A wandering student in the Far East/A new order in the Far East
PART I.
A NEW ORDER IN THE FAR EAST
"We have also to include in the definition of Central Asia the Western territories of the Great Empire of China, that mysterious and inscrutable dominion which in its age is never old, in its decay is never feeble, and in its revolutions is never scattered. In the examination of the Chinese problem alone there is sufficient material to occupy attention for a great number of years."
"It is time to drop the licence of exaggeration, and, with the light of common day, yet with sympathy and without prejudice, seek to know what Dai Nippon is and has been."
CHAPTER I.
A NEW ORDER IN THE FAR EAST.
The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been marked by many events of immense importance to the human race. Many years hence historians will no doubt give their decision as to the relative importance of the various movements which have characterised the past decade, and which have provided the outward and visible signs of the mysterious onward flowing current—call it evolution or what you will—which is for ever sweeping peoples and kingdoms along the road to an unknown goal. It would be rash, indeed, to endeavour to anticipate the verdict of posterity, but this at least may be foretold, that no historian dealing with the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth century will be able to minimise the vast importance to the world at large of the remarkable change which has taken place during that period in the relations between the peoples of the East and those of the West.
The whole outlook upon life of the people of Asia is undergoing a process of transformation: they are beginning to look to the future instead of dwelling in the past. The restless spirit of modern industrial competition is warring with the comfortable fatalism which has for centuries enslaved the men of the devout and contemplative East. Asia has always displayed a passionate reverence for the past, and it is not too much to say—of China at any rate—that she has existed for centuries in a state of voluntary bondage to the dead. The worship of ancestors has been the keystone of the religion of the races of the Far East, and throughout the Asiatic Continent the highest expression of the genius and art of her children is to be found in monuments raised to the memory of her illustrious dead—the Taj Mahal at Agra, the tomb of Tamerlane at Samarkand, the beautiful mausolea of the Shoguns at Tokyo and Nikko.
But the chains that bind her to the dead are being loosened; with the spread of modern education are rising new thoughts and new ideals, her gaze is slowly being directed away from the immutability of the past to the possibilities of the future. A force of incalculable potentiality for influencing the destinies of the world has been given birth, and it is no longer possible to ignore the immense significance of the movement which, beginning in the extreme East, is sweeping back over Asia and leaving an indelible mark upon every country in its flight. Japan has already emancipated herself from the fetters of Oriental fatalism and inaction—with what startling results we already know. China stirs uneasily with the child national assertion in her womb. In India agitation seethes and bubbles and takes feverish hold of any weakness which the ruling Power displays. Persia, until recent years the home of the luxury and splendour, the pomp and pageantry, the unfettered and illimitable egoism of an irresponsible and unchallenged absolutism, is even now in travail, with every prospect of giving birth to a deformed caricature of constitutional government. In Egypt the cry of nationality trembles in the air, while in Turkey the passage from autocracy to representative government has been effected with such bewildering rapidity, and with such an astonishing absence of friction, that it is difficult to grasp the fact that so unexampled and so unlooked-for a change has in very truth been brought about. From all quarters come indications that the Eastern question of the future is assuming a new phase, in which the rivalries and jealousies of European Powers are falling more and more into the background before the rapidly growing ambitions and aspirations of the Eastern races themselves.
It is in the Far East that this new movement has had its origin, and it is in the Far East that its progress may be most profitably studied, and it is to the countries of the Far East consequently—China, Korea, and Japan—that the pages that follow are almost exclusively restricted. The greater part of the material used in their composition was collected in the course of thirteen consecutive months of travel, and a not inconsiderable portion of the whole is devoted to the narrative of a journey across China from the Pacific seaboard to the Burmese frontier.
My primary object, however, has been to give the public the results of my investigations rather than a mere description of the incidents of journeys which it has been necessary to undertake in order to carry such investigations through, and descriptive narrative of the greater part of the six or seven months spent in travelling over the less inaccessible regions of the Far East, such as North China, Manchuria, Korea, and Japan, has necessarily been omitted, or, where not altogether omitted, compressed to the narrowest possible dimensions. I propose, therefore, to take the opportunity provided by an introductory chapter to say a few words from the general point of view of the traveller in Far Eastern lands.
