n. fCjr ^4 % PRINCETON, N. J. Purchased by the Hammill Missionary Fund. Division D3809 Section '.C353 Number. 'V / 2C^e Kiberstoe iLibrar? for IFoung peoplr Number 10 JAPAN: IN HISTORY, FOLK-LORE AND ART By william ELLIOT GRIFFIS JAPAN IN HISTORY, FOLK LORE AND ART BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS AUTHOR OF “the MIKADO’S EMPIRE,” “JAPANESE FAIRY WORLD ' “MATTHEW GALBRAITH PERRY,” ETC. BOSTON AND NEW^YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY i^itewiDc 12'rcss, Cambribfle 1894 Copyright, 1892, By william ELLIOT GRIFFIS. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. DEDICATED TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ' JAPAN PREFACE. ! In this contribution to the Riverside Library for Young People, I have told more about Kioto j than about Yedo. I have sketched in outline the Japan of ages rather than of our age. 1 own While political history is the chief theme, my aim has ! been to show how and why the Ja'panese see and think as they do. The adoption of Western civilization changes the outer, but does not greatly modify the inner man. Believing also that what the dignified historians write is only part of a people’s true history, I have sought, from their customs and folk-lore, as well as from the inter- pretation of their artists, material with which to brighten the narrative. Fact and fiction, however, are presented in separate chapters. No writer on Japan can fail to acknowledge deep obligations to that noble band of English students, Messrs. Satow, Aston, and Chamberlain, who have made such profound researches into the ! Vlll PREFACE ancient Japanese language and literature. To them and to Captain Brinkley, the scholarly editor of the “Japan Mail,” I heartily acknowledge much obligation. To my many Japanese friends who from time to time assist me, and especially to the members of the Historical Society of the Imperial University of Tokio, who have honored me by membership in their body, I owe much, and herewith offer my grateful thanks. It is one of the good signs of the times that the Japanese are now studying their own history according to the methods of science, with truth as the end in view. God speed them W. E. G. Boston, Oct. 17, 1892. CONTENTS. CHAPTER page I. Where is Japan? 1 II. Who are the Japanese? 8 III. The Morning of Rising-Sun Land . .15 IV. The Japanese Story of Creation ... 26 V. Origin of the Arts . ^ . .32 VI. The Conquest of the East .... 42 VII. Corea and Buddhism 52 VIII. How THEY LOOK AT THE WoRLD ... 60 IX. The Mikado and his Samurai . .70 X. Letters, Writing, and Names .... 80 XI. The Noble Families and their Politics . 92 XII. Social Life in Kioto' 99 XIII. The Wars of the Genji and Heike . 108 XIV. Yoritomo at Kamakura 117 XV. The Death of Yoshitsune 124 XVI. The Hojo Rule 129 XVII. Benten and the Dragons 137 XVIII. The Ashikaga Shoguns 145 XIX. Three Fajvious Men 154 XX. Ideas and Symbols 166 XXI. The Ashes that made Trees bloom . 175 XXII. Signs and Omens 183 XXIII. The Dutch Yeast in the Japanese Cake . 192 XXIV. Interior Forces making New Japan . 203 XXV. Outward Agencies 209 XXVI. New Japan 221 . Index , 229 I JAPAN : IN HISTORY, FOLK-LORE, AND ART. CHAPTER I. WHEEE IS JAPAN? Where is Japan, and how does it lie on the surface of the globe? With the aid of the steamship and railway, we may answer by saying that Fuji Yama is about sixteen days from New York, or twelve from San Francisco. Or, from the other point of view, we may say that Japan lies in the Pacific Ocean east of China and Corea, in latitude between New- foundland and the West Indies ; that is, the Jap- anese climate is very much like our own. Japan is one of the many archipelagoes in the Pacific Ocean. The number of islands under the sun-flag is nearly four thousand. To inclose the space within the ocean-square thus occupied, we must draw our lines on the globe from the point at latitude 50° 56'. Here our pin, or the sur- veyor’s stake, is driven in at the most northern end of a sMma^ for that is the Japanese word for island, called Araito. This land formerly be- 9 JAPAN longed to Russia. It is in the old chain or group called the Kuriles, or “ The Smokers.” Japan from top to bottom is a line of volcanoes. The hot inside of the earth has here a row of vents in the shape of great mountains like funnels turned upside down. From their holes at the top, as out of tall foundry chimneys, gas, fire, smoke and ashes escape from the interior of