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Three brothers were born in the 1850s in England to Rear Admiral William Charles Chamberlain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C ... hamberlain
- One followed his father in the Royal Navy becoming a Lieutenant Commander.
- One taught at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy.
- One become an influential proponent of Aryan supremacy and prominent war time propagandist for Germany.
This is the first of what will be a couple of posts presenting some bits and pieces about the Chamberlain brothers’ lives and how social engineering relates to them.
To begin, the middle son, Henry Chamberlain, joined the Navy and rose to the position of Lieutenant Commander. He was not a very prominent person apparently. At least, there is very little information about him to be easily found online.
The eldest brother, Basil Hall Chamberlain, lived in Japan from 1873 for 38 years. During this time he would have observed, and assisted to some degree, Japan’s (relatively) rapid transformation into an industrial powerhouse.
He was apparently hired by the Japanese government for “(his) specialized knowledge and skill to assist in the modernization” (Wakip).
He taught at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and afterwards at Tokyo Imperial University as a professor. What he actually taught requires further research.
Of his written works one title suggestive of social engineering caught my attention. The piece, (excerpts below with some commentary), does indeed discuss such engineering, and though it is focused on that of imperial Japan, some of his observations have quite universal relevance.
The full text (11 pages) can be found here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25 ... mages.html
THE INVENTION OF A NEW RELIGION
By B. H. Chamberlain
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE AND PHILOLOGY
AT THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO, JAPAN 1912
[...] [A]gnostic Japan is teaching us at this very hour how religions are sometimes manufactured for a special end—to subserve practical worldly purposes.
Mikado-worship and Japan-worship—for that is the new Japanese religion—is, of course, no spontaneously generated phenomenon. [...] [T]he twentieth-century Japanese religion of loyalty and patriotism is quite new, for in it pre-existing ideas have been sifted, altered, freshly compounded, turned to new uses, and have found a new centre of gravity. Not only is it new, it is not yet completed; it is still in process of being consciously or semi-consciously put together by the official class, in order to serve the interests of that class, and, incidentally, the interests of the nation at large. The Japanese bureaucracy is a body greatly to be admired.
[...] [P]atriotic sentiment was appealed to through the throne, whose hoary antiquity had ever been a source of pride to Japanese literati, [...]. Shinto, a primitive nature cult, which had fallen into discredit, was taken out of its cupboard and dusted. The common people, it is true, continued to place their affections on Buddhism, the popular festivals were Buddhist, Buddhist also the temples where they buried their dead. The governing class determined to change all this. They insisted on the Shinto doctrine that the Mikado descends in direct succession from the native Goddess of the Sun, and that He himself is a living God on earth who justly claims the absolute fealty of his subjects. Such things as laws and constitutions are but free gifts on His part, not in any sense popular rights. Of course, the ministers and officials, high and low, who carry on His government, are to be regarded not as public servants, but rather as executants of supreme—one might say supernatural—authority. Shinto, because connected with the Imperial Family, is to be alone honoured. [...] [T]he practice was established in all schools of bowing down several times yearly before the Emperor's picture.
The latter does not seem particularly notable. “God Save the Queen” was Australia’s national anthem, sung in schools and elsewhere, right up until 1984. There was no bowing in my primary school, but the Queen’s portrait was, (maybe still is), in a prime position on the library wall.
Meanwhile Japanese polities had prospered; her warriors had gained great victories. Enormous was the prestige thus accruing to Imperialism and to the rejuvenated Shinto cult. All military successes were ascribed to the miraculous influence of the Emperor's virtue, and to the virtues of His Imperial and divine ancestors—that is, of former Emperors and of Shinto deities. [...] The new legend is enforced wherever feasible—for instance, by means of a new set of festivals celebrating Imperial official events.
But the schools are the great strongholds of the new propaganda. History is so taught to the young as to focus everything upon Imperialism , and to diminish as far as possible the contrast between ancient and modern conditions. The same is true of the instruction given to army and navy recruits.
[...]
Woe to the native professor who strays from the path of orthodoxy. His wife and children [...] will starve.
[...]
Never, it is alleged, has Japan been soiled by the disobedient and rebellious acts common in other countries; while at the same time the Japanese nation, sharing to some extent in the supernatural virtues of its rulers, has been distinguished by a high-minded chivalry called Bushido, unknown in inferior lands.
After debunking the myth of an obedient and placid populace, the author turns to Bushido which he says is...
[...] so modern a thing [...] that neither Kaempfer, Siebold, Satow, nor Rein—all men knowing their Japan by heart—ever once allude to it in their voluminous writings. The cause of their silence is not far to seek: Bushido was unknown until a decade or two ago! THE VERY WORD APPEARS IN NO DICTIONARY, NATIVE OR FOREIGN, BEFORE THE YEAR 1900. Chivalrous individuals of course existed in Japan, as in all countries at every period; but Bushido, as an institution or a code of rules, has never existed. The accounts given of it have been fabricated out of whole cloth, chiefly for foreign consumption.
[...]
Thus, within the space of a short lifetime, the new Japanese religion of loyalty and patriotism has emerged into the light of day. The feats accomplished during the late war with Russia show that the simple ideal which it offers is capable of inspiring great deeds. From a certain point of view the nation may be congratulated on its new possession.
The new Japanese religion consists, in its present early stage, of worship of the sacrosanct Imperial Person and of His Divine Ancestors, of implicit obedience to Him as head of the army (a position, by the way, opposed to all former Japanese ideas, according to which the Court was essentially civilian); furthermore, of a corresponding belief that Japan is as far superior to the common ruck of nations as the Mikado is divinely superior to the common ruck of kings and emperors. [...] For the inhabitants of "the Land of the Gods" to take any notice of such creatures by adopting a few of their trifling mechanical inventions is an act of gracious condescension.
As a matter of fact, the spread of the new ideas has been easy, because a large class derives power from their diffusion, while to oppose them is the business of no one in particular. Moreover, the disinterested love of truth for its own sake is rare; the patience to unearth it is rarer still, especially in the East. Patriotism, too, is a mighty engine working in the interests of credulity. How should men not believe in a system that produces such excellent practical results, a system which has united all the scattered elements of national feeling into one focus, and has thus created a powerful instrument for the attainment of national aims?
Likewise, how should we not believe in a system that has sent men to the moon?
Meanwhile a generation is growing up which does not so much as suspect that its cherished beliefs are inventions of yesterday.
[...]
One might have imagined that Japan's new religionists would have experienced some difficulty in persuading foreign nations of the truth of their dogmas. Things have fallen out otherwise. [...]
The foreigner cannot refuse the bolus thus artfully forced down his throat. He is not suspicious by nature. How should he imagine that people who make such positive statements about their own country are merely exploiting his credulity? HE has reached a stage of culture where such mythopoeia has become impossible. On the other hand, to control information by consulting original sources lies beyond his capacity.
The result of all this is that, whereas the Japanese know everything that it imports them to know about us, Europeans cannot know much about them, such information as they receive being always belated, necessarily meagre, and mostly adulterated to serve Japanese interests. International relations placed—and, we repeat it, inevitably placed—on this footing resemble a boxing match in which one of the contestants should have his hands tied. But the metaphor fails in an essential point, as metaphors are apt to do—the hand-tied man does not realise the disadvantage under which he labours. He thinks himself as free as his opponent.
Europe is easily accessible whereas Japan is secretive and guarded by a near impenetrable language. Kind of like how Communism and its agents were presented as grave threats to the free and open democracies of the west while an iron curtain effectively kept westerners out of the USSR.
The ideas in this last paragraph are as close as Chamberlain comes to presenting Japan as a rival. That was to come later -this was still the “build up of Japan” phase.
Thus does it come about that the neo-Japanese myths concerning dates, and Emperors, and heroes, and astonishing national virtues already begin to find their way into popular English text-books, current literature, and even grave books of reference. The Japanese governing class has willed it so, and in such matters the Japanese governing class can enforce its will abroad as well as at home. The statement may sound paradoxical. Study the question carefully, and you will find that it is simply true.
Really? The Japanese had craftily manufactured a glowing impression of Japan in people living abroad? If true, this could not have happened without the western media ignoring, if not outright supporting, this propaganda. They could have easily “corrected the record” if inclined.
What is happening in Japan to-day is evidently exceptional. Normal religious and political change does not proceed in that manner; it proceeds by imperceptible degrees.
[...]
We modern Westerners love individual liberty, and the educated among us love to let the sunlight of criticism into every nook and cranny of every subject. Freedom and scientific accuracy are our gods.* But Japanese officialdom acts quite naturally, after its kind, in not allowing the light to be let in, because the roots of the faith it has planted need darkness in which to grow and spread. No religion can live which is subjected to critical scrutiny.
Thus also are explained the rigours of the Japanese bureaucracy against the native liberals, who, in its eyes, appear, not simply as political opponents, but as traitors to the chosen people—sacrilegious heretics defying the authority of the One and Only True Church.
"But," you will say, "this indignation must be mere pretence. Not even officials can be so stupid as to believe in things which they have themselves invented." We venture to think that you are wrong here. People can always believe that which it is greatly to their interest to believe. Thousands of excellent persons in our own society cling to the doctrine of a future life on no stronger evidence. It is enormously important to the Japanese ruling class that the mental attitude sketched above should become universal among their countrymen. Accordingly, they achieve the apparently impossible. "We believe in it," said one of them to us recently—"we believe in it, although we know that it is not true."
This piece positions the author as a dispassionate, but nevertheless somewhat admiring, observer of a ruling system that is skillfully and deceitfully motivating the masses towards certain objectives - for the welfare of the nation of course.
Yet, likewise, at this very time, Britain was similarly marching their masses towards the Great War. Understanding social engineering so well, is it plausible that Basil Hall Chamberlain was blind to this parallel?
In 1912, when this piece was published, Chamberlain had just finished his long teaching stint in Japan and returned to Europe. Perhaps he was unaware of these developments at home - his time abroad kept him out of the loop and his brothers and friends did not keep him up to speed. Or, perhaps he did know, but naively did not regard British propaganda as propaganda at all.
Another possibility is that he well understood what was going on and therefore was deliberately deceiving readers into believing that social engineering / propaganda is something that only goes on in other places (I do get this impression - see * above).
In the next post, I hope to illustrate how the most well known of the brothers was, in his case, very clearly, helping to maneuver Germany, into war - notwithstanding his family’s strong British ties.
