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diff --git a/34341-h/34341-h.htm b/34341-h/34341-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..20327b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/34341-h/34341-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2296 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Japanese Spirit, by Okakura-Yoshisaburo. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 34341 ***</div> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#PREFACE"><b>PREFACE</b></a><br /> +<a href="#INTRODUCTION"><b>INTRODUCTION</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_JAPANESE_SPIRIT"><b>THE JAPANESE SPIRIT.</b></a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + +<h1>THE JAPANESE SPIRIT</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>OKAKURA-YOSHISABURO</h2> + +<h3>WITH AN INTRODUCTION</h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>GEORGE MEREDITH</h3> + +<h4>NEW YORK</h4> + +<h4>JAMES POTT & CO.</h4> + +<h4>1905</h4> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<h5>TO MY BROTHER</h5> + +<p style="margin-left: 18em;"> +<i>Bellario</i> Sir, if I have made<br /> +A fault in ignorance, instruct my youth:<br /> +I shall be willing, if not able, to learn:<br /> +Age and experience will adorn my mind<br /> +With larger knowledge; and if I have done<br /> +A wilful fault, think me not past all hope<br /> +For once.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Philaster</i>, Act. II. Sc. I.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>The following pages owe their existence to Mr. Martin White, whose keen +interest in comparative sociology led to the opening of special courses +for its investigation in the University of London.</p> + +<p>My thanks are due to Mr. P.J. Hartog, Academic Registrar of the +University, as well as to Dr. and Mrs. E.R. Edwards, who inspired me +with the courage to take the present task on my inexperienced shoulders. +But above all I render the expression of my deepest obligation to +Professor Walter Rippmann. Had it not been for his friendly interest and +help, I would not have been able thus to come before an English public. +For the peculiarities of thought and language, which, if nothing else, +might at least make the booklet worthy of a perusal, I naturally assume +the full responsibility myself.</p> + +<p>With these prefatory words, I venture to submit this essay to the +lenient reception of my readers.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2> + + +<p>We have had illuminating books upon Japan. Those of Lafcadio Hearn will +always be remembered for the poetry he brought in them to bear upon the +poetic aspects of the country and the people. Buddhism had a fascination +for him, as it had for Mr. Fielding in his remarkable book on the +practice of this religion in Burma.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> There is also the work of Captain +Brinkley, to which we are largely indebted.</p> + +<p>These Lectures by a son of the land, delivered at the University of +London, are compendious and explicit in a degree that enables us to form +a summary of much that has been otherwise partially obscure, so that we +get nearer to the secret of this singular race than we have had the +chance of doing before. He traces the course of Confucianism, Laoism, +Shintoism, in the instruction it has given to his countrymen for the +practice of virtue, as to which Lao-tze informs us with a piece of +'Chinese metaphysics' that can be had without having recourse to the +dictionary: '<i>Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore it has virtue. +Inferior virtue never loses sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue. +Superior virtue is non-assertive and without pretension. Inferior virtue +asserts and makes pretensions.</i>' It is childishly subtle and easy to be +understood of a young people in whose minds Buddhism and Shintoism +formed a part.</p> + +<p>The Japanese have had the advantage of possessing a native Nobility who +were true nobles, not invaders and subjugators. They were, in the +highest sense, men of honor to whom, before the time of this dreadful +war, Hara-kiri was an imperative resource, under the smallest suspicion +of disgrace. How rigidly they understood and practised Virtue, in the +sense above cited, is exemplified in the way they renounced their +privileges for the sake of the commonweal when the gates of Japan were +thrown open to the West.</p> + +<p>Bushido, or the 'way of the Samurai,' has become almost an English word, +so greatly has it impressed us with the principle of renunciation on +behalf of the Country's welfare. This splendid conception of duty has +been displayed again and again at Port Arthur and on the fields of +Manchuria, not only by the Samurai, but by a glorious commonalty imbued +with the spirit of their chiefs.</p> + +<p>All this is shown clearly by Professor Okakura in this valuable book.</p> + +<p>It proves to general comprehension that such a people must be +unconquerable even if temporarily defeated; and that is not the present +prospect of things. Who could conquer a race of forty millions having +the contempt of death when their country's inviolability is at stake! +Death, moreover, is despised by them because they do not believe in it. +'The departed, although invisible, are thought to be leading their +ethereal life in the same world in much the same state as that to which +they had been accustomed while on earth.' And so, 'when the father of a +Japanese family begins a journey of any length, the raised part of his +room will be made sacred to his memory during his temporary absence; his +family will gather in front of it and think of him, expressing their +devotion and love in words and gifts in kind. In the hundreds of +thousands of families that have some one or other of their members +fighting for the nation in this dreadful war, there will not be even one +solitary house where the mother, wife, or sister is not practising this +simple rite of endearment for the beloved and absent member of the +family.' Spartans in the fight, Stoics in their grief.</p> + +<p>Concerning the foolish talk of the Yellow Peril, a studious perusal of +this book will show it to be fatuous. It is at least unlikely in an +extreme degree that such a people, reckless of life though they be in +front of danger, but Epicurean in their wholesome love of pleasure and +pursuit of beauty, will be inflated to insanity by the success of their +arms. Those writers who have seen something malignant and inimical +behind their gracious politeness, have been mere visitors on the fringe +of the land, alarmed by their skill in manufacturing weapons and +explosives—for they are inventive as well as imitative, a people not to +be trifled with; but this was because their instinct as well as their +emissaries warned them of a pressing need for the means of war. Japan +and China have had experience of Western nations, and that is at the +conscience of suspicious minds.</p> + +<p>It may be foreseen that when the end has come, the Kaiser, always +honourably eager for the influence of his people, will draw a glove over +the historic 'Mailed Fist' and offer it to them frankly. It will surely +be accepted, and that of France, we may hope; Russia as well. England is +her ally—to remain so, we trust; America is her friend. She has, in +fact, won the admiration of Friend and Foe alike.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 30em;">GEORGE MEREDITH.</span><br /> +<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_JAPANESE_SPIRIT" id="THE_JAPANESE_SPIRIT"></a>THE JAPANESE SPIRIT.</h2> + + +<p>Since the end of the thirteenth century, when Marco Polo, on his return +to Venice, wrote about 'Cipango,' an island, as he stated, '1500 miles +off the coast of China, fabulously rich, and inhabited by people of +agreeable manners,' many a Western pen has been wielded to tell all +kinds of tales concerning the Land of the Rising Sun. Her long +seclusion; her anxious care to guard inviolate the simple faith which +had been gravely threatened by the Roman Church; her hearty welcome of +the honoured guests from the West, after centuries of independent +growth; the sudden, almost pathetic, changes she has gone through in the +past forty years in order to equip herself for a place on the world's +stage where powers play their game of balance; the lessons she lately +taught the still slumbering China through the mouths of thundering +cannon: all this has called into existence the expression of opinions +and comments of very varying merit and tone; and especially since the +out-break of the present war, when the daily news from the scenes of +action, where my brethren are fighting for the cause of wronged justice +and menaced liberty, is showing the world page after page of patriotism +and loyalty, written unmistakably in the crimson letters of heroes' +blood,—all this has given occasion to Europe and America to think the +matter over afresh. Here you have at least a nation different in her +development from any existing people in the Occident. Governed from time +immemorial by the immediate descendants of the Sun-Goddess, whose +merciful rule early taught us to offer them our voluntary tribute of +devotion and love, we have based our social system on filial piety, that +necessary outcome of ancestor-worship which presupposes altruism on the +one hand, and on the other loyalty and love of the fatherland. Different +doctrines of religion and morality have found their way from their +continental homes to the silvery shores of the Land of the Gods, only to +render their several services towards consolidating and widening the +so-called 'Divine Path,' that national cult whose unwritten tenets have +lurked for thousands of years hidden in the most sacred corner of our +hearts, whose pulse is ever beating its rhythm of patriotism and +loyalty. Buddhist metaphysics, Confucian and Taoist philosophy, have +been fused together in the furnace of Shintoism for fifteen centuries +and a half, and that apart from the outer world, in the island home of +Japan, where the blue sky looks down on gay blossoms and gracefully +sloping mountains. The final amalgamation of these forces produces, +among other results, the works of art and the feats of bravery now +before you, each bearing the ineffaceable hall-marks of Japan's past +history. Surely here you are face to face with a people worthy of +serious investigation, not only from the disinterested point of view of +a folk-psychologist. It is a study which will open to any impartial +observer a new horizon, more so than would be the case if he attempted +the sociological interpretation of a nation the history of whose +development was almost identical with that of his own. Here he meets +totally different sets of things with totally different ways of looking +at them; and this gives him ample occasion to realise the fact that +human thought and action may evolve in several forms and through several +channels before they reach their respective culmination where they all, +regardless of their original differences, melt into the common sea of +truth.</p> + +<p>But this simple fact that 'God fulfills Himself in many ways,' as your +Tennyson has it, so necessary to ensure freedom from national bigotry +and conventional ignorance, so necessary too for a proper understanding +of oneself as the cumulative product of a nation's history, has not +always been kept in mind, even by those otherwise well-meaning authors, +whose works have some charm as descriptive writing, but give only a +superficial and often misleading account of the inner life of the +nation. True, a great deal of excellent work has been achieved by a +number of scholars of lasting merit, from Kaempfe's memorable work first +published in its English translation as early as 1727, down to the +admirable <i>Interpretation</i> written last year by the late Mr. Lafcadio +Hearn, in whose death Japan lost one of her most precious friends, +possessing as he did the scholar's insight and the poet's pen, two +heavenly gifts seldom found united in a single man. It is mainly through +the remarkable labour of two learned bodies, the Asiatic Society of +Japan, and the <i>Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde +Ostasiens</i>, both with their headquarters in Tôkyô—in whose +indefatigable researches the 'Japan Society' in this city has ably +joined since 1892—that most valuable data have been constantly brought +to light, furnishing for future students sure bases for wider +generalizations. But owing to the numerous hindrances—some of which +look almost insurmountable to the Western investigator—a fair synthetic +interpretation of Japan as a nation, explaining all the important forces +that underlie the psychic and physical phenomena, still remains to be +written. The most formidable of the difficulties which meet a European +or American student at the very threshold of his researches is the +totally different construction of Japanese society, a difficulty which +makes it impossible to understand properly any set of the phenomena +belonging to it apart from the others which surround them. One could as +well cut a single mesh from a net without prejudice to the neighbouring +ones! The proper understanding of things Japanese therefore presupposes +freedom from your conventional philosophy of life, and the power of +viewing things through other people's eyes.</p> + +<p>Besides this obstacle, there are many others; for example, that of the +language. Like most other nations in the East, we have been accustomed, +up to this very day, to use a written language, divided within itself +into several styles, which is considerably different from the +vernacular. To make this state of things still more complicated, Chinese +characters are profusely resorted to in the native writings, and are +used not only as so many ideographs for words of Chinese origin, but +also to represent native words. To make confusion worse confounded, they +are not infrequently used as pure phonetic symbols without any further +meaning attaching to them. So one and the same sign may be read in half +a dozen different ways, according to the hints, more or less sure, given +by the context. All this makes the study of Japanese immensely +difficult. It is difficult even for a Japanese with the best +opportunities; a hundred times more so, then, for a Western scholar who, +if he cares to study the subject at first hand at all, begins this +study, comparatively speaking, late in life, when his memory has +well-nigh lost the capacity of bearing such an enormous burden!</p> + +<p>Still, there have been many Western scholars who, nothing daunted by the +above-mentioned hindrances, have done much valuable work. English names +like those of Sir E. Satow, G.W. Aston, B.H. Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn +are to be gratefully remembered by all future students in this field of +inquiry, as well as such German scholars as Dr. Baelz and Dr. Florenz. +Leaving the enumeration of general works on Japan, whose name is legion, +for some other time, let me mention one or two of those works of +reference which a would-be English scholar of Japanese matters might +find very useful. First of all Mr. B.H. Chamberlain's <i>Things +Japanese</i>—a book which gave birth to Mr. J.D. Hall's equally +indispensable <i>Things Chinese</i>—containing in cyclopædic form a mine of +information about Japan. Dr. Wenckstern's painstaking <i>Japanese +Bibliography</i>, with M. de Losny's earlier attempt as a supplement, gives +you the list of all writings on Japan in European tongues that have +appeared up to 1895. For those who want good books on the Japanese +language, Mr. Aston's <i>Grammar of the Japanese Written Language</i>, Mr. +Chamberlain's <i>Handbook of Colloquial Japanese</i>, as well as the same +author's <i>Monzi-no-Shirubi, a Practical Introduction to the Study of the +Japanese Writing</i>, are the best. As for books on the subject from the +pen of the Japanese themselves, Dr. Nitobe's <i>Bushido, Explanations of +the Japanese Thought</i>, and my brother K. Okakura's <i>Ideals of the East</i>, +besides a volume by several well-known Japanese, entitled <i>Japan by the +Japanese</i>, are to be specially mentioned.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>What I myself propose to do in this essay is to give to the best of my +ability, and so far as is possible with the scanty knowledge and the +limited space at my disposal, a simple statement in plain language of +what I think to be the fundamental truths necessary for the proper +understanding of my fatherland. I am not vain enough to attempt any +original solution of the old difficulty; knowing as I do my own +deficiencies, I should be well satisfied if I could manage to give you +some kind of general introduction to the Japanese views of life.</p> + +<p>So much for the preliminary remarks. Let us now take a step further and +see what factors are to be considered as the bases of modern Japan.