soul less than his, would dare
to undertake. His adopted clan of Uesugi was in time before Taiko one of the most
powerful in the whole country, holding, as it did, the large and wealthy province of
Echigo, together with parts of several other provinces on the western coast of
Japan. The clan was removed by Taiko to the Aidzu district, and its power was
greatly reduced thereby. Yet it was still a powerful clan, with a revenue of over
1,000,000 koku of rice and its lord was counted among the five great daimios of the
country. Through its siding with the anti-Tokugawa party in the battle of
Sekigahara (1600), the seat of the clan was again removed, this time to an
out-of-the-way district of Yonezawa, with the reduced revenue of 300,000 koku.
Then to make bad worse, the revenue was once more cut off one half, and when
Yozan came to be the chief, the Uesugi was a daimio of 150,000 koku, with subjects
once supported by 1,000,000 koku, and all the habits and practices established
upon the latter basis. We need not wonder, therefore, when we hear that the new
territory scarcely supported the clan, that its debts amounted to millions, that
taxes and exactions scared off the population, that penury and destitution
prevailed everywhere in the district. Yonezawa is in the southern part of the
province of Uzen, has no sea-coast, and its fertility and natural resources ranked
very low in the country. The whole made the case a most hopeless one, and the
dissolution of the clan, and the bankruptcy of the people under its protection,
seemed to be inevitable at no distant future. We can well understand the extremity
to which the whole clan was reduced, when we hear that often-times they were
unable to raise five pieces of gold by their united effort, - a state of poverty hard to
believe about a daimio, who owned 750 square miles of land, with a population of
over l00,000. The boy Yozan's business was first to put a stop to this state of things,
then to restore it to something of tolerability, and if his guardian god of Kasuga
would bless him more, to make of his territory an ideal state as laid out by
philosophic sages of old.
Two years after his installment in the office, he made his first entrance to his own
territory of Yonezawa. It was in late autumn when Nature lent sadness to the state
of things already sad enough in themselves. As the procession passed by villages
after villages, deserted, neglected, and depopulated, the sensitive heart of the
young chief was deeply touched by the sights before him. It was then that his
attendants observed him in his norimono diligently engaged in blowing at a
charcoal fire in a little hibachi before him. "We can serve your Lordship with good
fire," said one of them. "Not now," Yozan replied; "I am now learning a great lesson.
What it is I will tell you afterward." In a hotel where the procession stopped for the
night, the chief called his attendants together, and explained to them a new and
valuable lesson he had learnt that afternoon. He said: "As despair took hold of me,
as I witnessed with my own eyes my people's miseries, my attention was called to a
little charcoal fire before me, that was on the point of going out. I slowly took it up,
and by blowing at it gently and patiently, I succeeded in resuscitating it - to my very
satisfaction. 'May I not be able in the same way to resuscitate the land and the
people that are under my care?' This I said to myself, and hope revived within me."

III-THE ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM <to contents>

Men are natural enemies of changes, in Japan as elsewhere. Young Yozan must
effect changes, else salvation was impossible. But changes in others must begin
with changes in one's own self. Naturally, finance was the first question to be
settled. Only by the utmost frugality could it be restored to anything like order and
credit. The chief himself would curtail his family expense of 1,050 pieces of gold to
209 pieces. He would keep only nine maids in his household instead of fifty as
before; would wear nothing but cotton stuff, and would eat no more than soup and
one dish at a meal. His subjects were to be likewise economical, but not in the
proportion he himself would be. The annual allowances were reduced one-half; and
the savings thus realized were to be used to liquidate the accumulated debt of the
clan. This state of things must continue for sixteen years before the clan could be
free from its pressing obligations! This is, however, only the negative aspect of the
finance reform.
"The people's happiness is the ruler's wealth." "As well expect an egg-plant fruit
from a cucumber-vine as to look for wealth from misgoverned people." And no good
government is possible without right men in right places. And men he would have
by all means, though the hereditary nature of the feudal government was against
this democratic idea of "a man according to his abilities." Out of his impoverished
treasury he paid very liberally to men of ability, and these he placed over his
people in three distinct capacities. First, there were the governor and his
sub-officers who were general supervisors, "fathers and mothers of the people,"
taking upon themselves all the duties of the general administrative affairs of the
little state. To these one of Yozan's injunctions read as follows:
"The child has no knowledge of its own; but she who mothers it understands its
needs and ministers thereto, because she does this from her sincere heart.
Sincerity begets love, and love begets knowledge. Only be sincere, and nothing is
unattainable. As is the mother to her child, so must the officer be to his people. If
but the heart that loves the people lies in you, you need not lament that lack of
wisdom in you."
The second class of his officers were a kind of itinerant preachers who were to
teach the people in morals and ceremonies, "of filial piety, of pity toward widows
and orphans, of matters of marriage, of decency in clothing, of food and ways of
eating, of funeral services, of house-repairs, etc." The whole territory was divided
into twelve districts (dioceses) for this purpose, each with a presiding teacher
(lay-bishop) over it. These bishops were to meet twice a year for mutual conference,
and to make occasional reports to the chief of the progress of their work among the
people.
The third class were policemen of the strictest kind. They were to detect the people's
vices and crimes, and to punish them severely for their just dues. Mercy they were
to show none, and every nook and corner of villages and towns was to be carefully
investigated. It was a diocese's shame to produce offenders, and every preacher took
upon himself responsibilities for the troubles his district gave to the police. Yozan's
injunction to the two classes of officers was as follows :
"Go with Zizo's*[God of mercy.] mercy, ye preachers, but forget not to carry
Fudo's*[ God of justice.] justice within you.
"Show Emma's*[God of justice.] justice and righteous wrath, ye police; but fail
not to store Zizo's mercy in your bosom."
The three functions together worked admirably. His general administrative
policies went out through the governor and his subsidiaries. But Yozan says, "To
rule a people that is not taught is costly and ineffectual." And such teaching was
furnished by his lay-bishops, to give "life and warm circulation to the whole." But
teaching without discipline is also ineffectual. Hence the strictest police system to
make the teaching more effectual, and the mercy shown, more conspicuous. The
young lord must have had no little insight into human nature to have enable him
to frame such a system for governing mankind.
The new machinery was put in operation for five years without meeting any
molestation from any quarter. Order began to show itself, and hopes revived of the
possible resuscitation of the despaired-of society. Then came the trial, the severest
of all, under which souls weaker than Yozan's would have surely succumbed.
Conservatives showed themselves, - those who love the old for its own sake, if not
for their bellies' sake. Renovations of any kind are objectionable to such men. One
day, seven of the highest dignitaries of the district approached the young chief with
their grievances, and tried to wrest from him words for the immediate abrogation
of the new system of government. The chief was silent. He would have his people
judge him; and if they objected to the new administration, he would willingly give
its place and his own to the better and the abler. So he called the general
conference of all his subjects at once. Armored and weaponed, they in thousands
gather in the castle, and wait for the business. Meanwhile our lord resorts to the
temple of the god Kasuga to pray for the peaceful issue of the trouble. Then he
meets his beloved subjects, and asks them if in their opinions his administration is
against Heaven's will. The governor and his associates say, No. The police, one and
all, say, No. Captains and sergeants say, No. "Different mouths with one voice," say,
No. Our lord is satisfied. Vox populi est vox dei. His mind is made up. He calls the
seven before him, and passes sentences upon them. Five of them had halves of
their fiefs forfeited, and "shut up within their gates for ever." Two of them, the
head conspirators, were dealt with according to the manners of samurai, - were
"given harakiri," bowel-cutting, a dignified method of self-destruction !
Conservatives and grumblers thus disposed of, good began to flow in in
abundance. No reform is complete till this is done. The young chief is a veritable
hero notwithstanding his religiosity and sensitiveness of heart. We may now
expect a prosperous reign from him.


IV-THE INDUSTRIAL REFORMS <to contents>

Yozan's industrial policies were two: (1) to leave no waste places in his territory,
(2) and no idlers among his people. Though not naturally fertile, he thought he
could make his land give 300,000 koku instead of 150,000, by sheer industry on his
and his people's part. Agriculture he encouraged therefore with his whole heart.
So, a few years after he assumed the government, he went through the ceremony of
"Earth-Worship" on a grand scale. The lord, the governor, country-officers,
village-officers, lay-bishops, the heads of the police, all dressed in sacerdotal robes,
proceed first to the temple of Kasuga, to inform the god of their aim and purpose.
The procession then marches to a piece of ground recently opened, and there with
all solemnity the chief first takes up a hand-plough, and strikes three times into
the ground. The governor comes next, and strikes nine times. Then county-officers
twenty-seven times, village-officers eighty-one times, and so on to the very "tiller
of the soil." The whole was a public announcement of the most august kind, that
from that time on the earth was to be sacredly handled, and all blessings of life
were to be expected from it. No bad worship after all!
His samurai he turned into farmers in time of peace, and recovered thousands of
acres from desolation and wilderness in that way. He ordered lacquer-trees to be
extensively planted. Every samurai family was required to plant 15 nurslings in its
yard; every family other than samurai, 5; and every temple, 20 within its
enclosure. For every one tree that was planted above the required number, the
reward of twenty cents was given; and for every one that died and was not replaced
by another, a fine of the same sum was required. Over one million nurslings of this
valuable plant were thus planted in his territory within a very short period, - a
matter of very great consequence to the posterity. A million more of kozo*[ Paper-plants,
Broussonetia papyrifera.] were planted in those places which allowed of no cultivation.
But Yozan's chief aim was to make his territory one of the greatest silk-producing
districts in the land. For this a fund was required which his impoverished treasury
was not able to supply. He therefore cut fifty more out of the two hundred and
nine pieces of gold which he had reserved for his family-expenses, and did with it
as much as he could to forward this industry among his people. The young chief says,
"Slender means is a large sum if long continued." So he continued for fifty long years,
till the few thousands of mulberry stocks he had commenced with propagated themselves,
and his whole territory had no more space left for them. The Yonezawa district of to-day
and its splendid silk-produce testify to the patience and benevolence of its ancient chief.
The Yonezawa brand now ranks highest in the market.
Still waste lands remained in his territory. In a rice-producing country like Japan,
fertility means abundance of water-supply, and insufficient irrigation leaves large
portions of land in comparative sterility. Conveyance of water through long
distances seemed an impossibility with Yozan's exhausted treasury. But frugality
with him meant no parsimony. "Give in charity, and waste not," was his motto.
When public welfare was assured, he could think of no impossibility, for he had
patience to make up the lack in his means. So it was that the poorest of daimios
projected and completed two of the most stupendous engineering works ever
undertaken in Old Japan. One was the conduction of water for a distance of
twenty-eight miles through viaducts and long and high embankments, all of
which are master-pieces of hydraulic engineering. The other was the turning of the
water-course of a large stream through a tunnel, 1,200 feet of which was through
solid rocks. This latter work took twenty years of Yozan's administration, and is
by far the most important of his services to his territory. Among his subjects he had
one Kuroi, a slow speechless man, passing for a good-for-nothing till the chief
found out his usefulness. The man was a mathematician of the rarest ability. With
his rude instruments he made careful surveys of the territory, and planned out the
works, which to his contemporaries, appeared like real madness. He completed the
first, and died while engaged in the second. The work was continued nevertheless
following the plan laid out by him; and twenty years after its commencement, the
tunnel was bored through from both ends, the lower section meeting the upper four
feet below the latter, - a wonder of accuracy in calculation when the transit or the
theodolite was an unknown instrument in the land. Deserts began to blossom, and
fertility flowed in abundance into Yozan's territory. Yonezawa alone of all northern
provinces knows of no draught to this day.
That nothing might escape the solicitous attention of the chief for his people's
welfare, he imported improved breeds of horses, stocked ponds and streams with
carps and eels, invited miners and weavers from other provinces, removed all the
commercial obstructions, and endeavored to develop in every way all the resources
of which his territory was capable. These with his extermination of idlers from
among his people, and their conversion into useful laborers, brought about changes
such that the once poorest district in the land became a type of productivity near
the close of his life, and has continued so ever since.


V-THE SOCIAL AND MORAL REFORMS <to contents>

One beautiful feature of Oriental knowledge is that it has never treated economy
apart from morality. Wealth with their philosophers is always the effect of virtue,
and the two bear the same relation to each other that the fruit bears to the tree.
You manure the tree, and the result will surely be fruit without your effort.
You "fertilise love to the people," and wealth will be a necessary outcome.
"Therefore the great man thinketh of the tree, and he hath the fruit.
The small man thinketh of the fruit, and he hath it not." Such was
the Confucianism indoctrinated into Yozan's mind by his worthy teacher Hosoi.
In this lies the grandeur of all of Yozan's industrial reforms that his chief aim was
to make virtuous people out of his subjects. The hedonistic view of happiness was
repugnant to his idea. Wealth was to be had that all might be made "decorous
people" thereby, for, said the ancient sage, "Decorum is known only when life's
necessities are had." Remarkably free from the conventionalities of the time, he
aimed to lead his heaven-entrusted people into "the ways of man," alike binding on
the daimio and the tiller of the soil.
Some years after he came to his office, when his other reforms were fairly set
a-going, he revived the clan-school long in suspense, and named it Kojokwan, or
the "Institute for the Promotion of Humility," very expressive of the dominant
virtue he had in view. The magnitude and equipment of the school were out of all
proportions to the then financial state of the clan, for besides having one of the
greatest scholars of the day for its provost, - Hosoi Heishu, Yozan's own tutor,
- it provided many free scholarships to enable the worthy poor of his dominion
to get the advantage of a high-class education. For nearly a century after
its establishment, the Yonezawa school continued to be a type and example
to the whole country. The institute still remains, retaining its old name,
and is perhaps the oldest of the kind in the land.
But no administration of love is complete till it provides means for the healing of
the sick, and in this, as might be expected, our good chief was not wanting. A
medical school was started, for which two of the then most notable physicians of
the country were invited to be instructors. A botanical garden was also opened for
the cultivation of medicinal plants, and pharmacy was taught and practiced on the
spot with the products thus obtained. At the time when the European medical art
was looked upon with fear and suspicion, Yozan caused several of his subjects to be
trained in the new system by Dr. Sugita Genhaku, of great celebrity as the first
Japanese physician after the Dutch method. Once convinced of its superiority over
the Japanese and Chinese medicine, he spared no expense to get all the medical
apparatuses he possibly could, and deposited them in his school to be freely used in
instruction and practice, Thus fifty years before Perry's squadron appeared in the
Bay of Yedo, one of the mountain-districts of north Japan had the Western
medicine adopted by the general public. Yozan's Chinese education had not made
a Chinaman out of him.
Of his purely social reforms, we have space for but two of them.
His abolition of public prostitution was in entire accordance with his views of
"administration of love." To the usual objection that thus might be cut off a channel
for the vile passion to spend itself, and endanger social purity in other and more
heinous ways, his plain answer was, that "if the passion is to be thus allayed, no
amount of prostitution is enough for the purpose." He had it abolished, and could
keep it abolished without any social inconvenience whatever.
His instruction to the farming class, - by far the most important in his dominion,
- on "the Institution of the Associations of Five and Ten" (Go-Ju-kumiai) is so
characteristic of his ideal of the perfect state that we give it here entire, keeping
ourselves as close to the original as possible.
"The farmer's mission is in soil (tillage) and mulberries (silk-raising).
Diligent in these, he feeds his father and mother, wife and children, and gives his
dues to the government to have its protection. But all this is possible by the mutual
dependence of one upon another, for which purpose associations of some kind are
necessary. Not that you had them not already, but as we hear of none that can
be thoroughly depended upon, we herein institute anew the Associations of Five
and Ten and the Associations of Five Villages as follows:
"I. - The members of the Association of Five*[Only heads of families were counted.
The rest, the same.] should be in constant intercourse one with another, share
the joys and sorrows of each, as do the members of one and the same family.
"II. - The members of the Association of Ten should have frequent intercourse one
with another, and bear to the family affairs of each, a tie equal to their blood
relationship.
"III. - They of one village should be like friends in helping and serving one another.
"IV. - The villages that constitute the Association of Five Villages should help
one another in time of troubles, as befit true neighbors in all such cases.
"V. - Be ye thus kindly disposed one toward another, and fail not. If there is
one among you who is old and has no child, or is young and has no parents, or is
poor and cannot adopt sons, or is widowed, or is a cripple and support himself, or
is sick and has no means of help, or is dead and is left without burial, or has met
fire and exposed to rain and dew, or if by other calamities his family is in
distress, - let any such who has no one else to depend upon be taken up by his
Association of Five, and be cared for as its own. In case it lies not in the said
Association's power to succor him, let his Association of Ten lend him its help. If his
case is more than the latter can do for him, let his village see to the removal of his
distress and make possible his existence. Should some calamity overtake one village
so that its existence is endangered thereby, how can its neighboring villages stand
aloof without extending help to it? The four of the Association of Five Villages
should give it willing salvation.
"VI. - To encourage the good, to teach the bad, to promote temperance, to check
luxury, and so to enable each to abide in his mission, - these are the aims for which
these associations are formed. If there is one who neglects his farm, or follows not
his trade and runs to other employments, or indulges in dances, theatres, banquets
and other laxities, such and such like should have peremptory admonition, first of
his Association of Five, and then of Ten; and in case he is still refractory, he must
be privily reported to the village authority and receive due treatment.
February, 2nd year of Kyowa (1802)."
Not much of officialism in all these; yet we declare we never have seen the like of
them promulgated and put into practice in any other portion of the globe except in
Yozan's dominion of Yonezawa. What is called the farmers' guild in America and
elsewhere is nothing more than an industrial cooperation, with selfishness as
its main motive. We should go to the Apostolic Church itself to find anything
like our chief's Associations of farmers.
With his polices and lay-bishops, schools and various "instructions," and above all,
with his own example, he moulded his clan of 150,000 souls to his ideals slowly
but effectively. How far he succeeded in so doing can be seen by the following
few extracts from an account of his dominion given by a well-known scholar,
Kuranari Ryucho, who went there for the special purpose of observing
"how the saint rules his people."
"In Yonezawa there is what they call the Label-Market. Away from
the habitations of men, by the side of public roads, sandals, shoes, fruits and other
articles are exposed for sale with their prices labeled upon them, and their owners
all absent. Men go there, leave the prices as marked, fetch the goods, and pass on,
and nobody imagines that any stealing will be done in these markets.
"In Lord Yozan's government, the men highest in office are usually the poorest.
R- is his prime minister, and no body can be compared with him in the chief's
favor and confidence. Yet, as I observed his ways of living, his food and raiment
reminded me of those of a poor student.
"The dominion has no custom-houses and all such obstructions to free commerce
on its borders, and yet no smuggling is ever attempted."
Let not our readers imagine that we are writing here an idyl about some mythic
land of unknown ages. The things of which we write were practical realities; not
yet one hundred years have passed since they were enacted in a well-known
portion of this globe; and if they are no more realities such as they were in the days
of their great enactor, their after-influences are distinctively readable in the place
where they were tried, and among the people who practiced them.

