Yet, while all this care is lavished on animals, the human being
suffers.[50] Buddhism is kind to the brute, and cruel to man. Until the
influx of western ideas in recent years, the hospital and the orphanage
did not exist in Japan, despite the gentleness and tenderness of Shaka,
who, with all his merits, deserted his wife and babe in order to
enlighten mankind.[51] If Buddhism is not directly responsible for the
existence of that class of Japanese pariahs called _hi-nin_, or
not-human, the name and the idea are borrowed from the sutras; while the
execration of all who prepare or sell the flesh of animals is
persistently taught in the sacred books. These unfortunate bearers of
the human image, during twelve hundred years and until the fiat of the
present illustrious emperor made them citizens, were not reckoned in the
census, nor was the land on which they dwelt measured. The imperial
edict which finally elevated the Eta to citizenship, was suggested by
one whose life, though known to men as that of a Confucian, was probably
hid with Christ, Yokoi Héishiro.[52] The emperor Mutsuhito, 123d of the
line of Japan, born on the day when Perry was on the Mississippi and
ready to sail, placed over these outcast people in 1871, the protecting
aegis of the law.[53] Until that time, the people in this unfortunate
class, numbering probably a million, or, as some say, three millions,
were compelled to live outside of the limits of human habitation, having
no lights which society or the law was bound to respect. They were given
food or drink only when benevolence might be roused; but the donor would
never again touch the vessel in which the offering was made. The
Eta,[54] though in individual cases becoming measurably rich, rotted and
starved, and were made the filth, and off-scouring of the earth, because
they were the butchers, the skinners, the leather workers, and thus
handled dead animals, being made also the executioners and buriers of
the dead. After a quarter of a century the citizens, whose ancestry is