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Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life

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Title: Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life

Author: Lafcadio Hearn


        
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8882]
                Most recently updated: August 19, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KOKORO: HINTS AND ECHOES OF JAPANESE INNER LIFE ***




Produced by Liz Warren









KOKORO

BY

LAFCADIO HEARN




THE papers composing this volume treat of the inner rather than
of the outer life of Japan,--for which reason they have been
grouped under the title Kokoro (heart). Written with the above
character, this word signifies also mind, in the emotional sense;
spirit; courage; resolve; sentiment; affection; and inner
meaning,--just as we say in English, "the heart of things."

KOBE September 15, 1895.


CONTENTS

I.  AT A RAILWAY STATION
II. THE GENIUS Of JAPANESE CIVILIZATION
III. A STREET SINGER
IV. FROM A TRAVELING DIARY
V. THE NUN OF THE TEMPLE OF AMIDA
VI. AFTER THE WAR
VII. HARU
VIII. A GLIMPSE OF TENDENCIES
IX. BY FORCE OF KARMA
X. A CONSERVATIVE
XI. IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
XII. THE IDEA OF PRE-EXISTENCE
XIII. IN CHOLERA-TIME
XIV. SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT ANCESTOR-WORSHIP
XV. KIMIKO
APPENDIX. THREE POPULAR BALLADS



KOKORO

I

AT A RAILWAY STATION

Seventh day of the sixth Month;--
twenty-sixth of Meiji.

Yesterday a telegram from Fukuoka announced that a desperate
criminal captured there would be brought for trial to Kumamoto
to-day, on the train due at noon. A Kumamoto policeman had gone
to Fukuoka to take the prisoner in charge.

Four years ago a strong thief entered some house by night in the
Street of the Wrestlers, terrified and bound the inmates, and
carried away a number of valuable things. Tracked skillfully by
the police, he was captured within twenty-four hours,--even
before he could dispose of his plunder. But as he was being taken
to the police station he burst his bonds, snatched the sword of
his captor, killed him, and escaped. Nothing more was heard of
him until last week.

Then a Kumamoto detective, happening to visit the Fukuoka prison,
saw among the toilers a face that had been four years
photographed upon his brain. "Who is that man?" he asked the
guard. "A thief," was the reply,--"registered here as Kusabe."
The detective walked up to the prisoner and said:--

"Kusabe is not your name. Nomura Teichi, you are needed in
Kumamoto for murder." The felon confessed all.


I went with a great throng of people to witness the arrival at
the station. I expected to hear and see anger; I even feared
possibilities of violence. The murdered officer had been much
liked; his relatives would certainly be among the spectators; and
a Kumamoto crowd is not very gentle. I also thought to find many
police on duty. My anticipations were wrong.

The train halted in the usual scene of hurry and noise,--scurry
and clatter of passengers wearing geta,--screaming of boys
wanting to sell Japanese newspapers and Kumamoto lemonade.
Outside the barrier we waited for nearly five minutes. Then,
pushed through the wicket by a police-sergeant, the prisoner
appeared,--a large wild-looking man, with head bowed down, and
arms fastened behind his back. Prisoner and guard both halted in
front of the wicket; and the people pressed forward to see--but
in silence. Then the officer called out,--

"Sugihara San! Sugihara O-Kibi! is she present?"

A slight small woman standing near me, with a child on her back,
answered, "Hai!" and advanced through the press. This was the
widow of the murdered man; the child she carried was his son. At
a wave of the officer's hand the crowd fell back, so as to leave
a clear space about the prisoner and his escort. In that space
the woman with the child stood facing the murderer. The hush was
of death.

Not to the woman at all, but to the child only, did the officer
then speak. He spoke low, but so clearly that I could catch every
syllable:--

"Little one, this is the man who killed your father four years
ago. You had not yet been born; you were in your mother's womb.
That you have no father to love you now is the doing of this man.
Look at him--[here the officer, putting a hand to the prisoner's
chin, sternly forced him to lift his eyes]--look well at him,
little boy! Do not be afraid. It is painful; but it is your duty.
Look at him!"

Over the mother's shoulder the boy gazed with eyes widely open,
as in fear; then he began to sob; then tears came; but steadily
and obediently he still looked--looked--looked--straight into the
cringing face.

The crowd seemed to have stopped breathing.

I saw the prisoner's features distort; I saw him suddenly dash
himself down upon his knees despite his fetters, and beat his
face into the dust, crying out the while in a passion of hoarse
remorse that made one's heart shake:--

"Pardon! pardon! pardon me, little one! That I did--not for hate
was it done, but in mad fear only, in my desire to escape. Very,
very wicked have I been; great unspeakable wrong have I done you!
But now for my sin I go to die. I wish to die; I am glad to die!
Therefore, O little one, be pitiful!--forgive me!"

The child still cried silently. The officer raised the shaking
criminal; the dumb crowd parted left and right to let them by.
Then, quite suddenly, the whole multitude began to sob. And as
the bronzed guardian passed, I saw what I had never seen before,
--what few men ever see,--what I shall probably never see again,
--the tears of a Japanese policeman.

The crowd ebbed, and left me musing on the strange morality of
the spectacle. Here was justice unswerving yet compassionate,--
forcing knowledge of a crime by the pathetic witness of its
simplest result. Here was desperate remorse, praying only for
pardon before death. And here was a populace--perhaps the most
dangerous in the Empire when angered--comprehending all, touched
by all, satisfied with the contrition and the shame, and filled,
not with wrath, but only with the great sorrow of the
sin,--through simple deep experience of the difficulties of life
and the weaknesses of human nature.

But the most significant, because the most Oriental, fact of the
episode was that the appeal to remorse had been made through the
criminal's sense of fatherhood,--that potential love of children
which is so large a part of the soul of every Japanese.

There is a story that the most famous of all Japanese robbers,
Ishikawa Goemon, once by night entering a house to kill and
steal, was charmed by the smile of a baby which reached out hands
to him, and that he remained playing with the little creature
until all chance of carrying out his purpose was lost.

It is not hard to believe this story. Every year the police
records tell of compassion shown to children by professional
criminals. Some months ago a terrible murder case was reported in
the local papers,--the slaughter of a household by robbers. Seven
persons had been literally hewn to pieces while asleep; but the
police discovered a little boy quite unharmed, crying alone in a
pool of blood; and they found evidence unmistakable that the men
who slew must have taken great care not to hurt the child.



II


THE GENIUS OF JAPANESE CIVILIZATION

I

Without losing a single ship or a single battle, Japan has broken
down the power of China, made a new Korea, enlarged her own
territory, and changed the whole political face of the East.
Astonishing as this has seemed politically, it is much more
astonishing psychologically; for it represents the result of a
vast play of capacities with which the race had never been
credited abroad,--capacities of a very high order. The
psychologist knows that the so-called "adoption of Western
civilization" within a time of thirty years cannot mean the
addition to the Japanese brain of any organs or powers previously
absent from it. He knows that it cannot mean any sudden change in
the mental or moral character of the race. Such changes are not
made in a generation. Transmitted civilization works much more
slowly, requiring even hundreds of years to produce certain
permanent psychological results.

It is in this light that Japan appears the most extraordinary
country in the world; and the most wonderful thing in the whole
episode of her "Occidentalization" is that the race brain could
bear so heavy a shock. Nevertheless, though the fact be unique in
human history, what does it really mean? Nothing more than
rearrangement of a part of the pre-existing machinery of thought.
Even that, for thousands of brave young minds, was death. The
adoption of Western civilization was not nearly such an easy
matter as un-thinking persons imagined. And it is quite evident
that the mental readjustments, effected at a cost which remains
to be told, have given good results only along directions in
which the race had always shown capacities of special kinds.
Thus, the appliances of Western industrial invention have worked
admirably in Japanese hands,--have produced excellent results in
those crafts at which the nation had been skillful, in other and
quainter ways, for ages. There has been no transformation,

--nothing more than the turning of old abilities into new and
larger channels. The scientific professions tell the same story.
For certain forms of science, such as medicine, surgery (there
are no better surgeons in the world than the
Japanese), chemistry, microscopy, the Japanese genius is
naturally adapted; and in all these it has done work already
heard of round the world. In war and statecraft it has shown
wonderful power; but throughout their history the Japanese have
been characterized by great military and political capacity.
Nothing remarkable has been done, however, in directions foreign
to the national genius. In the study, for example, of Western
music, Western art, Western literature, time would seem to have
been simply wasted(1). These things make appeal extraordinary to
emotional life with us; they make no such appeal to Japanese
emotional life. Every serious thinker knows that emotional
transformation of the individual through education is impossible.
To imagine that the emotional character of an Oriental race could
be transformed in the short space of thirty years, by the contact
of Occidental ideas, is absurd. Emotional life, which is older
than intellectual life, and deeper, can no more be altered
suddenly by a change of milieu than the surface of a mirror can
be changed by passing reflections. All that Japan has been able
to do so miraculously well has been done without any
self-transformation; and those who imagine her emotionally closer
to us to-day than she may have been thirty years ago ignore facts
of science which admit of no argument.