</p> + +<p>'To which race do the Japanese belong?' is the first question asked by +any one who wants to approach our subject from the historical point of +view. Unfortunately not much is known as yet about our place in racial +science. If we do not take into account the inhabitants of the newly +annexed island of Formosa, we have, roughly speaking, two very different +races in our whole archipelago—the hairy Aino and the ruling Yamato +race, the former being the supposed aborigines, physically sturdy and +well developed, with their characteristic abundant growth of hair, who +are at present to be found only in the Yezo island in the northern +extremity of Japan, and whose number, notwithstanding all the care of +our government, is fast dwindling, the sum total being not much more +than 15,000. The Aino have a tradition that the land had been occupied +before them by another race of dwarfish stature called Koropokguru, who +are identified by some scholars with those primitive pit-dwellers known +in our history as Tuchigumo,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> whose traces, although scanty, are still +to be met with in various parts of Yezo. Anyhow, we see at the first +dawn of history the aborigines gradually receding before the conquering +Yamato race, who are found steadily pushing on towards the northeast, +and who finally established themselves as a ruling body under the divine +banner of the first emperor Jimmu, from whose accession we reckon our +era, the present year being the 2565th, according to our recognised way +of counting dates.</p> + +<p>Suggestions, audacious rather than strictly scientific, have been put +forward as to the original home both of the Aino and the Japanese. The +Rev. I. Dooman, for instance, proposed in his paper read before the +meeting of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1897 to derive both from the +people who had been living, according to him, on both sides of the great +Himalayan range. 'The Aino,' he says, 'the first inhabitants of these +(Japanese) islands, belong to the South Himalayan Centre; while the +Japanese, the second comers, belong to the North Himalayan, commonly +called Altaic races.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> But in face of the scanty knowledge at our +command about the respective sets of people in question, such wholesale +conjecture had better be postponed until some later time, when further +research shall have supplied surer data for our speculations. As regards +the Aino, we must for the present say, on the authority of Mr. +Chamberlain, that, remembering how the Aino race is isolated from all +other living races by its hairiness and by the extraordinary flattening +of the tibia and humerus, it is not strange to find the language +isolated too.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<p>With respect to the Japanese proper, the only thing known about their +racial affinity is the theory proposed by the German scholar Dr. Baelz, +as the result of his elaborate measurements both of living specimens and +skeletons.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> He considers the Yamato race to belong to the Mongolian +stock of the Asiatic continent, from where they proceeded to Japan by +way of the Corean peninsula. There are two distinct types noticeable +among them at present, one characterised by a delicate, refined +appearance, with oval face, rather oblique eyes, slightly Roman nose, +and a frame not vigorous yet well proportioned; the other marked out by +broader face, projecting cheek bones, flat nose, and horizontal eyes, +while the body is more robust and muscular, though not so well +proportioned and regular. The former is to be met with among the better +classes and in the southern parts of Japan, while the specimens of the +latter are found rather among the labouring population, and are more +abundant in the northern provinces. This difference of types, +aristocratic and plebeian, which is still more conspicuous among the +fair sex, is with good reason attributed to the two-fold wave of +Mongolian emigration which reached our island in prehistoric times. The +first emigrants, consisting of coarser tribes of the Mongolian race, +landed most probably on the northern coast of the main island somewhere +in the present Idzumo province, and settled down there, while the second +wave broke on the shores of Kyûshû. These emigrants seem to have +belonged to the more refined branch of the great Mongolian stock. This +hypothesis is borne out by our mythology, which divides itself into two +cycles, one centring at Idzumo and the other at Kyûshû, and which tell +us how the great-grandfather of the first great emperor Jimmu descended +from heaven on to the peak of the mountain Takachiho in Hyûga in Kyûshû. +Accompanied by his brother, he started from this spot on his march of +conquering migration to Yamato, fighting and subduing on his way tribes +who on the continent were once his kith and kin.</p> + +<p>It might perhaps interest you to know something of our prevailing idea +of personal beauty, especially as, in such a homogeneous nation as the +Japanese, ruled from time immemorial by one and the same line of +dynasty, it may help us to make some vague conjectures as to the +physical appearances of at least one of those continental tribes out of +which our nation has been formed. The standard of beauty naturally +fluctuates a little according to sex and locality. In a lady, for +example, mildness and grace are, generally speaking, preferred to that +strength or manliness of expression which would be thought more becoming +in her brother. Tôkyô again does not put so much stress on the +fleshiness of limbs and face as does Kyôto. But, as a whole, there is +only one ideal throughout the Empire. So let me try to enumerate all the +qualities usually considered necessary to make a beautiful woman. She is +to possess a body not much exceeding five feet in height, with +comparatively fair skin and proportionately well-developed limbs; a head +covered with long, thick, and jet-black hair; an oval face with a +straight nose, high and narrow; rather large eyes, with large deep-brown +pupils and thick eyelashes; a small mouth, hiding behind its red, but +not thin, lips, even rows of small white teeth; ears not altogether +small; and long and thick eyebrows forming two horizontal but slightly +curved lines, with a space left between them and the eyes. Of the four +ways in which hair can grow round the upper edge of the forehead, viz., +horned, square, round, and Fuji-shaped, one of the last two is +preferred, a very high as well as a very low forehead being considered +not attractive.</p> + +<p>Such are, roughly speaking, the elements of Japanese female beauty. Eyes +and eyebrows with the outer ends turning considerably upwards, with +which your artists depict us, are due to those Japanese colour prints +which strongly accentuate our dislike of the reverse, for straight eyes +and eyebrows make a very bad impression on us, suggesting weakness, +lasciviousness, and so on. It must also be understood that in Japan no +such variety of types of beauty is to be met with as is noticed here in +Europe. Blue eyes and blond hair, the charms of which we first learn to +feel after a protracted stay among you, are regarded in a Japanese as +something extraordinary in no favourable sense of the term! A girl with +even a slight tendency to grey eyes or frizzly hair is looked upon as an +unwelcome deviation from the national type.</p> + +<p>If we now consider our mythology, with a view to tracing the continental +home of the Yamato race, we find, to our disappointment, that our +present knowledge is too scanty to allow us to arrive at a conclusion. +Indeed, so long as the general science of mythology itself remains in +that unsettled condition in which its youth obliges it to linger, and +especially so long as the Indian and Chinese bodies of myths—by which +our mythology is so unmistakably influenced—do not receive more serious +systematic treatment, the recorded stories of the Japanese deities +cannot be expected to supply us with much indication as to our +continental home. One thing is certain about them, that they were not +free from influences exerted by the different myths prevalent among the +Chinese and the Indians at the time when they were written down in our +earliest history, the <i>Ko-ji-ki</i> or <i>Records of Ancient Matter</i>, +completed in A.D. 712. There is an excellent English translation of the +book, with an admirable introduction and notes, by Mr. B.H. Chamberlain. +According to this book, the original ethereal chaos with which the world +began gradually congealed, and was finally divided into heaven and +earth. The male and female principles now at work gave birth to several +deities, until a pair of deities named Izanagi and Izanami, or the +'Male-who-invites' and the 'Female-who-invites,' were produced. They +married, and produced first of all the islands of Japan big and small, +and then different deities, until the birth of the Fire-God cost the +divine mother her life. She subsequently retired to the Land of Darkness +or Hades, where her sorrowful consort descended, Orpheus-like, in quest +of his spouse. He failed to bring her back to the outer world, for, like +the Greek musician, he broke his promise not to look at her in her more +profound retirement. The result was disastrous. Izanagi barely escaped +from his now furious wife, and on coming back to daylight he washed +himself in a stream, in order to purify himself from the hideous sights +and the pollution of the nether-world. This custom of lustration is, by +the way, kept up to this day in the symbolic sprinkling of salt over +persons returning from a funeral—salt representing pure water, as our +name for it, 'the flower of the waves,' well indicates. Our love of +cleanliness and of bathing might be also recognised in this early +custom. Impurity, whether mental or corporal, has always been regarded +as a great evil, and even as a sin.</p> + +<p>Now one of the most important results of the purification of the god +Izanagi was the birth of three important deities through the washing of +his eyes and nose. The Moon-God and the Sun-Goddess emerged from his +washing his right and left eyes, while Susanowo, their youngest brother, +owed his existence to the washing of his nose; three illustrious +children to whom the divine father trusted the dominion of night, day, +and the seas.</p> + +<p>The last-mentioned deity, whose name would mean in English 'Prince +Impetuous,' lost his father's favour by his obstinate longing to see +Izanami, the divine mother, in Hades, and was expelled from the father's +presence. He eventually went up to heaven to pay a visit to his sister, +the Sun-Goddess, whom he gravely offended by his monstrous outrages on +her person, and who was consequently so angry that she shut herself up +in a rocky chamber, thus causing darkness in the world outside. In +accordance with the deliberate plans worked out by an assembly of a +myriad gods, she was at last allured from her cavern by the sounds of +wild merriment caused by the burlesque dancing of a female deity, and +day reigned once more.</p> + +<p>The now repenting offender was driven down from heaven, and he wandered +about the earth. It was during this wandering that in Idzumo he, like +Perseus, rescued a beautiful young maid from an eight-headed serpent. He +won her hand and lived very happily with her ever after.</p> + +<p>In the meantime the state of things in the 'High Plain of Heaven' +ripened to the point that the Sun-Goddess began to think of sending her +august child to govern the +'Luxuriant-Reed-Plain-Land-of-Fresh-Rice-Ears,' that is to say, Japan. +Messages were previously sent to pacify the land for the reception of +the divine ruler. This took much time, during which a grandson was born +to the Sun-Goddess, and in the end it was this grandson who was +designated to come down to earth instead of his father. On his departure +a formal command to descend and rule the land now placed under his care +was accompanied by the present of a mirror, a sword, and a string of +crescent-shaped jewels. These treasures, still preserved in our imperial +household as regalia, are generally interpreted to mean the three +virtues of wisdom, courage, and mercy—necessary qualities for a perfect +ruler. It was on the high peak of Mount Takachiho that the divine ruler +descended to earth. He settled down in the country until his +great-grandson, known in history as Emperor Jimmu, founded the empire +and began that unique line of rulers who have governed the 'Land of the +Gods' for more than two thousand years, the present emperor being the +hundred and twenty-first link in the eternal chain.</p> + +<p>Such is, in brief, the story about my country before it was brought +under the rule of one central governing body. Subjected to scientific +scrutiny the whole tale presents many gaps in logical sequence. It +betrays, besides, traces of an intermingling of the early beliefs of +other nations. Still, it must be said that the divine origin of our +emperors has invested their throne with the double halo of temporal and +of spiritual power from the earliest days of their ascendancy; and the +people, themselves the descendants of those patriarchs who served under +the banners of Emperor Jimmu, or else of those who early learned to bow +themselves down before the divine conqueror, have looked up to this +throne with an ever-growing reverence and pride.</p> + +<p>In primitive Japan, as in every other primitive human society, +ancestor-worship was the first form of belief. Each family had its own +departed spirits of forefathers to whom was dedicated a daily homage of +simple words and offerings in kind. The guardian ghosts demanded of +their living descendants that they should be good and brave in their own +way. As these families of the same race and language gathered themselves +around the strongest of them all, imbued with a firm belief in its +divine origin, they contributed in their turn their own myths to the +imperial ones, thus eventually forming and consolidating a national +cult; and it was but natural that the people's heart should come in +course of time to re-echo in harmony with the keynote struck by the one +through whom the gods breathe eternal life. The whole nation is bound by +that sacred tie of common belief and common thought. Here lies the great +gap that separates, for example, the Chinese cult of fatalism from our +Path of Gods as a moral force. The Chinese have believed from the +earliest times in one supreme god whom they called the Divine Presider +(<i>Shang-ti</i>) or the August Heaven (<i>Hwang-t'ien</i> or simply <i>T'ien</i>), +who, according to their notion, carefully selects a fit person from +among swarming mankind to be the temporary ruler of his +fellow-countrymen, but only for so long as it pleases the god to let him +occupy the throne. At the expiration of a certain period, the heavenly +mission (<i>T'ien-ming</i>) is transferred through bloodshed and national +disaster to another mortal, who exercises the earthly rule until he or +his descendants incur the disfavour of the 'Heaven above.' To this day +the Chinese word for revolution means the 'renovation of missions' +(<i>kweh-ming</i>). This fatalistic idea, which is but a natural outcome of +the almost too democratic nature of the people of the Celestial Empire +and of the frequent changes of dynasties it has had to go through, is +almost unknown in our island home in its gravest aspects; more than +that, ever since its introduction into Japan, this idea, along with the +Indian doctrine of pitiless fate, has gradually taught us to offer a +more resigned and determined service to our respective superiors who +culminate in the divine person of the Emperor himself. This is well +illustrated by the fact that no attempt at the formal occupation of the +throne has ever been made, even on the part of those powerful Shoguns +who were the real rulers of our country; they knew full well how +dangerous and fatal for themselves it would be to tamper with that hinge +on which the nation's religious life turns. Only once in our long +history is there an example of an unsuccessful attempt (and it is the +highest treason a Japanese subject can think of), when a Buddhist monk +named Dôkyô, encouraged by the undue devotion of the ruling empress, +tried to ascend the throne by means of the recognition of the higher +temporal rank of the Buddhist priesthood over the imperial ministry of +the native cult. This imminent danger was averted by the bold and +resolute patriotism of a Shinto priest, Wake-no-Kiyomaro, who, in +Luther-like defiance of all peril and personal risks, declared +fearlessly, in the very presence of the haughty and menacing head of the +Buddhist Church, the divine will, 'Japan is to know no emperor except in +the person of the divine descendants of the Sun-Goddess!'</p> + +<p>Turning now to the question of language, we must confess that the +linguistic affinities of Japanese are as little cleared up as the other +problems we have been considering. The only thing we know about the +Japanese language amounts to this: it belongs, morphologically speaking, +to the so-called agglutinative languages, <i>e.g.