VI-THE MAN HIMSELF <to contents>

It is not fashionable in these days to make any mortals more than common sons of
Adam, especially so if such happen to be heathens, "outside of the pale of grace and
revelation;" and we are often criticized for making gods out of our heroes. But
perhaps of all men, Yozan has the least need of having his faults and weaknesses
counted up; as he himself was more conscious of such than any of his biographers
could possibly be. He was a man in the full sense of the term. Only a weak man
sends in oaths to a temple on his entrance to a responsible office. It was his
weakness (if we may so term it) that drove him to his guardian god when a crisis
overtook him and his clan. One day, while in his residence at Yedo, a roll containing
the names of those subjects of his who were to be rewarded for their filial piety was
sent to him for examination and approval. He looked it over, and ordered it to be kept
in a drawer till his tutor's lecture was over. It was over, but the important business
slipped from his mind. One of his attendants severely reprimanded him for
the negligence that was unforgivable in a "lord of thousand." The chief's shame
knew no bound. There he sat, for the whole night in repentance, weeping,
and "could not touch his breakfast because of his shame." The next morning
the tutor was called in, absolution was passed over him by a quotation from
the book of Confucius, and then "his food passed through his throat." Let not
Historical Criticism be too harsh to a soul so sensitive as this.
But nowhere do we find the transparency and integrity of his character more than
in his home and domestic relations. His frugality we have already touched upon.
He kept up his cotton stuff and meagre table till the very end of his life, when the
credit of his treasury was fully restored, and he had abundance at his command.
His old tatami he would not replace till further remedy became impossible; and he
was often seen patching up torn mats by pasting papers over them.
His idea of home was a most exalted one. Herein he followed literally the words of
the sage who said, "He alone ruleth his family who ruleth himself; and he alone
can rule a nation whose family is in right order." At the time when nobody
doubted the right of concubinage, especially in men of his social standing, and
when a few daimios had less than four or five concubines, Yozan had only one who
was his senior by ten years, and under the following exceptional circumstance. The
lady to whom he was wedding in his minority by their parents, according to the
then custom of the land, proved to be a born imbecile, and her intellect was never
above that of a child of ten years of age. Her however he treated with genuine love
and respect, made for her toys and dolls, and comforted her in all ways, and for
twenty years of their wedded lives he never showed any dissatisfaction with his
fate. His other consorts was left in Yonezawa while they lived mostly in Yedo, and
was never allowed the dignity he attached to his imbecile wife. The latter of course
left him no children.
Naturally he was benignant father, and he made strenuous efforts for the
education of his children. He clearly saw the importance involved in this part of his
duty, as in the hereditary system of the Feudal Government, his people's future
happiness depended wholly upon the kind of rulers he would leave after him. His
boys he trained in "the knowledge of the poor," that ''they might not forfeit their
great mission and sacrifice it to their selfish purpose." That we may have a look
into his ways of training his children, we give here one of many beautiful letters he
wrote to his granddaughters. It was addressed to the eldest of them when she was
leaving her paternal mansion to join her consort in the metropolis.
"Three influences make a man; his parents, his teacher, and his master. Each is
unfathomable in beneficence, but the parents excel all others......Our being in this
universe we owe to our parents. That this body is a part of theirs should never be
forgotten. In thy service to them, therefore, comport thyself with a heart that
dissembles not; for if sincerity reside there (in heart), even though thou miss the
mark, thou art not far from it. Think not a thing is out of thy power because of thy
lack in wisdom. Sincerity makes up the lack thereof........The ruling of a dominion
may appear a stupendous task to thee. But know that the 'root' of a dominion is in
its well-ordered families. And there can be no ordered families without the right
relation of the wife to her husband. The source in disorder, how canst thou
expect a well-ordered stream?.........In thy youthful womanhood, it is very natural
that thy mind should often be taken up with the matter of dress. But forsake not
the frugal habits thou hast been taught. Devote thyself to silk-worm raising and
other womanly industries; and at the same time feed thy mind with poems
and books of poetry. Seek not culture and enlightenment for their own sake.
The aim of all knowledge is to lead us into ways of virtue. Select such knowledge
therefore as shall teach thee to do good and avoid evil. Poetry softens the heart.
With it the moon and flowers abase us not, but our sentiments are lifted up thereby
............Thy husband is to teach the people as their father, and thou art to love them
as their mother. Then they honour you both as their parents; and what joys can
excel this?............
"To repeat the same things to thee, serve thy parents-in-law with all fidelity, and
comfort them. With obedience to thy lord and husband in all quietness, may your
prosperity know no end, and may my daughter be honoured as a virtuous woman
worthy of the land that gave her birth.
"On My Beloved Daughter's Leaving for the Metropolis:

When Spring overtaketh thee,
And raiment of flowers thou puttest on,
Forget not Winter thou hast had,
In thy father's mountain-home.
Harunori."

The hard-working abstemious man enjoyed continuous health of three-score years
and ten. He had his early hopes mostly realized; - saw his clan firmly established,
his people well supplied, and his whole dominion abundantly replenished. The clan
that had not been able to raise five pieces of gold by their united effort, could now
raise ten thousands at a moment's notice. The end of such a man could not be
anything but peace. On the 19th of March, the 5th year of Bunsei (1822), he
breathed his last. "The people wept as if they had lost their good grandparents.
The lamentations of all classes no pen could describe. On the day of his funeral,
tens of thousands of mourners filled the way-side. Hands clasped, and heads all
bowed, deep wailings went up from them all, and even mountains, rivers,
and plants, joined in the universal sorrow."


NINOMIYA SONTOK - A PEASANT SAINT

I-JAPANESE AGRICULTURE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY <to contents>

"AGRICULTURE is the ground-basis of the national existence"; essentially so in a
country like ours, where, despite all its maritime and commercial advantages, the
main support of the people comes from its soil. Natural fertility alone cannot
support so immense a population upon so limited an area, - 48,000,000 upon
150,000 sq. miles, only 20 per cent of which are cultivable. The land must
be made to yield its maximum, and human genius and industry must be exerted
to the utmost for that end. We consider Japanese agriculture to be the most
remarkable of the kind in the world. Every clod of earth receives
thoughtful manipulation, and to every plantlet that starts from the ground
is given a care and attention well nigh
bordering upon parental affection. The science we lacked in we supplied with
strenuous industry, and as a result we have 13,000,000 acres of cultivated surface,
kept with all the nicety and perfection of market-gardens.
Such a high degree of cultivation is possible only by more than ordinary industry
on the people's part. A little negligence is sure to call in desolation of the most
unattractive character. We know of nothing so disheartening as a once cultivated
field abandoned by human labor. Without the vigor and luxuriance of the primitive
forest, the desolation of the deserted field is that of black despair. For ten men who
would dare to break up the virgin soil, not one will apply himself to recover the
abandoned land. While the Americas invite the thrifty nations of the world,
Babylon remains as a habitation of owls and scorpions.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Japanese agriculture was in a most
lamentable state. The long-continued peace of two-hundred years brought in
luxuries and dissipation among men of all classes, and indolence thus introduced
had immediate effects upon the cultivated fields. In many places, the revenue from
land decreased by two-thirds. Thistles and bushes invaded the once productive
fields, and what little was left in cultivation had to bear all the feudal dues levied
from the land. Village after village wore an aspect of utter desolation. Honest labor
becoming too onerous, men betook themselves to dishonest ways. From the kind
earth they ceased to look for her ever bounteous gifts, and by cheating and
defrauding one another they sought to acquire what little they needed to sustain
their ill-doomed existence. The whole cause of their evils was moral, and Nature
refusing to reward her ignoble sons, brought about all the miseries that befell the
land. Then was born a man whose spirit was in league with Nature's laws.

II-BOYHOOD <to contents>

Ninomiya .Kinjiro, surnamed Sontok (Admirer of Virtue), was born in the seventh
year of Tenmei (1787). His father was a farmer of very small means in an obscure
village in the province of Sagami, notable, however, among his neighbors
for his charity and public spirit. At the age of 16, Sontok, with his two little brothers,
was orphaned, and the conference of his relatives decided upon the dissolution
of his poor family, and he, the eldest, was placed under the custody of one of
his paternal uncles. Here the lad's whole endeavor was to be as little burdensome to
his uncle as possible. He lamented that he could not do a man's part, and to make up
what he in his youth could not accomplish in daytime, he would work till very late
at midnight. Then came a thought to him that he would not grow up to be
an illiterate man, an "open-blind" to the wisdoms of ancients. So he procured a copy of
Confucius' Great Learning, and in the depth of night after the day's full work,
he applied himself assiduously to his classical study. But soon his uncle found him
at his study, sharply reprimanded him for the use of precious oil for work from which
he (the uncle) could not derive any benefit, and could see no practical good to
the youth himself. Sontok considered his uncle's resentment reasonable, and gave up
his study till he could have oil of his own to burn. So the next spring, he broke up a
little land that belonged to nobody, on the bank of a river, and there planted some
rape-seed and gave all of his holidays to the raising of this crop of his own. At the
end of one year, he had a large bagful of the seed, the product of his own hand, and
received directly from Nature as a reward of his honest labor. He took the seed to a
neighbouring oil-factory, had it exchanged for a few gallons of the oil, and was glad
beyond expression that he could now resume his study without drawing from his
uncle's store. Triumphantly he returned to his night-lesson, not without some hope

of words of applause from his uncle for patience and industry such as his. But no!
the uncle said that the youth's time was also his, seeing that he supported him,
and that he could not afford to let any of his men engage in so unprofitable a work
as book-reading. Sontok again thinks his uncle is reasonable, follows his behest,
and goes to mat weaving and sandal-making after the day's heavy work
upon the farm is done. Since then, his studies were prosecuted on his way to and
from hills whereunto he was daily sent to fetch hay and fuel for his uncle's household.
His holidays were his, and he was not one to throw them away for amusements.
His experiment with the rape-seed taught him the value of earnest labor, and he
wished to renew his experiment upon a larger scale. He found in his village a spot
changed into a marsh-pond by a recent flood, wherein was a capital opportunity for
him to employ his holidays for useful purposes. He drained the pond, levelled its
bottom, and prepared it for a snug little rice-field. There he planted some seedlings
that he picked out of the surplus usually cast away by farmers, and bestowed upon
them a summer's watchful care. The autumn brought him a bagful (2 bushels) of
golden grain, and we can imagine the joy of our orphan-boy who for the first time
in his life had his life-stuff provided him as a reward for his humble effort.
The crop he gathered that autumn was the fund upon which he started
his eventful career. True, independent man was he! He learnt that Nature is
faithful to honest sons of toil, and all his subsequent reforms were based
upon this simple principle that Nature rewardeth abundantly them
that obey her laws.
A few years afterward he left his uncle's house, and with what little grain he
gathered with his own hand out of the mere refuse lands he discovered and
improved in his village, he returned to his paternal cottage now deserted
for many years. With his patience, faith, and industry, nothing stood
in his way on his attempt to convert chaos and desolation into order and
productivity. Declivities of hills, waste spots on river-banks, roadsides,
marshes, all added wealth and substance to him, and before many years
he was a man of no little means, respected by his entire neighborhood
for his exemplary economy and industry. He conquered all things
for himself, and he was ready to help others to make similar conquests
for themselves.

