Part 7 (1/2)
A GLIMPSE OP TENDENCIES
I
The foreign concession of an open port offers a striking contrast to its far-Eastern environment. In the well-ordered ugliness of its streets one finds suggestions of places not on this side of the world,--just as though fragments of the Occident had been magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Ma.r.s.eilles, of New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile buildings--immense by comparison with the low light j.a.panese shops--seem to utter the menace of financial power. The dwellings, of every conceivable design--from that of an Indian bungalow to that of an English or French country-manor, with turrets and bow-windows--are surrounded by commonplace gardens of clipped shrubbery; the white roadways are solid and level as tables, and bordered with boxed-up trees. Nearly all things conventional in England or America have been domiciled in these districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-gla.s.s windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels.
There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals, courts, jails, and a foreign police. There are foreign lawyers, doctors, and druggists; foreign grocers, confectioners, bakers, dairymen; foreign dress-makers and tailors; foreign school-teachers and music-teachers. There is a town-hall, for munic.i.p.al business and public meetings of all kinds,--likewise for amateur theatricals or lectures and concerts; and very rarely some dramatic company, on a tour of the world, halts there awhile to make men laugh and women cry like they used to do at home.
There are cricket-grounds, racecourses, public parks,--or, as we should call them in England, ”squares,”--yachting a.s.sociations, athletic societies, and swimming baths. Among the familiar noises are the endless tinkling of piano-practice, the cras.h.i.+ng of a town-band, and an occasional wheezing of accordions: in fact, one misses only the organ-grinder. The population is English, French, German, American, Danish, Swedish, Swiss, Russian, with a thin sprinkling of Italians and Levantines. I had almost forgotten the Chinese. They are present in mult.i.tude, and have a little corner of the district to themselves. But the dominant element is English and American, the English being in the majority. All the faults and some of the finer qualities of the masterful races can be studied here to better advantage than beyond seas,--because everybody knows all about everybody else in communities so small,--mere oases of Occidental life in the vast unknown of the Far East. Ugly stories may be heard which are not worth writing about; also stories of n.o.bility and generosity--about good brave things done by men who pretend to be selfish, and wear conventional masks to hide what is best in them from public knowledge.
But the domains of the foreigner do not stretch beyond the distance of an easy walk, and may shrink back again into nothing before many years--for reasons I shall presently dwell upon. His settlements developed precociously,--almost like ”mushroom cities” in the great American West,--and reached the apparent limit of their development soon after solidifying.
About and beyond the concession, the ”native town”--the real j.a.panese city--stretches away into regions imperfectly known. To the average settler this native town remains a world of mysteries; he may not think it worth his while to enter it for ten years at a time. It has no interest for him, as he is not a student of native customs, but simply a man of business; and he has no time to think how queer it all is. Merely to cross the concession line is almost the same thing as to cross the Pacific Ocean,--which is much less wide than the difference between the races. Enter alone into the interminable narrow maze of j.a.panese streets, and the dogs will bark at you, and the children stare at you as if you were the only foreigner they ever saw. Perhaps they will even call after you ”Ijin,” ”Tojin,” or ”Ke-tojin,”--the last of which signifies ”hairy foreigner,” and is not intended as a compliment.
II
For a long time the merchants of the concessions had their own way in everything, and forced upon the native firms methods of business to which no Occidental merchant would think of submitting,--methods which plainly expressed the foreign conviction that all j.a.panese were tricksters. No foreigner would then purchase anything until it had been long enough in his hands to be examined and re-examined and ”exhaustively” examined,--or accept any order for imports unless the order were accompanied by ”a substantial payment of bargain money”(1). j.a.panese buyers and sellers protested in vain; they found themselves obliged to submit. But they bided their time,--yielding only with the determination to conquer. The rapid growth of the foreign town, and the immense capital successfully invested therein, proved to them how much they would have to learn before being able to help themselves. They wondered without admiring, and traded with the foreigners or worked for them, while secretly detesting them. In old j.a.pan the merchant ranked below the common peasant; but these foreign invaders a.s.sumed the tone of princes and the insolence of conquerors. As employers they were usually harsh, and sometimes brutal. Nevertheless they were wonderfully wise in the matter of making money; they lived like kings and paid high salaries. It was desirable that young men should suffer in their service for the sake of learning things which would have to be learned to save the country from pa.s.sing under foreign rule. Some day j.a.pan would have a mercantile marine of her own, and foreign banking agencies, and foreign credit, and be well able to rid herself of these haughty strangers: in the meanwhile they should be endured as teachers.
