Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Volume II Part 7

'The light of the Moon shines alike upon foul and pure, upon high and low. That beautiful Lamp is neither yours nor mine, but everybody's.

'When we look at the Moon we should remember that its waxing and its waning are the signs of the truth that the culmination of all things is likewise the beginning of their decline.'

Any person totally unfamiliar with j.a.panese educational methods might presume that the foregoing composition shows some original power of thought and imagination. But this is not the case. I found the same thoughts and comparisons in thirty other compositions upon the same subject. Indeed, the compositions of any number of middle-school students upon the same subject are certain to be very much alike in idea and sentiment--though they are none the less charming for that. As a rule the j.a.panese student shows little originality in the line of imagination. His imagination was made for him long centuries ago--partly in China, partly in his native land. From his childhood he is trained to see and to feel Nature exactly in the manner of those wondrous artists who, with a few swift brushstrokes, fling down upon a sheet of paper the colour-sensation of a chilly dawn, a fervid noon, an autumn evening.

Through all his boyhood he is taught to commit to memory the most beautiful thoughts and comparisons to be found in his ancient native literature. Every boy has thus learned that the vision of Fuji against the blue resembles a white half-opened fan, hanging inverted in the sky.

Every boy knows that cherry-trees in full blossom look as if the most delicate of flushed summer clouds were caught in their branches. Every boy knows the comparison between the falling of certain leaves on snow and the casting down of texts upon a sheet of white paper with a brush.

Every boy and girl knows the verses comparing the print of cat's-feet on snow to plum-flowers, [6] and that comparing the impression of bokkuri on snow to the j.a.panese character for the number 'two.' These were thoughts of old, old poets; and it would be very hard to invent prettier ones. Artistic power in composition is chiefly shown by the correct memorising and clever combination of these old thoughts.

And the students have been equally well trained to discover a moral in almost everything, animate or inanimate. I have tried them with a hundred subjects--j.a.panese subjects--for composition; I have never found them to fail in discovering a moral when the theme was a native one. If I suggested 'Fire-flies,' they at once approved the topic, and wrote for me the story of that Chinese student who, being too poor to pay for a lamp, imprisoned many fireflies in a paper lantern, and thus was able to obtain light enough to study after dark, and to become eventually a great scholar. If I said 'Frogs,' they wrote for me the legend of Ono- no-Tofu, who was persuaded to become a learned celebrity by witnessing the tireless perseverance of a frog trying to leap up to a willow- branch. I subjoin a few specimens of the moral ideas which I thus evoked. I have corrected some common mistakes in the originals, but have suffered a few singularities to stand:

THE BOTAN 'The botan [j.a.panese peony] is large and beautiful to see; but it has a disagreeable smell. This should make us remember that what is only outwardly beautiful in human society should not attract us. To be attracted by beauty only may lead us into fearful and fatal misfortune.

The best place to see the botan is the island of Daikonshima in the lake Nakaumi. There in the season of its flowering all the island is red with its blossoms. [7]

THE DRAGON 'When the Dragon tries to ride the clouds and come into heaven there happens immediately a furious storm. When the Dragon dwells on the ground it is supposed to take the form of a stone or other object; but when it wants to rise it calls a cloud. Its body is composed of parts of many animals. It has the eyes of a tiger and the horns of a deer and the body of a crocodile and the claws of an eagle and two trunks like the trunk of an elephant. It has a moral. We should try to be like the dragon, and find out and adopt all the good qualities of others.'

At the close of this essay on the dragon is a note to the teacher, saying: 'I believe not there is any Dragon. But there are many stories and curious pictures about Dragon.'

MOSQUITOES 'On summer nights we hear the sound of faint voices; and little things come and sting our bodies very violently. We call .them ka--in English "mosquitoes." I think the sting is useful for us, because if we begin to sleep, the ka shall come and sting us, uttering a small voice; then we shall be bringed back to study by the sting.'

The following, by a lad of sixteen, is submitted only as a characteristic expression of half-formed ideas about a less familiar subject:

EUROPEAN AND j.a.pANESE CUSTOMS 'Europeans wear very narrow clothes and they wear shoes always in the house. j.a.panese wear clothes which are very lenient and they do not shoe except when they walk out-of-the-door.

