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Strangeness and Charm THE majority of the first impressions of Japan
recorded by travellers are pleasurable impressions. Indeed, there must be something
lacking, or something very harsh, in the nature to which Japan can make no
emotional appeal. The appeal itself is the clue to a problem; and that problem
is the character of a race and of its civilization. My own first impressions of Japan, — Japan as
seen in the white sunshine of a perfect spring day, — had doubtless much in
common with the average of such experiences. I remember especially the wonder
and the delight of the vision. The wonder and the delight have never passed
away: they are often revived for me even now, by some chance happening, after
fourteen years of sojourn. But the reason of these feelings was difficult to
learn, — or at least to guess; for I cannot yet claim to know much about
Japan.... Long ago the best and dearest Japanese friend I ever had said to me,
a little before his death: "When you find, in four or five years more,
that you cannot understand the Japanese at all, then you will begin to know
something about them." After having realized the truth of my friend's
prediction, — after having discovered that I cannot understand the Japanese at
all, — I feel better qualified to attempt this essay. As first perceived, the outward strangeness
of things in Japan produces (in certain minds, at least) a queer thrill
impossible to describe, — a feeling of weirdness which comes to us only with
the perception of the totally unfamiliar. You find yourself moving through
queer small streets full of odd small people, wearing robes and sandals of
extraordinary shapes; and you can scarcely distinguish the sexes at sight. The
houses are constructed and furnished in ways alien to all your experience; and
you are astonished to find that you cannot conceive the use or meaning of
numberless things on display in the shops. Food-stuffs of unimaginable
derivation; utensils of enigmatic forms; emblems incomprehensible of some
mysterious belief; strange masks and toys that commemorate legends of gods or
demons; odd figures, too, of the gods themselves, with monstrous ears and
smiling faces, — all these you may perceive as you wander about; though you
must also notice telegraph-poles and type-writers, electric lamps and sewing
machines. Everywhere on signs and hangings, and on the backs of people passing
by, you will observe wonderful Chinese characters; and the wizardry of all
these texts makes the dominant tone of the spectacle. Further acquaintance with this fantastic
world will in nowise diminish the sense of strangeness evoked by the first
vision of it. You will soon observe that even the physical actions of the
people are unfamiliar, — that their work is done in ways the opposite of
Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after surprising
methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a hammer such as no
Western smith could use without long practice; the carpenter pulls, instead of
pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side,
and the right side the wrong; and keys must be turned, to open or close a lock,
in what we are accustomed to think the wrong direction. Mr. Percival Lowell has
truthfully observed that the Japanese speak backwards, read backwards, write
backwards, — and that this is "only the abc of their contrariety." For the habit of writing backwards
there are obvious evolutional reasons; and the requirements of Japanese
calligraphy sufficiently explain why the artist pushes his brush or pencil
instead of pulling it. But why, Instead of putting the thread through the eye
of the needle, should the Japanese maiden slip the eye of the needle over the
point of the thread? Perhaps the most remarkable, out of a hundred possible
examples of antipodal action, is furnished by the Japanese art of fencing. The
swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards
him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it, indeed, as
other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw; yet there
is a pushing motion where we should expect a pulling motion in the stroke.... These
and other forms of unfamiliar action are strange enough to suggest the notion
of a humanity even physically as little related to us as might be the
population of another planet, the notion of some anatomical unlikeness. No such
unlikeness, however, appears to exist; and all this oppositeness probably
implies, not so much the outcome of a human experience entirely independent of
Aryan experience, as the outcome of an experience evolutionally younger than
our own. Yet that experience has been one of no mean
order. Its manifestations do not merely startle; they also delight. The delicate
perfection of workmanship, the light strength and grace of objects, the power
manifest to obtain the best results with the least material, the achieving of
