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Page 962 : JAPAN

dairy cattle is making milk and butter familiar. The wealthy enliven the dinner hour with the professional music and dancing of pretty geisha girls. Then they go to the theater in jinrikshas, and listen to plays all whose characters are acted by men and that, like our serial stories, are “to be continued.” Or they go to a public tea-house, a temple-festival or a flower-show. They are fond of travel, picnics, stories and poetry. On holidays the streets are gay with flags and paper-lanterns. The boys have their kite-flying day, as hilarious as our Fourth of July, and the girls their feast of the dolls. The entire population of city and country turns out at the flower-festivals, of cherry-blossom time in April, and the chrysanthemum shows of November. The essential refinement and gentleness of the Japanese are shown by the character of their pleasures.

Religion. The explanation of much that is strange in Japanese customs and ideas is to be found in their two principal religions: Shintoism and Buddhism. The first is ancestor-worship in the broadest sense, and makes for family affection and loyalty, civic duty and national patriotism. It has many temples, few ceremonials and no idols. It is not inconsistent to be a good Shintoist and also a good Buddhist. Buddhism is the predominant religion, as it is of China and Korea. Its underlying principle is that all life is eternal and sacred; hence the universal kindness to animals, birds and even insects and the indifference to death shown by Japanese soldiers. The Buddhist virtues are self-control, kindness, patience, duty. St. Francis Xavier introduced Christianity in the 16th century, but it was afterwards forbidden. Two hundred and fifty years later, when the country was opened, 25,000 Roman Catholics were found to have survived persecution. Now all religions are permitted. The Presbyterian and Congregationalists have flourishing missions, the Greek Catholics a church, and the Y. M. C. A. an organization. The Roman Catholic and Protestant converts together number scores of thousands.

History. The early history of the Japanese, as of all ancient peoples, is shrouded in myth. Like the Greeks and Egyptians their origin is ascribed to deities, and the pedigree of the present reigning family is traced back to the sun-goddess. The emperor Jimmu, 600 B. C. is considered an historical personage. It was not until the 10th century of our era, however, that true historic records began to be kept. The Buddhist religion, the literary language and printing, with many of the arts of Japan, were introduced from China. But the political system was a native, free evolution, unaffected by outside influence. Originally the active rulers, the mikados gradually resigned leadership to a military chieftain or shogun, they retaining their prerogatives and semi-sacred character in a life of enervating seclusion. Japan became a hermit-empire, the inhabitants forbidden to leave the country under pain of terrible punishments. Until 1543 communication was held only with China and Korea. For nearly a century thereafter the Portuguese and the Dutch East India Company carried on a precarious trade with Nagasaki. But from 1638 to 1854 no foreign vessel anchored in any other harbor of Japan.

In these two centuries the emperor was a sacred recluse in the temple-palace at Kioto, the shogun military dictator in Yedo (now Tokyo). Troops were supplied by 250 daimios or feudal lords of great estates, each of whom had bodies of armed retainers known as the samurai. Shogun, daimio and samurai became hereditary in families and formed a military class that dominated the empire. The mass of the people were agricultural laborers and artizans. Protected by their masters, unable to leave the estate where they were born, unhurried, undisturbed by the wars of clans, all their original genius and aspirations were turned back on their work. They acquired monumental patience, tactile skill and an exquisite exuberance of fancy that fills the world with wondering admiration of their work to-day. It was in the middle ages of Europe that the artist was set free in the artizans who built the great cathedrals and filled them with paintings and sculptures. So not all was evil in Japan’s hermit centuries that brought a dozen native arts to such perfection. Unnoted, these millions of nameless toilers filled the land with splendor, while the sacred mikados dozed away the idle generations.

At Kioto the shoguns became dictators and the daimios rebelled against their despotic rule. Since the daimios furnished the revenue and the soldiers, they demanded a voice in affairs, as did the nobles of England when they wrested Magna Charta from King John. Five centuries in arrears with Europe, Japan was enacting the drama of civilization. With brief intervals of quiet the country was in a state of civil war from 1603 to 1854 without dislodging the shogun, because the daimios could never stop fighting each other long enough to unite against the common enemy. He was tottering to a fall, however, when Commodore Perry, U. S. N., arrived in Tokyo in a war-vessel (1854), and demanded that the harbor be opened to American trade. Mr. Townsend Harris, the first American envoy, had a letter from President Fillmore which he refused to deliver to anyone but the ruler of the land who was thought to be the shogun. Then Admiral Stirling steamed into Nagasaki with Lord Elgin aboard to present English demands. The shogun saw an opportunity to bolster his rickety throne by concessions to these foreign invaders. This so incensed the daimios that the land burst

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