Sympathy is limited by comprehension. We may sympathize to the
same degree that we understand. One may imagine that he
sympathizes with a Japanese or a Chinese; but the sympathy can
never be real to more than a small extent outside of the simplest
phases of common emotional life,--those phases in which child and
man are at one. The more complex feelings of the Oriental have
been composed by combinations of experiences, ancestral and
individual, which have had no really precise correspondence in
Western life, and which we can therefore not fully know. For
converse reasons, the Japanese cannot, even though they would,
give Europeans their best sympathy.

But while it remains impossible for the man of the West to
discern the true color of Japanese life, either intellectual or
emotional (since the one is woven into the other), it is equally
impossible for him to escape the conviction that, compared with
his own, it is very small. It is dainty; it holds delicate
potentialities of rarest interest and value; but it is otherwise
so small that Western life, by contrast with it, seems almost
supernatural. For we must judge visible and measurable
manifestations. So judging, what a contrast between the emotional
and intellectual worlds of West and East! Far less striking that
between the frail wooden streets of the Japanese capital and the
tremendous solidity of a thoroughfare in Paris or London. When
one compares the utterances which West and East have given to
their dreams, their aspirations, their sensations,--a Gothic
cathedral with a Shinto temple, an opera by Verdi or a trilogy by
Wagner with a performance of geisha, a European epic with a
Japanese poem,--how incalculable the difference in emotional
volume, in imaginative power, in artistic synthesis! True, our
music is an essentially modern art; but in looking back through
all our past the difference in creative force is scarcely less
marked,--not surely in the period of Roman magnificence, of
marble amphitheatres and of aqueducts spanning provinces, nor in
the Greek period of the divine in sculpture and of the supreme in
literature.


And this leads to the subject of another wonderful fact in the
sudden development of Japanese power. Where are the outward
material signs of that immense new force she has been showing
both in productivity and in war? Nowhere! That which we miss in
her emotional and intellectual life is missing also from her
industrial and commercial life,--largeness! The land remains what
it was before; its face has scarcely been modified by all the
changes of Meiji. The miniature railways and telegraph poles, the
bridges and tunnels, might almost escape notice in the ancient
green of the landscapes. In all the cities, with the exception of
the open ports and their little foreign settlements, there exists
hardly a street vista suggesting the teaching of Western ideas.
You might journey two hundred miles through the interior of the
country, looking in vain for large manifestations of the new
civilization. In no place do you find commerce exhibiting its
ambition in gigantic warehouses, or industry expanding its
machinery under acres of roofing. A Japanese city is still, as it
was ten centuries ago, little more than a wilderness of wooden
sheds,--picturesque, indeed, as paper lanterns are, but scarcely
less frail. And there is no great stir and noise anywhere,--no
heavy traffic, no booming and rumbling, no furious haste. In
Tokyo itself you may enjoy, if you wish, the peace of a country
village. This want of visible or audible signs of the new-found
force which is now menacing the markets of the West and changing
the maps of the far East gives one a queer, I might even say a
weird feeling. It is almost the sensation received when, after
climbing through miles of silence to reach some Shinto shrine,
you find voidness only and solitude,--an elfish, empty little
wooden structure, mouldering in shadows a thousand years old. The
strength of Japan, like the strength of her ancient faith, needs
little material display: both exist where the deepest real power
of any great people exists,--in the Race Ghost.

(1) In one limited sense, Western art has influenced Japanese.
literature and drama; but the character of the influence proves
the racial difference to which I refer. European plays have been
reshaped for the Japanese stage, and European novels rewritten
for Japanese readers. But a literal version is rarely attempted;
for the original incidents, thoughts, and emotions would be
unintelligible to the average reader or playgoer. Plots are
adopted; sentiments and incidents are totally transformed. "The
New Magdalen" becomes a Japanese girl who married an Eta. Victor
Hugo's _Les Miserables_ becomes a tale of the Japanese civil war;
and Enjolras a Japanese student. There have been a few rare
exceptions, including the marked success of a literal translation
of the _Sorrows of Werther_.



II

As I muse, the remembrance of a great city comes back to me,--a
city walled up to the sky and roaring like the sea. The memory of
that roar returns first; then the vision defines: a chasm, which
is a street, between mountains, which are houses. I am tired,
because I have walked many miles between those precipices of
masonry, and have trodden no earth,--only slabs of rock,--and
have heard nothing but thunder of tumult. Deep below those huge
pavements I know there is a cavernous world tremendous: systems
underlying systems of ways contrived for water and steam and
fire. On either hand tower facades pierced by scores of tiers of
windows,--cliffs of architecture shutting out the sun. Above, the
pale blue streak of sky is cut by a maze of spidery lines,--an
infinite cobweb of electric wires. In that block on the right
there dwell nine thousand souls; the tenants of the edifice
facing it pay the annual rent of a million dollars. Seven
millions scarcely covered the cost of those bulks overshadowing
the square beyond,--and there are miles of such. Stairways of
steel and cement, of brass and stone, with costliest balustrades,
ascend through the decades and double-decades of stories; but no
foot treads them. By water-power, by steam, by electricity, men
go up and down; the heights are too dizzy, the distances too
great, for the use of the limbs. My friend who pays rent of five
thousand dollars for his rooms in the fourteenth story of a
monstrosity not far off has never trodden his stairway. I am
walking for curiosity alone; with a serious purpose I should not
walk: the spaces are too broad, the time is too precious, for
such slow exertion,--men travel from district to district, from
house to office, by steam. Heights are too great for the voice to
traverse; orders are given and obeyed by machinery. By
electricity far-away doors are opened; with one touch a hundred
rooms are lighted or heated.

And all this enormity is hard, grim, dumb; it is the enormity of
mathematical power applied to utilitarian ends of solidity and
durability. These leagues of palaces, of warehouses, of business
structures, of buildings describable and indescribable, are not
beautiful, but sinister. One feels depressed by the mere
sensation of the enormous life which created them, life without
sympathy; of their prodigious manifestation of power, power
without pity. They are the architectural utterance of the new
industrial age. And there is no halt in the thunder of wheels, in
the storming of hoofs and of human feet. To ask a question, one
must shout into the ear of the questioned; to see, to understand,
to move in that high-pressure medium, needs experience. The
unaccustomed feels the sensation of being in a panic, in a
tempest, in a cyclone. Yet all this is order.

The monster streets leap rivers, span sea-ways, with bridges of
stone, bridges of steel. Far as the eye can reach, a bewilderment
of masts, a web-work of rigging, conceals the shores, which are
cliffs of masonry. Trees in a forest stand less thickly, branches
in a forest mingle less closely, than the masts and spars of that
immeasurable maze. Yet all is order.



III

Generally speaking, we construct for endurance, the Japanese for
impermanency. Few things for common use are made in Japan with a
view to durability. The straw sandals worn out and replaced at
each stage of a journey, the robe consisting of a few simple
widths loosely stitched together for wearing, and unstitched
again for washing, the fresh chopsticks served to each new guest
at a hotel, the light shoji frames serving at once for windows
and walls, and repapered twice a year; the mattings renewed every
autumn,--all these are but random examples of countless small
things in daily life that illustrate the national contentment
with impermanency.

What is the story of a common Japanese dwelling? Leaving my home
in the morning, I observe, as I pass the corner of the next
street crossing mine, some men setting up bamboo poles on a
vacant lot there. Returning after five hours' absence, I find on
the same lot the skeleton of a two-story house. Next forenoon I
see that the walls are nearly finished already,--mud and wattles.
By sundown the roof has been completely tiled. On the following
morning I observe that the mattings have been put down, and the
inside plastering has been finished. In five days the house is
completed. This, of course, is a cheap building; a fine one would
take much longer to put up and finish. But Japanese cities are
for the most part composed of such common buildings. They are as
cheap as they are simple.

I cannot now remember where I first met with the observation that
the curve of the Chinese roof might preserve the memory of the
nomad tent. The idea haunted me long after I had ungratefully
forgotten the book in which I found it; and when I first saw, in
Izumo, the singular structure of the old Shinto temples, with
queer cross-projections at their gable-ends and upon their
roof-ridges, the suggestion of the forgotten essayist about the
possible origin of much less ancient forms returned to me with
great force. But there is much in Japan besides primitive
architectural traditions to indicate a nomadic ancestry for the
race. Always and everywhere there is a total absence of what we
would call solidity; and the characteristics of impermanence seem
to mark almost everything in the exterior life of the people,
except, indeed, the immemorial costume of the peasant and the
shape of the implements of his toil. Not to dwell upon the fact
that even during the comparatively brief period of her written
history Japan has had more than sixty capitals, of which the
greater number have completely disappeared, it may be broadly
stated that every Japanese city is rebuilt within the time of a
generation. Some temples and a few colossal fortresses offer
exceptions; but, as a general rule, the Japanese city changes its
substance, if not its form, in the lifetime of a man. Fires,
earth-quakes, and many other causes partly account for this; the
chief reason, however, is that houses are not built to last. The
common people have no ancestral homes. The dearest spot to all
is, not the place of birth, but the place of burial; and there is
little that is permanent save the resting-places of the dead and
the sites of the ancient shrines.

