The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of MéijiGriffis, William Elliot
Religion
The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji
Griffis, William Elliot
Japan -- Religion
Revision with improvement of the Fifth Relation hastens the reign of
universal brotherhood. It lifts up the fallen, the down-trodden and the
outcast. It says to the slave "be free," and after having said "be
free," educates, trains, and lifts up the brother once in servitude, and
helps him to forget his old estate and to know his rights as well as his
duties, and develops in him the image of God. It says to the hinin or
not-human, "be a man, be a citizen, accept the protection of the law."
It says to the eta, "come into humanity and society, receive the
protection of law, and the welcome of your fellows; let memory forget
the past and charity make a new future." It will bring Japan into the
fraternity of nations, making her people one with the peoples of
Christendom, not through the empty forms of diplomacy, or by the craft
of her envoys, or by the power of her armies and navies reconstructed on
modern principles, but by patient education and unflinching loyalty to
high ideals. Thus will Japan become worthy of all the honors, which the
highest humanity on this planet can bestow.
The Ideal of Yamato Damashii Enlarged.
In this our time it is not only the alien from Christendom, with his
hostile eye and mordant criticism, who is helping to undermine that
system of ethics which permitted the sale of the daughter to shame, the
introduction of the concubine into the family and the reduction of
woman, even though wife and mother, to nearly a cipher. It is not only
the foreigner who assaults that philosophy which glorified the vendetta,
kept alive private war, made revenge in murder the sweetest joy of the
Samurai and suicide the gate to honor and fame, subordinated the family
to the house, and suppressed individuality and personality. It is the
native Japanese, no longer a hermit, a "frog in the well, that knows not
the great ocean" but a student, an inquirer, and a critic, who assaults
the old ethical and philosophical system, and calls for a new way
between heaven and earth, and a new kind of Heaven in which shall be a
Creator, a Father and a Saviour. The brain and pen of New Japan, as well
as its heart, demand that the family shall be more than the house and
that the living members shall have greater rights as well as duties,
than the dead ancestors. They claim that the wife shall share
responsibility with the husband, and that the relation of husband and
wife shall take precedence of that of the father and son; that the
mother shall possess equal authority with the father; that the wife,
whether she be mother or not, shall not be compelled to share her home
with the concubine; and that the child in Japan shall be born in the
home and not in the herd. The sudden introduction of the Christian ideas
of personality and individuality has undoubtedly wrought peril to the
framework of a society which is built according to the Confucian
principles; but faith in God, love in the home, and absolute equality
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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