Appearances Part 5

People who could so devise life, we may be sure, are people with a fineness of perception unknown to the West, unless it were once in ancient Greece. The j.a.panese indeed, I suspect, are the Greeks of the East. In the theatre at Kyoto this was curiously borne in upon me. On the floor of the house reclined figures in loose robes, bare-necked and barefooted. On the narrow stage were one or two actors, chanting in measured speech, and moving slowly from pose to pose. From boxes on either side of the stage intoned a kind of chorus; and a flute and pizzicato strings accompanied the whole in the solemn strains of some ancient mode. I have seen nothing so like what a Greek play may have been, though doubtless even this was far enough away. And still more was I struck by the resemblance when a comedy succeeded to the tragedy, and I found the young and old j.a.pan confronting one another exactly as the young and old Athens met in debate, two thousand years ago, in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes. The theme was an ascent of Mount Fuji; the actors two groups of young girls, one costumed as virgin priestesses of the Shinto cult, the other in modern European dress. The one set were climbing the mountain as a pilgrimage, the other as a lark; and they meet and exchange sharp dialectics (unintelligible to me, but not unguessable) on the lower slopes. The sympathies of the author, like those of Aristophanes, were with the old school. It is the pilgrims who reach the top and the modern young women who collapse. And the modern young man fares no better; he is beaten by a coolie and frightened by a ghost. The playwright had at least Aristophanes' gift of lampoon, though I doubt whether he had a touch of his genius. Perhaps, however, he had a better cause. For, I doubt, modern j.a.pan may deserve lampooning more than the Athens of Aristophanes. For modern j.a.pan is the modern West.

And that--well, it seemed to be symbolised to me yesterday in the train.

In my carriage were two j.a.panese. One was loosely wrapt in a kimono, bare throat and feet, fine features, fine gestures, everything aristocratic and distinguished. The other was clad in European dress, sprigged waistcoat, gold watch-chain, a coa.r.s.e, thick-lipped face, a podgy figure. It was a hot July day, and we were pa.s.sing through some of the loveliest scenery in the world. He first closed all doors and windows, and then extended himself at full length and went to sleep.

There he lay, his great paunch sagging--prosperity exuding from every pore--an emblem and type of what in the West we call a "successful" man.

And the other? The other, no doubt, was going downhill. Both, of course, were j.a.panese types; but the civilisation of the West chose the one and rejected the other. And if civilisation is to be judged, as it fairly may be, by the kind of men it brings to the top, there is much to be said for the point of view of my Tory playwright.

II

A "NO" DANCE

On entering the theatre I was invaded by a sense of serenity and peace.

There was no ornament, no upholstery, no superfluity at all. A square building of unvarnished wood; a floor covered with matting, exquisitely clean, and divided into little boxes, or rather trays (so low were the part.i.tions), in which the audience knelt on their heels, beautiful in loose robes; running out from the back wall a square stage, with a roof supported by pillars; a pa.s.sage on the same level, by which the actors entered, on the left; the screens removed from the outer walls, so that the hall was open to the air, and one looked out on sky and trees, or later on darkness, against which shone a few painted lanterns. Compare this with the Queen's Hall in London, or with any of our theatres, and realise the effect on one's mood of the mere setting of the drama. Drama was it? Or opera? Or what? It is called a "dance." But there was very little dancing. What mainly remains in my mind is a series of visual images, one more beautiful than another; figures seated motionless for minutes, almost for half-hours, with a stillness of statues, not an eyelash shaking; or pa.s.sing very slowly across the stage, with that movement of bringing one foot up to the other and pausing before the next step which is so ridiculous in our opera, but was here so right and so impressive; or turning slowly, or rising and sitting with immense deliberation; each figure right in its relation to the stage and to the others. All were clothed in stiff brocade, sumptuous but not gorgeous.

One or two were masked; and all of them, I felt, ought to have been. The mask, in fact, the use of which in Greek drama I had always felt to be so questionable, was here triumphantly justified. It completed the repudiation of actuality which was the essence of the effect. It was a musical sound, as it were, made visible. It symbolised humanity, but it was not human, still less inhuman. I would rather call it divine. And this whole art of movement and costume required that completion. Once I had seen a mask I missed it in all the characters that were without it.