On first acquaintance it is, perhaps, the contrast which the lands of East Asia present to those of the Near East and Central Asia that most forcibly strikes the traveller who is acquainted with those regions. In Japan abundant water and a humid atmosphere have clothed the country with a mantle of tropical luxuriance and created in the Eastern Sea a world of fragrant flowers and riotous vegetation, the very antithesis of the harsh outlines and sun-scorched deserts of Western Asia. Here is a land that is kissed, not scourged, by the sun. Here, too, the gentle and kindly nature of the people testifies to the peaceful influence of Buddhism, contrasting strongly with the fierce fanaticism of Western Asia inspired by the militant creed of Mohammed. The humble worshipper at the shrine of his ancestors, the æsthetic acolyte chanting with monotonous iteration the meaningless "Namu Amida Butsu" of the Buddhic liturgy, has little in common with the perfervid apostle of Islam: the intricate and ingenious architecture of the one contrasts markedly with the grand and simple conceptions of the other.
Nor is the difference of the two creeds of East and West Asia less marked in its effects upon the social life of the people. "You 
A land that is kissed, not scourged, by the sun.
should know," wrote Ser Marco Polo six centuries ago, "that the Tartars, before they were converted to the religion of the idolaters (i.e., Buddhism), never practised almsgiving. Indeed, when any poor man begged of them, they would tell him, 'Go, with God's curse, for if he loved you as he loves me, he would have provided for you.'" Moreover, the stern law that in Mohammedan countries relegates one-half of humanity to a rigid and perpetual self-effacement behind the prison walls of the zenana, finds no counterpart in the tolerant code of Buddhism, and in town and country alike woman plays a prominent and conspicuous part in the daily life of the people. That the condition of woman has been vastly improved by the spread of Buddhist ideas is admitted even by members of the Christian missionary community, as instance the case of Father Bigaudet in Siam, who found in the Buddhist teaching a meritorious disapproval of polygamy, though he deprecated its culpable tolerance of divorce, in which respect he declared the habits of the people to be of "a damnable laxity."
Yet despite such dissimilarity of creed and setting, there is among the peoples of Asia a certain affinity of thought, certain kindred characteristics, observing which the stranger from across the seas may say, "This is the East." The unabashed indecency of the bazaars of Western and Central Asia finds its counterpart in the frank disregard of convention displayed in the country districts of Japan, where life and social intercourse proceed innocently, if immodestly according to Western canons, upon the assumption that though the serpent tempted, the woman did not eat of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. The woman gives suck to her child in the street, the village maid bathes in company with the village hodge, and these things present no cause for offence, because in the eyes of the people there is no offence in them. Again, if the traveller in Persia or Turkestan is brought into perpetual contact with an unyielding and irritating resistance to hurry, the wanderer in Far Eastern lands becomes early conscious of the fact that he is moving in a world where all thought and action are characterised chiefly by a profound and imperturbable deliberation. Nor will it be long before old memories are revived with a vigour and force which surprise, until it be remembered that "memory, imagination, old sentiments and associations, are more readily reached through the sense of smell than by almost any other channel."[1] There are few villages in China, or in Japan at the season for manuring the crops, which do not recall the supreme efforts in this direction of Baghdad or Bokhara. Finally, East and West Asia alike vie with one another in proclaiming the existence of that strange and mysterious law by which it appears to have been decreed that among the peoples of the West alone shall the sanctity of truth meet with respect or recognition.
Of this homogeneousness of atmosphere I have invariably been conscious when travelling in Eastern lands; and it was, perhaps, because a tolerably extended acquaintance with the men and manners of many Asian countries had taught me to accept it without question or reserve that certain symptoms of innovation struck forcibly upon my imagination as I travelled through the country districts of Japan. Schools presented a conspicuous feature in every corner of the country—not the schools dear to the literati of China or the mullahs of Islam, but modern, up-to-date, twentieth-century schools, where the knowledge and learning of the West is fast being imparted to the children of the East. I remember one day meeting a number of small boys returning from a village school in a district far removed from the influence of railways and big cities. On my approaching them they drew up to attention with military precision and bowed ceremoniously to me as I passed. I was somewhat puzzled to find a reason for this spontaneous display, and subsequently learned that the cause was to be found in the cut of my clothes. I was dressed after the manner of the West, and was therefore an object of respect. You ask why? Because the Japanese are the most sensitive people in the world; because the day has already dawned when much that is artistic and characteristic of real Japan must be sacrificed at the altar of progress; because Europeanisation is the fetich of the day; and because European clothes are the hall-mark of progress and modernity in the gentlemen of New Japan. Is it not forbidden to the ladies of Japan to present themselves at Court in Japanese dress?
