Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Volume II Part 8

'Afterward, I myself, having called upon the Nun Shingyo-in, whom I now also have the honour to know, wrote down the history of the doll, and make a poem thereupon.'

(Dated about ninety years ago: no signature.)

Sec. 17

June 1, 1891 I find among the students a healthy tone of scepticism in regard to certain forms of popular belief. Scientific education is rapidly destroying credulity in old superst.i.tions yet current among the unlettered, and especially among the peasantry--as, for instance, faith in mamori and ofuda. The outward forms of Buddhism--its images, its relics, its commoner practices--affect the average student very little.

He is not, as a foreigner may be, interested in iconography, or religious folklore, or the comparative study of religions; and in nine cases out of ten he is rather ashamed of the signs and tokens of popular faith all around him. But the deeper religious sense, which underlies all symbolism, remains with him; and the Monistic Idea in Buddhism is being strengthened and expanded, rather than weakened, by the new education. What is true of the effect of the public schools upon the lower Buddhism is equally true of its effect upon the lower Shinto.

Shinto the students all sincerely are, or very nearly all; yet not as fervent worshippers of certain Kami, but as rigid observers of what the higher Shinto signifies--loyalty, filial piety, obedience to parents, teachers, and superiors, and respect to ancestors. For Shinto means more than faith.

When, for the first time, I stood before the shrine of the Great Deity of Kitzuki, as the first Occidental to whom that privilege had been accorded, not without a sense of awe there came to me the Sec. 'This is the Shrine of the Father of a Race; this is the symbolic centre of a nation's reverence for its past.' And I, too, paid reverence to the memory of the progenitor of this people.

As I then felt, so feels the intelligent student of the Meiji era whom education has lifted above the common plane of popular creeds. And Shinto also means for him--whether he reasons upon the question or not-- all the ethics of the family, and all that spirit of loyalty which has become so innate that, at the call of duty, life itself ceases to have value save as an instrument for duty's accomplishment. As yet, this Orient little needs to reason about the origin of its loftier ethics.

Imagine the musical sense in our own race so developed that a child could play a complicated instrument so soon as the little fingers gained sufficient force and flexibility to strike the notes. By some such comparison only can one obtain a just idea of what inherent religion and instinctive duty signify in Izumo.

Of the rude and aggressive form of scepticism so common in the Occident, which is the natural reaction after sudden emanc.i.p.ation from superst.i.tious belief, I find no trace among my students. But such sentiment may be found elsewhere--especially in Tokyo--among the university students, one of whom, upon hearing the tones of a magnificent temple bell, exclaimed to a friend of mine: 'Is it not a shame that in this nineteenth century we must still hear such a sound?'

For the benefit of curious travellers, however, I may here take occasion to observe that to talk Buddhism to j.a.panese gentlemen of the new school is in just as bad taste as to talk Christianity at home to men of that cla.s.s whom knowledge has placed above creeds and forms. There are, of course, j.a.panese scholars willing to aid researches of foreign scholars in religion or in folk-lore; but these specialists do not undertake to gratify idle curiosity of the 'globe-trotting' description. I may also say that the foreigner desirous to learn the religious ideas or superst.i.tions of the common people must obtain them from the people themselves--not from the educated cla.s.ses.

Sec. 18

Among all my favourite students--two or three from each cla.s.s--I cannot decide whom I like the best. Each has a particular merit of his own. But I think the names and faces of those of whom I am about to speak will longest remain vivid in my remembrance--Ishihara, Otani-Masan.o.bu, Adzukizawa, Yokogi, Shida.

Ishihara is a samurai a very influential lad in his cla.s.s because of his uncommon force of character. Compared with others, he has a somewhat brusque, independent manner, pleasing, however, by its honest manliness.

He says everything he thinks, and precisely in the tone that he thinks it, even to the degree of being a little embarra.s.sing sometimes. He does not hesitate, for example, to find fault with a teacher's method of explanation, and to insist upon a more lucid one. He has criticized me more than once; but I never found that he was wrong. We like each other very much. He often brings me flowers.

One day that he had brought two beautiful sprays of plum-blossoms, he said to me:

'I saw you bow before our Emperor's picture at the ceremony on the birthday of His Majesty. You are not like a former English teacher we had.'

'How?'

'He said we were savages.'

'Why?'

'He said there is nothing respectable except G.o.d--his G.o.d--and that only vulgar and ignorant people respect anything else.'

'Where did he come from?'

'He was a Christian clergyman, and said he was an English subject.'

