A JAPANESE ROMANCE
Romantic Japan—The daimio and the stable-boy—Thirsting for truth —In a junk to Hakodate—A schooner and a stowaway—A discovery in Hong-Kong—Arrival in Boston—Mr. Hardy and "Joe" —At Amherst and Andover—The Mikado's embassy—Neesima's educational dreams—Return to Japan—The "Doshisha"—The wooden cross and the living monument.
THERE is no country on the map of the world with which it is more natural to associate the idea of romance than the island empire of Japan. The sudden awaking of the people from their sleep of centuries, their transition in the course of a single generation from something like European medievalism to the most up-to-date modernity, may fairly be described as one of the greatest wonders of history. Heroic as well as romantic, recalling twice over the immortal story of David and Goliath, are the two wars which the little Power has waged triumphantly in quick succession against the biggest empires—first of Asia and then of Europe. Romantic, too, as every traveler tells us, are the sights of the country and the ways of the people wherever Old Japan survives—the houses, the gardens, the elaborate courtesies, the artistic costumes, the combination of a frank naturalism with an artificiality which has become a second nature.
In reading about Japan we sometimes feel as if we had to do not with the world of sober realities, but with a fascinating chapter out of a new volume of Arabian Nights. And yet even in a land in which wonders meet us on every side, the strange story of Joseph Neesima deserves to be called romantic.
He was born in 1843: It was ten years before that memorable Sabbath morning when Commodore Perry, of the U.S. Navy, with his fleet of "barbarian" ships steamed into the harbor of Uraga, in the Bay of Yedo, and extorted from a reluctant Government those treaties of friendship and commerce which broke down forever the walls of seclusion behind which Japan had hid herself from the eyes of the world. Neesima was a samurai, a member of the old fighting caste of feudal times, and so even as a boy wore a sword and was sworn to a life of fealty to the daimio or prince on whose estate he was born.
From the first, however, it was evident that this little serf had a mind and will of his own, and also a passionate longing for truth and freedom. Ile devoted all his spare time to study, often sitting up over his books until the morning cocks began to crow. Once the prince, his master, caught him running away from his ordinary duties to go to the house of a teacher whom he was in the habit of visiting by stealth. After giving the boy a severe flogging, he asked him where he was going. Neesima's answer will best be given in his own words at a time when he had learned only enough English to write it in the "pidgin" fashion. “Why you run out from here?' the daimio said. Then I answered him, That I wish to learn foreign knowledge, because foreigners have got best knowledge, and I hope to understand very quickly.' Then he said, ‘With what reason will you like foreign knowledge? Perhaps it will mistake yourself.' I said to him sooner, ' Why will it mistake myself? I guess every one must take some knowledge. If a man has not any knowledge, I will worth him as a dog or a pig.' Then he laughed, and said to me, ‘You are a stable-boy.”
Not less remarkable than this thirst for knowledge was the lad's consciousness of the rights of human beings, and passionate desire for fuller liberty: "A day my comrade sent me a Atlas of United States, which was written in Chinese letter by some American minister. I read it many times, and I was wondered so much as my brain would melted out of my head, because I liked it very much-picking one President, building free schools, poorhouses, house of correction, and machine-working, and so forth, and I thought that a government of every country must be as President of United States. And I murmured myself that, O governor of Japan! why you keep down us, as a dog or a pig? We are people of Japan; if you govern us, you must love us as your children.”
But above all young Neesima felt a deep longing after God. When he was about fifteen years of age, to the great distress of his relatives, he refused to worship any longer the family gods which stood on a shelf in the house. He saw for himself that they were "only whittled things," and that they never touched the food and drink which he offered to them. Not long after this he got possession of an abridged Bible history in the Chinese language, with which he was well acquainted, and was immensely struck by the opening sentence, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Immediately he recognized the Creator's claim to be worshipped. To this still Unknown God he began thereafter to pray, "Oh, if You have eyes, look upon me; if You have ears, listen for me.”
Before long it became Neesima's constant desire to find his way to the port of Hakodate, as an open port, where he thought he might fall in with some Englishman or American from whom to obtain the knowledge that he wanted. He made application to the daimio to be allowed to undertake the voyage, but got only a scolding and a beating for his pains. Yet he did not despair. In the quaint language of his earliest English style, "My stableness did not destroy by their expostulations." He waited patiently for four or five years, and at last, to his inexpressible joy, secured permission to go to Hakodate in a sailing-junk which belonged to his master. The junk was a coaster, and it was several weeks before he reached the haven of his hopes. Getting to Hakodate at last, it seemed for a time as if nothing but disappointment was in store for him there. He could find no one to teach him English, and meanwhile his little stock of money melted rapidly away. At length matters began to look brighter. He fell in with a Russian priest who gave him some employment, and he made the acquaintance of a young Jap, Mr. Munokite, who was a clerk in an English store, and who not only taught him a little English, but helped to carry out a secret determination he had now formed of escaping to America at the earliest opportunity.