Nor is it only the boys that attend the schools in this year of grace 1908; for the schoolgirl in magenta hakama, with satchel and books in hand, walking blithely to the nearest academy, is the rule rather than the exception of to-day—and a vastly significant one in an Eastern country. And if we turn to statistics regarding education, we find that they more than confirm the deductions of casual observation. Thus in 1885, 77 per cent of the boys and 44 per cent of the girls of school age were attending school—figures which had increased twenty years later to 98 and 93 per cent respectively. During the school year 1905 (the latest for which figures are obtainable), £3,821,660 was spent on public education; and 5,841,302, or 96 per cent of the children, boys and girls combined, of school age were recorded as receiving elementary education.[2]
There is another, a powerful—perhaps a sinister—influence eating slowly but surely into the old communal life of the people,—the influence of modern industrial requirement. Already thousands of women and children are toiling wearily in factory and workshop, attending mechanically to the great steam-driven spindles and looms which are slowly but inexorably crushing the life out of the old family hand–machines on which were made the exquisite fabrics embodying the artistic soul of Japan. Unguarded and uncared for by a kindly legislation, their lot is far from being an enviable one. No factory acts grace the statute-book of Japan. "We have our duty before us," say the manufacturers, "to establish ourselves firmly upon the world's markets. Let us get our hold of them before we are tied and handicapped by Government interference." Such was the fervent aspiration which I heard breathed by more than one manufacturer,—an aspiration which would appear to have every chance of being fulfilled, since only so lately as August 1906 the Japanese Government refused an invitation to send delegates to an international conference at Berne, held with a view to prohibiting night work by women, on the grounds that the state of the industries in the country did not admit of such interference.
True, the women and children may smile over their work as the casual visitor passes to and fro among the whirring creels or the crashing looms; but then the Japanese smile is an enigmatical thing, and, as has been written, "the Japanese can smile in the teeth of death, and usually does." One must know something of the possibilities of the Japanese smile if one is to appraise it at its true value. "At first it only charms, and it is only at a later day when one has observed the same smile under extraordinary circumstances—in moments of pain, shame, disappointment—that one becomes suspicious of it."[3] Some day the workers of Japan will rise and will demand for themselves the same rights and privileges already conceded to their fellow-workers of the West—but the day is not yet. Before that time comes Japan will have dispelled once and for all the illusion that she is a trifler in toy lanterns and paper fans, and will have vindicated her claim to be regarded as one of the manufacturing nations of the world.
Herein, then, we become conscious of a subtle change. Some new influence pervades the otherwise familiar atmosphere of the East. The presence of a new force makes itself felt,—a disturbing force, perhaps a dangerous force, but in any case a force fraught with fateful possibilities,—the force of national assertion, fostered by a growing desire among Eastern peoples for the liberty, the equality, the democratisation of the West, and rendered formidable by the acquisition of the applied sciences of Europe. As the true signification of the new signs and portents in the East dawns upon the mind, it gradually becomes clear that a new order of things is arising which is destined to give a new turn to the course of history and to provide the dominating element in the evolution of mankind during the twentieth century.
As the pioneer in the new movement, Japan presents at the present time a subject for grave study. For her the past half-century has been one of violent and incessant change. From a period of stress and storm, when the land was racked by revolution and civil war from within and menaced with violent interference from without, has emerged the Japan of to-day,—a force utterly unsuspected and unforeseen, an Asiatic Power wielding with unexampled skill and precision the weapons and inventions of the collective genius of the West. What may be the psychic effect of such volcanic change upon the mind and thought of an Eastern people lies hidden from Western eyes deep down in the inscrutable soul of the race: this only may be affirmed without question or hesitation, that no one who has had the opportunity of coming into close contact with Government or people can fail to be deeply impressed with a sense of the growing ambitions of the people, or of the inflexible determination of those in high places to do everything in their power to assist them in bringing such ambitions to fruition. Forced in the teeth of their own determined and strenuous opposition to open their doors to the world and to enter into the comity of Western nations, they came to a momentous decision, and having decided, picked up the gauntlet which had been thrown down with a rapidity which astonished the world, and plunged headlong, and with altogether unlooked-for success, into the arena of international rivalry and competition.