'But if he was an English subject, he was bound to respect Her Majesty the Queen. He could not even enter the office of a British consul without removing his hat.'

'I don't know what he did in the country he came from. But that was what he said. Now we think we should love and honour our Emperor. We think it is a duty. We think it is a joy. We think it is happiness to be able to give our lives for our Emperor. [9] But he said we were only savages-- ignorant savages. What do you think of that?'

'I think, my dear lad, that he himself was a savage--a vulgar, ignorant, savage bigot. I think it is your highest social duty to honour your Emperor, to obey his laws, and to be ready to give your blood whenever he may require it of you for the sake of j.a.pan. I think it is your duty to respect the G.o.ds of your fathers, the religion of your country--even if you yourself cannot believe all that others believe. And I think, also, that it is your duty, for your Emperor's sake and for your country's sake, to resent any such wicked and vulgar language as that you have told me of, no matter by whom uttered.'

Masan.o.bu visits me seldom and always comes alone. A slender, handsome lad, with rather feminine features, reserved and perfectly self- possessed in manner, refined. He is somewhat serious, does not often smile; and I never heard him laugh. He has risen to the head of his cla.s.s, and appears to remain there without any extraordinary effort.

Much of his leisure time he devotes to botany--collecting and cla.s.sifying plants. He is a musician, like all the male members of his family. He plays a variety of instruments never seen or heard of in the West, including flutes of marble, flutes of ivory, flutes of bamboo of wonderful shapes and tones, and that shrill Chinese instrument called sho--a sort of mouth-organ consisting of seventeen tubes of different lengths fixed in a silver frame. He first explained to me the uses in temple music of the taiko and shoko, which are drums; of the flutes called fei or teki; of the flageolet termed hichiriki; and of the kakko, which is a little drum shaped like a spool with very narrow waist, On great Buddhist festivals, Masan.o.bu and his father and his brothers are the musicians in the temple services, and they play the strange music called Ojo and Batto--music which at first no Western ear can feel pleasure in, but which, when often heard, becomes comprehensible, and is found to possess a weird charm of its own. When Masan.o.bu comes to the house, it is usually in order to invite me to attend some Buddhist or Shinto festival (matsuri) which he knows will interest me.

Adzukizawa bears so little resemblance to Masan.o.bu that one might suppose the two belonged to totally different races. Adzukizawa is large, raw-boned, heavy-looking, with a face singularly like that of a North American Indian. His people are not rich; he can afford few pleasures which cost money, except one--buying books. Even to be able to do this he works in his leisure hours to earn money. He is a perfect bookworm, a natural-born researcher, a collector of curious doc.u.ments, a haunter of all the queer second-hand stores in Teramachi and other streets where old ma.n.u.scripts or prints are on sale as waste paper. He is an omnivorous reader, and a perpetual borrower of volumes, which he always returns in perfect condition after having copied what he deemed of most value to him. But his special delight is philosophy and the history of philosophers in all countries. He has read various epitomes of the history of philosophy in the Occident, and everything of modern philosophy which has been translated into j.a.panese--including Spencer's First Principles. I have been able to introduce him to Lewes and John Fiske--both of which he appreciates,--although the strain of studying philosophy in English is no small one. Happily he is so strong that no amount of study is likely to injure his health, and his nerves are tough as wire. He is quite an ascetic withal. As it is the j.a.panese custom to set cakes and tea before visitors, I always have both in readiness, and an especially fine quality of kwashi, made at Kitzuki, of which the students are very fond. Adzukizawa alone refuses to taste cakes or confectionery of any kind, saying: 'As I am the youngest brother, I must begin to earn my own living soon. I shall have to endure much hardship.

And if I allow myself to like dainties now, I shall only suffer more later on.' Adzukizawa has seen much of human life and character. He is naturally observant; and he has managed in some extraordinary way to learn the history of everybody in Matsue. He has brought me old tattered prints to prove that the opinions now held by our director are diametrically opposed to the opinions he advocated fourteen years ago in a public address. I asked the director about it. He laughed and said, 'Of course that is Adzukizawa! But he is right: I was very young then.'

And I wonder if Adzukizawa was ever young.