He had not come to this decision without long and anxious thought. It involved great sacrifices and no small danger. In those days a Japanese subject was forbidden to leave the country on pain of death. If caught in the act of attempting to do so, he forfeited his life; while if he made good his escape, this meant that he had banished himself for ever from the "Land of the Rising Sun.”
It was painful for the youth to think of leaving his parents without even saying good-bye, and with no prospect of ever seeing them again, especially as he had been brought up under the influence of the Confucian doctrine of filial obedience. But he thought the matter out, and saw at last that in the search for truth and God it may be proper to set all other claims aside. "I discovered for the first time," he wrote afterwards, "that the doctrines of Confucius on the filial relations are narrow and fallacious. I felt that I must take my own course. I must serve my Heavenly Father more than my earthly parents.”
And Neesima loved his country as well as his home, for patriotism is a sentiment which glows with extraordinary warmth in every Japanese heart. Moreover, he was something of a poet as well as a patriot, seeing his country in the glowing hues of a lively imagination. The verses he wrote far out on the China Sea, after he had made good his flight, show how his heart kept turning back to the dear land of flowers. "If a man be determined in his mind to run away a thousand miles," one of his poems says, "he expects to have to endure great sufferings, and why can he be anxious about his home? But how strange! In the night, when the spring wind is blowing, in a dream he sees flowers in the garden at home.”
But we are anticipating somewhat, for the story of Neesima's adventurous flight has yet to be told. After endless difficulties, his friend Munokite secured leave for him to work his passage to Shanghai on an American schooner, the Berlin, Captain Savory. He had, of course, to smuggle himself on board at his own risk, and to do so with the full knowledge that if detected by the harbour police he would be handed over to the executioner without delay. His plans had accordingly to be laid with the utmost caution. When night fell, he had a secret meeting in a private house with Munokite and two other young friends. They supped together, and passed round the sake-cup in token of love and faithfulness. At midnight the fugitive crept out of the house in the garb of a servant, carrying a bundle and following one of his friends who walked in front with a dignified air wearing two swords, as if he were the master. By back streets and dark lanes they found their way to the water's edge, where a small boat was already in waiting. Neesima was placed in the bottom of the boat and covered up with a tarpaulin as if he were a cargo of provisions; and then swiftly, but with muffled oars, the boatman pulled out to the schooner. A rope was thrown over the side, and the cargo, suddenly becoming very much alive, scrambled on board and hurried below.
That night he never slept a wink, for he knew that the worst danger was yet to come. In those days every vessel leaving Hakodate harbor was keenly searched at the last moment to make sure that no Japanese subject was secreted anywhere on board. Early next morning the police boat was seen coming off to the schooner for this purpose; and Neesima felt that his hour of destiny was at hand. But Captain Savory had laid his plans carefully too, for he also was running a risk; and he hid his dangerous passenger in a part of the ship where the watch-dogs of the port never thought of looking for him. The search was over at last; the anchor weighed; the sails spread to an offshore breeze. The Berlin forged her way through the shipping and out to the open sea. Neesima now was safe and free. It was on 18 July, 1864, and the hero of our story was 21 years of age.
After a very disagreeable passage to Shanghai and ten days of wretchedness and uncertainty in that busy port, where he could not get rid of the idea that even yet he might be betrayed and sent back to Japan, our adventurer found another American vessel, the Wild Rover, bound for Boston, and succeeded in persuading the captain to take him on board without wages as his own personal servant. The voyage was a tedious one, for the Wild Rover was a "tramp," which sailed here and there about the China seas for eight months before turning homewards, and spent four months more on the ocean passage. While they were lying in Hong-Kong harbor Neesima discovered a Chinese New Testament in a shop, and felt that he must secure it at all costs. But he had not a copper of his own, and having promised to work his passage without wages, felt that he could not ask the captain for any money. At last he bethought himself of his sword, which, being a samurai, he had brought with him as a matter of course. Could he honorably part with this weapon which marked the dignity of his caste, and was to him like his shield to a young Spartan—an indispensable badge of his own self-respect? He was not long in deciding. The Japanese sword was soon in the hands of a dealer, and Neesima triumphantly bore his prize back to the ship. He read the book day and night, and found in it answers to some of the questions which had so long perplexed his mind.
