DEATH BY NEGLECT AND SACRIFICE IN JAPAN—THE NEW-BORN TABOO—MYTH OF THE EXPOSURE OF THE CHILD OF THE GODS—GROWTH OF THE MARRIAGE CUSTOM—THE ARRIVAL OF THE CHINESE—MODERN CANNIBALISM—MODERN LAWS ON THE SALE OF CHILDREN.

THE first inhabitants of Japan were a numerous people named Koropok-guru, who lived in conelike huts built over holes dug in the earth and who were exterminated by the Ainu people. The latter were in turn conquered by the race that we speak of today as the Japanese; these last settlers coming to the islands of Japan from somewhere in the north of Central Asia, while a second stream of South Asian immigrants were drifted to Japan by the Japan current.

In the Kojiki, or “Records of Ancient Matters,” dictated by Hide-no-are and completed in A. D. 711 or 712, we have a record of the mythology, manners, language, and the traditional history of Japan; this “history” purports to give the actual story of Japan from the year 660 B. C., when the first Emperor Jimmu, “having subdued and pacified the savage deities and extirpated the unsubmissive people, dwelt at the palace of Kashiwabara.” Modern Japanese scholars as well as Western scholars are inclined to say that there is really no authentic history before A. D. 461 but as a picture of the customs of early Japan, the Kojiki is still the only authentic document that we have.

Inazo Nitobe, in dividing the history of his country into periods, groups the legendary age and all that went before the political reforms of the seventh century as the first period, under the name of the “ancient period.”

These ancient people, the mythical people of the Kojiki, had passed through a genuine Bronze Age and had in general attained a high level of barbaric skill. Of their many curious customs, both in the Kojiki and in the equally important Nihongi or “Chronicles of Japan,” prominent notice is made of the “parturition house”—“one-roomed but without windows, which a woman was supposed to build and retire into for the purpose of being delivered unseen.” Here is evidence that the infant was “taboo” until it had been received by the head of the house.

Even up to recent times in the island of Hachijo the custom survived according to Ernest Satow, who visited this island in 1878.

“In Hachijo,” wrote Mr. Satow, “women, when about to become mothers, were formerly driven out to the huts on the mountainside, and according to the accounts of native writers, left to shift for themselves, the result not unfrequently being the death of the new-born infant, or if it survived the rude circumstances under which it first saw the light, the seeds of disease were sown which clung to it throughout its after life. The rule of non-intercourse was so strictly enforced that the woman was not allowed to leave the hut even to visit her own parents at the point of death, and besides the injurious effects that this solitary confinement must have had on the wives themselves, their prolonged absence was a serious loss to households where there were elder children and large establishments to be superintended. The rigour of the custom was so far relaxed in modern times that the huts were no longer built on the hills, but were constructed inside the homestead. It was a subject of wonder to people from other parts of Japan that the senseless practice should still be kept up, and its abolition was often recommended, but the administration of the Shoguns was not animated by a reforming spirit, and it remained for the government of the Mikado to exhort the islanders to abandon this and the previously mentioned custom. They are therefore no longer sanctioned by official authority and the force of social opinion against them is increasing, so that before long these relics of ancient ceremonial religion will in all probability have disappeared from the group of islands.”

As with most early histories there is little description of custom or manners in either the Kojiki or the Nihongi, but we gather what the general attitude was toward children from the fact that the conception of marriage was probably limited to cohabitation, this condition lasting until well on into the Middle Ages,100 cohabitation being often secret at first, but afterward acknowledged. When the latter conditions had come to prevail, the young man, instead of going to his mistress under the cover of the night, brought her back publicly to his parents’ home, and that was the beginning of his own home.

Little is there in the Kojiki about the care of children but the harshness toward women about to have children, as shown in the frequent reference to the parturition houses, shows that unless they were children of royalty they were left to whatever care their mothers might be able to bestow on them.

In the account of the making of Japan by the two Heavenly Deities, known as the Izani-gi-no-kami and Izana-mi-no-kami, the Man Who Invites and the Female Who Invites, it is stated that their first child was not retained.

“This child,” says the legend,101 after retailing the events that led up to its birth, “they placed in a boat of reeds and let it float away. Next they gave birth to the island of Aha. This is not reckoned among their children.”

Among the gods, therefore, children were rejected or accepted without ceremony, and with such an attitude of rejection or acceptance depicted as the normal condition among the deities, it may easily be imagined what was the attitude of the ordinary beings who modelled their conduct on that of the deities.

It is told of the first Emperor Jimmu, that, meeting a group of seven maidens, he invited one of them to become a wife of his, and on her acceptance the sovereign passed the night at her house. This constituted the only marriage ceremony that the times knew. As far as the woman was concerned, all that the new condition meant was that she was liable to receive a visit at any time from her new lord and master, but on his side there was no obligation, no duty of fidelity, and he was free to form as many similar unions as fancy dictated.

