THE MEMORY OF JAPAN'S GREATER GLORY UNDER THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

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entirely to one large hall. The whole place was even more void of furniture than the Japanese home, the room being fitted out with nothing more than the usual straw mats and a few small tables to be used during study hours. The flower decorations, the fine wall kakemono, and the delicate woodwork which give the Japanese house its dignity and simple beauty were wanting here. These things belong to the woman's province, and the sha member rises at four in the morning of the coldest winter month to practice his fencing and jiu-jitsu for the very purpose of showing that there is nothing of the feminine about him.

Our little party was joined by two older lads, whom I afterwards found to be in authority on that particular afternoon. The control of the society is in the hands of these elder members, who act as coaches in the athletics and tutors in the educational work. These youths are in turn responsible to the "scout master," as he would be called in America or England, one of the Samurai of the district. These head men are often retired army officers of very worthy position, and spend much of their time with the sha, giving to it that spirit which plays so large a part in its life. The superintendent of the society ranked as a general of Manchurian forces during the late war.

It is impossible to give any definite date for the origin of these societies. It seems probable, however, that these sha, or Boy Scouts of Feudal Japan, as I prefer to think of them, first came into prominence at the close of the sixteenth century, when Japan was warring with Korea. These campaigns drained Satsuma of her fighting class; the fathers and elder brothers going to the wars left the young blood of the province under the tutelage of the women and old men. Fearing a weakness in the youths thus left to feminine care and indulgence, Niiro Tadamo, the Sir Philip Sidney of Satsuma knighthood, organized, or, perhaps better, developed, societies in the different parts of the city for the training of the Samurai

sons.

As time went on, each society in the general organization became a distinct unit sufficient unto itself. A spirit of exclusiveness grew up which would make the rivalry of present-day college fraternities seem puerile. The lads of one district were forbidden to associate with those of another, and many are the stories of blood-letting on the streets at

an affront, either fancied or real, offered by a member of one society to one of another.

The bridge over the serene, lotus-covered moat surrounding the present Seventh Higher School is said to have been the scene of one of the fiercest of these encounters. The members of two sha, to the number of about fifty, on their way to the central fortifications of the city, elbowed each other in passing over the bridge. With a true d'Artagnan resentment, each youth imagined himself insulted. Swords were drawn. The fight which took place left some three or four mortally wounded. The whole affair was suppressed only when a detachment of men-atarms from the castle engaged in the affray to cool the too fierce ardor of the youngsters' spirit.

With the Restoration the raison d'être of this old institution disappeared. Feudal principles have largely vanished, and the sha lives to-day chiefly in its traditions.

As evidenced in these traditions, the modern sha is a most picturesque institution. Four times each year the organizations hold special ceremonies to perpetuate the memory of their heroes and to instill a respect for the noble and brave. That two of these four evenings should be given over to recalling past acts whose merit is their fierce adherence to a primitive sense of revenge will perhaps surprise the Western reader.

On the 23d of June the lads journey on foot to a little hamlet some twenty-five miles from Kagoshima, where there is a shrine dedicated to one of their old feudal lords. Here they camp out overnight in the inclosure of the shrine, ready at the first gray of dawn to perform their sacred dance before the manes; this completed, a general pellmell Marathon race takes place back to a second shrine within the precincts of the city. With the rivalry which still exists between the societies the affair becomes serious, the contestants frequently dropping from exhaustion along the route.

But the 14th of September witnesses the greatest of the sha festivals. The habitual evening repose of the city is banished by the alternating high and low notes of a martial chant as the Boy Scouts of Feudal Japan march on their yearly pilgrimage to a shrine twenty miles inland.

All through the late afternoon and early evening the hills near by have resounded with a fanfare that would be truly martial were the youthful buglers but a trifle more

adept. For this pilgrimage the chigo, or junior members, don the ancient dress of a time" when reds and blues were indeed red and blue"-the heavy cloth stuffs which were the garb of the Samurai on occasions which did not call for the more protecting but cumbersome armor, and were much worn, even in battle, by the rank and file. The older lads, those above fifteen years, make the journey clad in the full armor of metal and completely helmeted—a feat not to be carelessly undertaken. In each file is a boy carrying a streamer bearing the name of his organization, just as in past days the name of the knight in command was borne by his colorbearer.

With bugles blowing, pennants flying, and dressed in these heavy trappings of war, the Samurai sons traverse the twenty miles to the village shrine consecrated to the greatest of Satsuma's warriors-Shimadzu Yoshihisa. This Yoshihisa, the most notable of a notably warlike family, has been canonized by the Satsuma people for his bravery at the battle of Sekigahara-the Japanese Marston Moor. On this occasion he found himself, through the treachery of a supposed ally, in the midst of a fearful debacle, which threatened to annihilate his whole command. Undaunted, however, Yoshihisa formed a forlorn hope, and with some seventy of his men cut his way through whole regiments of the victorious forces.

It

The Satsuma people have that all too rare worship for the hero even in his defeat. has probably never occurred to them that their lord was defeated. He is their hero, and as such still lives in their ceremonies.

