But in contrast to this appreciation is a remarkable indifference to certain foul odors. It is amazing what horrid smells the cultivated j.a.panese will endure in his home. What we conceal in the rear and out of the way, he very commonly places in the front yard; though this is, of course, more true of the country than of large towns or cities. It would seem as if a high aesthetic development should long ago have banished such sights and smells. As a matter of fact, however, the aesthetics of the subject does not seem to have entered the national mind, any more than have the hygienics of the same subject.
In explanation of these facts, may it not be that the j.a.panese method of agriculture has been a potent hindrance to the aesthetic development of the sense of smell? In primitive times, when wealth was small, the only easy method which the people had of preserving the fertilizing properties of that which is removed from our cities by the sewer-system was such as we still find in use in j.a.pan to-day. Perhaps the necessities of the case have toughened the mental, if not the physical, sense of the people. Perhaps the unaesthetic character of the sights and smells has been submerged in the great value of fertilizing materials. Then, too, with the Occidental, the thought is common that such odors are indications of seriously unhealthful conditions. We are accordingly offended not simply by the odor itself, but also by the a.s.sociations of sickness and death which it suggests. Not so the unsophisticated Oriental. Such a correlation of ideas is only now arising in j.a.pan, and changes are beginning to be made, as a consequence.
I cannot leave this point without drawing attention to the fact that the development of the sense of smell in these directions is relatively recent, even in the West. Of all the non-European nations and races, I have no doubt j.a.pan is most free from horrid smells and putrid odors. And in view of our own recent emanc.i.p.ation it is not for us to marvel that others have made little progress. Rather is it marvelous that we should so easily forget the hole from which we have been so recently digged.
In turning to study certain features of j.a.panese pictorial art, we notice that a leading characteristic is that of simplicity. The greatest results are secured with the fewest possible strokes. This general feature is in part due to the character of the instrument used, the "fude," "brush." This same brush answers for writing. It admits of strong, bold outlines; and a large brush allows the exhibition of no slight degree of skill. As a result, "writing" is a fine art in j.a.pan. Hardly a family that makes any pretense at culture but owns one or more framed specimens of writing. In j.a.pan these rank as pictures do or mottoes in the West, and are prized not merely for the sentiment expressed, but also for the skill displayed in the use of the brush. Skillful writers become famous, often receiving large sums for small "pictures" which consist of but two or three Chinese characters.
No doubt the higher development of appreciation for natural scenery among the people in general is largely due to the character of the scenery itself. Steep hills and narrow valleys adjoin nearly every city in the land. Seas, bays, lakes, and rivers are numerous; reflected mountain scenes are common; the colors are varied and marked. Flowering trees of striking beauty are abundant. Any people living under these physical conditions, and sufficiently advanced in civilization to have leisure and culture, can hardly fail to be impressed with such wealth of beauty in the scenery itself.
In the artistic reproduction of this scenery, however, j.a.panese artists are generally supposed to be inferior to those of the West.
As often remarked, j.a.panese art has directed its chief endeavor to animals and to nature, thus failing to give to man his share of attention. This curious one-sidedness shows itself particularly in painting and in sculpture. In the former, when human beings are the subject, the aim has apparently been to extol certain characteristics; in warriors, the military or heroic spirit; in wise men, their wisdom; in monks and priests, their mastery over the pa.s.sions and complete attainment of peace; in a G.o.d, the moral character which he is supposed to represent. Art has consequently been directed to bringing into prominence certain ideal features which must be over-accentuated in order to secure recognition; caricatures, rather than lifelike forms, are the frequent results. The images of mult.i.tudes of G.o.ds are frightful to behold; the aim being to show the character of the emotion of the G.o.d in the presence of evil. These idols are easily misunderstood, for we argue that the more frightful he is, the more vicious must be the G.o.d in his real character; not so the Oriental. To him the more frightful the image, the more n.o.ble the character. Really evil G.o.ds, such as demons, are always represented, I think, as deformed creatures, partly human and partly beast. It is to be remembered, in this connection, that idols are an imported feature of j.a.panese religion; Shinto to this day has no "graven image." All idols are Buddhistic. Moreover, they are but copies of the hideous idols of India; the j.a.panese artistic genius has added nothing to their grotesque appearance. But the point of interest for us is that the aesthetic taste which can revel in flowers and natural scenery has never delivered j.a.panese art from truly unaesthetic representations of human beings and of G.o.ds.