mechanical ends by the simplest possible means, the comprehension of
irregularity as aesthetic value, the shapeliness and perfect taste of
everything, the sense displayed of harmony in tints or colours, — all this must
convince you at once that our Occident has much to learn from this remote
civilization, not only in matters of art and taste, but in matters likewise of
economy and utility. It is no barbarian fancy that appeals to you in those
amazing porcelains, those astonishing embroideries, those wonders of lacquer
and ivory and bronze, which educate imagination in unfamiliar ways. No: these
are the products of a civilization which became, within its own limits, so
exquisite that none but an artist is capable of judging Its manufactures, — a
civilization that can be termed imperfect only by those who would also term
imperfect the Greek civilization of three thousand years ago. But the underlying strangeness of this world,
— the psychological strangeness, — is much more startling than the visible and
superficial. You begin to suspect the range of it after having discovered that
no adult Occidental can perfectly master the language. East and West the
fundamental parts of human nature — the emotional bases of it — are much the
same: the mental difference between a Japanese and a European child is mainly
potential. But with growth the difference rapidly develops and widens, till it
becomes, in adult life, inexpressible. The whole of the Japanese mental
superstructure evolves into forms having nothing in common with Western
psychological development: the expression of thought becomes regulated, and the
expression of emotion inhibited in ways that bewilder and astound. The ideas of
this people are not our ideas; their sentiments are not our sentiments; their
ethical life represents for us regions of thought and emotion yet unexplored,
or perhaps long forgotten. Any one of their ordinary phrases, translated into
Western speech, makes hopeless nonsense; and the literal rendering into
Japanese of the simplest English sentence would scarcely be comprehended by any
Japanese who had never studied a European tongue. Could you learn all the words
in a Japanese dictionary, your acquisition would not help you in the least to
make yourself understood in speaking, unless you had learned also to think like
a Japanese, — that is to say, to think backwards, to think upside-down and
inside-out to think in directions totally foreign to Aryan habit. Experience in
the acquisition of European languages can help you to learn Japanese about as much
as it could help you to acquire the language spoken by the inhabitants of Mars.
To be able to use the Japanese tongue as a Japanese uses it, one would need to
be born again, and to have one's mind completely reconstructed, from the
foundation upwards. It is possible that a person of European parentage, born in
Japan, and accustomed from infancy to use the vernacular, might retain in
after-life that instinctive knowledge which could alone enable him to adapt his
mental relations to the relations of any Japanese environment. There is
actually an Englishman named Black, born in Japan, whose proficiency in the
language is proved by the fact that he is able to earn a fair income as a
professional storyteller (hanashika).
But this is an extraordinary case.... As for the literary language, I need only
observe that to make acquaintance with it requires very much more than a
knowledge of several thousand Chinese characters. It is safe to say that no
Occidental can undertake to render at sight any literary text laid before him —
indeed the number of native scholars able to do so is very small; — and
although the learning displayed in this direction by various Europeans may
justly compel our admiration, the work of none could have been given to the
world without Japanese help. But as the outward strangeness of Japan
proves to be full of beauty, so the inward strangeness appears to have its
charm, — an ethical charm reflected in the common life of the people. The
attractive aspects of that life do not indeed imply, to the ordinary observer,
a psychological differentiation measurable by scores of centuries, only a scientific
mind, like that of Mr. Percival Lowell, immediately perceives the problem
presented. The less gifted stranger, if naturally sympathetic, is merely
pleased and puzzled, and cries to explain, by his own experience of happy life
on the other aide of the world, the social conditions that charm him. Let us
suppose that he has the good fortune of being able to live for six months or a
year in some old-fashioned town of the interior. From the beginning of this
sojourn he can scarcely fail to be impressed by the apparent kindliness and
joyousness of the existence about him. In the relations of the people to each other,
as well as in all their relations to himself, he will find a constant amenity,
a tact, a good-nature such as he will elsewhere have met with only in the