So the import and export trade remained entirely in foreign hands, and it grew from nothing to a value of hundreds of millions; and j.a.pan was well exploited. But she knew that she was only paying to learn; and her patience was of that kind which endures so long as to be mistaken for oblivion of injuries. Her opportunities came in the natural order of things. The growing influx of aliens seeking fortune gave her the first advantage.
The intercompet.i.tion for j.a.panese trade broke down old methods; and new firms being glad to take orders and risks without ”bargain-money,” large advance-payments could no longer be exacted. The relations between foreigners and j.a.panese simultaneously improved,--as the latter showed a dangerous capacity for sudden combination against ill-treatment, could not be cowed by revolvers, would not suffer abuse of any sort, and knew how to dispose of the most dangerous rowdy in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes. Already the rougher j.a.panese of the ports, the dregs of the populace, were ready to a.s.sume the aggressive on the least provocation.
Within two decades from the founding of the settlements, those foreigners who once imagined it a mere question of time when the whole country would belong to them, began to understand how greatly they had underestimated the race. The j.a.panese had been learning wonderfully well--”nearly as well as the Chinese.” They were supplanting the small foreign shopkeepers; and various establishments had been compelled to close because of j.a.panese compet.i.tion. Even for large firms the era of easy fortune-making was over; the period of hard work was commencing. In early days all the personal wants of foreigners had necessarily been supplied by foreigners,--so that a large retail trade had grown up under the patronage of the wholesale trade. The retail trade of the settlements was evidently doomed. Some of its branches had disappeared; the rest were visibly diminis.h.i.+ng.
To-day the economic foreign clerk or a.s.sistant in a business house cannot well afford to live at the local hotels. He can hire a j.a.panese cook at a very small sum per month, or can have his meals sent him from a j.a.panese restaurant at five to seven sen per plate. He lives in a house constructed in ”semi-foreign style,” and owned by a j.a.panese. The carpets or mattings on his floor are of j.a.panese manufacture. His furniture is supplied by a j.a.panese cabinet-maker. His suits, s.h.i.+rts, shoes, walking-cane, umbrella, are ”j.a.panese make”: even the soap on his washstand is stamped with j.a.panese ideographs. If a smoker, he buys his Manila cigars from a j.a.panese tobacconist half a dollar cheaper per box than any foreign house would charge him for the same quality. If he wants books he can buy them at much lower prices from a j.a.panese than from a foreign book dealer,--and select his purchases from a much larger and better-selected stock. If he wants a photograph taken he goes to a j.a.panese gallery: no foreign photographer could make a living in j.a.pan. If he wants curios he visits a j.a.panese house;--the foreign dealer would charge him a hundred per cent. dearer.
On the other hand, if he be a man of family, his daily marketing is supplied by j.a.panese butchers, fishmongers, dairymen, fruit-sellers, vegetable dealers. He may continue for a time to buy English or American hams, bacon, canned goods, etc., from some foreign provision dealer; but he has discovered that j.a.panese stores now offer the same cla.s.s of goods at lower prices. If he drinks good beer, it probably comes from a j.a.panese brewery; and if he wants a good quality of ordinary wine or liquor, j.a.panese storekeepers can supply it at rates below those of the foreign importer. Indeed, the only things he cannot buy from the j.a.panese houses are just those things which he cannot afford,--high-priced goods such as only rich men are likely to purchase. And finally, if any of his family become sick, he can consult a j.a.panese physician who will charge him a fee perhaps one tenth less than he would have had to pay a foreign physician in former times. Foreign doctors now find it very hard to live,--unless they have something more than their practice to rely upon. Even when the foreign doctor brings down his fee to a dollar a visit, the high-cla.s.s j.a.panese doctor can charge two, and still crush compet.i.tion; for, he furnishes the medicine himself at prices which would ruin a foreign apothecary. There are doctors and doctors, of course, as in all countries; but the German-speaking j.a.panese physician capable of directing a public or military hospital is not easily surpa.s.sed in his profession; and the average foreign physician cannot possibly compete with him. He furnishes no prescriptions to be taken to a drugstore: his drugstore is either at home or in a room of the hospital he directs.
