The Asiatic Society of Japan Its Formative Years

<講演 1 >

THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN ITS FORMATIVE YEARS

Anthony Farrington*

When I was Invited to speak at the Annual Conference of the Nihon-Ei Gakushi Gakukai it seemed particularly appropriate to devote my paper to a society which, almost like a Meiji period counterpart of yourselves, devoted itself to Japanese studies. 'Asiatic Societies' pursuing the language, literature, history, geography, botany, zoology and 'industrial arts' of the host community were an interesting feature of the British presence in Asia. The first was the Asiatic Society of Bengal, formed in 1784. It led to an Asiatic Society in

London in 1834, which was followed throughout the century by similar bodies, mostly affiliated to the London Society-Bombay in 1841, Ceylon n 1843,

Shanghai in 1847, Japan in 1872, and the Straits Settlements in 1878. In South and South-East Asia the societies drew their strength from the

British administrative class—judges, magistrates and senior civil servants, sharing a common social and educational background-plus a sprinkling of non-official professional residents, military officers and clergymen. The Far

Eastern pattern was slightly different because of the combined European and

American presence and the absence of direct colonial rule. Diplomats re- placed administrators, while in Japan during the 1870's there was an important group of professional men who had come out as government employees to take part in the modernisation programme. These scientists, teachers, engi-

* Senior Assistant Keeper, India Office Library & Records, London

81 英学史研究第9号 neers, military and naval officers, doctors and lawyers were mainly based on

Tokyo, the new capital. It was there that the first Western-style government

departments were formed, the military, medical and technical colleges were established, and the railway, postal and telegraph services operated. However, like those elsewhere in Asia, the Asiatic Society of Japan was predominantly

British in its membership, and it did not attract the merchants and traders

of the treaty ports. The Society was founded at a meeting held on 8 October 1872 at the Grand

Hotel, Yokohama, when Robert Grant Watson of the British Legation was elected the first President, and the first papers were read there on 30 October-

Notes on Loochoo by Ernest Mason Satow, then Japanese Secretary at the British Legation, and The Hyalonema Mirabilis, a marine biological study by

Henry Hadlow, a Royal Navy surgeon. The opening papers were significant for two reasons: the subjects themselves, and the presence of Satow at the very beginning of the Society's life.

Travel into the interior of Japan or to the outlying islands was regarded as a combination of exploration and high adventure, and the new Society was treated to numerous papers with such titles as Itinerary of a journey from

Yedo to Kusatsu (27 October 1873), Notes of a journey in Hitachi and Shimosa

(13 May 1874), A journey in North-East Japan (17 June 1874), DescriPtion of a trip to Niigata (18 November 1874), An excursion into the interior parts of Yamato Province (17 February 1875). The first ten volumes of the Society's

Transactions, 1872-1882, print 146 papers, of which 25 can be roughly classified as geographical/topographical. However, they are far outnumbered by the largest subject grouping; the 'scientific' papers during the same period, as exemplified by Hadlow's study, total 52 items, with topics ranging from The typhoons of September and October 1872 (10 May 1873) to Useful minerals

82 THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN-ITS FORMATIVE YEARS

and metallurgy of the Japanese (October-December 1874), Cotton in Japan

(14 June 1876), Notes on the manufacture of oshiroi (21 March 1878) and Contributions to the agricultural chemistry of Japan (8 June 1880). But to

take the figures further, during the second decade, 1882-1892, 107 papers

were printed, of which only 4 were geographical and 18 scientific, a reflec-

tion of the end of the 'exploration' phase and of changing interests among the membership.

Satow is, of course, a familiar figure to all students of the period. Arriving in Yokohama in September 1862, he rapidly acquired fluency in written and

spoken Japanese and his linguistic ability made a major contribution to the

power and authority of the British Legation. But perhaps more significant for the future were his studies of the language, history and culture of Japan,

which found a partial outlet in the new Asiatic Society. Satow was among

the first members of the Society's Council, he served as Corresponding

Secretary 1877-1882, he continued his interest during diplomatic service

postings to Bangkok, Montevideo and Morocco 1884-1895, and when he returned to Japan as Minister Plenipotentiary 1895-1900 he headed the

Society as its President.

The Society held its first Annual General Meeting at the Grand Hotel on 8

October 1873, electing James Curtis Hepburn, the missionary and linguist, as

President, and Sir Harry Smith Parkes, Satow's chief, as Vice-President for the forthcoming year. The Council were able to report a total of 64 members

risident in Japan and that a start had been made towards establishing a

Library and Museum by the presentation of a few books and specimens. The Society's rules were not finally authorised until the second Annual

General Meeting, on 15 July 1874. It was then agreed that the officers should consist of a President, a Senior and a Junior Vice-President, five Councillors,

83 英学史研究第9号 a Corresponding Secretary, a Recording Secretary and a Treasurer, all to be elected or re-elected annually. The membership was divided into three classes;

Honorary, Corresponding and Ordinary, the last being residents and paying

$ 5 annual subscription. The aims of the Society were formally defined as:

(a) the collection of information and the investigation of subjects relat- ing to Japan or other Asiatic countries

(b) the formulation of a Library and Museum adapted to the above

purposes

From February 1874 minutes of the discussions which invariably followed papers read to the Society were reported in the Transactions, which had begun to reach the academic market in London and New York. During the session 1875-76 the Society obtained the use of a room at the Imperial Uni- versity in Tokyo, where its growing collection of books and objects was deposited for the use of members and their friends from 2-5 p. m. daily.

The latest additions included 'an ancient bell presented by the Kenrei of Kobe, numerous specimens of clothing, shoes etc worn by the peasants of the Yone- zawa District' and 'a collection of Japanese butterflies'. Sensibly, however, the museum was soon brought to an end and the objects were distributed to the Tokyo Museum, the Imperial University and the Education Department.

The library went on to flourish. A catalogue was first printed in the 1877-

78 Transactions. Ten years later the Society had exchange agreements with no less than 57 institutions in Britain, Holland, Germany, Austria, France,

Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russia, America, Australia and India, and books were pouring in. The 1875-76 session also saw meetings held alternately in Yokohama and

84 THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN-ITS FORMATIVE YEARS

My-6 plus a change in the Society's constitution to give five Councillors and one Recording Secretary for each of the two centres of activity. Although

the dual arrangement persisted for many years the Yokohama connection

quickly declined in importance; from 1879 only occasional meetings were held there, at the most one or two a year. The transfer to Tokyo and the

Society's growth brought accommodation problems; from 1878 until 1890, when it found a permanent home at No 17 Tsukiji, the foreign residential

area of Tokyo, the Society was successively housed at the Department of

Public Instruction, the Chamber of Commerce, No 33 Tsukiji, the Imperial

College of Engineering, the Geographical Society of TOkya, and St Paul's

School in Tsukiji—almost an annual move. But at least it remained free from

financial problems.

The 1878 Council report contains an interesting and quotable statement of how the Society began to initiate research in unknown areas, a statement which bears the influence of Satow. It reads: 'We want before all things to learn more about the religions of Japan. Concerning Buddhism in this country we have been up to the present entirely in the dark, and our knowl- edge of Shinto is still extremely meagre The introduction of Chinese learning and its influence upon the language and ideas of the Japanese people is a subject which has never been treated ... It cannot be said either that we possess in any European language a useful account of the history of

Japan previous to the middle of the present century, and the nature of the laws, civil, penal and ceremonial, by which the people have been governed in successive ages has still to be ascertained from the original writings and traditions. A few specimens of the pure literature have fortunately been made known already, but there still remain treasures of thought and artistic expression hidden away in the poems and romances of the classical period;

85 - 英学史研究第9号 while of the dramatic literature in all its various forms, only a small part

has been made accessible to Europeans unacquinted with the Japanese language. In the department of Natural Science a great deal has already been achieved, especially in Botany and Zoology, yet those branches are far from being fully exchausted. Japanese meteorology is still in its infancy, and concerning the physical geography and geology of the country scarcely any information has hitherto been accessible in print. The manufactures for which the Japanese people are distinguished, such as lacquer, pottery of all kinds, cutlery and metal-work, woven fabrics, and other industries which are perhaps peculiar to the country, deserve especially to be observed and de- scribed, and even more than these, the fine arts, music, painting, sculputure and architecture, together with decorative art in all its applications merit to be carefully studied in themselves, and to be compared with the corresponding products of the aesthetic faculty in China and India ... There is none amongst us who does not possess an aptitude and facilities of some sort for pursuing one or more of the paths of study above indicated