The land itself is a land of impermanence. Rivers shift their
courses, coasts their outline, plains their level; volcanic peaks
heighten or crumble; valleys are blocked by lava-floods or
landslides; lakes appear and disappear. Even the matchless shape
of Fuji, that snowy miracle which has been the inspiration of
artists for centuries, is said to have been slightly changed
since my advent to the country; and not a few other mountains
have in the same short time taken totally new forms. Only the
general lines of the land, the general aspects of its nature, the
general character of the seasons, remain fixed. Even the very
beauty of the landscapes is largely illusive,--a beauty of
shifting colors and moving mists. Only he to whom those
landscapes are familiar can know how their mountain vapors make
mockery of real changes which have been, and ghostly predictions
of other changes yet to be, in the history of the archipelago.

The gods, indeed, remain,--haunt their homes upon the hills,
diffuse a soft religious awe through the twilight of their
groves, perhaps because they are without form and substance.
Their shrines seldom pass utterly into oblivion, like the
dwellings of men. But every Shinto temple is necessarily rebuilt
at more or less brief intervals; and the holiest,--the shrine of
Ise,--in obedience to immemorial custom, must be demolished every
twenty years, and its timbers cut into thousands of tiny charms,
which are distributed to pilgrims.


From Aryan India, through China, came Buddhism, with its vast
doctrine of impermanency. The builders of the first Buddhist
temples in Japan--architects of another race--built well: witness
the Chinese structures at Kamakura that have survived so many
centuries, while of the great city which once surrounded them not
a trace remains. But the psychical influence of Buddhism could in
no land impel minds to the love of material stability. The
teaching that the universe is an illusion; that life is but one
momentary halt upon an infinite journey; that all attachment to
persons, to places, or to things must be fraught with sorrow;
that only through suppression of every desire--even the desire of
Nirvana itself--can humanity reach the eternal peace, certainly
harmonized with the older racial feeling. Though the people never
much occupied themselves with the profounder philosophy of the
foreign faith, its doctrine of impermanency must, in course of
time, have profoundly influenced national character. It explained
and consoled; it imparted new capacity to bear all things
bravely; it strengthened that patience which is a trait of the
race. Even in Japanese art--developed, if not actually created,
under Buddhist influence--the doctrine of impermanency has left
its traces. Buddhism taught that nature was a dream, an illusion,
a phantasmagoria; but it also taught men how to seize the
fleeting impressions of that dream, and how to interpret them in
relation to the highest truth. And they learned well. In the
flushed splendor of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming
and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn
foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of
wave or cloud, they saw old parables of perpetual meaning. Even
their calamities--fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence--
interpreted to them unceasingly the doctrine of the eternal
Vanishing.

_All things which exist in Time must perish. The forests, the
mountains,--all things thus exist. In Time are born all things
having desire._

_The Sun and Moon, Sakra himself with all the multitude of his
attendants, will all, without exception, perish; there is not one
that will endure._

_In the beginning things were fixed; in the end again they
separate: different combinations cause other substance; for in
nature there is no uniform and constant principle._

_All component things must grow old; impermanent are all
component things. Even unto a grain of sesamum seed there is no
such thing as a compound which is permanent. All are transient;
all have the inherent quality of dissolution._

_All component things, without exception, are impermanent,
unstable, despicable, sure to depart, disintegrating; all are
temporary as a mirage, as a phantom, or as foam.... Even as all
earthen vessels made by the potter end in being broken, so end
the lives of men._

_And a belief in matter itself is unmentionable and
inexpressible,--it is neither a thing nor no-thing: and this is
known even by children and ignorant persons._



IV

Now it is worth while to inquire if there be not some
compensatory value attaching to this impermanency and this
smallness in the national life.


Nothing is more characteristic of that life than its extreme
fluidity. The Japanese population represents a medium whose
particles are in perpetual circulation. The motion is in itself
peculiar. It is larger and more eccentric than the motion of
Occidental populations, though feebler between points. It is also
much more natural,--so natural that it could not exist in Western
civilization. The relative mobility of a European population and
the Japanese population might be expressed by a comparison
between certain high velocities of vibration and certain low
ones. But the high velocities would represent, in such a
comparison, the consequence of artificial force applied; the
slower vibrations would not. And this difference of kind would
mean more than surface indications could announce. In one sense,
Americans may be right in thinking themselves great travelers. In
another, they are certainly wrong; the man of the people in
America cannot compare, as a traveler, with the man of the people
in Japan. And of course, in considering relative mobility of
populations, one must consider chiefly the great masses, the
workers,--not merely the small class of wealth. In their own
country, the Japanese are the greatest travelers of any civilized
people. They are the greatest travelers because, even in a land
composed mainly of mountain chains, they recognize no obstacles
to travel. The Japanese who travels most is not the man who needs
railways or steamers to carry him.

Now, with us, the common worker is incomparably less free than
the common worker in Japan. He is less free because of the more
complicated mechanism of Occidental societies, whose forces tend
to agglomeration and solid integration. He is less free because
the social and industrial machinery on which he must depend
reshapes him to its own particular requirements, and always so as
to evolve some special and artificial capacity at the cost of
other inherent capacity. He is less free because he must live at
a standard making it impossible for him to win financial
independence by mere thrift. To achieve any such independence, he
must possess exceptional character and exceptional faculties
greater than those of thousands of exceptional competitors
equally eager to escape from the same thralldom. In brief, then,
he is less independent because the special character of his
civilization numbs his natural power to live without the help of
machinery or large capital. To live thus artificially means to
lose, sooner or later, the power of independent movement. Before
a Western man can move he has many things to consider. Before a
Japanese moves he has nothing to consider. He simply leaves the
place he dislikes, and goes to the place he wishes, without any
trouble. There is nothing to prevent him. Poverty is not an
obstacle, but a stimulus. Impedimenta he has none, or only such
as he can dispose of in a few minutes. Distances have no
significance for him. Nature has given him perfect feet that can
spring him over fifty miles a day without pain; a stomach whose
chemistry can extract ample nourishment from food on which no
European could live; and a constitution that scorns heat, cold,
and damp alike, because still unimpaired by unhealthy clothing,
by superfluous comforts, by the habit of seeking warmth from
grates and stoves, and by the habit of wearing leather shoes.

It seems to me that the character of our footgear signifies more
than is commonly supposed. The footgear represents in itself a
check upon individual freedom. It signifies this even in
costliness; but in form it signifies infinitely more. It has
distorted the Western foot out of the original shape, and
rendered it incapable of the work for which it was evolved. The
physical results are not limited to the foot. Whatever acts as a
check, directly or indirectly, upon the organs of locomotion must
extend its effects to the whole physical constitution. Does the
evil stop even there? Perhaps we submit to conventions the most
absurd of any existing in any civilization because we have too
long submitted to the tyranny of shoemakers. There may be defects
in our politics, in our social ethics, in our religious system,
more or less related to the habit of wearing leather shoes.
Submission to the cramping of the body must certainly aid in
developing submission to the cramping of the mind.

The Japanese man of the people--the skilled laborer able to
underbid without effort any Western artisan in the same line of
industry--remains happily independent of both shoemakers and
tailors. His feet are good to look at, his body is healthy, and
his heart is free. If he desire to travel a thousand miles, he
can get ready for his journey in five minutes. His whole outfit
need not cost seventy-five cents; and all his baggage can be put
into a handkerchief. On ten dollars he can travel for a year
without work, or he can travel simply on his ability to work, or
he can travel as a pilgrim. You may reply that any savage can do
the same thing. Yes, but any civilized man cannot; and the
Japanese has been a highly civilized man for at least a thousand
years. Hence his present capacity to threaten Western
manufacturers.

We have been too much accustomed to associate this kind of
independent mobility with the life of our own beggars and tramps,
to have any just conception of its intrinsic meaning. We have
thought of it also in connection with unpleasant
things,--uncleanliness and bad smells. But, as Professor
Chamberlain has well said, "a Japanese crowd is the sweetest in
the world" Your Japanese tramp takes his hot bath daily, if he
has a fraction of a cent to pay for it, or his cold bath, if he
has not. In his little bundle there are combs, toothpicks,
razors, toothbrushes. He never allows himself to become
unpleasant. Reaching his destination, he can transform himself
into a visitor of very nice manners, and faultless though simple
attire(1).

Ability to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the
least possible amount of neat clothing, shows more than the
advantage held by this Japanese race in the struggle of life; it
shows also the real character of some weaknesses in our own
civilization. It forces reflection upon the useless multiplicity
of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread and butter; glass
windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen underwear; boots
and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses,
sheets, and blankets: all of which a Japanese can do without, and
is really better off without. Think for a moment how important an
article of Occidental attire is the single costly item of white
shirts! Yet even the linen shirt, the so-called "badge of a
gentleman," is in itself a useless garment. It gives neither
warmth nor comfort. It represents in our fashions the survival of
something once a luxurious class distinction, but to-day
meaningless and useless as the buttons sewn on the outside of
coat-sleeves.

(1) Critics have tried to make fun of Sir Edwin Arnold's
remark that a Japanese crowd smells like a geranium-flower. Yet
the simile is exact! The perfume called jako, when sparingly
used, might easily be taken for the odor of a musk-geranium. In
almost any Japanese assembly including women a slight perfume of
jako is discernible; for the robes worn have been laid in drawers
containing a few grains of jako. Except for this delicate scent,
a Japanese crowd is absolutely odorless.


