Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 4/Chapter 4
Chapter IV
PERSONAL LIBERTY, JUSTICE, SLAVERY, AND CHECKS ON VICE
A moment's attention may be called to a notable feature of the Tokugawa system, already briefly alluded to; namely, the responsibility imposed on the people themselves for the preservation of order. Specially serviceable for that purpose was the "five-man group" (go-nin-gumi), originally an instrument for securing the payment of taxes by holding all the numbers jointly liable for the debts of any one of their number. Many duties devolved upon the "group" and its units. No householder might give lodging to travellers without notifying the "group" to which he belonged; nor might he himself move temporarily to another village before similar notice had been given. In the case of certain offences against good order or public morality, the whole group was penalised in common with an offending member, and sometimes this method of vicarious punishment received wider application, as when any one attempted to charge more than the lawful price for a pack-horse, or to discount Government money, or to circulate forbidden coins, or to consent, as master or owner of a ship, to carry a person of suspicious character, or, as a barrier-guard, to suffer a wounded man to pass without a permit,—in these and many other instances, not only those directly culpable, but also the headman and all the inhabitants of the district became liable to fine. Again, if a man wandered about neglectful of his duties and wearing costly garments, the members of his "group" must report the case to the authorities. Should they fail to do so, and should the idler's punishment result from information otherwise furnished, not only the members of his group and the elders of his street were subject to a penalty, but also the offender's kinsmen. As to active participation in public duties, young and robust citizens of Yedo had to serve by turn as town-guards, who, being posted in buildings at cross-streets, sent out patrols every hour during the night and received periodical visits of inspection from a street committee. The people were further ordered to form combinations for the purpose of checking illegal acts, and were enjoined to send to the magistrates monthly reports as to the state of affairs in the district. If any one apprehended that by giving information of an evil act he might incur the vengeance of malefactors,—a fear which protected many law-breakers against exposure,—he was advised to communicate in writing with the authorities, who guaranteed his immunity from evil consequences.
Under such a system it was natural that considerable power should be vested in the individual. Thus all persons were authorised to arrest suspicious characters,—a commission of wide import, inasmuch as if a man without ostensible occupation was seen frequenting a village, or if any one was observed lurking in a temple-enclosure or a forest, or leading a horse in an unwonted manner, he became a suspicious character for the purposes of the injunction, and should those detecting him be unable to effect his arrest, they were to appeal to the headman of the village, whose duty then required him to collect a sufficient number of persons to accomplish the task. It was also lawful for the inhabitants of a village to expel mendicants of every class—including itinerant priests and kōmuso—if they grew troublesome or importunate. The samurai in this era retained some of the police functions that had devolved on them in early feudal days. Thus, if a murder was committed in the vicinity of a samurai's dwelling, he was expected to pursue the assassin, deprive him of his weapons, and hand him over to the nearest magisterial court, or kill him if he resisted; nor might a householder plead ignorance of such a deed of blood, for ignorance of lawless acts perpetrated close at hand was regarded as culpable negligence. But, on the whole, a transfer of the duty of preserving public order from the shoulders of the samurai to those of the commoner was one of the features of the Tokugawa epoch.
It is not to be inferred, however, that an official force of police did not exist. There were duly organised bands of police in every city and fief. Constables had their regular beats, and in each ward there stood a small wooden building for confining turbulent characters, pending instructions from an inspector who made tours at set intervals. The system pursued in the case of a person found lying drunk or sick on the road was to leave him undisturbed, treating him however with due care, unless he could indicate his place of residence, when the police had to send for assistance to remove him. When he had lain for a day and a night without recovering, the fact must be reported. To be "drunk and incapable" did not constitute an offence in those days.