</i>, those which express +their grammatical functions by the addition of etymologically +independent elements—prefixes and suffixes—to the unchangeable roots +or base forms. Genealogically, to follow the classification expounded by +Friedrich Müller in his <i>Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft</i>, who based +his system on Haeckel's division of the human race by the nature and +particularly the section of the hair, Japanese is one of the languages +or groups of languages spoken by the Mongolian race.</p> + +<p>But this characterisation of our tongue does not help us much. One could +as well point to the East at large to show where Japan lies! +Notwithstanding the general uncertainty as regards the exact position of +our language, this much is sure, that Japanese has, in spite of the +immense number of loan-words of Chinese origin, no fundamental +connection with the monosyllabic language of China, whose different +syntactical nature and want of common roots baffles the attempts on the +part of some speculative Europeans to connect it with our own tongue. At +the same time, it is well known among competent scholars that Japanese, +with its most distant dialect Luchuan, bears great kinship to the +Corean, Manchurian, and Mongolian languages. It shares with them, +besides the dislike of commencing a word with a trilled sound or with a +sonant, almost the same rules for the arrangement of the component +elements of a sentence. According to the Japanese syntax, the following +rules can, for instance, be applied to Corean without alteration:—</p> + +<p>1. All the qualifying words and phrases are put before those they +qualify. Attributive adjectives and adverbs, and their equivalents, are +placed before nouns and verbs they modify.</p> + +<p>2. The grammatical subject stands at the beginning of the sentence.</p> + +<p>3. Predicative elements are at the end of a sentence.</p> + +<p>4. Direct and indirect objects follow the subject.</p> + +<p>5. Subordinate sentences precede the principal ones.</p> + +<p>One thing worthy of notice is the fact that, notwithstanding the most +convincing structural similarity that exists between these affiliated +languages, they contain, comparatively speaking, few words in common, +even among the numerals and personal pronouns, which have played such an +important part in Indo-European philology. We must still wait a long +time before a better knowledge of linguistic affinity reveals such +decisive links of connection as will enable us to trace our Japanese +home on the continent.</p> + +<p>Let us now consider what were the effects of the continental +civilisation on the mental development of the Japanese within their +insular home.</p> + +<p>Before entering into details about the various continental doctrines +implanted in our country from China and India, it may be well to tell +you something of the mental attitude of the Japanese in facing a new +form of culture, in many senses far superior to their own. Nothing +definite can perhaps be said about it; but when we grope along the main +cord of historical phenomena we think we find that the Japanese as a +whole are not a people with much aptitude for deep metaphysical ways of +thinking. They are not of the calibre from which you expect a Kant or a +Schopenhauer. Warlike by nature more than anything else, they have been +known from the very beginning to have had the soldier-like simplicity +and the easy contentment of men of action—qualities which the practical +nature of Confucian ethics had ample chance to develop. The abstruse +conceptions of Chinese or Indian origin have been received into the +Japanese mind just as they were preached, and usually we have not +troubled ourselves to think them out again; but in accordance with our +peculiarly quick habit of perceiving the inner meaning of things, we +have generalised them straight away and turned them immediately into so +many working principles. There are any number of instances of slight +hints given by some people on the continent and worked out to suit our +own purposes into maxims of immediate and practical value. Ideals in +their original home are ideals no longer in our island home. They are +interpreted into so many realities with a direct bearing on our daily +life. We have been and are, even to this day, always in need of some new +hints and suggestions to work up into so many dynamic forces for +practical use. Upon Europe and America the full power of our mental +searchlight is now playing, in quest of those new ideas for future +development for which we have been accustomed to draw mainly on China +and India. Even such a commonplace thing as the drinking of a cup of tea +becomes in our hands something more: it becomes a training in stoic +serenity, in the capacity of smiling at life's troubles and +disturbances. Some day you might learn from us a new philosophy based on +the use of motor cars and telephones as applied to life and conduct!</p> + +<p>This, as you will see, explains why we have failed to produce any +original thinkers; this is why we have to recognise our indebtedness 
 +for almost all the important ideas which have brought about social +innovation either to China or to India, or else to the modern Western +nations; and this notwithstanding so many national idiosyncrasies and +characteristics which are to be found in the productions of our art and +in our life and ways, and which are even as handfuls of grain gathered +in foreign fields and brewed into a national drink of utterly Japanese +flavour. We are, I think, a people of the Present and the Tangible, of +the broad Daylight and the plainly Visible. The undeniable proclivity of +our mind in favour of determination and action, as contrasted with +deliberation and calm, makes it an uncongenial ground for the sublimity +and grandeur of that 'loathed melancholy, of Cerberus and blackest +midnight born,' to take deep root in it. Pure reasoning as such has had +for us little value beyond the help it affords us in harbouring our +drifting thought in some nearest port, where we can follow any peaceful +occupation rather than be fighting what we should call a useless fight +with troubled billows and unfathomable depths. Such, according to my +personal view, are the facts about our mentality considered generally. +And now it is necessary to speak of the main waves of cult and culture +that successively washed our shores.</p> + +<p>The first mention in our history of the introduction of the Chinese +learning into the imperial household places it in the reign of the +fifteenth emperor Ô-jin, in the year 284 after Christ according to the +earliest native records, but according to more trustworthy recent +computation<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> considerably later than that date. We are told that a +certain prince was put under the tutorship of a learned Corean scholar +of Chinese, who, at the request of the emperor, came over to Japan with +the <i>Confucian Analects</i> (<i>Iun-yü</i>) and some other Chinese classics as a +tribute from the King of Kudara. But long before the learning of the +Celestial Empire found its way through Corea into our imperial court, it +had in all probability been making its silent influence felt here and +there among the Japanese people. Great swarms of immigrants had sought a +final place of rest in our sea-girt country from many parts of China, +where raging tyranny and menacing despotism made life intolerable even +for Chinese meekness; these, and the bands of daring invaders which +Japan sent out from time to time to the Corean and Chinese coasts, had +given us many opportunities of coming into contact with the learning +prevalent among our continental neighbours. In this manner Chinese +literature, with its groundwork of Confucian ethics, surrounded by the +strange lore derived from Taoism, and perhaps also from Hindu sources, +had been gradually but surely attracting the ever-increasing attention +of our warlike forefathers, who were to become in course of time its +devoted admirers.</p> + +<p>Now, Confucianism pure and simple, as taught by the sage Kung-foo-tsze +(551-478 B.C.), from whom the doctrine derived its name, was, +notwithstanding the contention of the famous English sinologue Dr. +Legge, nothing more and nothing less than an aggregate of ethical ideas +considered in their application to the conduct and duties of our +everyday life. 'The great teacher never allowed himself to be considered +an expounder of any new system of either religious or metaphysical +ideas. He was content to call himself 'a transmitter and not a maker, +believing in and loving the ancients.' True to the spirit of these +words, and most probably having no other course open to him on account +of his extremely utilitarian turn of mind, he devoted his whole life to +the elucidation of the True Path of human life, as exemplified by those +half-mythical rulers of old China, Yaô, Shun, etc., from whom he derived +his ideals and his images of perfect man in flesh and blood. These early +kings were of course no creation of Confucius himself; the only thing he +did was to place the forms, which popular tradition had handed down +surrounded by legendary halos, in high relief before the people, as +perfect models to regulate the earthly conduct of the individuals as +members of a society. His attitude towards the ancient classics which he +compiled and perpetuated was that of one transmitting faithfully. He +studied them, and exhorted and helped his disciples to do the same, but +he did not alter them, nor even digest them into their present form.'<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> +In order to find concrete examples to show his ethical views more +positively, he wrote a history of his native state Loò from 722 to 484 +B.C., in which, while faithfully recording events, he took every +opportunity to jot down his moral judgment upon them in the terse words +and phrases he knew so well how to wield. As abstract reasoning had +little charm for his practical mind, he systematically avoided indulging +in discussions of a metaphysical nature. 'How can we know anything of an +After-life, when we are so ignorant even of the Living,' was his answer +when asked by one of his disciples about Death. Ancestor-worship he +sanctioned, as might naturally be expected from his enthusiastic +advocacy of things ancient, and also from the importance he attached to +filial piety, which strikes the keynote of his ethical ideas. But here +too his indifference to the spiritual side of the question is very +remarkable. Perhaps he found the holy altar of his day so much +encumbered by the presence of innumerable fetishes and demons, that he +felt little inclination to approach and sweep them away. 'To give +oneself,' he said on one occasion, 'to the duties due to men, and while +respecting spiritual things to keep aloof from them, may be called +wisdom.'</p> + +<p>The main features which he advocated are found well reflected in the +first twelve out of sixteen articles of the so-called sacred Edict, +published by the famous K'ang Hsi (1654-1722), the second emperor of the +present Manchu dynasty, in 1670 A.D., which embody the essential points +of Confucianism, as adapted to the requirements of modern everyday +Chinese life.</p> + +<p>1. Esteem most highly filial piety and brotherly submission, in order to +give due prominence to the social relations.</p> + +<p>2. Behave with generosity to the branches of your kindred, in order to +illustrate harmony and benignity.</p> + +<p>3. Cultivate peace and concord in your neighbourhood, in order to +prevent quarrels and litigation.</p> + +<p>4. Recognise the importance of husbandry and the culture of the +mulberry-tree, in order to ensure sufficiency of food and clothing.</p> + +<p>5. Show that you prize moderation and economy, in order to prevent the +lavish waste of your means.</p> + +<p>6. Make much of the colleges and seminaries, in order to make correct +the practice of the scholars.</p> + +<p>7. Discountenance and banish strange doctrines, in order to exalt +correct doctrines.</p> + +<p>8. Describe and explain the laws, in order to warn the ignorant and +obstinate.</p> + +<p>9. Exhibit clearly propriety and gentle courtesy, in order to improve +manners and customs.</p> + +<p>10. Labour diligently at your proper callings, in order to give +well-defined aims to the people.</p> + +<p>11. Instruct sons and younger brothers, in order to prevent them doing +what is wrong.</p> + +<p>12. Put a stop to false accusations, in order to protect the honest and +the good.</p> + +<p>Here too you see what an important place filial piety occupies, which +Confucius himself prized so highly. The Hsiao King, or the 'Sacred Book +of Filial Piety,' which is supposed to record conversations held between +Confucius and his disciple Tsang Ts'an on that weighty subject, has the +following passage: 'He who (properly) serves his parents in a high +situation will be free from haughtiness; in a low situation he will be +free from insubordination; whilst among his equals he will not be +quarrelsome. In a high position haughtiness leads to ruin; among the +lowly insubordination means punishment; among equals quarrelsomeness +tends to the wielding of weapons.' These words, naïve as they are, +express the exalted position filial affection occupies in the eyes of +Confucianism. 'Dutiful subjects are to be found in the persons of filial +sons,' and again, 'Filial piety is the source whence all other good +actions take their rise,' are other sayings expressing its importance.</p> + +<p>Along with this virtue, other forms of moral force, such as mercy, +uprightness, courage, politeness, fidelity, and loyalty, have been duly +considered and commended by the great teacher himself and his disciples. +Among these, Mencius (373-289 B.C.) is most enterprising and attractive, +digesting and systematising with a great deal of philosophic talent the +rather fragmentary ideas of his great master. It is he who, among other +things, informs us, on the assumed authority of a passage in the +Shu-King, how the sage Shun made it a subject of his anxious solicitude +to teach the five constituent relationships of society, viz., affection +between father and son; relations of righteousness between ruler and +subject; the assigning of their proper spheres to husband and wife; +distinction of precedence between old and young; and fidelity between +friend and friend—an idea which has played such an important part in +the history of the development of the Oriental mind.</p> + +<p>Such were the main features of Confucianism when it first reached Japan, +some centuries after the Christian era. But it was not until some time +after the introduction of Buddhism from Corea during the reign of the +Emperor Kimmei, in 552 A.D., that Confucianism and Chinese learning +began to take firm root and make their influence felt among us. +Paradoxical as it looks, it is Buddhism that so greatly helped the +teaching of the Chinese sage to establish itself as a ruling factor in +Japanese society. This curious state of things came about in this way. +The gospel of Shâkya-muni has, ever since its introduction into our +country, been made accessible only through the Chinese translation, +which demanded a considerable knowledge of the written language of the +Middle Kingdom. The keen and far-reaching spiritual interest aroused by +Buddhism gave a fresh and vigorous impulse to the study of Chinese +literature, already increasingly cultivated for some centuries. Now, the +knowledge of Chinese in its written form has, until quite recently, +always been imparted by a painful perusal of the Chinese classics and +Chinese books deeply imbued with Confucianism. It was only after a +considerable amount of knowledge of this difficult language had been +obtained in this unnatural way, that one came in contact with the works +of authors not strictly orthodox. This way of teaching Chinese through +Confucian texts, which we adopted from China's faithful agent, Corea, +necessarily led from the very beginning to an intimate acquaintance with +the main aspects of the Confucian morals in our upper classes, among +whom alone the study was at first pursued with any seriousness. Although +skilled in warlike arts, gentle and loyal in domestic life, our +forefathers were simple in manners and thought in those olden days when +book-learned reasons of duty had not yet superseded the naïve observance +of the dictates of the heart and of responsibility to the ancestral +spirits. They possessed no letters of their own, and consequently no +literature, except in unwritten songs and legendary lore sung from mouth +to mouth, telling of the gods and men who formed the glorious past of +the Yamato race. So it is not difficult to imagine the dazzling effect +which the Chinese learning, with its richness and its pedantry, with its +elaborate system of civil government and its philosophy, produced upon +our untrained eyes. Gradually but steadfastly it had been gaining +ground, and making its slow way from the topmost rung to the bottom of +the social ladder, when the introduction of Buddhism quickened the now +resistless progress. The would-be priests and advocates of the Indian +creed felt a fresh impulse and spiritual need to learn the Chinese +language, for which they had long entertained a high estimation. Owing +to the extremely secular character of the Confucian ethics on the one +hand, and on the other, to the fact that Buddhists deny the existence of +a personal god, and are eager to minister salvation through any adequate +means so long as it does not contradict the Law of the Universe upon +which the whole doctrine is based, Buddhism found in the teaching of the +Chinese sage and his followers not only no enemy, but, on the contrary, +a helpful friend. It found that the sacred books of Confucian doctrine +contained only in a slightly different form the five commandments laid +down by Shâkya-muni himself for the regulation of the conduct of a +layman, viz.:—</p> + +<p>1. Not to destroy life nor to cause its destruction.