V

The absence of any huge signs of the really huge things that
Japan has done bears witness to the very peculiar way in which
her civilization has been working. It cannot forever so work; but
it has so worked thus far with amazing success. Japan is
producing without capital, in our large sense of the word. She
has become industrial without becoming essentially mechanical and
artificial. The vast rice crop is raised upon millions of tiny,
tiny farms; the silk crop, in millions of small poor homes, the
tea crop, on countless little patches of soil. If you visit Kyoto
to order something from one of the greatest porcelain makers in
the world, one whose products are known better in London and in
Paris than even in Japan, you will find the factory to be a
wooden cottage in which no American farmer would live. The
greatest maker of cloisonne vases, who may ask you two hundred
dollars for something five inches high, produces his miracles
behind a two-story frame dwelling containing perhaps six small
rooms. The best girdles of silk made in Japan, and famous
throughout the Empire, are woven in a house that cost scarcely
five hundred dollars to build. The work is, of course,
hand-woven. But the factories weaving by machinery--and weaving
so well as to ruin foreign industries of far vaster capacity--are
hardly more imposing, with very few exceptions. Long, light, low
one-story or two-story sheds they are, about as costly to erect
as a row of wooden stables with us. Yet sheds like these turn out
silks that sell all round the world. Sometimes only by inquiry,
or by the humming of the machinery, can you distinguish a factory
from an old yashiki, or an old-fashioned Japanese school
building,--unless indeed you can read the Chinese characters over
the garden gate. Some big brick factories and breweries exist;
but they are very few, and even when close to the foreign
settlements they seem incongruities in the landscape.

Our own architectural monstrosities and our Babels of machinery
have been brought into existence by vast integrations of
industrial capital. But such integrations do not exist in the Far
East; indeed, the capital to make them does not exist. And
supposing that in the course of a few generations there should
form in Japan corresponding combinations of money power, it is
not easy to suppose correspondences in architectural
construction. Even two-story edifices of brick have given bad
results in the leading commercial centre; and earthquakes seem to
condemn Japan to perpetual simplicity in building. The very land
revolts against the imposition of Western architecture, and
occasionally even opposes the new course of traffic by pushing
railroad lines out of level and out of shape.

Not industry alone still remains thus unintegrated; government
itself exhibits a like condition. Nothing is fixed except the
Throne. Perpetual change is identical with state policy.
Ministers, governors, superintendents, inspectors, all high civil
and military officials, are shifted at irregular and surprisingly
short intervals, and hosts of smaller officials scatter each time
with the whirl. The province in which I passed the first
twelvemonth of my residence in Japan has had four different
governors in five years. During my stay at Kumamoto, and before
the war had begun, the military command of that important post
was three times changed. The government college had in three
years three directors. In educational circles, especially, the
rapidity of such changes has been phenomenal. There have been five
different ministers of education in my own time, and more than
five different educational policies. The twenty-six thousand
public schools are so related in their management to the local
assemblies that, even were no other influences at work, constant
change would be inevitable because of the changes in the
assemblies. Directors and teachers keep circling from post to
post; there are men little more than thirty years old who have
taught in almost every province of the country. That any
educational system could have produced any great results under
these conditions seems nothing short of miraculous.

We are accustomed to think that some degree of stability is
necessary to all real progress, all great development. But Japan
has given proof irrefutable that enormous development is possible
without any stability at all. The explanation is in the race
character,--a race character in more ways than one the very
opposite of our own. Uniformly mobile, and thus uniformly
impressionable, the nation has moved unitedly in the direction of
great ends, submitting the whole volume of its forty millions to
be moulded by the ideas of its rulers, even as sand or as water
is shaped by wind. And this submissiveness to reshaping belongs
to the old conditions of its soul life,--old conditions of rare
unselfishness and perfect faith. The relative absence from the
national character of egotistical individualism has been the
saving of an empire; has enabled a great people to preserve its
independence against prodigious odds. Wherefore Japan may well be
grateful to her two great religions, the creators and the
preservers of her moral power to Shinto, which taught the
individual to think of his Emperor and of his country before
thinking either of his own family or of himself; and to Buddhism,
which trained him to master regret, to endure pain, and to accept
as eternal law the vanishing of things loved and the tyranny of
things hated.


To-day there is visible a tendency to hardening,--a danger of
changes leading to the integration of just such an officialism as
that which has proved the curse and the weakness of China. The
moral results of the new education have not been worthy of the
material results. The charge of want of "individuality," in the
accepted sense of pure selfishness, will scarcely be made against
the Japanese of the next century. Even the compositions of
students already reflect the new conception of intellectual
strength only as a weapon of offense, and the new sentiment of
aggressive egotism. "Impermanency," writes one, with a fading
memory of Buddhism in his mind, "is the nature of our life. We
see often persons who were rich yesterday, and are poor to-day.
This is the result of human competition, according to the law of
evolution. We are exposed to that competition. We must fight each
other, even if we are not inclined to do so. With what sword
shall we fight? With the sword of knowledge, forged by
education."

Well, there are two forms of the cultivation of Self. One leads
to the exceptional development of the qualities which are noble,
and the other signifies something about which the less said the
better. But it is not the former which the New Japan is now
beginning to study. I confess to being one of those who believe
that the human heart, even in the history of a race, may be worth
infinitely more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner
or later prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the
cruel enigmas of the Sphinx of Life. I still believe that the old
Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are
we, just because they recognized moral beauty as greater than
intellectual beauty. And, by way of conclusion, I may venture to
quote from an article on education by Ferdinand Brunetiere:--

"All our educational measures will prove vain, if there be no
effort to force into the mind, and to deeply impress upon it, the
sense of those fine words of Lamennais: '_Human society is based
upon mutual giving, or upon the sacrifice of man for man, or of
each man for all other men; and sacrifice is the very essence of
all true society._' It is this that we have been unlearning for
nearly a century; and if we have to put ourselves to school
afresh, it will be in order that we may learn it again. Without
such knowledge there can be no society and no education,--not, at
least, if the object of education be to form man for society.
Individualism is to-day the enemy of education, as it is also the
enemy of social order. It has not been so always; but it has so
become. It will not be so forever; but it is so now. And without
striving to destroy it-which would mean to fall from one extreme
into another--we must recognize that, no matter what we wish to
do for the family, for society, for education, and for the
country, it is against individualism that the work will have to
be done."



III

A STREET SINGER

A woman carrying a samisen, and accompanied by a little boy seven
or eight years old, came to my house to sing. She wore the dress
of a peasant, and a blue towel tied round her head. She was ugly;
and her natural ugliness had been increased by a cruel attack of
smallpox. The child carried a bundle of printed ballads.

Neighbors then began to crowd into my front yard,--mostly young
mothers and nurse girls with babies on their backs, but old women
and men likewise--the inkyo of the vicinity. Also the
jinrikisha-men came from their stand at the next street-corner;
and presently there was no more room within the gate.


The woman sat down on my doorstep, tuned her samisen, played a
bar of accompaniment,--and a spell descended upon the people; and
they stared at each other in smiling amazement.

For out of those ugly disfigured lips there gushed and rippled a
miracle of a voice--young, deep, unutterably touching in its
penetrating sweetness. "Woman or wood-fairy?" queried a
bystander. Woman only,--but a very, very great artist. The way
she handled her instrument might have astounded the most skillful
geisha; but no such voice had ever been heard from any geisha,
and no such song. She sang as only a peasant can sing,--with
vocal rhythms learned, perhaps, from the cicada and the wild
nightingales,--and with fractions and semi-fractions and
demi-semi-fractions of tones never written down in the musical
language of the West.

And as she sang, those who listened began to weep silently. I did
not distinguish the words; but I felt the sorrow and the
sweetness and the patience of the life of Japan pass with her
voice into my heart,--plaintively seeking for something never
there. A tenderness invisible seemed to gather and quiver about
us; and sensations of places and of times forgotten came softly
back, mingled with feelings ghostlier,--feelings not of any place
or time in living memory.

Then I saw that the singer was blind.


When the song was finished, we coaxed the woman into the house,
and questioned her. Once she had been fairly well to do, and had
learned the samisen when a girl. The little boy was her son. Her
husband was paralyzed. Her eyes had been destroyed by smallpox.
But she was strong, and able to walk great distances. When the
child became tired, she would carry him on her back. She could
support the little one, as well as the bed-ridden husband,
because whenever she sang the people cried, and gave her coppers
and food.... Such was her story. We gave her some money and a
meal; and she went away, guided by her boy.


I bought a copy of the ballad, which was about a recent double
suicide: "_The sorrowful ditty of Tamayone and Takejiro,--
composed by Tabenaka Yone of Number Fourteen of the Fourth Ward
of Nippon-bashi in the South District of the City of Osaka_." It
had evidently been printed from a wooden block; and there were
two little pictures. One showed a girl and boy sorrowing
together. The other--a sort of tail-piece--represented a
writing-stand, a dying lamp, an open letter, incense burning in a cup,
and a vase containing shikimi,--that sacred plant used in the
Buddhist ceremony of making offerings to the dead. The queer
cursive text, looking like shorthand written perpendicularly,
yielded to translation only lines like these:--

"In the First Ward of Nichi-Hommachi, in far-famed Osaka--
_O the sorrow of this tale of shinju!_

"Tamayone, aged nineteen,--to see her was to love her, for
Takejiro, the young workman.

