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Japan's most representative thinker and educationist, as openly declaring that
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It goes without saying that the maintenance of peace and security in society requires a religion. For this purpose any religion will do. I lack a religious nature, and have never believed in any religion. I am thus open to the charge that I am advising others to be religious while I am not so. Yet my conscience does not permit me to clothe myself with religion when I have it not at heart.... Of religions there are several kinds--Buddhism, Christianity, and what not. From my standpoint there is no more difference between those than between green tea and black.... See that the stock is well selected and the prices cheap.... (Japan Herald, September 9, 1897). To this view, however, Fukuzawa did not finally adhere. The Rev. Isaac Dooman, a missionary in Japan who knew him well, testifies to a change that was taking place in his views in later life regarding the value of religion. In an unpublished letter to Mr. Robert Young, of Kobe, Mr. Dooman says that on one occasion, when conversing on the subject of Christianity, Fukuzawa remarked:
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There was a time when I advocated its adoption as a means to elevate our lower classes; but, after finding out that all Christian countries have their own lower classes just as bad, if not worse than ours, I changed my mind. Further reflection, marked by equal candour, may lead the pupils of Fukuzawa to see that nations cannot be led to adore any form of
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by the mere assurance of its indispensableness from leaders who confess they never take any. His view is doubtless shared by those priests concerning whom
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(Dixon, p. 516). In this state of things the Christian thinks he sees his special opportunity. Professor Dixon writes (p. 518), in the manner of the missionary, that
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while rejecting current creeds. The so-called religious instinct is in fact simply the spirit of moral and intellectual seriousness. Mr. Gulick's summing-up, as distinct from his theory and forecast, is as follows:
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For about three hundred years the intelligence of the nation has been dominated by Confucian thought, which rejects active belief in supra-human beings.... The tendency of all persons trained in Confucian classics was towards thoroughgoing skepticism as to divine beings and their relation to this world. For this reason, beyond doubt, has Western agnosticism found so easy an entrance into Japan.... Complete indifference to religion is characteristic of the educated classes of to-day. Japanese and foreigners, Christians and non-Christians alike, unite in this opinion. The impression usually conveyed by this statement, however, is that agnosticism is a new thing in Japan. In point of fact, the old agnosticism is merely reinforced by ... the agnosticism of the West (The Evolution of the Japanese, pp. 286-87). This may be taken as broadly accurate. Cp. the author's paper on
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Freethought in Japan in the Agnostic Annual for 1906. Professor E. H. Parker notes (China and Religion, 1905, p. 263) that
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devoid of devotion as to be capable of building up a fresh cultus to order. It appears that since the so-called Restoration of 1868, when the Imperial House, after more than two centuries of seclusion in Kyoto, was brought from its retirement and the Emperor publicly installed as ruler by right of his divine origin, the sentiment of religious devotion to the Imperial House has been steadily inculcated, reaching its height during the Russo-Japanese War, when the messages of victorious generals and admirals piously ascribed their successes over the enemy to the