Standing recently before a toy store and looking at the numberless dolls offered for sale, I was impressed afresh with the lack of taste displayed, both in coloring and in form; their conventionality was exceedingly tiresome; their one attractive feature was their absurdity. But the moment I turned away from the imitations of human beings to look at the imitations of nature, the whole impression was changed. I was pleased with the artistic taste displayed in the perfectly imitated, delicately colored flowers. They were beautiful indeed.
Why has j.a.panese art made so little of man as man? Is it due to the "impersonality" of the Orient, as urged by some? This suggests, but does not give, the correct interpretation of the phenomenon in question. The reason lies in the nature of the ruling ideas of Oriental civilization. Man, as man, has not been honored or highly esteemed. As a warrior he has been honored; consequently, when pictured or sculptured as a warrior, he has worn his armor; his face, if visible, is not the natural face of a man, but rather that of a pa.s.sionate victor, slaying his foe or planning for the same. And so with the priests and the teachers, the emperors and the generals; all have been depicted, not for what they are in themselves, but for the rank which they have attained; they are accordingly represented with their accouterments and robes and the characteristic att.i.tudes of their rank. The effort to preserve their actual appearance is relatively rare. Manhood and womanhood, apart from social rank, have hardly been recognized, much less extolled by art. This feature, then, corresponds to the nature of the j.a.panese social order. The art of a land necessarily reveals the ruling ideals of its civilization. As j.a.pan failed to discover the inherent nature and value of manhood and womanhood, estimating them only on a utilitarian basis, so has her art reflected this failure.
Apparently it has never attempted to depict the nude human form. This is partly explained, perhaps, by the fact that the development of a perfect physical form through exercise and training has not been a part of Oriental thought. Labor of every sort has been regarded as degrading. Training for military skill and prowess has indeed been common among the military cla.s.ses; but the skill and strength themselves have been the objects of thought, rather than the beauty of the muscular development which they produce. When we recall the prominent place which the games of Greece took in her civilization previous to her development of art, and the stress then laid on perfect bodily form, we shall better understand why there should be such difference in the development of the art of these two lands. I have never seen a j.a.panese man or youth bare his arm to show with pride the development of his biceps; and so far as I have observed, the pride which students in the United States feel over well-developed calves has no counterpart in j.a.pan--this, despite the fact that the average j.a.panese has calves which would turn the American youth green with envy.
From the absence of the nude in j.a.panese art it has been urged that j.a.pan herself is far more morally pure than the West. Did the moral life of the people correspond to their art in this respect, the argument would have force. Unfortunately, such does not seem to be the case. It is further suggested as a reason that the bodily form of Oriental peoples is essentially unaesthetic; that the men are either too fat or too lean, and the women too plump when in the bloom of youth and too wrinkled and flabby when the first bloom is over. The absurdity of this suggestion raises a smile, and a query as to the experience which its author must have had. For any person who has lived in j.a.pan must have seen individuals of both s.e.xes, whom the most fastidious painter or sculptor would rejoice to secure as models.
It might be thought that a truly artistic people, who are also somewhat immoral, would have developed much skill in the portrayal of the nude female form. But such an attempt does not seem to have been made until recent times, and in imitation of Western art. At least such attempts have not been recognized as art nor have they been preserved as such. I have never seen either statue or picture of a nude j.a.panese woman. Even the pictures of famous prost.i.tutes are always faultlessly attired. The number and size of the conventional hairpins, and the gaudy coloring of the clothing, alone indicate the immoral character of the woman represented.
It is not to be inferred, however, that immoral pictures have been unknown in j.a.pan, for the reverse is true. Until forcibly suppressed by the government under the incentive of Western criticism, there was perfect freedom to produce and sell licentious and lascivious pictures. The older foreign residents in j.a.pan testify to the frequency with which immoral scenes were depicted and exposed for sale. Here I merely say that these were not considered works of art; they were reproduced not in the interests of the aesthetic sense, but wholly to stimulate the taste for immoral things.