"For the time of two lives they exchange mutual vows--
_O the sorrow of loving a courtesan!_

"On their arms they tattoo a Raindragon, and the character
'Bamboo'--thinking never of the troubles of life....

"But he cannot pay the fifty-five yen for her freedom--
_O the anguish of Takejiro's heart!_

"Both then vow to pass away together, since never in this world
can they become husband and wife....

"Trusting to her comrades for incense and for flowers--
_O the pity of their passing like the dew!_

"Tamayone takes the wine-cup filled with water only, in which
those about to die pledge each other....

"_O the tumult of the lovers' suicide!--O the pity of their lives
thrown away!_"

In short, there was nothing very unusual in the story, and
nothing at all remarkable in the verse. All the wonder of the
performance had been in the voice of the woman. But long after
the singer had gone that voice seemed still to stay,--making
within me a sense of sweetness and of sadness so strange that I
could not but try to explain to myself the secret of those
magical tones.

And I thought that which is hereafter set down:--


All song, all melody, all music, means only some evolution of the
primitive natural utterance of feeling,--of that untaught speech
of sorrow, joy, or passion, whose words are tones. Even as other
tongues vary, so varies this language of tone combinations.
Wherefore melodies which move us deeply have no significance to
Japanese ears; and melodies that touch us not at all make
powerful appeal to the emotion of a race whose soul-life differs
from our own as blue differs from yellow....Still, what is the
reason of the deeper feelings evoked in me--an alien--by this
Oriental chant that I could never even learn,--by this common
song of a blind woman of the people? Surely that in the voice of
the singer there were qualities able to make appeal to something
larger than the sum of the experience of one race,--to something
wide as human life, and ancient as the knowledge of good and
evil.


One summer evening, twenty-five years ago, in a London park, I
heard a girl say "Good-night" to somebody passing by. Nothing but
those two little words,--"Good-night." Who she was I do not know:
I never even saw her face; and I never heard that voice again.
But still, after the passing of one hundred seasons, the memory
of her "Good-night" brings a double thrill incomprehensible of
pleasure and pain,--pain and pleasure, doubtless, not of me, not
of my own existence, but of pre-existences and dead suns.

For that which makes the charm of a voice thus heard but once
cannot be of this life. It is of lives innumerable and forgotten.
Certainly there never have been two voices having precisely the
same quality. But in the utterance of affection there is a
tenderness of timbre common to the myriad million voices of all
humanity. Inherited memory makes familiar to even the newly-born
the meaning of the tone of caress. Inherited, no doubt,
likewise, our knowledge of the tones of sympathy, of grief, of
pity. And so the chant of a blind woman in this city of the Far
East may revive in even a Western mind emotion deeper than
individual being,--vague dumb pathos of forgotten sorrows,--dim
loving impulses of generations unremembered. The dead die never
utterly. They sleep in the darkest cells of tired hearts and busy
brains,--to be startled at rarest moments only by the echo of
some voice that recalls their past.



IV


FROM A TRAVELING DIARY

I

OSAKA-KYOTO RAILWAY.
April 15, 1895.

Feeling drowsy in a public conveyance, and not being able to lie
down, a Japanese woman will lift her long sleeve before her face
ere she begins to nod. In this second-class railway-carriage
there are now three women asleep in a row, all with faces
screened by the left sleeve, and all swaying together with the
rocking of the train, like lotos-flowers in a soft current. (This
use of the left sleeve is either fortuitous or instinctive;
probably instinctive, as the right hand serves best to cling to
strap or seat in case of shock.) The spectacle is at once pretty
and funny, but especially pretty, as exemplifying that grace with
which a refined Japanese woman does everything,--always in the
daintiest and least selfish way possible. It is pathetic, too,
for the attitude is also that of sorrow, and sometimes of weary
prayer. All because of the trained sense of duty to show only
one's happiest face to the world.

Which fact reminds me of an experience.

A male servant long in my house seemed to me the happiest of
mortals. He laughed invariably when spoken to, looked always
delighted while at work, appeared to know nothing of the small
troubles of life. But one day I peeped at him when he thought
himself quite alone, and his relaxed face startled me. It was not
the face I had known. Hard lines of pain and anger appeared in
it, making it seem twenty years older. I coughed gently to
announce my presence. At once the face smoothed, softened,
lighted up as by a miracle of rejuvenation. Miracle, indeed, of
perpetual unselfish self-control.


II

Kyoto, April 16.

The wooden shutters before my little room in the hotel are pushed
away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji,
across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of a
little peach-tree. No mortal artist--not even a Japanese--could
surpass that silhouette! Limned in dark blue against the yellow
glow, the marvelous image even shows stronger or fainter tones
according to the varying distance of the unseen branches outside.
it sets me thinking about the possible influence on Japanese art
of the use of paper for house-lighting purposes.

By night a Japanese house with only its shoji closed looks like a
great paper-sided lantern,--a magic-lantern making moving shadows
within, instead of without itself. By day the shadows on the
shoji are from outside only; but they may be very wonderful at
the first rising of the sun, if his beams are leveled, as in this
instance, across a space of quaint garden.

There is certainly nothing absurd in that old Greek story which
finds the origin of art in the first untaught attempt to trace
upon some wall the outline of a lover's shadow. Very possibly all
sense of art, as well as all sense of the supernatural, had its
simple beginnings in the study of shadows. But shadows on shoji
are so remarkable as to suggest explanation of certain Japanese
faculties of drawing by no means primitive, but developed beyond
all parallel, and otherwise difficult to account for. Of course,
the quality of Japanese paper, which takes shadows better than
any frosted glass, must be considered, and also the character of
the shadows themselves. Western vegetation, for example, could
scarcely furnish silhouettes so gracious as those of Japanese
garden-trees, all trained by centuries of caressing care to look
as lovely as Nature allows.

I wish the paper of my shoji could have been, like a photographic
plate, sensitive to that first delicious impression cast by a
level sun. I am already regretting distortions: the beautiful
silhouette has begun to lengthen.


III

Kyoto, April 16.

Of all peculiarly beautiful things in Japan, the most beautiful
are the approaches to high places of worship or of rest,--the
Ways that go to Nowhere and the Steps that lead to Nothing.

Certainly, their special charm is the charm of the adventitious,
--the effect of man's handiwork in union with Nature's finest
moods of light and form and color,--a charm which vanishes on
rainy days; but it is none the less wonderful because fitful.

Perhaps the ascent begins with a sloping paved avenue, half a
mile long, lined with giant trees. Stone monsters guard the way
at regular intervals. Then you come to some great flight of steps
ascending through green gloom to a terrace umbraged by older and
vaster trees; and other steps from thence lead to other terraces,
all in shadow. And you climb and climb and climb, till at last,
beyond a gray torii, the goal appears: a small, void, colorless
wooden shrine,--a Shinto miya. The shock of emptiness thus
received, in the high silence and the shadows, after all the
sublimity of the long approach, is very ghostliness itself.

Of similar Buddhist experiences whole multitudes wait for those
who care to seek them. I might suggest, for example, a visit to
the grounds of Higashi Otani, which are in the city of Kyoto. A
grand avenue leads to the court of a temple, and from the court a
flight of steps fully fifty feet wide--massy, mossed, and
magnificently balustraded--leads to a walled terrace. The scene
makes one think of the approach to some Italian pleasure-garden
of Decameron days. But, reaching the terrace, you find only a
gate, opening--into a cemetery! Did the Buddhist
landscape-gardener wish to tell us that all pomp and power and
beauty lead only to such silence at last?


IV

KYOTO, April 10-20.

I have passed the greater part of three days in the national
Exhibition,--time barely sufficient to discern the general
character and significance of the display. It is essentially
industrial, but nearly all delightful, notwithstanding, because
of the wondrous application of art to all varieties of
production. Foreign merchants and keener observers than I find in
it other and sinister meaning,--the most formidable menace to
Occidental trade and industry ever made by the Orient. "Compared
with England," wrote a correspondent of the London Times, "it is
farthings for pennies throughout.... The story of the Japanese
invasion of Lancashire is older than that of the invasion of
Korea and China. It has been a conquest of peace,--a painless
process of depletion which is virtually achieved.... The Kyoto
display is proof of a further immense development of industrial
enterprise.... A country where laborers' hire is three shillings
a week, with all other domestic charges in proportion,
must--other things being equal--kill competitors whose expenses
are quadruple the Japanese scale." Certainly the industrial
jiujutsu promises unexpected results.

The price of admission to the Exhibition is a significant matter
also. Only five sen! Yet even at this figure an immense sum is
likely to be realized,--so great is the swarm of visitors.
Multitudes of peasants are pouring daily into the
city,--pedestrians mostly, just as for a pilgrimage. And a
pilgrimage for myriads the journey really is, because of the
inauguration festival of the greatest of Shinshu temples.