</p> + +<p>2. Not to steal.</p> + +<p>3. Not to commit adultery.</p> + +<p>4. Not to tell lies.</p> + +<p>5. Not to indulge in intoxicating drinks; or the Buddhist warning +against the ten sins; three of the body—taking life, theft, adultery; +four of speech—lying, slander, abuse, and vain conversation; three of +the mind—covetousness, malice, and scepticism.</p> + +<p>It saw also that Confucian writings embraced its fifty precepts<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> +detailed under the five different secular relationships of</p> + +<p>1. Parents and children.</p> + +<p>2. Pupils and teachers.</p> + +<p>3. Husbands and wives.</p> + +<p>4. Friends and companions.</p> + +<p>5. Masters and servants.</p> + +<p>Our early Buddhists therefore did not see why they should try to +suppress the existing Confucian moral code and supplant it with their +own which breathed the same spirit, only because it had not grown on +Indian soil.</p> + +<p>Thus encouraged by the now influential advocates of the teaching of +Buddha, themselves admirers of the Chinese learning, Confucianism began +with renewed vigour to exercise a great influence on the future of the +Japanese. This took place during the seventh century, when the +reorganisation of the Japanese government after the model of that of the +Celestial Empire made our educational system quite Chinese. In addition +to a university, there were many provincial schools where candidates for +the government service were instructed. Medicine, mathematics, including +astronomy and law, taught through Chinese books, along with the +all-important teaching in the Confucian ethics and in Chinese literature +generally, were the branches of study cultivated under the guidance of +professors whose calling had become hereditary among a certain number of +learned families. In the course of the next two centuries we see several +private institutions founded by great nobles of the court, with an +endowment in land for their support. The native system of writing which +had gradually emerged out of the phonetic use of Chinese ideographs made +it possible for Japanese thought, hitherto expressed only in an +uncongenial foreign garb, to appear in purely Japanese attire. Thus we +find the dawn of Japanese civilisation appearing at the beginning of the +tenth century after Christ. The air was replete with the Buddhist +thought of after-life and the Confucian ideas of broad-day morality. The +sonorous reading of the Book of Filial Piety was heard all over the +country, echoing with the loud recital of the <i>Myôhô-renge-kyô</i> (or +<i>Saddharma Pundarika Sûtra</i>).</p> + +<p>During the dark and dreary Middle Ages which followed this golden +period, and which were brought about by the degeneration of the ruling +nobles and by the gradually rising power of the military class, Chinese +learning fled to the protecting hands of Buddhist priests; and in its +quiet refuge within the monastery walls it continued to breathe its +humble existence, until it found at the beginning of the sixteenth +century a powerful patron in the great founder of the Tokugawa +Shogunate. The education of the common people, too, seems to have been +kept up by the monks—a fact still preserved in the word <i>tera-koya</i>, +'church seminary,' a term used, until forty years ago, to express the +tiny private schools for children. It must be remembered that the +education thus given was always of an exclusively secular character, +basing itself on the Confucian morals.</p> + +<p>Before passing on to the consideration of Laoism, let me say something +about the so-called orthodox form of the teaching of Confucius, which is +one of the latest developments of that doctrine. Orthodox Confucianism, +as represented by the famous Chinese philosopher and commentator of the +Confucian canon, Chu-Hsi (1130-1200), found its admirer in a Japanese +scholar, Fujiwara-no-Seigwa (1560-1619), who in his youth had joined the +priesthood, which however he afterwards renounced. He gave lectures on +the Chinese classics at Kyôto. He was held in great esteem by Tokugawa +Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa line of Shoguns, who embraced the +Chinese system of ethics as preached by Chu-Hsi. During the two hundred +and fifty years of the Tokugawa rule, this system, under the hereditary +direction of the descendants of Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), one of the +most distinguished disciples of Seigwa, was recognised as the +established doctrine.</p> + +<p>According to the somewhat hazy ideas of Chu-Hsi's philosophy, which I +ask your permission to sketch here on account of the high public esteem +in which we have held them for the last three centuries, the ultimate +basis of the universe is Infinity, or <i>Tai Kieh</i>, which, though +containing within itself all the germs of all forms of existence and +excellence, is utterly void of form or sensible qualities. It consists +of two qualities, <i>li</i> and <i>chi</i>, which may be roughly rendered into +'force-element' and 'matter-element.' These are self-existences, are +present in all things, and are found in their formation. The +'force-element,' or <i>li</i>, we are told, is the perfection of heavenly +virtue. It is in inanimate things as well as in man and other animate +beings, and pervades all space. The 'matter-element,' or <i>chi</i>, is +endowed with the male and the female principles, or positive and +negative polarities, as we might call them. It is, moreover, +characterised by the five constituent qualities of <i>wood</i>, <i>fire</i>, +<i>earth</i>, <i>metal</i>, and <i>water</i>. Hence its other name, <i>Wu-hsieng</i>, or +'Five Qualities.'</p> + +<p>Things and animals, except human beings, get only portions of the +force-element, but man receives it in full, and this becomes in his +person <i>sing</i>, or real human nature. He has thus within him the perfect +mirror of the heavenly virtue and complete power of understanding. There +is no difference in this respect between a sage and an ordinary man. To +both the force-element is uniformly given. But the matter-element, from +which is derived his form and material existence, and which constitutes +the basis of his mental disposition, is different in quality in +different men.</p> + +<p>Man's real nature, or <i>sing</i>, although originally perfect, becomes +affected on entering into him, or is modified by his mental disposition, +which differs according to the different state of the matter-element. +Thus a second nature is formed out of the original. It is through this +second and tainted human nature that man acts well or ill. When a man +does evil, that is the result of his mental disposition covering or +interfering with his original perfect nature. Wipe this vapour of +corrupted thought from the surface of your mental mirror and it will +shine out as brightly as if it had never been covered by a temporary +mist.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<p>Synoptically expressed and applied to the microcosm Chu-Hsi's system +will be as follows:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 14.5em;">MAN</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">{Force-Element = <i>Original Nature of Man</i>.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Different Human Characters.</span><br /> +Infinity<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">{Male-Principle }Wood-quality.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 18.5em;">}Fire- "</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">{Matter-Element }Earth-"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 18.5em;">}Metal-"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">{Female-Principle}Water-"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;"><i>Dispositions latent in Matter.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Such is, in its outline, Chu-Hsi's view, which received the sanction of +the ruling Tokugawa family. But it was not without its opponents in +Japan as well as in China. Already in his own time, Lu-Shang-Shan (b. +1140 A.D.) maintained, in opposition to the high-sounding erudition of +Chu-Hsi, that the purification of the heart was the first and main point +of study.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> The same protest was more systematically urged against it +by his great follower, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1528 A.D.), who found warm +and able admirers in Japan in such scholars as Nakae Tôju (1603-1678), +Kumazawa Hanzan (1619-1691), and Oshio Chûsai (1794-1837). Among other +great opponents of the orthodox philosophy, such names as Itô Jinsai +(1625-1706) and his son Tôgai (1670-1736), Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714), +Ogyû Sorai (1666-1728), are to be mentioned. These scholars, getting +their fundamental ideas from other Chinese thinkers, and eager to remain +faithful to the true spirit of Confucianism itself, pointed out many +inconsistencies in Chu-Hsi's theory, and were of the opinion that more +real good was to be achieved in proceeding straight to action under the +guidance of conscience which was heaven and all, than in indulging in +idle talk about the subtlety of human nature.</p> + +<p>The philosophy of Chu-Hsi, although he calls himself the true exponent +of Confucianism, is not at all Confucian. It is greatly indebted to +Buddhism and Taoism, or better, Laoism, that is to say, to the +philosophy originated by Lao-tze (b. 604 B.C.), one of the greatest +thinkers that China has ever produced. Since Laoism, through the +wonderful <i>Tao-teh-king</i>, a small book by Lao-tze himself, but +especially through <i>Chwang-tze</i>, a work in ten books by his famous +follower Chwang-chow, has exercised considerable influence on our +thought for twelve centuries, a word about it may not be out of place +before we go on to consider the doctrine of Shâkya-muni.</p> + +<p>In Lao-tze we find the perfect opposite of Confucius, both in the turn +of his mind and in his views and methods of saving the world. Lao-tze +endeavoured to reform humanity by warning them to cast off all human +artifice and to return to nature. This may be taken as the whole tenor +of his doctrine: Do not try to do anything with your petty will, because +it is the way to hinder and spoil the spontaneous growth of the true +virtue that permeates the universe. To follow Nature's dictates, while +helping it to develop itself, is the very course sanctioned and followed +by all the sages worthy of the name. Make away with your 'Ego' and learn +to value simplicity and humiliation; for in total 'altruism' exists the +completion of self, and in humble contentment and yielding pliancy are +to be found real grandeur and true strength. Under the title 'Dimming +Radiance' he says:<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>—</p> + +<blockquote><p>'Heaven endures and earth is lasting. And why can heaven and earth +endure and be lasting? Because they do not live for themselves. On +that account can they endure.</p> + +<p>'Therefore the True Man puts his person behind and his person comes +to the front. He surrenders his person and his person is preserved. +Is it not because he seeks not his own? For that reason he +accomplishes his own.'</p></blockquote> + +<p>Again we hear him 'Discoursing on Virtue':—</p> + +<blockquote><p>'Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore it has Virtue. Inferior +virtue never loses sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue. +Superior virtue is non-assertive and without pretension. Inferior +virtue asserts and makes pretensions.'</p></blockquote> + + +<p>He talks about 'Returning to Simplicity':</p> + +<blockquote><p>'Quit the so-called saintliness; leave the so-called wisdom alone; +and the people's gain will be increased by a hundredfold.</p> + +<p>`Abandon the so-called mercy; put away the so-called righteousness; +and the people will return to filial devotion and paternal love.</p> + +<p>`Abandon your scheming; put away your devices; and thieves and +robbers will no longer exist.'</p></blockquote> + +<p>Such is the general purport of the doctrine expounded by Lao-tze. It is +well to remember that this doctrine, which we may call for distinction's +sake Laoism, has intrinsically very little to do with that form of +belief now so prevalent among the Chinese, and which is known under the +name of Taoism. Although this name itself is derived from Lao-tze's own +word <i>Tao</i>, meaning Reason or True Path, and although the followers of +Taoism see in the great philosopher its first revealer, it is in all +probability nothing more than a new aspect and new appellation assumed +by that aboriginal Chinese cult which was based on nature- and +ancestor-worship. Ever since their appearance in history the Chinese +have had their belief in Shang-ti, in spirits, and in natural agencies. +This cult found, at an early date, in the mystic interpretation and +solution of life as expressed by Lao-tze and his followers, the means of +fresh development. The philosophical ideas of these thinkers were not +properly understood, and words and phrases mostly metaphorical were +construed in such a manner that they came to mean something quite +different from what the original writers wished to suggest. Such an +idea, for instance, as the deathlessness of a True Man by virtue of his +incorporation with the grand Truth <i>Tao</i> that pervades Heaven and Earth, +breathing in the eternity of the universe, was easily misinterpreted in +a very matter-of-fact manner, <i>e.g.</i>, anybody who realised <i>Tao</i> could +then enjoy the much-wished-for freedom from actual death. You see how +easy it is for an ordinary mind to pass from one to the other when it +hears Chwang-tze say:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>'Fire cannot burn him who is perfect in virtue, nor water drown +him; neither cold nor heat can affect him injuriously; neither bird +nor beast can hurt him.'<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p></blockquote> + +<p>Or again:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>'Though heaven and earth were to be overturned and fall, they would +occasion him no loss. His judgment is fixed on that in which there +is no element of falsehood, and while other things change, he +changes not.'<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p></blockquote> + +<p>We want no great flight of imagination therefore to follow the traces of +development of the present form of Taoism with its occult aspects. The +eternity attributed to a True Man in its Laoist sense begot the idea of +a deathless man in flesh and blood endowed with all kinds of +supernatural powers. This in turn produced the notion that these +superhuman beings knew some secret means to preserve their life and +could work other wonders. Herbalism, alchemy, geomancy, and other magic +arts owe their origin to this fountain-head of primitive superstition.</p> + +<p>There is little room for reasonable doubt that in this way Taoism, +although the name itself was of later development, has been in its main +features the religion of China <i>par excellence</i> from the very dawn of +its history. It has from the beginning found a congenial soil in the +heart of the Chinese people, who still continue to embrace the cult with +great enthusiasm, and in whose helpless credulity the Taoist priests of +to-day, borrowing much help from the occult sides of Buddhism and +Hinduism, still find an easy prey for their necromantic arts.</p> + +<p>Not so with Laoism. One may well wonder how such an uncongenial doctrine +ever came to spring from the soil of materialistic China. Some suggest +that Lao-tze was a Brahman, and not a Chinese at all. Another +explanation of this anomaly is to be found in the attempted division of +the whole Chinese civilisation into two geographically distinct groups, +the rigid Northern and the more romantic Southern types: Laoism +belonging to the latter, while Confucianism belongs to the former. In +any case, the resemblance in many respects between the doctrine +introduced by Lao-tze and the higher form of Buddhism is very striking. +Let me take this opportunity of saying something about the religion of +Shâkya-muni, which has occupied our mind and heart for the past fifteen +centuries.