The absence of the nude from j.a.panese art is due to the same causes that led to the relative absence of all distinctively human nature from art. Manhood and womanhood, as such, were not the themes they strove to depict.
A curious feature of the artistic taste of the people is the marked fondness for caricature. It revels in absurd accentuations of special features. Children with protruding foreheads; enormously fat little men; grotesque dwarf figures in laughable positions; these are a few common examples. Nearly all of the small drawings and sculpturings of human figures are intentionally grotesque. But the j.a.panese love of the grotesque is not confined to its manifestation in art. It also reveals itself in other surprising ways. It is difficult to realize that a people who revel in the beauties of nature can also delight in deformed nature; yet such is the case. Stunted and dwarfed trees, trees whose branches have been distorted into shapes and proportions that nature would scorn--these are sights that the j.a.panese seem to enjoy, as well as "natural" nature. Throughout the land, in the gardens of the middle and higher cla.s.ses, may be found specimens of dwarfed and stunted trees which have required decades to raise. The branches, too, of most garden shrubs and trees are trimmed in fantastic shapes. What is the charm in these distortions? First, perhaps, the universal human interest in anything requiring skill.
Think of the patience and persistence and experimentation necessary to rear a dwarf pear tree twelve or fifteen inches high, growing its full number of years and bearing full-size fruit in its season! And second is the no less universal human interest in the strange and abnormal. All primitive people have this interest. It shows itself in their religions. Abnormal stones are often objects of religious devotion. Although I cannot affirm that such objects are worshiped in j.a.pan to-day, yet I can say that they are frequently set up in temple grounds and dedicated with suitable inscriptions. Where nature can be made to produce the abnormal, there the interest is still greater. It is a living miracle. Witness the c.o.c.ks of Tosa, distinguished by their two or three tail feathers reaching the extraordinary length of ten or even fifteen feet, the product of ages of special breeding.
According to the ordinary use of the term, aesthetics has to do with art alone. Yet it also has intimate relations with both speech and conduct. Poetry depends for its very existence on aesthetic considerations. Although little conscious regard is paid to aesthetic claims in ordinary conversation, yet people of culture do, as a matter of fact, pay it much unconscious attention. In conduct too, aesthetic ideas are often more dominant than we suppose. The objection of the cultured to the ways of the boorish rests on aesthetic grounds. This is true in every land. In the matter of conduct it is sometimes hard to draw the line between aesthetics and ethics, for they shade imperceptibly into one another; so much so that they are seen to be complementary rather than contradictory. Though it is doubtless true that conduct aesthetically defective may not be defective ethically, still is it not quite as true that conduct bad from the ethical is bad also from the aesthetical standpoint?
In no land have aesthetic considerations had more force in molding both speech and conduct than in j.a.pan. Not a sentence is uttered by a j.a.panese but has the characteristic marks of aestheticism woven into its very structure. By means of "honorifics" it is seldom necessary for a speaker to be so pointedly vulgar as even to mention self. There are few points in the language so difficult for a foreigner to master, whether in speaking himself, or in listening to others, as the use of these honorific words. The most delicate shades of courtesy and discourtesy may be expressed by them. Some writers have attributed the relative absence of the personal p.r.o.nouns from the language to the dominating force of impersonal pantheism. I am unable to take this view for reasons stated in the later chapters on personality.
Though the honorific characteristics of the language seem to indicate a high degree of aesthetic development, a certain lack of delicacy in referring to subjects that are ruled out of conversation by cultivated people in the West make the contrary impression upon the uninitiated.
Such language in j.a.pan cannot be counted impure, for no such idea accompanies the words. They must be described simply as aesthetically defective. Far be it from me to imply that there is no impure conversation in j.a.pan. I only say that the particular usages to which I refer are not necessarily a proof of moral tendency. A realistic baldness prevails that makes no effort to conceal even that which is in its nature unpleasant and unaesthetic. A spade is called a spade without the slightest hesitation. Of course specific ill.u.s.trations of such a point as this are out of place. aesthetic considerations forbid.
