LEARNING in the broad sense can be divided into immaterial and material spheres. The former includes such subjects as ethics (shingaku), theology, and metaphysics; the latter, astronomy, geography, physics, and chemistry. Each branch of learning broadens the range of our knowledge and experience, gives us discernment into the principles of things and understanding of our duties as persons. In order to widen our knowledge and experience, we must hear what others have to say, form our own ideas, and read books as well. Accordingly, although it is essential to know letters to study, it would be a great misunderstanding of the nature of learning to think that it only consists in reading books, as people have thought from ancient times. Letters are the instruments of learning; they are like the hammers and saws used to build a house. Although hammers and saws are indispensable tools for building a house, a person who only knows their names but not how to build a house cannot be called a carpenter. For this reason, a person who only knows how to read letters but does not know how to discern the principles of things cannot be called a true scholar. Such a person is like a man who is said to have read the Confucian Analects but does not understand it. In like manner, a person who has learned to recite the Kojiki† by heart but does not know the present price of rice must be called ignorant in practical studies. A person who has mastered the inner meaning of the Chinese Classics and Histories but does not understand the ways of buying and selling, and is quite incompetent in business dealings, must be said to be a failure in the art of book-keeping. And a person who, after years of hard study and huge outlays of money, becomes proficient in Western studies but is unable to make his own private living, is out of touch with learning pertinent to the current of the times. Such people may be called mere wholesalers of letters. In merit and capacity they are not different from food-consuming dictionaries. They are useless to the nation, and parasites on the economy. Therefore, household management, book-keeping, staying abreast of the trends of the times are also forms of learning. What is the reason for understanding learning exclusively in the sense of reading Japanese, Chinese, and Western books? I have entitled this book An Encouragement of Learning, but I am hardly advocating an exclusive study of books.
In this work, I have expressed the general meaning of learning, sometimes by quoting literally and sometimes by paraphrasing Western sources, as well as by citing matters which should be known by everyone in respect to both material and immaterial spheres of learning. As a follow-up to the previous section, I will broaden this theme here, and continue with it in the third and fourth sections as well.
At the beginning of the first section I declared that all men are equal, and that they can live in freedom and independence without hereditary status distinctions. Let me further develop that idea here. The birth of man is the work of nature and not the power of man. People should love and respect one another, and each person should fullfil his own duty without infringing upon others. For they are persons of the same species who share the same heaven and are creatures between the same heaven and earth. Thus, for example, the reason that brothers in the same household should cherish one another is that they are children of the same family, and have the same parents whom they serve. This relationship has been enunciated as a great ethical principle.
And similarly, if I inquire into the balance of human relations, I must again say that all men are equal. However, they may not be equal in outward appearances. Equality means equality in essential human rights, even though in external conditions there may be extreme differences between rich and poor, strong and weak, intelligent and stupid persons. Some nobles descended from feudal lords still live in palaces, dress in luxurious clothing, and eat sumptuous foods; there are others who rent their lodgings in back alleys and hardly eke out a living from day to day. Some become the public officials and merchants who move the world with their splendid talents and knowledge; others, without wisdom and discernment, spend their lives as candy vendors. Some become powerful sumo wrestlers; others, delicate princesses. But while they differ like the clouds above and the mud below, still, from the point of view of inherent human rights, all men are equal without the least distinction among them.
In other terms, human rights are the great moral obligations that give dignity to an individual human life, protect a man’s fortune and possessions, and dignify his honor and reputation. When Heaven gives birth to man, it gives him faculties of body and mind and the powers to realize his rights in practice. Therefore under no circumstances should a man be deprived of his rights. The lives of the feudal lord and laborers were equal in essential value. A rich merchant protects his million ryō no more than the candy vendor protects his four mon, each as his own personal property. A proverb about the ills of society says: “It is impossible to deal with crying children or the lord of a manor.” Another says: “Parents and masters make unreasonable requests.” As these proverbs suggest, there are persons who think that human rights can be twisted. But this is a misunderstanding and confusion of the outward appearances of things with essential human rights. The estate steward and his peasants may have differed in outward circumstances, but they were equal in essential human rights. What was distressing for the peasants was also distressing for the steward; what was sweet for the steward was also sweet for the peasants. It is human nature to avoid what is distressing and to take the sweet. And it is a basic human right for a person to be able to attain what he wants, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others. There was not the slightest distinction between the rights of a steward and his peasants. It was just that the steward was powerful and wealthy, the peasants weak and poor. Wealth and power are relative conditions of man, and of course they are different. But if today one man acts unjustly toward a weak and poor person through his wealth and power, is this not a violation of the other’s rights by taking advantage that their external circumstances are unequal? It would be comparable to a strong-armed sumo wrestler breaking the arm of his neighbor. His neighbor is of course weaker, but even though weaker he can still use his arm to accomplish his own purposes. Therefore it would be an outrageous infringement if the weaker man’s arm were broken by the wrestler for no good reason at all.
Let me now extend the above argument to the matters of society. In the time of the Tokugawa shogunate, the distinction between samurai and common people was sharply drawn. The military families recklessly brandished their prestige. They treated the peasants and townsfolk as despicable criminals. They enacted such notorious laws as that which gave a samurai the right to cut down a commoner. According to these laws the lives of the commoners were not truly their own, but merely borrowed things. The peasants and merchants had to prostrate themselves before the samurai, although they had no connection with them. On the roads they had to give way to them, and indoors to yield their mats to them. In the extreme case, they suffered the outrage of not being allowed to ride the horses they had reared in their own stables.