</p> + +<p>But, first of all, let me say that I am not unaware of the absurdity of +trying to give you anything like a fair idea of a many-sided and +extremely complicated system of human belief such as Buddhism in the +short space which is at my disposal. Very far from it. Even a brief +summary of its main features would take an able speaker at least a +couple of hours. So I humbly confine myself to giving you some hints on +the belief, about which most of you, I presume, have already had +occasion to hear something, the religion which took its origin among the +people who claim their descent from the same Aryan stock to which you +yourselves belong. Those who would care to read about it will find an +excellent supply of knowledge in two little books called <i>Buddhism</i> and +<i>Buddhism in China</i>, written respectively by Dr. Rhys Davids and the +late Rev. S. Beal, not to mention the late Sir Monier Williams' standard +work. A perusal of the Rev. A. Lloyd's paper read before the Asiatic +Society of Japan in 1894, entitled 'Developments of Japanese Buddhism,' +is very desirable. There are also two chapters devoted to this doctrine +in Lafcadio Hearn's last work, <i>Japan</i>. This enumeration might almost +exempt me from making any attempt to describe it myself.</p> + +<p>Buddhism has, to begin with, two distinct forms, philosophical and +popular, which may practically be taken as two different religions. +Philosophical Buddhism—or at least the truest form of it—is a system +based upon the recognition of the utter impermanency of the phenomenal +world in all its forms and states. It believes in no God or gods +whatever as a personal motive power. The only thing eternal is matter, +or essence of matter, with the Karma, or Law of cause and effect, +dwelling incorporated in it. Through the never-ceasing working of this +law innumerable forms of existence develop, which, notwithstanding the +appearance of stability they temporarily assume, are, in consequence of +the action and reaction of the very law to which they owe their +existence, constantly subject to everlasting changes. Constancy is +nowhere to be found in this universe of phenomena. It is therefore an +act of unspeakable ignorance on the part of human beings, themselves a +product of the immutable Karma, to attach a constant value to this +dreamy world and allow themselves to lose their mental harmony in the +quest of shadowy desires and of their shadowy satisfaction, thus +plunging themselves into the boundless sea of misery. True salvation is +to be sought in the complete negation of egoism and in the unconditional +absorption of ourselves in the fundamental law of the universe. +Shâkya-muni was no more than one of a series of teachers whose mission +it is to show us how to get rid of our fatal ignorance of this grand +truth, an ignorance which is at the root of all the discontent and +misery of our selfish existence.</p> + +<p>Very different from this is the aspect assumed by the popular form of +Buddhism. This is a system built up on the blind worship of personified +psychic phenomena, originally meant merely as convenient symbols for +their better contemplation, and in the transformation of the human +teachers of truth into so many personal gods. This is the reason why +Buddhism, so essentially atheistic, has come to be regarded by the +ordinary Christian mind as polytheism, or as a degraded form of +idolatry.</p> + +<p>Now, in all the many sects of Buddhism which have been planted in the +soil of Japan since the middle of the seventh century, some of which +soon withered, while others took deep root and grew new branches, these +two phases have always been recognised and utilised in their proper +sphere as means of salvation. For the populace there was the lower +Buddhism, while the more elevated classes found satisfaction in the +higher form and in an explanation of that True Path which lies hidden +beneath the complicated symbolic system.</p> + +<p>Of the sects which have exercised great influence on Japanese mentality, +the following are specially to be mentioned: the Tendai, the Shingon, +the Zen, the Hokke, and the Jodo, with its offspring the Ikkô sect. Each +of these chose its own means of reaching enlightenment from among those +indicated by Shâkya-muni, but did not on that account entirely reject +the means of salvation preferred by the others. Some give long lists of +categories and antitheses, and seek to define the truth with a more than +Aristotelian precision of detail, while others think it advisable to +realise it by dint of faith alone. But among these means of salvation +the practice advocated by the Zen sect is worthy of special +consideration in this place, as it has exercised great influence in the +formation of the Japanese spirit. <i>Zen</i> means 'abstraction,' standing +for the Sanskrit Dhyâna. It is one of the six means of arriving at +Nirvâna, namely, (1) charity; (2) morality; (3) patience; (4) energy; +(5) contemplation; and (6) wisdom. This practice, which dates from a +time anterior to Shâkya himself, consists of an 'abstract +contemplation,' intended to destroy all attachment to existence in +thought and wish. From the earliest time Buddhists taught four different +degrees of abstract contemplation by which the mind frees itself from +all subjective and objective trammels, until it reaches a state of +absolute indifference or self-annihilation of thought, perception, and +will.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> + +<p>You might perhaps wonder how a method so utterly unpractical and +speculative as that of trying to arrive at final enlightenment by pure +contemplation could ever have taken root in Japan, among a people who, +generally speaking, have never troubled themselves much about things +apart from their actual and immediate use. An explanation of this is not +far to seek. Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai school, the branch of the +Contemplative sect first established on our soil, came back to Japan +from his second visit to China in 1192 A.D.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> This was the time when +the short-lived rule of the Minamoto clan (1186-1219) was nearing the +end of its real supremacy. Only fifteen years before that the world had +seen the downfall of another mighty clan. The battle of Dannoura put an +end to the Heike ascendancy after an incessant series of desperate +battles extending over a century, giving our soldier-like qualities +enough occasion for an excellent schooling. The whole country during +this period had been under the raging sway of Mars, who swept with his +fiery breath the blossoms of human prosperity, and the people high and +low were obliged to recognise the folly of clinging to shadowy desires +and to learn the urgent necessity for facing every emergency with +something akin to indifference. To pass from glowing life into the cold +grasp of death with a smile, to meet the hardest decrees of fate with +the resolute calm of stoic fortitude, was the quality demanded of every +man and woman in that stormy age. In the meanwhile, different military +clans had been forming themselves in different parts of Japan and +preparing to wage an endless series of furious battles against one +another. In half a century too came the one solitary invasion of our +whole history when a foreign power dared to threaten us with +destruction. The mighty Kublei, grandson of the great Genghis Khan, +haughty with his resistless army, whose devastating intrepidity taught +even Europe to tremble at the mention of his name, despatched an embassy +to the Japanese court to demand the subjection of the country. The +message was referred to Kamakura, then the seat of the Hôjô regency, and +was of course indignantly dismissed. Enraged at this, Kublei equipped a +large number of vessels with the choicest soldiers China could furnish. +The invading force was successful at first, and committed massacres in +Iki and Tsushima, islands lying between Corea and Japan. The position +was menacing; even the steel nerves of the trained Samurai felt that +strange thrill a patriot knows. Shinto priests and Buddhist monks were +equally busy at their prayers. A new embassy came from the threatening +Mongol leader. The imperious ambassadors were taken to Kamakura, to be +put to death as an unmistakable sign of contemptuous refusal. A +tremendous Chinese fleet gathered in the boisterous bay of Genkai in the +summer of 1281. At last the evening came with the ominous glow on the +horizon that foretells an approaching storm. It was the plan of the +conquering army victoriously to land the next morning on the holy soil +of Kyûshû. But during this critical night a fearful typhoon, known to +this day as the 'Divine Storm,' arose, breaking the jet-black sky with +its tremendous roar of thunder and bathing the glittering armour of our +soldiers guarding the coastline in white flashes of dazzling light. The +very heaven and earth shook before the mighty anger of nature. The +result was that the dawn of the next morning saw the whole fleet of the +proud Yuan, that had darkened the water for miles, swept completely away +into the bottomless sea of Genkai, to the great relief of the +horror-stricken populace, and to the unspeakable disappointment of our +determined soldiers. Out of the hundred thousand warriors who manned the +invading ships, only three are recorded to have survived the destruction +to tell the dismal tale to their crestfallen great Khan!</p> + +<p>Then after a short interval of a score of peaceful years, Japan was +plunged again into another series of internal disturbances, from which +she can hardly be said to have emerged until the beginning of the +seventeenth century, when order and rest were brought back by the able +hand of Tokugawa Iyeyasu. During all these troublous days, the original +Contemplative sect, paralleled soon after its establishment in Japan by +a new school called <i>Sôtô</i>, as it was again supplemented by another, the +<i>Ôbaku</i> school, five centuries afterwards, found ample material to +propagate its special method of enlightenment. This sect, which drew its +patrons from the ruling classes of Japan, was unanimously looked up to +as best calculated to impart the secret power of perfect self-control +and undisturbable peace of mind. It must be remembered that the ultimate +riddance in the Buddhist sense, the entrance into cold Nirvâna, was not +what our practical mind wanted to realise. It was the stoic +indifference, enabling man to meet after a moment's thought, or almost +instinctively, any hardships that human life might impose, that had +brought about its otherwise strange popularity.</p> + +<p>Another charm it offered to the people of the illiterate Middle Ages, +when they had to attend to other things than a leisurely pursuit of +literature, was its systematic neglect of book-learning. Truth was to be +directly read from heart to heart. The intervention of words and writing +was regarded as a hindrance to its true understanding. A rudimentary +symbolism expressed by gestures was all that a Zen priest really relied +upon for the communication of the doctrine. Everybody with a heart to +feel and a mind to understand needed nothing further to begin and finish +his quest of the desired freedom from life's everlasting torments.</p> + +<p>The self-control that enables us not to betray our inner feeling through +a change in our expression, the measured steps with which we are taught +to walk into the hideous jaws of death—in short, all those qualities +which make a present Japanese of truly Japanese type look strange, if +not queer, to your eyes, are in a most marked degree a product of that +direct or indirect influence on our past mentality which was exercised +by the Buddhist doctrine of Dhyâna taught by the Zen priests.</p> + +<p>Another benefit which the Zen sect conferred on us is the healthy +influence it exercised on our taste. The love of nature and the desire +of purity that we had shown from the earliest days of our history, took, +under the leading idea of the Contemplative sect, a new development, and +began to show that serene dislike of loudness of form and colour. That +apparent simplicity with a fulness of meaning behind it, like a Dhyâna +symbol itself, which we find so pervadingly manifested in our works of +art, especially in those of the Ashikaga period (1400-1600 A.D.), is +certainly to be counted among the most valuable results which the Zen +doctrine quickened us to produce.</p> + +<p>In short, so far-reaching is the influence of the Contemplative sect on +the formation of the Japanese spirit as you find it at present, that an +adequate interpretation of its manifestations would be out of the +question unless based on a careful study of this branch of Buddhism. So +long as the Zen sect is not duly considered, the whole set of phenomena +peculiar to Japan—from the all-pervading laconism to the +hara-kiri—will remain a sealed book.</p> + +<p>This fact is my excuse for having detained you for so long on the +subject.</p> + +<p>I now pass on to the consideration of our own native cult.</p> + +<p>Shinto, or the 'Path of the Gods,' is the name by which we distinguish +the body of our national belief from Buddhism, Christianity, or any +other form of religion. It is remarkable that this appellation, like +Nippon (which corresponds to your word Japan), is no purely Japanese +term. Buddhism is called Buppô (from <i>Butsu</i>, Buddha, and <i>hô</i>, +doctrine) or Bukkyô (<i>kyô</i>, teaching); Confucianism is known as Jukyô +(<i>Ju</i>, literati); and both terms are taken from the Chinese. In keeping +with these we have Shinto (<i>Shin</i>, deity, and <i>to</i>, way). This state of +things in some measure explains the rather unstable condition in which +Buddhism on its first arrival found our national cult. It has ever since +remained in its main aspects nothing more than a form of +ancestor-worship based on the central belief in the divine origin of the +imperial line. A systematised creed it never was and has never become, +even if we take into consideration the attempts at its consolidation +made by such scholars as Yamazaki-Ansai (1618-1682), who in the middle +of the seventeenth century tried to formalise it in accordance with +Chu-Hsi's philosophy, or, later still, by such eager revivalists as +Hirata-Atsutane (1776-1843), etc. At the time when Shintoism had to meet +its mighty foe from India, its whole mechanism was very simple. It +consisted in a number of primitive rites, such as the recital of the +liturgy, the offering of eatables to the departed spirits of deified +ancestors, patriarchal, tribal, or national. This naïve cult was as +innocent of the cunning ideas and subtle formalisms of the rival creed +as its shrines were free from the decorations and equipments of an +Indian temple. So, although at the start Buddhism met with some +obstinate resistance at the hand of the Shintoists, who attributed the +visitations of pestilence that followed the introduction of the foreign +belief to the anger of the native gods, its superiority in organisation +soon overcame these difficulties; especially from the time when the +great Buddhist priest Kûkai (774-835 A.D.) hit upon the ingenious but +mischievous idea of solving the dilemma by the establishment of what is +generally known in our history as Ryôbu-Shinto, or double-faced Shinto. +According to this doctrine, a Shinto god was to be regarded as an +incarnation of a corresponding Indian deity, who made his appearance in +Japan through metamorphosis for Japan's better salvation—a doctrine +which is no more than a clever application of the notion known in India +as Nirmanakâya. This incarnation theory opened a new era in the history +of the expansion of Buddhism in Japan, extending over a period of eleven +centuries, during which Shintoism was placed in a very awkward position. +It was at last restored to its original purity at the beginning of the +present Meiji period, and that only after a century of determined +endeavour on the part of native Shintoist scholars.</p> + +<p>From these words you might perhaps conclude that Buddhism succeeded in +supplanting the native cult, at least for more than a thousand years. +But, strange to say, if we judge the case not by outward appearances, +but by the religious conviction that lurks in the depth of the heart, we +cannot but recognise the undeniable fact that no real conversion has +ever been achieved during the past eleven centuries by the doctrine of +Buddha. Our actual self, notwithstanding the different clothes we have +put on has ever remained true in its spirit to our native cult. Speaking +generally, we are still Shintoists to this day—Buddhists, Christians, +and all—so long as we are born Japanese. This might sound to you +somewhat paradoxical. Here is the explanation:—</p> + +<p>For an average Japanese mind in present Japan, thanks to the +ancestor-worship practised consciously or unconsciously from time +immemorial, it is not altogether easy to imagine the spirit of the +deceased, if it believes in one at all, to be something different and +distant from our actual living self. The departed, although invisible, +are thought to be leading their ethereal life in the same world in much +the same state as that to which they had been accustomed while on earth. +Like the little child so touchingly described by Wordsworth, we cannot +see why we should not count the so-called dead still among the existing. +The difference between the two is that of tangibility or visibility, but +nothing more.