And how explain these unaesthetic phenomena? By the fact that j.a.pan has long remained in a state of primitive development. Speech is but the verbal expression of life. Every primitive society is characterized by a bald literalism shocking to the aesthetic sense of societies which represent a higher stage of culture. In j.a.pan, until recently, little effort has been made to keep out of sight objects and acts which we of the West have considered disagreeable and repulsive. Language alters more slowly than acts. Laws are making changes in the latter, and they in time will take effect in the former. But many decades will doubtless pa.s.s before the cultivated cla.s.ses of j.a.pan will reach, in this respect, the standard of the corresponding cla.s.ses of the West.
As for the aesthetics of conduct in j.a.pan, enough is indicated by what has been said already concerning the aesthetics of speech. Speech and conduct are but diverse expressions of the same inner life. j.a.panese etiquette has been fashioned on the feudalistic theory of society, with its numberless gradations of inferior and superior. a.s.sertive individualism, while allowed a certain range among the samurai, always had its well-marked limits. The ma.s.s of the people were compelled to walk a narrow line of respectful obedience and deference both in form and speech. The constant aim of the inferior was to please the superior. That individuals of an inferior rank had any inherent rights, as opposed to those of a superior rank, seldom occurred to them. Furthermore, this whole feudal system, with its characteristic etiquette of conduct and speech, was authoritatively taught by moralists and religious leaders, and devoutly believed by the n.o.blest of the land. Ethical considerations, therefore, combined powerfully with those that were social and aesthetic to produce "the most polite race on the face of the globe." Recent developments of rudeness and discourtesy among themselves and toward foreigners have emphasized my general contention that these characteristics are not due to inherent race nature, but rather to the social order.
How are we to account for the wide aesthetic development of all cla.s.ses of the j.a.panese? As already suggested, the beautiful scenery explains much. But I pa.s.s at once to the significant fact that although the cla.s.ses of j.a.panese society were widely differentiated in social rank, yet they lived in close proximity to each other. There was no spatial gulf of separation preventing the lower from knowing fully and freely the thoughts, ideals, and customs of the upper cla.s.ses. The transmission of culture was thus an easy matter, in spite of social gradations.
Moreover, the character of the building materials, and the methods of construction used by the more prosperous among the people, were easily imitated in kind, if not in costliness, by the less prosperous. Take, for example, the structure of the room; it is always of certain fixed proportions, that the uniform mats may be easily fitted to it. The mats themselves are always made of a straw "toko," "bed," and an "omote," "surface," of woven straw; they vary greatly in value, but, of whatever grade, may always be kept neat and fresh at comparatively small cost. The walls of the average houses are made of mud wattles.
The outer layers of plaster consist of selected earth and tinted lime.
Whether put up at large or small expense, these walls may be neat and attractive. So, too, with other parts of the house.
The utter lack of independent thinking throughout the middle and lower cla.s.ses, and the constant desire of the inferior to imitate the superior, have also helped to make the culture of the cla.s.ses the possession of the ma.s.ses. This subserviency and spirit of imitation has been further stimulated by the enforced courtesy and deference and obedience of the common people.
In this connection it should be noted, however, that the universality of culture in j.a.pan is more apparent than real. The appearance is due in part to the lack of furniture in the homes. Without chairs or tables, bedsteads or washstands, and the mult.i.tude of other things invariably found in the home of the Occidental, it is easy for the j.a.panese housewife to keep her home in perfect order. No special culture is needful for this.
How it came about that the j.a.panese people adopted their own method of sitting on the feet, I cannot say; neither have I heard any plausible explanation of the practice. Yet this habit has relieved them of all necessity for heavy furniture. Given the custom of sitting on the feet, and a large part of the furniture of the house will be useless.
Already is the introduction of furniture after Western patterns producing changes in the homes of the people; and it will be interesting to see whether the aesthetic sense of the j.a.panese will be able to a.s.similate and harmonize with itself these useful, but bulky and unaesthetic, elements of Occidental civilization.
That no part of the fine taste of the j.a.panese is due to the general civilization, rather than to the individual possession of the aesthetic faculty, may be inferred from many little signs. In spite of the fact that, following the long-established social fashions, the women usually display good taste in the choice of colors for their clothing, it sometimes happens that they also manifest not the slightest sense of the harmony of colors. Daughters of wealthy families will array themselves in brilliant discordant hues, yet apparently without causing the wearers or their friends the slightest aesthetic discomfort. Little children are arrayed in clothing that would doubtless put Joseph"s coat of many colors quite out of countenance.
