BY KATSURO HARA   YAMATO SOCIETY PUBLICATION G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1920 Copyright, 1920, By THE YAMATO SOCIETY...

The military achievements of Japan in the last twenty years have done much to make the world appreciate and acknowledge the intrinsic worth of the Japanese nation. It is, however, very doubtful whether the other nations find in us many other things to admire besides our military excellence. Some of them, indeed, without fully investigating their deeper causes, have entertained serious misgivings as to the probable consequence of our military successes. The continual occurrence of anti-Japanese m

Art. I. The Society has for its object to make clear the meaning and extent of Japanese culture in order to reveal the fundamental character of the nation to the world; and also the introduction of the best literature and art of foreign countries to Japan so that a common understanding of Eastern and Western thought may be promoted. Art. II. In order to accomplish the object stated in the foregoing Article the Society shall carry on the following enterprises: 1. Publication in foreign languages

The principal aim of this work, written at the request of the Yamato Society as the first of its projected series of publications, is to furnish a synopsis, or perhaps rather to give a general sketch, of the history of Japan. The public to which it is tendered is not those professional historians and students of history now abounding in our country, who are already perplexedly encumbered with, and engrossed by, a superfluity of overdetailed materials and a plethora of contradictory conjectures a

INTRODUCTION The history of Japan may be useful to foreigners in several different ways. If we do not take into account the serviceableness of detached historical data or groups of data, that is to say, when we exclude those cases where the historical data of Japan are studied not for the sake of understanding Japan herself, but in behalf of some other scientific purposes, then it can be said that Japanese history will serve foreigners in two principal and distinct ways. Firstly, it will interes

THE RACES AND CLIMATE OF JAPAN Which is the more potent factor in building up the edifice of civilisation, race or climate? This has been a riddle repeatedly presented to various scholars of various ages, and has not yet been completely solved. The immanent force of the race deeply rooted in the principle of heredity on the one hand, and the influence of the physical milieu on the other, have been, are, and will be, ever the two important factors, coöperating in engendering any sort of civilisat

JAPAN BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CIVILISATION Before entering into a description of the early history of Japan, it may be of some service to the foreign reader to learn when the authentic history of Japan begins. Generally it is not an easy matter to draw a distinct line of demarcation between the historic and the prehistoric age in the history of any country, and in order to get rid of this difficulty, an intermediate age called the proto-historic was invented by modern sch

GROWTH OF THE IMPERIAL POWER. GRADUAL CENTRALISATION It is a privilege of historians to look back. By looking back I do not mean judging the past from the standpoint of the present. Though it is quite obvious that past things should be valued first by the standards of the age contemporaneous with the things to be valued, it would be a great mistake, if we supposed that the duty of historians was fulfilled when they could depict the past as it was seen by its contemporaries. Historians are by no

REMODELING OF THE STATE Japan stood on the verge of a crisis, and it was saved from catastrophe by two causes. First, by the ceaseless importation of high Chinese civilisation, which steadily encouraged the political concentration; secondly, by the necessity of centralisation so as to push on vigorously the attack on the still powerful Ainu. As I have mentioned several times before, the Ainu had been a losing party in the racial struggle with the Japanese, yet their resistance had been a very st

CULMINATION OF THE NEW RÉGIME; STAGNATION; RISE OF THE MILITARY RÉGIME Whatever be the merit or the demerit of the reform of the Taikwa, it was after all an honour to the Japanese nation that our ancestors ever undertook this reform. Not only because they were able to provide thereby for the needs of the state of that time, but because they were bold enough, temerarious almost, to aspire to imitate the elaborate system of the highly civilised T'ang. When an uncivilised people comes into contact

THE MILITARY RÉGIME; THE TAIRA AND THE MINAMOTO; THE SHOGUNATE OF KAMAKURA For some time the military class had been rocking the prestige of the court nobles, and at last superseded them by overturning their rotten edifice. It was first by the wars of the so-called "Nine Years" and "Three Years," both waged in northern Japan in the latter half of the eleventh century by Yoriyoshi and Yoshiiye, the famous generals of the Minamoto family, that the military class began to grow markedly powerful and

THE WELDING OF THE NATION THE POLITICAL DISINTEGRATION OF THE COUNTRY A war with a foreign power or powers is generally a very efficient factor in history, conducing to the unification of a nation, especially when that nation is composed of more than one race. The German Empire, which was consolidated mainly by virtue of the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870-1871, is one of the most exemplary instances. Japan, being surrounded by sea on all sides, has had more advantages than any continental country

END OF MEDIAEVAL JAPAN In order to see a nation consolidated, it is necessary not only to have a nucleus serving as a centre, towards which the whole nation might converge, but to have at the same time the centralising power of that nucleus strengthened sufficiently to hold the nation solid and compact. Moreover, the constituent parts of that nation ought to have the capacity to respond to the action emanating from that common centre or nucleus towards those parts, and facilitate the reciprocal

THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN JAPAN Anarchy engendered peace at least. At the end of the Ashikaga Shogunate the minor territorial lords, who had sprung up out of the impotency of the Shogun, were swallowed up one after another by the more powerful ones. The rights of manorial holders, that is to say, of court-nobles, shrines, and temples, over estates legally their own, though long since fallen into a condition of semi-desuetude, were active, sensitive, yet powerful enough in the middl

THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE,—ITS POLITICAL RÉGIME The spirit of the coming age was loudly heralded by Nobunaga. Most of the hindrances which had persistently obstructed the national progress for a long while were cleared away at his peremptory call. Then out of the quarry opened by him the stones for the new pieces of sculpture were hewn out by his successor Hideyoshi. The blocks, however, which were only rough-cut by the latter, were left unfinished, awaiting the final touch of wise and prudent Iyey

TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE, CULTURE AND SOCIETY In the previous chapter I have dwelt on the military and political organisation of the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate somewhat more fully than was appropriate for a book of such small compass as this. What was then the civilisation, which had been supported and sheltered by this organisation and régime? That must be told subsequently. As the well-planned military régime of the Shogunate can be said to have been based on the assumption that war was a far-di

THE RESTORATION OF THE MEIDJI The great political change which took place in the year 1867-1868 is generally called the Restoration, in the sense that the imperial power was restored by this event. In truth, however, the prerogative of the Emperor has never been formally usurped, and none has dared impudently to declare that he had assumed the power in His Majesty's stead. All the virtual potentates, court-nobles as well as Shogun, who, each in his day, held unlimited sway over the whole country

EPILOGUE Japan of the past fifty years since the Revolution of the Meidji may be said to have been in a transition period, although we do not know when nor how she will settle down after all. As a transition period in the history of any country is generally its most eventful epoch, so our last half century has been the busiest time the nation has ever experienced. Not only that. We were ushered into the wide world, just at the time when the world itself began to have its busiest time also. The o