The children were brought up by the mother and one household of a man might be in absolute ignorance of another.102 Mistress, wife, and concubine were on the same footing and could be discarded at any moment. When the Deity of Eight Thousand Spears, attired in his favourite courting costume, is about to go forth and search for a “better wife” he boldly announces that:

To this the Chief Empress, Her Augustness the Forward Princess, to whom the frank statement is made, plaintively replies:

“Thou ... indeed, being a man, probably hast on the various island-headlands that thou seest and on every beach-headland that thou lookest on, a wife like the young herbs. But I, alas! being a woman have no man except thee; I have no spouse except thee!”103

What became of the children in the cases of conjugal separation does not appear, a statement that is made by no less a Japanese authority than Chamberlain.104 In only one instance is there any reference made to the fate of a child that had been deserted, but this is an unusual case, where the father had violated the rules of the parturition house, with the result that the mother disappears, leaving the father to take care of the child. He pledged himself to look after it until the day of his death but the sister of the child’s mother was first invoked to act as nurse.

The result of this system of family life was that where the children of different mothers but of the same father discovered one another’s presence there were feuds and much fighting, especially as it was the children of the latest affection who were generally the recipients of his favour to the chagrin and anger of the less favoured children and families. Marriages between half-brothers and halfsisters were another result of the system, the only restriction on marriages of any kind being that children of the same mother should not marry. Sons of the same father were thus incited to be enemies rather than brothers, in the accepted sense, and the annals of the civil wars are replete with tales of treachery and ambition and show almost an entire absence of natural affection. The fact that the children had no claim on the love and the protection of the father and that their mother was condemned under the ancient system to the function of a mere animal, is cited by Brinkley as the reason for this cruelty and treachery.105

This was the position of the child in the society that is depicted in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, although the latter, written about forty years after the Kojiki (A. D. 720), and under the influence of the Chinese, is more apt to depict the conditions that sprang up with the spreading Chinese culture.

The fourth century brought to Japan a knowledge of Chinese classics, and Chinese morals, and in 552 A. D., there came a still greater change when the Buddhistic religion was introduced through a copy of the scripture and an image of Buddha being sent to the Yamato Court by the government of one of the Korean kingdoms. Unsuccessful preachments there had been by unofficial missionaries before this, but the arrival of the Korean ambassador served to bring to the attention of the government the new religion in a manner calculated to arouse interest in its doctrines.

Whatever may be the defects of Shintoism, human sacrifice never seems really to have been part of its practice,106 and to this fact, with the increasing regard for life that came with civilization, is undoubtedly due the little emphasis given to infanticide among the Japanese. Another influence, undoubtedly, and this is said to be the “best point of Shinto,”107 is that the people were taught that they themselves were sons and daughters of the gods, a belief apt to save the killing of surplus members of society in a time of economic stress.

According to the Nihongi, human sacrifice was put an end to in Japan in the year A. D. 3:

“Tenth month, fifth day: Yamato-hiko, the Mikado’s younger brother by the mother’s side, died.

“Eleventh month, second day: Yamato-hiko was buried at Tsukizaka in Musa. Thereupon his personal attendants were assembled, and were all buried alive upright in the precinct of the tomb. For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and ate them.

“The Emperor, hearing the sound of their weeping and wailing, was grieved at heart, and commanded his high officers, saying:

“‘It is a very painful thing to force these whom one has loved in life to follow him in death. Though it be an ancient custom, why follow it if it is bad? From this time forward, take counsel so as to put a stop to the following of the dead.’

“A. D. 3, seventh month, sixth day: The Empress Hibasuhime no Mikoto died. Sometime before the burial the Emperor commanded his ministers, saying:

“‘We have already recognized that the practice of following the dead is not good. What should now be done in performing this burial?’

“Thereupon Nomi no Sukune came forward and said:

“‘It is not good to bury living men upright at the tumulus of a prince. How can such a practice be handed down to posterity? I beg leave to propose an expedient which I will submit to your Majesty.’

“So he sent messengers to summon up from the land of Idzumo a hundred men of the clay-workers Be. He himself directed the men of the clay-workers Be to take clay and form therewith shapes of men, horses, and various objects, which he presented to the Emperor, saying:

“‘Henceforward, let it be the law for future ages to substitute things of clay for living men, and to set them up at tumuli.’

“Then the Emperor was greatly rejoiced, and commended Nomi no Sukune, saying:

“‘Thy expedient hath greatly pleased our heart.’

“So the things of clay were first set up at the tomb of Hibasuhime no Mikoto. And a name was given to those clay objects. They were called hani-wa or ‘clay rings.’

“Then a decree was issued, saying:

“‘Henceforth these clay figures must be set up at tumuli; let no men be harmed.’

