The Foundations of Japan Part 12

p. 112]

"So you see," said Uchimura, as we walked to the station in the morning, "in an antiquated book, which, I suppose, stands dusty on the shelves of some of your reformers, there is power to achieve the very things they aim at." He went on to explain that he looked "in the lives of hearers, not in what they say," for results from his teaching. He believed in liberty and freedom, in sowing the seed of change and reform and allowing people to develop as they would. "Let men and women believe as they have light."

He spoke in his kindly way of how "the bond of a common faith enables j.a.panese to get closer to the foreigner and the foreigner closer to the j.a.panese." There were many things we foreigners did not understand. We did not understand, for example, that "A man's a man for a' that" was an unfamiliar conception to a j.a.panese. I was to remember, when I interrogated j.a.panese about the problems of rural life, that they had had to coin a word for "problems." Above all, I must be careful not to "exaggerate the quality of Eastern morality."

Uchimura a.s.serted sweepingly that "morality in the Anglo-Saxon sense is not found in j.a.pan." We of the West underrated the value of the part played by the Puritans in our development. Our moral life had been evolved by the soul-stirring power of the Hebrew prophets and of Christ. To deny this was "kicking your own mother." Just as it was not possible for the Briton or American to get his present morality from Greece and Rome exclusively, it was not possible for the j.a.panese to obtain it from the sources at his disposal.

The faults of the Eastern were that he thought too much of outward conduct. Good political and neighbourly-relations, kindliness, honesty and thrift were his idea of morality. "To love goodness and to hate evil with one's whole soul is a Christian conception for which you may search in vain through heathendom." The horror which the Western man of high character felt when he thought of the future of the little girls in attendance on geisha was not a horror generated by Plato.

"Heathen life looks nice on the outside to foreigners," but Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism had all been weak in their att.i.tude towards immorality. It was Christianity alone which controlled s.e.xual life. Without deep-seated love of and joy in goodness and deep-seated horror of evil it was impossible to reform society.

Uchimura said that it had taken him thirty years to reach the conviction that the best way of raising his countrymen was by preaching the religion of "a despised foreign peasant." Many things he had been told by exponents of Christianity now seemed "very strange,"

but there remained in the first four books of the New Testament, in the essence of Christianity, principles "which would give new life to all men." Moved by this belief, Uchimura and his friends gave their lives to the work of the Gospel, to a work attended by humiliations; "but this is our glory."

j.a.panese civilisation, he reiterated, was "only good in the sense that Greek and Roman civilisations were good." Modern j.a.pan represented "the best of Europe minus Christianity; the moral backbone of Christianity is lacking." "Probe a dozen Buddhist priests in turn," he said, "and you find something lacking; you don't find the Buddhist or Confucian really to be your brother[106]."

"The greatness of England," he went on, "is not due to the inherent greatness of the English people, but to the greatness of the truths which they have received." In considering the sources of national greatness, it was idle to believe that some peoples were original and some not original in their ideas and methods. Where were the people to be found who were without extraneous influence? Where would England be without Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christianity?

Our talk broke off as several peasant women pa.s.sed us on the narrow way by the rice fields. The mattocks they carried were the same weight as their husbands' mattocks and the women were going to do the same work as the men. But the women were nearly all handicapped by having a child tied on their backs. Uchimura, returning to his objection to foreign political adventure, said that j.a.pan, properly cultivated, could support twice its present population. There were many marshy districts which could be brought into cultivation by drainage. Then what might not forestry do? But the progress could not be made because of lack of money. The money was needed for "national defence."

"For myself," said Uchimura, "I find it still possible to believe in some power which will take care of inoffensive, quiet, humble, industrious people. If all the high virtues of mankind are not safeguarded somehow, then let us take leave of all the enn.o.bling aspirations, all the poetry, and all the deepest hopes we have, and cease to struggle upward. The question is whether we have faith." We still waited, he declared, for the nation which would be Christian enough to take its stand on the Gospel and sacrifice itself materially, if need be, to its faith that right was greater than might.

And so "impractical, outspoken to rashness, but thoroughly sincere and experienced," as one of his appreciative countrymen characterised him to me, we take leave of the "j.a.panese Carlyle." With whom could I have gone more provocatively towards the foundation of things at the beginning of my investigation in farther j.a.pan?