That they regard their victories in battle merely as a means to an end, and not as an end in themselves, must be evident to any one who has had the opportunity of making even a superficial study of the country. Nothing is more galling to the susceptibilities of the educated Japanese than to find themselves the object of erroneous supposition upon this point. "On what grounds," asks Baron Shibusawa bitterly, "did I meet with so warm a reception at the hands of the prominent men of the world?"—and he himself supplies the unpalatable reply: "The President of the United States praised Japan because of her military prowess and fine arts. Are not Germany, France, and England praising Japan up to the skies on the same ground? If the warm reception I received abroad is based on the feeling that I came from a country known for its military exploits, I must confess that that reception is a death-blow to our hopes."[4]
The end, indeed, which the Japanese keep steadfastly in view is a far higher one than mere proficiency in arms, and does not stop short of political, diplomatic, commercial, industrial, and colonial equality with the first Powers of the Western world. That they have learned all that the West can teach them in the conduct of modern war few will be found to deny; but that they are capable of rising to the same heights in the war of commerce has yet to be revealed. It may well be doubted whether as a race they have the same aptitude for bearing aloft the flag of trade as they have for wielding the sword of war. Just as in China the military profession was despised and looked down upon by the people,—with what dire results the battlefields of 1894 soon showed,—so in feudal Japan the merchant classes were rated the lowest of the community. It is true that many of the best men in Japan are now entering or have already entered the commercial lists, and are showing themselves worthy of the best traditions of the West; but it is equally true that the country is sending forth vast numbers of small traders who reflect only too clearly the status of their kind of pre-restoration days, and whose procedure in neutral markets is fast pinning to their country's traders the title of the pedlars of the East. Pedlary in itself may be an honourable trade, but pedlary fraught with petty fraud and supported by devices which debauch the commercial standards of the West, brings little but obloquy upon the country's name and fame, and provides an only too obvious cause for the enemy to blaspheme. "The barrier of a low morality," to make use of the words of Baron Shibusawa once more, "is by far stronger than that of bad laws"; and I hold that he is the better friend of Japan who makes candid confession of such shortcomings as are thrust within the radius of his view, rather than the plausible advocate who, by ignoring or denying all faults, encourages the nefarious in their ways, and disseminates impressions which the cold and impartial evidence of fact is unable to sustain. When those who are responsible for the course and direction of Japanese progress succeed in inculcating in all classes a due sense of the immense value of an unimpeachable honesty in every branch of commercial intercourse, they will have succeeded in removing a serious stumbling-stone from the path which the nation is striving to pursue, and will have placed their country immeasurably nearer the attainment of the goal which they keep steadfastly in view.
Japan, then, has, with an astonishing rapidity, become a powerful force in the world's economy; but will the metamorphosis of Japan continue to be the only, or even the most significant, feature of the new order in the Far East? If commercial and industrial rivalry is more and more to take the place of the rude panoply of war—as who can doubt must be the case?—there are in China potentialities before which the possibilities of Japan pale into insignificance. Against an area of 147,467 square miles in the case of Japan,[5] China can boast of territory not far short of 4,000,000 square miles in extent: against Japan's 49,000,000[5] of population, China can probably pit 400,000,000 souls. In the matter of natural resources there is no comparison between the two countries, as may be seen from a glance at the opening pages of the following chapter, in which I have given, in faint outline, some suggestion of the almost incalculable wealth of China in this respect. Moreover, just as the aptitude of the Japanese as a people is for war rather than for commerce, so the philosophy of the Chinese has condemned and despised the profession of arms and applauded the pursuit of more peaceful avocations. The Samurai is the archetype of the Japanese gentleman; Bushido—the Fighting-knight ways—the accepted code of his conduct and honour. "In early youth the Samurai was put to the task of bearing and daring. Boys, and girls also, were trained in a Lacedemonian fashion to 
A link with the past.
