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The case of the last of the Shoguns may also be quoted. On the down- fall of his power in 1867 he was urged by one of his Council to save the honour of his family by a voluntary suicide. He flatly refused to do so and left the room, whereupon his faithful adviser retired to another part of the castle and solemnly performed the hara-kiri.' Of suicides, attempted suicides, or threatened suicides of men, women, and children, on the stage and in fiction, there is simply no end. Human nature being the same everywhere, the duties 1 Literally ‘‘belly-cut,” a term which some English wag has thought fit to render by ‘‘ happy despatch.” 232 JAPANESE LITERATURE arising out of the relations of the sexes are essentially the same in Japan asin Europe. Chastity, both in men and women, is a virtue, as it is with ourselves. But in the Yedo period it was thrust into the background by the more urgent claims of loyalty and filial duty. In theory a man should have but one wife. In the case of the heads of great houses, one or even more concubines were allowed, but only with the dondé fide object of having children. Vulgar licentiousness was condemned, and in the case of officials was visited with severe punishment. The position of the wife, as of women generally, was very different in the Yedo period from what it had been in earlier times. Chinese notions of the absolute sub- jection and the seclusion, as far as possible, of the sex, made great progress. Women were now rarely heard of in public life, and disappear completely from the world of literature—a significant fact when we remember the feminine masterpieces of the Heian period. A woman’s first duty was to be faithful and obedient to her husband. Second marriages of widows were not absolutely for- bidden, but women who refused to contract such unions were highly commended, and when we meet with the word “chastity” in a Japanese book, it is generally this form of the virtue which is meant. A wife was bound to revenge her husband’s murder, and in fiction at least was permitted to sacrifice her own honour with this praiseworthy object. Some European travellers and novelists speak as if an unmarried woman’s maiden fame were a thing of no account in Japan. This is simple nonsense. But it can hardly be denied that more par- ticularly in their case chastity holds a lower place in the scale of virtues than in Christian countries. According to the code of morality of novelists and dramatists, it is — ETHICS OF YEDO PERIOD 233 permissible for, and even obligatory on, a girl to allow herself to be sold into prostitution in order to support her destitute parents. Incidents of this kind are very common indeed in their pages. The harlot figures very prominently in the literature of the Yedo period, and in Japan, as elsewhere, writers have not been wanting who have done their best to surround this calling with a halo of romance. But, as Mitford has shown, Japanese opinion on this subject is on the whole sound. There may be some difference of degree, but of the substantial identity of the feeling with which prostitution is regarded by them and by ourselves there can be no doubt. The proverb, ‘ When you find an honest harlot and a three-cornered egg, the moon will appear on the last day of the [lunar] month,” very clearly indicates the general opinion of this class. Piety, by which must be understood a devotion to Buddhist religious practices, was not in high estimation under the Tokugawas. It is not a distinctive virtue of the Japanese character at any period of their history. On the extreme punctiliousness and ceremony which characterised all the doings of a well-bred Japanese, of his sensitiveness on the point of honour, and of his cult of the sword as a sort of incarnation of the spirit of the Samurai, this is not the place to dilate. Nor need any- thing be said of the virtues of frugality, sobriety, honesty, and liberality, as they hold practically the same position in Japan as with ourselves. The dutics of superiors to their inferiors, of a lord to his retainer, of a father to his son, and of a husband towards his wife, may also be taken for granted. Though less frequently insisted upon, they are by no means passed over by the Japanese moralist. As time went on, the code of morals derived from the 234 JAPANESE LITERATURE teachings of the philosophers of China, and expounded — and applied by their Japanese followers, gained in pre- cision and detail. But what had originally been a whole- — some and vivifying influence became a burden to the nation. It fell most heavily on the Samurai, all whose i actions were governed by strict rules and punctilious etiquette, in a way which was fatal to any reasonable share of personal freedom. In short, the great fault of the later Shdgunate was over-regulation