friendship of exclusive circles. Everybody greets everybody with happy looks
and pleasant words; faces are always smiling; the commonest incidents of
everyday life are transfigured by a courtesy at once so artless and so
faultless that it appears to spring directly from the heart, without any
teaching. Under all circumstances a certain outward cheerfulness never fails: no
matter what troubles may come, — storm or fire, flood or earthquake, — the
laughter of greeting voices, the bright smile and graceful bow, the kindly
inquiry and the wish to please, continue to make existence beautiful. Religion
brings no gloom into this sunshine: before the Buddhas and the gods folk smile
as they pray; the temple-courts are playgrounds for the children; and within
the enclosure of the great public shrines — which are places of festivity
rather than of solemnity — dancing-platforms are erected. Family existence
would seem to be everywhere characterized by gentleness: there is no visible
quarrelling, no loud harshness, no tears and reproaches. Cruelty, even to
animals, appears to be unknown: one sees farmers, coming to town, trudging
patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the
burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out
of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy
dog or a stupid chicken.... For no inconsiderable time one may live in the
midst of appearances like these, and perceive nothing to spoil the pleasure of
the experience. Of course the conditions of which I speak are
now passing away; but they are still to be found in the remoter districts. I
have lived in districts where no case of theft had occurred for hundreds of
years, — where the newly-built prisons of Meiji remained empty and useless, —
where the people left their doors unfastened by night as well as by day. These
facts are familiar to every Japanese. In such a district, you might recognize
that the kindness shown to you, as a stranger, is the consequence of official
command; but how explain the goodness of the people to each other? When you
discover no harshness, no rudeness, no dishonesty, no breaking of laws, and
learn that this social condition has been the same for centuries, you are
tempted to believe that you have entered into the domain of a morally superior
humanity. All this soft urbanity, impeccable honesty, ingenuous kindliness of
speech and act, you might naturally interpret as conduct directed by perfect
goodness of heart. And the simplicity that delights you is no simplicity of
barbarism. Here every one has been taught; every one knows how to write and
speak beautifully, how to compose poetry, how to behave politely; there is
everywhere cleanliness and good taste; interiors are bright and pure; the daily
use of the hot bath is universal. How refuse to be charmed by a civilization in
which every relation appears to be governed by altruism, every action directed
by duty, and every object shaped by art? You cannot help being delighted by
such conditions, or feeling indignant at hearing them denounced as
"heathen." And according to the degree of altruism within yourself,
these good folk will be able, without any apparent effort to make you happy.
The mere sensation of the milieu is a
placid happiness: it is like the sensation of a dream in which people greet us
exactly as we like to be greeted, and say to us all that we like to hear, and
do for us all that we wish to have done, — people moving soundlessly through
spaces of perfect repose, all bathed in vapoury light. Yes — for no little time
these fairy-folk can give you all the soft bliss of sleep. But sooner or later,
if you dwell long with them, your contentment will prove to have much in common
with the happiness of dreams. You will never forget the dream, — never; but it
will lift at last, like those vapours of spring which lend preternatural
loveliness to a Japanese landscape in the forenoon of radiant days. Really you
are happy because you have entered bodily into Fairyland, — into a world that
is not, and never could be your own. You have been transported out of your own
century — over spaces enormous of perished time — into an era forgotten, into a
vanished age, — back to something ancient as Egypt or Nineveh. That is the
secret of the strangeness and beauty of things, — the secret of the thrill they
give, — the secret of the elfish charm of the people and their ways. Fortunate
mortal! the tide of Time has turned for you I But remember that here all is
enchantment, — that you have fallen under the spell of the dead, — that the
lights and the colours and the voices must fade away at last into emptiness and
silence. * * * * *
* Some of us, at least, have often wished that
it were possible to live for a season in the beautiful vanished world of Greek
culture. Inspired by our first acquaintance with the charm of Greek art and
thought, this wish comes to us even before we are capable of imagining the true
conditions of the antique civilization. If the wish could be realized, we
