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Updated: June 29, 2025
I know that there are some persons who will deem secular morality a contradiction in terms. Indeed there are many eminent Japanese who do not approve of the present system. Count Okuma, for example, one of the ablest men in the country, bewails the lack of a moral standard. The upper classes have, he remarks, Chinese philosophy, the great mass of the people have nothing.
In a statement issued to the press Count Okuma said: "As Premier of Japan, I have stated and I now again state to the people of America and all the world that Japan has no ulterior motive or desire to secure more territory, no thought of depriving China or any other peoples of anything which they now possess."
Farseeing old Count Okuma, once Premier, and one of the empire's Elder Statesmen, seemed to realize this more fully than any other man I have seen. "Within two or three years from the time the new law goes into force," he declared, "I am confident that its injurious effects will be so apparent that the people will force its repeal.
Okuma Shigenobu resigned his portfolio, and was followed into private life by many able politicians and administrators. It must not be supposed for a moment that the Progressists were conservative. There was no such thing as real conservatism in Japan at that time. The whole nation exhaled the breath of progress.
Not a few of the country's foremost vernacular dailies are as outspoken as Count Okuma on this point, and the Kobe Chronicle declares that, with diminished exports to Japan, "British manufacturers will find compensation in the lessened ability of the Japanese to compete in China; and Japan will find that she has raised prices against herself and damaged her own efficiency."
No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern Japan of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.: and you will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought and wrought. When Mr.
Forthwith, the Emperor, on the advice of Prince Ito, invited Counts Okuma and Itagaki to form a Cabinet. An opportunity was thus given to the parties to prove the practical possibility of the system they had so long lauded in theory. Their union lasted barely six months, and then "the new links snapped under the tension of the old enmities." A strange thing now happened.
No wonder venerable Count Okuma, once Premier of the Empire, said to me: "I look for international arbitration to come not as a matter of sentiment but as a matter of cold financial necessity. Nations have labored for centuries to build up the civilization of to-day: it is unthinkable that its advantages must be largely sacrificed for the support of enormous non-productive armies and navies.
Take an old Japanese sage like Baron Shibusawa, who, like Count Okuma, it seems might well have been one of Plutarch's men, and you are not surprised to hear him mention the extravagance of America as the thing that impressed him more than anything else in traveling in our country.
In the second rank were several men destined afterwards to attain great celebrity the late Prince Ito, Marquis Inouye, Count Okuma, Count Itagaki often spoken of as the "Rousseau of Japan" and several others. *The distinction between Court nobles and territorial nobles had been abolished in 1871. The first five, however, were pre-eminent at the moment when Korea sent her offensive message.
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