“The Emperor bountifully rewarded Nomi no Sukune for this service, and also appointed him to the official charge of the clay-workers Be. His original title was therefore changed, and he was called Hashi no Omi. This was how it came to pass that the Hashi no Muraji superintended the burials of Emperors.”108

The date ascribed to this incident cannot be depended on. “Chinese accounts speak of the custom of human sacrifices at the burial of a sovereign as in full force in Japan so late as A. D. 247,” says Aston. Probably all the events of this part of Japanese history are very much antedated. But of the substantial accuracy of the narrative there can be no doubt. Some of these clay figures (known as tsuchi-ningio) are still in existence, and may be seen in the British Museum, where they constitute the chief treasure of the Gowland collection. The Uyeno Museum in Tokio also possessed specimens, both of men and horses. None, however, remain in situ at the tombs. The hani-wa (clay-rings), cylinders which may now be seen embedded in the earth round all the principal misasagi, are so numerous that they can hardly have all been surmounted by figures. But they are of the same workmanship and of the same date, and no doubt some of them are the pedestals of images, the above-ground part of which has been destroyed by the weather or by accident.

“A similar substitution of straw or wooden images for living men took place in China in ancient times, though by a curious inversion of ideas, the former practice is described as leading to the latter.”109

While neither the lion or the tiger ever troubled Japan and her most carnivorous and destructive animals have been wolves, tradition has ascribed the sacrifice of human beings in Japan to the desire to placate the god of wild animals. The victim was always a girl, and from the earliest ages the manner of selecting her was to affix to the roof of a house a bow and arrow. When the householder arose in the morning and discovered what was accepted as a divine intimation, the eldest daughter of the family was buried alive, it being supposed that her flesh served as a meal for the deity. Later the priests of Buddha found a more profitable method of disposing of these girls by selling them as slaves; thereby following out the fundamental tenet of the Buddhistic religion, which is the sanctity of human life, and at the same time increasing their wealth. Some writers refer to this practice as being a sacrifice to an animal in the service of Shakamuni, which would have made it a Buddhistic rite, but the idea is scoffed at by Brinkley.110 Even up to recent times it is said the habit of sacrificing human beings in order to make the foundation of any great work more stable was common. The corpses of two human beings were said to be under the scarps “of the futile forts hurriedly erected for defence of Yedo [Tokio] in the interval between Commodore Perry’s first and second coming.”111

In the Tokugawa period, extending from about 1615 to 1860, two and a half centuries, Japan was a hermit nation distinguished for its peaceful character. Yet its population for one hundred years remained almost stationary. By some authorities, this has been explained not only on the ground of many famines and devastating diseases but the common practice of abortion and the fact that the Samurai considered it disgraceful to marry until they were thirty, and equally disgraceful to raise a family of more than three children.

“Among the lower classes it was not common to rear all the children born, especially if girls came too frequently.” Also, “While there was hardly in the whole country a hospital in our sense of the term, there were in the large cities physicians famous for their skill in preventing the birth of living children. They kept private establishments to accommodate calculating patrons. All authorities agreed that sexual morality in the large cities was at a very low ebb among all classes, while luxury and effeminacy prevailed among people high in birth and wealth.”112

As a picture of what the people were driven to and a terrible example of what attitude famine may lead parents to take toward their children, there is no more important document than the statement of Shirakawa Rakuo, distinguished as the Minister of Finance of the Eleventh Shogun, Iyenari. The trace of cannibalism in semi-civilized peoples is easier to understand after the fearful famine in the third year of Temmei (1783).

“A trustworthy man,” says Rakuo,113 “who had travelled in this district [northern part of country], told me that in a village which had previously contained 800 houses there were only thirty left, the inhabitants of the rest all having died. Having entered a village in which the houses seemed to be larger and more numerous than usual, he proposed to rest there for the night. He soon discovered, however, that not a single house was inhabited, but in all the houses he saw bones and skulls scattered about the floor. As he went on he saw innumerable bones and skulls by the roadside. He met a man leading a pack-horse on the road, who said that he could survive without eating the flesh of human beings as he was supported by a rich uncle. In some places even those who abandoned themselves to eating human flesh could not find food enough to live. Great numbers starved to death. The price paid for a dog was 500 sen, sometimes even as high as 800 sen, a rat 50 sen. A rare work of art found no purchasers and could not be exchanged for a go of rice. If a person died he was of course eaten by the survivors. Those who died of starvation, however, could not be eaten, because their flesh decayed so soon. Some people, therefore, killed those who were certain to starve and put the flesh into brine so as to keep it for a long time. Among other people there was a farmer who went to his neighbour and said, ‘My wife and one of my sons have already died from want of food. My remaining son is certain to die within a few days, so I wish to kill him while his flesh is still eatable, but being his father, I do not dare to raise the sword against him, so I beg you to kill the boy for me.’ The neighbour agreed to do this, but stipulated that he should get a part of the flesh as a reward for his service. This was agreed to and the neighbour at once killed the boy. As soon as the deed was done, the farmer, who stood by, struck his neighbour with a sword and killed him, saying that he ‘was very glad to avenge his son and at the same time have double the quantity of food.’”