The last of the year's celebrations returns to the austere idea of revenge which we saw characterizing the umbrella burning. On the evening of December 14 the lads assemble in their respective sha, and under the leadership of their seniors read that famous old drama of the Forty-seven Ronin. The reading begins about seven, and is carried on continuously by alternating readers until fifteen small volumes are gone through-usually about four in the morning.

The story of the Forty-seven Ronin is too long for detailed narration here; indeed, it forms a history of itself, and is too well known to foreign readers through Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan" to bear repetition. Suffice it to say that it is a story whose motif lies in a revenge brought about by fortyseven knights after long months had elapsed.

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These Samurai had formerly been attached to the service of a great lord, who, having got into a quarrel at the palace in ancient Tokyo, had attempted to assassinate his enemy. According to the old rules, such an attempt was punished by an enforced suicide and forfeiture of estate. These retainers, ever faithful to their lord, decided on revenge, and in order to divert suspicion became ronin, a sort of condottieri, and scattered all over the Empire. The chief of these knights even went so far in his effort to blind the spies of the enemy as to divorce his wife, purchase a concubine, and frequent the gay quarters of the town, in the hope that word of his dissoluteness would reach Tokyo.

While the leader was in the depths of his dissipation a Satsuma Samurai found him sleeping in a gutter, intoxicated, and, to show his contempt for a creature fallen so low that he refused to revenge his lord, kicked the drunken ronin and spat in his face.

At length the ruse of these men was successful. All suspicion was buried, the large guard which had been maintained in the Tokyo castle was dismissed, and these fortyseven men entered in the dead of night and wrought their vengeance. Having obtained satisfaction, these retainers despatched themselves by hara-kiri and were all buried together in a cemetery which is now visited yearly by thousands of pilgrims.

But it is a forty-eighth grave which interests the sha boys-that of the Satsuma knight who had insulted the drunken leader in the street. Hearing that the dissipation of the chief of the band had been part of the general scheme, this old Satsuma warrior journeyed to the little shrine in the inclosure of the cemetery where they were interred, and, beseeching pardon for his mistake, himself committed hara-kiri.

This, in outline, is the story hundreds of Satsuma youths listen to from the lips of their elders. Many writers have taken occasion to lament the influence that such teaching must have on the children. Yet, withal, it is such as was necessary to meet the demands of the morality of feudal Japan.

Stern training in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, constant attention to the code of Bushido and to a medieval ethics, together with a sterling sense of loyalty to lord and piety towards parents, were the services which these societies of Boy Scouts in Feudal Japan were organized to promote.

Before taking up the play life of the child, let us see if we can determine what play is. There are four view-points in the theory of play, all of which should be considered. The "feeling fit," or overflowing with surplus. energy, is advanced by H. Schiller and Herbert Spencer, while directly opposed to this is the idea that play is an opportunity (Lazarus's theory) afforded for the relaxation. of exhausted powers. Professor Karl Groos claims that play is important in the development of the individual, while, opposing this, Professor G. Stanley Hall explains play as a rehearsing of ancestral activities. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles of Psychology," in upholding the first of these four views, claims that "play is characteristic of nerve processes that the superfluous integration of ganglion cells should be accompanied by an inherited readiness to discharge." This sounds quite technical; it means that on account of the advanced development of man he has more force than is needed in order to digest, breathe, keep the organic processes going, and is able to allow some of his processes longer periods of rest while others are being exercised.

Imitation seems to be quite general in the play of the child, who dramatizes the acts of adults in the dressing of dolls and the building of toy houses; still, imitation cannot be called the universal standard of play. Not imita

tion or superfluous energy, but the life of impulse and instinct alone can make special forms of play comprehensible to us. All that is needed to set the claws of a kitten in motion is to roll a ball of cord toward it, while the full-grown cat starts up at the sight of a mouse. If a father gets upon his hands and knees in the nursery, the child instinctively is ready for a romp. The feeling-fit theory is all right as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Recreation or play appeals to one when one is tired or exhausted and still does not wish to rest or sleep. Play is the diversion of thought from the weightier conflicts of life to the seemingly lighter diversions of the hour. As the strings of a violin and the string of a bow should not always be taut if the instrument is to retain its usefulness, so does man need the relaxation of play. When a student plays a game of baseball or tennis, he tones up his relaxed mental powers at the same time that he finds a means of relieving his accumulated motor impulses, repressed during his work in the clinic, laboratory, or at the drawing-board. Play which disposes of his surplus energy, and, again, which restores his lost powers, is a valuable supplement to the Schiller-Spencer idea, but still does not solve the theory of play. New recreative activity is often closely related to the work of which one is weary, as the changing from one scientific book to another. When almost exhausted from long, continuous walking on the level, I have found diversion and become rested by up-and-down-hill walking, and vice versa. This is due to the fact that different sets of muscles are employed. The swimmer becomes rested by turning over on his back.

While the theory of surplus energy accounts for play in the case of many children when there is no need for recreation, this need may produce play, as illustrated by adults with whom