Chapter 5 The Road to Success
1. Seiko[ *] 5:1 (1 July 1904), 52.
2. Many words of Portuguese and Dutch origin of the Tokugawa period have remained to this day: Portuguese terms such as velludo (velvet), pão de Castella (sponge cake), and tabaco (tobacco) for the Japanese birodo[ *] , kasutera , and tabako ; and the Dutch oblaat (a wrapper for powdered medicines), alcohol, bier (beer), and jak (vest), which converted to the Japanese oburaato, arukoru[ *] , biiru , and chokki . The Dutch conversions were by far the most numerous, noticeably so in the fields of science and medicine (Yazaki Genkuro * , Nihon no gairaigo [Japanese words of foreign origin] [Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1964], 53-79).
3. Ibid., 87-88.
4. Ibid., 84.
5. Mori Arinori (1847-1889), envoy to the United States, England, and China and the first minister of education in 1885, suggested early in his career that Japanese be replaced by English and corresponded with American educators in 1872 asking their views on the subject (Roy Andrew Miller, Japan's Modern Myth [New York: Weatherhill, 1982], 108). Mori's political position in the Meiji government was far from radical, however; he preached absolute and conservative statism and viewed education as the important vehicle by which to disseminate state ideology.
6. The middle school was reorganized in 1899, deemphasizing its former vocational aspect and establishing entrance and teacher qualification requirements ( Japan's Modern Educational System , 117). Between 1902 and 1906 the average enrollment of middle school students was 100,000, a tenfold increase in ten years (Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 1981, 180).
7. A vast assortment of magazines for different interests, age and gender groups, predominantly for the rapidly forming middle class, poured out from the Hakubunkan presses, as did government primary school textbooks, encyclopedia, and books for a general audience on current affairs, economics, law, and politics. Two of its best-sellers were popular treatments of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. In 1897, ten years after issuing its first publication, Hakubunkan had published twenty-nine magazines and more than 1,000 books; it controlled bookstores, printing shops, paper plants, and subsidiary publishing houses in a comprehensive enterprise that combined all aspects of the publishing business. See Ohashi[ *] Sahei to Hakubunkan (Ohashi * Sahei and Hakubunkan) (Private collection, n.d.), 211-14. Yanagita wrote about the rapid appearance of a large variety of published works, the growing "avarice of a reading public," and the phenomenal development of the publishing industry (Yanagita Kunio, Meiji Taishoshi[ *] , 2:214-16).
8. See Kinmonth, Self-made Man , chapter 1, for a discussion of Samuel Smiles's work.
9. For instance, Eisai shinshi (Talent magazine), Kokumin no tomo (Friend of the people), Shonenen[ *] (Garden for youth), and Chugaku[ *] sekai (World of the middle school); see Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 62, 108, 123, and 164. Kinmonth analyzed more than thirty self-advancement magazines for youth published from the 1870s to 1920s in his study on the ethos of the Japanese white-collar worker. See also Shimbun no ayumi (Development of newspapers) (Tokyo: National Diet Library, 1972).
10. Kato * and Maeda, Meiji medeako[ *] , 56.
11. Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 159.
12. Quoted in Yoshitake Oka, "Generational Conflict after the Russo-Japanese War," in Najita and Koschmann, eds., Conflict in Modern Japanese History , 198-99.
13. Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 166. R .P. Dore wrote that Seiko[ *] promoted individual self-attainment, encouraging a person "of character who helps himself and respects himself, lives by his own enterprise and his own toil, and creates his own fate" (Dore, "Mobility, Equality, and Individuation in Modern Japan," in R. P. Dore, ed., Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 113-50.
14. Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 175.
15. Of the roughly 55,000 individuals of student age in Tokyo in 1901, not all gained entry into an educational institution, for 20,000 were not enrolled in any school ( Tokyo[ *] hyakunenshi , 3:310-14).
16. Seiko[ *] 6:4 (1 April 1905), 181-83, and 6:5 (1 May 1905), 17-22. Keio and Tokyo Higher Commercial College graduates, however, consistently fed into the Mitsui and Mitsubishi combines and had entrance ratios comparable to that of the First Higher School.
17. A quick search at the National Diet Library in Tokyo shows that of books published between the turn of the century and 1926, close to 250 titles concerning the United States are still extant.
18. Tobei shimpo[ *] , 6:9 (15 September 1908).
19. Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 188.