should certainly find it impossible to accommodate ourselves to those
conditions, — not so much because of the difficulty of learning the
environment, as because of the much greater difficulty of feeling just as
people used to feel some thirty centuries ago. In spite of all that has been
done for Greek studies since the Renaissance, we are still unable to understand
many aspects oi the old Greek life; no modern mind can really feel, for
example, those sentiments and emotions to which the great tragedy of Œdipus
made appeal. Nevertheless we are much in advance of our forefathers of the
eighteenth century, as regards the knowledge of Greek civilization. In the time
of the French revolution, it was thought possible to reestablish in France the
conditions of a Greek republic, and to educate children according to the system
of Sparta. To-day we are well aware that no mind developed by modern civilization
could find happiness under any of those socialistic despotisms which existed in
all the cities of the ancient world before the Roman conquest. We could no more
mingle with the old Greek life, if it were resurrected for us, — no more become
a part of it, — than we could change our mental identities. But how much would
we not give for the delight of beholding it, — for the joy of attending one
festival in Corinth, or of witnessing the Pan-Hellenic games?... And yet, to witness the revival of some
perished Greek civilization, — to walk about the very Crotona of Pythagoras, —
to wander through the Syracuse of Theocritus, — were not any more of a
privilege than is the opportunity actually afforded us to study Japanese life.
Indeed, from the evolutional point of view, it were less of a privilege,— since
Japan offers us the living spectacle of conditions older, and psychologically
much farther away from us, than those of any Greek period with which art and
literature have made us closely acquainted. The reader scarcely needs to be reminded that
a civilization less evolved than our own, and intellectually remote from us, is
not on that account to be regarded as necessarily inferior in all respects,
Hellenic civilisation at its best represented an early stage of sociological
evolution; yet the arts which it developed still furnish our supreme and
unapproachable ideals of beauty. So, too, this much more archaic civilization
of Old Japan attained an average of aesthetic and moral culture well worthy of
our wonder and praise. Only a shallow mind — a very shallow mind — will
pronounce the best of that culture inferior. But Japanese civilization is
peculiar to a degree for which there is perhaps no Western parallel, since it
offers us the spectacle of many successive layers of alien culture superimposed
above the simple indigenous basis, and forming a very bewilderment of
complexity. Most of this alien culture is Chinese, and bears but an indirect
relation to the real subject of these studies. The peculiar and surprising fact
is that, in spite of all superimposition, the original character of the people
and of their society should still remain recognizable. The wonder of Japan is
not to be sought in the countless borrowings with which she has clothed
herself, — much as a princess of the olden time would don twelve ceremonial
robes, of divers colours and qualities, folded one upon the other so as to show
their many-tinted edges at throat and sleeves and skirt; — no, the real wonder is
the Wearer. For the interest of the costume is much less in its beauty of form
and tint than in its significance as idea, — as representing something of the
mind that devised or adopted it, And the supreme interest of the old Japanese
civilization lies in what it expresses of the race-character, — that character
which yet remains essentially unchanged by all the changes of Meiji. "Suggests" were perhaps a better
word than "expresses," for this race-character is rather to be
divined than recognized. Our comprehension of it might be helped by some
definite knowledge of origins; but such knowledge we do not yet possess.
Ethnologists are agreed that the Japanese race has been formed by a mingling of
peoples, and that the dominant element is Mongolian; but this dominant element
is represented in two very different types, — one slender and almost feminine
of aspect; the other, squat and powerful. Chinese and Korean elements are known
to exist in the populations of certain districts; and there appears to have been
a large infusion of Aino blood. Whether there be any Malay or Polynesian
element also has not been decided. Thus much only can be safely affirmed, —
that the race, like all good races, is a mixed one; and that the peoples who
originally united to form it have been so blended together as to develop, under
long social discipline, a tolerably uniform type of character. This character,
though immediately recognizable in some of its aspects, presents us with many
enigmas that are very difficult to explain. |