FOOTNOTES:

[100] The statement is, he told me, a calumny. He explained that he lost his post for refusing to bow, not to the portrait, but to the signature of the Emperor, the signature appended to that famous Imperial rescript on education which is appointed to be read in schools. Uchimura is very willing, he said, to show the respect which loyal j.a.panese are at all times ready to manifest to the Emperor, and he would certainly bow before the portrait of His Majesty; but in the proposal that reverence should be paid to the Imperial autograph he thought he saw the demands of a "Kaiserism"--his word, he speaks vigorous English--which was foreign to the j.a.panese conception of their sovereign, which would be inimical to the Emperor's influence and would be bad for the nation.

[101] But journalism is one of the most powerful influences for good, and some of the best brains of the country is represented in it.

Papers like the _Jiji, Asahi, Nichi Nichi_, and the Osaka papers run in conjunction with them have altogether a circulation approaching two millions.

[102] For statistics of forests, see Appendix x.x.xII.

[103] A severe shook occurs on an average about every six years. The eminent seismologist, Professor Omori, told me that he does not expect an earthquake of a dangerous sort for a generation.

[104] The _Oriental Economist_, a j.a.panese publication, in the autumn of 1921 suggested the abandonment of all the extensions to the Empire on the score that they had not been a benefit to j.a.pan, and that she was in no way dependent on them. See also Appendix x.x.xIII.

[105] See Appendix x.x.xIV.

[106] What of the old story which I have heard from Uchimura and others of the Confucian missionary to certain head hunters of Formosa?

After many years of labour among them they promised to give up head hunting if they might take just one more head. At last the good man yielded, and told them that a Chinaman in a red robe was coming towards the village the next day and his head might be taken. On the morrow the men lay in wait for the stranger, sprang on him and cut off his head, only to find that it was the head of their beloved missionary. Struck with remorse and realising the evil of head taking, the tribe gave up head hunting for ever.

CHAPTER XI

THE IDEA OF A GAP

Bold is the donkey driver, O Khedive, and bold is the Khedive who dares to say what he will believe, not knowing in any wise the mind of Allah, not knowing in any wise his own heart.

The "j.a.panese Carlyle" is getting grey. It seemed well to seek out some young j.a.panese thinker and take his view of that "heathenism"

concerning which Uchimura had delivered himself so unsparingly. Let me speak of my first visit to my friend Yanagi.

As a youth Yanagi was a lonely student. He took his own way to knowledge and religion. The famed General Nogi had been given by the Emperor the direction of the Peers' School, but even under such distinguished tutelage the stripling made his stand. His reading led him to write for the school magazine an anti-militarist article. The veteran, as I once learned from a friend of Yanagi, promptly paraded the school, boys and masters. He spoke of disloyal, immoral, subversive ideas, and bade the youthful disturber of the peace attend him at his own house. When Yanagi stood before Nogi and was asked what he had to say, he replied with the question, "Don't you feel pain because of sending so many men to death before Port Arthur[107]?"

Again I found my prophet in a cottage. It was a cottage overlooking rice fields and a lagoon. From the j.a.panese scene outdoors I pa.s.sed indoors to a new j.a.pan. Cezanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Beardsley, Van Gogh, Henry Lamb, Augustus John, Matisse and Blake--Yanagi has written a big book on Blake which is in a second edition--hung within sight of a grand piano and a fine collection of European music[108].

Chinese, Korean and j.a.panese pottery and paintings filled the places in the dwelling not occupied by Western pictures and the Western library of a man well advanced with an interpretative history of Eastern and Western mysticism. An armful of books about Blake and Boehme, all Swedenborg, all Carlyle, all Emerson, all Whitman, all Sh.e.l.ley, all Maeterlinck, all Francis Thompson, and all Tagore, and plenty of other complete editions; early Christian mystics; much of William Law, Bergson, Eucken, Caird, James, Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Jefferies, Havelock Ellis, Carpenter, Strindberg, "ae," Yeats, Synge and Shaw; not a little poetry of the fashion of Vaughan, Traherne and Crashaw; a well-thumbed Emily Bronte; all the great Russian novelists; numbers of books on art and artists--it was an arresting collection to come on in a j.a.panese hamlet, and odd to sit down beside it in order to talk of "heathen."

"Yes," said Yanagi--he speaks an English which reflects his wide reading--"our young maid, on being shown the full moon the other night, bowed her head. I find this natural instinct of some value. Our people have much natural feeling towards Nature. If modern j.a.panese art has degenerated it is because it does not sufficiently find out life in things. The sough of the wind in the trees may have only a slight influence on character, but it is a vital influence. I do not like, of course, the word 'heathendom' of which Uchimura seems so fond. I dearly admire Christ, but most of the Christianity of to-day is not Christ. It is largely Paul. It is a mixture. It is not the clear, pure, original thing. Christians must reform their Christianity before it can satisfy us. In the East we now see clearly enough to seek only the best that the West can offer."

Yanagi said that the spontaneity and naturalness of Eastern religions ought to be recognised. "You will find Christians admiring Walt Whitman, but it is Whitman the democrat they admire, not Whitman the prophet of naturalness." He spoke with appreciation of the Zen sect of Buddhists. Many of the Zen devotees were "n.o.ble and had a profound idea." He was unable to see "any difference at all" between the best part of Buddhism and the best part of Christianity. He said that his own mysticism was based on science, art, religion and philosophy. "My sincerest wish," he declared, "is to produce a beautiful reconciliation of these four. As it is, too often scientists and philosophers have no deep knowledge of religion or art, artists have no deep knowledge of religion or science, and the religious have no idea of art. Surely the deepest religious idea is the deepest artistic and philosophic idea. Perhaps our scientists are in the poorest state just now with no understanding of art or religion. Our scientists are immersed in the problem of matter, our religious people in the problem of spirit, and our artists forget that in dealing with nature they are dealing with spirit as well as body."

Faced by force and science when Commander Perry came, j.a.pan, in order to save herself from foreign colonisation, had had to concentrate all her attention on force and science. She had concentrated her attention with signal success. But naturally she had had, in the process, to slacken her hold somewhat on the spiritual life.

"Always remember how difficult the j.a.panese find it to know which way to take. Their whole basis has been shaken and on the surface all has become chaotic. Ten years hence it will be possible to take a just view. There is much reason for high hopes. For one thing, the burden of old thought does not rest so heavily on us as might be supposed. We are very free in many ways. In the matter of religion j.a.pan is the most free nation in the world. If England were to become Buddhist it would sound strange or exotic, but j.a.pan is free to become what she may."

"There may be a great difference between one of our temples and shrines and an English church," Yanagi proceeded, "but I cannot believe in the gap which some people seem to see yawning between East and West. It is deplorable that the world should think that there is such a complete difference between East and West. It is usually said that self-denial, asceticism, sacrifice, negation are opposed to self-affirmation, individualism, self-realisation; but I do not believe in such a gap. I wish to destroy the idea of a gap. It is an idea which was obtained a.n.a.lytically. The meeting of East and West will not be upon a bridge over a gap, but upon the destruction of the idea of a gap.

"In future, religion cannot be limited by this or that sect or idea.

Religion cannot be limited to Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism or Mahomedanism. Uchimura says that it is the essence of Christianity which has the power to rescue j.a.pan from its chaotic state. But the essence of Buddhism can also contribute some important element to the future of j.a.pan. The notion that the essence of Christianity and the essence of Buddhism are far apart is artificial and prejudiced."

One day some weeks later I walked with Yanagi on the hills. He said: "The weakest point in the j.a.panese character is the lack of the power of questioning. We are repressed by our educational system. And so many things come here at one time that it makes confusion. What is so often taken for a lack of originality in us is a state resulting from an immense importation of foreign ideas. They have been overpowering.

Many of us have no clear ideas on life, society, s.e.x and so on, and you will find it difficult to get satisfactory answers to many questions which you will want to ask."

As to morality, it was dangerous to say "this or that is immoral."

Morality was often merely custom. Ordinary morality had scant authority. Critics of j.a.panese morality should not forget that, in the opinion of j.a.panese, Western people were more erotic than they were.