Combinations and brilliancy that to the Western eye of culture seem crude and gaudy, typical of barbaric splendor, are in constant use, and are apparently thought to be fine. The j.a.panese display both taste and its lack in the choice of colors for clothing; this contradiction is the more striking in view of the taste manifest in the decorations of the homes of all cla.s.ses of the people. Few sights are more ludicrously unaesthetic than the red, yellow, and blue worsted crocheted caps and shawls for infants, which shock all our ideas of aesthetic harmony.
In connection with Western ways or articles of clothing, the native aesthetic faculty often seems to take its flight. In a foreign house many a j.a.panese seems to lose his sense of fitness. I have had schoolboys, and even gentlemen, enter my home with hobnailed muddied boots, without wiping their feet on the conspicuous door mat, which is the more remarkable since, in their own homes, they invariably take off their shoes on entering. I have frequently noticed that in railway cars the first comers monopolize the seats, and the later ones receive not the slightest notice, being often compelled to stand for an hour at a time, although, with a little moving, there would be abundant room for all. I have noticed this so often that I cannot think it an exceptional occurrence. I do not believe it to be intentional rudeness, but to be due simply to a lack of real heart politeness. Yet a true and deep aesthetic development, so far at least as relates to conduct, to say nothing of the spirit of altruism, would not permit such indifference to another"s discomfort.
My explanation for this, and for all similar defects in etiquette, is somewhat as follows. Etiquette is popularly conceived as consisting of rules of conduct, rather than as the outward expression of the state of the heart. From time immemorial rules for the ordinary affairs of life have been formulated by superiors and have been taught the people. In all usual and conventional relations, therefore, the average farmer and peasant know how to express perfect courtesy. But in certain situations, as in foreign houses and the railroad car, where there are no precedents to follow, or rules to obey, all evidence of politeness takes its flight. The old rules do not fit the new conditions. Not being grounded on the inner principles of etiquette, the people are not able to formulate new rules for new conditions. To the Westerner, on the other hand, these seem to follow from the simplest principles of common sense and kindliness. The general collapse of etiquette in j.a.pan, which native writers note and deplore, is due, therefore, not only to the withdrawal of feudal pressure, but also to introduction of strange circ.u.mstances for which the people have no rules, and to the fact that the people have not been taught those underlying principles of high courtesy which are applicable on all occasions.
An impression seems to have gained currency in the United States that the unaesthetic features seen in j.a.pan to-day are due to the debasing influences of Western art and Occidental intercourse. There can be no doubt that a certain type of tourist, ignorant of j.a.panese art, by greedily buying strange, gaudy things at high prices, has stimulated a morbid production of truly unaesthetic pseudo-j.a.panese art. But this accounts for only a small part of the grossly inartistic features of j.a.pan. The instances given of hideous worsted bibs for babes and collars for dogs, combining in the closest proximity the most uncomplementary and mutually repellent colors, has nothing whatever to do with foreign art or foreign intercourse. What foreigner ever decorated a little lapdog with a red-green-yellow-blue-and purple crocheted collar, four or five inches wide?
Westerners have been charmed with the exquisite colored photographs produced in j.a.pan. It is strange, yet true, that the same artistic hand that produces these beautiful effects will also, by a slight change of tints, produce the most unnatural and spectral views. Yet the strangest thing is, not that he produces them, but that he does not seem conscious of the defect, for he will put them on sale in his own shop or send them to purchasers in America, without the slightest apparent hesitation. The constant care of the purchaser in selection and his insistence on having only truly artistic work are what keep the j.a.panese artist up to the standard.