endure privation of all kinds."[6] The Japanese, in short, are a fighting race who have scorned the haggle of the market and sworn fealty to the god of war. The character of the Chinese is in this respect the antithesis of the character of the people of Japan. "Tzu Kung asked for a definition of good government. The Master (Confucius) replied: It consists in providing enough food to eat, in keeping enough soldiers to guard the State, and in winning the confidence of the people.—And if one of these things had to be sacrificed, which should go first?—The Master replied: Sacrifice the soldiers."[7] The high standard of commercial morality attaining in China is admitted on all hands, and their reputation for integrity in all matters appertaining to trade is in strong contrast to the ill odour in which Japanese traders are held among European merchants carrying on their business in the Far East. A German merchant told me that he frequently entered into contracts with Chinese merchants involving as much as 50,000 dollars, without any written or signed document being made use of at all; and this is typical of commercial intercourse between Europeans and Chinese. The commercial class in China is composed of shrewd hard-headed business men, to whom the accumulation of wealth is as the breath of life, and these men are beginning to realise the magnificent prospects which are held out by the organisation of industry. Who will venture to assign a limit to the influence of a reorganised China, with free play given to the commercial and industrial instinct of the race, upon the position of the trading and manufacturing nations of the world?
The position which China must inevitably acquire some day will not be won with the same startling rapidity with which Japan pressed home her claims to the title of a first-class Power. There are too many factors which will war against the reconstruction of Chinese society and the Chinese State, and which will act as clogs upon the wheels of Chinese progress. Loyalty to and adoration of the Sovereign, which bind the people of Japan into a united whole, is wanting in the case of China, for the scion of an alien race sits upon the throne of the Mings. The vast extent of Chinese territory is in itself a sufficient bar to rapid consolidation, either of interests or of aims; still more must the variety of race and of language war against the rapid evolution of a national movement towards a single goal. The practical man, then, while he does not lose sight of the possibilities of the future, will recognise that he has yet to deal with the present, and in those chapters in which I have attempted to deal with the trade and industry of China I have been careful to restrict myself to an examination of the facts as they are to-day, and to refrain from indulging in what can only be a speculative analysis of a more or less remote future. It is perhaps for this reason that there will not be found in the pages that follow quite so attractive an estimate of the prospects of Chinese trade, or of enterprise in China, as has sometimes been held out by those who have written upon the subject. The disadvantageous conditions under which the renovation of China is being brought about has been kept steadfastly in sight, and due weight given to the improbability of sudden change. The startling rapidity of the development of Japan as compared with that of China is emphasised by a mere comparison of the respective amounts of their foreign trade. Thus in 1907 the foreign trade of Japan, with a population of under 49 millions, amounted to approximately 94¾ million sterling, or only 18 million less than the foreign trade of China with a population of 400 millions.[8] This is a fact of which many are unaware.
There are many other matters of interest connected with the Far East of which the general public in England are unaware, and which might be urged as an excuse for adding yet another to the by no means inconsiderable number of books already in existence upon the Far East. How many people are aware, for instance, that Hong Kong is the first shipping port in the world,[9] or that in Peking there are eight postal deliveries daily? Nor is a lack of exact knowledge concerning the men and manners of the Far East peculiar to the general public. A pathetic display of ignorance on the part of his Majesty's Government in London is generally to be expected whenever Parliament is so ill advised as to meddle with Far Eastern affairs. Take, for example, the following question and answer between a private member of the House of Commons and a member of the Government, on June 25, 1906:—
"Sir H. Cotton asked whether the words 'Tremblingly obey' were only used in China in prohibitive proclamations, and not in proclamations purporting to make concessions?"
Mr Churchill—"The honourable member speaks with immense and exceptional authority on these questions, and I think that it is quite possible that what he says is correct. Speaking for myself, I should say that no commands should be addressed to law-abiding citizens which they cannot obey without trepidation."