</p> + +<p>The <i>raison d'être</i> of this illusive notion is, of course, not far to +seek. Any book on anthropology or ethnology would tell you how sleep, +trance, dream, hallucination, reflection in still water, etc., help to +build up the spirit-world in the untaught mind of primitive man. Yet it +must be remembered that these origins have led to something far higher, +to something of real value to our nation, and to something which is a +moral force in our daily lives that may well be compared to what is +efficacious in other creeds. Notice the fact that Buddhism from the +moment of its introduction in the sixth century after Christ to this +very day has on the whole remained the religion, so to say, of night and +gloomy death, while Shintoism has always retained its firm hold on the +popular mind as the cult, if I might so express it, of daylight and the +living dead. From the very dawn of our history we read of patriarchs, +chieftains, and national heroes deified and worshipped as so many +guardian spirits of families, of clans, or of the country. Nor has this +process of deification come to an end yet, even in this age of airship +and submarine boat. We continue to erect shrines to men of merit. This +may look very strange to you, but is not your poet Swinburne right when +he sings—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">lays down,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He, dying so, lives.'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Might not these lines explain, when duly extended, the subtle feeling +that lurks behind our apparently incomprehensible custom of speaking +with the departed over the altar? The present deification, is, like your +custom of erecting monuments to men of merit, a way of making the best +part of a man's career legible to the coming generations. The numberless +shrines you now find scattered all over Japan are only so many chapters +written in unmistakable characters of the lessons our beloved and +revered heroes and good men have left us for our edification and +amelioration. It is in the sunny space within the simple railing of +these Shinto shrines, where the smiling presence of the patron spirit of +a deified forefather or a great man is so clearly felt, that our +childhood has played for tens of centuries its games of innocent joy. +Monthly and yearly festivals are observed within the divine enclosure of +a guardian god, when a whole community under his protection let +themselves go in good-natured laughter and gleeful mirth before the +favouring eyes of their divine patron. How different is this jovial +feeling from that gloomy sensation with which we approach a Buddhist +temple, recalling death and the misery of life from every corner of its +mysterious interior. Such seriousness has never been congenial to the +gay Japanese mind with its strong love of openness and light. Until +death stares us right in the face, we do not care to be religious in the +ordinary sense of the term. True, we say and think that we believe in +death, but all the while this so-called death is nothing else than a new +life in this present world of ours led in a supernatural way. For +instance, when the father of a Japanese family begins a journey of any +length, the raised part of his room will be made sacred to his memory +during his temporary absence; his family will gather in front of it and +think of him, expressing their devotion and love in words and gifts in +kind. In the hundreds of thousands of families that have some one or +other of their members fighting for the nation in this dreadful war with +Russia, there will not be even one solitary house where the mother, +wife, or sister is not practising this simple rite of endearment for the +beloved and absent member of the family. And if he die on the field, the +mental attitude of the poor bereaved towards the never-returning does +not show any substantial difference. The temporarily departed will now +be regarded as the forever departed, but not as lost or passed away. His +essential self is ever present, only not visible. Daily offerings and +salutations continue in exactly the same way as when he was absent for a +time. Even in the mind of the modern Japanese with its extremely +agnostic tendencies, there is still one corner sacred to this inherited +feeling. You could sooner convince an ordinary European of the +non-existence of a personal God. When it gets dusk every bird knows +whither to wing its way home. Even so with us all when the night of +Death spreads its dark folds over our mortal mind!</p> + +<p>But ask a modern Japanese of ordinary education in the broad daylight of +life, if he believes in a God in the Christian sense; or in Buddha as +the creator; or in the Shinto deities; or else in any other personal +agency or agencies, as originating and presiding over the universe; and +you would immediately get an answer in the negative in ninety-nine cases +out of a hundred. Do you ask why? First, because our school education +throughout its whole course has, ever since its re-establishment +thirty-five years ago, been altogether free from any teaching of a +denominational nature. The ethical foundations necessary for the +building up of character are imparted through an adequate commentary on +the moral sayings and maxims derived mostly from Chinese classics. +Secondly, because the little knowledge about natural science which we +obtain at school seems to make it impossible to anchor our rational +selves on anything other than an impersonal law. Thirdly, because we do +not see any convincing reason why morals should be based on the teaching +of a special denomination, in face of the fact that we can be upright +and brave without the help of a creed with a God or deities at its other +end. So, for the average mind of the educated Japanese something like +modern scientific agnosticism, with a strong tendency towards the +materialistic monism of recent times, is just what pleases and satisfies +it most.</p> + +<p>If not so definitely thought out, and if expressed with much less +learned terminology, the thought among our educated classes as regards +supernatural agencies has during the past three centuries been much the +same. The Confucian warning against meddling with things supernatural, +the atheistic views and hermit-like conduct of the adherents of Laoism, +and the higher Buddhism, all contributed towards the consolidation of +this mental attitude with a conscious or unconscious belief in the +existing spirit-world. Except for the philosophy which they knew how to +utilise for their practical purposes, the educated felt no charm in +religion. The lower form of Buddhism with its pantheon has been held as +something only for the aged and the weak. For the execution of the +religious rites, at funerals or on other occasions (except in the rare +instances when some families for a special reason of their own preferred +the Shintoist form), we have unanimously drawn on the Buddhist +priesthood, just in the same way as you go to your family doctor or +attorney in case of a bodily or legal complication, knowing well that +religion as we have understood it is something as much outside the pale +of the layman as medicine and law.</p> + +<p>For the proper conduct of our daily life as members of society, the body +of Confucian morality resting on the tripod of loyalty, filial piety, +and honesty, has been the only standard which high and low have alike +recognised. These ethical ideals, when embraced by that formidable +warrior caste who played such an important part in feudal Japan, form +the code of unwritten morality known among us as Bushido, which means +the Path of the Samurai. This last word, which has found its way into +your language, is the substantival derivative from the verb <i>samurau</i> +(to serve), and, like its English counterpart 'knight' (Old English +<i>cniht</i>), has raised itself from its original sense of a retainer (cp. +German <i>Knecht</i>) to the meaning in which it is now used. To be a Samurai +in the true sense of the word has been the highest aspiration of a +Japanese. Your term 'gentleman,' when understood in its best sense, +would convey to you an approximate idea if you added a dash of soldier +blood to it. Rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity, +loyalty, and a predominating sense of honour—these are the chief +colours with which a novelist in the days of yore used to paint an ideal +Samurai; and his list of desirable qualities was not considered complete +without a well-developed body and an expression of the face that was +manly but in no way brutal. No special stress was at first laid on the +cultivation of thinking power and book-learning, though they were not +altogether discouraged; it was thought that these accomplishments might +develop other qualities detrimental to the principal character, such as +sophistry or pedantry. To have good sense enough to keep his name +honourable, and to act instead of talking cleverly, was the chief +ambition of a Samurai.</p> + +<p>But this view gradually became obscured. It lost its fearful rigidity in +course of time, as the world became more and more sure of a lasting +peace. Literature and music have gradually added softening touches to +its somewhat brusque features.</p> + +<p>It must, however, be always remembered that the keynote of Bushido was +from the very beginning an indomitable sense of honour. This was all in +all to the mind of the Samurai, whose sword at his side reminded him at +every movement of the importance of his good name. The care with which +he preserved it reached in some cases to a pathetic extreme; he +preferred, for example, an instant suicide to a reputation on which +doubt had been cast, however falsely. The very custom of seppuku (better +known as hara-kiri), a form of suicide not known in early Japan,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> is +an outcome of this love of an unstained name, originating, in my +opinion, in the metaphorical use of the word <i>hara</i> (abdomen), which was +the supposed organ for the begetting of ideas. In consequence of this +curious localisation of the thinking faculty, the word <i>hara</i> came to +denote at the same time intention or idea. Therefore, in cutting open +(<i>kiru</i>) his abdomen, a person whose motives had come to be suspected +meant to show that his inside was free from any trace of ideas not +worthy of a Samurai. This explanation is, I think, amply sustained by +the constant use to this very day of the word <i>hara</i> in the sense of +one's ideas.</p> + +<p>So Bushido, as you will now see, was itself but a manifestation of those +same forces already at work in the formation of Japanese thought, like +Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. But as it has played a most important part +in the development of modern Japan, I thought it more proper to consider +it as an independent factor in the history of our civilisation. Had it +not been for this all-daring spirit of Bushido, Japan would never have +been able to make the gigantic progress which she has been achieving in +these last forty years. As soon as our ports were flung open to the +reception of Western culture, Samurai, now deeply conscious of their new +mission, took leave of those stern but faithful friends, their beloved +swords, not without much reluctance, even as did Sir Bedivere, in order +to take up the more peaceful pen, which they were determined to wield +with the same knightly spirit. It is, in short, Bushido that has urged +our Japan on for the last three centuries, and will continue to urge her +on, on forever, onward to her ideals of the true, the good, and the +beautiful. Look to the spot where every Japanese sabre and every +Japanese bayonet is at present pointing with its icy edge of determined +patriotism in the dreary fields of Manchuria, or think of the intrepid +heroes on our men-of-war and our torpedo-boats amid blinding snowstorms +and the glare of hostile searchlights, and your eyes will invariably end +at the magic Path of the Samurai.</p> + +<p>Having thus far followed my enumeration of the various factors in the +formation of the present thought in Japan, some of you might perhaps be +curious to know what Christianity has contributed towards the general +stock of modern Japanese mentality.</p> + +<p>It must surely have exercised a very healthy influence on our mind since +its re-introduction at the beginning of the present Meiji period. Some +have indeed gone so far as to say that we owe the whole success we have +up to now achieved in this remarkable war to the holy inspiration we +drew from the teaching of Jesus Christ.</p> + +<p>I indorse this opinion to its full extent, but only if we are to +understand by His teaching that whole body of truth and love which are +of the essence of Christianity, and which we used in former days to call +by other names, such as Bushido, Confucianism, etc. But if you insist on +having it understood in a narrow sectarian sense, with a personal God +and rigid formalities as its main features, then I should say that I +cannot agree with you, for this Christianity occupies rather an awkward +place in our Japanese mind, finding itself somewhere between the +national worship of the living dead, and modern agnosticism, or +scientific monism. In our earlier fishery for new knowledge in the +Western seas, fish other than those fit for our table were caught and +dressed along with some really nourishing; the result was disastrous, +and we gradually came to learn more caution than at first. The Roman +Catholics, more enthusiastic than discreet, committed wholesale outrages +on our harmless ways of faith in the early days of the seventeenth +century, which did much to leave in bad repute the creed of Jesus +Christ. And since the prohibition against Christianity was removed, many +a missionary has been so particular about the plate in which the truth +is served as to make us doubt, with reason, if that be the spirit of the +immortal Teacher. The truth and poetry that breathe in your Gospels have +been too often paraphrased in the senseless prose of mere formalism. +Otherwise Christianity would have rendered us better help in our eternal +march towards the ideal emancipation.</p> + +<p>There remains still one highly important thing to be considered as a +formative element of the Japanese spirit. I mean the landscape and the +physical aspects of Japan in general.</p> + +<p>It is well known that an intimate connection exists between the mind and +the nature which surrounds it. A moment's consideration of the +development of Hellenic sculpture and of the Greek climate, or of the +Teutonic mythology and the physical condition of Northern Europe, will +bring conviction on that point. Is not the effect of the blue sky on +Italian painting, and the influence of the dusky heaven on the, +pictorial art of the Netherlands, clearly traceable in the productions +of the old masters? A study of London psychology at the present moment +will never be complete without special chapters on your open spaces and +your fogs.</p> + +<p>In order to convey anything like an adequate idea of the physical +aspects of Japan from the geographical and meteorological points of +view, it would be necessary to furnish a detailed account of the +country, with a long list of statistical tables and the ample help of +lantern slides. But on this occasion I must be content with naming some +of the typical features of our surroundings.</p> + +<p>Japan, as you know, is a long and narrow series of islands, stretching +from frigid Kamchatka in the north to half-tropical Formosa in the +south. The whole country is mountainous, with comparatively little flat +land, and is perforated with a great number of volcanoes, the active +ones alone numbering above fifty at present. With this is connected the +annoying frequency of earthquakes, and the agreeable abundance of +thermal springs—two phenomena that cannot remain without effect on the +people's character.