The art department proper I thought much inferior to that of the
Tokyo Exhibition of 1890. Fine things there were, but few.
Evidence, perhaps, of the eagerness with which the nation is
turning all its energies and talents in directions where money is
to be made; for in those larger departments where art is combined
with industry,--such as ceramics, enamels, inlaid work,
embroideries,--no finer and costlier work could ever have been
shown. Indeed, the high value of certain articles on display
suggested a reply to a Japanese friend who observed,
thoughtfully, "If China adopts Western industrial methods, she
will be able to underbid us in all the markets of the world."

"Perhaps in cheap production," I made answer. "But there is no
reason why Japan should depend wholly upon cheapness of
production. I think she may rely more securely upon her
superiority in art and good taste. The art-genius of a people may
have a special value against which all competition by cheap labor
is vain. Among Western nations, France offers an example. Her
wealth is not due to her ability to underbid her neighbors. Her
goods are the dearest in the world: she deals in things of luxury
and beauty. But they sell in all civilized countries because they
are the best of their kind. Why should not Japan become the
France of the Further East?"


The weakest part of the art display is that devoted to
oil-painting,--oil-painting in the European manner. No reason
exists why the Japanese should not be able to paint wonderfully
in oil by following their own particular methods of artistic
expression. But their attempts to follow Western methods have
even risen to mediocrity only in studies requiring very realistic
treatment. Ideal work in oil, according to Western canons of art,
is still out of their reach. Perhaps they may yet discover for
themselves a new gateway to the beautiful, even through
oil-painting, by adaptation of the method to the particular needs
of the race-genius; but there is yet no sign of such a tendency.

A canvas representing a perfectly naked woman looking at herself
in a very large mirror created a disagreeable impression. The
Japanese press had been requesting the removal of the piece, and
uttering comments not flattering to Western art ideas.
Nevertheless the canvas was by a Japanese painter. It was a daub;
but it had been boldly priced at three thousand dollars.

I stood near the painting for a while to observe its effect upon
the people,--peasants by a huge majority. They would stare at it,
laugh scornfully, utter some contemptuous phrase, and turn away
to examine the kakemono, which were really far more worthy of
notice though offered at prices ranging only from ten to fifty
yen. The comments were chiefly leveled at "foreign" ideas of good
taste (the figure having been painted with a European head). None
seemed to consider the thing as a Japanese work. Had it
represented a Japanese woman, I doubt whether the crowd would
have even tolerated its existence.

Now all this scorn for the picture itself was just. There was
nothing ideal in the work. It was simply the representation of a
naked woman doing what no woman could like to be seen doing. And
a picture of a mere naked woman, however well executed, is never
art if art means idealism. The realism of the thing was its
offensiveness. Ideal nakedness may be divine,--the most godly of
all human dreams of the superhuman. But a naked person is not
divine at all. Ideal nudity needs no girdle, because the charm is
of lines too beautiful to be veiled or broken. The living real
human body has no such divine geometry. Question: Is an artist
justified in creating nakedness for its own sake, unless he can
divest that nakedness of every trace of the real and personal?

There is a Buddhist text which truly declares that he alone is
wise who can see things without their individuality. And it is
this Buddhist way of seeing which makes the greatness of the true
Japanese art.


V

These thoughts came:--

That nudity which is divine, which is the abstract of beauty
absolute, gives to the beholder a shock of astonishment and
delight,--not unmixed with melancholy. Very few works of art give
this, because very few approach perfection. But there are marbles
and gems which give it, and certain fine studies of them, such as
the engravings published by the Society of Dilettanti. The longer
one looks, the more the wonder grows, since there appears no
line, or part of a line, whose beauty does not surpass all
remembrance. So the secret of such art was long thought
supernatural; and, in very truth, the sense of beauty it
communicates is more than human,--is superhuman, in the meaning
of that which is outside of existing life,--is therefore
supernatural as any sensation known to man can be.

What is the shock?

It resembles strangely, and is certainly akin to, that psychical
shock which comes with the first experience of love. Plato
explained the shock of beauty as being the Soul's sudden
half-remembrance of the World of Divine Ideas. "They who see here
any image or resemblance of the things which are there receive a
shock like a thunderbolt, and are, after a manner, taken out of
themselves." Schopenhauer explained, the shock of first love as
the Willpower of the Soul of the Race. The positive psychology of
Spencer declares in our own day that the most powerful of human
passions, when it makes its first appearance, is absolutely
antecedent to all individual experience. Thus do ancient thought
and modern--metaphysics and science--accord in recognizing that
the first deep sensation of human beauty known to the individual
is not individual at all.

Must not the same truth hold of that shock which supreme art
gives? The human ideal expressed in such art appeals surely to
the experience of all that Past enshrined in the emotional life
of the beholder,--to something inherited from innumerable
ancestors.

Innumerable indeed!

Allowing three generations to a century, and presupposing no
consanguineous marriages, a French mathematician estimates that
each existing individual of his nation would have in his veins
the blood of twenty millions of contemporaries of the year 1000.
Or calculating from the first year of our own era, the ancestry
of a man of to-day would represent a total of eighteen
quintillions. Yet what are twenty centuries to the time of the
life of man!

Well, the emotion of beauty, like all of our emotions, is
certainly the inherited product of unimaginably countless
experiences in an immeasurable past. In every aesthetic sensation
is the stirring of trillions of trillions of ghostly memories
buried in the magical soil of the brain. And each man carries
within him an ideal of beauty which is but an infinite composite
of dead perceptions of form, color, grace, once dear to look
upon. It is dormant, this ideal,--potential in essence,--cannot
be evoked at will before the imagination; but it may light up
electrically at any perception by the living outer senses of some
vague affinity. Then is felt that weird, sad, delicious thrill,
which accompanies the sudden backward-flowing of the tides of
life and time; then are the sensations of a million years and of
myriad generations summed into the emotional feeling of a moment.

Now, the artists of one civilization only--the Greeks--were able
to perform the miracle of disengaging the Race-Ideal of beauty
from their own souls, and fixing its wavering out-line in jewel
and stone. Nudity, they made divine; and they still compel us to
feel its divinity almost as they felt it themselves. Perhaps they
could do this because, as Emerson suggested, they possessed
all-perfect senses. Certainly it was not because they were as
beautiful as their own statues. No man and no woman could be
that. This only is sure,--that they discerned and clearly fixed
their ideal,--composite of countless million remembrances of dead
grace in eyes and eyelids, throat and cheek, mouth and chin, body
and limbs.


The Greek marble itself gives proof that there is no absolute
individuality,--that the mind is as much a composite of souls as
the body is of cells.


VI

Kyoto, April 21.

The noblest examples of religious architecture in the whole
empire have just been completed; and the great City of Temples is
now enriched by two constructions probably never surpassed in all
the ten centuries of its existence. One is the gift of the
Imperial Government; the other, the gift of the common people.

The government's gift is the Dai-Kioku-Den,--erected to
commemorate the great festival of Kwammu Tenno, fifty-first
emperor of Japan, and founder of the Sacred City. To the Spirit
of this Emperor the Dai-Kioku-Den is dedicated: it is thus a
Shinto temple, and the most superb of all Shinto temples.
Nevertheless, it is not Shinto architecture, but a facsimile of
the original palace of Kwammu Tenno upon the original scale. The
effect upon national sentiment of this magnificent deviation from
conventional forms, and the profound poetry of the reverential
feeling which suggested it, can be fully comprehended only by
those who know that Japan is still practically ruled by the dead.
Much more than beautiful are the edifices of the Dai-Kioku-Den.
Even in this most archaic of Japan cities they startle; they tell
to the sky in every tilted line of their horned roofs the tale of
another and more fantastic age. The most eccentrically striking
parts of the whole are the two-storied and five-towered
gates,--veritable Chinese dreams, one would say. In color the
construction is not less oddly attractive than in form,--and this
especially because of the fine use made of antique green tiles in
the polychromatic roofing. Surely the august Spirit of Kwammu
Tenno might well rejoice in this charming evocation of the past
by architectural necromancy!

But the gift of the people to Kyoto is still grander. It is
represented by the glorious Higashi Hongwanji,--or eastern
Hongwan temple (Shinshu). Western readers may form some idea of
its character from the simple statement that it cost eight
millions of dollars and required seventeen years to build. In
mere dimension it is largely exceeded by other Japanese buildings
of cheaper construction; but anybody familiar with the Buddhist
temple architecture of Japan can readily perceive the difficulty
of building a temple one hundred and, twenty-seven feet high, one
hundred and ninety-two feet deep, and more than two hundred feet
long. Because of its peculiar form, and especially because of the
vast sweeping lines of its roof, the Hongwanji looks even far
larger than it is,--looks mountainous. But in any country it
would be deemed a wonderful structure. There are beams forty-two
feet long and four feet thick; and there are pillars nine feet in
circumference. One may guess the character of the interior
decoration from the statement that the mere painting of the
lotos-flowers on the screens behind the main altar cost ten
thousand dollars. Nearly all this wonderful work was done with
the money contributed in coppers by hard-working peasants. And
yet there are people who think that Buddhism is dying!

More than one hundred thousand peasants came to see the grand
inauguration. They seated themselves by myriads on matting laid
down by the acre in the great court. I saw them waiting thus at
three in the afternoon. The court was a living sea. Yet all that
host was to wait till seven o'clock for the beginning of the
ceremony, without refreshment, in the hot sun. I saw at one
corner of the court a band of about twenty young girls,--all in
white, and wearing peculiar white caps,--and I asked who they
were. A bystander replied: "As all these people must wait here
many hours, it is to be feared that some may become ill.
Therefore professional nurses have been stationed here to take
care of any who may be sick. There are likewise stretchers in
waiting, and carriers. And there are many physicians."