If other evidence is needed of aesthetic defect in the still unoccidentalized j.a.panese taste let the doubter go to any popular second-grade Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple. Here unaesthetic objects and sights abound. Hideous idols, painted and unpainted, big and little, often decorated with soiled bibs; decaying to-rii; ruined sub-shrines; conglomerate piles of cast-off paraphernalia, consisting of broken idols, old lanterns, stones, etc., filthy towels at the holy-water basins, piously offered to the G.o.ds and piously used by hundreds of dusty pilgrims; equally filthy bell-ropes hung in front of the main shrines, pulled by ten thousand hands to call the attention of the deity; travel-stained hands, each of which has left its mark on the once beautiful enormous ta.s.selated cord; ex-voto tufts of human hair; scores of pictures, where the few may be counted works of art while the rest are hideous beyond belief; frightful faces of tengu, with their long noses and menacing teeth, decorated with scores of spit-b.a.l.l.s or even with mud-b.a.l.l.s; these are some of the more conspicuous unaesthetic features of mult.i.tudes of popular shrines and temples. And none of these can be attributed to the debasing influence of Western art. And these inartistic features will be found accompanying scrupulous neatness in well-swept walks, new sub-shrines, floral decorations, and much that pleases the eye--a strange compound of the beautiful and the ugly. Truly the aesthetic development of the j.a.panese is curiously one-sided.
A survey of j.a.panese musical history leads to the conclusion that while the people are fairly developed in certain aspects of the aesthetics of music, such as rhythm, they are certainly undeveloped in other directions--in melody, for example, and in harmony. Their instrumental music is primitive and meager. They have no system of musical notation. The love of music, such as it is, is well-nigh universal. Their solo-vocal music, a semi-chanting in minors, has impressive elements; but these are due to the pa.s.sionate outbursts and plaintive wails, rather than to the musically aesthetic character of the melodies. The universal tw.a.n.ging samisen, a species of guitar, accompanied by the shrill, hard voices of the geisha (singing girls), marks at once the universality of the love of music and the undeveloped quality of the musical taste, both vocal and instrumental.
But in comparing the musical development of j.a.pan with that of the West, we must not forget how recent is that of the former.
The conditions which have served to develop musical taste in the West have but recently come to j.a.pan. Sufficient time has not yet elapsed for the nation to make much visible progress in the lines of Occidental music. But it has already done something. The popularity of bra.s.s bands, the wide introduction of organs, their manufacture in this land, their use in all public schools, the exclusive use of Occidental music in Christian churches, the ability of trained individuals in foreign vocal and instrumental music--all these facts go to show that in time we may expect great musical evolution in j.a.pan. Those who doubt this on the ground of inherent race nature may be reminded of the evolution which has taken place among the Hawaiians during the past two generations. From being a race manifesting marked deficiency in music they have developed astonishing musical taste and ability. During a recent visit to these islands after an absence of twenty-seven years, I attended a Sunday-school exhibition, which was largely a musical contest; the voices were sweet and rich; and the difficulty of the part songs, easily carried through by children and adults, revealed a musical sense that surpa.s.ses any ordinary Sunday school of the United States or England with which I am acquainted.
The development of j.a.panese literature likewise conspicuously reflects the ruling ideas of the social order, and reveals the dependence of literary taste on the order. As in other aspects in j.a.panese aesthetic development, so in this do we see marked lack of balance. "It is wonderful what felicity of phrase, melody of versification, and true sentiment can be compressed within the narrow limits (of the Tanka). In their way nothing can be more perfect than some of these little poems."[U] The deficiencies of j.a.panese poetry have been remarked by the foreigners most competent to judge. The following general characterization from the volume just quoted merits attention.
"Narrow in its scope and resources, it is chiefly remarkable for its limitations--for what it has not, rather than what it has. In the first place there are no long poems. There is nothing which even remotely resembles an epic--no Iliad or Divina Commedia--not even a Nibelungen Lied or Chevy Chase. Indeed, narrative poems of any kind are short and very few, the only ones which I have met with being two or three ballads of a sentimental cast. Didactic, philosophical, political, and satirical poems are also conspicuously absent. The j.a.panese muse does not meddle with such subjects, and it is doubtful whether, if it did, the native Pegasus possesses sufficient staying power for them to be dealt with adequately. For dramatic poetry we have to wait until the fourteenth century. Even then there are no complete dramatic poems, but only dramas containing a certain poetical element.
"j.a.panese poetry is, in short, confined to lyrics, and what, for want of a better word, may be called epigrams. It is primarily an expression of emotion. We have amatory verse poems of longing for home and absent dear ones, praise of love and wine, elegies on the dead, laments over the uncertainty of life. A chief place is given to the seasons, the sound of purling streams, the snow of Mount Fuji, waves breaking on the beach, seaweed drifting to the sh.o.r.e, the song of birds, the hum of insects, even the croaking of frogs, the leaping of trout in a mountain stream, the young shoots of fern in spring, the belling of deer in autumn, the red tints of the maple, the moon, flowers, rain, wind, mist; these are among the favorite subjects which the j.a.panese poets delight to dwell upon.