III-THE TEST OF HIS ABILITY <to contents>

His fame daily increasing, his worth was recognized by the Lord of Odawara,
whose subject he was, and who as the then Prime-Minister of the Tycoon's
Government, wielded an influence second to none in the Empire. So valuable a
subject was not to be left buried in the obscurity of village life; but in the society of
his time, when class-distinctions were so strong, the promotion of a peasant to any
position of influence was possible only when he gave unmistakable evidence of
extraordinary ability, enough to silence popular protest that was sure to be
brought against any such infraction of regular social routine. The job that was
selected for this purpose was of most disappointing nature to any but one of
Sontok's indomitable patience. Among the feudal possessions of the Lord of
Odawara were the three villages of Monoi, Yokota, and Tosho in the province
of Shimotzuke, which, through the neglect of several generations, had gone
into fearful desolation. The three villages once counted 450 families,
and tendered as their annual feudal dues l0,000 bags (20,000 bushels)
of rice to their rightful Lord. But now that wild Nature invaded their fields,
and badgers and foxes shared habitations with men, the population numbered
only one-third of what it had been, and 2,000 bags were the utmost that would
be levied from the impoverished farmers. With poverty came moral degradation,
and the once thrifty villages were now dens of gamblers. Their restoration was
attempted several times; but neither money nor authority was of any avail
when the villagers themselves were confirmed thieves and idlers.
A more sanguine master might have determined upon the withdrawal of
the entire population, and by the importation of new and more virtuous labor,
might have begun to recover the fields left desolate by his indolent subjects.
But, these villages, if good for no purpose, just served the purpose which
the Lord of Odawara had in view. A man who could restore these villages
to their original wealth and prosperity might be entrusted with the restoration
of all deserted villages (of which there were a great many) in the country;
and he who succeeded where all before him had failed might be brought
before the public as their rightful leader, and be clothed with proper authority
without fear of discontent from the titled classes. This was the job then
which Sontok was prevailed upon by his master to undertake.
The peasant declined the honor upon the ground of his humble birth and
his total inability for a work of so public a nature; - he a poor tiller of the soil,
and the utmost he expected to accomplish in his life was the restoration of
his own family-property, and that not by his ability, but by the inherited merits
of his ancestors. For three long years the Lord insisted upon his demand
from his subject, who as persistently maintained his modesty and request
for peaceful domesticity under his own thatched roof. When, however,
the importunities of his worthy superior were no longer to be resisted,
Sontok asked for permission to carefully examine the situation of
the villages he was to revive. Thither he went upon his own feet,
a distance of 130 miles, and for months remained among the people,
visiting them from house to house, and carefully watching their ways of living;
made a close study of the nature of the soil, the extent of wilderness, drainage,
possible means of irrigation, etc., and gathered all the data for making
his full estimate for the possible restoration of the deserted district.
His report to the Lord of Odawara was most discouraging; but the case was
not one to be wholly given up. "The art of love alone can restore peace and
abundance to those poor people," said he in his report. "Grants in money,
or release from taxes, will in no way help them in their distress. Indeed,
one secret of their salvation lies in withdrawing all monetary help from them.
Such help only induces avarice and indolence, and is a fruitful source of
dissensions among the people. The wilderness must be opened by its own resources,
and poverty must be made to rescue itself. Let my Lord be satisfied
with the revenue that can be reasonably expected from his famished district"
and expect no more from it. Should one tan*[ Tan is about one-fourth of an acre.]
of such a held yield two bags of rice, one bag should go to the sustenance of
the people, and the other to the fund for the opening-up of the rest of the wilderness.
In this way alone was this our fruitful Nippon opened to cultivation in the days of
the gods. All was wilderness then; and without any outside help, by their own efforts,
with the land's own resources, they made fields, gardens, roads, and cities, as we see
them now. Love, diligence, self-help, - in the strict enforcement of these virtues lies
the hope of these villages; and I should not wonder, if, ten years from this date,
with patient application of ourselves in the work with all sincerity, we bring them
back to their original prosperity."
Bold, reasonable, inexpensive plant! Who will not consent to such a plan? Seldom
was such a scheme of restoration of villages ever proposed, making moral forces
prominent factors in reforms of economic kind. It was the economic application of
Faith. The man had a tincture of Puritanic blood in him; or rather he was a
genuine Japanese undefiled yet by the Greatest-Happiness-Philosophy of the
Occidental importation. He also found men who believed in his words, his good
Lord the first of all. How did the Western "civilization" change us within
a hundred years or so!
The plan was adopted, and our peasant-moralist was to be the virtual governor of
these villages for ten years. But sad was he to leave the restorative work of his ancestral
property only half-completed. To a man of his ardent sincerity
anything but a whole-souled devotion to any enterprise is sin; and now that he undertakes
a public work, his private interests are to be wholly disregarded. "He that would save
the homes of thousands can do so only at the expense of his own home," he says to himself.
He gets his wife's consent to the sacrifice of their cherished hope, tells all of his decisions
"audibly at his ancestors' graves," finishes up his home, and like a man bound
for another world, he leaves his native village, "burning all ships behind him,;
and enters upon the task he so boldly guaranteed to his Lord and countrymen.
With the details of his "battles with wilderness, and wildness of his people's
heart," we will not concern ourselves at present. Of arts and policies he had none.
His simple faith was this, that "the sincerity of a single soul is strong enough to
move both heaven and earth." He denied to himself all sweet things, put on
nothing but cotton stuffs, never ate at his people's houses, slept only two hours a
day, was in the field before any of his men was, remained there till all left, and
himself endured the hardest of lots that befell his poor villagers. He judged his men
with the same standard with which he judged himself, the sincerity of motives.
With him the best laborer is not he who does most work, but one who works with
the noblest motive. A man was recommended to him as the hardest worker, one
who did three men's work, the most affable fellow, etc. To all such recommendations
our peasant-governor was for a long time indifferent; but when
pressed by his associates for the due reward of this "affable fellow," Sontok called
the man to himself, and required of him to perform the day's labor in his presence
in the same way that he was reported to do it before other officers. The man owned
his inability to do so, and straightway confessed the sinister motive he had in
forcing himself to three-men's labor before the eyes of the attending officials. The
governor knew by his own experience the limit of a man's capacity, and he was not
to be deceived by any such report like that. The man was punished, and sent back
to the field with due admonition for his hypocrisy.
Another among his laborers was an aged man, hardly equal to one man's capacity.
He was always found working at stumps, - a toilsome job, not the kind of work that
can make much show. There he would work even when others were at rest, with
an evident contentment in the lot he chose for himself. "Stump-digger" they called
him, and very little notice was taken of him. But the governor's eyes were upon
him. On a certain pay-day, when, as was usual with our governor, judgement was
passed upon each laborer according to his merit and share in the work, the man
who was called up for the highest honor and reward was no other than the
"stump-digger" himself, to the great astonishment of all, and to none more than to
the man himself. He was to have fifteen pieces of gold (about $75) besides his
regular wages, - an immense sum of money when a laborer earned only twenty cents
a day. "I, my Lord," exclaimed the old man, "am not worthy of even one man's hire,
seeing that I am advanced in age, and am far behind others in the work I have
accomplished. Your lordship must be mistaken. For conscience's sake, the gold is
not mine."-"Not so," gravely remarked the governor. "You worked where no body
else liked to work. For men's observations you cared not, and you aimed only
at real service to our villages. Stumps you removed cleared obstructions,
and our work was greatly facilitated thereby. If I reward not such as you,
by what other ways shall I carry on the work that is yet before me.
The gift is from heaven to reward your honesty. Accept it with thankfulness,
and use it to add comforts to your age. Nothing makes me rejoice more than
the recognition of such an honesty as yours. "
The man weeps like a child, "his sleeves wet almost to be wringed." Whole villages
are impressed. One godlike has appeared among them, one who rewardeth
openly the virtue that is done in secret.
Oppositions he had many, but these he removed by "arts of love." Once it took
the patience and forbearance of three years to reconcile to him and his ways
of doing, a man whom the Lord of Odawara sent as his associate. One of
his villagers was an incorrigible idler, and a vehement opposer to all of his plans.
The man's house was in a tottering state, and his poverty he would recount
to his neighbors as a sure sign of the weakness of the new administration.
It happened that a certain of the governor's household was under
the man's manure-shed, which, by the negligence of many years, was
in so rotten a state that a slight touch brought it down to the ground.
The man's wrath knew no end. With a club he came out, gave a blow or
two to the suppliant transgressor, and pursued after him till he reached
his master's house. There in the front of the governor's gate the man stood,
and recited to the hearing of a large crowd that gathered around him,
the severe ills he suffered, and the governor's inability to give peace and
order to the district. Sontok ordered the man to his presence, and
in the mildest possible way, begged forgiveness for his servant's transgression,
and continued :
"Seeing that your manure-shed was in so fragile a state, I am afraid your
residence also is not in the best of conditions."
"You know I am a poor man," the man bluntly replied, "and I am unable to repair
my house."
"So," was the gentle answer of the moralist. "How is it then if we send men to
repair it for you? Will you give your consent to it?"
Taken with surprise, and already a sense of shame coming over him, the man
replied.
"Could I object to so kind a proposal? That is a mercy too great for me."
He was at once sent back to his home, to pull down the old house, and to prepare
the ground for the erection of the new. The next day, the governor's men appeared
with all preparations for the new structure, and within a few weeks there was
finished one of the nicest-looking houses in the whole neighborhood.
The manure-shed also was repaired, so that it could stand any man's touch.
The worst of the villagers was thus brought down. Ever afterward none remained
more faithful to the governor than this man. Tears always gushed out when he told
afterward of the real humiliation he experienced then.
Once discontent became general among the villagers, and no "art of love" could
subdue it. Our governor thought he himself was to be blamed for all such. ''Heaven
punishes thus my lack in sincerity," he said to himself. One day he disappeared
suddenly from among his people, and they all became uneasy about his whereabout.
Some days after it was found that he had resorted to a distant Buddhist temple,
there to pray and to meditate, but chiefly to fast for one-and-twenty days,
that he might be furnished with more sincerity in leading his people.
Men were sent thither to entreat him for his speedy return, as his absence meant
anarchy among his people, who now had learnt that they could not get along
without him. The term of his tasting over, he strengthened himself with a slight meal,
and "the day after his three weeks' abstinence from food he walked twenty-five miles
to his villages, rejoicing in his heart to hear of the repentance of his people." The man
must have had an iron constitution with him.
With several years' unabated diligence, economy, and above all, "arts of love,"
the wilderness had fairly departed, and something like tolerable productivity began
to return. The governor invited immigrants from other provinces, and them he treated
with more consideration than he did the native-born inhabitants, "because," said he,
"strangers need more kindness from us than our own children." To him the complete
restoration of any district does not mean the mere return of fertility to the soil,
but "provisions enough for ten years of scarcity." Therein he followed literally
the words of a Chinese sage who said, "A country without nine years' provisions is
in danger; and that without three years' is no country at all." According to the views
of our peasant-saint, then, the proudest of nations of now-a-days is "no nation at all." -----
But famine set in before these provisions were made. The year 1833 was one of
great distress to all the north-eastern provinces. Sontok foretold the year's poor harvest
when eating an eggplant fruit in summer. He said that it tasted very much like that
of autumn, an evident sign that "the sun had already spent forth its rays for the year."
He at once gave orders to his people to sow millet at the rate of a tan to a family,
so as to supply the deficiency of the rice-crop of the year. This was done;
and the year following, when scarcity reigned throughout the neighboring provinces,
not a single family in the three villages under Sontok's supervision suffered from lack.
"The ways of sincerity can know beforehand." Our governor was a prophet as well.
At the end of the promised ten years, the once poorest land in the empire became
the most orderly, the best provided, and as far as its natural fertility went, the
most productive district in the whole country. Not only were the villages made to
yield a revenue of 10,000 bags of rice as in their former days of prosperity, but they
had now several granaries well-filled with substantial grain to provide for many
years of scarcity; and we are glad to add that the governor himself had several
thousand pieces of gold left for himself which he was to freely use for philanthropic
purposes in after years. His fame now spread far and wide, and nobles from all
parts of the country sent in messengers to ask his instructions for the restoration
of desolated villages in their provinces. Never before had sincerity alone given so
prominent a result. So simple, so cheap, a man with Heaven alone can accomplish
so much. The moral impressions of Sontok's first public achievement was tremendous
upon the indolent community of his time.

IV-INDIVIDUAL HELPS <to contents>

Before speaking of his other public services to his country, let me narrate here
something of the friendly help he was called upon to offer to his suffering
fellowmen. Himself a wholly self-made man, he knew of no case which industry
and sincerity of heart could not bring up to independence and self-respect. "The
universe moves on and on, and a stop there is not in the growth of all things
around us. If but a man conforms himself to this law of everlasting growth, and
with it ceases not to work, poverty, though he seeks it, is impossible." So he said to
a group of poverty-stricken farmers, who, complaining of the misgovernment of
their feudal lord, were on the point of leaving their ancestral homes, and came to
Sontok for his guidance and instructions. "A hand-plough shall I give each of you,"
he continued, "and if you adopt my way, and abide by it, I assure you, with it you
can make a paradise out of your desolated field, pay back all your debts, and can
rejoice once more in plenty, without seeking fortune outside of your own land."
The men did so, accepted "a hand-plough each" from the saint's hand, went
earnestly to work as he advised, and in a few years got back all they had lost
and more.
A village-mayor who had entirely lost his influence with his people came to
Sontok for his wisdom. The saint's answer was the simplest that could be imagined,
"Because love of self is strong in you," he said. "Selfishness is of beasts; and a
selfish man is of beast-kind. You can have influence over your people only by
giving yourself and your all to them."
"How can I do so?" the mayor inquired.
"Sell your land, your house, your raiment, your all," was Sontok's reply, "and
whatever money you get thereby contribute to the village fund, and give yourself
wholly to the service of the people."
No natural man can easily commit himself to so severe a procedure like this. The
mayor asked for several days' delay before he could give his decision.
When told that the sacrifice was altogether too much for him, Sontok said: "I
suppose you are afraid of the starvation of your family. Think you that if you do
your part, I, your adviser, know not how to do my part?"
The man returned, and did as was instructed. His influence and popularity
returned at once. His lack for a time his revered instructor supplied out of his own
store; but soon the whole village came to the mayor's support, and within a short
period, he was a wealthier man than before.
A rice-merchant in the township of Fujisawa, who had made a considerable
fortune by selling his grain at high prices in a year of scarcity, came very near to
bankruptcy by successive misfortunes that befell his family. A relative of his was
an intimate acquaintance of Sontok, and the saint's wisdom was asked to devise
some means for the restoration of the lost property. Always very reluctant to confer
with the people who had personal interests in view, he yielded to their request only
after long importunity. His moral diagnosis of the man revealed to him at once
the sole cause of the trouble. "The way is to give in charity all you have left now,"
Sontok said, "and to begin anew with your bare hand." To his eye, ill-gotten fortune
was no fortune at all. A thing is ours only as we have it directly from Nature
by conforming ourselves to her righteous laws. The man lost his property
because it had not been originally his, and that which he had left was also "unclean,"
and hence nothing could be done with it also.
Avarice cannot be made to yield itself to such a radical reform without long and
painful struggles. But the reputation of the moral-physician was too great to doubt
the efficacy of his prescription, and his advice was followed to the amazement, and
(may we say) consternation of all his friends and relatives. The man distributed all
he had left, amounting to 700 pieces of gold ($3,500) among his townsmen, and he
himself went to rowing, the only "bare-hand" trade he was acquainted with from
his boyhood. We can easily imagine the moral effect of such a decision
on the man's part both upon the man himself, and upon the townsmen at large.
All the bitterness against him caused by his avarice was removed at once,
and those who rejoiced in his misfortunes now came to his help, and he was
upon his oars only for a very short time. Fortune began to smile upon him,
this time with the good-will of all his townsmen, and we are told that his latter end
was more prosperous than his
beginning. Only we are sorry to hear that with age avarice returned to him once more,
and his last days were spent in penury. Does not a book of Confucius say, "Misery and
happiness come not by themselves; only men invite them"?
Our teacher was not an easy man to approach. Strangers of whatever ranks were
always repulsed at his gate with the customary oriental excuse "I am pressed with
duty." Only the most importunate could get a hearing from him.
Should the inquirer's patience fail, the teacher would say, "My time of helping him
is not come yet." Once we are told that a Buddhist priest, who came a long distance
walking to get instruction for the relief of his parishioners, was bluntly refused audience;
but he a patient man spread his garment upon the ground in front of the teacher's house,
and there for three days and nights he sat, believing that by penance and pertinacity,
the teacher might be induced to give him a hearing. But Sontok was extremely wroth
to hear that "dog-like" a "beggar-priest" sat near his gate, and he ordered him to begone
at once and "pray and fast for people's souls." Such a treatment was repeated several times
before he received the priest in confidence, and this was he, who, in after years,
was to be a free recipient of his gold, wisdom, and friendship. His friendship was
always very costly to get, but when once procured, nothing was so precious and lasting.
He could do nothing with false insincere men. The universe and its laws were against
such men, and nothing in his power or any man's power could rescue them from misery
and degradation. Them he would first reconcile with the "Reason of Heaven and Earth,"
and then administer to them whatever human helps that might be absolutely necessary.
"Think not you can get anything else than cucumber-fruit when you plant
cucumber. The thing a man planteth, the same he must reap also." "Sincerity alone
can turn misery into happiness; arts and policies avail nothing." "An individual
soul is an infinitesimally small thing in the universe, but its sincerity can move
heaven and earth." "Duty is duty irrespective its result." Such and many like them
are the precepts with which he helped out many a struggling soul that came to him
for guidance and deliverance. Thus he stood between Nature and man, restoring to
the former them, who, through their moral obliquity, had forfeited the right she so
freely bestowed upon them. What are all the wisdoms of the West that have
recently flooded our soil, in comparison with an evangel such as this, of our own
kin and blood!