The report's challenge could hardly fail to be taken up. The list of members printed in the Transactions of 1883-84, the first to indicate addresses, gives the names of 13 honorary and 179 other members, which now read like a roll-call of the famous. The 'foreign expert' group included Basil Hall

Chamberlain, English Instructor at the Tokyo Naval College; Josiah Conder,

Government architect; John Milne, Edward Divers, James Main Dixon and

Charles Dickinson West, all of the Imperial College of Engineering; Henry

Faulds of the Tsukiji Hospital; and Robert Maclagan of the Osaka Mint.

The 'diplomatic' group had no less than 19 members of the British service

(including Sir Rutherford Alcock, Satow, and William George Aston), plus the Ministers of America, Russia and Holland. There were some 30 clergy-

86 THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN-ITS FORMATIVE YEARS

men/missionaries, including John Batchelor and James Curtis Hepburn, and 8

Japanese members Viscount Mori Arinori, Minister of public Instruction; Professors Hattori and Kanda of the Imperial University; and Messrs Mura -

matsu, Nakamura, Sank"), Takagi and Tsuda 'of Tokyo'. It would, of course,

be misleading to suggest that all the members were scholars. There must

have been many for whom the Society's meetings merely provided an op-

portunity for refined social intercourse, and others whose interests were more narrowly antiquarian, while native Japanese participation was slow to

develop. The first published paper by a Japanese author On some copper

bells by Kanda Takahira, Governor of HyOgo Ken appeared in the 1875-76

Transactions; between then and 1890 there were only five others, and it was not until 1882 that a Japanese scholar, Professor Hattori Ichiji, was

elected to the Society's Council. As one might expect, women were not

admitted to membership, although they could attend meetings as the guests

of their husbands, relatives or friends. On two rare occasions during the

Society's first twenty years papers were presented on behalf of female

researchers: Japanese New Year celebrations by Mrs Chaplin Ayrton (24

January 1877) and Suma mura fifty years ago by Miss Hannah Birkenhead

(28 April 1892).

Perhaps the Society's response to the 1878 report can best be illustrated by further consideration of some of the papers read before it. ShintO was one of Satow's special interests and he contributed The Shinto temples of Isg on 18 February 1874, The revival of pure Shint as an appendix to the 1874-

75 Transactions, and Ancient Japanese rituals at intervals 1878-1881. But

Buddhism remained a neglected field; up to 1890 there were only four papers: A discourse on infinite vision as attained to by the Buddha (13 March 1879) and Descriptive notes on the rosaries (jiu-dzu) as used by the

87 英学史研究第9号 different sects of Buddhists in Japan (12 April 1881) by Captain J. M. James,

and On the tenets of the Shinshiu or 'True Sect' of Buddhists (21 October

1885) and The Gobunsho or Ofumi of Rennyo Shônin (20 February 1889) by

James Troup. The relationship between Chinese and Japanese became the

preserve of Joseph Edkins, a Presbyterian missionary at Peking, who sent regular linguistic communications with such titles as The influence of Chinese

dialects on the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese Part of the Japanese

language (29 June 1880).

Basil Hall Chamberlain was the Society's literary specialist. He read his

first paper On the use of 'Pillow-words' and plays uPon words in Japanese

Poetry on 24 January 1877, almost four years after his arrival in Japan. Regular contributions followed grammarical points, translations, stylistic

analysis and his monumental translation of the Kojiki was published as a

supplement to the 1881-82 Transactions. Soon after his dual appointment in

1886 as Professor of Japanese at the Imperial University and adviser to the

Ministry of Education on the systematic teaching of Japanese he began to take an interest in the Ainu, thus crossing the path of John Batchelor . Chamberlain gave a public lecture on the Ainu in March 1887 and then on 9

November 1887 the Society heard Batchelor's paper On the Ainu term `kamui ,' in which he pointed out that Ainu was the correct spelling. Chamberlain followed at the same meeting with a Reply to Mr Batchelor on the words `kamui' and Aino' , arguing the case against purism 'because Europeans have said Aino for the last two hundred and fifty years' perhaps a slight exaggeration! But despite this mild academic storm the Society cohtinued to make a notable contribution to the study of Hokkaido and its inhabitants . It must, however, be admitted that the Society was less successful in artistic fields. Chamberlain translated Notes by Motoori on Japanese and