These facts, taken at random out of a mult.i.tude, imply that foreign shops or as we call them in America, ”stores,” will soon cease to be. The existence of some has been prolonged only by needless and foolish trickery on the part of some petty j.a.panese dealers,--attempts to sell abominable decoctions in foreign bottles under foreign labels, to adulterate imported goods, or to imitate trade-marks. But the common sense of the j.a.panese dealers, as a ma.s.s, is strongly opposed to such immorality, and the evil will soon correct itself. The native storekeepers can honestly undersell the foreign ones, because able not only to underlive them, but to make fortunes during the compet.i.tion.
This has been for some time well recognized in the concessions.
But the delusion prevailed that the great exporting and importing firms were impregnable; that they could still control the whole volume of commerce with the West; and that no j.a.panese companies could find means to oppose the weight of foreign capital, or to acquire the business methods according to which it was employed.
Certainly the retail trade would go. But that signified little.
The great firms would remain and multiply, and would increase their capacities.
(1) See j.a.pan Mail, July 21, 1895.
III
During all this time of outward changes the real feeling between the races--the mutual dislike of Oriental and Occidental--had continued to grow. Of the nine or ten English papers published in the open ports, the majority expressed, day after day, one side of this dislike, in the language of ridicule or contempt; and a powerful native press retorted in kind, with dangerous effectiveness. If the ”anti-j.a.panese” newspapers did not actually represent--as I believe they did--an absolute majority in sentiment, they represented at least the weight of foreign capital, and the preponderant influences of the settlements. The English ”pro-j.a.panese” newspapers, though conducted by shrewd men, and distinguished by journalistic abilities of no common order, could not appease the powerful resentment provoked by the language of their contemporaries. The charges of barbarism or immorality printed in English were promptly answered by the publication in j.a.panese dailies of the scandals of the open ports,--for all the millions of the empire to know. The race question was carried into j.a.panese politics by a strong anti-foreign league; the foreign concessions were openly denounced as hotbeds of vice; and the national anger became so formidable that only the most determined action on the part of the government could have prevented disastrous happenings. Nevertheless oil was still poured on the smothered fire by foreign editors, who at the outbreak of the war with China openly took the part of China.
This policy was pursued throughout the campaign. Reports of imaginary reverses were printed recklessly, undeniable victories were unjustly belittled, and after the war had been decided, the cry was raised that the j.a.panese ”had been allowed to become dangerous” Later on, the interference of Russia was applauded and the sympathy of England condemned by men of English blood. The effect of such utterances at such a time was that of insult never to be forgiven upon a people who never forgive. Utterances of hate they were, but also utterances of alarm,--alarm excited by the signing of those new treaties, bringing all aliens under j.a.panese jurisdiction,--and fear, not unfounded, of another anti-foreign agitation with the formidable new sense of national power behind it. Premonitory symptoms of such agitation were really apparent in a general tendency to insult or jeer at foreigners, and in some rare but exemplary acts of violence. The government again found it necessary to issue proclamations and warnings against such demonstrations of national anger; and they ceased almost as quickly as they began. But there is no doubt that their cessation was due largely to recognition of the friendly att.i.tude of England as a naval power, and the worth of her policy to j.a.pan in a moment of danger to the world's peace.
England, too, had first rendered treaty-revision possible,--in spite of the pa.s.sionate outcries of her own subjects in the Far East; and the leaders of the people were grateful. Otherwise the hatred between settlers and j.a.panese might have resulted quite as badly as had been feared.
