JAPAN’S DEBT TO CHRISTIANITY.
By Jas. I. Seder
CHRISTIANITY has given to Japan an ideal for human life, such as had never been known in this land before—a Christian home. Not that it has changed all or even a very large per cent of Japanese homes as yet. Quite the contrary; but the model is here, criticized by the unthinking few, but admired and desired by the intelligent many. The ideal Christian marriage, the foundation of the Christian home, is based on individual freedom, mutual acquaintanceship, union of hearts in reciprocal love, and respect for mutual rights and obligations. The custom of Japan is that partners for life, or rather for a while, are selected by a “go-between.” I say “for a while” advisedly, as one-third of the marriage contracts are broken by divorce, to say nothing of other kinds of unfaithfulness. In “Christian America,” sad to say, the proportions of divorces to marriages are one to sixteen; but here they are one to three. Christ allows but one reason for divorce—adultery—and that to both man and woman. Confucius, the Chinese sage, after whose ideas the Japanese laws, customs, and practices on this subject are modeled, allows man, and him only, seven grounds for divorce,—disobedience, barrenness, lewd conduct, jealousy, leprosy or any other foul and incurable disease, too much talking, and thievishness. Christianity is justified, therefore, in setting up her ideal for Japan’s imitation, and it is to the credit of this country that she is accepting the best. Christianity has also set a stake to concubinage, which was introduced into Japan while Confucianism was regnant. The social status of women is much improved, and her rights are being recognized more and more by “the lords of creation,” by the law, and in the courts. They are, moreover, being admitted to superior educational advantages in the various government and mission girls’ schools, and are winning their way to eminence in literature and art, music, poetry, painting, and other vocations. Formerly woman was regarded as so much inferior to man that by the teachings of Japanese Buddhism she was denied entrance to the higher joys of the future world. Christianity knows no such distinctions, and the work of woman’s emancipation in Japan has at least been well begun. Even for her general educational system and progress Japan is in no small degree indebted to Christianity. Early education was in the hands of Buddhist priests, and the studies were the sūtras. Three centuries ago Confucianism came into power with the rise of the Shogunate, and from that time on, the Confucian and Chinese classics were learned by heart, and instruction was imparted in the natural history and literature. Meager as it was, and excluding women as it did, with the revolution of 1868 the old system of education fell with the Shogunate, and an entirely new start was made. Americans, notably missionaries and mission schools, exerted a strong molding influence upon the trend of the new Japanese education in its early days. Rev. Dr. Verbeck was the organizer and for some years the head of what is now the Imperial University at Tokyo. He was also for a long time educational adviser to the government, and thus in a position to exert an influence for immeasurable good in behalf of Japan. The common-school system of Japan was modeled after that of America. Dr. McCartee, now over fifty years a missionary in Japan and China, was also a professor in the university for some years.—Rev. Jas. I. Seder, Tokyo.