V-PUBLIC SERVICES AT LARGE <to contents>

His faith once worked out in the restoration of the three deserted villages in the
province of Shimotzuke, and his fame thus indubitably established, he became an
object of constant interruption by nobles from all parts of the country. He fenced
himself against such intrusions by his usual blunt ways of receiving his visitors,
but such as endured his "test of faith" were not few, and these had all the benefit of
his wise councils and practical help. During his life-time, some half-a-score nobles
representing a wide extent of land had his services in improvement of their
impoverished dominions, and the number of villages likewise benefited was
innumerable. Near the end of his life his service to the nation became so
invaluable that he was employed by the Central Government; but the homely
nature of his mission made him appear at his best when he was among his own class
of poor laborers, unhampered by the official and social conventionalities of the titled classes.
The wonder is, however, that he a peasant of the meanest birth and the simplest culture
could have managed himself like a "real noble" when associating with "men in high places."
Naturally his own Lord of Odawara was to get most from him. The large dominion
attached to the castle-town of the same name was placed under his supervision,
and much of the desolated and waste places in it was recovered by his tireless
industry and never-failing "arts of love." The great famine of 1836 witnessed one
of his most signal services to his fellowmen. When thousands of people were on the
point of death from starvation, he was commissioned by his Lord (then residing in
Yedo) to undertake their speedy relief. Sontok hastened to Odawara, then a
journey of two full days, and asked the men in authority there to hand him the key
to open the castle-granary for the immediate relief of the starving people. "Not till
we have the Lord's written permission," was their rather contemptuous answer.
"All right, then," Sontok responded. "But, gentlemen, seeing that during the interval
between this and the arrival of the written permission of the Lord many more of
our starving people shall die of hunger, I believe it behooves us as their faithful guardians
that we should abstain from food as they are now doing, and should stay here
in this office-room fasting till the return of your messenger. Thus we may learn
somewhat of the nature of our people's suffering." Four days' fasting was too horrible
to think of to these officers. The key was instantly delivered to Sontok, and the relief was
effected at once. Would that all guardians of people of whatever clime at whatever time may
be mindful of our moralist's proposal when hunger waits at the people's door, and officialism
must go through useless formalities before it can bring relief to the sufferers!
It was upon this occasion that he delivered his famous discourse upon "the Ways
of Famine-Relief in default of Means for that end." His chief audience was the
governor of the dominion appointed by his Lord as the chief executive of the
provincial government. We give here some fragments of the discourse, as it is very
characteristic of the man who gave it.
"That the land famishes, the granaries are empty, and the people have nothing to
eat, - whose blame is this but that of the ruler himself! Is he not intrusted with
Heaven's children , and is it not his mission to lead them into (good and away
from evil, and so enable them to live and abide in peace? For this service which is
expected from him he is paid abundantly, and he brings up his family, and they
are safe. But now that his people are reduced to hunger, he thinks not himself
responsible for it: - Gentleman, I know of nothing under heaven so lamentable as this.
At this time, should he succeed in devising some means of relief, well; but if not, the ruler
should confess his sin before Heaven, and himself go to voluntary fasting and die!
Then his sub-officers, - country-officers after him, and then village-officers,
- they also should abstain from food and die, for they too have neglected their duty
and brought death and suffering upon the people. The moral effect of such sacrifices
upon the famished people will be evident at once. They will now say among themselves:
'The governor and his sub-officers held themselves responsible for the distress that is
upon us, when they have really nothing to blame themselves with. Starvation is upon us
because of our own improvidence, luxury, and extravagance in times of abundance.
We are accountable for the lamentable end of our honored officers, and that we should
now die of hunger is entirely proper.' Thus the fear of famine shall depart, and with it
the fear of death also. Their mind is now at peace. Fear once gone, abundance of
food-supply is within their reach. The rich may share his possession with the poor;
or they may climb mountains, and feed upon leaves and roots. A single year's famine
cannot exhaust all the rice and millet of land, and hills and mountains have their supply
of green things. The nation famishes because Fear reigns dominant in the people's mind,
and depriving them of energy too seek food, causes them to die. As guns fired without shots
often bring down timid birds, so men in years of scarcity are astounded with sound of hunger,
and die. Therefore let the leaders of the people die first of voluntary starvation, and the fear
of hunger shall be dissipated from the people's heart, and they all shall be ailed and saved.
I do not believe you need wait for the sacrifice of your county and village-officers
before you realize the result you aim at. I believe the sacrifice of the governor
alone is sufficient for this purpose. This, gentlemen, is one way of saving your hungry people
when you have nothing left to give them for their relief."
The discourse ended. The governor in shame and dismay, said after a long silence,
"I should say it is impossible to gainsay your argument.
The sarcasm, though seriously spoken, was not of course intended to be carried
into practice. The relief was effected with the same simplicity as that which
characterized all his other labors, - promptness, diligence, intense sympathy with
the sufferer, and trust in Nature and her beneficient laws. Grain and money were
loaned to the suffering farmers, to be paid back in instalment within five years by
crops; and be it mentioned in honor of the simple-hearted peasants thus succored,
as well as of the good faith in which the succor was offered, that the promise was
faithfully and willingly kept, not one of the 40,390 sufferers so relieved proving
himself insolvent at the end of the stipulated term!
He that is in league with Nature hastes not; neither does he plan works for the
present alone. He places himself in Nature's current, as it were, and helps and
enhances it, and is himself helped and forwarded thereby. With the universe at his
back, the magnitude of the work astounds him not. "There are natual courses for
all things," Sontok used to say," and we are to seek out Nature's ways and to
conform ourselves thereto. Thus can mountains be levelled and seas be drained,
and the earth itself be made to serve our purpose." Once he was appointed by his
government to report upon some possible plans of draining the great marshes' on
the lower course of the river Tone. If accomplished, such an enterprise would
serve triple purposes of inestimable public benefit: it would recover thousands of
acres of fertile land from the shallow and miasmatic marsh; would drain off
surplus water in time of flood, and obviate much of damage yearly done in those quarters;
and would afford a new and short passage between the river and the bay of Yedo.
The distance to be cute is ten miles between the marsh and the bay, and five miles
between the two main sections of the former, - in all, fifteen miles of excavation through
mud-hills and sand. The attempt has been made more than once, only to be given up in despair;
and the work is still there waiting for some master mind, - a Japanese Lesseps - to carry it into
completion. Sontok's report upon this gigantic enterprise was rather enigmatic; but it hit the
point upon which many an engineering work of like magnitude made ship-wreck.
"Possible, yet impossible," said the report: "Possible, if the natural and only
possible course be adopted and followed; but impossible, because human nature in
general is loathe to follow such a course. I see the demoralization of the district
through which the canal is to be dug, and that must be righted first by 'the arts of
love' as the essential preliminary to the work to be undertaken. Money spent
among such people cannot but have vicious effects upon them, to say nothing of the
amount of actual work accomplished thereby. But the nature of the undertaking under review
is such that little can be expected from either money or authority. Only a united people impelled
by a strong sense of gratitude can do it. Let the government therefore apply 'the arts of love'
upon them, comfort their widows, shelter their orphans, and make a virtuous people out of
the present demoralized population. Once you have called forth their sincerity, the boring of
mountains and breaking of rocks will be according to your wish. The way may look tortuous,
but it is the shortest and most effective one. Does not the root of a plant contain all its
flowerage and fruitage? Morality first, then work; - you cannot place the latter
before the former."
Most of the present-day readers may sympathize with his government that
rejected so visionary a plan as this; but who has watched the "Panama scandals"
and fails to see that the main cause of the failure of that gigantic enterprise was
moral and not financial? The gold that turned Colon and Panama into veritable
dens of thieves lies buried there like so much rubbish, and to all practical purposes,
the two oceans are as yet as far apart from each others as when the first shovel of
dirt was removed from the isthmus.*[Now accomplished by American gold, against our prophecy.
Great is Mammonism!] Would that the great French engineer had
possessed something of the moral foresight of the Japanese peasant; and instead of
disbursing his six hundred millions wholly upon the work itself, had a part of it
invested in human souls through "arts of love;" - then who doubts that Lesseps
would have had two canals to crown his gray hairs, instead of the disgraceful
failure of one covering up the glorious success of the other? Money can do much,
but virtue more; and he who takes into account moral elements in forming his plan
for canal construction is NOT after all the most unpractical of men.
The geographical extent of Sontok's actual accomplishment in his life-time was
not large, though considerable for a man of his social position at a time of rigid
class distinctions. By far the most considerable of all his achievements was the
restoration of the Soma region in the present province of Iwaki, - itself a no mean
district of two hundred and thirty villages, now one of the wealthiest and most
prosperous in the country. The way he set himself to work in any work of
magnitude was perfectly simple. He would first concentrate his whole energy upon
one typical village, - usually the poorest in the district, - and by sheer dint of industry would
convert it into his ways. This is usually the hardest part of the whole business. The one village
first rescued, he had as a base to start from for the conversion of the whole district. He always
infused a kind of missionary spirit among his peasant-converts, who were required to help
their neighboring villages as they themselves were helped by their teacher. With a striking
example furnished before their very eyes, and with help freely afforded by the men
under the new inspiration, the whole district was brought to adopt the same method,
and conversion was effected by a simple law of propagation. "The method that can rescue
a village can rescue the whole country; the principle is just the same," he used to say to
his inquirers. "Let us apply ourselves devotedly to this one piece of work; for the example may
serve to save the whole nation in times to come," he observed to his disciples while preparing
plans for the restoration of a few desolated villages in the Nikko district. The man was conscious
of his possession of the everlasting laws of the universe, and no work was too difficult for him
to attempt, nor too easy to require his whole-souled devotion to it.
Naturally he was a hard-working man till the very close of his life. As he planned
and worked for the distant future as well, so his works and influences still live with
us. Many a smiling village of his own reconstruction witnesses to his wisdom and
the permanence of his plans; while scattered through different parts of the empire
are to be found societies of farmers bound by the name and teaching of this man, to
perpetuate the spirit he made known to the disheartened sons of toils.




NAKAE TOJU - A VILLAGE TEACHER

I-TEACHING IN OLD JAPAN <to contents>

"WHAT kind of schooling had you in Japan before we Westerners came to save
you? You Japanese seem to be the cleverest set of people among heathens, and you
must have had some training, moral and intellectual, to make you what you have
been and are." Such are the questions, and oftentimes their tone, put to us by some
civilized Westerners, when some of us appeared in their midst, fresh from our country. To
which our answer has been somewhat as follows:
"Yes, we had schooling, and considerable of it. We believe, at least, eight out of the
Ten Commandments we learnt from the lips of our fathers while in our mothers'
laps. We knew that might is not right, that the universe does not stand upon
selfishness, that stealing is not right in whatever form it appears, that life and
property are not after all the things we should aim at, and many other things. We
had schools too and teachers, quite different from what we see in your great West
and now imitated in our land. First of all, we never have thought of schools as
shops for intellectual apprenticeship. We were sent there not so much for earning
livelihood when we had finished with them, as for becoming true men, kunshi, as
we called them, akin to gentlemen in English. Then too, we were not taught on
a dozen different subjects at the same time. We had only two lobes of the brain
then as now, and not a dozen; and our old teachers thought (we think, wisely,)
that we must not be crammed with knowledges of all kinds in a few years. This
was one good feature of our old system of education. We were taught
considerable in History, in Poetry, in Manners; but chiefly in Morals, and that of
practical kind. Morality of the speculative, or theosophical, or even of theological
kind, was never forced upon us in our schools. Our Buddhist scholars indeed, in
their mountain recesses, did dispute about the number of hairs upon the carapace
of the fabulous turtle, and other subjects of hair-splitting nature; but we who lived in the
plains below, and had to deal with the practical affairs of men, were spared from
conscientious scruples about these and similar questions. In a word, we were never
taught in theology in our schools. We had temples (churches) to resort to for that
purpose, and our schools were free from the sectarian wranglings often witnessed
in other lands. This was another good feature of our old system of education.
"Then also we were not taught in classes. The grouping of soul-bearing
human beings into classes, as sheep upon Australian farms, was not
known in our old schools. Our teachers believed, I think instinctively,
that man is unclassifiable, that he must be dealt with personally,
i.e. face to face and soul to soul. So they schooled us one by
one, each according to his idiosyncracies, physical, mental, and spiritual. They
knew every one of us by his name. And as asses were never harnessed with horses,
there was but little danger of the former being beaten down into stupidity, or the
latter driven into valedictorians' graves. The system of education based upon the
survival-of-the-fittest principle, as the modern one seems to be, was considered to
be unfittest for making generous, man-loving kunshi (gentlemen). In this respect,
therefore, our old-time teachers agreed with Socrates and Plato in their theory of
education.
"So naturally the relation between teachers and students was the closest possible.
We never called our teachers by that unapproachable name, professors. We called
them sensei, "men born before," so named because of their prior birth, not only in
respect of the time of their appearance in this world, which was not always the case,
but also of their coming to the 'understanding of the truth. As such they claimed
from us the highest veneration, akin to that which we were asked to show toward
our parents and feudal lords. Indeed, sensei, parents, and kimi (lord) constituted
the trinity of our worshipful regard; and the most vexing question for the Japanese
youth was which he would save if the three of them were on the point of drowning
at the same time, and he had ability to save but one. It was considered, therefore,
a virtue of the highest kind for deshi (disciples) to lay down their lives for the sake
of their sensei (master) ; while we never have heard of students dying for their
professor in our modern regime of education.
"It was this our idea of relationship between 'sensei' and 'deshi,' which made some
of us able to comprehend at once the intimate relation between tile master and his
disciples which we found in the Christian Bible. When we found written therein
that the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord; or that
the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep, and other similar
sayings, we took them almost instinctively as things known to us long before; and
we often wondered how those Christians whose idea of master is only professor,
and of disciple, only student, could have comprehended these teachings of the
Scripture which they came to teach us.
"We do not maintain of course that the old was superior to the new in every
respect. But we do maintain that the old was not all bad, and the new is not all
good and perfect. The new is yet to be much improved, and the old is
yet to to be resuscitated. As yet we cannot advise ourselves give up the old and owe our
allegiance to the new altogether."
So we expressed ourselves, as we still continue to express ourselves, and we were
not received with much applause. They thought, that is, these Westerners did,
that we were not so docile, and pliable, as they imagined we were. That we may
further maintain our "stubbornness," "non-receptivity," and "anti-foreignism;
' we give in this essay the life of a man whose name we revere as one of our ideal
school-teachers (sensei). Thereby we mean no more than to give a clue or two to
those our good friends of the West who have the education of the Japanese youths at heart.

II-EARLY YEARS AND AWAKENING TO CONSCIOUSNESS <to contents>

It was in the year 1608 of the Christian era, only eight years after the battle of
Sekigahara, and seven years before the fall of Osaka, when as yet men's chief
business was to fight, and women's to weep, and letters and philosophies were
thought unworthy to be pursued by practical men of the world, that one of the
saintliest and most advanced thinkers that Japan has ever produced was born in
the province of Omi, on the west bank of Lake Biwa, near which the Hira rears
up its rounded head, and casts its shadow upon the glassy lake below. Brought up
mostly by his grandparents, in the island of Shikoku, away from his paternal
residence at Omi, he early showed sensitiveness unusual in one of his age, and in
the son of a samurai trained mostly in the arts of war. It was in the eleventh year
of his age that a text from Confucius' Great Learning roused in him an ambition
which was to shape the whole of his future career. Therein he read: From the
Emperor down to the commonnest people, man's Chief aim is in the right ordering
of his life. "Here is this book, oh Heaven be thanked," he then exclaimed: ''and can I
not by attempting be a saint myself!" He wept, and the impression remained with
him through his life. "Be a saint," - what an ambition this!
But the boy was not a mere over-sensitive weakling, bent wholly upon prayers
and introspection. Once a mob attacked his grandfather's house, and he was
among the first that rushed into their midst, a sword in his hand, and repelled
them successfully, and "then was calm as before." He was but thirteen years of age
then.
About the same year, he was sent to one Tenryo, a Buddhist priest of great
learning, to be trained in the arts of poetry and hand-writing. Of the many
questions that the precocious youth put to his teacher, the following was very
characteristic of him: "You tell me," Toju said, "that when Buddha was born, he
pointed one hand heavenward and the other earthward, and said, 'I alone of all
beings in heaven above and under the heaven, am worthy of honor"; - is he not the
proudest of men under heaven; and how is it possible that my revered master owns
him as his ideal?" The boy never liked Buddhism afterward. His ideal was perfect
humility, and Buddha was not such a man.
When he was seventeen, he was able to obtain the complete set of Confucius' Four
Books, showing the scarcity of books at that time. This whetted his appetite for
learning more than ever, and he was found devoting all his stray hours to
acquiring of knowledge from the precious store now in his possession. At the time,
however, when the samurai's chief business was to fight, and book-reading was
despised as a work fitted only for priests and recluses, the young Toju was compelled
to carry on his study in all privacy. His day-time was spent wholly in the use of arms,
and he gave himself to his books only in the night-time. But his secrecy was not
to remain undiscovered. One day, one of his comrades addressed him as "Confucius,"
in evident derision of his nightly devotion to his books, as well as of his benignant temper
wholly exceptional among the rude combative youths of the time. "You, ignoramus, you!"
the gentle youth was now heard in indignation. "Holy Confucius is dead now for
two thousand years. Meanest thou by that epithet to blaspheme the saint's name,
or to deride me for my love of knowledge? Poor fellow! War alone is not
the samurai's profession, but the arts of peace as well. An unlettered samurai is a chattel,
a slave. Art thou satisfied with thy being a slave?" Toju's thundering had its effect.
The fellow owned his ignorance, and was silent ever afterward.
He was now twenty-two. His good grandparents were now gone, and he had
recently lost his father, with whom he had been only for a short time in his life.
Adversities made him more sensitive, tearful, and compassionate. His sole concern
was now his mother whom he left at Omi. He was now daily growing in fame for his
learning and purity of character, and honors and emoluments were waiting for him
in abundance. But to him a single woman, his mother, was weightier than all the world.
She was to claim his whole attention from this time on.