The above abuses were instances of injustice between the samurai and commoners in individual relations. But when it comes to the relation between government and people, matters were even worse. Not only the shogunate, but the 300 daimyo each presided over small-scale governments in their individual domains. They treated the common peasants and townsfolk despotically. They sometimes seemed compassionate to them, but they did not really recognize their inherent human rights. And there were many reprehensible practices. However, as I have declared above, the feudal governments and the people differed only in their relative strength; there was no difference in inherent human rights. The peasants grew rice to feed the people. The townsfolk engaged in buying and selling goods for the convenience of society. These were the businesses of peasants and merchants, respectively. The government established laws, by which it controlled the wicked and protected the good; and this was the business of the government. This government’s business cost a great deal of money; since it had neither rice nor cash to meet its expenses, it entered into an agreement with the commoners that the latter should pay taxes in rice and money to fund its treasury. This was the contract, in other words, between government and people. Therefore the peasants and townsfolk could fullfil their duties by paying taxes and obeying the laws, while the government fulfilled its duties by taking these taxes to make due payments for its expenses and to protect the people. As long as both sides fulfilled their obligations without violating this contract, there could be no further objections; and thus each side was freely implementing its rights.
However, in the time of the Tokugawa shogunate, the government was called ue-sama.† Those who went on official missions could recklessly brandish their prestige. Not only that, they would eat at the inns along their way without paying. They did not pay their fares for river crossings, and did not pay their carriers’ wages. The worst extreme was extorting money from their carriers to spend for drinking sake. These were outrageous cases of “Might makes right”—as when, to suit a personal whim, a feudal lord would build a house or undertake some needless enterprise through the good offices of some government official, thus squandering money uselessly. When he ran short of funds, he would increase the land-tax levies or collect incidental taxes and make some high-sounding declaration that he was repaying his indebtedness to the country.
But what did this indebtedness to the country mean? Presumably it meant that the peasants and townsfolk could continue to work in peace and live without fear of robbery or murder because of the government’s protection; however, it was already the business and proper duty of the government to make laws and protect the people. Therefore it could not properly be called kindness on the government’s part. If the government thought that it was acting out of kindness, then the peasants and townsmen could also have said that, for their part, their tax payments were also acts of kindness. If the government regarded the lawsuits of the people as its burden, then the people could also have said that it was burdensome to give up five out of every ten straw bags of their rice crop for land taxes. Thus the matter could be haggled about endlessly. At any rate, if there was indebtedness on both sides, it did not stand to reason that one side should have to express its gratitude unilaterally.
When we inquire into the cause of such evil customs, we find that the government had violated the great principle of the equality of man by taking advantage of the conditions of wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, as evil instruments to obstruct the rights of the poor through its own wealth and power. Therefore we must keep uppermost in mind that all men are inherently equal. This is the most important principle of human society. It is called reciprocity or equality in the West. This is what I referred to, in the beginning of Section One, as the equality of all men. In the present argument, I champion the side of the peasants and townsfolk to strengthen their position as much as possible. But there is also an argument on the other side. Generally speaking, in dealing with the people, harshness or moderation in the law must be proportionate to the nature of the people. The essential relation between people and government is that they constitute one entity, with distinctions only in functions and duties. There is a strict covenant that the government should act as deputy and lawmaker for the people, while the people should obey the laws without fail.
Thus for example the people of the present Meiji Period have contracted with the present government to obey its laws. Therefore, once the laws have been established, they cannot be changed before their revision, even if they inconvenience some individuals. They must be conscientiously and respectfully observed, for that is precisely the duty of the people. But there are some ignorant and illiterate persons who do not know the principles of right and wrong. Their only talents are those of eating, sleeping, and rising. They are ignorant, but they are also greedy. They cheat people right before their eyes and skillfully evade the laws of the government. They know neither the laws of the nation nor their own duties. They have many children, but they do not know how to educate them. They are shameless and lawless fools. If the descendants of such people flourish, they will not benefit the country. On the contrary, there may be some who bring it positive harm. It is quite impossible to use reason in dealing with such stupid people. Even though it is against our will, there is no other expediency than to intimidate them with force so as to prevent greater harm. This is one reason why there have been tyrannical governments in the world. Such indeed was the situation not only of the shogunate in Japan but also of the countries of Asia since ancient times. Accordingly a nation’s harsh government is not necessarily attributable to a tyrant or tyrannical officials. The people, through their own ignorance, bring down such misfortune upon themselves. There have been some who, instigated by others, have plotted assassinations, or who, misunderstanding the new laws, have risen up in revolt. Others, in the name of pressing their claims for justice, have broken into the houses of the rich, have drunk their sake, and have robbed them of their money. Their “solutions” can scarcely be called human. Even Buddha or Confucius could not devise measures to deal with such burglars. Eventually, the law has to be harshly applied. And consequently I am saying that if people want to avoid tyrannical government, they must forthwith set their mind to the pursuit of learning, so as to elevate their own talents and virtues to a position of equality with the government. This is precisely the purport of the learning I am encouraging.