When the Wild Rover reached Boston our hero's trials were by no means over. The Civil War had lately ended. Work was scarce; the price of everything was high. Nobody wanted this Japanese lad with his "pidgin" English and his demand to be sent to school. He began to fear that the hopes of years might only have been delusions after all. "I could not read book very cheerfully," he remarks, "and I am only looking around myself a long time as a lunatic.”
It is quite characteristic of his romantic experiences that his first real comfort came from a copy of Robinson Crusoe which he picked up for a few cents in a secondhand bookstore. Possibly he felt that there were some analogies between his adventures and trials and those of the hero of Defoe's great romance, and that he was almost as friendless and solitary on the shores of this great continent as the shipwrecked mariner on that lonely island beach. But what appealed to him most of all was Crusoe's prayers. Hitherto he had cried to God as an unknown God, feeling all the while that perhaps God had no eyes to see him, no ears to listen for him. Now he learned from Crusoe's manner of praying that in all his troubles he must cry to God as a present, personal friend. And so day by day, in the full belief that God was listening, he uttered this prayer. "Please don't cast me away into miserable condition. Please let me reach my great aim.”
Neesima's worst anxieties were nearly over now. His "great aim" was almost in sight. As soon as the Wild Rover reached Boston, the captain had gone off on a long visit to his friends, not thinking much about his Japanese cabin-boy or expecting to see him again. But on his return to his ship some weeks after, he found "Joe," as the lad was called on shipboard, still hovering about the vessel as his one ark of refuge. This led him to speak to his owner, a Mr. Hardy, of the queer young Oriental he had brought to America; and Mr. Hardy, who was a large-hearted and generous Christian man, at once declared that he would make some provision for the poor fellow. His first idea was to employ him as a house servant; but when his wife and he met the youth and heard his wonderful story, they saw immediately that this was no ordinary immigrant of the stowaway order; and instead of making him a servant they took him into their family practically as an adopted son, and gave him a thorough education, first in an academy at Andover and afterwards at Amherst College. It was in token of this adoption that, when he was baptized as a member of the Christian Church, he took his full name of Joseph Hardy Neesima. On shipboard, as has been mentioned, he was called "Joe," the sailors having decided that he must have some short and handy name, and "Joe" suggesting itself as convenient. "Keep the name," Mr. Hardy said after hearing how it was given. For he felt that, like another Joseph, who went down to Egypt as a captive and became the savior of his brethren, Joseph Neesima, the Japanese runaway, might yet become a benefactor to his country. He lived long enough to see his hopes much more than realized.
After graduating honorably at Amherst College, Neesima entered himself a student at Andover Theological Seminary, with the view of being ordained as a fully qualified missionary to his own countrymen. Soon after this a pathway for his return to Japan opened up in a manner which was almost dramatic. Since his departure from Hakodate in 1864, the chariot wheels of progress had been moving rapidly in the land of his birth. Japan was beginning to deserve in a wider sense than before its name of "The Land of the Rising Sun." Instead of closing all her doors and windows and endeavoring to shut out the light at every chink, she was now eager to live and move in the full sunshine of Western knowledge. The great political and social revolution had taken place. The Mikado had issued that epoch-making proclamation in which he declared: "The uncivilized customs of former times will be broken; the impartiality and justice displayed in the workings of nature adopted as a basis of action; and intellect and learning will be sought for throughout the world in order to establish the foundations of empire.”
It was in pursuance of this new policy that there came to Washington in the winter of 1871-72 a distinguished embassy from the Imperial Court of Japan, which had for its special commission to inspect and report upon the workings of Western civilization. The embassy soon felt the need of someone who could not only act as interpreter, but assist it in the task of examining the institutions, and especially the educational institutions, of foreign lands. For some time Mr. Mori, the Japanese Minister in the United States, had had his eye on his young countryman at Andover, and he now invited him to Washington to be introduced to the embassy. So favorable was the impression produced by his personal appearance, and so evident was it that he was thoroughly conversant with the principles and methods of Western culture, that he was immediately requested to accompany the ambassadors in the capacity of adviser, on their tour through the United States and Europe; while overtures of the most flattering kind were made to him, with brilliant prospects in the political world whenever he returned to his native land. But Neesima's mind was now fully made up regarding his work in life. When he returned to Japan it would be not as a politician, but as a Christian missionary. In the meantime, however, he willingly put his services at the disposal of the Mikado's embassy, and thereby not only greatly enlarged his experience, but gained influential friends among the rising statesmen of Japan, friends who were afterwards of no small help to him in his efforts to promote among his countrymen the cause of a Christian civilization. The special task was assigned to him of drawing up a paper on "The Universal Education of Japan." He discharged the duty with such ability that his essay became the basis of the report subsequently made by the embassy on the subject of education. And this report, with certain modifications, was the foundation of the Japanese system of education as it has existed ever since.
