Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And PsychicGulick, Sidney Lewis
History
Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic
Gulick, Sidney Lewis
Japan -- Civilization; Japan -- Social life and customs; National characteristics, Japanese
office, had individually sworn to maintain. Again the Board sent out a
man, now a lawyer vested with full power to press matters to a final
issue. After months of negotiations with the trustees in regard to the
restoration of the substance of the abrogated clauses, without result,
he was on the point of carrying the case into the courts, when the
trustees decided to resign in a body. A new board of trustees has been
formed, who bid fair to carry on the institution in accord with the
wishes of its founders and benefactors, as expressed in the original
constitution. At one stage of the proceedings the trustees voted
magnanimously, as they appeared to think, to allow the missionaries of
the Board to live for fifteen years, rent free, in the foreign houses
connected with the Doshisha; this, because of the many favors it had
received from the Board! By this vote they maintained that they had
more than fulfilled every requirement of honor. That they were
consciously betraying the trust that had been reposed in them is not
for a moment to be supposed.
It would not be fair not to add that this experience in Kyoto does not
exemplify the universal Japanese character. There are many Japanese
who deeply deplore and condemn the whole proceeding. Some of the
Doshisha alumni have exerted themselves strenuously to have
righteousness done.
Passing now from the character of trustful confidence, we take up its
opposite, suspiciousness. The development of this quality is a natural
result of a military feudalism such as ruled Japan for hundreds of
years. Intrigue was in constant use when actual war was not being
waged. In an age when conflicts were always hand to hand, and the man
who could best deceive his enemy as to his next blow was the one to
carry off his head, the development of suspicion, strategy, and deceit
was inevitable. The most suspicious men, other things being equal,
would be the victors; they, with their families, would survive and
thus determine the nature of the social order. The more than two
hundred and fifty clans and "kuni," "clan territory," into which the
land was divided, kept up perpetual training in the arts of intrigue
and subtlety which are inevitably accompanied by suspicion.
Modern manifestations of this characteristic are frequent. Not a
cabinet is formed, but the question of its make-up is discussed from
the clannish standpoint. Even though it is now thirty years since the
centralizing policy was entered upon and clan distinctions were
effectually broken down, yet clan suspicion and jealousy is not dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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