I admired the patience and the faith. But those peasants might
well love the magnificent temple,--their own creation in very
truth, both directly and indirectly. For no small part of the
actual labor of building was done for love only; and the mighty
beams for the roof had been hauled to Kyoto from far-away
mountain-slopes, with cables made of the hair of Buddhist wives
and daughters. One such cable, preserved in the temple, is more
than three hundred and sixty feet long, and nearly three inches
in diameter.


To me the lesson of those two magnificent monuments of national
religious sentiment suggested the certain future increase in
ethical power and value of that sentiment, concomitantly with the
increase of national prosperity. Temporary poverty is the real
explanation of the apparent temporary decline of Buddhism. But an
era of great wealth is beginning. Some outward forms of Buddhism
must perish; some superstitions of Shinto must die. The vital
truths and recognitions will expand, strengthen, take only deeper
root in the heart of the race, and potently prepare it for the
trials of that larger and harsher life upon which it has to
enter.



VII

Kobe, April 23.

I have been visiting the exhibition of fishes and of fisheries
which is at Hyogo, in a garden by the sea. Waraku-en is its name,
which signifies, "The Garden of the Pleasure of Peace." It is
laid out like a landscape garden of old time, and deserves its
name. Over its verge you behold the great bay, and fishermen in
boats, and the white far-gliding of sails splendid with light,
and beyond all, shutting out the horizon, a lofty beautiful
massing of peaks mauve-colored by distance.

I saw ponds of curious shapes, filled with clear sea-water, in
which fish of beautiful colors were swimming. I went to the
aquarium where stranger kinds of fishes swam behind glass--fishes
shaped like toy-kites, and fishes shaped like sword-blades, and
fishes that seemed to turn themselves inside out, and funny,
pretty fishes of butterfly-colors, that move like dancing-girls,
waving sleeve-shaped fins.

I saw models of all manner of boats and nets and hooks and
fish-traps and torch-baskets for night-fishing. I saw pictures of
every kind of fishing, and both models and pictures of men
killing whales. One picture was terrible,--the death agony of a
whale caught in a giant net, and the leaping of boats in a
turmoil of red foam, and one naked man on the monstrous back--a
single figure against the sky--striking with a great steel, and
the fountain-gush of blood responding to the stroke.... Beside me
I heard a Japanese father and mother explain the picture to their
little boy; and the mother said:--

"When the whale is going to die, it speaks; it cries to the Lord
Buddha for help,--_Namu Amida Butsu!_"

I went to another part of the garden where there were tame deer,
and a "golden bear" in a cage, and peafowl in an aviary, and an
ape. The people fed the deer and the bear with cakes, and tried
to coax the peacock to open its tail, and grievously tormented
the ape. I sat down to rest on the veranda of a pleasure-house
near the aviary, and the Japanese folk who had been looking at
the picture of whale-fishing found their way to the same veranda;
and presently I heard the little boy say:--

"Father, there is an old, old fisherman in his boat. Why does he
not go to the Palace of the Dragon-King of the Sea, like
Urashima?"

The father answered: "Urashima caught a turtle which was not
really a turtle, but the Daughter of the Dragon-King. So he was
rewarded for his kindness. But that old fisherman has not caught
any turtle, and even if he had caught one, he is much too old to
marry. Therefore he will not go to the Palace."

Then the boy looked at the flowers, and the fountains, and the
sunned sea with its white sails, and the mauve-colored mountains
beyond all, and exclaimed:--

"Father, do you think there is any place more beautiful than this
in the whole world?"

The father smiled deliciously, and seemed about to answer, but
before he could speak the child cried out, and leaped, and
clapped his little hands for delight, because the peacock had
suddenly outspread the splendor of its tail. And all hastened to
the aviary. So I never heard the reply to that pretty question.

But afterwards I thought that it might have been answered thus:--


"My boy, very beautiful this is. But the world is full of beauty;
and there may be gardens more beautiful than this.

"But the fairest of gardens is not in our world. It is the Garden
of Amida, in the Paradise of the West.

"And whosoever does no wrong what time he lives may after death
dwell in that Garden.

"There the divine Kujaku, bird of heaven, sings of the Seven
Steps and the Five Powers, spreading its tail as a sun.

"There lakes of jewel-water are, and in them lotos-flowers of a
loveliness for which there is not any name. And from those
flowers proceed continually rays of rainbow-light, and spirits of
Buddhas newly-born.

"And the water, murmuring among the lotos-buds, speaks to the
souls in them of Infinite Memory and Infinite Vision, and of the
Four Infinite Feelings.

"And in that place there is no difference between gods and men,
save that under the splendor of Amida even the gods must bend;
and all sing the hymn of praise beginning, '_O Thou of
Immeasurable Light!_'

"But the Voice of the River Celestial chants forever, like the
chanting of thousands in unison: '_Even this is not high; there
is still a Higher! This is not real; this is not Peace!_'"



V

THE NUN OF THE TEMPLE OF AMIDA

When O-Toyo's husband--a distant cousin, adopted into her family
for love's sake--had been summoned by his lord to the capital,
she did not feel anxious about the future. She felt sad only. It
was the first time since their bridal that they had ever been
separated. But she had her father and mother to keep her company,
and, dearer than either,--though she would never have confessed
it even to herself,--her little son. Besides, she always had
plenty to do. There were many household duties to perform, and
there was much clothing to be woven--both silk and cotton.

Once daily at a fixed hour, she would set for the absent husband,
in his favorite room, little repasts faultlessly served on dainty
lacquered trays,--miniature meals such as are offered to the
ghosts of the ancestors, and to the gods(1). These repasts were
served at the east side of the room, and his kneeling-cushion
placed before them. The reason they were served at the east side,
was because he had gone east. Before removing the food, she
always lifted the cover of the little soup-bowl to see if there
was vapor upon its lacquered inside surface. For it is said that
if there be vapor on the inside of the lid covering food so
offered, the absent beloved is well. But if there be none, he is
dead,--because that is a sign that his soul has returned by
itself to seek nourishment. O-Toyo found the lacquer thickly
beaded with vapor day by day.

The child was her constant delight. He was three years old, and
fond of asking questions to which none but the gods know the real
answers. When he wanted to play, she laid aside her work to play
with him. When he wanted to rest, she told him wonderful stories,
or gave pretty pious answers to his questions about those things
which no man can ever understand. At evening, when the little
lamps had been lighted before the holy tablets and the images,
she taught his lips to shape the words of filial prayer. When he
had been laid to sleep, she brought her work near him, and
watched the still sweetness of his face. Sometimes he would smile
in his dreams; and she knew that Kwannon the divine was playing
shadowy play with him, and she would murmur the Buddhist
invocation to that Maid "who looketh forever down above the sound
of prayer."


Sometimes, in the season of very clear days, she would climb the
mountain of Dakeyama, carrying her little boy on her back. Such a
trip delighted him much, not only because of what his mother
taught him to see, but also of what she taught him to hear. The
sloping way was through groves and woods, and over grassed
slopes, and around queer rocks; and there were flowers with
stories in their hearts, and trees holding tree-spirits. Pigeons
cried korup-korup; and doves sobbed owao, owao and cicada wheezed
and fluted and tinkled.

All those who wait for absent dear ones make, if they can, a
pilgrimage to the peak called Dakeyama. It is visible from any
part of the city; and from its summit several provinces can be
seen. At the very top is a stone of almost human height and
shape, perpendicularly set up; and little pebbles are heaped
before it and upon it. And near by there is a small Shinto shrine
erected to the spirit of a princess of other days. For she
mourned the absence of one she loved, and used to watch from this
mountain for his coming until she pined away and was changed into
a stone. The people therefore built the shrine; and lovers of the
absent still pray there for the return of those dear to them; and
each, after so praying, takes home one of the little pebbles
heaped there. And when the beloved one returns, the pebble must
be taken back to the pebble-pile upon the mountain-top, and other
pebbles with it, for a thank-offering and commemoration.

Always ere O-Toyo and her son could reach their home after such a
day, the dusk would fall softly about them; for the way was long,
and they had to both go and return by boat through the wilderness
of rice-fields round the town,--which is a slow manner of
journeying. Sometimes stars and fireflies lighted them; sometimes
also the moon,--and O-Toyo would softly sing to her boy the Izumo
child-song to the moon:--

Nono-San,
Little Lady Moon,
How old are you?
"Thirteen days,--
Thirteen and nine."
That is still young,
And the reason must be
For that bright red obi,
So nicely tied(2),
And that nice white girdle
About your hips.
Will you give it to the horse?
"Oh, no, no!"
Will you give it to the cow?
"Oh, no, no!(3)"

And up to the blue night would rise from all those wet leagues of
labored field that great soft bubbling chorus which seems the
very voice of the soil itself,--the chant of the frogs. And
O-Toyo would interpret its syllables to the child: Me kayui! me
kayui! "Mine eyes tickle; I want to sleep."

All those were happy hours.