Yokogi, Adzukizawa's dearest friend, is a very rare visitor; for he is always studying at home. He is always first in his cla.s.s--the third year cla.s.s--while Adzukizawa is fourth. Adzukizawa's account of the beginning of their acquaintance is this: 'I watched him when he came and saw that he spoke very little, walked very quickly, and looked straight into everybody's eyes. So I knew he had a particular character. I like to know people with a particular character.' Adzukizawa was perfectly right: under a very gentle exterior, Yokogi has an extremely strong character. He is the son of a carpenter; and his parents could not afford to send him to the Middle School. But he had shown such exceptional qualities while in the Elementary School that a wealthy man became interested in him, and offered to pay for his education. [10] He is now the pride of the school. He has a remarkably placid face, with peculiarly long eyes, and a delicious smile. In cla.s.s he is always asking intelligent questions--questions so original that I am sometimes extremely puzzled how to answer them; and he never ceases to ask until the explanation is quite satisfactory to himself. He never cares about the opinion of his comrades if he thinks he is right. On one occasion when the whole cla.s.s refused to attend the lectures of a new teacher of physics, Yokogi alone refused to act with them--arguing that although the teacher was not all that could be desired, there was no immediate possibility of his removal, and no just reason for making unhappy a man who, though unskilled, was sincerely doing his best. Adzukizawa finally stood by him. These two alone attended the lectures until the remainder of the students, two weeks later, found that Yokogi's views were rational. On another occasion when some vulgar proselytism was attempted by a Christian missionary, Yokogi went boldly to the proselytiser's house, argued with him on the morality of his effort, and reduced him to silence. Some of his comrades praised his cleverness in the argument. 'I am not clever,' he made answer: 'it does not require cleverness to argue against what is morally wrong; it requires only the knowledge that one is morally right.' At least such is about the translation of what he said as told me by Adzukizawa.

Shida, another visitor, is a very delicate, sensitive boy, whose soul is full of art. He is very skilful at drawing and painting; and he has a wonderful set of picture-books by the Old j.a.panese masters. The last time he came he brought some prints to show me--rare ones--fairy maidens and ghosts. As I looked at his beautiful pale face and weirdly frail fingers, I could not help fearing for him,--fearing that he might soon become a little ghost.

I have not seen him now for more than two months. He has been very, very ill; and his lungs are so weak that the doctor has forbidden him to converse. But Adzukizawa has been to visit him, and brings me this translation of a j.a.panese letter which the sick boy wrote and pasted upon the wall above his bed:

'Thou, my Lord-Soul, dost govern me. Thou knowest that I cannot now govern myself. Deign, I pray thee, to let me be cured speedily. Do not suffer me to speak much. Make me to obey in all things the command of the physician.

'This ninth day of the eleventh month of the twenty-fourth year of Meiji.

'From the sick body of Shida to his Soul.'

Sec. 19

September 4, 1891. The long summer vacation is over; a new school year begins. There have been many changes. Some of the boys I taught are dead. Others have graduated and gone away from Matsue for ever. Some teachers, too, have left the school, and their places have been filled; and there is a new Director.

And the dear good Governor has gone--been transferred to cold Niigata in the north-west. It was a promotion. But he had ruled Izumo for seven years, and everybody loved him, especially, perhaps, the students, who looked upon him as a father. All the population of the city crowded to the river to bid him farewell. The streets through which he pa.s.sed on his way to take the steamer, the bridge, the wharves, even the roofs were thronged with mult.i.tudes eager to see his face for the last time.

Thousands were weeping. And as the steamer glided from the wharf such a cry arose--'A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!' It was intended for a cheer, but it seemed to me the cry of a whole city sorrowing, and so plaintive that I hope never to hear such a cry again.

The names and faces of the younger cla.s.ses are all strange to me.

Doubtless this was why the sensation of my first day's teaching in the school came back to me with extraordinary vividness when I entered the cla.s.s-room of First Division A this morning.

Strangely pleasant is the first sensation of a j.a.panese cla.s.s, as you look over the ranges of young faces before you. There is nothing in them familiar to inexperienced Western eyes; yet there is an indescribable pleasant something common to all. Those traits have nothing incisive, nothing forcible: compared with Occidental faces they seem but 'half- sketched,' so soft their outlines are--indicating neither aggressiveness nor shyness, neither eccentricity nor sympathy, neither curiosity nor indifference. Some, although faces of youths well grown, have a childish freshness and frankness indescribable; some are as uninteresting as others are attractive; a few are beautifully feminine. But all are equally characterized by a singular placidity--expressing neither love nor hate nor anything save perfect repose and gentleness--like the dreamy placidity of Buddhist images. At a later day you will no longer recognise this aspect of pa.s.sionless composure: with growing acquaintance each face will become more and more individualised for you by characteristics before imperceptible. But the recollection of that first impression will remain with you and the time will come when you will find, by many varied experiences, how strangely it foreshadowed something in j.a.panese character to be fully learned only after years of familiarity. You will recognize in the memory of that first impression one glimpse of the race-soul, with its impersonal lovableness and its impersonal weaknesses--one glimpse of the nature of a life in which the Occidental, dwelling alone, feels a psychic comfort comparable only to the nervous relief of suddenly emerging from some stifling atmospheric pressure into thin, clear, free living air.