</p> + +<p>There are two other natural agencies to be mentioned in this connection. +One is the Kuro-shio, or Black Stream, so called on account of the deep +black colour which the ocean current displays in cloudy weather. This +warm ocean river, having a temperature of 27° centigrade in summer, +begins its course in the tropical regions near the Philippine Islands, +and on reaching the southern isles is divided by them into two unequal +parts. The greater portion of it skirts the Japanese islands on their +eastern coast, imparting to them that warm and moist atmosphere which is +one source of the fertility of the soil and the beauty of the +vegetation. The effect of the Kuro-shio upon the climate and productions +of the lands along which it flows may be fairly compared with that of +the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, which in situation, direction, +and volume it resembles. To this most noticeable cause of the climatic +condition of the Japanese islands must be added another agency closely +related to it in its effect. Our archipelago lies in the region of the +northeast monsoon, which affects in a marked degree the climate of all +those parts over which the winds blow. Although the same monsoon blows +over the eastern countries of the Asiatic continent, the insular +character of Japan, and the proximity of the above-mentioned warm +current on both sides of the islands, give to the winds which prevail a +character they do not possess on the continent.</p> + +<p>Although the effect of the chill and frost of the northern part of +Japan, with its heavy snowfall and covered sky, cannot be without its +depressing influence on human nature in that part of the island, this +has not played any serious role in the formation of the Japanese +character as a whole. It is only at a rather recent date that the +northern provinces began to contribute their share to the general +progress of the country. This can very easily be explained by the +gradual advance of Japanese civilisation from the southwest to the +northeast. Until comparatively lately the colder region of Japan north +of the 37th degree of latitude has remained very nearly inactive in our +history. It is almost exclusively in the more sunny south, extending +down to the 31st degree, that the main activity of the Japanese mind and +hand has been shown. And the effect is the sunniness of character and +rather hot temperament which we, as a whole, share in a marked degree +with the southern Europeans, as contrasted with the somewhat gloomy calm +and deliberation noticed both among oriental and occidental northerners.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding the comparatively high amount of rainfall, the fact +remains that as a nation we have spent most of our life under the serene +canopy of blue sky characteristic of a volcanic country. Mountains, +graceful rather than sublime, and fertile plains with rich verdure, its +beauties changing slowly from the white blossoms of spring to the +crimson leaves of autumn, have afforded us many welcome sights to rest +our eyes upon; while the azure stretch of water, broken agreeably by +scattered isles, washes to-day as it did in the days of the gods the +white shore, rendered conspicuous by the everlasting green of the pine +trees, which skirts the Land of the Rising Sun.</p> + +<p>The winter, though it begins its dreary course with a short period of +warm days known as the Little Spring, is of course not without its bleak +mornings with cutting winds and icy wreaths. But the fact that even as +far north as Tôkyô no elaborate system of warming rooms is at all +developed, and that the occasional falling of snow is hailed even by +aged men of letters, and still more by the numerous poetasters, as a fit +occasion for a pedestrian excursion to some neighboring localities for a +better appreciation of the silvery world, serves to show how mild the +cold is in south Japan.</p> + +<p>A people on whom the surrounding nature always smiles so indulgently can +be little expected to be driven to turn their thoughts in the direction +of their own self, and thus to develop such a strong sense of +individuality as characterises the rigid northerners; nor are the +nations panting under a scorching sun likely to share our friendly +feelings towards nature, for with them Father Sun is too rigorous to +allow a peaceful enjoyment of his works.</p> + +<p>All through the four seasons, which are almost too varied even for a +Thomson's pen, eventful with the constant calls of one after another of +our flowery visitors—beginning with the noble plum that peeps with its +tiny yellowish-white eyes from under the spotless repose of fleecy snow, +and ending in the gay variety of the chrysanthemum—we have too many +allurements from outside not to leap into the widespread arms of Mother +Nature and dream away our simple, our contented life in her lap. True, +there also are in Japan many instances of broken hearts seeking their +final rest under the green turf of an untimely grave, or else in the +grey mantle of the Buddhist monkhood. But in them, again, we see the +characteristic determination and action of a Japanese at work. To +indulge in Hamlet-like musing, deep in the grand doubt and sublime +melancholy of the never-slumbering question 'To be, or not to be?' is +something, so to say, too damp to occur in the sunny thought of our +open-air life.</p> + +<p>If asked to name the most conspicuous of those physical phenomena which +have exercised so great an influence on our mind, no Japanese will +hesitate to mention our most beloved Fuji-no-yama. This is the highest +and the most beautiful of all the great mountains in the main group of +the Japanese islands. Gracefully conical in shape, lifting its snowclad +head against a serene background 12,365 feet above the sea, it has from +the earliest time been the object of unceasing admiration for the +surrounding thirteen provinces, and where it stands out of the reach of +the naked eye, winged words from the poet's lyre, and flying leaves from +the artist's brush, have carried its never-tiring praise to all the +nooks and corners of the Land of the Gods.</p> + +<p>Here is one of the earliest odes to Fujiyama, contained in a collection +of lyrical poems called Man-yô-shû, or 'Myriad Leaves,' by Prince Moroe +(died A.D. 757), somewhere in the first half of the eighth century:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There on the border, where the land of Kahi</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Doth touch the frontier of Suruga's land,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A beauteous province stretched on either hand,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">See Fujiyama rear his head on high!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The clouds of heav'n in rev'rent wonder pause,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nor may the birds those giddy heights essay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where melt thy snows amid thy fires away,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or thy fierce fires lie quench'd beneath thy snows.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">What name might fitly tell, what accents sing,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy awful, godlike grandeur? 'Tis thy breast</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That holdeth Narusaha's flood at rest,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy side whence Fujikaha's waters spring.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Great Fujiyama, tow'ring to the sky!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A treasure art thou giv'n to mortal man,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A god-protector, watching o'er Japan:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On thee for ever let me feast mine eye!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This now extinct volcano, besides inspiring poetical efforts, has been +an inexhaustible subject for our pictorial art; it is enough to mention +the famous sets of colour prints, representing the thirty-six or the +hundred aspects of the favourite mountain, by Hiroshige, Hokusai, etc. +The groups of rural pilgrims that annually swarm from all parts of Japan +during the two hottest months of the year to pay their pious visit to +the Holy Mount Fuji, return to their respective villages deeply inspired +with a feeling of reverence and of love for the wonders and beauty of +the remarkable dawn they witnessed from its summit.</p> + +<p>There is many another towering mountain with its set of pilgrims, but +none can vie with Fujiyama for majestic grace. More beautiful than +sublime, more serene than imposing, it has been from time immemorial a +silent influence on the Japanese character. Who would deny that it has +reflected in its serenity and grace as seen on a bright day all the +ideals of the Japanese mind?</p> + +<p>Another favourite emblem of our spirit is the cherry blossom. The cherry +tree, which we cultivate, not for its fruit, but for the annual tribute +of a branchful of its flowers, has done much, especially in the +development of the gay side of our character. Its blossoms are void of +that sweet depth of scent your rose possesses, or the calm repose that +characterizes China's emblematic peony. A sunny gaiety and a readiness +to scatter their heart-shaped petals with a Samurai's indifference to +death are what make them so dear to our simple and determined view of +life. There is an ode known to every Japanese by the great Motoori +Norinaga (1730-1801 A.D.) which runs as follows:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Shikishima no</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Yamata-gokoro wo</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Hito toha ba,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Asahi ni nihofu</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Jamazakura-bana.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>(Should any one ask me what the spirit of Japan is like, I would point +to the blossoms of the wild cherry tree bathing in the beams of the +morning sun.)</p> + +<p>These words, laconic as they are, represent, in my opinion, the +fundamental truth about the Japanese mentality—its weak places as well +as its strength. They give an incomparable key to the proper +understanding of the whole people, whose ideal it has ever been to live +and to die like the cherry blossoms, beneath which they have these tens +of centuries spent their happiest hours every spring.</p> + +<p>The mention of a Japanese poem gives me an opportunity to say something +about Japanese poetry. Like other early people, our forefathers in +archaic time liked to express their thoughts in a measured form of +language. The whole structure of the tongue being naturally melodious, +on account of its consisting of open syllables with clear and sonorous +vowels and little of the harsh consonantal elements in them, the number +of syllables in a line has been almost the only feature that +distinguished our poetry from ordinary prose composition. The taste for +a lengthened form of poems had lost ground early, and already at the end +of the ninth century after Christ the epigrammatic form exemplified +above, consisting of thirty-one syllables, established itself as the +ordinary type of the Japanese odes.</p> + +<p>This form subdivides itself into two parts, viz., the upper half +containing three lines of five, seven, and again five syllables, and the +lower half consisting of two lines of seven syllables each. This +simplicity has made it impossible to express in it anything more than a +pithy appeal to our lyrical nature; epic poetry in the strict sense of +the word has never been developed by us.</p> + +<p>But it must be noticed that it is this simplicity of form of our +poetical expression that has put it within the reach of almost +everybody. To all of us without distinction of class and sex has been +accorded the sacred pleasure of satisfying and thus developing our +poetical nature, so long as we had a subject to sing and could count +syllables up to thirty-one. The language resorted to in such a +composition was at first the same as that in use in everyday life. But +afterwards as succeeding forms of the vernacular gradually deviated from +the classical type, a special grammar along with a special vocabulary +had to be studied by the would-be poet. This was avoided, however, by +the development in the sixteenth century of a popular and still shorter +form of ode called <i>Hokku</i>, with much less strict regulations about +syntax and phraseology. This ultra-short variety of Japanese poetry, +consisting only of seventeen syllables, is in form the upper half of the +regular poem. Here is an example:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Asagaho ni</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Tsurube torarete</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Morai-midzu.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Sketchy as it is, this tells us that the composer Chiyo, 'having gone to +her well one morning to draw water, found that some tendrils of the +convolvulus had twined themselves around the rope. As a poetess and a +woman of taste, she could not bring herself to disturb the dainty +blossoms. So, leaving her own well to the convolvuli, she went and +begged water of a neighbor'—a pretty little vignette, surely, and +expressed in five words.</p> + +<p>This new movement, which owes its real development to a remarkable man +called Bashô (1644-1649), a mystic of the Zen sect to the tip of his +fingers, had an aim that was strictly practical. 'He wished to turn +men's lives and thoughts in a better and a higher direction, and he +employed one branch of art, namely poetry, as the vehicle for the +ethical influence to whose exercise he devoted his life. The very word +poetry (or <i>haikai</i>) came in his mouth to stand for morality. Did any of +his followers transgress the code of poverty, simplicity, humility, +long-suffering, he would rebuke the offender with a "This is not +poetry," meaning "This is not right." His knowledge of nature and his +sympathy with nature were at least as intimate as Wordsworth's, and his +sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men was far more intimate; for +he never isolated himself from his kind, but lived cheerfully in the +world.'<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p> + +<p>Now, this form of popular literature by virtue of its accessibility even +to the poorest amateurs from the lowest ranks of the people, was +markedly instrumental, as the now classical form of poetry had been +during the Middle Ages, in the cultivation of taste and good manners +among all classes of the Japanese nation. Even among the ricksha men of +to-day you find many such humble poets, taking snapshots as they run +along the stony path of their miserable life. I wonder if your hansom +drivers are equally aspiring in this respect.</p> + +<p>In all these phases of the development of our poetry, we notice, as one +of its peculiarities, a strong inclination to the exercise of the witty +side of our nature. Even if we leave out of consideration the so-called +'pillow word' (<i>makura-kotoba</i>), so profusely resorted to in our ancient +poems, part of which were nothing but a naïve sort of <i>jeu de mots</i>, and +the abundant use of other plays on words of later development, known as +<i>kakekotoba</i>, <i>jo</i>, <i>shûku</i>, etc. (<i>haikai-no-uta</i>), it is noteworthy +that poems of a comic nature found a special place in the earliest +imperial collection of Japanese odes named Kokinshifu,' which was +compiled in the year A.D. 908. This species has flourished ever since +under the name of Kyôka, and also gave rise to a shortened form in +seventeen syllables, called <i>haikai-no-hokku</i>. When in the hand of Bashô +this latter form developed itself into something higher and more +serious, the witty and satirical Senryû, also in seventeen syllables, +came to take its place.</p> + +<p>One thing to be specially noted in this connection is the introduction +from China of the idea of poetic tournaments, the beauty of which +consisted in the offhand and quick composition of one long series of +odes by several persons sitting together, each supplying in turn either +the upper half or the lower half as the case might be, the two in +combination giving a poetical sense. This usage of capping verses known +as <i>renga</i> came to be very popular, from the Court downward, as early as +the thirteenth century. After a while the same practice was applied to +comic poetry, thus producing the so-called <i>haikai-no-renga</i>, or comic +linked verses. This coupling of verses gave plenty of occasion for +sharpening one's wit as well as one's skill in extemporising. It is to a +later attempt to express all these subtleties in the upper half of the +poem composed by one person that the present <i>kokku</i> owed its origin. +You can easily imagine the effect such an exercise produced on the +popular mind. Besides the moral good which this literary pursuit has +brought to the populace, it has given a fresh opportunity for the +cultivation of our habit of attaching sense to apparently meaningless +groups of phenomena, and our fondness of laconic utterance and symbolic +representation, not to say anything about our love of nature and +simplicity.