the earth. Did you ever see the shell of an avxibi^ as the Japanese call the haliotis, or sea-ear? One may compare the shape and nature of the country to the awabi. The living creature beneath the per- forated shell is able through its roof-holes to com- municate with the outside world, and make its presence and power known to its prey. The line of apertures reaches along the top from the apex to the bottom level of the shell. So all Japan is a great shell or crust of rock and earth, through which the steam, gas, fire, and lava burst forth at times, just as the tentacles of the awabi leap and twirl through its shell. When, for any reason, one or more of these vents are closed, and the volcanoes become dormant, great earthquakes which twist or wrinkle the skin of the globe, or eruptions, which are boiler-explosions on a vast scale, are sure to happen. Even the rock crust and the granite caps of mountains, unable to im- prison the hot subterranean gases, are blown high up in the air. The little Greek children in old times were WHERE IS JAPAN? 3 told that Jupiter confined the giants under volca- noes, and that earthquakes were caused by their writhing, but the Japanese children think that a great underground catfish makes the mischief in their country, and that no one can stop his floun- dering but the god Kashima. Since the Japanese, in 1875, exchanged their half of Saghalin for all the Kuriles, they have I called them Chishima, or the Thousand Islands. I Araito, the northernmost tip of the Mikado’s ' empire, is a little to the west of Cape Lopatka in Kamtschatka. To mark the most eastern point of Japan, we must stick a pin on the map at longitude east 156° 32'. The Japanese now use our system of latitude and longitude for survey- ing and navigation. They are thus able to locate within a few yards on the great earth’s surface the position of a moving ship or a thatched cot- tage. Looking through the lines of a spider’s web stretched across the end of a theodolite, they can measure the precise distance from plumb-bob to stake-centre, and fix the exact spot over the centre of a copper bolt driven in the rock. This mark of the national frontier is in the island of Shimushu at 156° 32'. To find the most southerly point of the Mi- kado’s domain, we follow the meridian down to the tiny island of Haterma, whose tip end south is at 24° 06'. Close to it the island of Yonakuni pokes its rocky nose above the waves. Here, ; 4 JAPAN also, on the end nearest Formosa, at longitude east 122° 45', is Japan’s most western extremity. So Japan lies between the Kussian territory of Kamschatka and the biggest of the Chinese islands, Formosa. If we inclose the space within the four points we have described, we shall have a quadrangle of over four million square miles or a little more, in water, of the space occupied by the land comprising the United States. In this ocean surface, however, the actual territory covers only less than 150,000 square miles, that is, about one twenty-sixth of the whole. The land is to the water as one letter in the alphabet. Japan and the two Dakotas are about the same in size, say 150,000 square miles. Or we may say the Japanese domain looks like a ruler laid slantwise on the map between Kamtschatka and Formosa. In this long and narrow strip, stretching from northwest to south- east between the Russian and Chinese territory, the space, roughly measured, is twenty-two hun- dred miles long and five hundred miles wide, and the land occupied is one seventh of the space. On most of our’ school maps of Asia, the Jap- anese Archipelago is represented as, relatively, about the size of a caterpillar lying on the pump- kin of Asia. Or, if Asia be a ship, Japan is the rudder. Indeed, glancing from north to south, we may thus make an appropriate picture, in our mind’s eye, of this land of tea, silkworms and WHERE IS JAPAN f 5 silk. We may look upon the rounded coast of China as a great teapot, with its spout pointing towards the headless butterfly or silk-moth of Corea; while the mainland of Japan appears as a monstrous silk-worm with its head at Kiushki, spinning out of its mouth a great, glistening thread of islands stretching down to Formosa. Indeed, while the literal meaning of the name Riu Kiu is “sleeping dragon,” the native name is Okinawa, or “long rope.” In the geological ages of the world, there was of land or moun- I probably an extended causeway tain ridge from Kamschatka to Formosa.