If we add some courtly and patriotic effusions, a vast number of conceits more or less pretty, and a very few poems of a religious cast, the enumeration is tolerably complete. But, as Mr.
Chamberlain has observed, there are curious omissions. War songs--strange to say--are almost wholly absent. Fighting and bloodshed are apparently not considered fit themes for poetry."[V]
The drama and the novel have both achieved considerable development, yet judged from Occidental standards, they are comparatively weak and insipid. They, of course, conspicuously reflect the characteristics of the social order to which they belong. Critics call repeated attention to the lack of sublimity in j.a.panese literature, and ascribe it to their inherent race nature. While the lack of sublimity in j.a.panese scenery may in fact account for the characteristic in question, still a more conclusive explanation would seem to be that in the older social order man, as such, was not known. The hidden glories of the soul, its temptations and struggles, its defects and victories, could not be the themes of a literature arising in a completely communal social order, even though it possessed individualism of the Buddhistic type.[W] These are the themes that give Western literature--poetic, dramatic, and narrative--its opportunity for sustained power and sublimity. They portray the inner life of the spirit.
The poverty of poetic form is another point of Western criticism. Mr.
Aston has shown how this poverty is directly due to the phonetic characteristics of the language. Diversities of both rhyme and rhythm are practically excluded from j.a.panese poetry by the nature of the language. And this in turn has led to the "preference of the national genius for short poems." But language is manifestly the combined product of linguistic heredity and the social order, and can in no sense be ascribed to inherent race nature. Thus directly are social heredity and social order determinative of the literary characteristics and aesthetic tastes of a nation.
Even more manifestly may j.a.panese architectural development be traced to the social heredity derived from China and India. The needs of the developing internal civilization have determined its external manifestation. So far as j.a.panese differs from Chinese architecture, it may be attributed to j.a.pan"s isolation, to the different demands of her social order, to the difference of accessible building materials, and to the different social heredity handed down from prehistoric times. That the distinguishing characteristics of j.a.panese architecture are due to the inherent race nature cannot for a moment be admitted.
We conclude that the j.a.panese are not possessed of a unique and inherent aesthetic taste. In some respects they are as certainly ahead of the Occidental as they are behind him in other respects. But this, too, is a matter of social development and social heredity, rather than of inherent race character, of brain structure. If aesthetic nature were a matter of inherited brain structure, it would be impossible to account for rapid fluctuations in aesthetic judgment, for the great inequality of aesthetic development in the different departments of life, or for the ease of acquiring the aesthetic development of alien races.[X]
XVI
MEMORY--IMITATION
The differences which separate the Oriental from the Occidental mind are infinitesimal as compared with the likenesses which unite them.
This is a fact that needs to be emphasized, for many writers on j.a.pan seem to ignore it. They marvel at the differences. The real marvel is that the differences are so few and so superficial. The j.a.panese are a race whose ancestors were separated from their early home nearly three thousand years ago; during this period they have been absolutely prevented from intermarriage with the parent stock. Furthermore, that original stock was not the Indo-European race. And no one has ventured to suggest how long before the migration of the ancestors of the j.a.panese to j.a.pan their ancestors parted from those who finally became the progenitors of modern Occidental peoples. For thousands of years, certainly, the j.a.panese and Anglo-Saxon races have had no ancestry in common. Yet so similar is the entire structure and working of their minds that the psychological textbooks of the Anglo-Saxon are adopted and perfectly understood by competent psychological students among the j.a.panese. I once asked a professor of psychology in the Matsuyama Normal School if he had no difficulty in teaching his cla.s.ses the psychological system of Anglo-Saxon thinkers, if there were not peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon mind which a j.a.panese could not understand, and if there were not psychological phenomena of the j.a.panese mind which were ignored in Anglo-Saxon psychological text-books. The very questions surprised him; to each he gave a negative reply. The mental differences that characterize races so dissimilar as the j.a.panese and the Anglo-Saxon, I venture to repeat, are insignificant as compared with their resemblances.