Three men ultimately rescued Japan from the hundred-years-old civil war. They were Norbunaga, a Daimyo or noble, Hideyoshi, a peasant, and Tokugawa lyeyasu, one of the great nobles. By the end of the sixteenth century the whole of Japan was again united. Hideyoshi, the peasant, was one of the ablest statesmen of Japan. But it is said that he was very ugly—short and stumpy with a face like that of an ape.
Having united Japan, these people did not know what to do with their large army. So for want of any other occupation they invaded Korea. But they repented soon enough. The Koreans defeated the Japanese navy and controlled the Sea of Japan between the two countries. They did this largely with the help of a new kind of ship with a roof like the back of a tortoise and with iron plates. These ships were called “Tortoise Boats”. They could be rowed backwards or forwards at will, and the Japanese warships were destroyed by these boats.
Tokugawa lyeyasu, the third of the men named above, managed to profit greatly by the civil wars. So much so that he became vastly rich and owned nearly one-seventh of Japan. It was he who built the city of Yedo in the middle of his possessions. This later became Tokyo. Iyeyasu became Shogun in 1603, and thus began the third and last Shogunate, the Tokugawa Shogunate, which lasted for over 250 years.
Meanwhile the Portuguese had been carrying on trade in a small way. They had no European rivals for quite fifty years, the Spanish coming in 1592, and the Dutch and English even later. Christianity seems to have been introduced by St. Francis Xavier in 1549. Jesuits were allowed to preach, and were even encouraged. This was for political reasons, as the Buddhist monasteries were supposed to be hotbeds of intrigue. For this reason these monks were suppressed and favour was shown to the Christian missionaries. But soon enough the Japanese came to feel that these missionaries were dangerous, and immediately they changed their policy and tried to drive them out. As early as 1587 an anti-Christian decree was issued ordering all missionaries to leave Japan within twenty days on pain of death. This was not aimed at merchants. It was stated that merchants could remain and trade, but if they brought a missionary on their ships, both the ship and the goods in it would be confiscated. This decree was passed for purely political reasons. Hideyoshi scented danger. He felt that the missionaries and their converts might become politically dangerous. And he was not much mistaken.
Soon after this an incident occurred which convinced Hideyoshi that his fears were justified, and enraged him. The Manilla Galleon, which, you may remember, used to go once a year between the Philippines and Spanish America, was driven by a typhoon on to the Japanese coast. The Spanish captain tried to frighten the local Japanese by showing them a map of the world, and especially pointing out the vast possessions of the Spanish King. The captain was asked how Spain had managed to get this huge empire. Nothing so simple, he replied. The missionaries went first, and when there were many converts, soldiers were sent to combine with the converts and overthrow the government. When a report of this reached Hideyoshi he was not over-pleased and became still more bitter against the missionaries. He allowed the Manilla Galleon to go, but he had some of the missionaries and their converts put to death.
When Iyeyasu became Shogun he was more friendly to foreigners. He was especially interested in developing foreign trade, particularly with his own port, Yedo. But after Iyeyasu’s death the persecution of Christians began again. Missionaries were forcibly driven out and Japanese converts were made to give up Christianity. Even the commercial policy changed, so afraid were the Japanese of the political designs of the foreigners. At any cost they wanted to keep the foreigner out.
One can understand this reaction of the Japanese. What surprises one is that they should have been penetrating enough to spot the wolf of imperialism in the sheep’s clothing of religion, even though they had had little intercourse with Europeans. In later years and in other countries, we know well how religion has been exploited by the European Powers for their own aggrandizement.
And now began a unique thing in history. This was the closing up of Japan. Deliberately, the policy of isolation and exclusion was adopted, and, once adopted, it was pursued with amazing thoroughness. The English, not finding themselves welcome, gave up going to Japan in 1623. Next year the Spaniards, who were feared most of all, were deported. It was laid down that only non-Christians could go abroad for trade; and even they could not go to the Philippines. Finally, a dozen years later, in 1636, Japan was sealed up. The Portuguese were expelled; all Japanese, Christians or non-Christians, were forbidden to go abroad for any reason whatsoever; and no Japanese living abroad could return to Japan, on pain of death! Only some Dutch people remained, but they were absolutely forbidden to leave the ports and to go into the interior of the country. In 1641 even these Dutch people were removed to a little island in Nagasaki harbour and were kept almost like prisoners there. Thus, just ninety-nine years after the first Portuguese came, Japan cut off all foreign intercourse and shut herself up.
A Portuguese ship came in 1640 with an embassy asking for the restoration of trade. But there was nothing doing. The Japanese killed the envoys and most of the crew, and left some of the crew alive to go back and report.
For over 200 years Japan was almost completely cut off from the world, even from its neighbours, China and Korea. The few Dutchmen on the island, and an occasional Chinaman, under strict supervision, were the only links with the outer world. This cutting off is a most extraordinary thing. At no period in recorded history, and in no country, is there another example of this. Even mysterious Tibet or Central Africa communicated often enough with their neighbours. It is a dangerous thing to isolate oneself; dangerous both for an individual and for a nation. But Japan survived it, and had internal peace, and recovered from the long wars. And when at last, in 1853, she opened her door and windows again, she performed another extraordinary thing. She went ahead with a rush, made up for lost time, caught up to the European nations, and beat them at their own game.
How dull is the bald outline of history, and how thin and lifeless are the figures that pass through it! Yet sometimes, when one reads a book written in the olden time, life seems to pour into the dead past, and the stage seems to come quite near to us, and living and loving and hating human beings move on it. I have been reading about a charming lady of old Japan, the Lady Murasaki, who lived many hundreds of years ago— long before the civil wars of which I have written in this letter. She has written a long account of her life at the Emperor’s Court in Japan, and as I read extracts from this, with its delightful touches, and intimacies, and courtly futilities, the Lady Murasaki became very real to me, and a vivid picture arose of the limited but artistic world of the Court of old Japan.
82
Europe in Turmoil
August 4, 1932
I have not written these letters to you for many days; it must be nearly two weeks since I wrote. One has moods in prison—as indeed one has in the world outside too—and lately I have felt little inclined to write these letters, which no one sees but myself. They are pinned together and put away to await the time, months or years hence, when perhaps you may see them. Months or years hence, when we meet again, and have a good look at each other, and I am surprised to find how you have grown and changed. We shall have plenty to talk of and to do then, and you will pay little attention to these letters. There will be quite a mountain of them by that time, and how many hundreds of hours of my prison life will be locked up in them!
But still I shall carry on with these letters and add to the pile of those already written. Perhaps they may interest you; and certainly they interest me.
We have been in Asia for some little time now, and we have followed her story in India, in Malaysia, and in China and Japan. We left Europe, rather suddenly, just when it was waking up and beginning to get interesting. There was a “renaissance”, a rebirth. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that there was a new birth, because the Europe which we find developing in the sixteenth century was no copy of any older period. It
was a new thing, or at least an old thing with an entirely new covering on it.
Everywhere in Europe there is turmoil and restlessness, and a bursting out of an enclosed place. For many hundreds of years a social and economic structure modelled on feudal lines had covered Europe and held it in its grip. For a while this shell prevented growth. But the shell was cracking now in many places. Columbus and Vasco da Gama and the early discoverers of the sea-routes broke through the shell, and the sudden and astounding wealth of Spain and Portugal from the Americas and the East dazzled Europe and hastened the change. Europe began to look beyond its narrow waters and to think in terms of the world. Great possibilities of world trade and dominion opened out. The bourgeoisie grew more powerful, and feudalism became more and more of a hindrance in western Europe.
Feudalism was already out of date. The essence of this system had been the shameless exploitation of the peasantry. There had been forced labour, unpaid work, all manner of special dues and payments to the lord, and this lord himself was the judge. The suffering of the peasantry had been so great that, as we have seen, peasant riots and wars had broken out frequently. These peasant wars spread and became more and more frequent, and the economic revolution which took place in many parts of Europe, replacing the feudal system with the middle class or bourgeois State, followed, and was largely brought about by these agrarian revolts and jacqueries.
But do not think that these changes were brought about quickly. They took long, and for scores of years civil war raged in Europe. A great part of Europe was, indeed, ruined by these wars. They were not only peasant wars, but, as we shall see, religious wars between Protestant and Catholic, national wars of freedom, as in the Netherlands, and the revolt of the bourgeoisie against the absolute power of the king. All this sounds very confusing, does it not? Well, it is confusing and complicated. But if we look at the big events and movements, we shall be able to make something out of it.
The first thing to remember is that there was great distress and suffering among the peasantry, which resulted in the peasant wars. The second thing which we must note is the rise of the bourgeoisie and the growth of the productive forces. More labour was applied in producing things and there was more trade. The third thing to note is the fact that the Church was the greatest of the landowners. It was a tremendous vested interest, and was thus, of course, very much interested in the feudal system continuing. It wanted no economic change which might deprive it of a great deal of its wealth and property. Thus when the religious revolt from Rome took place, it fitted in with the economic revolution.
This great economic revolution was accompanied by, or followed by, changes in all directions—social, religious, political. If you take a distant and large enough view of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, you will be able to make out how all these activities and movements and changes were inter-related and connected together. Usually three great movements of this period are emphasized— Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution. But behind all these, remember, was the economic distress and turmoil leading to the economic revolution, which was far the most important of all the changes.
The Renaissance was the rebirth of learning—the growth of art and science, and literature, and the languages of European countries. The Reformation was a revolt against the Roman Church. It was a popular revolt against the corruption of the Church; it was also a revolt of the princes of Europe against the claims of the Pope to lord it over them; and thirdly it was an attempt to reform the Church from within. Revolution was the political struggle of the bourgeoisie to control the kings and limit their power.
