The Japanese tongue has for a long time been regarded merely as an offshoot of the Chinese language, or at any rate as being very nearly connected with it. Study however, and the comparison of the two languages has rectified this error. Japanese understand Chinese writing because the Chinese characters form part of the numerous kinds in use in Japan. This is easily understood when it is remembered that Chinese characters represent neither letters nor meaningless sounds, which are only the constituent parts of a word, but are words themselves, or rather the ideas that these words express; consequently the same ideas can be communicated although expressed by different words to any one who is acquainted with the signification of the characters. The Japanese language is very soft and agreeable to the ear, but travelers declare that no one born out of the country could possibly pronounce some of the words. They have a system of forty-eight syllabic signs, which can be doubled by means of signs added to the consonants, which modify the sound, and render it harder or softer. This system, it is said, dates from the eighth century and can be written in four different series of characters.

Japanese literature comprises books on science, biography, geography, travels, philosophy, and natural history, as well as poetry, dramatic works, romances, and encyclopedias. The latter seem to be little more than picture books, with explanatory notes, arranged like other Japanese dictionaries, sometimes alphabetically, but more often quite fancifully and without any attempt at scientific classification. The poets of Japan strive to express the most comprehensive ideas in the fewest possible words, and to employ words with double meanings for the sake of typical allusions. They also delight in descriptions or similes furnished by the scenery, or the rich variety of natural productions with which they are surrounded.

Of their older books on science none are of any value but those which treat of astronomy. The proof of their progress in this science is afforded by the fact that almanacs, which were at first brought from China, have now become very general and are composed in Japan. The Japanese, until western education began to have its influence over them, had only a slight knowledge of mathematics, trigonometry, mechanics, or engineering. History and geography are very fairly cultivated. Reading is the favorite recreation of both sexes in Japan. The women confine themselves to the perusal of romances, and those works on etiquette and kindred subjects prepared for them. Every young girl who can afford it has her subscription to a library, which for the sum of a few copper coins per month furnishes her with as many books, ancient and modern, as she can devour. Except for their titles, these productions seem all formed on one pattern. In the choice of their characters and their subjects the authors seem by no means desirous of breaking through the narrow limits within which prejudice and custom have confined them.

The ancient religion of the Japanese is called “Kami no michi,” way, or doctrine of the gods. The Chinese form of the same is Shinto, and from this foreigners have called it Shintoism. In its purity the chief characteristic of this religion is the worship of ancestors and the deification of emperors, heroes, and scholars. The adoration of the personified forces of nature enters largely into it. It employs no idols, images, or effigies in its worship, and teaches no doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Shinto has no moral code, and no accurately defined system of ethics or belief. The leading principle of its adherents is imitation of the illustrious deeds of their ancestors, and they are to prove themselves worthy of their descent by the purity of their lives. The priests of Shinto are designated according to their rank. Sometimes they receive titles from the emperor, and the higher ranks of the priesthood are court nobles. Ordinarily they dress like other people, but are robed in white when officiating, or in court dress when in court. They marry, rear families, and do not shave their heads. The office is usually hereditary.

After all the research of foreign scholars, many hesitate to decide whether Shinto is a native Japanese product or whether it is not closely allied with the ancient religion of China which existed before the period of Confucius. The weight of opinion inclines to the latter belief. The Kojiki is the Bible of Shintoism. It is full of narrations, but it lays down no precepts, teaches no morals or doctrines, prescribes no ritual. Shinto has very few of the characteristics of a religion as understood by us. The most learned native commentators and exponents of the faith expressly maintain the view that Shinto has no moral code. Motoori, the great modern revivalist of Shinto, teaches with emphasis that morals were invented by the Chinese because they were an immoral people, but in Japan there was no necessity for any system of morals, as every Japanese acted aright if he only consulted his own heart. The duty of a good Japanese, he says, consists in obeying the commands of the mikado without questioning whether these commands are right or wrong. It was only immoral people like the Chinese who presumed to discuss the character of their sovereign. The opinion of most scholars from America and Europe, studying Shinto on its own soil, has been that the faith was little more than an influence for reducing the people to a condition of mental slavery. Its influence is weakening every year.

