Classic Poem

The son of a Japanese lord am I,--
A Prince of the olden time;
My hair is white, though black as night
In my youth and early prime;
And again and again I ask myself,
As the past I sadly scan,
Are we better or worse? Was it blessing or curse
That foreigners brought Japan?

It is barely two score years and ten
Since the epoch-making day
When a foreign fleet, through the summer heat,
Came sailing up our bay;
Still ring in my ears my father's words,
As we watched it breast the waves,--
"If strangers land on Nippon's strand,
We may one day be their slaves."

But the strangers landed, and asked for trade
And a permanent "Open Door,"
And we deemed it best to grant the West
A foothold on our shore;
Their slaves in truth we have not become,
Yet who can fail to find
That Japan obeys in a thousand ways
The will of the western mind?

We sent our sons across the seas
To learn from the Western Powers
Their modes of life and their modes of strife,
And have made them largely ours;
But before all else have we learned from them
That our first great aim, must be
To possess a fleet that can defeat
All rivals on the sea.

Hence, all that the West hath yet devised
For the slaughter of men en masse
We have copied or bought, and have stopped at naught
To make our fleet "first class";
And lest this might not quite suffice,
Should an enemy come in sight,
We have made each man throughout Japan
A soldier trained to fight!

But alas for the change that hath been wrought
In the millions in our fields!
For the costly ships take from their lips
The food that the harvest yields;
They were always poor, but their load was light,
Compared with their load to-day,
For thousands of hands that worked the lands
Are drafted now away.

And sad are the scenes in the sphere of Art
In which we had won such fame;
The fingers left are not so deft
As they were when the strangers came;
For then we toiled for Beauty's sake,
And by time were we never paid;
But now we have sold our art for gold
And the western market's trade.

I never look at the goods now sent,--
So worthless do they seem,--
Without a sigh for the standard high
Which prevailed in the old regime;
When even the hilt of a Daimio's sword
Was a work of months or years,
And the highest reward for a triumph scored
Was praise from the artist's peers.

No, the soul of my people is not the same;
It was formerly sweet and kind,
And happiness reigned in hearts restrained
By an unspoiled, gentle mind;
But now the lusts of the outer world
For power, and lands, and gold,
Our sons deprave, till they madly crave
What others have and hold.

We have borrowed many things from the West,
But one have we left alone;
Of its Christian creed we had no need,
And have thus far kept our own;
For each of its numerous sects affirms
That it has the only way,
And that all the rest should be suppressed,
For they lead mankind astray.

But worse than the claims of rival sects
And the war of clashing creeds,
Is the gulf,--heaven-wide! which we descried
Between their words and deeds;
For He whose sacred name they bear
Was known as the Prince of Peace,
And what He taught, in practice wrought,
Would cause all wars to cease.

They say with truth that we used to fight
For our Lords on sea and coast,
But our soldiers then were as one to ten,
Not a permanent armored host!
Nor do we claim to obey the God
They worship in the West;
But, since they do, is it not true
That they mock at His first behest?

His words were "Love your enemies!"
And never a hostile act
To friend or foe should Christians show,
By whomsoever attacked;
But they are really the best prepared
To attack and to resist;
And the Kaiser who prays is the Kaiser who says,--
"Go! Strike with the mailed fist!"

We look abroad, and everywhere
The spirit of Christ is dead;
Men call Him Lord, but they draw the sword
In defiance of what He said;
And the haughty, white-skinned Christian race
Hates men of a different hue,
And robs and slays in a thousand ways,
With excuses ever new.

In the North and South, in the East and West
In vain do the natives plead;
By the Congo's waves are countless graves,
Where the Paleface gluts his greed;
And China's fate looms dark and grim,
As its people note the means
That Christians take, when gold's at stake,
From the Rand to the Philippines.

We have had to choose between the rule
Of the Sermon on the Mount
And the brutal fact that nations act
With an eye to their bank-account!
And we see that the only way to shun
The clutch of the Western Powers
Is to learn to kill with Christian skill,
And to make their weapons ours.

For we will not, like the others, bend
Our necks to the white man's yoke;
And poor Japan, to her latest man,
Will answer stroke with stroke;
So I watch to-night a solemn sight
On the breast of the moonlit bay,
As our gallant host for a hostile coast
Prepares to sail away.

It is life or death for my native land,
And I fear I may never see
Those ships again, with their noble men,
Return from victory;
And well I know in my heart of hearts,
As the past I sadly scan,
That we are worse, and it was a curse
That foreigners brought Japan.

1904.