'What we think very strange is that in Europe every wife loves her husband more than her parents. In Nippon there is no wife who more loves not her parents than her husband.

'And Europeans walk out in the road with their wives, which we utterly refuse to, except on the festival of Hachiman.

'The j.a.panese woman is treated by man as a servant, while the European woman is respected as a master. I think these customs are both bad.

'We think it is very much trouble to treat European ladies; and we do not know why ladies are so much respected by Europeans.'

Conversation in the cla.s.s-room about foreign subjects is often equally amusing and suggestive:

'Teacher, I have been told that if a European and his father and his wife were all to fall into the sea together, and that he only could swim, he would try to save his wife first. Would he really?'

'Probably,' I reply.

'But why?'

'One reason is that Europeans consider it a man's duty to help the weaker first--especially women and children.'

'And does a European love his wife more than his father and mother?'

'Not always--but generally, perhaps, he does.'

'Why, Teacher, according to our ideas that is very immoral.'

'Teacher, how do European women carry their babies?'

'In their arms.'

'Very tiring! And how far can a woman walk carrying a baby in her arms?'

'A strong woman can walk many miles with a child in her arms.'

'But she cannot use her hands while she is carrying a baby that way, can she?'

'Not very well.'

'Then it is a very bad way to carry babies,' etc.

Sec. 15

May 1, 1891. My favourite students often visit me of afternoons. They first send me their cards, to announce their presence. On being told to come in they leave their footgear on the doorstep, enter my little study, prostrate themselves; and we all squat down together on the floor, which is in all j.a.panese houses like a soft mattress. The servant brings zabuton or small cushions to kneel upon, and cakes, and tea.

To sit as the j.a.panese do requires practice; and some Europeans can never acquire the habit. To acquire it, indeed, one must become accustomed to wearing j.a.panese costume. But once the habit of thus sitting has been formed, one finds it the most natural and easy of positions, and a.s.sumes it by preference for eating, reading, smoking, or chatting. It is not to be recommended, perhaps, for writing with a European pen--as the motion in our Occidental style of writing is from the supported wrist; but it is the best posture for writing with the j.a.panese fude, in using which the whole arm is unsupported, and the motion from the elbow. After having become habituated to j.a.panese habits for more than a year, I must confess that I find it now somewhat irksome to use a chair.

When we have all greeted each other, and taken our places upon the kneeling cushions, a little polite silence ensues, which I am the first to break. Some of the lads speak a good deal of English. They understand me well when I p.r.o.nounce every word slowly and distinctly--using simple phrases, and avoiding idioms. When a word with which they are not familiar must be used, we refer to a good English-j.a.panese dictionary, which gives each vernacular meaning both in the kana and in the Chinese characters.

Usually my young visitors stay a long time, and their stay is rarely tiresome. Their conversation and their thoughts are of the simplest and frankest. They do not come to learn: they know that to ask their teacher to teach out of school would be unjust. They speak chiefly of things which they think have some particular interest for me. Sometimes they scarcely speak at all, but appear to sink into a sort of happy reverie.

What they come really for is the quiet pleasure of sympathy. Not an intellectual sympathy, but the sympathy of pure goodwill: the simple pleasure of being quite comfortable with a friend. They peep at my books and pictures; and sometimes they bring books and pictures to show me-- delightfully queer things--family heirlooms which I regret much that I cannot buy. They also like to look at my garden, and enjoy all that is in it even more than I. Often they bring me gifts of flowers. Never by any possible chance are they troublesome, impolite, curious, or even talkative. Courtesy in its utmost possible exquisiteness--an exquisiteness of which even the French have no conception--seems natural to the Izumo boy as the colour of his hair or the tint of his skin. Nor is he less kind than courteous. To contrive pleasurable surprises for me is one of the particular delights of my boys; and they either bring or cause to be brought to the house all sorts of strange things.

Of all the strange or beautiful things which I am thus privileged to examine, none gives me so much pleasure as a certain wonderful kakemono of Amida Nyorai. It is rather large picture, and has been borrowed from a priest that I may see it. The Buddha stands in the att.i.tude of exhortation, with one, hand uplifted. Behind his head a huge moon makes an aureole and across the face of that moon stream winding lines of thinnest cloud. Beneath his feet, like a rolling of smoke, curl heavier and darker clouds. Merely as a work of colour and design, the thing is a marvel. But the real wonder of it is not in colour or design at all.