Up to the close of the seventeenth century, feudal legislation was very harsh, one of the worst laws of ancient times in force until that time being that by which children were punished for the crime of their parents.114 If a man or a woman had been sentenced to be crucified or burnt and had male children above fifteen years of age, those children were similarly executed, and if they were under that age they were given over to a relative to be reared until they reached the age of fifteen, when they were banished. When the criminal parent was condemned to the ordinary hanging or beheading it was still within the discretion of the judge to condemn the male children to be executed or exiled. The female children, while exempt from the capital punishment, were liable to be sold as slaves.

In 1721, during the reign of the enlightened Yoshimune, who was Shogun from 1716 to 1746, there were many reforms, and it was then enacted that for all crimes, even those punishable with crucifixion and exposure of the head, only the criminal himself must be punished. In the case of the most heinous of all crimes, according to Japanese standards, parricide or the murder of a teacher, a special tribunal was declared to be the only place where it could be decided whether the children and grandchildren should be implicated. Interesting too is the fact that this leniency extended to the farmers and merchants only, the Samurai not being included, it being assumed that the crime of a person of nobility and education was a more serious matter than a crime by a person less fortunate—a theory of justice that has never taken root in the minds of the Occidentals except among romancers.

From the time, early in the seventeenth century, when the governing power of Japan fell into the hands of the Buddhist Tokugawa family, through Iyeyasu, the head of the house, there was an endeavour to check the sale of children. No less than eight enactments were issued between 1624 and 1734 declaring the sale of human beings punishable by death.

Progress naturally was slow when the conditions were so flagrant that there were open offices where the sales and purchase of children were effected.115 In 1649 an absurd compromise was attempted when a law was passed declaring it was lawful to sell a child, providing that the consent of the child was obtained. There was an attempt to regulate, without abolishing, slavery in the law of 1655, which declared that in a dispute between an employer and the employed, the employer, if found to be in the wrong, might be imprisoned or meted out any punishment that the employed might suggest. It is safe to add that the administrative criminal machinery was not in the hands of the proletariat, nor was there any suffrage that threatened to put the employed in the position of judge.

It was during this period that the law was passed allowing the parent to have his son or daughter imprisoned, a just cause being assumed. A father had the right to punish his son, but the son had the right to appeal to a magistrate for a review of the sentence; but “costs” of the appeal were dangerous inasmuch as if the son lost he had to suffer whatever penalty his father might dole out to him. The Occidental mind will not appreciate so readily the attempts of the Tokugawas, beginning 1627, to regulate the social evil, one of their early laws depriving employers of all authority “to retain the services of a female for immoral purposes outside the appointed quarter.”

Modern writers on Japan lay stress on the affection of the Japanese for their children, and yet “during the famine of 1905 many girls who had been sold by the suffering parents were redeemed by the Christians.”116 This sacrifice of the children to the welfare of the parents is traceable to the influence of Confucius. To the same source may be ascribed the fact that, though in ancient times the female sex was prominent in Japan, after the introduction of Confucianism the Samurai considered it beneath him to even converse with his wife and children.117 “Neither God nor the ladies inspired any enthusiasm in the Samurai’s heart,” says Professor Chamberlain. For is it not written by the great moralist Karbara Ekken in the Owna Dargaku, “It was the custom of the ancients, on the birth of a female child, to let it lie on the floor for the space of three days. Even in this may be seen the likening of the man to heaven and of the woman to earth.”118

Only a few years ago a child, both of whose parents had died of cholera, was on the point of being buried alive by neighbours when it was rescued.119 “Certain parts of Japan have been notorious from of old for this practice,” says Gulick. “In Toas the evil was so rampant that a society for its prevention has been in existence many years. It helps support children of poor parents who might be tempted to dispose of them criminally.”

On the other hand, this word from Professor Goodrich, who as a member of the faculty of the Imperial College pictures a nation far from indifferent to the welfare of the child:

“Ever since the beginning of that indefinite period which we call ‘modern times’ the birth of a child has always been an occasion for rejoicing. To be sure, in Japan that joy was very much greater when it was a boy baby; yet the Japanese have never displayed such intense dislike to girl babies as have the Chinese. One great reason for this was that the population of Japan was not so dense as it is in China. It was easier to provide for children, and therefore there was no incentive to put girl babies out of the way. I am sorry to say that very lately, since the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), when the Japanese people are almost crushed by the weight of taxes to provide money with which to pay war expenses and to keep up army and navy, the number of cases of female infanticide is increasing alarmingly.”120