</p> + +<p>All this tends in my view to show that we Japanese have a strong liking +for wit in the wider sense of the word. We try to solve a question, not +by that slower but surer way of calm deliberation and untiring labour +like the cool-headed Germans, but by an incandescent flash of +inspiration like the hot-blooded Frenchmen. This fact is singularly +preserved in the earlier sense of the now sacred word <i>Yamato-damashî</i>, +which had not its present meaning, viz., 'the spirit of Japan' in the +most elevated sense of that term, but signified 'the wit of the +Japanese' as contrasted with the 'learning of the Chinese' (<i>wakon</i> as +opposed to <i>kansai</i>). The word <i>tamashî</i>, which now expresses the idea +of 'spirit,' corresponds in the compound in question to the French +<i>esprit</i> in such combinations as <i>homme d'esprit</i> or <i>jeu d'esprit</i>.</p> + +<p>Turning now to the consideration of other sets of phenomena, as an +illustration of the Japanese character, let me tell you something about +the tea-ceremony and kindred rites.</p> + +<p>To begin with the <i>Cha-no-e</i> (or <i>Cha-no-yu</i>), or tea-meeting, this +much-spoken-of art originated among the Buddhist priests, who learned to +appreciate the beverage from the Chinese. Indeed, the tea-plant itself +was first introduced into Japan along with the name <i>Cha</i> (Chinese +<i>Ch'a</i>) from the Celestial Empire, in the tenth century after Christ. +During the following centuries its cultivation and the preparation of +the drink was monopolised by the priesthood, if we except the cases of a +few well-to-do men of letters. This fact is gathered from the frequent +mention of tea-cups offered to the emperor on the occasion of an +imperial visit to a Buddhist monastery. During all this time a sense of +something precious and aristocratic was attached to this aromatic +beverage, which had been regarded as a kind of rare drug of strange +virtue in raising depressed spirits, and even of curing certain +diseases.</p> + +<p>This high appreciation of the drink, as well as the need of ceremony in +offering it to exalted personages, gradually developed in the hands of +monks with plenty of leisure and a good knowledge of the high praise +accorded to its virtues by the Chinese savants, into a very complicated +rite as to the way of serving, and of being served with, a cup of tea. A +print representing a man clad as a Buddhist priest in the act of selling +the beverage in the street at a penny a cup is preserved from a date as +early as the fourteenth century, showing that the drink had then come to +find customers even among the common people. But the ceremony of +Cha-no-e, as such, never made its way among them until many centuries +after. It was at first fostered and elaborated only among the +aristocracy. Already in the fifteenth century, when the luxury and +extravagance of the Ashikaga Shogunate reached its zenith in the person +of Yoshimasa (1435-1490), the tea-ceremony was one of the favourite +pastimes of the highest classes. Yoshimasa himself was a great patron +and connoisseur of the complicated rite, as well as of other branches of +art, such as landscape gardening and the arrangement of flowers.</p> + +<p>There are two different phases of the tea-ceremony, the regular course +and the simplified course, known among us as the 'Great Tea' and the +'Small Tea.' In either case, it might be defined in its present form as +a system of cultivating good manners as applied to daily life, with the +serving and drinking of a cup of tea at its centre. The main stress is +laid on ensuring outwardly a graceful carriage, and inwardly presence of +mind. As with the national form of wrestling known as <i>ju-jitsu</i>, with +its careful analysis of every push and pull down to the minutest +details, so with the Cha-no-e, every move of body and limb in walking +and sitting during the whole ceremony has been fully studied and worked +out so as to give it the most graceful form conceivable. At the same +time the calm and self-control shown by the partaker in the rite is +regarded as an essential element in the performance, without which +ultimate success in it will be quite impossible. So it is more a +physical and moral training than a mere amusement or a simple quenching +of thirst. But this original sense has not always been kept in view even +by the so-called masters of the tea-ceremony, who, like your +dancing-masters, are generally considered to be the men to teach us +social etiquette. Thus, diverted from its original idea, the Cha-no-e is +generally found to degenerate into a body of conventional and +meaningless formalities, which, even in its most abbreviated form as the +'Small Tea,' is something very tiresome, if not worse. To sit <i>à la +japonaise</i> (not <i>à la turque</i>, which is not considered polite) for an +hour, if not for hours together, on the matted floor to see the +celebration of the monotonous rite, daring to talk only little, and even +then not above a whisper, in the smallest imaginable tea-room, is not +what even a born Japanese of the present day can much appreciate, much +less so Europeans, who would prefer being put in the stocks, unless they +be themselves Cha-jin or tea-ceremonialists, that is to say, eccentrics. +How to open the sliding-door; how to shut it each time; how to bring and +arrange the several utensils, with their several prescribed ways of +being handled, into the tea-room; how to sit down noiselessly in front +of the boiling kettle which hangs over a brasier; how to open the lid of +the kettle; how to put tea-powder in the cup; how to pour hot water over +it; how to stir the now green water with a bamboo brush; how to give the +mixture a head of foam; how and where to place the cup ready for the +expecting drinker—this on the part of the person playing the host or +hostess; and now on the part of the guest—how to take a sweet from the +dish before him in preparation for the coming aromatic drink; how to +take up the cup now given him; how to hold it with both hands; how to +give it a gentle stir; how to drink it up in three sips and a half; how +to wipe off the trace of the sipping left on the edge of the cup; how to +turn the cup horizontally round; how to put it down within the reach of +his host or hostess, etc., etc., <i>ad infinitum</i>—these are some of the +essential items to be learned and practised. And for every one of them +there is a prescribed form even to the slightest move and curve in which +a finger should be bent or stretched, always in strict accordance with +the attitude of other bodies in direct connection with it. The whole +ceremony in its degenerated form is an aggregate of an immense number of +<i>comme il faut</i>'s, with practically no margin for personal taste. But +even behind its present frigidity we cannot fail to discern the true +idea and the good it has worked in past centuries. It has done a great +deal of good, especially in those rough days at the end of the sixteenth +century, when great warriors returning blood-stained from the field of +battle learned how to bow their haughty necks in admiration of the +curves of beauty, and how to listen to the silvery note of a boiling +tea-kettle. They could not help their stern faces melting into a naïve +smile in the serene simplicity of the tea-room, whose arrangement, true +to the Zen taste to the very last detail of its structure, showed a +studied avoidance of ostentation in form and colour. To this day it is +always this Zen taste that rules supreme in the decoration of a Japanese +house.</p> + +<p>Visit a Japanese gentleman whose taste is not yet badly influenced by +the Western love of show and symmetry in his dwelling: you will find the +room and the whole arrangement free from anything of an ostentatious +nature. The colour of the walls and sliding-doors will be very subdued, +but not on that account gloomy. In the niche you will see one or a +single set of <i>kakemono</i>, or pictures, at the foot of which, just in the +middle of the slightly raised floor of the niche, we put some object of +decoration—a sculpture, a vase with flowers, etc. These are both +carefully changed in accordance with the season, or else in harmony with +the ruling idea of the day, when the room is decorated in celebration of +some event or guest. This rule applies to the other objects connected +with the room—utensils, cushions, screens, etc.</p> + +<p>The European way of arranging a room is, generally speaking, rather +revolting to our taste. We take care not to show anything but what is +absolutely necessary to make a room look agreeable, keeping all other +things behind the scenes. Thus we secure to every object of art that we +allow in our presence a fair opportunity of being appreciated. This is +not usually the case in a European dwelling. I have very often felt less +crowded in a museum or in a bazaar than in your drawing-rooms. 'You know +so well how to expose to view what you have,' I have frequently had +occasion to say to myself, 'but you have still much to learn from us how +to hide, for exposition is, after all, a very poor means of showing.'</p> + +<p>To return to the main point, we owe to the Cha-no-e much of the present +standard of our taste, which is, in its turn, nothing more than the Zen +ways of looking at things as applied to everyday life. This is no +wonder, when we remember that it was in the tasteful hands of the Zen +priests that the whole ceremony reached its perfection. Indeed, the word +<i>cha</i> is a term which conveys to this day the main features of the +Contemplative sect to our mind.</p> + +<p>In connection with the tea-ceremony, there are some sister arts which +have been equally effective in the proper cultivation of our taste. +Landscape gardening, in which our object is to make an idealised copy of +some natural scene, is an art that has been loved and practised among us +for more than a thousand years, although it was not indigenous like most +things Japanese. This practice of painting with tree and stone soon gave +rise to another art, the miniature reproduction of a favourite natural +scene on a piece of board, and this is the forerunner of the later +<i>bonkei</i>, or the tray-landscape, and its sister <i>bonsai</i>, or the art of +symbolising an abstract idea, such as courage, majesty, etc., by means +of the growth of a dwarf tree.</p> + +<p>The same love that we feel for a symbolic representation is also to be +traced in the arrangement of flowers. The practice of preserving cut +branches, generally of flowering trees, in a vase filled with water is +often mentioned in our classical literature. But it was first in the +sixteenth century that it assumed its present aspect, when, in +conjunction with the Cha-no-e, it found a great patron in that most +influential dilettante Shogun Yoshimasa. Already in his time there were +a great many principles to be learned concerning the way to give the +longest life and the most graceful form to the branches put in a vase, +besides investing the whole composition with a symbolic meaning. Up to +this day we look upon this art as very helpful for the cultivation of +taste among the fair sex, who receive long courses of instruction by the +generally aged masters of floral arrangement, who, along with their +teaching in the treatment of plants, know how to instil ethics in their +young pupils, taking the finished vase of flowers as the subject of +conversation. The masters of the tea-ceremony are also well versed in +arranging flowers in that simple manner which is yet full of meaning +called <i>cha-bana</i>, or the 'Zen type of floral art.'</p> + +<p>You see how much all these arts have contributed to the production of +our taste, whose ideals are the dislike of loudness and love of symbolic +representation, with a delicate feeling for the beauty of line as seen +in things moving or at rest. This last quality must have been immensely +augmented by the linear character of our drawing, and also by the great +importance we are accustomed to attach to the shape and the strokes of +the characters when we are learning to write.</p> + +<p>All these qualities you will see exemplified in any Japanese work of +art—from a large picture down to a tiny wooden carving. Take up a +girl's silk dress and examine it carefully, and note how the lining is +dyed and embroidered with as great, if not greater care, in order to +make it harmonise in colour and design with the visible surface and add +some exquisite meaning. Do not forget to look at the back when you come +across a lacquered box, for it is not only the surface that receives our +careful attention. And above all, you must always keep in mind that our +artists think it a duty to be suggestive rather than explicit, and to +leave something of their meaning to be divined by those who contemplate +their works.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The time is now come to conclude my essay at an exposition of the +Japanese spirit. I think I have given you occasion to see something of +both the strong and the weak sides of my countrymen; for it is just +where our favourable qualities lie that you will also find the +corresponding weaknesses. The usual charges brought against us, that we +are precocious, unpractical, frivolous, fickle, etc., are not worthy of +serious attention, because they are all of them easily explained as but +the attendant phenomena of the transitory age from which we are just +emerging. Even the more sound accusation of our want of originality must +be reconsidered in face of so many facts to the contrary, facts which +show us to be at least in small things very original, almost in the +French sense of that word. That we have always been ready to borrow +hints from other countries is in a great measure to be explained by the +consideration that we had from the very beginning the disadvantage and +the advantage of having as neighbours nations with a great start in the +race-course of civilisation. The cause of our being small in great +things, while great in small things, can be partly found in the +financial conditions of the country and in the non-individual nature of +the culture we have received. These delicate questions will have to be +raised again some centuries hence, when a healthy admixture of the +European civilisation has been tried—a civilisation the effect of which +has been, on the whole, so beneficial to our development, that we feel +it a most agreeable duty gratefully to acknowledge our immense +obligation to the nations of the West.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>The Soul of a People.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Professor T. Inouye's little pamphlet, published first in +French, entitled <i>Sur le Développement des Idées Philosophiques au Japon +avant l'Introduction de la Civilisation Européenne</i>, will give you some +idea of our philosophic systems. For a serious perusal, its German +translation, annotated and amplified, by Dr. A. Gramatzky (<i>Kurze +Übersicht über die Entwicklung der philosophischen Ideen in Japan</i>, +Berlin, 1897), is to be preferred.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Professor Milne, <i>Transactions of the Asiatic Society of +Japan</i>, vol. viii. p. 82.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan</i>, vol. xxv.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of the Literary Department of the University of +Tôkyô</i>, vol. i.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Die körperlichen Eigenschaften der Japaner</i>, vols. xxviii. +and xxxii. of <i>Mittheilungen der Gesellschaft für die Natur- und +Völkerkunde Ostasiens</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Cp. Bramsen's <i>Japanese Chronological Tables</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Legge's <i>The Religion of China</i>, p. 137.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Cp. Rhys Davids' <i>Buddhism</i>, p. 144.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Cp. T. Haga's <i>Note on Japanese Schools of Philosophy. +T.A.S.J.</i>, vol. xx. pt. i. p. 134.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Faber's <i>Doctrines of Confucius</i>, p. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Cp. Dr. P. Carus's <i>Lao-tze Tao-teh-king</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Cp. <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, vol. xxix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Cp. <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, vol. xxix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> E. J. Eitel's <i>Handbook of Chinese Buddhism</i>, p. 49.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Four years later the first temple of this school was +opened in Hakata under the patronship of the Emperor Gotoba.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The first mention in books of a similar mode of death +dates from the latter part of the twelfth century. But it does not seem +that the custom became universal until a considerably later period.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> B.H. Chamberlain's <i>Bashô and the Japanese Epigram, +T.A.S.J.</i>, vol. xxx. pt. ii.</p></div> + +</div> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 34341 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |