JAPANESE ACCOUNT OF COLONIAL LIFE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4998, 31 March 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

JAPANESE ACCOUNT OF COLONIAL LIFE.

A Japanese gentleman, who for some time was on a visit to the Australian colonies, is said to have recently delivered a lecture in Japan, the translation of which gives the following ; Although I studied with care and assiduity the religion professed by this people, I am obliged to admit that it offers a tangled web of inconsistencies to the philosopher. They say that the founder of their creed was a young man born in the humblest walk of life in a distant country nearly two thousand years ago, or about five hundred years after the divine Buddha began his glorious mission. This founder laid down some admirable maxims, or rather gave his adhesion to maxims already laid down by the sages of old, for the guidance of his followers, and above all enjoined peace and tolerance as the very corner-stone of his His immediate followers —mostly rude, illiterate men and outcast women —were so imbued with his persuasive gentleness that they adhered to the rules he laid down with a perseverance which even the disciples of other inspired teachers cannot fail to admire. Each succeeding generation, however, saw the precepts of the Master disregarded ; obscure symbols substituted for the teacher’s burning words, and savage jealousy for his loving charity. After a thousand years of bloodshed, ignorance, and debasement, the ancestors of this people slowly emerged from the mental thraldom in which they were held, and read in their own homes the books in which the teachings of their Founder were written, instead of blindly adhering to the cloudy and repelling systems built up by generations of zealots. But the history of our own land shows us how slowly all great mental revolutions are accomplished, and although over three hundred years have come and gone since the days of the great innovators, the revolution is far from complete, and strange as it may seem, the liberators of three centuries ago, as if afraid of their own temerity, left untouched nearly all the fundamental dogmas of their predecessors, and only revolted on matters of comparative insignificance. You, my friends, who are happily conversant with the sayings of the sages—who await, with philosophic calm, the approach of dissolution, equally removed from unmanly fear and unavailing regret, conscious that death is but another name for absorption into the mighty soul which permeates the Universe ; you, I say, would be prone to receive with pardonable merriment an outline of the religions tenets professed by this people, were it not that, as thinking men, you will, I am sure, join with me in deeming that the beliefs, aspirations, and hopes, of our fellow-men, however grotesque they may be, are subjects more fitted for patient investigation than light laughter. I shall not, however, impose too much on your sense of decorum by entering into a long account of the numberless dogmas intertwined amongst the precepts of the Founder, and which, on careful scrutiny, fall to pieces like a child’s house of cards. I may, however, mention one, the belief in which seems all hut universal, namely, the attendance on a certain day more or less remote, in a certain valley of limited extent, of all the human beings who ever inhabited this earth of ours, with the same bodies they had while living ! (The speaker having allewed ten minutes for the subsidence of various signs of astonishment and dissent, continued as follows): —Scio, the alchemist, whom I see before me to-night, can tell you that the human body is chiefly composed of water, which is itself composed of the two gases hydrogen and oxygen. He can also show that when we die the substance of our bodies returns to its elements, and these again become the material from which the substance of other organised beings animals and plants—are built up. Portions of the dead body of to-day may be found in the leg of a chair to-morrow, or may be seen falling in snowflakes on the mountains of Oyama yonder. Part of the body which I call mine at present may have belonged to an Australian savage ten thousand years ago, and you cannot fail to see how manifestly unjust it would be to the savage in question if at some future time I should come forward and claim as mine materials which he possessed unnumbered ages ago. But you would do the oeople a serious injustice if you thought that they confirmed strictly to all the rules laid down with such minuteness in the sacred books. During my residence in the capital I attended frequently a celebrated temple of public worship, and heard the same gaily-dressed people confess •with the most astonishing coolness that during the period which had elapsed since their former attendance, seven days ago, they had' chiefly devoted themselves to slandering and cheating their neighbors. They then begged forgiveness in terms the most abject, promised amendment in language the moat pitiful, and with extraordinary regularity commenced on the following-day the practices they had deplored on the previous. I noticed one old gentleman, with a mild and benignant countenance, whose responses were delivered with faultless intonation and unmistakable contrition. He is said to be very rich, and is held in great esteem by the members of the church. His money was principally made in business, and it was noticed some time before he retired from active life, as a curious . circumstance, that one of the sides of the balance in which he weighed soap, sugar, and other articles was a couple of laches sherter than the other, and he is supposed to have frequently cheated himself by unconsciously placing the weights in the shorter scale. He prospered, however, which is an additional proof of how virtue is often rewarded even in this life. I noticed that the portion of the religious service, in which the people are admonished to lay up for themselves treasures in heaven, where no thieves reside, seemed to be chiefly relished by this estimable old man. His face then assumed n.n expression described in the language of the Country as ‘ smug,’ and with a touching pathos he confessed that he was, indeed, ‘ a miserable sinner.’ Before taking leave of this subject I may mention a circumstance which came under my own observation, and which will explain far better, than, I can the singular anemalies mixed up with the religious practices of the people I am describing. Happening one day to visit one of the large establishments in Which insane people are confined, I fell into conversation .with an inmate, whom I had seen about a month previously preaching in one of the public gardens. His conversation certainly gave no evidence of mental hullucination, and on my departure I ventured to ask him how it came to pass that he was confined in a madhouse. ' ‘ Because,’ said this poor creature sorrowfully, ‘in endeavoring to follow the teachings of my Master I sold most of my property and gave,to the poor ; that fact alone was deemed sufficient to warrant my committal as a maniac.’ “The social observances of this distant people are novel and interesting. Although great unanimity for the public weal would probably be found amongst them should any national calamity, such as. war or famine, desolate the land, yet, in their everyday life, the‘ principle of caste is carried out to an extent unknown amongst us, and restraints the most laughable arc cheerfully endured in order to be in what they call the ‘fashion.’ Two families will live in adjacent houses for years, without' ever enjoying each others society, or, exchanging ideas on any of the innumerable subjects of interest daily cropping up, merely because the head of one family kills and chops up cattle, and the other —men ; or because one sells an article in large quantities, and the other vends the same commodity in small parcels. Even among the learned men—scholars, as they are called —whose minds should he far above such childish considerations, these unmeaning distinctions are to be found. Two men will scarcely accost each other, because one has obtained his knowledge through the high school or university, and the other has received the same knowledge at his own fireside and by his own unaided efforts. The degrading influence of ‘fashion’ seems to leaven the whole social body in its endless ramifications, from the Governor to the beggar, and I am obliged to confess that it is chiefly upheld by the women, and these the most frivolous and empty-headed of their sex. Unlike our own dear country, a

man is esteemed or despised ift Victoria on account of his occupation, and, stranger still, he who does nothing is held in a reverence little short of veneration. I fear that generations will require to pass before this nation, for which I cherish a certain regard, although I smile at their singular foibles, will learn that a man who respects or despises another merely because of the latterV avocation is not far removed from a fool.”