The solemn spectacle of a member of Parliament speaking with "immense and exceptional authority on these questions" inviting a member of the British Government to enter into a serious discussion as to the merits or demerits of a formal phrase commonly attached to official proclamations in China, would be distinctly humorous if it was not so pathetic. What was merely pathetic became deplorable when it was asserted in the House of Commons a few days later that, as a result of the above discussion, the Secretary of State for the Colonies had given instructions for the issue of an amended proclamation for the benefit of the Chinese coolies in South Africa, in which "all minatory and hortatory sentences would be omitted"! Displays of this kind do not tend to heighten the respect in which Governments whose responsibilities are world-wide are, or ought to be, held.
This, however, is a digression, though it serves to show the extent of the ignorance concerning the Far East of those who ought to know better.
To sum up. The twentieth century has lifted the curtain on a Far East presenting for solution problems of unparalleled magnitude and of incalculable importance to Europe and America. Two nations are engaged in rough-hewing the destiny of Asia. Japan, a conquering and colonising nation, is engaged in a grim endeavour to become an industrial and commercial Power: China, the home of a peace-loving, trading people, is groping blindly after proficiency in arms. If the Japanese are successful in cultivating in the fighting classes a love and aptitude for commerce, without at the same time impairing their fighting qualities, then it may be predicted that, despite the comparative poverty of their natural resources, they will become a great people; but it is worth remembering that up to the present time the history of the world can provide no example of an Eastern race which has found it possible to cultivate in the same class both the love of commerce and the love of fighting. As far as the Chinese are concerned, it will probably prove sufficient for their purpose if they are successful in organising a fighting machine sufficiently powerful, in reputation and in fact, to make it unworth the while of other nations to attack them. With the advent of the present century the partition of China among the Powers has passed from the realm of practical politics, and formal record of her policy of preserving the integrity of the Chinese Empire has been registered by Great Britain in her latest treaty of alliance with Japan. The scheme for the reorganisation of the Chinese army, which has been described by European military experts as being, as far as its paper provisions are concerned, above criticism, provides for an army of 36 divisions of 12,000 men each (432,000 men) by the year 1917. There are at the present time at least 100,000 troops drilled and equipped on modern lines, and though their fighting efficiency is impaired by the fact that they are armed with divers patterns of rifles—Japanese, Mauser, and Marmlicher—and Japanese, Krupp, and Kreusot guns, and that some at least of the necessary accessories of war exist on paper only,[10] yet even now they present a sufficiently formidable force to prevent any one from lightly taking np arms against them. I do not believe in the existence of a Chinese army for purposes other than those of securing the nation against undue interference with its internal affairs at the hands of foreign Powers.
The questions discussed in the following chapters are consequently those of the development of China under the new conditions which recent years have brought, and especially the construction of railways, since this is at the present time the chief instrument which is being employed in opening up the country; of the prospects of future trade between China and Great Britain, with special reference to the provinces of Western China; of the settlement of frontier problems arising out of the juxtaposition of China with British Burma; of the politico-moral problem arising out of the opium traffic; and finally, of the future of Japan as a Great Power in the Orient. Let me, however, before entering upon the more serious discussion of such matters, invite the reader to accompany me upon a journey across the heart of the Chinese Empire.
- ↑ The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (O. W. Holmes).
- ↑ The figures are taken from the Thirty-third Annual Report of the Minister of State for Education.
- ↑ Lafcadio Hearn.
- ↑ Japan by the Japanese.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Exclusive of Formosa and the Pescadores.
- ↑ Professor Inazo Nitobe.
- ↑ The Analects of Confucius.
- ↑ In 1898 the foreign trade of China amounted to £53,180,000, and that of Japan to £47,914,000. The figures for the year 1907 were—China £112,686,000, and Japan £94,619,022. It is interesting to observe that in the ten years the foreign trade of each country has approximately doubled.
- ↑ The order of the chief shipping ports of the world varies from year to year. Hong Kong headed the list in 1905 with entrances and clearances aggregating 21,843,131 tons, and was fourth in 1896 with 19,833,666 tons, Antwerp heading the list on this occasion with an aggregate of 21,676,118 tons.
- ↑ At the much boomed manoeuvres of 1905, for instance, an inquisitive visitor found the dressing-station useless owing to the fact that it possessed no bandages.