20. Yanabu tells us that in the early Meiji years, individual was translated in various ways (ichikojin, hitori , or the complicated jinminkakko) . None of the translations encompassed the concept of the individual's relationship with society; all signified a self-centeredness. The educator Fukuzawa Yukichi translated individual as hito (person), the commonly used Japanese noun, but its very commonness failed to convey the abstract complexities of individual . Nevertheless, the use of hito helped to promote the use of what Fukuzawa referred to as odayakanaru (reasonable, moderate) Japanese in translation as opposed to shikakubatta (formal, angular) Japanese. Ichikojin was used extensively until the mid-1880s, when kojin began to appear, and in 1891, when individualisme was translated as kojinshugi in a French-Japanese dictionary, kojin gradually came to be used more widely. See Yanabu, Honyakugo seiritsujijo[ *] , 25-42.
21. Seiko[ *] 4:5 (15 May 1904), 10-14.
22. Ibid., 12.
23. Seiko[ *] 4:6 (1 June 1904), 43.
24. Amerika 12:9 (September 1908), 1-4.
25. Ibid., 2.
26. Ibid., 3.
27. Seiko[ *] 14:1 (1 June 1908), 7-10. Abe Iso * (1865-1949), educated at the first Japanese-administered Christian school, Doshisha Foreign Language School (later University), was a pastor in Japan for four years, then attended Hartford Theological Seminary. He was a key founding member of the short-lived Social Democratic Party in 1901. In the 1920s he became president of a renewed Social Democratic Party and was elected to the Diet in 1928. An advocate of baseball, he admired the utility men for their prowess in playing various positions. "I learned in baseball to obey the captain without question," he wrote, expressing his strong sense of discipline and cooperation. See Cyril H. Powles, "Abe Isoo: The Utility Man," in Nobuya Bamba and John F. Howes, eds., Pacificism in Japan (Kyoto: Minerva Press, 1978), 143-67.
28. Seiko[ *] 19:1 (1 September 1910), 31-34.
29. Seiko[ *] 24:2 (1 November 1912), 33-35. Educated at MIT, Dan Takuma (1858-1932) taught English until the government hired him to supervise the Miike coal mines in 1881. He retained this important position after the Mitsui Company bought the mines in 1888 and later headed Mitsui's mining enterprises and became chairman of the board.
30. Ibid., 35.
31. Lockwood, Economic Development , 249-51. See also the discussions on technology and capital in Lockwood, chapters 4 and 5, and in Nakamura, Economic Growth , 60-68.
32. Lockwood, Economic Development , 28-32.
33. John W. Dower, "E. H. Norman, Japan and the Uses of History," in Dower, ed., Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E. H. Norman (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 31.
34. The Meiji period saw a constant condition of low wages and instability and low morale of the work force (Taira, Economic Development , 4). Taira challenged the assumption among some Japanologists that Meiji economic development was rapid and amazing. He interpreted the Meiji Restoration not as a bourgeois revolution but as a revolution in favor of and regulated by the market. Therefore, general economic growth as defined by the appearance of capital-intensive factories was slow. See also Lockwood, Economic Development , 138-144, for a discussion of the Japanese standard of living, 1868-1914.
35. The higher one's place on the Tokugawa social scale, the less one handled money, that responsiblity being given to wives, trusted employees, and servants. On the surface, money was handled casually, but in reality money management was done poorly. See Yanagita Kunio, Japanese Manners and Customs in the Meiji Era , trans. Charles S. Terry (Tokyo: Obunsha, 1957), 122. On Tokugawa merchants see E. H. Norman, Japan's Emergence as a Modern State (1940), in Dower, ed., Origins , 156-65.
36. Seiko[ *] 6:1 (1 January 1905), 20-21.
37. Seiko[ *] 10:4 (1 December 1906), 18.
38. Seiko[ *] 15:5 (1 March 1909), 59-65.
39. The early political newspapers assumed a role as voices of newly formed political parties, mainly critical of the new Meiji government. To counter anti-government criticism, a law restricting freedom of the press was enacted in 1875, then strengthened by revisions in the 1880s, and finally replaced by the Press Law of 1909. Gradually but comprehensively, all publications came under Home Ministry jurisdiction, army and navy censorship, and police enforcement, which weakened and rendered ineffective any liberal opposition voice (Kato * and Maeda, Meiji medeako * , 136-37; Norman, Feudal Background , 444-46; and Mikiso Hane, Modern Japan , 119-20). In 1875 sixty journalists were arrested (James L. Huffman, Politics of the Meiji Press: The Life of Fukuchi Ger'ichiro * [ Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980], 105). Newspaper editors were routinely arrested, to the point that newspapers hired editors whose "chief duty . . . was to serve prison sentences" (Sansom, Western World , 352). See also Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths , 50-53, for discussion of government suppression and effects on the shaping of political consciousness; and Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), on the establishment and maintenance of censorship.
40. Huffman, Meiji Press , 164.
41. Takagi Takeo, Shimbun shosetsushi[ *] : Meijihen (History of newspaper novels of the Meiji period) (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1974), 105.
42. Shimbun no ayumi , 16-17.
43. Yanagita rated the proliferation of translated works as products of "indiscriminate choices," which were like "candy and fruit" but nevertheless broadened readers' world (Yanagita, Meiji Taishoshi[ *] , 2:215-16).
44. Takagi, Shimbun shosetsushi[ *] , 267.
45. Kato * and Maeda, Meiji medeako[ *] , 57-60. Natsume Soseki * decided to give up his profession as a provincial teacher to become a full-time writer, joining the staff of Tokyo Asahi in 1907. The Yomiuri then lost its status as the top literary newspaper. Shimbunhanbai hyakunenshi (One hundred years of newspaper sales) (Tokyo: Nihon shimbunhanbai kyokai, 1972), 329.
46. Yomiuri shimbun , 5 April-1 June 1897. Shunyo * was a leading protégé of the popular novelist Ozaki Koyo * and became known as a writer of the moralistic katei shosetsu[ *] (family novels), a form that became extremely popular in the late 1890s. These works were easy to read and understand by males and females, young and old. They centered around themes concerning the family, contained "healthy common sense" (usually with women as main characters), and had outcomes in which morality was always the victor (Takagi, Shimbun shosetsushi[ *] , 344).
47. In 1887 Disraeli's autobiographical novel, Contarini Fleming , Poe's The Black Cat , and Dumas' The Three Musketeers appeared as serialized newspaper novels (Takagi, Shimbun shosetsushi[ *] , 110 and 233).
48. Yomiuri shimbun , 15 April 1897. "Smelling of butter" ( batakusai ) connotes that which is intrinsic to the West, whether manners of behavior, attitudes, or material things.
49. Ozaki Koyo * , Konjikiyasha (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1969); originally published in Yomiuri shimbun , 1 January 1897-11 May 1902.
50. Takagi, Shimbun shosetsushi[ *] , 273. Between 1893 and 1902, six Bertha Clay novels appeared as newspaper series, translated by Kuroiwa Ruiko * ( 1862-1920), the prolific and popular writer of detective and romantic stories and owner of the liberal newspaper Yorozu choho[ *] (Takagi, 242-43). More than forty Clay novels are listed in the National Union Catalog: Between Two Hearts (1893); Another Man's Wife (1890); Another Woman's Husband (1892); A Dead Heart (1880); Her Only Sin (1900); and so on. These titles give us a sense of the focus in her novels. Although the author's name was a pseudonym of Charlotte Mary Brame, a number of other writers admittedly assumed the same pen name.
51. Takagi, Shimbun shosetsushi[ *] , 293. During periods when his creative level was low and he could not keep up with the newspaper's demands, Koyo * coauthored works with his protégés or his name was included as reviewer/reviser of novels by other writers (Takagi, 271).
52. Quoted in ibid., 269.
53. Ibid., 283.
54. Ibid., 276.
55. Ibid., 274-75.
56. Quoted in ibid., 278.
57. The Atami beach scene was so renowned that it became immortalized by a popular song in the 1930s.
58. Koyo * , Konjikiyasha , 103-5.
59. Ibid., 8-9.
60. Ibid., 485, note 3.
61. Literary scholar Saigusa Yasutaka placed Konjikiyasha in the framework of a new capitalist consciousness that became pronounced after the Sino-Japanese War, when social class differences were becoming more clearly defined. He analyzed the novel as a reaction to and critique of the increasingly prominent attachment to money and materialism. See Saigusa Yasutaka, Kindai bungaku no risozo[ *] (The ideal image in modern literature) (Tokyo: Kakushobo, 1961), 123-24.
62. Seiko[ *] 22:6 (13 April 1912), 165-74. Kori * (high interest; usury) is a homonym for ice in Japanese. A-i-su became the coded term used for usurers.
63. A law was passed to curb usury in 1877, but high interest rates continued to plague Japan, especially the small borrower, whose actual cost of credit could reach 100 percent (Lockwood, Economic Development , 289). The usury trade was given a boost after the 1907 panic ( Tokyo[ *] hyakunenshi , 3:475).