in almost every department of life. I was one day walking with the late Count Terashima, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, in one of those beautiful creations of the landscape gardener’s art which abound in Tokio. - He pointed to a grove of fir-trees standing by an artificial lake, which had been trimmed and trained by generations of gardeners into quaint and not unpleasing but stunted shapes. “There,” he said, “is an emblem of the Japanese nation under the Bakufu [Shogunate]. That is what Chinese learning did for us.” There is much in this type of humanity which it is hard for us Europeans to understand and appreciate. The Japanese of the ancient classical period appeal more strongly to our sympathies. Even Herodotus and Plato, far removed as they are from us in point of time, are immeasurably nearer to modern Englishmen in all their ideas, sentiments, and moral standards, than the Japanese of fifty years ago. Fujiwara Seikwa was the forerunner of a long series of , Kangakusha. His pupils became in their turn teachers, and handed on the torch of learning, which now began to burn brightly. It is difficult to give an idea of the rage for the acquisition of knowledge which possessed the Japanese people during the seventeenth century. It DOSHUN 2368 can only be compared to the passion for European learning of the last thirty years. Following the example of the great founder of their dynasty, the Tokugawa Shéguns encouraged learning by _ every means in their power. They founded libraries and colleges, subsidised professors, and were liberal of their favours to all eminent scholars. Tsunayoshi, the fifth Tokugawa Shdgun (1680-1709), an indifferent ruler, was passionately fond of learning. He surrounded himself with scholars, and spent all his leisure time in study. He used even to deliver lectures on the Chinese classics to audiences composed of Daimios and high officials, Shinto functionaries and Buddhist priests. It was in his time that Yedo began to take prominence as a literary centre, The Daimios, in their turn, vied with one another in attracting distinguished Kangakusha to their service, and in establishing high schools for the teaching of the classics, Chinese and Japanese history and composition, Nor were the people neglected. Nearly every temple had a ¢erakoya attached to it, where the children of peasants, mechanics, and tradespeople were instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is impossible to notice all the Kangakusha who flourished at this time, or to enumerate their most volu- minous writings. They do not take high rank as litera- ture. A word of mention is due, however, to Hayashi Rasan, also called DOsHUN, with half-a-dozen other aliases, which it is needless to reproduce here. All the Kangakusha indulged in a profusion of aliases, much to the confusion of bibliographers and writers on Japanese literature. Ddshun (b. 1583, d. 1657) was a pupil of Seikwa. He was a devoted student, and never passed a 236 JAPANESE LITERATURE day in his life without reading something. It is related of him that once, when obliged to flee from his house by a great conflagration, he took some books with him in ‘his £ago, and continued his work of annotation on the way. The list of his publications comprises one hundred and seventy separate treatises, mostly of a scholastic or moral character. There are also some memoirs use- ful to the historian, and one hundred and fifty volumes of miscellanies, essays, &c. He held an official position under the Shogun’s Government, by which he was em- ployed in drafting laws, and in giving advice on knotty questions which required learning for their solution. He was the founder of a long line of official Kangakusha which lasted until the downfall of the Shogunate in 1867. His son, Hayashi Shunsai (1618-1680) compiled about 1652 a history of Japan entitled O-dai-cchi-ran. It is in every respect a very poor production, and is only men- tioned here because a translation into French by Klaproth was published by the Oriental Translation Fund in 1835. Passing over a number of scholars deservedly remem- bered with gratitude in their own country for their ser- vices to learning and good morals, we come to KAIBARA YEKKEN (1630-1714), who was born at Fukuoka, in Chikuzen, of the Daimios of which province his family were hereditary retainers. His father held an official appointment as physician, and Yekken himself acquired some proficiency in the art of medicine. His first teacher was his elder brother, under whose instructions he was weaned of a liking for Buddhism, and devoted himself to the study of the Chinese classics. When he grew up to manhood he went to reside in Kidto, where he benefited by the instruction of Kinoshita Junan and Sede eae YEKKEN 237. other scholars. He had, however, no regular teacher.