88 THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN-ITS FORMATIVE YEARS

Chinese art (16 April 1884), R. H. Brunton, a civil engineer, contributed two

papers on Constructive art in Japan (22 December 1873 & 13 January 1875), and there was sporadic interest in Japanese music. But the only pioneer

was Josiah Conder. Conder was an English architect who went out to Japan in 1877, at the age of 25, to become the first Instructor in Architecture at

the Imperial College of Engineering. During a long and distinguished career

he was responsible for more than 70 buildings, including the Imperial

Museum, the Navy Department Headquarters, the Tokyo Club, the Yokohama

Union Club and numerous mansions for the nobility. At the same time he

became interested in native Japanese art forms. On 5 May 1886 the Society

heard his paper The art of landscape gardening in Japan, the first statement

of the theory of Japanese garden composition to be laid before European

readers. He followed this on 13 March 1889 with his Theory of Japanese flower arrangements. His two articles- for the Society found fuller expression in his books The flowers of Japan and the art of floral arrangement (1891)

and Landscape gardening in Japan (1893), which had considerable influence in Europe and America, where Japanese-style rock gardens began to be

created. Similarly the Society's historical efforts were uneven. Apart from Satow,

who concentrated on the Christian period, its principal historian member was

William George Aston. He, too, was a British diplmat; appointed a student interpreter with Satow in 1864, he served as Assistant Japanese Secretary to

the Legation 1875-1880, Consul at Kobe 1880-1883, Consul-General in Korea

1884-1886, and Japanese Secretary to the Legation in TOky5 again from 1886 until his retirement in 1889. He read papers on early nineteenth century attempts to break into Japan's seclusion Russian descents in Saghalien and Itorup in the years 1806 and 1807 (7 June 1873) and HMS 'Phaeton' at

89 英学史研究第9号 Nagasaki in 1808 (13 May 1879) and gave the Society an account of Hide-

yoshi's invasion of Korea at intervals 1878-1883. As his interests became increasingly literary he turned to the earliest written sources. His paper

Early Japanese history, read on 14 December 1887, prompted a thought-

provoking reply from Chamberlain, which also provides a convenient conclu- sion to this brief account of the Society's beginnings. Chamberlain wrote: 'The destruction of the fables that are current under the name of early Japa -

nese history and the partial reconstruction of a true early history of this

country being one of my special hobbies, it need scarcely be said how great

appears to me to be the value of the paper which has just been read. Mr

Aston seems to have a special talent for finding his way about in dark and

misty places ... But the Nihongi, the old topographical works entitled

Fudoki, and the poems of the Man-yOshii, still remain without a critic. Nor

is it only the early history and the pre-history of Japan which await their

Niebuhr. We are scarcely better off when we tread the solid ground of the

last twelve hundred years ... Surely a reliable, well-written, edifying history

of the Japanese people is the greatest desideratum of the enlightened Japan of the present day ... Two obstacles still bar the way to Japanese success in this direction. One a serious one is the ignorance which still prevails in

Japan concerning the methods of criticism, especially of the criticism of sources ... The other obstacle sounds to our ears rather ludicrous, but yet undoubtedly has real weight with the Japanese even in these outspoken days.

It consists in a fear of offending the powers that be by digging for facts instead of respectfully repeating fables ... To navigate in the mid-current of nineteenth century thought, and yet at the same time to put a veto on history ... is surely a piece of inconsistency which only needs a little ventilating to be discarded. Discarded it will be.' And, of course, Aston went

90 THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN-ITS FORMATIVE YEARS on to publish a translation of the Nihongi in London in 1896, and Japanese scholars finally discarded the 'fables'.

The Asiatic Society of Japan, embracing a core of pioneers with the self- imposed task of interpreting the Japanese and their civilisation to the rest of the world, played a highly significant part in transmitting new standards of critical and technical excellence to a whole generation of Japanese teachers and students, standards which, once adopted, made the 'foreign experts' superfluous.

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