Behind all these movements lay another factor—printing. You will remember that the Arabs learned paper-making from the Chinese and Europe learnt it from the Arabs. Still, it took a long time before paper was cheap and abundant. Towards the end of the fifteenth century books began to be printed in various parts of Europe—in Holland, Italy, England, Hungary, etc. Try to think of what the world was like before paper and printing became common. We are so used to books and paper and printing now that a world without them is most difficult to imagine. Without printed books it is almost impossible to teach many people even reading and writing. Books have to be copied out laboriously by hand and can reach only a small number of people. Teaching has to be largely oral, and students have to learn everything by heart. You see that even now in some primitive maktabs and pathshalas.
With the coming of paper and printing an enormous change takes place. Printed books appear—school books and others. Very soon there are many people who can read and write. The more people read, the more they think (but this applies to the reading of thoughtful books, not to much of the trash that appears today). And the more one thinks, the more one begins to examine existing conditions and to criticize them. And this often leads to a challenge of the existing order. Ignorance is always afraid of change. It fears the unknown and sticks to its rut, however miserable it may be there. In its blindness it stumbles on anyhow. But with right reading comes a measure of knowledge, and the eyes are partly opened.
It was this opening of the eyes by means of paper and printing that helped tremendously all these great movements of which we have been speaking. Among the earliest books to be printed were Bibles, and many persons who had only heard the Latin text of the Bible till then and had not understood it, were now able to read the book in their own language. This reading often made them very critical and somewhat independent of the priests. School books also appeared in large numbers. From this time onwards we find that the languages of Europe develop rapidly. Till now Latin had overshadowed them.
The history of Europe is full of the names of great men during this period. We shall come across some of them later. Always, when a country or continent breaks through the shell which has prevented growth, it shoots ahead in many directions. We find this in Europe, and the story of Europe at this period is most interesting and instructive because of the economic and other great changes that take place. Compare it to the history of India, or even of China during the same period. As I have told you, both these countries were ahead of Europe in many ways at the time. And yet there is a passivity about their history as compared with the dynamic nature of European history of this period. There are great rulers and great men in India and China and a high degree of culture, but, and especially so in India, the masses seem to be spiritless and passive. They put up with changes of rulers without any great objection. They seem to have been broken in, and have become too much used to obedience to challenge authority. Thus their history, though interesting occasionally, is more a record of events and rulers than of popular movements. I am not sure how far this is true of China; but of India it certainly has been true for many hundred years. And all the ills that have come to India during this period have been due to this unhappy condition of our people.
Another tendency to be noticed in India is the desire to look back and not forward; to the heights we once occupied and not to the heights we hope to occupy. And so our people sighed for the past, and, instead of getting a move on, obeyed anyone who chose to order them about. Ultimately empires rest not so much on their strength as on the servility of the people over whom they dominate.
83
The Renaissance
August 5, 1932
Out of the turmoil and travail that were spreading all over Europe rose the fine flower of the Renaissance. It grew in the soil of Italy first, but it looked across the centuries to old Greece for inspiration and nourishment. From Greece it took its love of beauty, and added to the beauty of bodily form something that was deeper, that came from the mind and was of the spirit. It was an urban growth, and the cities of northern Italy gave shelter to it. In particular, Florence was the home of the early Renaissance.
Florence had already produced, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Dante and Petrarch, the two great poets of the Italian language. During the Middle Ages it was for a long time the financial capital of Europe, where the big money-lender
s congregated. It was a little republic of rich and not very admirable people, who often ill-treated their own great men. “Fickle Florence”, it has been called. But, in spite of the money-lenders and the despots and tyrants, this city produced, in the second half of the fifteenth century, three remarkable men: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. All three of them were very great artists and painters; Leonardo and Michelangelo were great in other directions also. Michelangelo was a wonderful sculptor, hewing mighty figures out of the solid marble; and he was a great architect, and the mighty Cathedral of St. Peter’s in Rome was largely fashioned by him. He lived to a tremendous age—nearly ninety—and almost to his dying day he laboured at St. Peter’s. He was an unhappy man, always seeking for something behind the surface of things, always thinking, always attempting amazing tasks. “One paints with his head, not with his hands,” he once said.
Leonardo was the oldest of the three, and in many ways the most wonderful. Indeed, he was the most remarkable man of his age, and, remember, it was an age which produced many great men. A very great painter and sculptor, he was also a great thinker and scientist. Always experimenting, always probing, and trying to find out the reason for things, he was the first of the great scientists that have laid the foundations of modern science. “Kindly nature,” he said, “sees to it that you may find something to learn everywhere in the world.” He was a self-taught man, and began teaching himself Latin and mathematics at the age of thirty. He became a great engineer also, and he was the first to discover that blood circulated through the body. He was fascinated by the structure of the body. “Coarse people,” he said, “of bad habits and shallow judgments do not deserve so beautiful an instrument, such a complex anatomical equipment, as the human body. They should merely have a sack for taking in food and letting it out again, for they are nothing but an alimentary canal!” He was himself a vegetarian, and was very fond of animals. A habit of his was to buy caged birds in the market and set them free immediately.
Glimpses of World History Page 41