The Government evinced its sense of duty towards the people by periodically sending officials from Yedo to the provinces to see whether the inhabitants suffered from impositions, whether merchants arbitrarily raised the price of goods, whether any form of punishment not sanctioned by law was in force, and, in general, whether the condition of the commoners was satisfactory. Many abuses escaped these inspectors, and their eyes were closed to others by bribes, but they did some good. Nor can it be truly said of the samurai, as several critics have said, that the lower orders received no consideration at his hands in Tokugawa times. Such a theory is inconsistent with instructions repeatedly issued for the guidance of officials travelling on public business. They were provided with certificates entitling them to demand the services of a fixed number of horses and baggage-bearers at each village, the villagers having the right to refuse any further requisition; they were ordered to pay definitely determined rates for everything they used, the people, on the other hand, being forbidden to make any extra charge under penalty of thirty days' imprisonment for the person making the charge, and a fine for the headman of the village as well as all the residents of the quarter; they were strictly warned against accepting entertainments from the inhabitants of the places they visited, and the inhabitants were admonished not to offer entertainments; they were to adjudicate, in conjunction with the deputy of the district, any disputes between their followers and the people; they were to put to death any of their retinue that fought, as well as those joining the fight, and they were to restrain their attendants from felling trees or bamboos or otherwise damaging property. When the Shōgun himself made a progress to Kyōtō, his vassals were restrained by similar orders; any act of robbery or extortion on their part was punishable with death; wanton destruction of private property was peremptorily interdicted; horses must not be let loose; no retainer might enter the precincts of a hotel with- out dismounting from his steed, and when leaving an inn every samurai had to obtain from the landlord a document certifying that the visitor had behaved quietly during the night and had paid his reckoning before setting out. Such measures suggest that the lower orders in Tokugawa days received at the hands of the military class treatment not by any means deficient in benevolence, and when the fact is considered in conjunction with the share granted to them in the preservation of public order, it becomes impossible to regard them as the down-trodden serfs spoken of by many commentators.
Official solicitude for the welfare of the agricultural class should be mentioned in this context, though it was probably inspired by the policy of conserving and developing the farmer's tax-paying capacity rather than by any earnest thought for his happiness. Neither had the Tokugawa rulers any monopoly of such a spirit. The Taikō, though he increased the fiscal burdens of farmers, sought to protect them against extortion by enacting that assessments of their land for purposes of taxation must always be made in their presence; that any attempt to exact more than the regulated amount should be punished; that special abatements must be granted in case of poor harvests or natural calamities; that the Government should be responsible for heavy repairs of river banks,[1] and that the minor repairs, devolving on the people, should be deferred until the farmer's unoccupied season. Yet he made it a criminal offence for a farmer to suffer his land to lie fallow, and if a man fled leaving his taxes unpaid, not only the members of his "group," but also his family and all that harboured him or assisted his escape, became involved in the penalty. The Tokugawa were at once more practical in promoting agriculture and more considerate in their attitude towards the present. They carried out extensive works of irrigation and riparian improvement; they inculcated precautions against famine; they encouraged reclamation for rice-growing purposes;[2] they forbade farmers to become merchants; they enacted that, in the event of a man's being prevented by sickness from tilling his land, the members of his "group" must do it for him, and, like the Meiji Government of modern times, they undertook enterprises officially which seemed beyond the reach of private initiative.[3] The annals contain, also, numerous instances of instructions issued to provincial deputies to treat peasants benevolently; to save them from loss; not to borrow money from them or to engage in business with them; to pay direct the daily allowances (in rice) of all persons officially employed instead of paying through middle-men whose extortions sometimes reduced the employé's share to only ten per cent of his due; never to take for themselves more than the lawful amount of tax-collecting commission (three per cent), and to periodically inspect the rivers and the crops. Peasants that neglected their farms were liable to have them confiscated and to be themselves driven from the district, whereas, if a farmer cultivated his land industriously for twenty years, paying all his taxes without fail, he acquired the right of permanent tenancy, though not the right of disposing of the land; while if, though obviously diligent, he could not earn a livelihood, the deputy was required to assist him. It may be noted here that under no circumstances might a farmer sell his land. In any transaction of land sale, the seller became liable to imprisonment and banishment, the buyer to imprisonment, and if either died before the execution of his sentence, his children were punished in his stead, the land also being confiscated. The pledging of land on terms involving its possible alienation was equally penalised, and in view of these strict vetoes, the privilege of permanent tenancy became so valuable that hope of acquiring it by industry and regularity in discharging fiscal claims proved a powerful incentive to the exercise of those virtues.
