Japan: An Attempt at InterpretationHearn, Lafcadio
Religion
Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation
Hearn, Lafcadio
Japan -- Civilization
Otherwise the regimentation of society resembled that of all antique
civilizations of the militant type,--all action being both positively
and negatively regulated. The household ruled the person; the
five-family group; the household; the community, the group; the lord
of the soil, the community; the Shogun, the lord. Over the whole body
of the producing classes, two million samurai had power of life and
death; over these samurai the daimyo held a like power; and the
daimyo were subject to the Shogun. [252] Nominally the Shogun was
subject to the Emperor, but not in fact: military usurpation
disturbed and shifted the natural order of the higher responsibility.
However, from the nobility downwards, the regulative discipline was
much reinforced by this change in government. Among the producing
classes there were countless combinations--guilds of all sorts; but
these were only despotisms within despotisms--despotisms of the
communistic order; each member being governed by the will of the
rest; and enterprise, whether commercial or industrial, being
impossible outside of some corporation.... We have already seen that
the individual was bound to the commune--could not leave it without a
permit, could not marry out of it. We have seen also that the
stranger was a stranger in the old Greek and Roman sense,--that is to
say an enemy, a hostis,--and could enter another community only by
being religiously adopted into it. As regards exclusiveness,
therefore, the social conditions were like those of the early
European communities; but the militant conditions resembled rather
those of the great Asiatic empires.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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