Sec. 20

Was it not the eccentric Fourier who wrote about the horrible faces of 'the _civilizes_'? Whoever it was, would have found seeming confirmation of his physiognomical theory could he have known the effect produced by the first sight of European faces in the most eastern East. What we are taught at home to consider handsome, interesting, or characteristic in physiognomy does not produce the same impression in China or j.a.pan.

Shades of facial expression familiar to us as letters of our own alphabet are not perceived at all in Western features by these Orientals at first acquaintance. What they discern at once is the race- characteristic, not the individuality. The evolutional meaning of the deep-set Western eye, protruding brow, accipitrine nose, ponderous jaw-- symbols of aggressive force and habit--was revealed to the gentler race by the same sort of intuition through which a tame animal immediately comprehends the dangerous nature of the first predatory enemy which it sees. To Europeans the smooth-featured, slender, low-statured j.a.panese seemed like boys; and 'boy' is the term by which the native attendant of a Yokohama merchant is still called. To j.a.panese the first red-haired, rowdy, drunken European sailors seemed fiends, shojo, demons of the sea; and by the Chinese the Occidentals are still called 'foreign devils.'

The great stature and ma.s.sive strength and fierce gait of foreigners in j.a.pan enhanced the strange impression created by their faces. Children cried for fear on seeing them pa.s.s through the streets. And in remoter districts, j.a.panese children are still apt to cry at the first sight of a European or American face.

A lady of Matsue related in my presence this curious souvenir of her childhood: 'When I was a very little girl,' she said, our daimyo hired a foreigner to teach the military art. My father and a great many samurai went to receive the foreigner; and all the people lined the streets to see--for no foreigner had ever come to Izumo before; and we all went to look. The foreigner came by ship: there were no steamboats here then. He was very tall, and walked quickly with long steps; and the children began to cry at the sight of him, because his face was not like the faces of the people of Nihon. My little brother cried out loud, and hid his face in mother's robe; and mother reproved him and said: "This foreigner is a very good man who has come here to serve our prince; and it is very disrespectful to cry at seeing him." But he still cried. I was not afraid; and I looked up at the foreigner's face as he came and smiled. He had a great beard; and I thought his face was good though it seemed to me a very strange face and stern. Then he stopped and smiled too, and put something in my hand, and touched my head and face very softly with his great fingers, and said something I could not understand, and went away. After he had gone I looked at what he put into my hand and found that it was a pretty little gla.s.s to look through. If you put a fly under that gla.s.s it looks quite big. At that time I thought the gla.s.s was a very wonderful thing. I have it still.'

She took from a drawer in the room and placed before me a tiny, dainty pocket-microscope.

The hero of this little incident was a French military officer. His services were necessarily dispensed with on the abolition of the feudal system. Memories of him still linger in Matsue; and old people remember a popular s.n.a.t.c.h about him--a sort of rapidly-vociferated rigmarole, supposed to be an imitation of his foreign speech:

Tojin no negoto niwa kinkarakuri medagasho, Saiboji ga shimpeis.h.i.te haris.h.i.te keisan, Hanryo na Sacr-r-r-r-r-e-na-nom-da-Jiu.

Sec. 21

November 2, 1891.

Shida will never come to school again. He sleeps under the shadow of the cedars, in the old cemetery of Tokoji. Yokogi, at the memorial service, read a beautiful address (saibun) to the soul of his dead comrade.

But Yokogi himself is down. And I am very much afraid for him. He is suffering from some affection of the brain, brought on, the doctor says, by studying a great deal too hard. Even if he gets well, he will always have to be careful. Some of us hope much; for the boy is vigorously built and so young. Strong Sakane burst a blood-vessel last month and is now well. So we trust that Yokogi may rally. Adzukizawa daily brings news of his friend.

But the rally never comes. Some mysterious spring in the mechanism of the young life has been broken. The mind lives only in brief intervals between long hours of unconsciousness. Parents watch, and friends, for these living moments to whisper caressing things, or to ask: 'Is there anything thou dost wish?' And one night the answer comes: