{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_34341/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_34341","id":"gutenberg_34341","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34341","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Archaeology & Anthropology","Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Ethics -- Japan","Japan -- Civilization"],"text":"THE JAPANESE SPIRIT\n\nBY\n\nOKAKURA-YOSHISABURO\n\nWITH AN INTRODUCTION\n\nBY\n\nGEORGE MEREDITH\n\nNEW YORK\n\nJAMES POTT & CO.\n\n1905\n\n\n\nTO MY BROTHER\n\n    _Bellario_       Sir, if I have made\n    A fault in ignorance, instruct my youth:\n    I shall be willing, if not able, to learn:\n    Age and experience will adorn my mind\n    With larger knowledge; and if I have done\n    A wilful fault, think me not past all hope\n    For once.\n\n                  _Philaster_, Act. II. Sc. I.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe following pages owe their existence to Mr. Martin White, whose keen\ninterest in comparative sociology led to the opening of special courses\nfor its investigation in the University of London.\n\nMy thanks are due to Mr. P.J. Hartog, Academic Registrar of the\nUniversity, as well as to Dr. and Mrs. E.R. Edwards, who inspired me\nwith the courage to take the present task on my inexperienced shoulders.\nBut above all I render the expression of my deepest obligation to\nProfessor Walter Rippmann. Had it not been for his friendly interest and\nhelp, I would not have been able thus to come before an English public.\nFor the peculiarities of thought and language, which, if nothing else,\nmight at least make the booklet worthy of a perusal, I naturally assume\nthe full responsibility myself.\n\nWith these prefatory words, I venture to submit this essay to the\nlenient reception of my readers.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nWe have had illuminating books upon Japan. Those of Lafcadio Hearn will\nalways be remembered for the poetry he brought in them to bear upon the\npoetic aspects of the country and the people. Buddhism had a fascination\nfor him, as it had for Mr. Fielding in his remarkable book on the\npractice of this religion in Burma.[1] There is also the work of Captain\nBrinkley, to which we are largely indebted.\n\nThese Lectures by a son of the land, delivered at the University of\nLondon, are compendious and explicit in a degree that enables us to form\na summary of much that has been otherwise partially obscure, so that we\nget nearer to the secret of this singular race than we have had the\nchance of doing before. He traces the course of Confucianism, Laoism,\nShintoism, in the instruction it has given to his countrymen for the\npractice of virtue, as to which Lao-tze informs us with a piece of\n'Chinese metaphysics' that can be had without having recourse to the\ndictionary: '_Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore it has virtue.\nInferior virtue never loses sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue.\nSuperior virtue is non-assertive and without pretension. Inferior virtue\nasserts and makes pretensions._' It is childishly subtle and easy to be\nunderstood of a young people in whose minds Buddhism and Shintoism\nformed a part.\n\nThe Japanese have had the advantage of possessing a native Nobility who\nwere true nobles, not invaders and subjugators. They were, in the\nhighest sense, men of honor to whom, before the time of this dreadful\nwar, Hara-kiri was an imperative resource, under the smallest suspicion\nof disgrace. How rigidly they understood and practised Virtue, in the\nsense above cited, is exemplified in the way they renounced their\nprivileges for the sake of the commonweal when the gates of Japan were\nthrown open to the West.\n\nBushido, or the 'way of the Samurai,' has become almost an English word,\nso greatly has it impressed us with the principle of renunciation on\nbehalf of the Country's welfare. This splendid conception of duty has\nbeen displayed again and again at Port Arthur and on the fields of\nManchuria, not only by the Samurai, but by a glorious commonalty imbued\nwith the spirit of their chiefs.\n\nAll this is shown clearly by Professor Okakura in this valuable book.\n\nIt proves to general comprehension that such a people must be\nunconquerable even if temporarily defeated; and that is not the present\nprospect of things. Who could conquer a race of forty millions having\nthe contempt of death when their country's inviolability is at stake!\nDeath, moreover, is despised by them because they do not believe in it.\n'The departed, although invisible, are thought to be leading their\nethereal life in the same world in much the same state as that to which\nthey had been accustomed while on earth.' And so, 'when the father of a\nJapanese family begins a journey of any length, the raised part of his\nroom will be made sacred to his memory during his temporary absence; his\nfamily will gather in front of it and think of him, expressing their\ndevotion and love in words and gifts in kind. In the hundreds of\nthousands of families that have some one or other of their members\nfighting for the nation in this dreadful war, there will not be even one\nsolitary house where the mother, wife, or sister is not practising this\nsimple rite of endearment for the beloved and absent member of the\nfamily.' Spartans in the fight, Stoics in their grief.\n\nConcerning the foolish talk of the Yellow Peril, a studious perusal of\nthis book will show it to be fatuous. It is at least unlikely in an\nextreme degree that such a people, reckless of life though they be in\nfront of danger, but Epicurean in their wholesome love of pleasure and\npursuit of beauty, will be inflated to insanity by the success of their\narms. Those writers who have seen something malignant and inimical\nbehind their gracious politeness, have been mere visitors on the fringe\nof the land, alarmed by their skill in manufacturing weapons and\nexplosives--for they are inventive as well as imitative, a people not to\nbe trifled with; but this was because their instinct as well as their\nemissaries warned them of a pressing need for the means of war. Japan\nand China have had experience of Western nations, and that is at the\nconscience of suspicious minds.\n\nIt may be foreseen that when the end has come, the Kaiser, always\nhonourably eager for the influence of his people, will draw a glove over\nthe historic 'Mailed Fist' and offer it to them frankly. It will surely\nbe accepted, and that of France, we may hope; Russia as well. England is\nher ally--to remain so, we trust; America is her friend. She has, in\nfact, won the admiration of Friend and Foe alike.\n\n                              GEORGE MEREDITH.\n\n\n[1] _The Soul of a People._\n\n\n\n\nTHE JAPANESE SPIRIT.\n\n\nSince the end of the thirteenth century, when Marco Polo, on his return\nto Venice, wrote about 'Cipango,' an island, as he stated, '1500 miles\noff the coast of China, fabulously rich, and inhabited by people of\nagreeable manners,' many a Western pen has been wielded to tell all\nkinds of tales concerning the Land of the Rising Sun. Her long\nseclusion; her anxious care to guard inviolate the simple faith which\nhad been gravely threatened by the Roman Church; her hearty welcome of\nthe honoured guests from the West, after centuries of independent\ngrowth; the sudden, almost pathetic, changes she has gone through in the\npast forty years in order to equip herself for a place on the world's\nstage where powers play their game of balance; the lessons she lately\ntaught the still slumbering China through the mouths of thundering\ncannon: all this has called into existence the expression of opinions\nand comments of very varying merit and tone; and especially since the\nout-break of the present war, when the daily news from the scenes of\naction, where my brethren are fighting for the cause of wronged justice\nand menaced liberty, is showing the world page after page of patriotism\nand loyalty, written unmistakably in the crimson letters of heroes'\nblood,--all this has given occasion to Europe and America to think the\nmatter over afresh. Here you have at least a nation different in her\ndevelopment from any existing people in the Occident. Governed from time\nimmemorial by the immediate descendants of the Sun-Goddess, whose\nmerciful rule early taught us to offer them our voluntary tribute of\ndevotion and love, we have based our social system on filial piety, that\nnecessary outcome of ancestor-worship which presupposes altruism on the\none hand, and on the other loyalty and love of the fatherland. Different\ndoctrines of religion and morality have found their way from their\ncontinental homes to the silvery shores of the Land of the Gods, only to\nrender their several services towards consolidating and widening the\nso-called 'Divine Path,' that national cult whose unwritten tenets have\nlurked for thousands of years hidden in the most sacred corner of our\nhearts, whose pulse is ever beating its rhythm of patriotism and\nloyalty. Buddhist metaphysics, Confucian and Taoist philosophy, have\nbeen fused together in the furnace of Shintoism for fifteen centuries\nand a half, and that apart from the outer world, in the island home of\nJapan, where the blue sky looks down on gay blossoms and gracefully\nsloping mountains. The final amalgamation of these forces produces,\namong other results, the works of art and the feats of bravery now\nbefore you, each bearing the ineffaceable hall-marks of Japan's past\nhistory. Surely here you are face to face with a people worthy of\nserious investigation, not only from the disinterested point of view of\na folk-psychologist. It is a study which will open to any impartial\nobserver a new horizon, more so than would be the case if he attempted\nthe sociological interpretation of a nation the history of whose\ndevelopment was almost identical with that of his own. Here he meets\ntotally different sets of things with totally different ways of looking\nat them; and this gives him ample occasion to realise the fact that\nhuman thought and action may evolve in several forms and through several\nchannels before they reach their respective culmination where they all,\nregardless of their original differences, melt into the common sea of\ntruth.\n\nBut this simple fact that 'God fulfills Himself in many ways,' as your\nTennyson has it, so necessary to ensure freedom from national bigotry\nand conventional ignorance, so necessary too for a proper understanding\nof oneself as the cumulative product of a nation's history, has not\nalways been kept in mind, even by those otherwise well-meaning authors,\nwhose works have some charm as descriptive writing, but give only a\nsuperficial and often misleading account of the inner life of the\nnation. True, a great deal of excellent work has been achieved by a\nnumber of scholars of lasting merit, from Kaempfe's memorable work first\npublished in its English translation as early as 1727, down to the\nadmirable _Interpretation_ written last year by the late Mr. Lafcadio\nHearn, in whose death Japan lost one of her most precious friends,\npossessing as he did the scholar's insight and the poet's pen, two\nheavenly gifts seldom found united in a single man. It is mainly through\nthe remarkable labour of two learned bodies, the Asiatic Society of\nJapan, and the _Deutsche Gesellschaft f\u00fcr Natur- und V\u00f6lkerkunde\nOstasiens_, both with their headquarters in T\u00f4ky\u00f4--in whose\nindefatigable researches the 'Japan Society' in this city has ably\njoined since 1892--that most valuable data have been constantly brought\nto light, furnishing for future students sure bases for wider\ngeneralizations. But owing to the numerous hindrances--some of which\nlook almost insurmountable to the Western investigator--a fair synthetic\ninterpretation of Japan as a nation, explaining all the important forces\nthat underlie the psychic and physical phenomena, still remains to be\nwritten. The most formidable of the difficulties which meet a European\nor American student at the very threshold of his researches is the\ntotally different construction of Japanese society, a difficulty which\nmakes it impossible to understand properly any set of the phenomena\nbelonging to it apart from the others which surround them. One could as\nwell cut a single mesh from a net without prejudice to the neighbouring\nones! The proper understanding of things Japanese therefore presupposes\nfreedom from your conventional philosophy of life, and the power of\nviewing things through other people's eyes.\n\nBesides this obstacle, there are many others; for example, that of the\nlanguage. Like most other nations in the East, we have been accustomed,\nup to this very day, to use a written language, divided within itself\ninto several styles, which is considerably different from the\nvernacular. To make this state of things still more complicated, Chinese\ncharacters are profusely resorted to in the native writings, and are\nused not only as so many ideographs for words of Chinese origin, but\nalso to represent native words. To make confusion worse confounded, they\nare not infrequently used as pure phonetic symbols without any further\nmeaning attaching to them. So one and the same sign may be read in half\na dozen different ways, according to the hints, more or less sure, given\nby the context. All this makes the study of Japanese immensely\ndifficult. It is difficult even for a Japanese with the best\nopportunities; a hundred times more so, then, for a Western scholar who,\nif he cares to study the subject at first hand at all, begins this\nstudy, comparatively speaking, late in life, when his memory has\nwell-nigh lost the capacity of bearing such an enormous burden!\n\nStill, there have been many Western scholars who, nothing daunted by the\nabove-mentioned hindrances, have done much valuable work. English names\nlike those of Sir E. Satow, G.W. Aston, B.H. Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn\nare to be gratefully remembered by all future students in this field of\ninquiry, as well as such German scholars as Dr. Baelz and Dr. Florenz.\nLeaving the enumeration of general works on Japan, whose name is legion,\nfor some other time, let me mention one or two of those works of\nreference which a would-be English scholar of Japanese matters might\nfind very useful. First of all Mr. B.H. Chamberlain's _Things\nJapanese_--a book which gave birth to Mr. J.D. Hall's equally\nindispensable _Things Chinese_--containing in cyclop\u00e6dic form a mine of\ninformation about Japan. Dr. Wenckstern's painstaking _Japanese\nBibliography_, with M. de Losny's earlier attempt as a supplement, gives\nyou the list of all writings on Japan in European tongues that have\nappeared up to 1895. For those who want good books on the Japanese\nlanguage, Mr. Aston's _Grammar of the Japanese Written Language_, Mr.\nChamberlain's _Handbook of Colloquial Japanese_, as well as the same\nauthor's _Monzi-no-Shirubi, a Practical Introduction to the Study of the\nJapanese Writing_, are the best. As for books on the subject from the\npen of the Japanese themselves, Dr. Nitobe's _Bushido, Explanations of\nthe Japanese Thought_, and my brother K. Okakura's _Ideals of the East_,\nbesides a volume by several well-known Japanese, entitled _Japan by the\nJapanese_, are to be specially mentioned.[1]\n\n\n[1] Professor T. Inouye's little pamphlet, published first in French,\nentitled _Sur le D\u00e9veloppement des Id\u00e9es Philosophiques au Japon avant\nl'Introduction de la Civilisation Europ\u00e9enne_, will give you some idea\nof our philosophic systems. For a serious perusal, its German\ntranslation, annotated and amplified, by Dr. A. Gramatzky (_Kurze\n\u00dcbersicht \u00fcber die Entwicklung der philosophischen Ideen in Japan_,\nBerlin, 1897), is to be preferred.\n\nWhat I myself propose to do in this essay is to give to the best of my\nability, and so far as is possible with the scanty knowledge and the\nlimited space at my disposal, a simple statement in plain language of\nwhat I think to be the fundamental truths necessary for the proper\nunderstanding of my fatherland. I am not vain enough to attempt any\noriginal solution of the old difficulty; knowing as I do my own\ndeficiencies, I should be well satisfied if I could manage to give you\nsome kind of general introduction to the Japanese views of life.\n\nSo much for the preliminary remarks. Let us now take a step further and\nsee what factors are to be considered as the bases of modern Japan.\n\n'To which race do the Japanese belong?' is the first question asked by\nany one who wants to approach our subject from the historical point of\nview. Unfortunately not much is known as yet about our place in racial\nscience. If we do not take into account the inhabitants of the newly\nannexed island of Formosa, we have, roughly speaking, two very different\nraces in our whole archipelago--the hairy Aino and the ruling Yamato\nrace, the former being the supposed aborigines, physically sturdy and\nwell developed, with their characteristic abundant growth of hair, who\nare at present to be found only in the Yezo island in the northern\nextremity of Japan, and whose number, notwithstanding all the care of\nour government, is fast dwindling, the sum total being not much more\nthan 15,000. The Aino have a tradition that the land had been occupied\nbefore them by another race of dwarfish stature called Koropokguru, who\nare identified by some scholars with those primitive pit-dwellers known\nin our history as Tuchigumo,[2] whose traces, although scanty, are still\nto be met with in various parts of Yezo. Anyhow, we see at the first\ndawn of history the aborigines gradually receding before the conquering\nYamato race, who are found steadily pushing on towards the northeast,\nand who finally established themselves as a ruling body under the divine\nbanner of the first emperor Jimmu, from whose accession we reckon our\nera, the present year being the 2565th, according to our recognised way\nof counting dates.\n\n\n[2] Professor Milne, _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_,\nvol. viii. p. 82.\n\nSuggestions, audacious rather than strictly scientific, have been put\nforward as to the original home both of the Aino and the Japanese. The\nRev. I. Dooman, for instance, proposed in his paper read before the\nmeeting of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1897 to derive both from the\npeople who had been living, according to him, on both sides of the great\nHimalayan range. 'The Aino,' he says, 'the first inhabitants of these\n(Japanese) islands, belong to the South Himalayan Centre; while the\nJapanese, the second comers, belong to the North Himalayan, commonly\ncalled Altaic races.'[3] But in face of the scanty knowledge at our\ncommand about the respective sets of people in question, such wholesale\nconjecture had better be postponed until some later time, when further\nresearch shall have supplied surer data for our speculations. As regards\nthe Aino, we must for the present say, on the authority of Mr.\nChamberlain, that, remembering how the Aino race is isolated from all\nother living races by its hairiness and by the extraordinary flattening\nof the tibia and humerus, it is not strange to find the language\nisolated too.[4]\n\n\n[3] _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_, vol. xxv.\n\nWith respect to the Japanese proper, the only thing known about their\nracial affinity is the theory proposed by the German scholar Dr. Baelz,\nas the result of his elaborate measurements both of living specimens and\nskeletons.[5] He considers the Yamato race to belong to the Mongolian\nstock of the Asiatic continent, from where they proceeded to Japan by\nway of the Corean peninsula. There are two distinct types noticeable\namong them at present, one characterised by a delicate, refined\nappearance, with oval face, rather oblique eyes, slightly Roman nose,\nand a frame not vigorous yet well proportioned; the other marked out by\nbroader face, projecting cheek bones, flat nose, and horizontal eyes,\nwhile the body is more robust and muscular, though not so well\nproportioned and regular. The former is to be met with among the better\nclasses and in the southern parts of Japan, while the specimens of the\nlatter are found rather among the labouring population, and are more\nabundant in the northern provinces. This difference of types,\naristocratic and plebeian, which is still more conspicuous among the\nfair sex, is with good reason attributed to the two-fold wave of\nMongolian emigration which reached our island in prehistoric times. The\nfirst emigrants, consisting of coarser tribes of the Mongolian race,\nlanded most probably on the northern coast of the main island somewhere\nin the present Idzumo province, and settled down there, while the second\nwave broke on the shores of Ky\u00fbsh\u00fb. These emigrants seem to have\nbelonged to the more refined branch of the great Mongolian stock. This\nhypothesis is borne out by our mythology, which divides itself into two\ncycles, one centring at Idzumo and the other at Ky\u00fbsh\u00fb, and which tell\nus how the great-grandfather of the first great emperor Jimmu descended\nfrom heaven on to the peak of the mountain Takachiho in Hy\u00fbga in Ky\u00fbsh\u00fb.\nAccompanied by his brother, he started from this spot on his march of\nconquering migration to Yamato, fighting and subduing on his way tribes\nwho on the continent were once his kith and kin.\n\n\n[4] _Memoirs of the Literary Department of the University of T\u00f4ky\u00f4_,\nvol. i.\n\n[5] _Die k\u00f6rperlichen Eigenschaften der Japaner_, vols. xxviii. and\nxxxii. of _Mittheilungen der Gesellschaft f\u00fcr die Natur- und V\u00f6lkerkunde\nOstasiens_.\n\nIt might perhaps interest you to know something of our prevailing idea\nof personal beauty, especially as, in such a homogeneous nation as the\nJapanese, ruled from time immemorial by one and the same line of\ndynasty, it may help us to make some vague conjectures as to the\nphysical appearances of at least one of those continental tribes out of\nwhich our nation has been formed. The standard of beauty naturally\nfluctuates a little according to sex and locality. In a lady, for\nexample, mildness and grace are, generally speaking, preferred to that\nstrength or manliness of expression which would be thought more becoming\nin her brother. T\u00f4ky\u00f4 again does not put so much stress on the\nfleshiness of limbs and face as does Ky\u00f4to. But, as a whole, there is\nonly one ideal throughout the Empire. So let me try to enumerate all the\nqualities usually considered necessary to make a beautiful woman. She is\nto possess a body not much exceeding five feet in height, with\ncomparatively fair skin and proportionately well-developed limbs; a head\ncovered with long, thick, and jet-black hair; an oval face with a\nstraight nose, high and narrow; rather large eyes, with large deep-brown\npupils and thick eyelashes; a small mouth, hiding behind its red, but\nnot thin, lips, even rows of small white teeth; ears not altogether\nsmall; and long and thick eyebrows forming two horizontal but slightly\ncurved lines, with a space left between them and the eyes. Of the four\nways in which hair can grow round the upper edge of the forehead, viz.,\nhorned, square, round, and Fuji-shaped, one of the last two is\npreferred, a very high as well as a very low forehead being considered\nnot attractive.\n\nSuch are, roughly speaking, the elements of Japanese female beauty. Eyes\nand eyebrows with the outer ends turning considerably upwards, with\nwhich your artists depict us, are due to those Japanese colour prints\nwhich strongly accentuate our dislike of the reverse, for straight eyes\nand eyebrows make a very bad impression on us, suggesting weakness,\nlasciviousness, and so on. It must also be understood that in Japan no\nsuch variety of types of beauty is to be met with as is noticed here in\nEurope. Blue eyes and blond hair, the charms of which we first learn to\nfeel after a protracted stay among you, are regarded in a Japanese as\nsomething extraordinary in no favourable sense of the term! A girl with\neven a slight tendency to grey eyes or frizzly hair is looked upon as an\nunwelcome deviation from the national type.\n\nIf we now consider our mythology, with a view to tracing the continental\nhome of the Yamato race, we find, to our disappointment, that our\npresent knowledge is too scanty to allow us to arrive at a conclusion.\nIndeed, so long as the general science of mythology itself remains in\nthat unsettled condition in which its youth obliges it to linger, and\nespecially so long as the Indian and Chinese bodies of myths--by which\nour mythology is so unmistakably influenced--do not receive more serious\nsystematic treatment, the recorded stories of the Japanese deities\ncannot be expected to supply us with much indication as to our\ncontinental home. One thing is certain about them, that they were not\nfree from influences exerted by the different myths prevalent among the\nChinese and the Indians at the time when they were written down in our\nearliest history, the _Ko-ji-ki_ or _Records of Ancient Matter_,\ncompleted in A.D. 712. There is an excellent English translation of the\nbook, with an admirable introduction and notes, by Mr. B.H. Chamberlain.\nAccording to this book, the original ethereal chaos with which the world\nbegan gradually congealed, and was finally divided into heaven and\nearth. The male and female principles now at work gave birth to several\ndeities, until a pair of deities named Izanagi and Izanami, or the\n'Male-who-invites' and the 'Female-who-invites,' were produced. They\nmarried, and produced first of all the islands of Japan big and small,\nand then different deities, until the birth of the Fire-God cost the\ndivine mother her life. She subsequently retired to the Land of Darkness\nor Hades, where her sorrowful consort descended, Orpheus-like, in quest\nof his spouse. He failed to bring her back to the outer world, for, like\nthe Greek musician, he broke his promise not to look at her in her more\nprofound retirement. The result was disastrous. Izanagi barely escaped\nfrom his now furious wife, and on coming back to daylight he washed\nhimself in a stream, in order to purify himself from the hideous sights\nand the pollution of the nether-world. This custom of lustration is, by\nthe way, kept up to this day in the symbolic sprinkling of salt over\npersons returning from a funeral--salt representing pure water, as our\nname for it, 'the flower of the waves,' well indicates. Our love of\ncleanliness and of bathing might be also recognised in this early\ncustom. Impurity, whether mental or corporal, has always been regarded\nas a great evil, and even as a sin.\n\nNow one of the most important results of the purification of the god\nIzanagi was the birth of three important deities through the washing of\nhis eyes and nose. The Moon-God and the Sun-Goddess emerged from his\nwashing his right and left eyes, while Susanowo, their youngest brother,\nowed his existence to the washing of his nose; three illustrious\nchildren to whom the divine father trusted the dominion of night, day,\nand the seas.\n\nThe last-mentioned deity, whose name would mean in English 'Prince\nImpetuous,' lost his father's favour by his obstinate longing to see\nIzanami, the divine mother, in Hades, and was expelled from the father's\npresence. He eventually went up to heaven to pay a visit to his sister,\nthe Sun-Goddess, whom he gravely offended by his monstrous outrages on\nher person, and who was consequently so angry that she shut herself up\nin a rocky chamber, thus causing darkness in the world outside. In\naccordance with the deliberate plans worked out by an assembly of a\nmyriad gods, she was at last allured from her cavern by the sounds of\nwild merriment caused by the burlesque dancing of a female deity, and\nday reigned once more.\n\nThe now repenting offender was driven down from heaven, and he wandered\nabout the earth. It was during this wandering that in Idzumo he, like\nPerseus, rescued a beautiful young maid from an eight-headed serpent. He\nwon her hand and lived very happily with her ever after.\n\nIn the meantime the state of things in the 'High Plain of Heaven'\nripened to the point that the Sun-Goddess began to think of sending her\naugust child to govern the\n'Luxuriant-Reed-Plain-Land-of-Fresh-Rice-Ears,' that is to say, Japan.\nMessages were previously sent to pacify the land for the reception of\nthe divine ruler. This took much time, during which a grandson was born\nto the Sun-Goddess, and in the end it was this grandson who was\ndesignated to come down to earth instead of his father. On his departure\na formal command to descend and rule the land now placed under his care\nwas accompanied by the present of a mirror, a sword, and a string of\ncrescent-shaped jewels. These treasures, still preserved in our imperial\nhousehold as regalia, are generally interpreted to mean the three\nvirtues of wisdom, courage, and mercy--necessary qualities for a perfect\nruler. It was on the high peak of Mount Takachiho that the divine ruler\ndescended to earth. He settled down in the country until his\ngreat-grandson, known in history as Emperor Jimmu, founded the empire\nand began that unique line of rulers who have governed the 'Land of the\nGods' for more than two thousand years, the present emperor being the\nhundred and twenty-first link in the eternal chain.\n\nSuch is, in brief, the story about my country before it was brought\nunder the rule of one central governing body. Subjected to scientific\nscrutiny the whole tale presents many gaps in logical sequence. It\nbetrays, besides, traces of an intermingling of the early beliefs of\nother nations. Still, it must be said that the divine origin of our\nemperors has invested their throne with the double halo of temporal and\nof spiritual power from the earliest days of their ascendancy; and the\npeople, themselves the descendants of those patriarchs who served under\nthe banners of Emperor Jimmu, or else of those who early learned to bow\nthemselves down before the divine conqueror, have looked up to this\nthrone with an ever-growing reverence and pride.\n\nIn primitive Japan, as in every other primitive human society,\nancestor-worship was the first form of belief. Each family had its own\ndeparted spirits of forefathers to whom was dedicated a daily homage of\nsimple words and offerings in kind. The guardian ghosts demanded of\ntheir living descendants that they should be good and brave in their own\nway. As these families of the same race and language gathered themselves\naround the strongest of them all, imbued with a firm belief in its\ndivine origin, they contributed in their turn their own myths to the\nimperial ones, thus eventually forming and consolidating a national\ncult; and it was but natural that the people's heart should come in\ncourse of time to re-echo in harmony with the keynote struck by the one\nthrough whom the gods breathe eternal life. The whole nation is bound by\nthat sacred tie of common belief and common thought. Here lies the great\ngap that separates, for example, the Chinese cult of fatalism from our\nPath of Gods as a moral force. The Chinese have believed from the\nearliest times in one supreme god whom they called the Divine Presider\n(_Shang-ti_) or the August Heaven (_Hwang-t'ien_ or simply _T'ien_),\nwho, according to their notion, carefully selects a fit person from\namong swarming mankind to be the temporary ruler of his\nfellow-countrymen, but only for so long as it pleases the god to let him\noccupy the throne. At the expiration of a certain period, the heavenly\nmission (_T'ien-ming_) is transferred through bloodshed and national\ndisaster to another mortal, who exercises the earthly rule until he or\nhis descendants incur the disfavour of the 'Heaven above.' To this day\nthe Chinese word for revolution means the 'renovation of missions'\n(_kweh-ming_). This fatalistic idea, which is but a natural outcome of\nthe almost too democratic nature of the people of the Celestial Empire\nand of the frequent changes of dynasties it has had to go through, is\nalmost unknown in our island home in its gravest aspects; more than\nthat, ever since its introduction into Japan, this idea, along with the\nIndian doctrine of pitiless fate, has gradually taught us to offer a\nmore resigned and determined service to our respective superiors who\nculminate in the divine person of the Emperor himself. This is well\nillustrated by the fact that no attempt at the formal occupation of the\nthrone has ever been made, even on the part of those powerful Shoguns\nwho were the real rulers of our country; they knew full well how\ndangerous and fatal for themselves it would be to tamper with that hinge\non which the nation's religious life turns. Only once in our long\nhistory is there an example of an unsuccessful attempt (and it is the\nhighest treason a Japanese subject can think of), when a Buddhist monk\nnamed D\u00f4ky\u00f4, encouraged by the undue devotion of the ruling empress,\ntried to ascend the throne by means of the recognition of the higher\ntemporal rank of the Buddhist priesthood over the imperial ministry of\nthe native cult. This imminent danger was averted by the bold and\nresolute patriotism of a Shinto priest, Wake-no-Kiyomaro, who, in\nLuther-like defiance of all peril and personal risks, declared\nfearlessly, in the very presence of the haughty and menacing head of the\nBuddhist Church, the divine will, 'Japan is to know no emperor except in\nthe person of the divine descendants of the Sun-Goddess!'\n\nTurning now to the question of language, we must confess that the\nlinguistic affinities of Japanese are as little cleared up as the other\nproblems we have been considering. The only thing we know about the\nJapanese language amounts to this: it belongs, morphologically speaking,\nto the so-called agglutinative languages, _e.g._, those which express\ntheir grammatical functions by the addition of etymologically\nindependent elements--prefixes and suffixes--to the unchangeable roots\nor base forms. Genealogically, to follow the classification expounded by\nFriedrich M\u00fcller in his _Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft_, who based\nhis system on Haeckel's division of the human race by the nature and\nparticularly the section of the hair, Japanese is one of the languages\nor groups of languages spoken by the Mongolian race.\n\nBut this characterisation of our tongue does not help us much. One could\nas well point to the East at large to show where Japan lies!\nNotwithstanding the general uncertainty as regards the exact position of\nour language, this much is sure, that Japanese has, in spite of the\nimmense number of loan-words of Chinese origin, no fundamental\nconnection with the monosyllabic language of China, whose different\nsyntactical nature and want of common roots baffles the attempts on the\npart of some speculative Europeans to connect it with our own tongue. At\nthe same time, it is well known among competent scholars that Japanese,\nwith its most distant dialect Luchuan, bears great kinship to the\nCorean, Manchurian, and Mongolian languages. It shares with them,\nbesides the dislike of commencing a word with a trilled sound or with a\nsonant, almost the same rules for the arrangement of the component\nelements of a sentence. According to the Japanese syntax, the following\nrules can, for instance, be applied to Corean without alteration:--\n\n1. All the qualifying words and phrases are put before those they\nqualify. Attributive adjectives and adverbs, and their equivalents, are\nplaced before nouns and verbs they modify.\n\n2. The grammatical subject stands at the beginning of the sentence.\n\n3. Predicative elements are at the end of a sentence.\n\n4. Direct and indirect objects follow the subject.\n\n5. Subordinate sentences precede the principal ones.\n\nOne thing worthy of notice is the fact that, notwithstanding the most\nconvincing structural similarity that exists between these affiliated\nlanguages, they contain, comparatively speaking, few words in common,\neven among the numerals and personal pronouns, which have played such an\nimportant part in Indo-European philology. We must still wait a long\ntime before a better knowledge of linguistic affinity reveals such\ndecisive links of connection as will enable us to trace our Japanese\nhome on the continent.\n\nLet us now consider what were the effects of the continental\ncivilisation on the mental development of the Japanese within their\ninsular home.\n\nBefore entering into details about the various continental doctrines\nimplanted in our country from China and India, it may be well to tell\nyou something of the mental attitude of the Japanese in facing a new\nform of culture, in many senses far superior to their own. Nothing\ndefinite can perhaps be said about it; but when we grope along the main\ncord of historical phenomena we think we find that the Japanese as a\nwhole are not a people with much aptitude for deep metaphysical ways of\nthinking. They are not of the calibre from which you expect a Kant or a\nSchopenhauer. Warlike by nature more than anything else, they have been\nknown from the very beginning to have had the soldier-like simplicity\nand the easy contentment of men of action--qualities which the practical\nnature of Confucian ethics had ample chance to develop. The abstruse\nconceptions of Chinese or Indian origin have been received into the\nJapanese mind just as they were preached, and usually we have not\ntroubled ourselves to think them out again; but in accordance with our\npeculiarly quick habit of perceiving the inner meaning of things, we\nhave generalised them straight away and turned them immediately into so\nmany working principles. There are any number of instances of slight\nhints given by some people on the continent and worked out to suit our\nown purposes into maxims of immediate and practical value. Ideals in\ntheir original home are ideals no longer in our island home. They are\ninterpreted into so many realities with a direct bearing on our daily\nlife. We have been and are, even to this day, always in need of some new\nhints and suggestions to work up into so many dynamic forces for\npractical use. Upon Europe and America the full power of our mental\nsearchlight is now playing, in quest of those new ideas for future\ndevelopment for which we have been accustomed to draw mainly on China\nand India. Even such a commonplace thing as the drinking of a cup of tea\nbecomes in our hands something more: it becomes a training in stoic\nserenity, in the capacity of smiling at life's troubles and\ndisturbances. Some day you might learn from us a new philosophy based on\nthe use of motor cars and telephones as applied to life and conduct!\n\nThis, as you will see, explains why we have failed to produce any\noriginal thinkers; this is why we have to recognise our indebtedness\nfor almost all the important ideas which have brought about social\ninnovation either to China or to India, or else to the modern Western\nnations; and this notwithstanding so many national idiosyncrasies and\ncharacteristics which are to be found in the productions of our art and\nin our life and ways, and which are even as handfuls of grain gathered\nin foreign fields and brewed into a national drink of utterly Japanese\nflavour. We are, I think, a people of the Present and the Tangible, of\nthe broad Daylight and the plainly Visible. The undeniable proclivity of\nour mind in favour of determination and action, as contrasted with\ndeliberation and calm, makes it an uncongenial ground for the sublimity\nand grandeur of that 'loathed melancholy, of Cerberus and blackest\nmidnight born,' to take deep root in it. Pure reasoning as such has had\nfor us little value beyond the help it affords us in harbouring our\ndrifting thought in some nearest port, where we can follow any peaceful\noccupation rather than be fighting what we should call a useless fight\nwith troubled billows and unfathomable depths. Such, according to my\npersonal view, are the facts about our mentality considered generally.\nAnd now it is necessary to speak of the main waves of cult and culture\nthat successively washed our shores.\n\nThe first mention in our history of the introduction of the Chinese\nlearning into the imperial household places it in the reign of the\nfifteenth emperor \u00d4-jin, in the year 284 after Christ according to the\nearliest native records, but according to more trustworthy recent\ncomputation[6] considerably later than that date. We are told that a\ncertain prince was put under the tutorship of a learned Corean scholar\nof Chinese, who, at the request of the emperor, came over to Japan with\nthe _Confucian Analects_ (_Iun-y\u00fc_) and some other Chinese classics as a\ntribute from the King of Kudara. But long before the learning of the\nCelestial Empire found its way through Corea into our imperial court, it\nhad in all probability been making its silent influence felt here and\nthere among the Japanese people. Great swarms of immigrants had sought a\nfinal place of rest in our sea-girt country from many parts of China,\nwhere raging tyranny and menacing despotism made life intolerable even\nfor Chinese meekness; these, and the bands of daring invaders which\nJapan sent out from time to time to the Corean and Chinese coasts, had\ngiven us many opportunities of coming into contact with the learning\nprevalent among our continental neighbours. In this manner Chinese\nliterature, with its groundwork of Confucian ethics, surrounded by the\nstrange lore derived from Taoism, and perhaps also from Hindu sources,\nhad been gradually but surely attracting the ever-increasing attention\nof our warlike forefathers, who were to become in course of time its\ndevoted admirers.\n\n\n[6] Cp. Bramsen's _Japanese Chronological Tables_.\n\nNow, Confucianism pure and simple, as taught by the sage Kung-foo-tsze\n(551-478 B.C.), from whom the doctrine derived its name, was,\nnotwithstanding the contention of the famous English sinologue Dr.\nLegge, nothing more and nothing less than an aggregate of ethical ideas\nconsidered in their application to the conduct and duties of our\neveryday life. 'The great teacher never allowed himself to be considered\nan expounder of any new system of either religious or metaphysical\nideas. He was content to call himself 'a transmitter and not a maker,\nbelieving in and loving the ancients.' True to the spirit of these\nwords, and most probably having no other course open to him on account\nof his extremely utilitarian turn of mind, he devoted his whole life to\nthe elucidation of the True Path of human life, as exemplified by those\nhalf-mythical rulers of old China, Ya\u00f4, Shun, etc., from whom he derived\nhis ideals and his images of perfect man in flesh and blood. These early\nkings were of course no creation of Confucius himself; the only thing he\ndid was to place the forms, which popular tradition had handed down\nsurrounded by legendary halos, in high relief before the people, as\nperfect models to regulate the earthly conduct of the individuals as\nmembers of a society. His attitude towards the ancient classics which he\ncompiled and perpetuated was that of one transmitting faithfully. He\nstudied them, and exhorted and helped his disciples to do the same, but\nhe did not alter them, nor even digest them into their present form.'[7]\nIn order to find concrete examples to show his ethical views more\npositively, he wrote a history of his native state Lo\u00f2 from 722 to 484\nB.C., in which, while faithfully recording events, he took every\nopportunity to jot down his moral judgment upon them in the terse words\nand phrases he knew so well how to wield. As abstract reasoning had\nlittle charm for his practical mind, he systematically avoided indulging\nin discussions of a metaphysical nature. 'How can we know anything of an\nAfter-life, when we are so ignorant even of the Living,' was his answer\nwhen asked by one of his disciples about Death. Ancestor-worship he\nsanctioned, as might naturally be expected from his enthusiastic\nadvocacy of things ancient, and also from the importance he attached to\nfilial piety, which strikes the keynote of his ethical ideas. But here\ntoo his indifference to the spiritual side of the question is very\nremarkable. Perhaps he found the holy altar of his day so much\nencumbered by the presence of innumerable fetishes and demons, that he\nfelt little inclination to approach and sweep them away. 'To give\noneself,' he said on one occasion, 'to the duties due to men, and while\nrespecting spiritual things to keep aloof from them, may be called\nwisdom.'\n\n\n[7] Legge's _The Religion of China_, p. 137.\n\nThe main features which he advocated are found well reflected in the\nfirst twelve out of sixteen articles of the so-called sacred Edict,\npublished by the famous K'ang Hsi (1654-1722), the second emperor of the\npresent Manchu dynasty, in 1670 A.D., which embody the essential points\nof Confucianism, as adapted to the requirements of modern everyday\nChinese life.\n\n1. Esteem most highly filial piety and brotherly submission, in order to\ngive due prominence to the social relations.\n\n2. Behave with generosity to the branches of your kindred, in order to\nillustrate harmony and benignity.\n\n3. Cultivate peace and concord in your neighbourhood, in order to\nprevent quarrels and litigation.\n\n4. Recognise the importance of husbandry and the culture of the\nmulberry-tree, in order to ensure sufficiency of food and clothing.\n\n5. Show that you prize moderation and economy, in order to prevent the\nlavish waste of your means.\n\n6. Make much of the colleges and seminaries, in order to make correct\nthe practice of the scholars.\n\n7. Discountenance and banish strange doctrines, in order to exalt\ncorrect doctrines.\n\n8. Describe and explain the laws, in order to warn the ignorant and\nobstinate.\n\n9. Exhibit clearly propriety and gentle courtesy, in order to improve\nmanners and customs.\n\n10. Labour diligently at your proper callings, in order to give\nwell-defined aims to the people.\n\n11. Instruct sons and younger brothers, in order to prevent them doing\nwhat is wrong.\n\n12. Put a stop to false accusations, in order to protect the honest and\nthe good.\n\nHere too you see what an important place filial piety occupies, which\nConfucius himself prized so highly. The Hsiao King, or the 'Sacred Book\nof Filial Piety,' which is supposed to record conversations held between\nConfucius and his disciple Tsang Ts'an on that weighty subject, has the\nfollowing passage: 'He who (properly) serves his parents in a high\nsituation will be free from haughtiness; in a low situation he will be\nfree from insubordination; whilst among his equals he will not be\nquarrelsome. In a high position haughtiness leads to ruin; among the\nlowly insubordination means punishment; among equals quarrelsomeness\ntends to the wielding of weapons.' These words, na\u00efve as they are,\nexpress the exalted position filial affection occupies in the eyes of\nConfucianism. 'Dutiful subjects are to be found in the persons of filial\nsons,' and again, 'Filial piety is the source whence all other good\nactions take their rise,' are other sayings expressing its importance.\n\nAlong with this virtue, other forms of moral force, such as mercy,\nuprightness, courage, politeness, fidelity, and loyalty, have been duly\nconsidered and commended by the great teacher himself and his disciples.\nAmong these, Mencius (373-289 B.C.) is most enterprising and attractive,\ndigesting and systematising with a great deal of philosophic talent the\nrather fragmentary ideas of his great master. It is he who, among other\nthings, informs us, on the assumed authority of a passage in the\nShu-King, how the sage Shun made it a subject of his anxious solicitude\nto teach the five constituent relationships of society, viz., affection\nbetween father and son; relations of righteousness between ruler and\nsubject; the assigning of their proper spheres to husband and wife;\ndistinction of precedence between old and young; and fidelity between\nfriend and friend--an idea which has played such an important part in\nthe history of the development of the Oriental mind.\n\nSuch were the main features of Confucianism when it first reached Japan,\nsome centuries after the Christian era. But it was not until some time\nafter the introduction of Buddhism from Corea during the reign of the\nEmperor Kimmei, in 552 A.D., that Confucianism and Chinese learning\nbegan to take firm root and make their influence felt among us.\nParadoxical as it looks, it is Buddhism that so greatly helped the\nteaching of the Chinese sage to establish itself as a ruling factor in\nJapanese society. This curious state of things came about in this way.\nThe gospel of Sh\u00e2kya-muni has, ever since its introduction into our\ncountry, been made accessible only through the Chinese translation,\nwhich demanded a considerable knowledge of the written language of the\nMiddle Kingdom. The keen and far-reaching spiritual interest aroused by\nBuddhism gave a fresh and vigorous impulse to the study of Chinese\nliterature, already increasingly cultivated for some centuries. Now, the\nknowledge of Chinese in its written form has, until quite recently,\nalways been imparted by a painful perusal of the Chinese classics and\nChinese books deeply imbued with Confucianism. It was only after a\nconsiderable amount of knowledge of this difficult language had been\nobtained in this unnatural way, that one came in contact with the works\nof authors not strictly orthodox. This way of teaching Chinese through\nConfucian texts, which we adopted from China's faithful agent, Corea,\nnecessarily led from the very beginning to an intimate acquaintance with\nthe main aspects of the Confucian morals in our upper classes, among\nwhom alone the study was at first pursued with any seriousness. Although\nskilled in warlike arts, gentle and loyal in domestic life, our\nforefathers were simple in manners and thought in those olden days when\nbook-learned reasons of duty had not yet superseded the na\u00efve observance\nof the dictates of the heart and of responsibility to the ancestral\nspirits. They possessed no letters of their own, and consequently no\nliterature, except in unwritten songs and legendary lore sung from mouth\nto mouth, telling of the gods and men who formed the glorious past of\nthe Yamato race. So it is not difficult to imagine the dazzling effect\nwhich the Chinese learning, with its richness and its pedantry, with its\nelaborate system of civil government and its philosophy, produced upon\nour untrained eyes. Gradually but steadfastly it had been gaining\nground, and making its slow way from the topmost rung to the bottom of\nthe social ladder, when the introduction of Buddhism quickened the now\nresistless progress. The would-be priests and advocates of the Indian\ncreed felt a fresh impulse and spiritual need to learn the Chinese\nlanguage, for which they had long entertained a high estimation. Owing\nto the extremely secular character of the Confucian ethics on the one\nhand, and on the other, to the fact that Buddhists deny the existence of\na personal god, and are eager to minister salvation through any adequate\nmeans so long as it does not contradict the Law of the Universe upon\nwhich the whole doctrine is based, Buddhism found in the teaching of the\nChinese sage and his followers not only no enemy, but, on the contrary,\na helpful friend. It found that the sacred books of Confucian doctrine\ncontained only in a slightly different form the five commandments laid\ndown by Sh\u00e2kya-muni himself for the regulation of the conduct of a\nlayman, viz.:--\n\n1. Not to destroy life nor to cause its destruction.\n\n2. Not to steal.\n\n3. Not to commit adultery.\n\n4. Not to tell lies.\n\n5. Not to indulge in intoxicating drinks; or the Buddhist warning\nagainst the ten sins; three of the body--taking life, theft, adultery;\nfour of speech--lying, slander, abuse, and vain conversation; three of\nthe mind--covetousness, malice, and scepticism.\n\nIt saw also that Confucian writings embraced its fifty precepts[8]\ndetailed under the five different secular relationships of\n\n1. Parents and children.\n\n2. Pupils and teachers.\n\n3. Husbands and wives.\n\n4. Friends and companions.\n\n5. Masters and servants.\n\nOur early Buddhists therefore did not see why they should try to\nsuppress the existing Confucian moral code and supplant it with their\nown which breathed the same spirit, only because it had not grown on\nIndian soil.\n\n\n[8] Cp. Rhys Davids' _Buddhism_, p. 144.\n\nThus encouraged by the now influential advocates of the teaching of\nBuddha, themselves admirers of the Chinese learning, Confucianism began\nwith renewed vigour to exercise a great influence on the future of the\nJapanese. This took place during the seventh century, when the\nreorganisation of the Japanese government after the model of that of the\nCelestial Empire made our educational system quite Chinese. In addition\nto a university, there were many provincial schools where candidates for\nthe government service were instructed. Medicine, mathematics, including\nastronomy and law, taught through Chinese books, along with the\nall-important teaching in the Confucian ethics and in Chinese literature\ngenerally, were the branches of study cultivated under the guidance of\nprofessors whose calling had become hereditary among a certain number of\nlearned families. In the course of the next two centuries we see several\nprivate institutions founded by great nobles of the court, with an\nendowment in land for their support. The native system of writing which\nhad gradually emerged out of the phonetic use of Chinese ideographs made\nit possible for Japanese thought, hitherto expressed only in an\nuncongenial foreign garb, to appear in purely Japanese attire. Thus we\nfind the dawn of Japanese civilisation appearing at the beginning of the\ntenth century after Christ. The air was replete with the Buddhist\nthought of after-life and the Confucian ideas of broad-day morality. The\nsonorous reading of the Book of Filial Piety was heard all over the\ncountry, echoing with the loud recital of the _My\u00f4h\u00f4-renge-ky\u00f4_ (or\n_Saddharma Pundarika S\u00fbtra_).\n\nDuring the dark and dreary Middle Ages which followed this golden\nperiod, and which were brought about by the degeneration of the ruling\nnobles and by the gradually rising power of the military class, Chinese\nlearning fled to the protecting hands of Buddhist priests; and in its\nquiet refuge within the monastery walls it continued to breathe its\nhumble existence, until it found at the beginning of the sixteenth\ncentury a powerful patron in the great founder of the Tokugawa\nShogunate. The education of the common people, too, seems to have been\nkept up by the monks--a fact still preserved in the word _tera-koya_,\n'church seminary,' a term used, until forty years ago, to express the\ntiny private schools for children. It must be remembered that the\neducation thus given was always of an exclusively secular character,\nbasing itself on the Confucian morals.\n\nBefore passing on to the consideration of Laoism, let me say something\nabout the so-called orthodox form of the teaching of Confucius, which is\none of the latest developments of that doctrine. Orthodox Confucianism,\nas represented by the famous Chinese philosopher and commentator of the\nConfucian canon, Chu-Hsi (1130-1200), found its admirer in a Japanese\nscholar, Fujiwara-no-Seigwa (1560-1619), who in his youth had joined the\npriesthood, which however he afterwards renounced. He gave lectures on\nthe Chinese classics at Ky\u00f4to. He was held in great esteem by Tokugawa\nIyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa line of Shoguns, who embraced the\nChinese system of ethics as preached by Chu-Hsi. During the two hundred\nand fifty years of the Tokugawa rule, this system, under the hereditary\ndirection of the descendants of Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), one of the\nmost distinguished disciples of Seigwa, was recognised as the\nestablished doctrine.\n\nAccording to the somewhat hazy ideas of Chu-Hsi's philosophy, which I\nask your permission to sketch here on account of the high public esteem\nin which we have held them for the last three centuries, the ultimate\nbasis of the universe is Infinity, or _Tai Kieh_, which, though\ncontaining within itself all the germs of all forms of existence and\nexcellence, is utterly void of form or sensible qualities. It consists\nof two qualities, _li_ and _chi_, which may be roughly rendered into\n'force-element' and 'matter-element.' These are self-existences, are\npresent in all things, and are found in their formation. The\n'force-element,' or _li_, we are told, is the perfection of heavenly\nvirtue. It is in inanimate things as well as in man and other animate\nbeings, and pervades all space. The 'matter-element,' or _chi_, is\nendowed with the male and the female principles, or positive and\nnegative polarities, as we might call them. It is, moreover,\ncharacterised by the five constituent qualities of _wood_, _fire_,\n_earth_, _metal_, and _water_. Hence its other name, _Wu-hsieng_, or\n'Five Qualities.'\n\nThings and animals, except human beings, get only portions of the\nforce-element, but man receives it in full, and this becomes in his\nperson _sing_, or real human nature. He has thus within him the perfect\nmirror of the heavenly virtue and complete power of understanding. There\nis no difference in this respect between a sage and an ordinary man. To\nboth the force-element is uniformly given. But the matter-element, from\nwhich is derived his form and material existence, and which constitutes\nthe basis of his mental disposition, is different in quality in\ndifferent men.\n\nMan's real nature, or _sing_, although originally perfect, becomes\naffected on entering into him, or is modified by his mental disposition,\nwhich differs according to the different state of the matter-element.\nThus a second nature is formed out of the original. It is through this\nsecond and tainted human nature that man acts well or ill. When a man\ndoes evil, that is the result of his mental disposition covering or\ninterfering with his original perfect nature. Wipe this vapour of\ncorrupted thought from the surface of your mental mirror and it will\nshine out as brightly as if it had never been covered by a temporary\nmist.[9]\n\n\n[9] Cp. T. Haga's _Note on Japanese Schools of Philosophy. T.A.S.J._,\nvol. xx. pt. i. p. 134.\n\nSynoptically expressed and applied to the microcosm Chu-Hsi's system\nwill be as follows:--\n\n                             MAN\n         {Force-Element=_Original Nature of Man_.\n                         Different Human Characters.\nInfinity\n                        {Male-Principle  }Wood-quality.\n                                         }Fire- \"\n         {Matter-Element                 }Earth-\"\n                                         }Metal-\"\n                        {Female-Principle}Water-\"\n                       _Dispositions latent in Matter._\n\nSuch is, in its outline, Chu-Hsi's view, which received the sanction of\nthe ruling Tokugawa family. But it was not without its opponents in\nJapan as well as in China. Already in his own time, Lu-Shang-Shan (b.\n1140 A.D.) maintained, in opposition to the high-sounding erudition of\nChu-Hsi, that the purification of the heart was the first and main point\nof study.[10] The same protest was more systematically urged against it\nby his great follower, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1528 A.D.), who found warm\nand able admirers in Japan in such scholars as Nakae T\u00f4ju (1603-1678),\nKumazawa Hanzan (1619-1691), and Oshio Ch\u00fbsai (1794-1837). Among other\ngreat opponents of the orthodox philosophy, such names as It\u00f4 Jinsai\n(1625-1706) and his son T\u00f4gai (1670-1736), Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714),\nOgy\u00fb Sorai (1666-1728), are to be mentioned. These scholars, getting\ntheir fundamental ideas from other Chinese thinkers, and eager to remain\nfaithful to the true spirit of Confucianism itself, pointed out many\ninconsistencies in Chu-Hsi's theory, and were of the opinion that more\nreal good was to be achieved in proceeding straight to action under the\nguidance of conscience which was heaven and all, than in indulging in\nidle talk about the subtlety of human nature.\n\n\n[10] Faber's _Doctrines of Confucius_, p. 33.\n\nThe philosophy of Chu-Hsi, although he calls himself the true exponent\nof Confucianism, is not at all Confucian. It is greatly indebted to\nBuddhism and Taoism, or better, Laoism, that is to say, to the\nphilosophy originated by Lao-tze (b. 604 B.C.), one of the greatest\nthinkers that China has ever produced. Since Laoism, through the\nwonderful _Tao-teh-king_, a small book by Lao-tze himself, but\nespecially through _Chwang-tze_, a work in ten books by his famous\nfollower Chwang-chow, has exercised considerable influence on our\nthought for twelve centuries, a word about it may not be out of place\nbefore we go on to consider the doctrine of Sh\u00e2kya-muni.\n\nIn Lao-tze we find the perfect opposite of Confucius, both in the turn\nof his mind and in his views and methods of saving the world. Lao-tze\nendeavoured to reform humanity by warning them to cast off all human\nartifice and to return to nature. This may be taken as the whole tenor\nof his doctrine: Do not try to do anything with your petty will, because\nit is the way to hinder and spoil the spontaneous growth of the true\nvirtue that permeates the universe. To follow Nature's dictates, while\nhelping it to develop itself, is the very course sanctioned and followed\nby all the sages worthy of the name. Make away with your 'Ego' and learn\nto value simplicity and humiliation; for in total 'altruism' exists the\ncompletion of self, and in humble contentment and yielding pliancy are\nto be found real grandeur and true strength. Under the title 'Dimming\nRadiance' he says:[11]--\n\n     'Heaven endures and earth is lasting. And why can heaven and earth\n     endure and be lasting? Because they do not live for themselves. On\n     that account can they endure.\n\n     'Therefore the True Man puts his person behind and his person comes\n     to the front. He surrenders his person and his person is preserved.\n     Is it not because he seeks not his own? For that reason he\n     accomplishes his own.'\n\nAgain we hear him 'Discoursing on Virtue':--\n\n     'Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore it has Virtue. Inferior\n     virtue never loses sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue.\n     Superior virtue is non-assertive and without pretension. Inferior\n     virtue asserts and makes pretensions.'\n\n\n[11] Cp. Dr. P. Carus's _Lao-tze Tao-teh-king_.\n\nHe talks about 'Returning to Simplicity':\n\n     'Quit the so-called saintliness; leave the so-called wisdom alone;\n     and the people's gain will be increased by a hundredfold.\n\n     `Abandon the so-called mercy; put away the so-called righteousness;\n     and the people will return to filial devotion and paternal love.\n\n     `Abandon your scheming; put away your devices; and thieves and\n     robbers will no longer exist.'\n\nSuch is the general purport of the doctrine expounded by Lao-tze. It is\nwell to remember that this doctrine, which we may call for distinction's\nsake Laoism, has intrinsically very little to do with that form of\nbelief now so prevalent among the Chinese, and which is known under the\nname of Taoism. Although this name itself is derived from Lao-tze's own\nword _Tao_, meaning Reason or True Path, and although the followers of\nTaoism see in the great philosopher its first revealer, it is in all\nprobability nothing more than a new aspect and new appellation assumed\nby that aboriginal Chinese cult which was based on nature- and\nancestor-worship. Ever since their appearance in history the Chinese\nhave had their belief in Shang-ti, in spirits, and in natural agencies.\nThis cult found, at an early date, in the mystic interpretation and\nsolution of life as expressed by Lao-tze and his followers, the means of\nfresh development. The philosophical ideas of these thinkers were not\nproperly understood, and words and phrases mostly metaphorical were\nconstrued in such a manner that they came to mean something quite\ndifferent from what the original writers wished to suggest. Such an\nidea, for instance, as the deathlessness of a True Man by virtue of his\nincorporation with the grand Truth _Tao_ that pervades Heaven and Earth,\nbreathing in the eternity of the universe, was easily misinterpreted in\na very matter-of-fact manner, _e.g._, anybody who realised _Tao_ could\nthen enjoy the much-wished-for freedom from actual death. You see how\neasy it is for an ordinary mind to pass from one to the other when it\nhears Chwang-tze say:--\n\n     'Fire cannot burn him who is perfect in virtue, nor water drown\n     him; neither cold nor heat can affect him injuriously; neither bird\n     nor beast can hurt him.'[12]\n\nOr again:--\n\n     'Though heaven and earth were to be overturned and fall, they would\n     occasion him no loss. His judgment is fixed on that in which there\n     is no element of falsehood, and while other things change, he\n     changes not.'[13]\n\n\n[12] Cp. _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxix.\n\n[13] Cp. _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxix.\n\nWe want no great flight of imagination therefore to follow the traces of\ndevelopment of the present form of Taoism with its occult aspects. The\neternity attributed to a True Man in its Laoist sense begot the idea of\na deathless man in flesh and blood endowed with all kinds of\nsupernatural powers. This in turn produced the notion that these\nsuperhuman beings knew some secret means to preserve their life and\ncould work other wonders. Herbalism, alchemy, geomancy, and other magic\narts owe their origin to this fountain-head of primitive superstition.\n\nThere is little room for reasonable doubt that in this way Taoism,\nalthough the name itself was of later development, has been in its main\nfeatures the religion of China _par excellence_ from the very dawn of\nits history. It has from the beginning found a congenial soil in the\nheart of the Chinese people, who still continue to embrace the cult with\ngreat enthusiasm, and in whose helpless credulity the Taoist priests of\nto-day, borrowing much help from the occult sides of Buddhism and\nHinduism, still find an easy prey for their necromantic arts.\n\nNot so with Laoism. One may well wonder how such an uncongenial doctrine\never came to spring from the soil of materialistic China. Some suggest\nthat Lao-tze was a Brahman, and not a Chinese at all. Another\nexplanation of this anomaly is to be found in the attempted division of\nthe whole Chinese civilisation into two geographically distinct groups,\nthe rigid Northern and the more romantic Southern types: Laoism\nbelonging to the latter, while Confucianism belongs to the former. In\nany case, the resemblance in many respects between the doctrine\nintroduced by Lao-tze and the higher form of Buddhism is very striking.\nLet me take this opportunity of saying something about the religion of\nSh\u00e2kya-muni, which has occupied our mind and heart for the past fifteen\ncenturies.\n\nBut, first of all, let me say that I am not unaware of the absurdity of\ntrying to give you anything like a fair idea of a many-sided and\nextremely complicated system of human belief such as Buddhism in the\nshort space which is at my disposal. Very far from it. Even a brief\nsummary of its main features would take an able speaker at least a\ncouple of hours. So I humbly confine myself to giving you some hints on\nthe belief, about which most of you, I presume, have already had\noccasion to hear something, the religion which took its origin among the\npeople who claim their descent from the same Aryan stock to which you\nyourselves belong. Those who would care to read about it will find an\nexcellent supply of knowledge in two little books called _Buddhism_ and\n_Buddhism in China_, written respectively by Dr. Rhys Davids and the\nlate Rev. S. Beal, not to mention the late Sir Monier Williams' standard\nwork. A perusal of the Rev. A. Lloyd's paper read before the Asiatic\nSociety of Japan in 1894, entitled 'Developments of Japanese Buddhism,'\nis very desirable. There are also two chapters devoted to this doctrine\nin Lafcadio Hearn's last work, _Japan_. This enumeration might almost\nexempt me from making any attempt to describe it myself.\n\nBuddhism has, to begin with, two distinct forms, philosophical and\npopular, which may practically be taken as two different religions.\nPhilosophical Buddhism--or at least the truest form of it--is a system\nbased upon the recognition of the utter impermanency of the phenomenal\nworld in all its forms and states. It believes in no God or gods\nwhatever as a personal motive power. The only thing eternal is matter,\nor essence of matter, with the Karma, or Law of cause and effect,\ndwelling incorporated in it. Through the never-ceasing working of this\nlaw innumerable forms of existence develop, which, notwithstanding the\nappearance of stability they temporarily assume, are, in consequence of\nthe action and reaction of the very law to which they owe their\nexistence, constantly subject to everlasting changes. Constancy is\nnowhere to be found in this universe of phenomena. It is therefore an\nact of unspeakable ignorance on the part of human beings, themselves a\nproduct of the immutable Karma, to attach a constant value to this\ndreamy world and allow themselves to lose their mental harmony in the\nquest of shadowy desires and of their shadowy satisfaction, thus\nplunging themselves into the boundless sea of misery. True salvation is\nto be sought in the complete negation of egoism and in the unconditional\nabsorption of ourselves in the fundamental law of the universe.\nSh\u00e2kya-muni was no more than one of a series of teachers whose mission\nit is to show us how to get rid of our fatal ignorance of this grand\ntruth, an ignorance which is at the root of all the discontent and\nmisery of our selfish existence.\n\nVery different from this is the aspect assumed by the popular form of\nBuddhism. This is a system built up on the blind worship of personified\npsychic phenomena, originally meant merely as convenient symbols for\ntheir better contemplation, and in the transformation of the human\nteachers of truth into so many personal gods. This is the reason why\nBuddhism, so essentially atheistic, has come to be regarded by the\nordinary Christian mind as polytheism, or as a degraded form of\nidolatry.\n\nNow, in all the many sects of Buddhism which have been planted in the\nsoil of Japan since the middle of the seventh century, some of which\nsoon withered, while others took deep root and grew new branches, these\ntwo phases have always been recognised and utilised in their proper\nsphere as means of salvation. For the populace there was the lower\nBuddhism, while the more elevated classes found satisfaction in the\nhigher form and in an explanation of that True Path which lies hidden\nbeneath the complicated symbolic system.\n\nOf the sects which have exercised great influence on Japanese mentality,\nthe following are specially to be mentioned: the Tendai, the Shingon,\nthe Zen, the Hokke, and the Jodo, with its offspring the Ikk\u00f4 sect. Each\nof these chose its own means of reaching enlightenment from among those\nindicated by Sh\u00e2kya-muni, but did not on that account entirely reject\nthe means of salvation preferred by the others. Some give long lists of\ncategories and antitheses, and seek to define the truth with a more than\nAristotelian precision of detail, while others think it advisable to\nrealise it by dint of faith alone. But among these means of salvation\nthe practice advocated by the Zen sect is worthy of special\nconsideration in this place, as it has exercised great influence in the\nformation of the Japanese spirit. _Zen_ means 'abstraction,' standing\nfor the Sanskrit Dhy\u00e2na. It is one of the six means of arriving at\nNirv\u00e2na, namely, (1) charity; (2) morality; (3) patience; (4) energy;\n(5) contemplation; and (6) wisdom. This practice, which dates from a\ntime anterior to Sh\u00e2kya himself, consists of an 'abstract\ncontemplation,' intended to destroy all attachment to existence in\nthought and wish. From the earliest time Buddhists taught four different\ndegrees of abstract contemplation by which the mind frees itself from\nall subjective and objective trammels, until it reaches a state of\nabsolute indifference or self-annihilation of thought, perception, and\nwill.[14]\n\n\n[14] E. J. Eitel's _Handbook of Chinese Buddhism_, p. 49.\n\nYou might perhaps wonder how a method so utterly unpractical and\nspeculative as that of trying to arrive at final enlightenment by pure\ncontemplation could ever have taken root in Japan, among a people who,\ngenerally speaking, have never troubled themselves much about things\napart from their actual and immediate use. An explanation of this is not\nfar to seek. Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai school, the branch of the\nContemplative sect first established on our soil, came back to Japan\nfrom his second visit to China in 1192 A.D.[15] This was the time when\nthe short-lived rule of the Minamoto clan (1186-1219) was nearing the\nend of its real supremacy. Only fifteen years before that the world had\nseen the downfall of another mighty clan. The battle of Dannoura put an\nend to the Heike ascendancy after an incessant series of desperate\nbattles extending over a century, giving our soldier-like qualities\nenough occasion for an excellent schooling. The whole country during\nthis period had been under the raging sway of Mars, who swept with his\nfiery breath the blossoms of human prosperity, and the people high and\nlow were obliged to recognise the folly of clinging to shadowy desires\nand to learn the urgent necessity for facing every emergency with\nsomething akin to indifference. To pass from glowing life into the cold\ngrasp of death with a smile, to meet the hardest decrees of fate with\nthe resolute calm of stoic fortitude, was the quality demanded of every\nman and woman in that stormy age. In the meanwhile, different military\nclans had been forming themselves in different parts of Japan and\npreparing to wage an endless series of furious battles against one\nanother. In half a century too came the one solitary invasion of our\nwhole history when a foreign power dared to threaten us with\ndestruction. The mighty Kublei, grandson of the great Genghis Khan,\nhaughty with his resistless army, whose devastating intrepidity taught\neven Europe to tremble at the mention of his name, despatched an embassy\nto the Japanese court to demand the subjection of the country. The\nmessage was referred to Kamakura, then the seat of the H\u00f4j\u00f4 regency, and\nwas of course indignantly dismissed. Enraged at this, Kublei equipped a\nlarge number of vessels with the choicest soldiers China could furnish.\nThe invading force was successful at first, and committed massacres in\nIki and Tsushima, islands lying between Corea and Japan. The position\nwas menacing; even the steel nerves of the trained Samurai felt that\nstrange thrill a patriot knows. Shinto priests and Buddhist monks were\nequally busy at their prayers. A new embassy came from the threatening\nMongol leader. The imperious ambassadors were taken to Kamakura, to be\nput to death as an unmistakable sign of contemptuous refusal. A\ntremendous Chinese fleet gathered in the boisterous bay of Genkai in the\nsummer of 1281. At last the evening came with the ominous glow on the\nhorizon that foretells an approaching storm. It was the plan of the\nconquering army victoriously to land the next morning on the holy soil\nof Ky\u00fbsh\u00fb. But during this critical night a fearful typhoon, known to\nthis day as the 'Divine Storm,' arose, breaking the jet-black sky with\nits tremendous roar of thunder and bathing the glittering armour of our\nsoldiers guarding the coastline in white flashes of dazzling light. The\nvery heaven and earth shook before the mighty anger of nature. The\nresult was that the dawn of the next morning saw the whole fleet of the\nproud Yuan, that had darkened the water for miles, swept completely away\ninto the bottomless sea of Genkai, to the great relief of the\nhorror-stricken populace, and to the unspeakable disappointment of our\ndetermined soldiers. Out of the hundred thousand warriors who manned the\ninvading ships, only three are recorded to have survived the destruction\nto tell the dismal tale to their crestfallen great Khan!\n\n\n[15] Four years later the first temple of this school was opened in\nHakata under the patronship of the Emperor Gotoba.\n\nThen after a short interval of a score of peaceful years, Japan was\nplunged again into another series of internal disturbances, from which\nshe can hardly be said to have emerged until the beginning of the\nseventeenth century, when order and rest were brought back by the able\nhand of Tokugawa Iyeyasu. During all these troublous days, the original\nContemplative sect, paralleled soon after its establishment in Japan by\na new school called _S\u00f4t\u00f4_, as it was again supplemented by another, the\n_\u00d4baku_ school, five centuries afterwards, found ample material to\npropagate its special method of enlightenment. This sect, which drew its\npatrons from the ruling classes of Japan, was unanimously looked up to\nas best calculated to impart the secret power of perfect self-control\nand undisturbable peace of mind. It must be remembered that the ultimate\nriddance in the Buddhist sense, the entrance into cold Nirv\u00e2na, was not\nwhat our practical mind wanted to realise. It was the stoic\nindifference, enabling man to meet after a moment's thought, or almost\ninstinctively, any hardships that human life might impose, that had\nbrought about its otherwise strange popularity.\n\nAnother charm it offered to the people of the illiterate Middle Ages,\nwhen they had to attend to other things than a leisurely pursuit of\nliterature, was its systematic neglect of book-learning. Truth was to be\ndirectly read from heart to heart. The intervention of words and writing\nwas regarded as a hindrance to its true understanding. A rudimentary\nsymbolism expressed by gestures was all that a Zen priest really relied\nupon for the communication of the doctrine. Everybody with a heart to\nfeel and a mind to understand needed nothing further to begin and finish\nhis quest of the desired freedom from life's everlasting torments.\n\nThe self-control that enables us not to betray our inner feeling through\na change in our expression, the measured steps with which we are taught\nto walk into the hideous jaws of death--in short, all those qualities\nwhich make a present Japanese of truly Japanese type look strange, if\nnot queer, to your eyes, are in a most marked degree a product of that\ndirect or indirect influence on our past mentality which was exercised\nby the Buddhist doctrine of Dhy\u00e2na taught by the Zen priests.\n\nAnother benefit which the Zen sect conferred on us is the healthy\ninfluence it exercised on our taste. The love of nature and the desire\nof purity that we had shown from the earliest days of our history, took,\nunder the leading idea of the Contemplative sect, a new development, and\nbegan to show that serene dislike of loudness of form and colour. That\napparent simplicity with a fulness of meaning behind it, like a Dhy\u00e2na\nsymbol itself, which we find so pervadingly manifested in our works of\nart, especially in those of the Ashikaga period (1400-1600 A.D.), is\ncertainly to be counted among the most valuable results which the Zen\ndoctrine quickened us to produce.\n\nIn short, so far-reaching is the influence of the Contemplative sect on\nthe formation of the Japanese spirit as you find it at present, that an\nadequate interpretation of its manifestations would be out of the\nquestion unless based on a careful study of this branch of Buddhism. So\nlong as the Zen sect is not duly considered, the whole set of phenomena\npeculiar to Japan--from the all-pervading laconism to the\nhara-kiri--will remain a sealed book.\n\nThis fact is my excuse for having detained you for so long on the\nsubject.\n\nI now pass on to the consideration of our own native cult.\n\nShinto, or the 'Path of the Gods,' is the name by which we distinguish\nthe body of our national belief from Buddhism, Christianity, or any\nother form of religion. It is remarkable that this appellation, like\nNippon (which corresponds to your word Japan), is no purely Japanese\nterm. Buddhism is called Bupp\u00f4 (from _Butsu_, Buddha, and _h\u00f4_,\ndoctrine) or Bukky\u00f4 (_ky\u00f4_, teaching); Confucianism is known as Juky\u00f4\n(_Ju_, literati); and both terms are taken from the Chinese. In keeping\nwith these we have Shinto (_Shin_, deity, and _to_, way). This state of\nthings in some measure explains the rather unstable condition in which\nBuddhism on its first arrival found our national cult. It has ever since\nremained in its main aspects nothing more than a form of\nancestor-worship based on the central belief in the divine origin of the\nimperial line. A systematised creed it never was and has never become,\neven if we take into consideration the attempts at its consolidation\nmade by such scholars as Yamazaki-Ansai (1618-1682), who in the middle\nof the seventeenth century tried to formalise it in accordance with\nChu-Hsi's philosophy, or, later still, by such eager revivalists as\nHirata-Atsutane (1776-1843), etc. At the time when Shintoism had to meet\nits mighty foe from India, its whole mechanism was very simple. It\nconsisted in a number of primitive rites, such as the recital of the\nliturgy, the offering of eatables to the departed spirits of deified\nancestors, patriarchal, tribal, or national. This na\u00efve cult was as\ninnocent of the cunning ideas and subtle formalisms of the rival creed\nas its shrines were free from the decorations and equipments of an\nIndian temple. So, although at the start Buddhism met with some\nobstinate resistance at the hand of the Shintoists, who attributed the\nvisitations of pestilence that followed the introduction of the foreign\nbelief to the anger of the native gods, its superiority in organisation\nsoon overcame these difficulties; especially from the time when the\ngreat Buddhist priest K\u00fbkai (774-835 A.D.) hit upon the ingenious but\nmischievous idea of solving the dilemma by the establishment of what is\ngenerally known in our history as Ry\u00f4bu-Shinto, or double-faced Shinto.\nAccording to this doctrine, a Shinto god was to be regarded as an\nincarnation of a corresponding Indian deity, who made his appearance in\nJapan through metamorphosis for Japan's better salvation--a doctrine\nwhich is no more than a clever application of the notion known in India\nas Nirmanak\u00e2ya. This incarnation theory opened a new era in the history\nof the expansion of Buddhism in Japan, extending over a period of eleven\ncenturies, during which Shintoism was placed in a very awkward position.\nIt was at last restored to its original purity at the beginning of the\npresent Meiji period, and that only after a century of determined\nendeavour on the part of native Shintoist scholars.\n\nFrom these words you might perhaps conclude that Buddhism succeeded in\nsupplanting the native cult, at least for more than a thousand years.\nBut, strange to say, if we judge the case not by outward appearances,\nbut by the religious conviction that lurks in the depth of the heart, we\ncannot but recognise the undeniable fact that no real conversion has\never been achieved during the past eleven centuries by the doctrine of\nBuddha. Our actual self, notwithstanding the different clothes we have\nput on has ever remained true in its spirit to our native cult. Speaking\ngenerally, we are still Shintoists to this day--Buddhists, Christians,\nand all--so long as we are born Japanese. This might sound to you\nsomewhat paradoxical. Here is the explanation:--\n\nFor an average Japanese mind in present Japan, thanks to the\nancestor-worship practised consciously or unconsciously from time\nimmemorial, it is not altogether easy to imagine the spirit of the\ndeceased, if it believes in one at all, to be something different and\ndistant from our actual living self. The departed, although invisible,\nare thought to be leading their ethereal life in the same world in much\nthe same state as that to which they had been accustomed while on earth.\nLike the little child so touchingly described by Wordsworth, we cannot\nsee why we should not count the so-called dead still among the existing.\nThe difference between the two is that of tangibility or visibility, but\nnothing more.\n\nThe _raison d'\u00eatre_ of this illusive notion is, of course, not far to\nseek. Any book on anthropology or ethnology would tell you how sleep,\ntrance, dream, hallucination, reflection in still water, etc., help to\nbuild up the spirit-world in the untaught mind of primitive man. Yet it\nmust be remembered that these origins have led to something far higher,\nto something of real value to our nation, and to something which is a\nmoral force in our daily lives that may well be compared to what is\nefficacious in other creeds. Notice the fact that Buddhism from the\nmoment of its introduction in the sixth century after Christ to this\nvery day has on the whole remained the religion, so to say, of night and\ngloomy death, while Shintoism has always retained its firm hold on the\npopular mind as the cult, if I might so express it, of daylight and the\nliving dead. From the very dawn of our history we read of patriarchs,\nchieftains, and national heroes deified and worshipped as so many\nguardian spirits of families, of clans, or of the country. Nor has this\nprocess of deification come to an end yet, even in this age of airship\nand submarine boat. We continue to erect shrines to men of merit. This\nmay look very strange to you, but is not your poet Swinburne right when\nhe sings--\n\n    'Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own\n         lays down,\n    He, dying so, lives.'\n\nMight not these lines explain, when duly extended, the subtle feeling\nthat lurks behind our apparently incomprehensible custom of speaking\nwith the departed over the altar? The present deification, is, like your\ncustom of erecting monuments to men of merit, a way of making the best\npart of a man's career legible to the coming generations. The numberless\nshrines you now find scattered all over Japan are only so many chapters\nwritten in unmistakable characters of the lessons our beloved and\nrevered heroes and good men have left us for our edification and\namelioration. It is in the sunny space within the simple railing of\nthese Shinto shrines, where the smiling presence of the patron spirit of\na deified forefather or a great man is so clearly felt, that our\nchildhood has played for tens of centuries its games of innocent joy.\nMonthly and yearly festivals are observed within the divine enclosure of\na guardian god, when a whole community under his protection let\nthemselves go in good-natured laughter and gleeful mirth before the\nfavouring eyes of their divine patron. How different is this jovial\nfeeling from that gloomy sensation with which we approach a Buddhist\ntemple, recalling death and the misery of life from every corner of its\nmysterious interior. Such seriousness has never been congenial to the\ngay Japanese mind with its strong love of openness and light. Until\ndeath stares us right in the face, we do not care to be religious in the\nordinary sense of the term. True, we say and think that we believe in\ndeath, but all the while this so-called death is nothing else than a new\nlife in this present world of ours led in a supernatural way. For\ninstance, when the father of a Japanese family begins a journey of any\nlength, the raised part of his room will be made sacred to his memory\nduring his temporary absence; his family will gather in front of it and\nthink of him, expressing their devotion and love in words and gifts in\nkind. In the hundreds of thousands of families that have some one or\nother of their members fighting for the nation in this dreadful war with\nRussia, there will not be even one solitary house where the mother,\nwife, or sister is not practising this simple rite of endearment for the\nbeloved and absent member of the family. And if he die on the field, the\nmental attitude of the poor bereaved towards the never-returning does\nnot show any substantial difference. The temporarily departed will now\nbe regarded as the forever departed, but not as lost or passed away. His\nessential self is ever present, only not visible. Daily offerings and\nsalutations continue in exactly the same way as when he was absent for a\ntime. Even in the mind of the modern Japanese with its extremely\nagnostic tendencies, there is still one corner sacred to this inherited\nfeeling. You could sooner convince an ordinary European of the\nnon-existence of a personal God. When it gets dusk every bird knows\nwhither to wing its way home. Even so with us all when the night of\nDeath spreads its dark folds over our mortal mind!\n\nBut ask a modern Japanese of ordinary education in the broad daylight of\nlife, if he believes in a God in the Christian sense; or in Buddha as\nthe creator; or in the Shinto deities; or else in any other personal\nagency or agencies, as originating and presiding over the universe; and\nyou would immediately get an answer in the negative in ninety-nine cases\nout of a hundred. Do you ask why? First, because our school education\nthroughout its whole course has, ever since its re-establishment\nthirty-five years ago, been altogether free from any teaching of a\ndenominational nature. The ethical foundations necessary for the\nbuilding up of character are imparted through an adequate commentary on\nthe moral sayings and maxims derived mostly from Chinese classics.\nSecondly, because the little knowledge about natural science which we\nobtain at school seems to make it impossible to anchor our rational\nselves on anything other than an impersonal law. Thirdly, because we do\nnot see any convincing reason why morals should be based on the teaching\nof a special denomination, in face of the fact that we can be upright\nand brave without the help of a creed with a God or deities at its other\nend. So, for the average mind of the educated Japanese something like\nmodern scientific agnosticism, with a strong tendency towards the\nmaterialistic monism of recent times, is just what pleases and satisfies\nit most.\n\nIf not so definitely thought out, and if expressed with much less\nlearned terminology, the thought among our educated classes as regards\nsupernatural agencies has during the past three centuries been much the\nsame. The Confucian warning against meddling with things supernatural,\nthe atheistic views and hermit-like conduct of the adherents of Laoism,\nand the higher Buddhism, all contributed towards the consolidation of\nthis mental attitude with a conscious or unconscious belief in the\nexisting spirit-world. Except for the philosophy which they knew how to\nutilise for their practical purposes, the educated felt no charm in\nreligion. The lower form of Buddhism with its pantheon has been held as\nsomething only for the aged and the weak. For the execution of the\nreligious rites, at funerals or on other occasions (except in the rare\ninstances when some families for a special reason of their own preferred\nthe Shintoist form), we have unanimously drawn on the Buddhist\npriesthood, just in the same way as you go to your family doctor or\nattorney in case of a bodily or legal complication, knowing well that\nreligion as we have understood it is something as much outside the pale\nof the layman as medicine and law.\n\nFor the proper conduct of our daily life as members of society, the body\nof Confucian morality resting on the tripod of loyalty, filial piety,\nand honesty, has been the only standard which high and low have alike\nrecognised. These ethical ideals, when embraced by that formidable\nwarrior caste who played such an important part in feudal Japan, form\nthe code of unwritten morality known among us as Bushido, which means\nthe Path of the Samurai. This last word, which has found its way into\nyour language, is the substantival derivative from the verb _samurau_\n(to serve), and, like its English counterpart 'knight' (Old English\n_cniht_), has raised itself from its original sense of a retainer (cp.\nGerman _Knecht_) to the meaning in which it is now used. To be a Samurai\nin the true sense of the word has been the highest aspiration of a\nJapanese. Your term 'gentleman,' when understood in its best sense,\nwould convey to you an approximate idea if you added a dash of soldier\nblood to it. Rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity,\nloyalty, and a predominating sense of honour--these are the chief\ncolours with which a novelist in the days of yore used to paint an ideal\nSamurai; and his list of desirable qualities was not considered complete\nwithout a well-developed body and an expression of the face that was\nmanly but in no way brutal. No special stress was at first laid on the\ncultivation of thinking power and book-learning, though they were not\naltogether discouraged; it was thought that these accomplishments might\ndevelop other qualities detrimental to the principal character, such as\nsophistry or pedantry. To have good sense enough to keep his name\nhonourable, and to act instead of talking cleverly, was the chief\nambition of a Samurai.\n\nBut this view gradually became obscured. It lost its fearful rigidity in\ncourse of time, as the world became more and more sure of a lasting\npeace. Literature and music have gradually added softening touches to\nits somewhat brusque features.\n\nIt must, however, be always remembered that the keynote of Bushido was\nfrom the very beginning an indomitable sense of honour. This was all in\nall to the mind of the Samurai, whose sword at his side reminded him at\nevery movement of the importance of his good name. The care with which\nhe preserved it reached in some cases to a pathetic extreme; he\npreferred, for example, an instant suicide to a reputation on which\ndoubt had been cast, however falsely. The very custom of seppuku (better\nknown as hara-kiri), a form of suicide not known in early Japan,[16] is\nan outcome of this love of an unstained name, originating, in my\nopinion, in the metaphorical use of the word _hara_ (abdomen), which was\nthe supposed organ for the begetting of ideas. In consequence of this\ncurious localisation of the thinking faculty, the word _hara_ came to\ndenote at the same time intention or idea. Therefore, in cutting open\n(_kiru_) his abdomen, a person whose motives had come to be suspected\nmeant to show that his inside was free from any trace of ideas not\nworthy of a Samurai. This explanation is, I think, amply sustained by\nthe constant use to this very day of the word _hara_ in the sense of\none's ideas.\n\n\n[16] The first mention in books of a similar mode of death dates from\nthe latter part of the twelfth century. But it does not seem that the\ncustom became universal until a considerably later period.\n\nSo Bushido, as you will now see, was itself but a manifestation of those\nsame forces already at work in the formation of Japanese thought, like\nBuddhism, Confucianism, etc. But as it has played a most important part\nin the development of modern Japan, I thought it more proper to consider\nit as an independent factor in the history of our civilisation. Had it\nnot been for this all-daring spirit of Bushido, Japan would never have\nbeen able to make the gigantic progress which she has been achieving in\nthese last forty years. As soon as our ports were flung open to the\nreception of Western culture, Samurai, now deeply conscious of their new\nmission, took leave of those stern but faithful friends, their beloved\nswords, not without much reluctance, even as did Sir Bedivere, in order\nto take up the more peaceful pen, which they were determined to wield\nwith the same knightly spirit. It is, in short, Bushido that has urged\nour Japan on for the last three centuries, and will continue to urge her\non, on forever, onward to her ideals of the true, the good, and the\nbeautiful. Look to the spot where every Japanese sabre and every\nJapanese bayonet is at present pointing with its icy edge of determined\npatriotism in the dreary fields of Manchuria, or think of the intrepid\nheroes on our men-of-war and our torpedo-boats amid blinding snowstorms\nand the glare of hostile searchlights, and your eyes will invariably end\nat the magic Path of the Samurai.\n\nHaving thus far followed my enumeration of the various factors in the\nformation of the present thought in Japan, some of you might perhaps be\ncurious to know what Christianity has contributed towards the general\nstock of modern Japanese mentality.\n\nIt must surely have exercised a very healthy influence on our mind since\nits re-introduction at the beginning of the present Meiji period. Some\nhave indeed gone so far as to say that we owe the whole success we have\nup to now achieved in this remarkable war to the holy inspiration we\ndrew from the teaching of Jesus Christ.\n\nI indorse this opinion to its full extent, but only if we are to\nunderstand by His teaching that whole body of truth and love which are\nof the essence of Christianity, and which we used in former days to call\nby other names, such as Bushido, Confucianism, etc. But if you insist on\nhaving it understood in a narrow sectarian sense, with a personal God\nand rigid formalities as its main features, then I should say that I\ncannot agree with you, for this Christianity occupies rather an awkward\nplace in our Japanese mind, finding itself somewhere between the\nnational worship of the living dead, and modern agnosticism, or\nscientific monism. In our earlier fishery for new knowledge in the\nWestern seas, fish other than those fit for our table were caught and\ndressed along with some really nourishing; the result was disastrous,\nand we gradually came to learn more caution than at first. The Roman\nCatholics, more enthusiastic than discreet, committed wholesale outrages\non our harmless ways of faith in the early days of the seventeenth\ncentury, which did much to leave in bad repute the creed of Jesus\nChrist. And since the prohibition against Christianity was removed, many\na missionary has been so particular about the plate in which the truth\nis served as to make us doubt, with reason, if that be the spirit of the\nimmortal Teacher. The truth and poetry that breathe in your Gospels have\nbeen too often paraphrased in the senseless prose of mere formalism.\nOtherwise Christianity would have rendered us better help in our eternal\nmarch towards the ideal emancipation.\n\nThere remains still one highly important thing to be considered as a\nformative element of the Japanese spirit. I mean the landscape and the\nphysical aspects of Japan in general.\n\nIt is well known that an intimate connection exists between the mind and\nthe nature which surrounds it. A moment's consideration of the\ndevelopment of Hellenic sculpture and of the Greek climate, or of the\nTeutonic mythology and the physical condition of Northern Europe, will\nbring conviction on that point. Is not the effect of the blue sky on\nItalian painting, and the influence of the dusky heaven on the,\npictorial art of the Netherlands, clearly traceable in the productions\nof the old masters? A study of London psychology at the present moment\nwill never be complete without special chapters on your open spaces and\nyour fogs.\n\nIn order to convey anything like an adequate idea of the physical\naspects of Japan from the geographical and meteorological points of\nview, it would be necessary to furnish a detailed account of the\ncountry, with a long list of statistical tables and the ample help of\nlantern slides. But on this occasion I must be content with naming some\nof the typical features of our surroundings.\n\nJapan, as you know, is a long and narrow series of islands, stretching\nfrom frigid Kamchatka in the north to half-tropical Formosa in the\nsouth. The whole country is mountainous, with comparatively little flat\nland, and is perforated with a great number of volcanoes, the active\nones alone numbering above fifty at present. With this is connected the\nannoying frequency of earthquakes, and the agreeable abundance of\nthermal springs--two phenomena that cannot remain without effect on the\npeople's character.\n\nThere are two other natural agencies to be mentioned in this connection.\nOne is the Kuro-shio, or Black Stream, so called on account of the deep\nblack colour which the ocean current displays in cloudy weather. This\nwarm ocean river, having a temperature of 27\u00b0 centigrade in summer,\nbegins its course in the tropical regions near the Philippine Islands,\nand on reaching the southern isles is divided by them into two unequal\nparts. The greater portion of it skirts the Japanese islands on their\neastern coast, imparting to them that warm and moist atmosphere which is\none source of the fertility of the soil and the beauty of the\nvegetation. The effect of the Kuro-shio upon the climate and productions\nof the lands along which it flows may be fairly compared with that of\nthe Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, which in situation, direction,\nand volume it resembles. To this most noticeable cause of the climatic\ncondition of the Japanese islands must be added another agency closely\nrelated to it in its effect. Our archipelago lies in the region of the\nnortheast monsoon, which affects in a marked degree the climate of all\nthose parts over which the winds blow. Although the same monsoon blows\nover the eastern countries of the Asiatic continent, the insular\ncharacter of Japan, and the proximity of the above-mentioned warm\ncurrent on both sides of the islands, give to the winds which prevail a\ncharacter they do not possess on the continent.\n\nAlthough the effect of the chill and frost of the northern part of\nJapan, with its heavy snowfall and covered sky, cannot be without its\ndepressing influence on human nature in that part of the island, this\nhas not played any serious role in the formation of the Japanese\ncharacter as a whole. It is only at a rather recent date that the\nnorthern provinces began to contribute their share to the general\nprogress of the country. This can very easily be explained by the\ngradual advance of Japanese civilisation from the southwest to the\nnortheast. Until comparatively lately the colder region of Japan north\nof the 37th degree of latitude has remained very nearly inactive in our\nhistory. It is almost exclusively in the more sunny south, extending\ndown to the 31st degree, that the main activity of the Japanese mind and\nhand has been shown. And the effect is the sunniness of character and\nrather hot temperament which we, as a whole, share in a marked degree\nwith the southern Europeans, as contrasted with the somewhat gloomy calm\nand deliberation noticed both among oriental and occidental northerners.\n\nNotwithstanding the comparatively high amount of rainfall, the fact\nremains that as a nation we have spent most of our life under the serene\ncanopy of blue sky characteristic of a volcanic country. Mountains,\ngraceful rather than sublime, and fertile plains with rich verdure, its\nbeauties changing slowly from the white blossoms of spring to the\ncrimson leaves of autumn, have afforded us many welcome sights to rest\nour eyes upon; while the azure stretch of water, broken agreeably by\nscattered isles, washes to-day as it did in the days of the gods the\nwhite shore, rendered conspicuous by the everlasting green of the pine\ntrees, which skirts the Land of the Rising Sun.\n\nThe winter, though it begins its dreary course with a short period of\nwarm days known as the Little Spring, is of course not without its bleak\nmornings with cutting winds and icy wreaths. But the fact that even as\nfar north as T\u00f4ky\u00f4 no elaborate system of warming rooms is at all\ndeveloped, and that the occasional falling of snow is hailed even by\naged men of letters, and still more by the numerous poetasters, as a fit\noccasion for a pedestrian excursion to some neighboring localities for a\nbetter appreciation of the silvery world, serves to show how mild the\ncold is in south Japan.\n\nA people on whom the surrounding nature always smiles so indulgently can\nbe little expected to be driven to turn their thoughts in the direction\nof their own self, and thus to develop such a strong sense of\nindividuality as characterises the rigid northerners; nor are the\nnations panting under a scorching sun likely to share our friendly\nfeelings towards nature, for with them Father Sun is too rigorous to\nallow a peaceful enjoyment of his works.\n\nAll through the four seasons, which are almost too varied even for a\nThomson's pen, eventful with the constant calls of one after another of\nour flowery visitors--beginning with the noble plum that peeps with its\ntiny yellowish-white eyes from under the spotless repose of fleecy snow,\nand ending in the gay variety of the chrysanthemum--we have too many\nallurements from outside not to leap into the widespread arms of Mother\nNature and dream away our simple, our contented life in her lap. True,\nthere also are in Japan many instances of broken hearts seeking their\nfinal rest under the green turf of an untimely grave, or else in the\ngrey mantle of the Buddhist monkhood. But in them, again, we see the\ncharacteristic determination and action of a Japanese at work. To\nindulge in Hamlet-like musing, deep in the grand doubt and sublime\nmelancholy of the never-slumbering question 'To be, or not to be?' is\nsomething, so to say, too damp to occur in the sunny thought of our\nopen-air life.\n\nIf asked to name the most conspicuous of those physical phenomena which\nhave exercised so great an influence on our mind, no Japanese will\nhesitate to mention our most beloved Fuji-no-yama. This is the highest\nand the most beautiful of all the great mountains in the main group of\nthe Japanese islands. Gracefully conical in shape, lifting its snowclad\nhead against a serene background 12,365 feet above the sea, it has from\nthe earliest time been the object of unceasing admiration for the\nsurrounding thirteen provinces, and where it stands out of the reach of\nthe naked eye, winged words from the poet's lyre, and flying leaves from\nthe artist's brush, have carried its never-tiring praise to all the\nnooks and corners of the Land of the Gods.\n\nHere is one of the earliest odes to Fujiyama, contained in a collection\nof lyrical poems called Man-y\u00f4-sh\u00fb, or 'Myriad Leaves,' by Prince Moroe\n(died A.D. 757), somewhere in the first half of the eighth century:--\n\n    There on the border, where the land of Kahi\n    Doth touch the frontier of Suruga's land,\n    A beauteous province stretched on either hand,\n    See Fujiyama rear his head on high!\n\n    The clouds of heav'n in rev'rent wonder pause,\n    Nor may the birds those giddy heights essay,\n    Where melt thy snows amid thy fires away,\n    Or thy fierce fires lie quench'd beneath thy snows.\n\n    What name might fitly tell, what accents sing,\n    Thy awful, godlike grandeur? 'Tis thy breast\n    That holdeth Narusaha's flood at rest,\n    Thy side whence Fujikaha's waters spring.\n\n    Great Fujiyama, tow'ring to the sky!\n    A treasure art thou giv'n to mortal man,\n    A god-protector, watching o'er Japan:\n    On thee for ever let me feast mine eye!\n\nThis now extinct volcano, besides inspiring poetical efforts, has been\nan inexhaustible subject for our pictorial art; it is enough to mention\nthe famous sets of colour prints, representing the thirty-six or the\nhundred aspects of the favourite mountain, by Hiroshige, Hokusai, etc.\nThe groups of rural pilgrims that annually swarm from all parts of Japan\nduring the two hottest months of the year to pay their pious visit to\nthe Holy Mount Fuji, return to their respective villages deeply inspired\nwith a feeling of reverence and of love for the wonders and beauty of\nthe remarkable dawn they witnessed from its summit.\n\nThere is many another towering mountain with its set of pilgrims, but\nnone can vie with Fujiyama for majestic grace. More beautiful than\nsublime, more serene than imposing, it has been from time immemorial a\nsilent influence on the Japanese character. Who would deny that it has\nreflected in its serenity and grace as seen on a bright day all the\nideals of the Japanese mind?\n\nAnother favourite emblem of our spirit is the cherry blossom. The cherry\ntree, which we cultivate, not for its fruit, but for the annual tribute\nof a branchful of its flowers, has done much, especially in the\ndevelopment of the gay side of our character. Its blossoms are void of\nthat sweet depth of scent your rose possesses, or the calm repose that\ncharacterizes China's emblematic peony. A sunny gaiety and a readiness\nto scatter their heart-shaped petals with a Samurai's indifference to\ndeath are what make them so dear to our simple and determined view of\nlife. There is an ode known to every Japanese by the great Motoori\nNorinaga (1730-1801 A.D.) which runs as follows:--\n\n    _Shikishima no_\n      _Yamata-gokoro wo_\n    _Hito toha ba,_\n      _Asahi ni nihofu_\n      _Jamazakura-bana._\n\n(Should any one ask me what the spirit of Japan is like, I would point\nto the blossoms of the wild cherry tree bathing in the beams of the\nmorning sun.)\n\nThese words, laconic as they are, represent, in my opinion, the\nfundamental truth about the Japanese mentality--its weak places as well\nas its strength. They give an incomparable key to the proper\nunderstanding of the whole people, whose ideal it has ever been to live\nand to die like the cherry blossoms, beneath which they have these tens\nof centuries spent their happiest hours every spring.\n\nThe mention of a Japanese poem gives me an opportunity to say something\nabout Japanese poetry. Like other early people, our forefathers in\narchaic time liked to express their thoughts in a measured form of\nlanguage. The whole structure of the tongue being naturally melodious,\non account of its consisting of open syllables with clear and sonorous\nvowels and little of the harsh consonantal elements in them, the number\nof syllables in a line has been almost the only feature that\ndistinguished our poetry from ordinary prose composition. The taste for\na lengthened form of poems had lost ground early, and already at the end\nof the ninth century after Christ the epigrammatic form exemplified\nabove, consisting of thirty-one syllables, established itself as the\nordinary type of the Japanese odes.\n\nThis form subdivides itself into two parts, viz., the upper half\ncontaining three lines of five, seven, and again five syllables, and the\nlower half consisting of two lines of seven syllables each. This\nsimplicity has made it impossible to express in it anything more than a\npithy appeal to our lyrical nature; epic poetry in the strict sense of\nthe word has never been developed by us.\n\nBut it must be noticed that it is this simplicity of form of our\npoetical expression that has put it within the reach of almost\neverybody. To all of us without distinction of class and sex has been\naccorded the sacred pleasure of satisfying and thus developing our\npoetical nature, so long as we had a subject to sing and could count\nsyllables up to thirty-one. The language resorted to in such a\ncomposition was at first the same as that in use in everyday life. But\nafterwards as succeeding forms of the vernacular gradually deviated from\nthe classical type, a special grammar along with a special vocabulary\nhad to be studied by the would-be poet. This was avoided, however, by\nthe development in the sixteenth century of a popular and still shorter\nform of ode called _Hokku_, with much less strict regulations about\nsyntax and phraseology. This ultra-short variety of Japanese poetry,\nconsisting only of seventeen syllables, is in form the upper half of the\nregular poem. Here is an example:--\n\n    _Asagaho ni_\n      _Tsurube torarete_\n    _Morai-midzu._\n\nSketchy as it is, this tells us that the composer Chiyo, 'having gone to\nher well one morning to draw water, found that some tendrils of the\nconvolvulus had twined themselves around the rope. As a poetess and a\nwoman of taste, she could not bring herself to disturb the dainty\nblossoms. So, leaving her own well to the convolvuli, she went and\nbegged water of a neighbor'--a pretty little vignette, surely, and\nexpressed in five words.\n\nThis new movement, which owes its real development to a remarkable man\ncalled Bash\u00f4 (1644-1649), a mystic of the Zen sect to the tip of his\nfingers, had an aim that was strictly practical. 'He wished to turn\nmen's lives and thoughts in a better and a higher direction, and he\nemployed one branch of art, namely poetry, as the vehicle for the\nethical influence to whose exercise he devoted his life. The very word\npoetry (or _haikai_) came in his mouth to stand for morality. Did any of\nhis followers transgress the code of poverty, simplicity, humility,\nlong-suffering, he would rebuke the offender with a \"This is not\npoetry,\" meaning \"This is not right.\" His knowledge of nature and his\nsympathy with nature were at least as intimate as Wordsworth's, and his\nsympathy with all sorts and conditions of men was far more intimate; for\nhe never isolated himself from his kind, but lived cheerfully in the\nworld.'[17]\n\nNow, this form of popular literature by virtue of its accessibility even\nto the poorest amateurs from the lowest ranks of the people, was\nmarkedly instrumental, as the now classical form of poetry had been\nduring the Middle Ages, in the cultivation of taste and good manners\namong all classes of the Japanese nation. Even among the ricksha men of\nto-day you find many such humble poets, taking snapshots as they run\nalong the stony path of their miserable life. I wonder if your hansom\ndrivers are equally aspiring in this respect.\n\n\n[17] B.H. Chamberlain's _Bash\u00f4 and the Japanese Epigram, T.A.S.J._, vol.\nxxx. pt. ii.