But if the Tokugawa system showed unprecedented consideration for the peasant and offered him substantial encouragement, it also exacted from him absolute and almost abject submission to lawfully constituted authority. He was authorised, indeed, to submit to the deputy of his district a written account of any damage produced by drought or inundation or of any circumstances causing discontent. But a peremptory interdict forbade him to combine with his fellows for the purpose of presenting petitions or to make any direct appeal to a feudal chief. All petitions or appeals thus preferred, whether just or unjust, were to be rejected, and those preferring them stood convicted of audacity meriting even capital punishment. The deputies and the magistrates in the various localities wielded almost irresponsible authority, and there is evidence that they often abused it. It was against these deputies and magistrates that the aggrieved peasant had to complain, yet it was to the deputy or the magistrate that his complaint must be carried, and it was at the hands of the same deputy or magistrate that he suffered punishment if his manner of appeal seemed turbulent or seditious. Not until 1771 were the deputies and magistrates deprived of competence to fix penalties for such offences, and the law making that wholesome change contained provisions that the ringleader of a combination to prefer a complaint, or the person whose signature stood first among the names on a petition, should be sent into penal servitude; that delegates carrying a statement of farmers' grievances to their feudal chief's mansion in Yedo should be handcuffed for from thirty to fifty days; that their co-signatories should be reprimanded and that the whole village should be fined. A wholesale example of the operation of these laws was furnished in 1838, when the inhabitants of five hundred and forty-four villages and three post-towns in the province of Kai, rendered desperate by official extortion and bad crops, rose in insurrection, with the result that four were crucified, nine beheaded, forty-six transported, twenty-three driven from their homes, thirty-four scourged and tattooed, sixty-four fettered for several days, and one hundred and twenty-nine fined. In truth, the only resource for distressed peasants was to leave the district where they suffered, and even that step might not be taken unless all arrears of taxation had been paid.
Theoretically this system aimed at suppressing collective action without discouraging individual initiative. But it is evident that no such discrimination is possible in practice. Active courage of opinion will not survive the sense of permanent isolation. If a man knows that he can never hope for the cooperation of his fellows, or at any rate may not receive it except at heavy cost to himself and to them, self-effacement and patient endurance under all circumstances will become staple elements of his character. These elements were very apparent in the character of the Japanese under Tokugawa rule, and were perhaps most conspicuously displayed in the realm of civil law. Very few appeals were made to the official tribunals of justice: men preferred to compound a difference of opinion or even to suffer wrong. Of course, considering the wide interval that separated the "commoner" from the samurai by whom alone justice was administered, it would have been natural that the former should shrink from the presumption of thrusting his private affairs on the latter's attention. But that diffidence would not have produced so much effect had it not been supplemented by a settled conviction of the futility and peril of petitions and appeals in general, and further, had not the deputies and magistrates done everything in their power to deter recourse to litigation, law-suits being avowedly attributed by the central Government to partiality and want of vigilance on the part of local officials. There was another reason for avoiding the law courts. Unsuccessful suitors had to anticipate very harsh treatment, for upon them devolved the chief responsibility of carrying the case beyond the reach of conciliation. Thus arbitration and compromise became the rule, litigation the exception. When a dispute occurred, the parties submitted it, in the first place, to the members of the "five-men group," or groups, to which they belonged. These met in conclave, the disputants being present, and food and wine being served to promote a friendly spirit. Very seldom did the judgment of the group fail to satisfy the disputants, or at any rate to placate them. Indeed any case not settled in that manner assumed at once an unreasonable and even a disreputable character. Nevertheless, before reaching the official court there still remained another tribunal to be consulted; the tribunal of the elders (toshi yori) and the headman (shoya or nanushi). The respect enjoyed by these persons gave great weight to their opinions, and they took infinite pains to reconcile all differences submitted to them, because failure to find a settlement discredited them in the eyes of the people as well as of officialdom. If, finally, a matter went to the deputy's court, his first proceeding was to re-commit it to the hands of some other headman for a final effort of arbitration, and thus the sum of the procedure was that only irreconcilable disputes or exceedingly obstinate disputants found their way to the court of the deputy or the magistrate. In short, law-suits were the exception, compromise and arbitration the rule. This cannot be affirmed quite so comprehensively of the great cities as of the provinces. Business relations and social intercourse being on a wider basis in the former than in the latter, disputes were often more complicated, and the influence of "groups" and "elders" was smaller in proportion to the range of their functions. But the difference is one of degree only.