Minute examination reveals the astonishing fact that every shadow and clouding is formed by a fairy text of Chinese characters so minute that only a keen eye can discern them; and this text is the entire text of two famed sutras--the Kwammu-ryjo-kyo and the Amida-kyo--'text no larger than the limbs of fleas.' And all the strong dark lines of the figure, such as the seams of the Buddha's robe, are formed by the characters of the holy invocation of the Shin-shu sect, repeated thousands of times: 'Namu Amida Butsu!' Infinite patience, tireless silent labour of loving faith, in some dim temple, long ago.

Another day one of my boys persuades his father to let him bring to my house a wonderful statue of Koshi (Confucius), made, I am told, in China, toward the close of the period of the Ming dynasty. I am also a.s.sured it is the first time the statue has ever been removed from the family residence to be shown to anyone. Previously, whoever desired to pay it reverence had to visit the house. It is truly a beautiful bronze.

The figure of a smiling, bearded old man, with fingers uplifted and lips apart as if discoursing. He wears quaint Chinese shoes, and his flowing robes are adorned with the figure of the mystic phoenix. The microscopic finish of detail seems indeed to reveal the wonderful cunning of a Chinese hand: each tooth, each hair, looks as though it had been made the subject of a special study.

Another student conducts me to the home of one of his relatives, that I may see a cat made of wood, said to have been chiselled by the famed Hidari Jingoro--a cat crouching and watching, and so life-like that real cats 'have been known to put up their backs and spit at it.'

Sec. 16

Nevertheless I have a private conviction that some old artists even now living in Matsue could make a still more wonderful cat. Among these is the venerable Arakawa Junosuke, who wrought many rare things for the Daimyo of Izumo in the Tempo era, and whose acquaintance I have been enabled to make through my school-friends. One evening he brings to my house something very odd to show me, concealed in his sleeve. It is a doll: just a small carven and painted head without a body,--the body being represented by a tiny robe only, attached to the neck. Yet as Arakawa Junosuke manipulates it, it seems to become alive. The back of its head is like the back of a very old man's head; but its face is the face of an amused child, and there is scarcely any forehead nor any evidence of a thinking disposition. And whatever way the head is turned, it looks so funny that one cannot help laughing at it. It represents a kirakubo--what we might call in English 'a jolly old boy,'--one who is naturally too hearty and too innocent to feel trouble of any sort. It is not an original, but a model of a very famous original--whose history is recorded in a faded scroll which Arakawa takes out of his other sleeve, and which a friend translates for me. This little history throws a curious light upon the simple-hearted ways of j.a.panese life and thought in other centuries:

'Two hundred and sixty years ago this doll was made by a famous maker of No-masks in the city of Kyoto, for the Emperor Go-midzu-no-O. The Emperor used to have it placed beside his pillow each night before he slept, and was very fond of it. And he composed the following poem concerning it:

Yo no naka wo Kiraku ni kurase Nani goto mo Omoeba omou Omowaneba koso. [8]'

'On the death of the Emperor this doll became the property of Prince Konoye, in whose family it is said to be still preserved.

'About one hundred and seven years ago, the then Ex-Empress, whose posthumous name is Sei-Kwa-Mon-Yin, borrowed the doll from Prince Konoye, and ordered a copy of it to be made. This copy she kept always beside her, and was very fond of it.

'After the death of the good Empress this doll was given to a lady of the court, whose family name is not recorded. Afterwards this lady, for reasons which are not known, cut off her hair and became a Buddhist nun --taking the name of Shingyo-in.

'And one who knew the Nun Shingyo-in--a man whose name was Kondo-ju- haku-in-Hokyo--had the honour of receiving the doll as a gift.

'Now I, who write this doc.u.ment, at one time fell sick; and my sickness was caused by despondency. And my friend Kondo-ju-haku-in-Hokyo, coming to see me, said: "I have in my house something which will make you well." And he went home and, presently returning, brought to me this doll, and lent it to me--putting it by my pillow that I might see it and laugh at it.