\n\nIn all these phases of the development of our poetry, we notice, as one\nof its peculiarities, a strong inclination to the exercise of the witty\nside of our nature. Even if we leave out of consideration the so-called\n'pillow word' (_makura-kotoba_), so profusely resorted to in our ancient\npoems, part of which were nothing but a na\u00efve sort of _jeu de mots_, and\nthe abundant use of other plays on words of later development, known as\n_kakekotoba_, _jo_, _sh\u00fbku_, etc. (_haikai-no-uta_), it is noteworthy\nthat poems of a comic nature found a special place in the earliest\nimperial collection of Japanese odes named Kokinshifu,' which was\ncompiled in the year A.D. 908. This species has flourished ever since\nunder the name of Ky\u00f4ka, and also gave rise to a shortened form in\nseventeen syllables, called _haikai-no-hokku_. When in the hand of Bash\u00f4\nthis latter form developed itself into something higher and more\nserious, the witty and satirical Senry\u00fb, also in seventeen syllables,\ncame to take its place.\n\nOne thing to be specially noted in this connection is the introduction\nfrom China of the idea of poetic tournaments, the beauty of which\nconsisted in the offhand and quick composition of one long series of\nodes by several persons sitting together, each supplying in turn either\nthe upper half or the lower half as the case might be, the two in\ncombination giving a poetical sense. This usage of capping verses known\nas _renga_ came to be very popular, from the Court downward, as early as\nthe thirteenth century. After a while the same practice was applied to\ncomic poetry, thus producing the so-called _haikai-no-renga_, or comic\nlinked verses. This coupling of verses gave plenty of occasion for\nsharpening one's wit as well as one's skill in extemporising. It is to a\nlater attempt to express all these subtleties in the upper half of the\npoem composed by one person that the present _kokku_ owed its origin.\nYou can easily imagine the effect such an exercise produced on the\npopular mind. Besides the moral good which this literary pursuit has\nbrought to the populace, it has given a fresh opportunity for the\ncultivation of our habit of attaching sense to apparently meaningless\ngroups of phenomena, and our fondness of laconic utterance and symbolic\nrepresentation, not to say anything about our love of nature and\nsimplicity.\n\nAll this tends in my view to show that we Japanese have a strong liking\nfor wit in the wider sense of the word. We try to solve a question, not\nby that slower but surer way of calm deliberation and untiring labour\nlike the cool-headed Germans, but by an incandescent flash of\ninspiration like the hot-blooded Frenchmen. This fact is singularly\npreserved in the earlier sense of the now sacred word _Yamato-damash\u00ee_,\nwhich had not its present meaning, viz., 'the spirit of Japan' in the\nmost elevated sense of that term, but signified 'the wit of the\nJapanese' as contrasted with the 'learning of the Chinese' (_wakon_ as\nopposed to _kansai_). The word _tamash\u00ee_, which now expresses the idea\nof 'spirit,' corresponds in the compound in question to the French\n_esprit_ in such combinations as _homme d'esprit_ or _jeu d'esprit_.\n\nTurning now to the consideration of other sets of phenomena, as an\nillustration of the Japanese character, let me tell you something about\nthe tea-ceremony and kindred rites.\n\nTo begin with the _Cha-no-e_ (or _Cha-no-yu_), or tea-meeting, this\nmuch-spoken-of art originated among the Buddhist priests, who learned to\nappreciate the beverage from the Chinese. Indeed, the tea-plant itself\nwas first introduced into Japan along with the name _Cha_ (Chinese\n_Ch'a_) from the Celestial Empire, in the tenth century after Christ.\nDuring the following centuries its cultivation and the preparation of\nthe drink was monopolised by the priesthood, if we except the cases of a\nfew well-to-do men of letters. This fact is gathered from the frequent\nmention of tea-cups offered to the emperor on the occasion of an\nimperial visit to a Buddhist monastery. During all this time a sense of\nsomething precious and aristocratic was attached to this aromatic\nbeverage, which had been regarded as a kind of rare drug of strange\nvirtue in raising depressed spirits, and even of curing certain\ndiseases.\n\nThis high appreciation of the drink, as well as the need of ceremony in\noffering it to exalted personages, gradually developed in the hands of\nmonks with plenty of leisure and a good knowledge of the high praise\naccorded to its virtues by the Chinese savants, into a very complicated\nrite as to the way of serving, and of being served with, a cup of tea. A\nprint representing a man clad as a Buddhist priest in the act of selling\nthe beverage in the street at a penny a cup is preserved from a date as\nearly as the fourteenth century, showing that the drink had then come to\nfind customers even among the common people. But the ceremony of\nCha-no-e, as such, never made its way among them until many centuries\nafter. It was at first fostered and elaborated only among the\naristocracy. Already in the fifteenth century, when the luxury and\nextravagance of the Ashikaga Shogunate reached its zenith in the person\nof Yoshimasa (1435-1490), the tea-ceremony was one of the favourite\npastimes of the highest classes. Yoshimasa himself was a great patron\nand connoisseur of the complicated rite, as well as of other branches of\nart, such as landscape gardening and the arrangement of flowers.\n\nThere are two different phases of the tea-ceremony, the regular course\nand the simplified course, known among us as the 'Great Tea' and the\n'Small Tea.' In either case, it might be defined in its present form as\na system of cultivating good manners as applied to daily life, with the\nserving and drinking of a cup of tea at its centre. The main stress is\nlaid on ensuring outwardly a graceful carriage, and inwardly presence of\nmind. As with the national form of wrestling known as _ju-jitsu_, with\nits careful analysis of every push and pull down to the minutest\ndetails, so with the Cha-no-e, every move of body and limb in walking\nand sitting during the whole ceremony has been fully studied and worked\nout so as to give it the most graceful form conceivable. At the same\ntime the calm and self-control shown by the partaker in the rite is\nregarded as an essential element in the performance, without which\nultimate success in it will be quite impossible. So it is more a\nphysical and moral training than a mere amusement or a simple quenching\nof thirst. But this original sense has not always been kept in view even\nby the so-called masters of the tea-ceremony, who, like your\ndancing-masters, are generally considered to be the men to teach us\nsocial etiquette. Thus, diverted from its original idea, the Cha-no-e is\ngenerally found to degenerate into a body of conventional and\nmeaningless formalities, which, even in its most abbreviated form as the\n'Small Tea,' is something very tiresome, if not worse. To sit _\u00e0 la\njaponaise_ (not _\u00e0 la turque_, which is not considered polite) for an\nhour, if not for hours together, on the matted floor to see the\ncelebration of the monotonous rite, daring to talk only little, and even\nthen not above a whisper, in the smallest imaginable tea-room, is not\nwhat even a born Japanese of the present day can much appreciate, much\nless so Europeans, who would prefer being put in the stocks, unless they\nbe themselves Cha-jin or tea-ceremonialists, that is to say, eccentrics.\nHow to open the sliding-door; how to shut it each time; how to bring and\narrange the several utensils, with their several prescribed ways of\nbeing handled, into the tea-room; how to sit down noiselessly in front\nof the boiling kettle which hangs over a brasier; how to open the lid of\nthe kettle; how to put tea-powder in the cup; how to pour hot water over\nit; how to stir the now green water with a bamboo brush; how to give the\nmixture a head of foam; how and where to place the cup ready for the\nexpecting drinker--this on the part of the person playing the host or\nhostess; and now on the part of the guest--how to take a sweet from the\ndish before him in preparation for the coming aromatic drink; how to\ntake up the cup now given him; how to hold it with both hands; how to\ngive it a gentle stir; how to drink it up in three sips and a half; how\nto wipe off the trace of the sipping left on the edge of the cup; how to\nturn the cup horizontally round; how to put it down within the reach of\nhis host or hostess, etc., etc., _ad infinitum_--these are some of the\nessential items to be learned and practised. And for every one of them\nthere is a prescribed form even to the slightest move and curve in which\na finger should be bent or stretched, always in strict accordance with\nthe attitude of other bodies in direct connection with it. The whole\nceremony in its degenerated form is an aggregate of an immense number of\n_comme il faut_'s, with practically no margin for personal taste. But\neven behind its present frigidity we cannot fail to discern the true\nidea and the good it has worked in past centuries. It has done a great\ndeal of good, especially in those rough days at the end of the sixteenth\ncentury, when great warriors returning blood-stained from the field of\nbattle learned how to bow their haughty necks in admiration of the\ncurves of beauty, and how to listen to the silvery note of a boiling\ntea-kettle. They could not help their stern faces melting into a na\u00efve\nsmile in the serene simplicity of the tea-room, whose arrangement, true\nto the Zen taste to the very last detail of its structure, showed a\nstudied avoidance of ostentation in form and colour. To this day it is\nalways this Zen taste that rules supreme in the decoration of a Japanese\nhouse.\n\nVisit a Japanese gentleman whose taste is not yet badly influenced by\nthe Western love of show and symmetry in his dwelling: you will find the\nroom and the whole arrangement free from anything of an ostentatious\nnature. The colour of the walls and sliding-doors will be very subdued,\nbut not on that account gloomy. In the niche you will see one or a\nsingle set of _kakemono_, or pictures, at the foot of which, just in the\nmiddle of the slightly raised floor of the niche, we put some object of\ndecoration--a sculpture, a vase with flowers, etc. These are both\ncarefully changed in accordance with the season, or else in harmony with\nthe ruling idea of the day, when the room is decorated in celebration of\nsome event or guest. This rule applies to the other objects connected\nwith the room--utensils, cushions, screens, etc.\n\nThe European way of arranging a room is, generally speaking, rather\nrevolting to our taste. We take care not to show anything but what is\nabsolutely necessary to make a room look agreeable, keeping all other\nthings behind the scenes. Thus we secure to every object of art that we\nallow in our presence a fair opportunity of being appreciated. This is\nnot usually the case in a European dwelling. I have very often felt less\ncrowded in a museum or in a bazaar than in your drawing-rooms. 'You know\nso well how to expose to view what you have,' I have frequently had\noccasion to say to myself, 'but you have still much to learn from us how\nto hide, for exposition is, after all, a very poor means of showing.'\n\nTo return to the main point, we owe to the Cha-no-e much of the present\nstandard of our taste, which is, in its turn, nothing more than the Zen\nways of looking at things as applied to everyday life. This is no\nwonder, when we remember that it was in the tasteful hands of the Zen\npriests that the whole ceremony reached its perfection. Indeed, the word\n_cha_ is a term which conveys to this day the main features of the\nContemplative sect to our mind.\n\nIn connection with the tea-ceremony, there are some sister arts which\nhave been equally effective in the proper cultivation of our taste.\nLandscape gardening, in which our object is to make an idealised copy of\nsome natural scene, is an art that has been loved and practised among us\nfor more than a thousand years, although it was not indigenous like most\nthings Japanese. This practice of painting with tree and stone soon gave\nrise to another art, the miniature reproduction of a favourite natural\nscene on a piece of board, and this is the forerunner of the later\n_bonkei_, or the tray-landscape, and its sister _bonsai_, or the art of\nsymbolising an abstract idea, such as courage, majesty, etc., by means\nof the growth of a dwarf tree.\n\nThe same love that we feel for a symbolic representation is also to be\ntraced in the arrangement of flowers. The practice of preserving cut\nbranches, generally of flowering trees, in a vase filled with water is\noften mentioned in our classical literature. But it was first in the\nsixteenth century that it assumed its present aspect, when, in\nconjunction with the Cha-no-e, it found a great patron in that most\ninfluential dilettante Shogun Yoshimasa. Already in his time there were\na great many principles to be learned concerning the way to give the\nlongest life and the most graceful form to the branches put in a vase,\nbesides investing the whole composition with a symbolic meaning. Up to\nthis day we look upon this art as very helpful for the cultivation of\ntaste among the fair sex, who receive long courses of instruction by the\ngenerally aged masters of floral arrangement, who, along with their\nteaching in the treatment of plants, know how to instil ethics in their\nyoung pupils, taking the finished vase of flowers as the subject of\nconversation. The masters of the tea-ceremony are also well versed in\narranging flowers in that simple manner which is yet full of meaning\ncalled _cha-bana_, or the 'Zen type of floral art.'\n\nYou see how much all these arts have contributed to the production of\nour taste, whose ideals are the dislike of loudness and love of symbolic\nrepresentation, with a delicate feeling for the beauty of line as seen\nin things moving or at rest. This last quality must have been immensely\naugmented by the linear character of our drawing, and also by the great\nimportance we are accustomed to attach to the shape and the strokes of\nthe characters when we are learning to write.\n\nAll these qualities you will see exemplified in any Japanese work of\nart--from a large picture down to a tiny wooden carving. Take up a\ngirl's silk dress and examine it carefully, and note how the lining is\ndyed and embroidered with as great, if not greater care, in order to\nmake it harmonise in colour and design with the visible surface and add\nsome exquisite meaning. Do not forget to look at the back when you come\nacross a lacquered box, for it is not only the surface that receives our\ncareful attention. And above all, you must always keep in mind that our\nartists think it a duty to be suggestive rather than explicit, and to\nleave something of their meaning to be divined by those who contemplate\ntheir works.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe time is now come to conclude my essay at an exposition of the\nJapanese spirit. I think I have given you occasion to see something of\nboth the strong and the weak sides of my countrymen; for it is just\nwhere our favourable qualities lie that you will also find the\ncorresponding weaknesses. The usual charges brought against us, that we\nare precocious, unpractical, frivolous, fickle, etc., are not worthy of\nserious attention, because they are all of them easily explained as but\nthe attendant phenomena of the transitory age from which we are just\nemerging. Even the more sound accusation of our want of originality must\nbe reconsidered in face of so many facts to the contrary, facts which\nshow us to be at least in small things very original, almost in the\nFrench sense of that word. That we have always been ready to borrow\nhints from other countries is in a great measure to be explained by the\nconsideration that we had from the very beginning the disadvantage and\nthe advantage of having as neighbours nations with a great start in the\nrace-course of civilisation. The cause of our being small in great\nthings, while great in small things, can be partly found in the\nfinancial conditions of the country and in the non-individual nature of\nthe culture we have received. These delicate questions will have to be\nraised again some centuries hence, when a healthy admixture of the\nEuropean civilisation has been tried--a civilisation the effect of which\nhas been, on the whole, so beneficial to our development, that we feel\nit a most agreeable duty gratefully to acknowledge our immense\nobligation to the nations of the West.","title":"The Japanese Spirit","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":21738}