Although these remarks refer chiefly to Tokugawa times, that is merely because the machinery of conciliation was better organised at that epoch, not because the conciliatory principle failed to receive as full practical recognition in other eras. It is essential to recognise the antiquity of the custom, because a leading trait of Japanese character seems to have been educated by it. Evidently the justice administered by tribunals of "five-men groups," headmen and elders of city wards or villages, cannot have paid much attention to hard-and-fast jurisprudential rules. Such arbitrators knew nothing about law and were entire strangers to the strict legal principles which form the bases of statutes and codes in the Occident. Their decisions were guided mainly by "human relationship," and only in the very remotest degree by jural dogmas. Full account was taken of all the circumstances of a case, of the past intercourse between those concerned in it, of their family connections, and of the moral obligations under which they stood to one another. Justice, in short, was "personal, not impersonal."[4] Even when a case went before the court of a deputy or a magistrate, it received similar treatment. Neither the deputy nor the magistrate was a trained judicial expert in the sense of having graduated from a law college or satisfied an examination test. But both had the qualification that they made the study of law a life-long business, and that they brought years of practical training to the trial of a suit. In these respects they differed from the members of a "five-men group," from "headmen" and from "elders." Further, it is not to be supposed that their decisions were inspired merely by an intuitive sense of right and wrong. Recent research shows that though Japan's eighth-century codes did not remain operative in the feudal age, she had in the mean while come into possession of a body of rules, statutes, and precedents which, though varying more or less in different fiefs, were applied with tolerable uniformity by the deputies and the magistrates throughout the Shōgun's dominions. Nevertheless, that the deputies and magistrates paid almost as much attention to the personal elements of a case as did the "groups" or "headmen," may easily be inferred from the consideration that had the quality of justice obtainable by recourse to an official court differed palpably from that administered by the popular tribunals of arbitration, the latter must have lost their credit, and therefore their usefulness as instruments for checking litigation. Besides, although a deputy might in time be promoted to be a magistrate, and a provincial magistrate might be translated to the capital, these were rare incidents, the general rule being that both classes of officials served throughout their lives in the same localities, and thus, acquiring an intimate acquaintance with the inhabitants, were constrained to look beyond the purely legal aspects of cases brought before them. The result of all this was that the Japanese people learned to pay little attention to abstract theories, and to set much store by considerations which an Anglo-Saxon jurist would reject as emotional. They took for guide the sentiment of right, not its science, and moral duty assumed in their eyes altruistic extensions that trenched upon the confines of romance. Educated to anticipate compromise as the issue of every dispute, they carried the spirit of concession into all controversies, and thus neither in the story of the individual nor in the history of the nation can the student find many examples of that fiercely implacable assertiveness which conviction begets in an Occidental. The Japanese will readily sacrifice his own life to vindicate right, but he does not require others to make any such sacrifice. He may be persuaded of the truth of his own opinions, but he does not exact general deference to them, and he pursues his most cherished aims with neighbourly deference and courteous deprecation not altogether unsuggestive of moral limpness. Buddhism doubtless contributed to educate this mood, for Buddhism, as the Japanese knew it, was essentially a creed of compromises, engrafting other faiths upon its own stem rather than seeking to uproot them. It is scarcely to be questioned that the emotional fires kindled by religious polemics in every age of Europe's civilised existence had some part in welding the mind of the average Occidental to its present implacable tenacity of opinion. But Buddhism never served such a purpose. Its tendency was rather to inspire deference to the views of others and to deprecate sectarian strife. Perhaps no mood could have been more serviceable to the Japanese in their modern career. It has helped them to adapt themselves docilely to changes which must otherwise have provoked vehement revolt, and it has presided beneficially over the arena of party politics and commercial competition, so that when foreign observers looked confidently for a crisis in the former or a catastrophe in the latter, the result was always adjustment and compromise. How much is lost in other directions owing to the weakness of moral fibre inseparable from such a disposition, it is extremely difficult to estimate. There must be some deficiency of strenuousness and tenacity, and indeed Japanese enterprise often seems to flag on the threshold of attainment. Yet in the other side of the scale there is patience almost unlimited and there is the profoundest faith in time. Where a goal might be quickly reached by resolute vehemence at the cost of a collision, the Japanese reaches it smoothly by slow insistence. He is discovered to have been waiting at his post when he was supposed to have abandoned the field altogether.
The Japanese themselves ascribe their love of compromise and conciliation largely to the code of social courtesy. It is a breach of politeness to be self-assertive; to thrust one's own rights into the sphere of a neighbour's; to disturb the graceful placidity of life by egoistic claims of any kind, or to obtrude distressful subjects upon the attention of others. Therefore the line of least resistance must always be sought even at the cost of some sacrifices. At first sight this explanation appears to confuse cause and effect; for rules of politeness, being only the expression of the mood that enacts them, cannot be regarded as its origin. There is historical reason to think, however, that Japanese politeness, though it may not have had its beginnings in the Confucian doctrine which places etiquette at the base of all sound administration, certainly owed much of its development to that doctrine. Evidently, if a man is trained to observe, in intercourse with his fellows, certain invariable methods of behaviour and address, he will come to respect the principles of which those methods are the outward expression. The Japanese must be credited with a natural aptitude for the graces of courtesy, or they could not have so greatly improved upon the models they borrowed from China; but their instinct may have been greatly quickened by the Confucian precept of etiquette which informed the Constitution of Prince Shōtoku. At all events, their canons of politeness inculcate self-effacement such as cannot fail to reinforce the spirit of compromise and conciliation. The language abounds not merely with honorifics which must be used when referring to others, but also with depreciative forms for indicating one's self, one's affairs, or one's belongings. A man's dwelling becomes "poor" when he speaks of it to a friend or a stranger; his child, "mischievous;" his garden, "ill kept;" his capacity, "small;" his wife, "silly;" himself, "humble." The exordium and the whole tone of a public speech by a Japanese differ palpably from one by an Anglo-Saxon. The Japanese never dwells on himself, his own attainments, or his own qualifications; he keeps carefully out of sight everything pertaining to the Ego. The same rule directs him in social intercourse. Thanks for some courtesy received in the past preface his greetings. He remembers all the doings, the enterprises, the ambitions of his vis à vis and makes them the subject of conversation. He commiserates the bereavements of another, but never alludes to his own except to minimise them. It is because of this last habit that superficial observers have accused him of callousness. They imagine that there can be no sense of suffering without a display of pain. But even the least refined Japanese holds that nothing is more discourteous than to obtrude one's personal sorrows on the observation of others, and nothing more unreasoning than to solicit their sympathies, while for the gentleman or the lady trained in the precepts of the samurai's creed, all displays of egotistical emotion are contemptible.
There is a trait of Japanese character which falls naturally into this context because of its apparent irreconcilability with what has been written above. It has been here affirmed that the administrators of justice in old Japan, the "groupmen," the "headmen," the "elders," the "deputies," and the "magistrates," were guided rather by the special circumstances of each case than by any hard-and-fast rules, and that there grew out of that method a disposition on the part of the people to adjust all affairs by the sentiment of justice rather than by its science. It has also been shown in previous chapters that extreme formalism characterised the pursuit of pastimes and the culture of polite accomplishments in Japan; that folks seemed to delight in elaborating and following mazes of minute regulations and petty precepts. There is an apparent but not a real contradiction between these two habits of mind, for evidently the mental attitude of a man towards matters of human relationship may differ radically from his mood towards tea ceremonials, incense-comparing, or garden-making. It is patent, however, to foreign observers of modern Japan that her judges, her policemen, and her officials in general, cling with almost desperate tenacity to the letter of the law, and avoid any exercise of discretion in administering it. That is certainly not what might have been expected, judging by the record of their predecessors. Yet it is easy to conceive that the Japanese of the present generation, being called upon to apply systems entirely novel to them, do not venture to make the slightest departure from the exact routine prescribed for their guidance in discharging the unwonted task. Experience shows that the effect of codified laws in every country is to check the exercise of discretion by their administrators, and if that is true anywhere it should be specially true of modern Japan, where not only the codes themselves, but also the laws they embody, are new to the people.
A leading feature of early Tokugawa administration was the enactment of measures to check abuses that virtually involved slavery. Traffic in human beings was common at that epoch. Servants and labourers were openly disposed of; children of both sexes were kidnapped for secret sale; girls were ruthlessly pledged to a life of shame; men made a business of acting as agents in such transactions, and offices existed where sales and purchases could be effected. The Tokugawa legislators declared it a capital offence to keep such an agency or to act in the capacity of agent. Doubts have been cast on the sincerity of this repressive effort, and in some degree they appear to be justified. For though between the years 1624 and 1734 no less than eight enactments were issued declaring the sale or purchase of human beings punishable with death, imprisonment, or confiscation of property, and forbidding that servants, male or female, should be bound for a longer term than ten years, still the sense of right in such matters did not always prove as strong as the dictates of expediency. Economical difficulties disturbed the continuity of this wholesomely drastic legislation. Thus, a disastrous failure of the rice crop in 1675, having caused great distress in the agricultural districts, all time-restrictions upon traffic in body service were withdrawn, the only essential condition being that the transaction must not be compulsory. This liberty of contract affected adults only. But in 1649 it was declared lawful for parents or guardians to sell a child into a life of shame provided that the consent of the child was obtained,—a frail barrier against abuse. The interests of employers, too, were amply protected. A servant had to be guaranteed by one or two sureties, and in the event of flight prior to the expiration of the term of service, the sureties were required to capture the fugitive or to pay a fine. The offence of absconding was held to be greatly aggravated if committed by a person in the Shōgun's service, and in the event of a servant's fleeing after the perpetration of a serious crime, failure to apprehend him exposed his surety to death. Moreover, a law (1655) provided that in case of dispute between employer and employed, the latter, if found to be in the wrong, should become liable not only to imprisonment, but also to any penalty desired by the former. Hence, while it was certain that the Tokugawa system put an end, for the most part, to kidnapping and to the sale of unwilling adults, it did not prevent boys from being apprenticed under conditions that resembled slavery, or girls from being pledged to a career of prostitution or to some cognate unhappiness.
In estimating the operation of such laws due account must be taken of the great importance attaching to filial piety in Japan. Statutes enacted during the first half of the seventeenth century empowered a parent to have his son or daughter imprisoned,—always assuming the existence of a cause ostensibly reasonable,—and declared that whereas children must be responsible for the debts of a parent, the latter might not be held liable for his children's obligations unless he had pledged himself by deed to discharge them. Also, in the event of a dispute between a father and his son, the ward elder was to act as judge, appeal being allowed to a magistrate, but if the son was found to be in the wrong, the father had the right to determine his penalty. Failure to observe the duties of filial piety constituted a capital offence, and that this law was not a dead letter is proved by the fact that in 1717 a man underwent crucifixion for treating his mother with inhuman neglect, and, three years later, another had to commit suicide for severity to his step-mother. Nor was the system entirely punitory. Conspicuous exercise of the virtue of filial piety received ample recognition. In 1681 one Goroyemon, a peasant of Suruga, whose admirable conduct to his parents had been reported by the visiting censor, received from the Shōgun an autograph letter of commendation and was declared absolute owner of his farms. The practice thus inaugurated found embodiment in a law thirty-nine years later under the good Shōgun Yoshimune. He enacted that a tenant farmer distinguished for filial piety should be allowed to take a family name and to carry a sword, and should receive a money reward equivalent to £8 if he was a married man and £32 if single. Land-owners being regarded as more opulent than tenant-farmers and therefore less likely to neglect their parents, were not so greatly encouraged, but if a land-owner having a large family and many domestics to support gave proof of strong filial piety, he was absolved from the duty of paying taxes. It does not appear, however, that the system of signal rewards extended to tradesmen, who stood lowest among commoners. Evidently in the presence of such legislation the idea of refusing to make any sacrifice demanded by parents or suggested by their circumstances could scarcely be entertained by a child, and little practical value attached to the legal provision that without the consent of the child a bargain of servitude could not be binding. A false standard of rightful authority was created in a parent's mind and a false estimate of filial obligation in a child's, so that it became a common practice for a mother or father to sell a daughter to a brothel or pledge her to servitude for a term of years in some other position scarcely less painful. The literature of the Tokugawa era presents many examples of girls who made heroic sacrifices of that nature for the sake of their families or were sacrificed by them. Indeed this custom has always been one of the darkest blots upon Japanese civilisation, nor can it be honestly said that the abuse has yet disappeared altogether. In addition to the respect—insufficient but still worthy of all praise—evinced by the Tokugawa administrators for liberty of the subject, they must also be credited with a sincere desire to check vicious practices. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, unnatural crimes were declared punishable with confiscation of the offender's entire property, and though this prohibition is attributable in a large measure to incidents connected with such crimes,—quarrels, suicides, and other catastrophes,—no hint of that reason appeared in the official attitude. Again, in 1627, steps were taken to give practical effect to the system of relegating the social evil to remote quarters in the principal cities and penalising its practice elsewhere. Much has been written and said about this system, but its keenest opponents must at least admit that the Tokugawa rulers were guided by a sound instinct when they preferred isolation of vice to its promiscuous practice. Probably the most efficient measures of segregation were a law depriving employers of all authority to retain the services of a female for immoral purposes outside the appointed quarter, and an enactment that not only the owner of a house used for such a trade, but also the headman of the district and the five householders of the "group" to which the offender belonged, should be held responsible.
Then, as now, the dancing-girl (geisha) proved herself a potent perverter of good morals. At first (1710) the authorities seem to have imagined that they could get rid of this troublesome attraction by prohibiting the teaching of dancing under penalty of expulsion from house and district. But of course no such veto could be enforced in a society where dancing represented the chief pastime of all classes. The danseuse flourished in the face of legal prohibitions, and not until the close of the eighteenth century were the abuses of which she was typical attacked with really strenuous practicality by the good Shōgun Iyenari and his able minister, Matsudaira Sadanobu. This era (1787–1838), as well as that of the Shōgun Iyeyoshi (1838–1853),may claim attention, for the records of the sixty-six years immediately prior to the renewal of foreign intercourse afford interesting information about the attitude of Japanese officialdom towards problems generally supposed to have remained unsolved, and even unconsidered, until contact with the Occident suggested new canons of conduct. One of the first acts of Iyenari's administration was to declare the geisha illegal, and three years later (1790) he issued a strict prohibition against the publication of any kind of pornographic literature. Complete success did not attend his efforts in either case, but that could scarcely have been expected. At any rate, the spirit of his legislation was admirable. It is to this era, too, that the embryo of a press law may be attributed. Something very like the modern journal had made its appearance,—a written sheet sold from house to house and embodying sensational reports and strange items of news. It created so much mischief and scandal that regulations were framed providing that every publication must bear the name of its writer as well as of its author; that matters of family history, especially those relating to the Tokugawa, must be carefully excluded, and that no manuscript containing rumours about current events might be offered for sale. Of course the infant enterprise could not survive such vetoes.
It is noteworthy, also, that promiscuous bathing of the sexes was forbidden at an early date (1791). Bath-houses had long assisted to promote immorality. The mere fact that the women's bathing-room was not separated from the men's did not work so much mischief as it would have done in a nation where every display of the nude is counted immodest. The Japanese conception of modesty is not at once comprehensible. In no country has the educated lady been more particular at all epochs to avoid exposure of any part of her person except the face and hands. In the highest classes, as the reader has already learned, even the face used not to be shown to strangers. But the restraining impulse in these cases seems to have been respect for etiquette rather than dread of outraging modesty. Politeness required perfect adjustment of the costume, and any derangement so violent as to expose the foot or the ankle would have been a solecism. On the other hand, some incidents that are shrouded in careful secrecy by Occidental peoples have always been treated with unaffected frankness by the Japanese, and it has never appeared to them more immodest that folks should take off their clothes in each other's presence for the purpose of bathing than that a labourer at work should divest himself of garments which hamper the exercise of his muscles. The intention is everything. If a woman bares her arms and strips herself to her shoulders for the sake of looking attractive in society, she disturbs Japanese notions of propriety much more than a woman that bathes in the presence of others where the alternative is to go without a bath. It should be understood that all families of the better classes had bath-rooms in their own houses, and that in these places anything like commingling of the sexes was carefully avoided. But the small tradesman, the artisan, and the labourer were obliged to frequent the public bath-house, and there no sufficient arrangements existed for separating the sexes until Iyenari's regulations went into force. Another abuse connected with Yedo bath-houses in Tokugawa days was that their upper storeys were converted into a species of café, where girls of doubtful character waited on the guests. The third Shōgun, Iyemitsu (1652), sought to correct that immorality by limiting the number of female attendants at a bath-house to three, but Iyenari adopted the more drastic course of abolishing them altogether. It is evident, however, that great difficulty was experienced in checking abuses of this nature. The strict regulation of the social evil, though a wholesome measure in itself, made successful evasions of the law correspondingly profitable. Even elders of wards, though themselves responsible for the enforcement of moral restraints, began to maintain large numbers of female servants who received training in polite accomplishments and were sent to act as waitresses in tea-houses and restaurants at the request of the guests. This clever device to elude official control elicited a proclamation (in 1824) that any householder indulging in such practices should be imprisoned, and that the leading citizens of his street should be liable to confiscation of their house-lots. Nor did the administration limit its vetoes to semi-professional ministers of vice. It endeavoured also to check demoralising habits among the mercantile classes. As a result of the extraordinary vogue enjoyed by the dramatic recitatives called jōruri and naga-uta, it became fashionable for merchants' daughters to sing music of that nature to audiences of friends and acquaintances in houses specially fitted up for the purpose. This practice was peremptorily forbidden (1805), on the explicit ground that girls performing in such a manner reduced themselves to the level of beggars and vagabonds, who alone were permitted to entertain the public with singing and playing in wayside booths and church-yards. Side by side with this legislation renewed vetoes were issued against the professional danseuse. She was described in one notification (1822) as "a female singer who, magnificently apparelled, hires herself out to amuse guests at restaurants, ostensibly by dancing and singing, but really by practices of a very different character." All such females as well as similarly immoral girls kept at archery galleries and in tea-houses were to be classed as "secret prostitutes," and the owners of the house-lots as well as the street-officials were to be punished as accessories. Any maidservant at a restaurant or tea-house who was observed wearing handsome garments or hair-ornaments unsuited to her position, became liable to arrest and imprisonment; no one was permitted to engage a girl for training as a singer; any females that had already adopted such a profession were to be immediately released from their engagements; men were cautioned against allowing daughters or sisters to pursue the occupation of danseuse even for the purpose of supporting parents or family, and merchants' daughters who wore conspicuously fine clothes or costly hair-ornaments were warned that they exposed themselves to the reproach of immorality.
The growing popularity of the theatre and cognate places of public amusement from the early part of the eighteenth century caused concern to Tokugawa legislators, who saw in such amusements a danger to good morals. In the middle of the seventeenth century an attempt had been made by the third Shōgun, Iyemitsu, to segregate Yedo from the histrionic developments then beginning to attract attention in Osaka and Kyōtō. He appointed special constables to arrest actors said to be going about the city corrupting men's morals, and he expelled them immediately on apprehension. But this interdict being subsequently withdrawn, the theatre became a popular institution in Yedo, and serious abuses grew up about it. The building being made three storeys high, chambers in the top storey served for debauches of various kinds, and secret passages connecting the manager's residence or the green-room with houses of assignation, enabled the actors to carry on intrigues which began to constitute romances in the lives of many girls and women occupying respectable positions. Drastic steps for checking these immoralities were finally taken by the Government. It interdicted the building of theatres more than two storeys high, the making of secret passages, the use of bamboo blinds for screening the galleries, the giving of performances after sunset, and the construction of private rooms connecting with tea-houses attached to theatres. Actors were forbidden to repair to a tea-house by invitation, except for histrionic purposes, or to invite a private individual to their own dwellings. Altogether the theatre and its votaries were regarded as greatly injurious to morality. Iyenari attempted (1799) to put an end to every kind of public entertainment within the precincts of a temple or shrine in connection with religious festivals. But the spirit of the people resented such a restriction and it failed to produce any effect. When, however, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the organisers of these entertainments began to employ actors for the purpose of giving theatrical performances at religious fêtes, public opinion supported the authorities in peremptorily vetoing anything of the kind (1842), and in ordering that all persons engaged in such performances should be arrested and severely punished. It appears to have been thought that the attitude of the theatre was fatal to good morals. The yose did not present itself in such an objectionable light. This was a species of music hall where performances were given by singers of jōruri or naga-uta, by experts in the Biwa recitative and by raconteurs. The yose had none of the decorative features of an Occidental music hall. It was a building of the very plainest and least attractive description, generally situated in some narrow alley or by-street, and frequented by people who thought much of the penny paid for admission and were content to take a seat on the floor side by side with the labourer or the mechanic "out for the evening." But the owners of yose by and by conceived the idea of introducing troupes of female experts to sing dramatic songs, and of causing refreshments to be served by pretty and fashionably dressed girls, while the raconteurs accommodated themselves to these innovations by adding a salicic spice to their stories. Then (1842) the authorities stepped in. They limited the number of yose in Yedo to fifteen; they forbade the presence of females in any capacity except as units of an audience, and they ruled that the subjects of recitative, whether song or story, must be chosen from the repertoire of Shintō mythology, of military annals, or of ancient legends. There can be no doubt about the sincerity of all these measures. They show that from the first quarter of the seventeenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, and above all during the period 1787–1850, the Tokugawa rulers in their endeavours to promote public morality evinced a degree of earnestness and practicality quite irreconcilable with the disposition hitherto attributed by foreign critics to Japanese officialdom prior to the fall of feudalism.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 13.
Note 13.—Riparian works have long been a troublesome question in Japan. Owing to gradual banking up, the beds of many rivers have been elevated high above the general level of the district. The water can thus be easily led hither and thither for irrigation purposes, but, on the other hand, the bursting of banks pours the whole river like a cataract over the country.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 14.
Note 14.—There are many evidences that the supply of rice was found insufficient in the Tokugawa epoch. At one time (1643) the brewing of sake (rice-beer) was limited; at another (1644) the making of all cakes or confectionery that contained rice was forbidden. In 1660 farmers were not allowed to use rice as a staple of diet, and in 1818 the conversion of rice-fields into sugar-plantations was declared illegal. Yet the production ought to have sufficed for the population of the time. In 1688 the yield was twenty-five and three-fourths millions of koku; in 1836 it was thirty and one half millions; to-day it is only thirty-six millions.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 15.
Note 15.—In 1674 Tokugawa Mitsukuni imported twelve Dutch horses and established a stud at Ono-maki in Hitachi. In 1718 foreign cattle were bred at Mineoka in Awa. At first there were only three cows, but ultimately the number increased to seventy. Butter was made, and presents of it were sent by Matsudaira Sadanobu to his friends. In 1746 the Shōgun's officers organised a ginseng farm at Imaichi in Iwate province. It does not appear that any of these enterprises could be called a success.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 16.
Note 16.—See Mr. John Henry Wigmore's admirable essay, "Materials for the Study of Private Law in Old Japan."