III-MOTHER-WORSHIP <to contents>

His first attempt was to call his mother to his side, and to serve his lord in the
province of Iyo. In which failing he made up his mind to leave his lord, and to
cling to his mother. This conclusion he reached only after severe struggles in his
mind. He prepared a letter addressed to his lord's chancellor, wherein he stated the
motives that induced him in his peculiar circumstance to prefer the service of his
mother to that of his lord. "I carefully weighed the two duties in my mind," was one
of the sayings. "My lord can invite with salaries any number of servants such as I,
but my old mother has none to depend upon except my poor self." His "trinitarian"
scruples thus disposed of, he made his way to his mother's home, leaving behind
him all his possessions now amounting to a considerable sum in grain, houses, and
furnitures.
He was now by his mother's side, to his entire satisfaction; but means to comfort
her was wholly wanting. When he reached her home, he had only a hundred mon
(one sen in our present currency, perhaps a yen in value) left. With it he bought
a little sake, and a scholar and sensei now turned himself into a pedler, and went
round the neighboring villages to sell the liquor with little interest on it;
- all for his mother's sake. Also he disposed of his sword, "the samurai's soul,"
and got ten pieces of silver for it. This he lent out to the villagers; and a small
interest coming there from was another source of supply to the humble existence of
the little family. The master felt not the slightest shame in all these menial labors.
His heaven was in his mother's smiles, and nothing was too costly to have one of
them.
For two years he lived in this state of menial obscurity. From what we gather from
his writings, these were among the happiest years of his life. Away from his mother,
he could not very well sleep at night, "remembering her in my dreams, as I rolled
from side to side upon my bed." As we shall see afterward, his whole system of
morality was centred in filial duty ( we shall call it filiality), and lacking in this
pivotal duty, he lacked in all, and hence his uneasiness. His aim of life, we know
what it was; and to be a saint, a perfect man, was grander in his eyes than to be
a scholar and philosopher. But the world needed him in the latter capacity as well,
and he was finally prevailed upon to give his knowledge to the public.

IV-THE SAINT OF OMI <to contents>

He was twenty-eight years old, when leaving his pedler's business, he opened a
school in his village. Nothing was simpler then than to start a school. His own
house served as a dormitory, a chapel and a lecture-hall at the same time.
Confucius' image was hung up in the right place, and incense was burnt in his
honors with due ceremonies by the master attended by his pupils. Sciences and
mathematics found no place in its curriculum. The Chinese classics, some history,
poetry-making and hand-writing constituted the whole of the topics then taught. A
modest, unseen business, this of school-teaching. Its influence was felt only very
slowly, - the work envied by angels, and despised by the show-loving men of the
world.
Established there in that out-of-the-way section of the country, his life was a
smooth continuity of peaceful enjoyment to its very close. Only accidentally his
name was brought to the public notice, as we shall see soon afterward. Notoriety
he hated above all things. His mind to him a kingdom was, and he had his all, and
more than all, within himself. We hear of his taking constant interest in the affairs
of his village; of his interceding for a villager prosecuted before the provincial court;
of his teaching in "the ways of man" the very coolies who carried him in a kago;
and of a few such incidents preserved by his simple neighbors. And such were in
entire accordance with his views of life. Here is what he said "on the accumulation
of virtue":
"All men hate bad names, and love good names. And as small deeds, unless
accumulated, make not names, the small man takes no thought of them. But the
kunshi despises not small deeds that come to him day by day. Great deeds he also
does if they come in his way; only he seeks them not. Great deeds are few, and
small deeds are many. The former make names; but the latter virtue. The world
seeks great deeds, because name is what it loves. If done for the name's sake,
however, even great deeds become small. A kunshi is he who makes virtue out
of many small deeds. Indeed, no deed is greater than virtue. Virtue is the source
of all great deeds." One thing was very peculiar in his teaching. He made
very much of virtue and character, and very little of letters and intellectual
attainment in his pupils. Here is his idea of what a true scholar is:
"Scholar' is a name for virtue, not for arts. Literature is an art, and a man with an
inborn genius for it has no difficulty in becoming a man of letters. But though
proficient in letters, he is not a scholar, if he lacks in virtue. He is an ordinary person
knowing letters. An illiterate man with virtue is not an ordinary person. He is a scholar
without letters."
For years, the teacher led a "mute inglorious life," unknown save to the narrow
circle in his vicinity, when Providence sought him out in his obscurity, and made
him known to the world. A young man started from Okayama to seek out a saint
in the land, whom he might own as his sensei. He had no better aim in this
singular search than had the magi of old in their search after the King of the
Jews. On he sped toward the east, toward the capital of the country, where, he
naturally thought, can be found saints, as well as kings and other notables. He
came to Omi and there stopped at a country hotel for a night. In a room next to his,
separated only by a thin partition, were two travellers, evidently of but recent
acquaintance with each other. The conversation they were engaged in attracted the
youth's attention. One of them, a samurai, was telling his experience on this wise:
"I had gone up to the capital on my lord's errand, and was on my way home
entrusted with several hundred pieces of his gold. I usually carried them close to
my body; but on the day I reached this village, contrary to my usual custom, I
fastened the purse to the saddle of the horse which I had hired for the latter part of
the day. I reached my hotel, and forgetful of the treasure on the saddle, I sent the
horse away with its betto, and came to the knowledge of my fearful loss only some
time afterward. You can imagine the extremity to which I was driven. I knew not
the name of the betto, and to seek him out was an impossibility. Or even if I could,
what availed me if he had disposed of the gold already. My absence of mind was
inexcusable. There was but one way left of explaining myself to my lord." - (Human
life was not very costly then). "I prepared letters, one to the chancellor, and others
to my relatives, and resolutely made up my mind for the last hour."
"While in this state of inexpressible anguish, now late in midnight, I heard
somebody knocking hard at the hotel door; and I was soon informed that a man in
a cooly's raiment wanted to see me. I met him, and to my great amazement, he was
no other than the betto who had carried me upon his horse that same afternoon.
'Sir Samurai:' he addressed me at once, 'I believe you left an important thing upon
the saddle. I found it after I reached my home, and I came back for the purpose of
handing it to you. Here it is.' So saying, he placed the purse before me. I knew not
where I was; ecstasy transported me. But recollecting myself, I said, 'Man, I owe
my life to you. Take a fourth of this as the price of my existence. You are to me
another father.' But the cooly was immovable. 'I am not entitled to any such thing.
The purse is yours, and it is entirely just that you should have it.' So saying he would
not touch the gold placed before him. I forced upon him fifteen pieces, then five pieces,
two pieces, and finally one piece, without success. 'As I am a poor man,' he said at last,
'pray give me 4 mon (4-hundredths of a cent) for a pair of strawsandals, as I came
all the way from my home four riis (10 miles) away for this special purpose.' The utmost I
could force upon him was only two hundred mon (2 cents), and he was on the point
of going gladly away. Stopping him I said, 'Pray tell me what made you so
unselfish, so honest, so true. Never in this age have I thought of finding such an
honesty upon this earth.' 'There lives in my village of Ogawa,' the poor man
answered, 'a man by the name of Nakae Toju, who teaches us villagers of these
things. He says gain is not the aim of life, but honesty, righteousness, and the ways
of man. We villagers all hear him, and walk by his teachings."
The young man heard the story. He clapped his knee, and exclaimed, "Here is the
saint I seek after. I will go to him tomorrow morning, and be made his servant and disciple.
" The day after he proceeded at once to Ogawa Village, inquired after the saint, and found him.
He confessed his purpose of coming there, and humbly implored the teacher to accept him into
his discipleship. Master Toju is surprised. He is a village-teacher, and he is no man to be
inquired after by a gentleman from a distant province. He as humbly declines the young
samurai's request. The latter is importunate. He would not move away from his sworn master.
But the teacher also is determined. The stranger must be entirely mistaken, for he (Toju) is not a
sensei for any but the village-children. Now it was a rivalry between importunity and modesty,
and both determined to hold its ground to the end.
As neither words nor entreaties could avail to win the master's favour, the
samurai made up his mind to overcome the saint's modesty by sheer importunity.
So by the entrance-gate of the master's house, he spread his upper garment, and
there in a posture befitting a gentleman, with swords on his side, and hands upon
his knees, he sat, exposed to the sun, dews and the comments of the passersby. It
was summer-time, and mosquitoes are troublesome in those regions. But nothing
could break his upright posture as well as his heart bent upon its single aim. For
three days and nights, his silent request went up to the master within, without
drawing from him a word of consent. It was at this time that Toju's mother, his
almighty mother, interfered on the youth's behalf. Should such sincerity of request
be turned away without acceptance on her son's part, thinks the mother. Might he
not just as well take the young man in to his discipleship, and be more honorable
for so doing than not? The master begins to reconsider the situation. What his
mother thinks right must be right. He yields at last, and the samurai becomes his
deshi. The same was Kumazawa Banzan, the future financier and administrator
of the powerful clan of Okayama, an introducer of many permanent reforms still visible in
the land he superintended. Had Toju no other disciple than this man, he would yet be remembered
as one of the nation's greatest benefactors. We need a separate essay for the pupil to fully appreciate
the magnitude of the work now entrusted to the teacher's hand. How does Providence
bring to light, the gems that love the shadows of night!
One more episode finishes up all that is worth noting of the outward life of this
silent man; and that was a visit paid him by the Lord of Okayama, to whom
Banzan, now his subject, communicated the grandeur of his master's character.
Such a visit was entirely exceptional at that time of rigid class distinctions; and
when we remember that Toju was yet an unknown man, and the daimio, one of the greatest
in the land, the visit was a condescension of the rarest kind, honorable, alike to him who paid it,
as well as to him who called it forth. Contrary to the expectation of the great daimio, however,
he found the master and his village wholly unprepared to receive so great a guest. With his large
retinues, he proceeded to the master's residence, and found him there explaining the Book of Filiality
to several of the village-children. When it was announced that the Lord of Okayama was in for the
special purpose of seeing him, he sent back word that he would like the guest to wait for him at the
house-entrance till the lecture was over. Never before had the daimio received such strange treatment.
But there he waited, his whole retinues with him, while the teaching went on within, as if nothing
special was going on outside. The great guest was received with no more ceremony than that due to
common humanity. When asked to enter the Lord's service as his master and councillor, the
teacher declined by saying that his mission was in his village, and with his mother.
The utmost the Lord succeeded in this extraordinary visit was a consent to have
his name enrolled among the master's disciples, and a promise to have his eldest
son sent to Okayama in his stead. He who was so humble to a poor young man
coming for his instruction was so dignified to a prince coming in all his glory. He
certainly was worthy of the name which the nation at large came to confer upon
him, the Saint of Omi. He became an object of universal admiration, and many
other daimios came to him for the special purpose of having his counsels upon the
affairs of their dominions.
Before closing this part of his otherwise very uneventful life, our Western readers
would like to know of the master's relation to his wife, as they seem to judge a man
more by this relation than by any other. He was a Confucian and a monogamist of
the highest order. In accordance with the injunction of the Chinese sage, he was
married at thirty. It so happened, however, that the lady who became his consort
was not very remarkable for her physical beauty; and the mother, solicitous of the
disrepute his family might suffer, urged upon him remarriage, as such was not
uncommon under similar circumstances.
But the mildest of sons who would hear to almost anything that his mother wished
to have done, was disobedient in this case; for he said, "Even the mother's word is
not in force if contrary to Heaven's laws." So the lady stayed with him all her life,
gave birth to two children, and was one of those typical Japanese wives "who shun
all honors that their husbands may be honored thereby." It was this spiritual
beauty of hers that suggested to him an ideal womanhood as depicted in his
brochure entitled "Instructions to Women." Therein we read: "The relation of man
to woman is that of Heaven to Earth. Heaven is strength (virtus), and all things
have their origin in it. Earth is receptive. It accepts what Heaven makes, and
nurtures Herein is the harmony between a man and his wife. The former
originates, and the latter completes, etc." I believe Christianity itself has no
objection against such consideration toward womankind.

V-THE INWARD MAN <to contents>

His outward poverty and simplicity were out of all proportion to his inward
wealth and variety. He had a large kingdom within of which he was a perfect sovereign.
His outward tranquility was nothing but the natural result of his inward satisfaction.
Indeed we may say of him, as was said of another angelic man, that "he was nine parts
spirit, and only one part flesh." I wonder whether we with all our improved Soteriology and
Eschatology are half as happy as this man was.
Only very recently his works were carefully edited and collected by two of his
distant disciples, and we have now before us ten good-sized Japanese volumes of
his writings, the whole opening up a vista before us of the soul that once was a
reality among us, at the time when we might almost doubt the existence of
systematic thinking in Japan. The books comprise a short sketch of his life, the reminiscence
of his villagers about him, his commentaries upon the Chinese classics, lectures, essays,
dialogues, letters, stray-thoughts, table-talks, and poems both Japanese (uta) and Chinese
(shi). We can do no more than to introduce our readers to what was in the man.
There were ,two distinct stages in his intellectual career. The first was when he with
his countrymen of the time was brought up in the conservative Chu philosophy,
which above all other things, enforced ceaseless examination into one's own self.
We can imagine the sensitive youth made doubly sensitive by his constant introspection
into the lack and weakness within himself, and all the effects of undue self-examination
are plainly visible in his early life and writings. His Notes and Commentaries upon
Great Learning, composed in his twenty-first year, was written under this mood.
We fear his natural modesty under the pressure of disheartening philosophy would
have turned him into a morbid recluse, as it did many souls like him, had not a new hope
been reached out to him in the writings of that progressive Chinese, Wang Yang Ming.
We have had already some occasion to refer to this remarkable philosopher when we spoke of
our great Saigo. I think I am stating a well established fact in Japanese History
when I state my own observation that the Chinese culture in the form of Yang-Ming-ism
has never produced timid, fearful, conservative and retrogressive people out of us. I believe
all thoughtful critics of Confucius now agree that the sage himself was a very progressive man.
It was his retrogressive countrymen who construed him in their own light, and made him
appear so to the world. But Yang Ming developed the progressiveness that was in Confucius,
and inspired hopes in such as were inclined to understand him in that light. The same helped
our own Toju to see the sage in the new light. The Saint of Omi was now a practical man.
Here are some of his Yang-Ming-isms:

"Press right on, though thy ways be dark;
Skies may clear ere thy course is done."
"Tightly pull, man, thy heart's string,
Prepare for a resolute march;
A case is known of an arrow,
Piercing through a flinty rock."
"He loves his life who his life forsakes
For Ways that no like or higher know."

Who can make a quiet village-teacher out of these?
We have said he wrote commentaries upon the Chinese Classics. Indeed, these
form by far the most important part of all his writings. But let not our readers imagine that
Toju was a commentator in the ordinary sense of that term. He was a most original man, and
his natural modesty alone made him resort to this kind of literature for expressing
himself. That he expressed perfect freedom in handling the ancient writings was
evident from the words he often repeated to his pupils. "These Discourses of the
holy men of old contain many things in them that are not applicable to the present
state of society." So saying, he made an expurgated edition of the same for use in
his school. Had he lived to-day, he would have made a fine subject for a heresy
trial!
That he clearly made distinctions between man-made Laws ( nomos) and
eternally-existing Truth ( logos) is shown by the remarkable saying of his as
follows:
"The truth is distinct from the law. Many taking one for the other are greatly
mistaken. The law changes with time, even with saints in their land, - much more
when transplanted to our land. But the truth is from eternity. Before the name of virtue was,
the truth was and prevailed. Before man was, space had it; and after he shall have disappeared,
and heaven and earth have returned to nothingness, it will abide. But the law was made
to meet the need of time. When time and place change, even saints' laws, if forced upon
the world, are injurious to the cause of the truth."
And this was spoken when the so-called Classical Books were considered as inerrant as the Bible
to the extreme inspirationists in our day. Commentaries written in such a spirit as this cannot
but be bold, striking and new.
Yet with all his fearlessness and independence, nothing was more remarkable in
his ethical system than the foremost position he gave to the virtue of humility. To
him it was the primal virtue out of which all other virtues came, and without which
a man lacked in all things. "Unless the scholar first purges himself of his spirit and
seek the virtue of humility, with all his learning and abundance of genius, he is not
yet entitled to a position above the slough of low commonalty." "Fullness invites
loss; humility is Heaven's law. Humility is emptiness. When the mind is empty,
the judgement of good and bad comes by itself." Explaining the meaning of the word emptiness,
he has this to say: "From of old, he that seeks the truth stumbles at this word. Because spiritual,
hence empty; because empty, therefore spiritual. Consider this well."
As for attaining this hight of virtue, his method was very simple. Said he: "If to
cherish virtue is our aim, we are to do good day by day. One good done, and one
evil goes. Good daily done, evil daily goes. Like as the day lengthens, the night
shortens, we persevere in good, and evil all disappears." And finding his supreme
satisfaction in this emptiness in his soul, he has these words of pity to say of those
who are not yet exonerated of selfishness in them:
"A prison there is besides prisons,
Large enough to take in the world;
Its four walls, love of honour,
Of gain, and pride, and desire -
Alas! So many among men,
Chained therein, mourn evermore."

"Wish," desire, he despised in all its forms. It was the predominance of this
element in Buddhism that alienated
him entirely from that faith. That good is done with a reward as its aim, even
though the reward lies in the future existence, was objectionable to him.
Righteousness with him needed no other incentive than itself. The hope of future
reward and existence, even if he had it, influenced him not in the slightest degree
in his love of righteousness and enjoyment in the practice of the Heavenly Ways.
Writing to a mother who mourned over her son's leaving the Buddhist faith to turn
a Confucian, he has this to say: "That you make so much of the future I can well
understand. But I wish you to note that if the future is so important, the present is
still more so, for if a man get astray in this life, it is all too probable that he will be
forever lost in the life to come. * * * In a life so uncertain as this, where to-morrow
is wholly unknown to us, nothing can exceed in importance our constant worship of
the Buddha within our breasts, etc." That he was not an atheist is abundantly shown
by the profound respect he paid to the gods of the nation. Only his faith was singular1y
free from "wishes" of all kind, except that of being righteous altogether.
And yet he seems to have enjoyed his life thoroughly. In all his writings we fail to catch
a single note of despondence. Indeed, we with our own views of God and universe,
can hardly imagine how this man with his Yang-Ming-istic form of Confucianism could
have been so happy.
Everlasting joyful must have been the heart that could sing "On a Winter Day:"

"Whence flowers ceased to be
Objects of my heart's desire,
How everlasting is the Spring,
That reigns in my bosom."
The following is in a similar strain:

"Little knew I that this life,
With sorrows hard pressed,
Could by Learning's benign help,
Be spent in endless peace"

But he did not enjoy his life long. His wife predeceased him two years, and in the
autumn of 1648, in his fortieth year, he died a death worthy of his life. When he found
that his end had arrived, he called his disciples together, assumed his usual upright posture,
and said, "I go away; see that my ways be not lost to the land;" and passed
away. The whole neighborhood went into mourning. Deputies were sent by princes
to render honor to the master. His funeral was a national affair, and all that loved virtue
and righteousness mourned the death so costly to the land. Years afterward, the house
he had lived in was repaired by his villagers, and is preserved to this day. They made
a god of his name, and observe two annual festivals in his memory. You go to visit
his grave, and a villager will guide you, not without a simple ceremonial robe cast
over his shoulders. You ask him why his respect thus paid to a man who lived
three hundred years ago, and he will answer you on this wise:
"Here in this village and neighborhood, the father is kind to the son, the son filial
to the father, and brothers are affectionate to one another. In our homes no angry
voices are to be heard, and all wear the countenance of peace. All these we owe to
the teachings and after-influence of the Master Toju, and we, one and all, revere
his name with grateful remembrance."
And we of this age, with so much of our drum-beatings, trumpet-blowings, and
newspaper advertisements, that we might have "influence" over others, may well
learn of this man what the real secret of influence is. If we cannot live quiet as Toju
did, who was no more conscious of his influence than the rose of its odor, we may
write and preach and howl and gesticulate all our lives, and yet nothing will
remain of each one of us except "a mound of sod one tatami wide." "There are
saints scattered all over this land," Toju once said, "in nooks of valleys and
sheltered by mountains; and we cannot recognize them because they do not show
themselves. These are real saints, and those whose names sound in the world need
not be counted as anything." Happily or unhappily his name did "sound in the
world," (much contrary to his wish, we know), that we might all learn of him the
power of a silent life if lived with a noble aim in view. These saints were they who
in their schools "in nooks of valleys" did preserve Old Japan from meannesses of
all kinds; and we know not whether our present system with virtues and geniuses
all dabbed and professored, could as effectively keep down the meannesses so rife
in our midst. "The blood has all gone up to the head," they cry; "the limbs are
empty, and we shall soon die of apoplexy," if not many Tojus appear in the land.




SAINT NICHIREN - A BUDDHIST PRIEST

I-BUDDHISM IN JAPAN <to contents>

RELIGION is man's chiefest concern. Properly understood, a man without a
religion is unthinkable. In this strange existence where our wishes are so much
more than our faculties, and our hopes exceed all that the world does or can give,
something must be done to remove these incongruities, in our thought at least, if
not in our actions as well. Indeed we often hear some say that they are "men of no
religion." By that they simply mean that they do not sign their names to any
distinct set of dogmas, own no order of priests as their guides, and pay no homage
to any wooden or metallic or psychic image as their god. But a religion they
nevertheless have. The Inscrutable within them is tamed in some way, be it by
Mammon-Worship or Whiskey-Oblations or some other soporific or sedative
method of his own choosing. A man's religion is his own explanation of life; and
some explanation of it is an absolute necessity for his well-being in this world of
strifes.
Then that all-important question of death, the hope of the poor and the dread of
the rich - that is the question of all questions. Where death is, religion must be; - a
sure sign of our weakness it may be, but withal also of our noble birth, and of
deathlessness within us. Not to die by dying, - that is what all the sons of Adam
yearn after, and Japanese no less than Hebrews' or Hindoos of famed religiosity.
And for twenty-five centuries before we heard of any thing about Resurrection,
we have managed to die in some fashion, some of us in very creditable fashion,
thanks for all the good religions we have had. With this beautiful land as our
earthly home, with cherry blossoms to adorn our joyous spring, and maples
to paint our serene autumn, and peaceful domesticity as our lot in life,
existence has been a burden to us only very seldom, and death has been
grievous unto us so much the more. With our desire to live "a thousand and
eight thousand years," the thought of death was a double pain, to be alleviated
only by a faith that could introduce us into a still better land, be it a saint's home
in Shinto heaven, or a lotus garden in Buddhist paradise. We feared death
not so much from our cowardice as from our attachment to this beautiful land
of ours. Religions we needed to resign ourselves when fate or duty called us from
the beloved land of our birth.
The Japanese has a religion of his own, which in all probability he brought with
him from his home in Central Asia. What the exact nature of that religion
originally was is not easy to tell. Its similarity to the Mosaic Faith has been
recently pointed out, and another attempt was made to find in us the Lost Ten
Tribes of the Jewish record. But whatever it had been, the time came when it was
superseded and eclipsed by a very much more complex, and, may we say, refined
faith of Indian origin. We can easily imagine the effect of the Hindoo faiths as it
first made its way among Japanese. Its gorgeous ceremonies, high mysticisms, and
speculations bold and labyrinthine, must have struck the simple-hearted people
with wonder. It satisfied the eyes of the ignorant, whetted the intellect of the
learned, and served the purpose of the ruler. Notwithstanding some patriotic
opposition against the wholesale importation of an exotic faith, the Hindoo
religion spread in Japan with gigantic strides. For a time at least, the ancient
faith was placed wholly in the background and the new reigned supreme for
centuries in succession.
The date of the introduction of Buddhism into Japan is the thirteenth year of the
reign of Kinmei, the twenty-ninth emperor, which we make to be 552 of the
Christian era, or "1501(sic.) year after Buddha's entrance into Nirvana," as
Buddhist chronologists like to have it. The great temple of Tenwoji was built as
early as 587(sic.) AD. at Naniwa (Osaka) by Shotoku Taishi, the wisest prince
the country has had, and "the father of Japanese Buddhism." The next century
(seventh) saw active proselyting going on throughout the empire, the emperors
themselves taking the initiatives in the work. About this time there was a great
revival of Buddhism in China under the leadership of Hiuen Chwang, that
famous priest of the Tau dynasty, whose adventurous journey into India was so
vividly described by Barthelemy St. Hilaire; and scholars were sent from Japan
across the water to study under the man who had sought the faith in the land of its
birth. The emperors of the Nara dynasty (708-769) were all strong supporters of
Buddhism, and the mighty temples that still adorn the ancient capital of the same
name witness to the power attained by the new religion so soon after its
introduction into the land.
But the new enthusiasm reached its acme, when by the beginning of the ninth
century, two Buddhist scholars, Saijo and Kukai returned from their study in
China, each with a sect of his choosing. The emperor Kammu who removed the capital
from Nara to Kyoto gave each a conspicuous site for temple-building, and
endowments and privileges affixed thereto. Saijo built Eizan lying to the
northeast of the new capital, the direction from which all evils were thought to
come. Kukai posted himself at Koya in the province of Kii, but had a temple-site
given him in the south end of the capital, the famed Toji with its peering pagoda
right south of the railway station being his own establishment. With Eizan founded
in 788, and Koya in 816 A.D., we may say that Japanese Buddhism had rooted
itself firmly in the native soil. No competition with it by any other faith was
possible, and no wonder that its founders thought that its foundations were
immovably laid as the mountains on which they builded.
Thus in the beginning of the ninth century we find the so-called "eight sects of
Buddhism"* [For those who may not yet be familiar with them, we might just as well
mention them here. They are (1) Sanron , (2) Hoshoo, (3) Kegon , (4) Ritsu, (5) Jojitsu,
(6) Gusha, (7) Tendai, and (8) Shingon.] firmly established in the land. For four
centuries after the death of Kakai we hear nothing about the introduction or
formation of any new sect in Japan. The "eight" grew on in power and influence,
Saijo's (Tendai) leading all the rest. And here as elsewhere assumption of power
by spiritual bodies brought in all the attending corruptions. Soon the priesthood
became emperor of emperors, so much so that one of the latter expressed
the annoyance due to his priest-subjects by the wellknown saying, "Two things
are beyond the power of my control: the water of the Kamo and mountain-priests."
Emperor after emperor, and noble after noble vied with one another in building,
endowing, and embellishing temples of their particular devotion; and the large city
of Kyoto and its suburbs, with their magnificent religious structures, - porches,
pagodas, hexagons, bell-houses, - are one huge monument of the faith that once
flourished among us.
Near the close of the twelfth century, a pacific settlement of the country after long
internecine wars gave rise to a new activity in religious thought. The great
Yoritomo crippled the temporal power of the priests, but showed them due respect
as the people's spiritual guides; and the result was the rise of many great teachers
honourable for their learning and virtue. The Hojos who succeeded him were
most of them faithful devotees of Buddhism. Tired with the pomp and
vain-gloriousness of the then existing sects, they caused the Zen or meditative
school of Buddhism to be introduced from China (1200), and several great temples
were built, in Kyoto, Kamakura, and Echizen, to perpetuate the new form of
worship in the land. The new became a favorite faith with the upper and
intellectual classes, its esoterism and endless metaphysics standing in strong
contrast to the ceremonial shows of the older sects. - The populace too needed a faith
other than the high intellectualities of the Zen philosophy, or the unapproachable
sublimities of the older cults. And such a faith was furnished them by a priest
called Genka (Saint Honen), who, about 1207 A.D. introduced among them what
has since been called the Jodo or "pureland" sect. It taught above all other things,
the possibility of entrance into the Pure Land merely by calling upon the name of
Buddha, and hence was otherwise called Nen-Butsu or Call-on-Buddha sect.
The simple "Nam-Amida-Butsu" (I commit myself to thee O thou Amitabha Buddha)
was set music on the hand-bell; and the whole uttered with plaintive voice and
often attended with a dance gave entirely new features to, thus far, a very august
form of belief. A branch of this was the Shin sect, started at about the same time
by a priest named Hanyen (Saint Shinran) , destined to eclipse all other sects
by the influence it was to have over the mass of the people. The very novel feature
of this sect was the removal of the vows of chastity from the priest-class, and
considerable leniency thus afforded to their free indulgence in the common joys of life.
Buddhism thus vulgarized, its approach to the commonalty was greatly facilitated;
and now without any imperial authority to forward its propagation, it began to be
a power among the people, - a matter of very great consequence to the ages that followed.
The addition of one more branch, that of Jisha, to the Nen-Butsu sect completed
the development of the exoteric school of Buddhism in Japan, the three coming
to be adopted by the people almost simultaneously with one another, and with
the esoteric Zen school which invaded the cultured society of the time.
The country was to have one more sect, - twelve in all, - immediately following
the last we have mentioned. We may say therefore that the thirteenth century was
the last and greatest formative period of Japanese Buddhism. The century was really
the reformative era of the Hindoo faith in Japan. No such lights as we saw then have
appeared since, and we of this century still hang upon the words then uttered with
all the conviction of the age. Here, as elsewhere, enthusiasm disappeared together
with superstition, and we, afraid of being nonscientific, are cowardly creatures,
basing our actions wholly upon the visible, and upon the faint echoes of the time
when men were sincere without our knowledge, and heroic without our crowding cares.
Let us call up a hero then to shame us in our vaunted faith, and in our love of
ignoble ease, when heaven and earth are calling us to nobler deeds and greater sacrifice.

II-BIRTH AND CONSECRATION <to contents>

On a spring day of the lst year of Teiwo (1222), as the sun rose above the billowy
horizon, and the easternmost outpost of Earth's nations caught its first rosy rays, a
child was born to a fisher's family in the village of Kominato (Little Haven) near
the most eastern cape of the province of Awa. The father was a fugitive there for
some political reasons, now a poor fisherman without any outward distinction; and
the mother, also, of no mean birth, a devout worshipper of the Sun-god, of whom
the gift of a son had long been asked, and now granted in answer to her prayers.
They named him Zen-Nichi-Maro (Good-Sun-Boy) in pious commemoration of the
deity who called him into being, - a fact which had considerable to do when the child
came to decide his mission to this world, as we shall see afterward. All the wonders
and miracles which are reported to have attended his birth, how a crystalline
spring spontaneously gushed forth in the fisher's garden "to wash natal
uncleanliness away," how a white lotus of unusual magnitude, entirely out of
season, opened near by "to cast fragrance into the air," etc., - we of this century are
accustomed to ascribe to the devout imaginations of the time. But the date of his
birth is worth particular mention here, as it was a point much ruminated upon by the
young enthusiast as the awful question of his country's salvation afterward came
before his mind. The year was the 2171st after Buddha's entrance into the
Nirvana; that is, after the first "millennium of the right law" had ended,
and the second "millennium of the image-law" had also spent itself, and
the third and last "millennium of the latter law" had just been ushered
in; when as was prophesied by the Great Teacher, a light was expected to appear
to the east of him to shine the darkness of the last days. The day was the 16th of
the second month (according to the lunar calendar), a day after the same great
event in Buddha's life, which was on the 15th of the same month. Correspondences
such as these were of immense importance to a mind like our hero's.
When he came to be twelve years old, the pious inclination of his parents decided
upon his being made a priest. Considering what he did in after years, we can well
believe many stories told about his remarkable childhood; and we do not wonder
if the paternal ambition of the fugitive-fisherman saw in his son's consecration to
a priestly office an opportunity for the lad's rise in society, as in that age of
rigid social distinctions, religion was the only way open for a low-born genius
to show itself in the world. Not far from the place where he was born, was a temple,
Kiyozumi by name, and its abbot Dozen had local reputation for his learning and
virtue. There the boy Zen-nichi was taken, and entrusted to the care of the benignant
teacher who seems to have taken special delight in the youth. Passing his novitiate of
four years, he was formally consecrated a priest at the age of sixteen under the new
name of Rencho; and already the good abbot, watching the unusual ability of
his young disciple, was beginning to think of nominating him as his possible successor
in his office. The youth remained his parents' hope, and his teacher's pride, when behind all
outward appearances struggles were going on in his mind, which drove him at last
from the region of his birth, to seek enlightenment throughout the country.

III-IN AND OUT OF DARKNESS <to contents>

He was fairly introduced into the elementary knowledge of Buddhism when
several questions presented themselves to his mind for solution. The most
apparent was the existence of multitudinous sects in Buddhism. "Why is it" he
asked to himself, "that Buddhism which had its origin in the life and teaching of
one man is now divided into so many sects and divisions? Is Buddhism more than
one? What means that which I see around me, that one sect speaks evil of all
others, each maintaining that it has Buddha's true mind? The waters of the sea
have the same taste, and there can be no two ways in the teachings of Buddha. Oh
wherein lies the explanation of this division into sects, and which among these
sects is Buddha's way, the way I should walk in?"
Such was his first and greatest doubt, an entirely reasonable doubt, we believe.
We also have similar doubt about Buddhism and some other religions, and we can
entirely sympathize with our hero in the struggle he had. As neither his abbot nor
anybody else relieved him from his doubt, he naturally resorted to his prayers.
One day as he came from his worship at the temple of the Bodhisattwa of his special
devotion, the burden within him became unbearable, and down he came to the ground
with abundant hemorrhage from his mouth. His friends helped him up, and it was
sometime before he returned to consciousness again. We are still pointed to the exact
spot of this occurrence, a little bamboo bush near by with certain reddish tints
in its leaves being supposed to have taken its colours from the blood that was spattered
on that occasion. One evening, however, as his eyes were poring over the Nirvana Sutra,
said to have been delivered by Buddha just before his entrance into that blessed state,
the following caught the attention of the young priest, to the inexpressible relief of
his troubled mind: Trust in the Word and not in man. That is, he was not to trust in
human opinions, however plausible and highsounding, but in the sutras as left by
the Great Teacher, and he was to decide all questions by them and them only. His
mind was now at ease. He found something to stand upon, whereas thus far all
had been sinking sand under him. Who, by reading the above account of the Japanese
priest, is not reminded of a similar case in the convent of Erfurth four hundred years ago,
when after much questionings, "loss of consciousness," etc., the young German monks found
his rest in an old Latin Bible that caught his eyes, and clung to it ever afterward as
his stronghold of faith and life?
But in case of the Buddhist priest, the question of the authoritative scripture was
not so simple a one as in that of the Christian Luther. Whereas the German had a
single Bible to rely upon, the Japanese had dozens, often of very contradictory
natures, from which to make his selection of the canon of the supreme authority.
This, however, was a comparatively easy task in the age when the so-called Higher
Criticism was wholly unknown, and men put their simple trust upon the records of
the ancients without questioning why and wherefore. It was enough for our hero
that he found that one of the sutras gave the chronological order of all the great
sutras in both mahayana and hinayana. The order given was, beginning with
the Avatamsaka Sutra, supposed to contain Buddha's first public utterances, (1)
the Agamas (Kegon Kyo), containing his teachings of the first twelve years of his
ministry, (2) the Vaipulya Sutras (Agon Kyo), containing those of the second
sixteen years, (3) the Pragna Sutra (Hannya Kyo), of the third fourteen years,,
and (4) the Sadharma-Pundarika Sutra (Myo-Ho-Renge or Hokke Kyo) , of the
last eight years of his life. Natural conclusions from this order were that the
last-mentioned sutra contained the essence of the teaching of Buddha's whole life;
or in the words of Nichiren, it had in it "the principle of all things, the truth of
eternity, and the secret importance of Buddha's original state and of the virtue of
his enlightenment." Hence its beautiful name of "the Sutra of the Lotus of the
Mysterious Law." It is not our purpose here to enter into a critical examination of
the exact order of the Buddhist canons, or of the comparative value of one above
others. I think it is fairly settled now that the sutra that Nichiren thought so much
of was a later product, some 500 years after Buddha's death, and that the
Amitartha Sutra that gives the order of the different canons here mentioned was
written expressly for the purpose of giving authenticity and superlative authority
to the new canon. But be these whatever they may, it only suffices us to know that
our hero accepted them in the order here given, and found in Saddharma-Pundarika
Sutra the standard of the Buddhist faith, and a clear simple explanation of
the all-comprehensibility of so many dicordant views in Buddhism. As he came to
this conclusion, the joy and gratitude within him burst into abundant tears.
"I," he finally said to himself, "I who left my father and mother, and gave myself to
the service of this excellent faith, - should I cling to the traditional teachings of
common priests, and not seek the golden words of the Tathagata (Buddha) himself?"
He was twenty years old when the holy ambition rose in his mind. Seclusion in
a country-monastery became no more possible. Bidding farewell to his abbot and order,
he launched out boldly into the world, to seek the truth far and wide.
His first destination was Kamakura, the Shogun's capital of the time. A
country-priest in the metropolis - a Luther in Rome, - strange phenomena met his
eyes, and strange doctrines reached his ears. With the magnificence of its
temple-structures and the pomp of its priest-classes, the city was given up wholly
to falsities. The Zen sect leading the high, and the Jodo sect the low, the former
into quagmires of futile speculation, and the latter into a delirium of blind trust in
Amitabha, Buddha's Buddhism was not to be found anywhere. Yea more, he saw
Buddha's very images given to children for toys, and Amitabha of only fabulous
existence was given the supreme position in what they called Buddhist worship!
Men clad in holy garments vaunted themselves in their open shame. Salvation,
they taught, consisted only in calling upon the name of Amitabha, and not in acts
of virtue and discipline; and so amidst the din of Nan-Amida-Butsu, licentiousness
of the grossest kind prevailed among the people. During his five years' stay in
Kamaknra, he saw enough to convince him of the presence of the Latter Day
already in the world, and the need and opportunity of a new faith to bring in a new
era of light, as foretold by the Worshipful in his Holy Sutra. Only but recently,
Saint Daia, an object of universal adoration, had died a death, which sent horrors.
to all his followers. His body ''shrivelled up into the smallness of a child," and the
color of his skin changed into "pitchy darkness," - unmistakable signs of his fall into
Hell, and evidences of the diabolical nature of the faith he represented. Then, too,
what do those monstrosities in the sky signify? Three aerial forms, white and red,
hung clear against the western sky, and when the two white disappeared, the red
remained "as a pillar of fire piercing through the zenith." The whole was succeeded
by a violent earthquake bringing down many temples to the ground, and men and
beasts groaned under the debris of the structures intended for their salvation. "All
because the true sutra is not preached in the land, and errors are taught and
believed in. Am I not he of eternal appointment to revive the Faith in the
land?"......With thoughts such as these, Rencho left Kamakura behind him, wisely
remarking that "the capital of a country is a place for disseminating the truth, and
not for learning it."
After a short visit to his parents, he set out for further search after knowledge.
Eizan towering in the direction of Kimon (Devil's Gate) from Kyoto to ward all
evil influences from off the Mikado's capital, has for the last one thousand years
been the chief repository of Buddhist learning in Japan. There twenty-five hundred
feet above the sea-level, encompassed by tall cryptomeria forests, and with a magnificent
view of the placid Lake Biwa below, the ways of Sakya were searched into, contemplated,
and transmitted. In its days of prosperity, the whole mountain must have worn the aspect
of a bustling colony, harbouring, as it did, an army of mendicants three thousand strong,
a dread of the populace as well as of the emperors. It was here that Genka studied, and
formulated his exoteric school of Buddhism so contrary to the tenets taught in the mountain,
and had it afterward so widely adopted by the people. His disciple Hanyen, the founder of
the Shin sect, was also a student here, as were also many others who had had national
reputations for their attainment in the secret laws of the Faith. And now our Rencho,
ambitious of the propagation of genuine Buddhism in Japan, came four hundred miles on
his feet from his fisher's hut in the province of Awa, to seek enlightenment in the same mountain.
With the new opportunities for investigation here afforded, Rencho took in with
avidity all that he could lay his hands upon. But his speciality was Saddharma
Pundarika Sutra, - his Sutra, - of which valuable manuscripts and commentaries
were accessible in the mountain. Indeed, the Tendai sect of which Eizan was the
centre, made a great deal of this Sutra. What are called "the sixty volumes" of the
sect are so many commentaries upon this one book. Such a wonderful book is it
that Tendai, the Chinese founder of the sect, wrote thirty volumes upon it; and
one of his disciples, Myogaku, finding that the master's commentaries still needed
commentaries, wrote another thirty volumes upon the first thirty volumes. Ten of
these volumes treat separately of each of the six Chinese hieroglyphics that compose
the name of the Sutra! So deep to the ancient did appear the meaning of the book
which to us appears as nothing very extraordinary. - For ten long years, Rencho stayed
in Eizan, delving into these intricacies. We can only give the conclusions he came to.
He was now thoroughly convinced of the view he had entertained of the superiority of
the Pundarika Sutra above all the other Sutras; of its introduction into Japan in its pure
from by Saijo, the founder of Eizan, and of considerable vitiations introduced thereto
by priests who came after him. Often to Kyoto, and once to Nara and Koya, he carried
his researches, to establish him further in his conviction; and when no more doubting was possible,
he was ready to lay down his life for the Sutra. Once he saw with his own eyes all the principal
deities of the land coming to promise protection to him; and as they vanished in the air,
a divine chorus was heard in the sky, saying, "Shi-nin-gyo-seken, no-metsushujo-an"
(this man will go round the world, and destroy the darkness that is in men). He was not
the only mystic, however, who has had smilar visions and visitations.
He was now thirty-two years of age, friendless, unknown, yet independent and
indomitable. He had no ancestral lineage to lay his claim upon, as had Hanyen of
the Shin sect. He was a fisherman's son, "a sudra of the sea-coast," as he
afterward called himself. Neither was his study prosecuted in a foreign land, as
were those of Saijo, Kukai, and other eminent "theologians," - a matter of prime
importance, then, as now, of being accepted by Japanese as a holder of a key to the
secret of any branch of knowledge.
Patronage of any kind he had absolutely none; much less, imperial patronage, as
had most other sect-founders in abundance. He alone began single-handed,
against powers of all kinds, with a view wholly at variance with those of the influential sects
of the day. He is the only case, as far as we know, of Japanese Buddhists, who, without
any example to follow after, stood for a Sutra and a Law with his life in his hand. His life is
interesting not so much for the doctrinal views he maintained and promulgated, as for the brave
way in which he upheld them. Religious persecution in its true sense began in Japan with Nichiren.

IV-PROCLAMATION <to contents>

"A prophet is not without honour save in his own country." Yet it is a pathetic
fact to know that a prophet usually begins his public career in his own country.
Homeless as he is in this world, he yet feels the attraction of his home, and despite
the kind of treatment he is sure to receive there, he resorts there as a hart pants
after the water-brooks, only to be rejected, stoned, and expelled. Rencho's course
was not to be otherwise.
In his humble home at Little Haven, he found his parents eagerly waiting for the
return of their son; and the first and greatest of all his trials was to protest against
their natural desire of seeing him installed as the abbot of the monastery that had
nursed him in his youth. He now changed his name to Nichiren, Sun-Lotus,
significant of the god who called him into being, and of the Sutra he was to give to
the world. On the 28th day of the fourth month of the fifth year of Kencho (l253.),
as the rosy sun was half above the eastern horizon, Nichiren was upon a cliff
looking toward the broad Pacific, and to the seas before him and the mountains
behind him, and through them to the whole universe, he repeated the form of
prayer he had framed for himself, the form that was intended to silence all others,
to lead his disciples to the end of the earth, and be their watchword to all
eternity, - the form, indeed, that embodied the essence of Buddhism, the constitution
of man, and of the universe. It was NAM-MYO-HO-REN-GE-KYO, Namah
Saddharmapundarikaya Sutraya, I humbly trust in the Sutra of the Mysterious
Law of the White Lotus.
Nature addressed in morning, he was to address his townsmen in afternoon. His
fame had already gone around the whole neighborhood. He who spent fifteen years
in study in Kamakura, Eizan, and Nara, must have something new, deep, and
edifying to say to his countrymen. So they came, young and old, men and women,
some repeating haraharitaya of the Shingon sect, others the nam-amida-butsu of
the Jodo. When the temple was all filled, and "incense perfumed its four corners,"
Nichiren appeared on the pulpit "at the beating of a drum." A man just reaching
fulness of manhood, with many marks of vigils upon him, the eyes of a zealot, the
dignity of a prophet, - he was the cynosure of the whole congregation, and his
opening words were watched with breathless silence. He took up his sutra, the
Pundarika, read a part of its sixth chapter, and "with countenance mild, and voice
resonant" he thus began:
"Years have I spent in the study of all the sutras, and read and heard all that
different sects have to say about them. In one of them we are told that for 500
years after Buddha's entrance into Nirvana, many will attain Buddhahood without
any exertion on their part; and for the succeeding 500 years, with diligence and
ascetic contemplation. This is the millennium of the right law. Then will
come 500 years of sutra-reading, and another 500 years of temple-building. This is
the millennium of the image-law. Then will be inaugurated the five centuries of
'the concealment of the pure law,' wherein the merit of the Tathagata's teaching
shall have exhausted itself, and all ways of enlightenment shall be lost to mankind.
This is the beginning of the latter-day-law, which will continue for ten thousand
years. ..........Now it is two hundred years since the world entered the last
millennium. And to us so far removed from the direct teaching of Buddha, there is
but one way provided for our attainment of Buddhahood; and that way is contained
in the five characters of Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo. Yet the Jodo calls upon the people to
shut this precious sutra, and to turn no more ear to it; and the Shingon reviles it as
unworthy even of loosing the shoes from off the feet of their sutra, the
Mahavairokana. Are not such spoken of by the Worshipful in the second book of
the Pundarika, in the chapter on parables, as the exterminators of the seeds of
Buddhism, whose sure end will be endless Hell? He that has ears to hear and eyes
to see, let him understand, and divide truth from falsehood. Know that the Jodo is
a way to Hell, the Zen, the teaching of infernal hosts; the Shingon, a heresy to
destroy the nation, and the Ritzu, an enemy of the land. These are not my own
words, but I found them in the sutra. Hark to the cuckoo above the cloud.
He knows the time, and warns you to plant. Plant now therefore, and do not repent
when the harvest season comes. Now is the time for planting the Lotus Sutra, and
I am the messenger sent by the Worshipful for that end." He ended, and an
uproar of indignation arose from the infuriated audience. Some said that his mind
was out of order, and hence he might be pardoned; others that his blasphemy was
worthy of the severest punishment. The landlord who attended the meeting would
see to the blasphemer's being dispatched as soon as he stepped out of the holy
ground. But the old abbot was kind. His pupil might some day repent, resume his
former orthodoxy, and so end his dreaming. At dusk, he ordered two of his disciples
to take Nichiren out of the district by ways safe from the landlord's attack.