After a year had been spent in this interesting way, Neesima returned to Andover, and on the completion or his theological course was ordained by the American Board of Missions as an evangelist to his fellow-countrymen, his foster-father, Mr. Hardy, undertaking to provide for his support. Ten years had now elapsed from the time when he was smuggled out of Japan in the hold of a little schooner—a poor and unknown lad, and a criminal in the eyes of the law. He was about to return a highly cultured Christian gentleman, with not a few influential friends on both sides of the Pacific. And he was returning with a purpose. He had found the light he came to seek, but he was far from being satisfied with that. His aim now was to be a light-bringer to Japan. He was deeply conscious of the truth that
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.
He was unwilling, says Dr. Davis, his colleague in after years and one of his biographers, "to go back with a full heart but with an empty hand." His purpose was to start a Christian College in which he could meet the craving of Young Japan for Western knowledge—the craving which he knew so well—while at the same time he might surround the students with a Christian atmosphere, and train some of them to be preachers and teachers of Jesus Christ. But he could not start a college without means, and where the means were to come from he did not know.
He spoke of his plans in the first place to various members of the American Board. But the Board's hands were full, and he met with no encouragement. Then he took counsel with himself. It had been arranged that before leaving America he should give an address at the annual public meeting of the Board, and he determined to utilize this opportunity. To the very best of his ability he prepared a speech. But when he stepped on to the platform and faced the great audience, a fate befell him which has often come to public speakers at a critical moment in the beginning of their careers. His carefully arranged ideas all disappeared; his mind became a perfect blank; and every one present thought that he had completely broken down. But suddenly a thought flashed into his mind, opening up an entirely fresh line of address, and for fifteen minutes, while the tears streamed down his cheeks, he pleaded the cause of his country with such overwhelming earnestness that at the close of his short speech 5000 dollars were subscribed on the spot, and Neesima knew that the foundation-stone of a Christian College in Japan was already laid.
It was characteristic of our hero's indomitable courage that when he reached Japan he started his college, which he called the "Doshisha," or "Company of One Endeavor" —not in any city of the coast, where Western ideas had become familiar, but in Kyoto itself, the sacred city of the interior, a city of 6000 temples and the very heart of the religious life of Old Japan. In this place, where Buddhism and Shintoism had flourished unchallenged for a thousand years, Neesima was subjected for a time to the furious hatred of the native priests and even to the opposition of the magistrates. For the most part these men had no objections to Western education but Christian education they would have liked to suppress. It was now that he realized the advantage of the friendship of the members of the embassy of 1871-2. Several of those gentlemen, including the present Marquis Ito, had become prominent members of the Japanese Cabinet, and they did not a little to remove difficulties out of Neesima's way.
And so the Doshisha took root and flourished, until in the last year of its founder's life, when he had been engaged in his work for fifteen years, the number of students in all departments, young women as well as young men, had risen to over 900. Neesima wore himself out by his labors, and died at the comparatively early age of 47, just when he had taken steps to broaden out the Doshisha College into the Doshisha University, and had secured large sums for this purpose, including a single gift of 100,000 dollars from a gentleman in New England, and a collection of 31,000 yen subscribed at a dinner-party in Tokyo in the house of Count Inouye, after those present had been addressed by Neesima himself, who was one of the guests.
Neesima's widow has fulfilled his last wish, spoken from the depths of a humble Christian heart: "Raise no monument after my death. It is enough, if on a wooden cross there stands the word, The grave of Joseph Neesima.'" But the Doshisha is Neesima's living monument in Japan. More than 5000 students have passed through it, of whom in 1903 above eighty were preachers of the Gospel, 161 were teachers, 27 were Government officials, and 16 were newspaper editors. By turning out a succession of highly educated men and women trained under Christian influences, Neesima's college has contributed no small part in the creation of that New Japan which has so swiftly stepped in these late years into the foremost rank of the great company of nations.
The chief authority for this chapter is A Maker of New Japan: Joseph Hardy Neesima, by Rev. J. D. Davis, D. D. (Fleming H. Revell Co.)