Jews & the Japanese - Ben-Ami Shillony

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      The ability to read difficult Chinese texts and to express oneself in writing in both Chinese and Japanese became the distinguishing mark of the upper classes. In the eighth century an institute of higher learning, or university (daigaku), was established in the capital, and a special government bureau (Zushoryo) was set up to collect, preserve, and copy books. The shrines of the ninth-century official, scholar, and poet Sugawara no Michizane, who was deified after his death as the Shinto god of literature, scholarship, and calligraphy (Tenmangu), are still among the most popular in Japan.

      When warriors took over the reins of power from the nobles in the twelfth century C.E., members of the military elite joined the literate classes as readers and writers. In the following centuries, the war epics Heike monogatari and Taiheiki were compiled and copied. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who unified the country in the early seventeenth century, established a large library at his castle in Edo and, following his example, all the great daimyo acquired magnificent libraries and book collections. In the Tokugawa period literacy spread to all samurai, as well as to many town dwellers and farmers. Publishing became an established and profitable business and gifted writers like Ihara Saikaku were very popular.

      Although in Japan learning did not become a religious duty as it did for Jews, its prestige was very high. In his rules of conduct for the samurai (Buke shohatto) of 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu held the study of literature (bun) and the pursuit of military arts (bu) to be the most important duty of the samurai, with bun preceding bu. Every Tokugawa shogun and most of the daimyo kept a Confucian advisor (jusha) to supervise classical education and to handle official correspondence and publications. In the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), schools of various kinds flourished in Japan. Almost all male children of samurai attended government-run schools where they learned the Chinese classics, and about half of the sons of commoners attended temple-schools (tera-koya), where they learned to read and write. There were also many private academies where one could acquire a knowledge in various fields from ancient scriptures to Dutch studies, as Western learning was then referred to. Education could not break class barriers, but it was considered the best way to self-improvement.

      By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Jews and the Japanese were probably the two most literate peoples in the world. Although the texts in which they were versed had little relevance to the political and social needs of the day, the long-established practice of the Jews and the Japanese of avidly acquiring knowledge through the medium of printed texts prepared them well for the task of absorbing the civilization of the advanced West.

      6

       Seclusion and Explosion

      THE MASSIVE absorption of Western civilization by both Jews and Japanese in the last century and a half was preceded by a long period of seclusion during which both of these peoples lived in their respective cocoons. In medieval Europe Jews tended to dwell in separate neighborhoods or adjacent streets, in order to maintain their communal life, but it was only in the sixteenth century that they started to be legally restricted to particular sections of town. These areas, designated as their exclusive living quarters, were the ghettos. The first ghetto was established in 1516 in Venice, where it acquired its name (from the Italian for "foundry," because a cannon foundry was located there). Other ghettos then appeared in the rest of Italy, southern France, and parts of Germany. In most Moslem countries Jews were similarly segregated, in quarters such as the mellah in Morocco, established in the fifteenth century.

      The expulsion of Jews from most western European countries in the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era brought about their emigration to Poland and to the Ottoman Empire. From this emigration developed the division of the Jewish people into the Ashkenazi (German) branch, which migrated to Eastern Europe and continued to speak a mixture of Hebrew and medieval High German (Yiddish), and the Sephardi (Spanish) branch, which remained in the Mediterranean basin and continued to speak a medieval Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). The rulers of both Poland and the Ottoman Empire at that time desired to attract Jewish capital and skills in order to develop the poor economies of their realms. Consequently, Poland came to hold the largest Jewish population in the world. There, Jews sometimes constituted the majority of the urban population, and there the Jewish shtetl (little town) originated as a place where Jews could congregate and maintain their cultural autonomy. The division of Poland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave Russia, where previously no Jews had been allowed to reside, the largest Jewish population of any country. To prevent them from settling in Russia proper, the Jews were restricted to the Pale, i.e., the western borderlands stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. By the late nineteenth century, out of a world Jewish population of about ten million, more than five million lived in the crowded Russian Pale.

      The physical seclusion and segregation of the Jews in ghettos and shtetls, whether resulting from coercion, necessity, or their own desires, was a central feature of Jewish life for a long time. However, the closed, cramped, and often impoverished environment of the shtetl did not breed intellectual stagnation. On the contrary, Jewish learning there flourished with a minimum of outside interference. Physical segregation enhanced cohesion and developed communal institutions. Traditional scholarship thrived, great talmudic schools (yeshivot) prospered, and a rich religious literature was produced. Constant argumentation over scriptural interpretation produced rival schools of thought. The Hasidim, who emphasized enthusiasm and mystical communion with God, clashed with the Opponents (Mitnagdim), who emphasized scholarship and a strict adherence to tradition. Proponents of Enlightenment (Haskala) advocated the introduction of secular Western studies and clashed with an Orthodox establishment afraid of outside influences. The increase in population, the spread of education, and the growing gap between the closed Jewish society and the materially advancing outside world turned the crowded shtetl into a social and intellectual powder keg where ideas, ambitions, and frustrations simmered. Then when the ghetto walls finally fell, these pent-up energies burst forth with a power that changed not only Jewish life, but also much of the outside world.

      Something quite similar happened in Japan. Geographic isolation, a separate language, unique customs and institutions, and a long, uninterrupted independence caused the Japanese to perceive themselves as different and distinct from their neighbors. In the seventeenth century this mental detachment from the rest of the world was augmented by the official closing of the country (sakoku). Except for two small and well-controlled Chinese and Dutch trading posts at Nagasaki, and occasional delegations from Korea and the Ryukyu Islands, no contacts were maintained with the rest of the world for more than two centuries.

      Thus, a little more than a century after Catholic Spain and Portugal had expelled their Jews, Japan expelled the Spaniards and the Portuguese living there and outlawed Christianity. The cruel persecution of the "hidden Jews" in Spain and Portugal—the so-called Marranos, who had become converts to Christianity under threat of death but continued to practice Judaism in secret—had its counterpart in the cruel persecution of the "hidden Christians" in Japan.

      Seclusion denied Japan the fruits of international trade and arrested its technological and military development but saved the country from falling prey to the colonial ambitions of the European powers. Continued intercourse with the West might have kept Japan abreast of European inventions but might also have brought Japan to share the fate of the Philippines and India, which became Western colonies. Moreover, as it did with the Jews, seclusion had a positive internal effect. It consolidated the Japanese and united them into a nation as never before. It also imbued them, like the Jews in the shtetl, with great dynamism. Peace and stability stimulated internal commerce, promoted the growth of cities, and caused production to flourish. Scholarship, literature, and the arts thrived behind the closed doors of Japan, penetrating even the lowest classes of society. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, different interpretations of the Confucian classics emerged, producing different attitudes toward the past and the present. Neo-Confucian ideas of the Zhu Xi school clashed with those of the Wang Yang-ming school, admirers of Chinese culture argued with supporters of the national studies (kokugaku), and conservatives debated with the advocates of Dutch learning (rangaku). As in the case of the Jews, the bottled-up energies of an increasingly sophisticated, educated, and ambitious population

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