V-ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD <to contents>

Rejected at home, he made his way right into Kamakura, the capital of the
country, "the best place for disseminating the truth." There in a spot owned by
nobody, in what is still called Matsuba-ga-Tani (Pine-Leaf's Dale), he had a little
strawhut built for him. Here he posted himself with his Pundarika Sutra, - an
independent man, - to begin his conquest of errors around him. The great Nichiren
sect had its beginning in this hut. The stupendous temple-structures at Minobu,
Ikegami, and other places, with more than five thousand temples in the land, and
two million souls that worship in them, - all had their beginning in this hut and this
one man. So are great works always born. One indomitable soul, and the world
against him, - therein lies the promise of all permanent greatness. The twentieth
century may well learn of this man, of his faith and bravery, if not of his doctrines.
Had Christianity itself such a beginning in Japan? Mission-schools,
mission-churches, allowances in money, helps in men, - great Nichiren, he began
with himself alone, with none of these!
For a year he is silent once more in study and contemplation. Meanwhile he had
his fiist disciple, named Nissho afterward, who came all the way from Eizan,
attracted by the view they had in common upon the state of Buddhism in Japan.
Nichiren is exceedingly glad, because he can now appear before the public, and lay
down his life there without the fear of his doctrines being lost to his country. So he
began in the spring of 1254 what was never heard of before in the land, - street
preaching. He repeated materially, amidst the gibes and railings of the
metropolitan hearers, what he had first proclaimed to his townsmen. To the retort
that it was not becoming for a man of his order to preach by the way-side, his
decisive answer was that it was becoming for a man to eat standing in time of war.
To the rebuke that he must not speak evil of the faith adored by the ruler of the
land, his plain reply was that "the priest is Buddha's messenger, and fear of the
world and men agrees not with his vocation." To the natural doubt that the other
forms of worship could not all be mistaken, his simple explanation was that "the
scaffold is of use only till the temple is done." For six years he preached in this
manner, in season and out of season, till his work and person began to call public
attention. Among his disciples were counted not a few of men in high authority,
some even of the Shogun's household, and there was a fear that the whole city
might be carried away by his influence, if not checked in due time. There were
Abbot Doryu of Kencho-ji, Abbot Ryochu of Komyo-ji, Ryokwan of Gokuraku-ji,
Ryukwan of Daibutsu-ji, etc., all high dignitaries of vast influence, who took
counsel together for the suppression of the rising faith in the capital. But
Nichiren's audacity was more than all their united efforts against him. Taking
advantage of many calamities that had recently befallen the land, he prepared
what is still considered the most remarkable production of the kind,
- Rissei-Ankoku-Ron, A Treatise on Bringing Peace and Righteousness to
the Country. Therein he recounted all the evils from which the land was then
suffering, and traced their cause to the false doctrines taught among the people.
These he proved by extensive quotations from sutras. The remedy, in his view, lay
in the universal acceptation by the nation of the highest of all sutras, the
Pundarika; and pointed out, as the sure result of refusal of such a gift, civil wars
and a foreign invation. Never before were more caustic terms applied to the
church-dignitaries of the land. The whole treatise was a battle-cry, declaration of
war of the most determined kind, which if fought through, could have but one issue,
the extirpation of his sect, or of all the other sects. It was enthusiasm indistinguishable
from madness, and Hojo Tokiyori, one of the wisest rulers the country has had,
decided upon its suppression by the removal of the zealot from the capital. But
the politic man did not know the kind of soul he was dealing with. It was a soul prepared
for death, and with such sincerity in it that it had already begotten other souls like it,
no less prepared for encounter with all kinds of trial, as was abundantly proved afterward.
Nothing could intimidate these men, and "warfare against Buddha's enemies" was carried
on with unabated vigor, till by force the little company was disbanded and its leader carried
away as an exile to a far-off province.

VI-SWORD AND EXILE <to contents>

For fifteen years following the publication of his treatise, his life was a continuous
battling with the powers and principalities of his world. He was first banished to
Idzu, where he remained three years, making converts in his exile. On his return
to Kamakura, he was entreated by his followers to stop "warfare" and devote
himself mostly to their edification; to which his decided answer was that "now in
the beginning of the Latter Day, when the virulence of errors is so strong, polemic
attack is a necessity as medicine to a disease at its crisis, and is a mercy, though it
does not appear so." He at once resumed his old attitude, - an incorrigible
priest, - heedless of the destruction now hanging over his head. One evening, when
on his missionary tour with several of his disciples, he was suddenly attacked by a
company of men, swords in hand. The leader of the attacking party was no other
than the landlord who had determined upon the removal of the audacious renovator
at the time of his proclamation of the new doctrines four years ago. Three of his disciples
were killed, one priest and two laymen, in their effort to save the life of their master. Thus the
sutra had its first martyrs in Japan, precious to the memory of the myriad who
now put their trust in the same. Nichiren escaped with a wound in his forehead,
the mark of his fidelity to the Law.
But the real crisis came in the autumn of 1271. His life had been spared thus far,
for the law of the time forbade the capital punishment of the priest-class; and
though his impudence was now beyond forbearance, his shaven head and
sacerdotal robes were his strong protection against the rigor of the law. But when
nothing could prevent his vituperative attack upon the existing faiths of the land,
and with them upon the authorities both civil and clerical, Hojo decided upon his
being delivered to the hand of the executioner as an extraordinary measure in his
special case. The so-called "Danger of the Sutra (Go-ho-nan) at Tatsunokuchi" is a most
notable event in the religious history of Japan. Its historic veracity has been
recently doubted; but the "danger" shorn of the miracles which later piety attached
to the event, seems unquestionable. The popular account is on this wise: At the
instant when the executioner lifted up his sword for the final despatch, repetition
by Nichiren of sacred words* [Rin-kei yok-ju-sha, Nen-pi Kwan-on-riki, To-jin dan-dan ye.
When on the scaffold life is to end,
And Kwanyin's power is contemplated,
The blade of the sword to pieces will crumble]
from his Sutra brought down a sudden gust of wind from heaven, and to the utter
bewilderment of all around him, the blade was broken into three pieces, and no second stroke
was possible by the paralysis of the swordsman's hand. Soon a messenger reached
the spot "galloping at full-speed," bringing a writ of release from Kamakura, and the cause
of the Sutra was thus saved. - But we can explain the incident without calling in the aid of
a miracle. The superstitious fear of the executioner to put an end to the life of a man of the holy
order is perfectly natural in that age. And when he saw the calm composure of the
dignified priest ready to receive the fatal stroke in the attitude of offering prayer, we can well
imagine the poor executioner shaking with fear of heavenly punishment, should he be
instrumental in shedding innocent blood. A similar fear must have overtaken the ruler himself
who had decided upon this unprecedented execution; and he at once sent out a messenger
with the sentence of exile instead of death. The escape we believe was narrow, but was perfectly
natural.
The exile which was to take the place of death was a severe one. He was now
carried to Sado, a forlorn island in the Japan Sea, at that time the most
inaccessible part in the whole country, and the favorite place of banishment for
criminals of the most offensive kind. That he survived the exile of five years in this
island is a wonder. One severe winter he passed through with little beyond the
mental food of his Sutra. His was another conquest of mind over body, spirit over
force. At the close of his banishment, he added one more province to his spiritual
dominion. Ever since, Sado and the neighboring populous province of Echigo have
remained fanatically loyal to his cause.
His indomitable courage and perseverance now called forth the fear and
admiration of the authority at Kamakura: and this, together with the fast
approaching danger from the Mongol attack in fulfillment of his prophecy of a
foreign invasion, secured him permission for his return to the capital (1274). Soon
after his arrival there, he obtained a charter for the free promulgation of his
doctrines in the land. Spirit conquered at last, and for seven centuries it was to be
a power in the nation.

VII-THE LAST DAYS <to contents>

The man was now fifty-two years of age, and most of his life had been spent in
vigils and battlings with the world. He was now free to speak to his country-men;
but the way in which the permission was given to that effect did not please him at
all. It was fear which induced the Hojos to grant freedom, whereas he aimed at the
willing acceptation of the Sutra by the ruler and his people. He now began to think
of retiring to a mountain after the manner of his Hindoo Master, there to end his
days in quiet contemplation and instruction of his disciples. Herein we believe lies
his greatness, and the main reason of the permanence of his sect. When the world
began to receive him, he left it. Here was an opportunity for stumbling for souls
less than his.
But to his disciples, the removal of the interdiction of their tenets was the
commencement of open aggressive actions against the adherents of the older sects.
We are told of temple after temple "stormed and brought down by vocal attacks."
We know what the manner of these zealots is. Each carries a drum in his hand,
and all in unison repeat their prayer, - Nam-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, - with five
strikes to accompany its five syllables. Twenty of them is stunning to our ears, and
we can well imagine the effect of hundreds of them in their new vigor and
enthusiasm, going from house to house, from temple to temple, through the city of
Kamakura, calling for its immediate surrender to the new faith. The zeal, the fire,
the intolerance of the founder, are still distinctly visible in his disciples of
today, - the only case of martial zeal in the naturally inoffensive and pessimistic
religion of Buddha.
Our hero's last days were peaceful. He established himself in Mt. Minobu to the
west of Mt. Fuji, and there with the splendid view of the ocean to the south, and
noble mountains beside and behind him, he received the homage of his admirers
from all parts of the land. Here he lived to see his prophecy literally fulfilled in the
great Mongol invasion of 1281, which of course increased his
fame and influence considerably. The year following that great event, he was
carried to Ikegami (near Omori Station) as a guest of one of his lay-disciples, and
there died on the 11th day of the 10th month, 1282. His last wish was to have his
doctrines preached in the imperial city of Kyoto, to have "the holy hearings" at last,
and he appointed one Nizzo, then a boy fourteen years of age, for this work. One
feature of his death-bed scene needs our notice. They brought to him an idol of
Buddha as his possible consolation in his last hours; but he beckoned with his hand
to remove it at once, with evident signs of much displeasure. Then they unrolled
before him a kakemono with the name of Saddharma-Pundarika Sutra written in
magnificent Chinese characters. Thereto he slowly turned his body, and clasping
his hands towards it, he breathed his last. A bibliolater, and not an idolater, was
he.

VIII-AN ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER <to contents>

No more enigmatic character has appeared in our history than this subject of our
essay. To his enemy he was a blasphemer, a hypocrite, a belly-server, a king of
mountebanks, and all that. Books were written, some of them very ingenious, to
prove his charlatanism. He is the favorite mark of attack when Buddhism is to be
ridiculed by its enemies. He is made the scapegoat of all that is opprobrious in
that religion, by his brother-Buddhists out of his own sect. No man in Japan had
more calumnies piled upon him. And when Christianity made its appearance in the
land, it too took its part in the matter, and many more stones were thrown at him
from that quarter as well. I know one of its famed ministers once turning his whole
attention in that direction. Indeed, for a Christian man in Japan to write anything
laudatory this man sounds as impious as to speak good words for Judas Iscariot.
But I for one venture my honour, if need be, for this man. Most of his doctrines, I
grant, cannot stand the test of the present-day criticism. His polemics were
inelegant, and his whole tone was insanoid. He certainly was an unbalanced
character, too pointed in only one direction.
But divest him of his intellectual errors, of his hereditary temperament, and of
much that his time and surroundings marked upon him, and you have a soul
sincere to its very core, the honestest of men, the bravest of Japanese. A hypocrite
cannot keep his hypocrisy for twenty-five years and more. Neither can he have
thousands of followers ready to lay down their lives for him. "A false man found a
religion?" Carlyle exclaims. "Why, a false man cannot build a brick house." I look
around me, and I see 5,000 temples manned by 4,000 priests and 8,000 teachers,
and 1,500,000-2,000,000 souls worshipping in them after the manner prescribed by
this man, now seven hundred years after his death; and I am told to take all these
as the work of a shameless mountebank! My belief in human nature is too strong
for me to believe in any such thing. If falsity is so permanent upon his earth,
by what other means shall we distinguish honesty from it?
The most fearless of men, his courage was based wholly upon his conviction that
he was Buddha's special messenger to this earth. He himself is nothing, - "a sudra
of a seacoast" - but in his capacity as a vehicle of the Pundarika Sutra, his person
had all the importance of heaven and earth. "I am a worthless, ordinary priest," he
once said to a man in authority; - "but as a promulgator of the Pundarika Sutra, I
am Sakyamouni's special messenger, and as such Brahma serves me on my right
hand and Sakra on my left, the Sun guides me and the Moon follows me, and all
the deities of the land bend their heads and honour me." His own life was of no
account whatever to him; but that his nation should persecute him, the bearer of
such a law, was lamentable to him beyond his power of expression. If demented he
was, his dementia was of a noble sort, hard to be distinguished from that highest
form of self-respect which knows its own worth by the worth of the mission it was
sent to fulfill. Nichiren was not the only man in History who has had such an
estimate of himself.
Therefore, the holy sutras, and especially his own Pundarika, were the constant
sources of his consolation during years of hard persecution. Turning to Nichiro his
favorite disciple, who to approach his master's boat as it was launched for its
voyage to the land of the exile, had his arms painfully disabled by the angry
strokes of its oarsmen, Nichiren had this consolation to offer: "Know that staves
and exiles are the necessary accompaniments of the preachers of the Sutra in the
Latter Day. What was written in the chapter on exhortation in the Pundarika
Sutra two-thousand years ago, has now come upon thee and me. Rejoice, therefore,
for the time of the conquest of the Sutra is at hand." His exilic epistles to his disciples
are full of quotations from sutras. In one of them he writes: "In the Nirvana Sutra,
we have the doctrine of 'the turning of heaviness into lightness.' We receive this
heaviness in this life, and with it, lightness in the life to come is assured.
* * * Devabodhisattwa was killed by heretics, Aryasimha was beheaded, and
Nagardjuna met diverse temptations; and they in the Right-Law Age,
in Buddha's own land. How much more then in this end of the earth, in the
beginning of the Latter-Law Age? etc." The Christian Bible was not more precious
to Luther than the Pundarika Sutra to this man. "If I can die for the sake of my
Sutra, I count not my life precious," were his words on many critical occasions. A
bibliolater he might have been, as in one sense our own Luther was; but a book
certainly is a nobler object of worship than images and forces of all kinds, and a
man that could die for a book is a nobler sort of hero than most that go by that
name. Let the modern Christian reviler of Nichiren see whether his Books is not
covered with dust; or if it is daily mumbled in his mouth, and its inspiration hotly
defended, whether he could endure sword and exile for fifteen years, and stake his
life and soul for it, that it might be adopted by the people to whom he is sent.
Nichiren should be the last man to be stoned by the owners of that Book, which
more than all other books, did fashion for the better the affairs of mankind.
Nichiren's private life was the simplest that could be imagined. Thirty years after
he had established himself in the strawhut in Kamakura, we find him in a similar
structure in Minobu, when wealthy laymen were his disciples, and ease and comfort
were at his command. Very intolerant to what he called "Buddha's enemies,"
he was the mildest of men when he dealt with the poor and stricken. His letters to
his disciples breathe the softest of tempers, in great contrast to the fire in his
memorable "Treatise." No wonder that they thought so much of him.
Indeed, Nichiren's life always reminds me of Mahomet without the
concupiscence of the latter. The same intensity, the same insanoid fanaticism,
yet withal the same sincerity of purpose, and much of inward pity and tenderness,
in one as in the other. Only I believe the Japanese was greater than the Arabian,
in that the former had more confidence in his Sutra than the latter in his Koran.
Physical force was not a necessity to Nichiren, seeing that he had such a book to
trust in. It alone without any human agency is a power enough, and no force is
needed to establish its worth. History that has acquitted Mahomet of hypocrisy,
ought have done more toward a right estimate of Nichiren.
Divested therefore of his thirteenth century garb, of the aberration of his critical
knowledge, and of a little taint of insanity that might have dwelt in him, (as it
dwells in all great men, I suppose,) there stands before us a remarkable figure, one
of the greatest of his kind in the world. No more independent man can I think of
among my countrymen. Indeed, he by his originality and independence made
Buddhism a Japanese religion. His sect alone is purely Japanese, while all others
have had their beginnings either in Hindoo, or Chinese, or Corean minds.
His ambition, too, embraced the whole world of his time. He speaks of the eastward
march of Buddhism from India to Japan till his time, and of the westward march
of its improved form from Japan to India from his time on. He was therefore
an exception among passive receptive Japanese, - not a very tractable fellow no doubt,
because he had a will of his own. But such alone is the nation's backbone,
while much else that goes by the name of affability, humility, receptivity, or beg-ability,
is no better than the country's shame, fitted only for swelling the number of "converts"
in proselytizers' reports to their homeland. Nichiren minus his combativity is
our ideal religious man.

<to contents>

[The second edition,digitalised January the 29th,2001 by TERESA CORP.
Copyright all right reserved by TERESA CORP.Tokio Japan. Mail : info@teresa.co.jp]