JAPAN,— OLD AND NEW

The son of a Japanese lord am I,—

A Prince of the olden time;

My hair is white, though black as night

In my youth and early prime;

And again and again I ask myself,

As the past I sadly scan,

Are we better or worse? Was it blessing or curse

That foreigners brought Japan?

It is barely two score years and ten

Since the epoch-making day

When a foreign fleet, through the summer heat,

Came sailing up our bay;

Still ring in my ears my father's words,

As we watched it breast the waves,—

“If strangers land on Nippon's strand,

We may one day be their slaves.”

But the strangers landed, and asked for trade

And a permanent “Open Door,”

And we deemed it best to grant the West

A foothold on our shore;

Their slaves in truth we have not become,

Yet who can fail to find

That Japan obeys in a thousand ways

The will of the western mind?

We sent our sons across the seas

To learn from the Western Powers

Their modes of life and their modes of strife,

And have made them largely ours;

But before all else have we learned from them

That our first great aim, must be

To possess a fleet that can defeat

All rivals on the sea.

Hence, all that the West hath yet devised

For the slaughter of men en masse

We have copied or bought, and have stopped at naught

To make our fleet “first class”;

And lest this might not quite suffice,

Should an enemy come in sight,

We have made each man throughout Japan

A soldier trained to fight!

But alas for the change that hath been wrought

In the millions in our fields!

For the costly ships take from their lips

The food that the harvest yields;

They were always poor, but their load was light,

Compared with their load to-day,

For thousands of hands that worked the lands

Are drafted now away.

And sad are the scenes in the sphere of Art

In which we had won such fame;

The fingers left are not so deft

As they were when the strangers came;

For then we toiled for Beauty's sake,

And by time were we never paid;

But now we have sold our art for gold

And the western market's trade.

I never look at the goods now sent,—

So worthless do they seem,—

Without a sigh for the standard high

Which prevailed in the old regime;

When even the hilt of a Daimio's sword

Was a work of months or years,

And the highest reward for a triumph scored

Was praise from the artist's peers.

No, the soul of my people is not the same;

It was formerly sweet and kind,

And happiness reigned in hearts restrained

By an unspoiled, gentle mind;

But now the lusts of the outer world

For power, and lands, and gold,

Our sons deprave, till they madly crave

What others have and hold.

We have borrowed many things from the West,

But one have we left alone;

Of its Christian creed we had no need,

And have thus far kept our own;

For each of its numerous sects affirms

That it has the only way,

And that all the rest should be suppressed,

For they lead mankind astray.

But worse than the claims of rival sects

And the war of clashing creeds,

Is the gulf,— heaven-wide! which we descried

Between their words and deeds;

For He whose sacred name they bear

Was known as the Prince of Peace,

And what He taught, in practice wrought,

Would cause all wars to cease.

They say with truth that we used to fight

For our Lords on sea and coast,

But our soldiers then were as one to ten,

Not a permanent armored host!

Nor do we claim to obey the God

They worship in the West;

But, since they do, is it not true

That they mock at His first behest?

His words were “Love your enemies!”

And never a hostile act

To friend or foe should Christians show,

By whomsoever attacked;

But they are really the best prepared

To attack and to resist;

And the Kaiser who prays is the Kaiser who says,—

“Go! Strike with the mailed fist!”

We look abroad, and everywhere

The spirit of Christ is dead;

Men call Him Lord, but they draw the sword

In defiance of what He said;

And the haughty, white-skinned Christian race

Hates men of a different hue,

And robs and slays in a thousand ways,

With excuses ever new.

In the North and South, in the East and West

In vain do the natives plead;

By the Congo's waves are countless graves,

Where the Paleface gluts his greed;

And China's fate looms dark and grim,

As its people note the means

That Christians take, when gold's at stake,

From the Rand to the Philippines.

We have had to choose between the rule

Of the Sermon on the Mount

And the brutal fact that nations act

With an eye to their bank-account!

And we see that the only way to shun

The clutch of the Western Powers

Is to learn to kill with Christian skill,

And to make their weapons ours.

For we will not, like the others, bend

Our necks to the white man's yoke;

And poor Japan, to her latest man,

Will answer stroke with stroke;

So I watch to-night a solemn sight

On the breast of the moonlit bay,

As our gallant host for a hostile coast

Prepares to sail away.

It is life or death for my native land,

And I fear I may never see

Those ships again, with their noble men,

Return from victory;

And well I know in my heart of hearts,

As the past I sadly scan,

That we are worse, and it was a curse

That foreigners brought Japan.