Western dancing--not to speak of Western women's evening costumes--was undoubtedly more erotic than j.a.panese dancing. Again, the s.e.xual curiosity of foreigners seemed stronger than that manifested by j.a.panese. It was a well-known fact that the girls at many hotels and restaurants had not a little to complain of from foreign men who misjudged their nave ways. It must be remembered that j.a.panese were franker in s.e.xual matters than Europeans and Americans. s.e.xual ill-doing was not so much concealed as in Europe. A wrong impression of j.a.panese morality was taken away by tourists whose guides showed them, as in Paris, what they expected to see.

"I wonder," he said, "that Western visitors to Tokyo who talk of our immorality are not struck by the fact that in an Eastern capital a foreign lady may walk home at night and be practically safe from being spoken to. The j.a.panese are undoubtedly a very kind people. They may be unmoral, but they are not immoral."

"Most of our people do not understand liberty in the mental s.e.xual relations. Love is not free. In a very large proportion of cases, indeed, parents would oppose a match because a son or daughter had fallen in love. And if it is difficult to marry for love it is not easy to fall in love.[109] Society in which young men and young women meet is restricted; there are few opportunities of conversation.

Without liberty towards women there can be no perfect sense of responsibility towards them."

What had been taught to women as the supreme virtue was the virtue of sacrifice for father, husband, children. It was most important to let women know the significance of individualism. They were always offering themselves for others before they became themselves. But the idea of individuality was very little clearer to the j.a.panese man than to the j.a.panese woman. People were too p.r.o.ne to wish to give 100 yen before they had 100 yen. The j.a.panese were the most devotional people in the world, but they hardly knew yet the things to be devoted to.

Yanagi is a leading member of a small a.s.sociation of literary men, artists and students who graduated together from the Peers' School.

They call themselves for no obvious reason the Shirakaba or Silver Birch Society. The intelligent and consistent efforts of these young men to introduce vital Western work in literature, philosophy, painting, sculpture, draughtsmanship and music, and the large measure of success they have attained is of some significance. Several members of the group belong to the old Kuge families, that is the ancient n.o.bility which surrounded the Emperor at Kyoto before the Restoration. Cut off for centuries from military and administrative activities by the dominance of the Shogunate Government, the Kuge devoted themselves to the arts and the refinements of life. For the exclusiveness of the past some of their descendants subst.i.tute artistic integrity. The Shirakaba has had for several years a remarkable magazine. Its editor and its publisher, its size, its price and its date of publication are continually changed; it never makes any bid for popularity; it expresses its sentiments in a downright way and it has always been anti-official: yet it survives and pays its way. Beyond the magazine, the Society has had every year at least one exhibition of what its members conceive to be significant modern European work. The members have also supported a few j.a.panese artists of outstanding sincerity. Through the Shirakaba the influence of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Blake, Delacroix, Matisse, Augustus John, Beardsley, Courbet, Daumier, Maillol, Chavannes and Millet, particularly Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin and Blake, has been marked. The Silver Birch group has never tired of extolling the great names of Rembrandt, Durer, El Greco, Van Eyck, Goya, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Tintoretto, Giotto and Mantegna[110].

While an ardent Young j.a.pan has formed and dissolved many societies, movements and fashions, this Shirakaba group has held fast and has gained friends by its sincerity, its vision and its audacity[111].

Rodin encouraged the Shirakaba efforts to reproduce the best Western art by presenting it with three pieces of sculpture.

"The intellectual man does no fighting," Froude has written. Why do not Yanagi and his friends make a stand on public questions?

"Because," he said, "at the present stage of our development it is almost impossible to take up a strong att.i.tude, and because, important though political and social questions are, they are not, in our opinion, of the first importance. To artists, philosophers, students of religion, such problems are secondary. More important problems are: What is the meaning of this world? What is G.o.d? What is the essence of religion? How can we best nourish ourselves so as to realise our own personalities? Political and social problems are secondary for us at present; they are not related emotionally to our present conditions[112].

For the East the Root, For the West the Fruit.

"If we faced such problems directly we should probably make them primary problems, as you do in Great Britain. Our present att.i.tude does not prove, however, that we are cold to political and social problems. In fact, when we think of these terrible political and social questions they make us boil. But you will understand that in order to have something to give to others, we must have that something. We are seeking after that something."

Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution which the new artistic movement in j.a.pan, under the influence of modern Western art, was making to the solution of political and social questions[113]. The interest of the younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite disharmonious with the ordinary att.i.tude towards militarism."