To me, then, this visual spectacle was the essence of the "No" dance.

The dancing itself, when it came, was but a slight intensification of the slow and solemn posing I have described. There was no violence, no leaping, no quick steps; rather a turning and bending, a slow sweep of the arm, a walking a little more rhythmical, on the verge, at most, of running. It was never exciting, but I could not say it was never pa.s.sionate. It seemed to express a kind of frozen or petrified pa.s.sion; rather, perhaps, a pa.s.sion run into a mould of beauty and turned out a statue. I have never seen an art of such reserve and such distinction.

"Or of such tediousness," I seem to hear an impatient reader exclaim.

Well, let me be frank. Like all Westerners, I am accustomed to life in quick time, and to an art full of episode, of intellectual content, of rapid change and rapid development. I have lost to a great extent that power of prolonging an emotion which seems to be the secret of Eastern art. I am bored--subconsciously, as it were--where an Oriental is lulled into ecstasy. His case is the better. But also, in this matter of the No dance he has me at a disadvantage. In the first place he can understand the words. These, it is true, have far less importance than in a drama of Shakspere. They are only a lyric or narrative accompaniment to the music and the dance. Still they have, one is informed, a beauty much appreciated by j.a.panese, and one that the stranger, ignorant of the language, misses. And secondly, what is worse, the music failed to move me. Whether this is my own fault, or that of the music, I do not presume to decide, for I do not know whether, as so often is the case, I was defeated by a convention unfamiliar to me, or whether the convention has really become formal and artificial. In any case, after the first shock of interest, I found the music monotonous. It was solemn and religious in character, and reminded me more of Gregorian chants than of anything else. But it had one curious feature which seemed rather to be primitive and orgiastic. The two musicians who played the drums accompanied the performers, almost unceasingly, by a kind of musical e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, starting on a low note and swooping up to a high, long-held falsetto cry. This over and over again, through the dialogue and through the singing. The object, I suppose, and perhaps, to j.a.panese, the effect, is to sustain a high emotional tone. In my case it failed, as the music generally failed. My interest, as I began by saying, was maintained by the visual beauty; and that must have been very great to be able to maintain itself independently of the words and the music.

As to the drama, it is not drama at all in the sense in which we have come to understand the term in the West. There is no "construction," no knot tied and untied, no character. Rather there is a succession of scenes selected from a well-known story for some quality of poignancy, or merely of narrative interest. The form, I think, should be called epic or lyric rather than dramatic. And it is in this point that it most obviously differs from the Greek drama. It has no intellectual content, or very little. And, perhaps for that reason, it has had no development, but remains fossilised where it was in the fifteenth century. On the other hand, these actors, I felt, are the only ones who could act Greek drama. They have, I think, quite clearly the same tradition and aim as the Greeks. They desire not to reproduce but to symbolise actuality; and their conception of acting is the very opposite of ours. The last thing they aim at is to be "natural." To be unnatural rather is their object.

Hence the costume, hence the mask, hence the movement and gesture. And how effective such "unnaturalness" can be in evoking natural pa.s.sion only those will understand who have realised how ineffective for that purpose is our "naturalness" when we are concerned with Sophocles or Shakspere. The j.a.panese have in their No dance a great treasure. For out of it they might, if they have the genius, develop a modern poetic drama. How thankful would hundreds of young men be, starving for poetry in England, if we had as a living tradition anything a.n.a.logous to work upon!

III

NIKKO

Waking in the night, I heard the sound of running water. Across my window I saw, stretching dimly, the branch of a pine, and behind it shone the stars. I remembered that I was in j.a.pan and felt that all the essence of it was there. Running water, pine trees, sun and moon and stars. All their life, as all their art, seems to be a mood of these.

For to them their life and their art are inseparable. The art is not an accomplishment, an ornament, an excrescence. It is the flower of the plant. Some men, some families of men, feeling beauty as every one felt it, had the power also to express it. Or perhaps I should say--it is the j.a.panese view--to suggest it. To them the branch of a tree stands for a forest, a white disk on gold for night and the moon, a quivering reed for a river, a bamboo stalk for a grove. Their painters are poets. By pa.s.sionate observation they have learnt what expression of the part most inevitably symbolises the whole. That they give; and their admirers, trained like them in feeling, fill in the rest. This art presupposes, what it has always had, a public not less sensitive than the artist; a similar mood, a similar tradition, a similar culture. Feel as they do, and you must create as they do, or at least appreciate their creations.

It was with this in my mind that I wandered about this exquisite place, where Man has made a lovely nature lovelier still. More even than by the famous and sumptuous temples I was moved by the smaller and humbler shrines, so caressing are they of every choice spot, so expressive, not of princely, but of popular feeling. Here is one, for instance, standing under a cliff beside a stream, where women offer bits of wood in the faith that so they will be helped to pa.s.s safely through the pangs of childbirth. Here in a ravine is another where men who want to develop their calves hang up sandals to a once athletic saint. "The Lord," our Scripture says, "delighteth not in any man's legs." How pleasant, then, it must be to have a saint who does! Especially for the j.a.panese, whose legs are so finely made, and who display them so delightfully. Such, all over the world, is the religion of the people, when they have any religion at all. And how human it is, and how much nearer to life than the austerities and abstractions of a creed!

Hour after hour I strolled through these lovely places, so beautifully ordered that the authorities, one feels, must themselves delight in the nature they control. I had proof of it, I thought, in a notice which ran as follows:

"FAMOUS TAKINO TEMPLE STANDS NOT FAR AWAY, AND SOMEN FALL TOO.

IT IS WORTH WHILE TO BE THERE ONCE."

It is indeed, and many times! But can you imagine a rural council in England breaking into this personal note? And how reserved! Almost like j.a.panese art. Compare the invitation I once saw in Switzerland, to visit "das schonste Schwarm- und Aussichts.p.u.n.kt des ganzen Schweitzerischen Reichs." There speaks the advertiser. But beside the Somen Fall there was no restaurant.

Northerners, and Anglo-Saxons in particular, have always at the back of their minds a notion that there is something effeminate about the sense for beauty. That is reserved for decadent Southern nations. _Tu regere imperio populos, Romane memento_ they would say, if they knew the tag; and translate it "Britain rules the waves"! But history gives the lie to this complacent theory. No nations were ever more virile than the Greeks or the Italians. They have left a mark on the world which will endure when Anglo-Saxon civilisation is forgotten. And none have been, or are, more virile than the j.a.panese. That they have the delicacy of women, too, does not alter the fact. The Russian War proved it, if proof so tragic were required; and so does all their mediaeval history. j.a.panese feudalism was as b.l.o.o.d.y, as ruthless, as hard as European. It was even more gallant, stoical, loyal. But it had something else which I think Europe missed, unless it were once in Provence. It had in the midst of its hardness a consciousness of the pathos of life, of its beauty, its brevity, its inexplicable pain. I think in no other country has anything arisen a.n.a.logous to the Zen sect of Buddhism, when knights withdrew from battle to a garden and summerhouse, exquisitely ordered to symbolise the spiritual life, and there, over a cup of tea served with an elaborate ritual, looking out on a lovely nature, entered into mystic communion with the spirit of beauty which was also the spirit of life. From that communion, with that mood about them, they pa.s.sed out to kill or to die--to die, it might be, by their own hand, by a process which I think no Western man can bear even to think of, much less conceive himself as imitating.

This sense at once of the beauty and of the tragedy of life, this power of appreciating the one and dominating the other, seems to be the essence of the j.a.panese character. In this place, it will be remembered, is the tomb of Iyeyasu, the greatest statesman j.a.pan has produced.

Appropriately, after his battles and his labours, he sleeps under the shade of trees, surrounded by chapels and oratories more sumptuous and superb than anything else in j.a.pan, approached for miles and miles by a road lined on either side with giant cryptomerias. His spirit, if it could know, would appreciate, we may be sure, this habitation of beauty.

For these men, ruthless as they were, were none the less sensitive. For example, the traveller is shown (in Kyoto, I think) a little pavilion in a garden where Hideyoshi used to sit and contemplate the moon. I believe it. I think Iyeyasu did the same. And also he wrote this, on a roll here preserved:

"Life is like unto a long journey with a heavy load. Let thy steps be slow and steady, that thou stumble not. Persuade thyself that privations are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair. When ambitious desires arise in thy heart, recall the days of extremity thou hast pa.s.sed through. Forbearance is the root of quietness and a.s.surance for ever. Look upon wrath as thy enemy.

If thou knowest only what it is to conquer, and knowest not what it is to be defeated, woe unto thee! It will fare ill with thee.

Find fault with thyself rather than with others. Better the less than the more."

Marcus Aurelius might have said that. But Marcus Aurelius belonged to a race peculiarly insensitive to beauty. The j.a.panese stoics were also artists and poets. Their earliest painters were feudal lords, and it was feudal lords who fostered and acted the No dances. If Nietzsche had known j.a.pan--I think he did not?--he would surely have found in these Daimyos and Samurai the forerunners of his Superman. A blood-red blossom growing out of the battlefield, that, I think, was his ideal. It is one which, I hope, the world has outlived. I look for the lily flowering over the fields of peace.

IV

DIVINE RIGHT IN j.a.pAN

When j.a.pan was opened to the West, after more than two centuries of seclusion, she was in possession of a national spirit which had been enabled, by isolation, to become and remain simple and h.o.m.ogeneous. All public feeling, all public morals centred about the divinity of the Emperor; an idea which, by a process unique in history, had hibernated through centuries of political obscuration, and emerged again to the light with its prestige unimpaired in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the Emperor, one may say, j.a.pan was incarnate. And to this faith the j.a.panese, as well as foreign observers, attribute their great achievement in the Russian War. The little book of Captain Sakurai, _Human Bullets_, testifies to this fact in every sentence: "Through the abundant grace of Heaven and the ill.u.s.trious virtue of his Majesty, the Imperial forces defeated the great enemy both on land and sea." ... "I jumped out of bed, cleansed my person with pure water, donned my best uniform, bowed to the East where the great Sire resides, solemnly read his proclamation of war, and told his Majesty that his humble subject was just starting to the front. When I offered my last prayers--the last I then believed they were--before the family shrine of my ancestors I felt a thrill going all through me, as if they were giving me a solemn injunction, saying: 'Thou art not thy own. For his Majesty's sake, thou shalt go to save the nation from calamity, ready to bear the crushing of thy bones and the tearing of thy flesh. Disgrace not thy ancestors by an act of cowardice.'" This, it is clear, is an att.i.tude quite different from that of an Englishman towards the King. The King, to us, is at most a symbol. The Emperor, to the j.a.panese, is, or was, a G.o.d. And the difference may be noted in small matters. For instance, a j.a.panese, writing from England, observes with astonishment that we put the head of the King on our stamps and cover it with postmarks. That, to a j.a.panese, seems to be blasphemy. Again, he is puzzled, at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey, to find the people looking down from above on the King. That, again, seems to him blasphemy. Last year, when the Emperor was dying, crowds knelt hour after hour, day and night, on the road beside the palace praying for him. And a photographer who took a picture of them by flashlight was literally torn to pieces. One could multiply examples, but the thing is plain. The national spirit of j.a.pan centres about the divinity of the Emperor. And precisely therein lies their present problem. For one may say, I think, with confidence that this att.i.tude cannot endure, and is already disappearing. Western thought is an irresistible solvent of all irrational and instinctive ideas. Men cannot be engineers and pathologists and at the same time believe that a man is a G.o.d. They cannot be historians and at the same time believe that their first Emperor came down from heaven. Above all, they cannot be politicians and abstain from a.n.a.lysing the real source and sanction of political power. English political experience, it is true, suggests immense possibilities in the way of clinging to fictions with the feelings while insisting upon facts in practice. And the famous verse:

"But I was thinking of a plan To dye my whiskers green, And always wear so large a fan That they should not be seen,"

might have been written to summarise the development of the British Const.i.tution. But the success of that method depends upon the condition that the fictions shall be nothing _but_ fictions. The feelings of the English can centre about the King only because they are well a.s.sured that he does not and will not govern. But that condition does not exist in j.a.pan. The j.a.panese Const.i.tution is conceived on the German, not the English, model; and it bristles with clauses which are intended to prevent the development which has taken place in England--the shifting of power from the Sovereign to a Parliamentary majority. The Ministers are the Emperor's Ministers; the policy is the Emperor's policy. That is the whole tenour of the Const.i.tution. No Const.i.tution, it is true, can "trammel up" facts and put power anywhere but where nature puts it. If an Emperor is not a strong man he will not govern, and his Ministers will. And it seems to be well understood among j.a.panese politicians that the personal will of the Emperor does not, in fact, count for very much.

But it is supposed to; and that must become an important point so soon as conflict develops between the Parliament and the Government. And such conflict is bound to arise, and is already arising. j.a.panese parties, it is true, stand for persons rather than principles; and the real governing power hitherto has been a body quite unknown to the Const.i.tution--namely, the group of "Elder Statesmen." But there are signs that this group is disintegrating, and that its members are beginning to recognise the practical necessity of forming and depending upon a party in the country and the House of Representatives. The crisis which led, the other day, to the fall of Prince Katsura was provoked by popular tumults; and it was noticeable that, for the first time, the name of the Emperor was introduced into political controversy. It seems clear that in the near future either the Emperor must appear openly as a fighting force, as the German Emperor does, or he must subside into a figure-head and the government pa.s.s into the hands of Parliament. The former alternative is quite incompatible with the idea of the G.o.d-king; the latter might not be repugnant to it if other things tended to foster it. But it is so clear that they do not! An Emperor who is t.i.tular head of a Parliamentary Government might, and in j.a.pan no doubt _would_, be surrounded with affection and respect. He could never be seriously regarded as divine. For that whole notion belongs to an age innocent of all that is implied in the very possibility of Parliamentary government.

It belongs to the age of mythology and poetry, not to the age of reason.

j.a.panese patriotism in the future must depend on love of country, unsupported by the once powerful sanction of a divine personality.

If this be true, I question very much the wisdom of that part of the j.a.panese educational system which endeavours to centre all duty about the person of the Emperor. The j.a.panese are trying a great experiment in State-imposed morality--a policy highly questionable at the best, but becoming almost demonstrably absurd when it is based on an idea which is foredoomed to discredit. The well-known Imperial rescript, which is kept framed in every school, reads as follows:

"Our Ancestors founded the State on a vast basis, and deeply implanted virtue; and Our subjects, by their unanimity in their great loyalty and filial affection, have in all ages shown these qualities in perfection. Such is the essential beauty of Our national polity, and such, too, is the true spring of Our educational system. You, Our beloved subjects, be filial to your parents, affectionate to your brothers, be loving husbands and wives, and truthful to your friends. Conduct yourselves with modesty, and be benevolent to all. Develop your intellectual faculties and perfect your moral power by gaining knowledge and by acquiring a profession. Further, promote the public interest and advance the public affairs; and in case of emergency, courageously sacrifice yourself to the public good. Thus offer every support to Our Imperial Dynasty, which shall be as lasting as the Universe. You will then not only be Our most loyal subjects, but will be enabled to exhibit the n.o.ble character of your ancestors.

"Such are the testaments left us by Our Ancestors, which must be observed alike by their descendants and subjects. These precepts are perfect throughout all ages and of universal application. It is Our desire to bear them in Our heart, in common with you Our subjects, to the end that we may constantly possess their virtues."

This rescript may be read with admiration. But common sense would teach every Westerner that a doc.u.ment so framed is at variance with the whole bent of the modern mind, and, if forced upon it, could only goad it into rebellion. And such, I have been informed, and easily believe, is the effect it is beginning to have in j.a.pan. Young people brought up on Western languages and Western science demand a Western, that is a rational, sanction for conduct. They do not believe the Emperor to be divine, and therefore they cannot take their moral principles on trust from him and from his ancestors. The violent reaction from this State-imposed doctrine drives them into sheer scepticism and anarchy.

And here, as always throughout history, authority defeats its own purposes. Western ideas cannot be taken _in part_. They cannot be applied to the natural world and fenced off from the moral world. j.a.pan must go through the same crisis through which the West is pa.s.sing; she must revise the whole basis of her traditional morals. And in doing so she must be content to lose that pa.s.sionate and simple devotion which is the good as well as the evil product of an age of uncritical faith.

V

FUJI

It was raining when we reached Gotemba and took off our boots at the entrance of the inn. I had never before stayed at a j.a.panese inn, and this one, so my friend a.s.sured me, was a bad specimen of the cla.s.s.

Certainly it was disorderly and dirty. It was also overcrowded. But that was inevitable, for a thousand pilgrims in a day were landing at Gotemba station. Men and women, young and old, grandparents, parents, children come flocking in to climb the great mountain. The village street is lined with inns; and in front of each stood a boy with a lantern hailing the new arrivals. We were able, in spite of the crowd, to secure a room to ourselves, and even, with difficulty, some water to wash in--too many people had used and were using the one bath! A table and a chair were provided for the foreigner, and very uncouth they looked in the pretty j.a.panese room. But a bed was out of the question. One had to sleep on the floor among the fleas. Certainly it was not comfortable; but it was amusing. From my room in the upper storey I looked into the whole row of rooms in the inn opposite, thrown open to the street, with their screens drawn back. One saw families and parties, a dozen or more in a room, dressing and undressing, naked and clothed, sleeping, eating, talking; all, of course, squatting on the floor, with a low stool for a table, and red-lacquered bowls for plates and dishes. How people manage to eat rice with chopsticks will always be a mystery to me. For my own part, I cannot even--but I will not open that humiliating chapter.

Of the night, the less said the better. I rose with relief, but dressed with embarra.s.sment; for the girl who waited on us selected the moment of my toilet to clean the room. It was still raining hard, and we had decided to abandon our expedition, for another night in that inn was unthinkable. But, about eleven, a gleam of sun encouraged us to proceed, and we started on horseback for the mountain. And here I must note that by the official tariff, approved by the police, a foreigner is charged twice as much for a horse as a j.a.panese. If one asks why, one is calmly informed that a foreigner, as a rule, is heavier! This is typical of travel in j.a.pan; and there have been moments when I have sympathised with the Californians in their discrimination against the j.a.panese.

Those moments, however, are rare and brief, and speedily repented of.

Naturally, as soon as we had started the weather clouded over again. We rode for three hours at a foot-pace, and by the time we left our horses and began the ascent on foot we were wrapped in thick, cold mist. There is no difficulty about climbing Fuji, except the fatigue. You simply walk for hours up a steep and ever-steeper heap of ashes. It was perhaps as well that we did not see what lay before us, or we might have been discouraged. We saw nothing but the white-grey mist and the purple-grey soil. Except that, looming out of the cloud just in front of us, there kept appearing and vanishing a long line of pilgrims, with peaked hats, capes, and sandals, all made of straw, winding along with their staffs, forty at least, keeping step, like figures in a frieze, like shadows on a sheet, like spirits on the mountain of Purgatory, like anything but solid men walking up a hill. So for hours we laboured on, the slope becoming steeper every step, till we could go no further, and stopped at a shelter to pa.s.s the night. Here we were lucky. The other climbers had halted below or above, and we had the long, roomy shed to ourselves.

Blankets, a fire of wood, and a good meal restored us. We sat warming and congratulating ourselves, when suddenly our guide at the door gave a cry. We hurried to see. And what a sight it was! The clouds lay below us and a starlit sky above. At our feet the mountain fell away like a cliff, but it fell rather to a glacier than a sea--a glacier infinite as the ocean, yawning in creva.s.ses, billowing in ridges; a glacier not of ice, but of vapour, changing form as one watched, opening here, closing there, rising, falling, shifting, while far away, at the uttermost verge, appeared a crimson crescent, then a red oval, then a yellow globe, swimming up above the clouds, touching their lights with gold, deepening their shadows, and spreading, where it rose, a lake of silver fire over the surface of the tossing plain.