In the beginning, of course, this mutual antagonism was racial, and therefore natural; and the irrational violence of prejudice and malignity developed at a later day was inevitable with the ever-increasing conflict of interests. No foreigner really capable of estimating the conditions could have seriously entertained any hope of a rapprochement. The barriers of racial feeling, of emotional differentiation, of language, of manners and beliefs, are likely to remain insurmountable for centuries.
Though instances of warm friends.h.i.+p, due to the mutual attraction of exceptional natures able to divine each other intuitively, might be cited, the foreigner, as a general rule, understands the j.a.panese quite as little as the j.a.panese understands him. What is worse for the alien than miscomprehension is the simple fact that he is in the position of an invader. Under no ordinary circ.u.mstances need he expect to be treated like a j.a.panese, and this not merely because he has more money at his command, but because of his race. One price for the foreigner, another for the j.a.panese, is the common regulation,--except in those j.a.panese stores which depend almost exclusively upon foreign trade. If you wish to enter a j.a.panese theatre, a figure-show, any place of amus.e.m.e.nt, or even an inn, you must pay a virtual tax upon your nationality. j.a.panese artisans, laborers, clerks, will not work for you at j.a.panese rates--unless they have some other object in view than wages. j.a.panese hotel-keepers--except in those hotels built and furnished especially for European or American travelers--will not make out your bill at regular prices. Large hotel-companies have been formed which maintain this rule,-- companies controlling scores of establishments throughout the country, and able to dictate terms to local storekeepers and to the smaller hostelries. It has been generously confessed that foreigners ought to pay higher than j.a.panese for accommodation, since they give more trouble; and this is true. But under even these facts race-feeling is manifest. Those innkeepers who build for j.a.panese custom only, in the great centres, care nothing for foreign custom, and often lose by it,--partly because well-paying native guests do not like hotels patronized by foreigners, and partly because the Western guest wants all to himself the room which can be rented more profitably to a j.a.panese party of five or eight. Another fact not generally understood in connection with this is that in Old j.a.pan the question of recompense for service was left to honor. The j.a.panese innkeeper always supplied (and in the country often still supplies) food at scarcely more than cost; and his real profit depended upon the conscience of the customer. Hence the importance of the chadai, or present of tea-money, to the hotel. From the poor a very small sum, from the rich a larger sum, was expected,--according to services rendered.
In like manner the hired servant expected to be remunerated according to his master's ability to pay, even more than according to the value of the work done; the artist preferred, when working for a good patron, never to name a price: only the merchant tried to get the better of his customers by bargaining, --the immoral privilege of his cla.s.s. It may be readily imagined that the habit of trusting to honor for payment produced no good results in dealing with Occidentals. All matters of buying and selling we think of as ”business”; and business in the West is not conducted under purely abstract ideas of morality, but at best under relative and partial ideas of morality. A generous man extremely dislikes to have the price of an article which he wants to buy left to his conscience; for, unless he knows exactly the value of the material and the worth of the labor, he feels obliged to make such over-payment as will a.s.sure him that he has done more than right; while the selfish man takes advantage of the situation to give as nearly next to nothing as he can.
Special rates have to be made, therefore, by the j.a.panese in all dealings with foreigners. But the dealing itself is made more or less aggressive, according to circ.u.mstance, because of race antagonism. The foreigner has not only to pay higher rates for every kind of skilled labor; but must sign costlier leases, and submit to higher rents. Only the lowest cla.s.s of j.a.panese servants can be hired even at high wages by a foreign household; and their stay is usually brief, as they dislike the service required of them. Even the apparent eagerness of educated j.a.panese to enter foreign employ is generally misunderstood; their veritable purpose being simply, in most cases, to fit themselves for the same sort of work in j.a.panese business houses, stores, and hotels. The average j.a.panese would prefer to work fifteen hours a day for one of his own countrymen than eight hours a day for a foreigner paying higher wages. I have seen graduates of the university working as servants; but they were working only to learn special things.