The outlines of Buddhism in its Chinese forms have been indicated in a foregoing chapter. It is well, however, to take another glance at it here in connection with its Japanese significance. This religion reached the Japanese empire about the middle of the sixth century after Christ, twelve centuries after its establishment. Buddhism originated as a pure atheistic humanitarianism, with a lofty philosophy and a code of morals higher perhaps than any heathen religion had reached before or has since attained. First preached in India, a land accursed by secular and spiritual oppression, it acknowledged no caste and declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally capable of being freed from sin and misery through knowledge. It taught that the souls of all men had lived in a previous state of existence and that all the sorrows of this life are punishments for sins committed in a previous state. After death the soul must migrate for ages through stages of life inferior or superior, until perchance it arrived at last in Nirvana or absorption in Buddha. The true estate of the human soul, according to the Buddhist, was blissful annihilation.

The morals of Buddhism are superior to its metaphysics. Its commandments are the dictates of the most refined morality. Such was Buddhism in its early purity. Beside its moral code and philosophical doctrines it had almost nothing. But in the twelve centuries which passed while it swept through India, Birmah, Siam, China, Thibet, Manchooria, Corea, and Siberia, it acquired the apparel with which Asiatic imagination and priestly necessity had clothed and adorned the original doctrines of Buddha. The ideas of Buddha had been expanded into a complete theological system, with all the appurtenances of a stock religion. Japan was ready for the introduction of any religion as attractive as Buddhism, for prior to that time nothing existed except Shinto, of which there was little but the dogma of the divinity of the mikado, the duty of all Japanese to obey him implicitly, and some Confucian morals.

Buddhism came to touch the heart, to fire the imagination, to feed the intellect, to offer a code of lofty morals, to point out a pure life through self-denial, to awe the ignorant, and to terrify the doubting. With this explanation of the field which Buddhism found and what it offered, it is sufficient to say that the faith spread with marvelous rapidity until the Japanese empire was a Buddhist land. This did not necessarily exclude Shinto from the minds of the same people, and the two faiths have existed side by side in harmony. Of late years, however, the Japanese have not only been losing faith in their own religions but in all others, and to-day they are said by many to form a nation of atheists. This does not apply to the common people so truly as to the educated ones, and of course is not nearly as general a truth as has been often assumed. In no country of Asia has Christianity made such rapid and permanent advance as in Japan. It is the only oriental country having a government of its own in which there is absolute freedom in religious belief and practice, and in which there is no state religion and no state support.

It has been for years the prophetic declaration of missionaries in the east that the first nation to extend full liberty of conscience in religion would be the dominant power of Asia. That Japan has fulfilled this condition is not more remarkable than are her rapid strides to political power since that country opened its doors to Christianity. That Japan is sincere in its treatment of an alien religion is attested by the fact that native Christian chaplains accompany her armies in their marches against China, and these are representative men of the Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches in Japan. There is no doubt that the whole Christian element in Japan, foreign and native, has been loyal to the country and in thorough sympathy with the aggressive movement made by Japan. The sympathy between Corea and Japan has been greatly strengthened by the active support rendered Presbyterian missionaries in Corea by the whole Christian body in Japan. The work of Mr. Johnson, a Presbyterian missionary in Corea, made him an adviser of the king, and this assisted in leading the latter rather towards Japan than towards China. The corner stone of Japan’s position to-day is religious toleration. All that the Christian missionaries have asked in Asia is equal privilege with other religions, and these they have had in Japan. History is only repeating itself, and the results of religious toleration in Europe centuries ago are being duplicated in Asia in 1895.

The student of Asiatic life, on coming to Japan, is cheered and pleased on contrasting the position of women in Japan with that in other countries. He sees them treated with respect and consideration far above that observed in other quarters of the Orient. They are allowed greater freedom, and hence have more dignity and self-confidence. The daughters are better educated and the national annals will show probably as large a number of illustrious women as those of any other country in Asia. In these last days of enlightenment public and private schools for girls are being opened and attended. Furthermore, some of the leaders of new Japan, braving public scandal, and learning to bestow that measure of honor upon their wives which they see is enthusiastically awarded by foreigners to theirs, and are not ashamed to be seen in public with them. No women excel the Japanese in that innate love of beauty, order, neatness, household adornment and management, and the amenities of dress and etiquette as prescribed by their own standard. In maternal affection, tenderness, anxiety, patience, and long suffering, the Japanese mothers need fear no comparison with those in other climes. As educators of their children, the Japanese women are peers to the mothers of any civilization in the care and minuteness of their training, and their affectionate tenderness and self-sacrificing devotion within the limits of their knowledge. The Japanese maiden is bright, intelligent, interesting, modest, ladylike, and self-reliant. What the American girl is in Europe the Japanese maiden is among Asiatics.

So far our attention has been devoted exclusively to the Japanese proper, that is, to those people inhabiting Hondo and the other islands to the south of it. But a few words remain to be said about a people, who, while forming part of the empire of Japan, yet differ essentially from the great majority of the population. They are the Ainos, or the original inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, now only to be found in the island of Yesso. These people are decreasing in numbers year by year, and will soon be named with those extinct races of whom it is only known that they have once existed. The Ainos, however, have had their day of glory. In olden times, several centuries before our era, they were masters of all the north part of the island of Hondo, and their power equalled that of the Japanese; but little by little their influence diminished, and they were driven before the Japanese, and finally confined to the island of Yesso. There the Japanese pursued them and a long war ensued, but finally reduced them to complete submission about the fourteenth century. Since then the state of servitude in which their conquerors have held them has been such as to stifle even the instinct of progress within them, so that in the nineteenth century they offer the image of a people hardly past its first infancy.

The origin of the Ainos is unknown. They themselves are perfectly ignorant of their own history, and they have no written documents existing which could throw light upon their past. It is most probable that they originally came from the far interior of the Asiatic continent, for they bear not the slightest resemblance to any of their neighbors in the tribes scattered along the eastern coasts of the north of Asia. The Ainos are generally small, thick-set, and awkwardly formed; they have wide foreheads and black eyes, not sloping; their skin is fair but sunburnt. Their distinguishing feature is their hairiness, and they never dress their heads or trim their beards. The little children have a bright, intelligent look, which, however, gradually wears away as they grow older. The dwellings are of the simplest construction, and only contain a few implements for hunting and fishing, and some cooking utensils. They are built in small groups or hamlets, never containing more than a hundred individuals. They are a gentle, kindly, hospitable, and even timid people. Fishing is their chief occupation, and hunting is another profitable pursuit. There is no sign of agriculture, nor is any breed of cattle to be found among these people. Dogs are utilized to draw their sledges in winter. Their organization is quite patriarchal. They have neither king, princes nor lords, but in every hamlet the affairs of the community are vested in the hands of the oldest and most influential member. Although the intelligence of the Ainos is very little developed, they evince great aptitude for knowledge and eagerly seize every opportunity for acquainting themselves with Japanese laws and customs.

The London Times, in 1859, predicted that “The Chinaman would still be navigating the canals of his country in the crazy old junks of his ancestors when the Japanese was skimming along his rivers in high pressure steamers, or flying across the country behind a locomotive.” The railway is now in fact stretching its iron tracks in every direction over the islands; the telegraph spreads its web all over the country; street car lines are in every city; the printing press rattles merrily in every moderate sized country town; and the Japanese who have always read much, now read ten times more than they ever did before. Technical education of the higher kind is telling upon the people, and many works are now undertaken from which the authorities would have shrunk a few years ago as being impossible for them to grapple with. Original investigation in many lines has been pursued, and particularly in the study of earthquake phenomena has Japan given to the world results of extreme value. The influence of the modern scientific spirit is immense and ever growing. Western influence in its better nature is constantly on the increase. It appears to-day as if Japan were to be the civilizing influence in the east of Asia.