(1) Such a repast, offered to the spirit of the absent one loved,
is called a Kage-zen; lit., "Shadow-tray." The word zen is also
use to signify the meal served on the lacquered tray,--which has
feet, like miniature table. So that time term "Shadow-feast"
would be a better translation of Kage-zen.

(2) Because an obi or girdle of very bright color can be worn
only by children.

(3) Nono-San,
or
O-Tsuki-san
Ikutsu?
"Jiu-san,--
Kokonotsu."

Sore wa mada
Wakai yo,
Wakai ye mo
Dori
Akai iro no
Obi to,
Shire iro no
Obi to
Koshi ni shanto
Musun de.
Uma ni yaru?
"Iyaiya!"
Ushi ni yaru?
"Iyaiya!"



II

Then twice, within the time of three days, those masters of life
and death whose ways belong to the eternal mysteries struck at
her heart. First she was taught that the gentle husband for whom
she had so often prayed never could return to her,--having been
returned unto that dust out of which all forms are borrowed. And
in another little while she knew her boy slept so deep a sleep
that the Chinese physician could not waken him. These things she
learned only as shapes are learned in lightning flashes. Between
and beyond the flashes was that absolute darkness which is the
pity of the gods.

It passed; and she rose to meet a foe whose name is Memory.
Before all others she could keep her face, as in other days,
sweet and smiling. But when alone with this visitant, she found
herself less strong. She would arrange little toys and spread
out little dresses on the matting, and look at them, and talk to
them in whispers, and smile silently. But the smile would ever
end in a burst of wild, loud weeping; and she would beat her head
upon the floor, and ask foolish questions of the gods.


One day she thought of a weird consolation,--that rite the
people name Toritsu-banashi,--the evocation of the dead. Could
she not call back her boy for one brief minute only? It would
trouble the little soul; but would he not gladly bear a moment's
pain for her dear sake? Surely!


[To have the dead called back one must go to some priest--Buddhist
or Shinto--who knows the rite of incantation. And the
mortuary tablet, or ihai, of the dead must be brought to that
priest.

Then ceremonies of purification are performed; candles are
lighted and incense is kindled before the ihai; and prayers or
parts of sutras are recited; and offerings of flowers and of rice
are made. But, in this case, the rice must not be cooked.
And when everything has been made ready, the priest, taking in
his left hand an instrument shaped like a bow, and striking it
rapidly with his right, calls upon the name of the dead, and
cries out the words, Kitazo yo! kitazo yo! kitazo yo! meaning, "I
have come(1)." And, as he cries, the tone of his voice gradually
changes until it becomes the very voice of the dead person,--for
the ghost enters into him.

Then the dead will answer questions quickly asked, but will cry
continually: "Hasten, hasten! for this my coming back is painful,
and I have but a little time to stay!" And having answered, the
ghost passes; and the priest falls senseless upon his face.

Now to call back the dead is not good. For by calling them back
their condition is made worse. Returning to the underworld, they
must take a place lower than that which they held before.

To-day these rites are not allowed by law. They once consoled;
but the law is a good law, and just,--since there exist men
willing to mock the divine which is in human hearts.]


So it came to pass that O-Toyo found herself one night in a
lonely little temple at the verge of the city,--kneeling before
the ihai of her boy, and hearing the rite of incantation. And
presently, out of the lips of the officiant there came a voice
she thought she knew,--a voice loved above all others,--but faint
and very thin, like a sobbing of wind.

And the thin voice cried to her:--

"Ask quickly, quickly, mother! Dark is the way and long; and I
may not linger."

Then tremblingly she questioned:--

"Why must I sorrow for my child? What is the justice of the
gods?"

And there was answer given:--

"O mother, do not mourn me thus! That I died was only that you
might not die. For the year was a year of sickness and of
sorrow,--and it was given me to know that you were to die; and I
obtained by prayer that I should take your place(2).

"O mother, never weep for me! it is not kindness to mourn for the
dead. Over the River of Tears(3) their silent road is; and when
mothers weep, the flood of that river rises, and the soul cannot
pass, but must wander to and fro.

"Therefore, I pray you, do not grieve, O mother mine! Only give
me a little water sometimes."

(1) Whence the Izumo saying about one who too often announces his
coming: "Thy talk is like the talk of
necromancy!"--Toritsubanashi no yona.

(2) Migawari, "substitute," is the religious term.

(3) "Namida-no-Kawa."



III

From that hour she was not seen to weep. She performed, lightly
and silently, as in former days, the gentle duties of a daughter.

Seasons passed; and her father thought to find another husband
for her. To the mother, he said:--

"If our daughter again have a son, it will be great joy for her,
and for all of us."

But the wiser mother made answer:--

"Unhappy she is not. It is impossible that she marry again. She
has become as a little child, knowing nothing of trouble or sin."

It was true that she had ceased to know real pain. She had begun
to show a strange fondness for very small things. At first she
had found her bed too large--perhaps through the sense of
emptiness left by the loss of her child; then, day by day, other
things seemed to grow too large,--the dwelling itself, the
familiar rooms, the alcove and its great flower-vases,--even the
household utensils. She wished to eat her rice with miniature
chop-sticks out of a very small bowl such as children use.

In these things she was lovingly humored; and in other matters
she was not fantastic. The old people consulted together about
her constantly. At last the father said:--

"For our daughter to live with strangers might be painful. But as
we are aged, we may soon have to leave her. Perhaps we could
provide for her by making her a nun. We might build a little
temple for her."

Next day the mother asked O-Toyo:--

"Would you not like to become a holy nun, and to live in a very,
very small temple, with a very small altar, and little images of
the Buddhas? We should be always near you. If you wish this, we
shall get a priest to teach you the sutras."

O-Toyo wished it, and asked that an extremely small nun's dress
be got for her. But the mother said:--

"Everything except the dress a good nun may have made small. But
she must wear a large dress--that is the law of Buddha."

So she was persuaded to wear the same dress as other nuns.


IV

They built for her a small An-dera, or Nun's-Temple, in an empty
court where another and larger temple, called Amida-ji, had once
stood. The An-dera was also called Amida-ji, and was dedicated to
Amida-Nyorai and to other Buddhas. It was fitted up with a very
small altar and with miniature altar furniture. There was a tiny
copy of the sutras on a tiny reading-desk, and tiny screens and
bells and kakemono. And she dwelt there long after her parents
had passed away. People called her the Amida-ji no Bikuni,--which
means The Nun of the Temple of Amida.

A little outside the gate there was a statue of Jizo. This Jizo
was a special Jizo--the friend of sick children. There were
nearly always offerings of small rice-cakes to be seen before
him. These signified that some sick child was being prayed for;
and the number of the rice-cakes signified the number of the
years of the child. Most often there were but two or three cakes;
rarely there were seven or ten. The Amida-ji no Bikuni took care
of the statue, and supplied it with incense-offerings, and
flowers from the temple garden; for there was a small garden
behind the An-dera.

After making her morning round with her alms-bowl, she would
usually seat herself before a very small loom, to weave cloth
much too narrow for serious use. But her webs were bought always
by certain shopkeepers who knew her story; and they made her
presents of very small cups, tiny flower-vases, and queer
dwarf-trees for her garden.

Her greatest pleasure was the companionship of children; and this
she never lacked. Japanese child-life, is mostly passed in temple
courts; and many happy childhoods were spent in the court of the
Amida-ji. All the mothers in that street liked to have their
little ones play there, but cautioned them never to laugh at the
Bikuni-San. "Sometimes her ways are strange," they would say;
"but that is because she once had a little son, who died, and the
pain became too great for her mother's heart. So you must be very
good and respectful to her."

Good they were, but not quite respectful in the reverential
sense. They knew better than to be that. They called her
"Bikuni-San" always, and saluted her nicely; but otherwise they
treated her like one of themselves. They played games with her;
and she gave them tea in extremely small cups, and made for them
heaps of rice-cakes not much bigger than peas, and wove upon her
loom cloth of cotton and cloth of silk for the robes of their
dolls. So she became to them as a blood-sister.

They played with her daily till they grew too big to play, and
left the court of the temple of Amida to begin the bitter work of
life, and to become the fathers and mothers of children whom they
sent to play in their stead. These learned to love the Bikuni-San
like their parents had done. And the Bikuni-San lived to play
with the children of the children of the children of those who
remembered when her temple was built.

The people took good heed that she should not know want. There
was always given to her more than she needed for herself. So she
was able to be nearly as kind to the children as she wished, and
to feed extravagantly certain small animals. Birds nested in her
temple, and ate from her hand, and learned not to perch upon the
heads of the Buddhas.


Some days after her funeral, a crowd of children visited my
house. A little girl of nine years spoke for them all:--

"Sir, we are asking for the sake of the Bikuni-San who is dead. A
very large haka(1) has been set up for her. It is a nice haka.
But we want to give her also a very, very small haka because in
the time she was with us she often said that she would like a
very little haka. And the stone-cutter has promised to cut it for
us, and to make it very pretty, if we can bring the money.
Therefore perhaps you will honorably give something."

"Assuredly," I said. "But now you will have nowhere to play."

She answered, smiling:--"We shall still play in the court of the
temple of Amida. She is buried there. She will hear our playing,
and be glad."

(1) Tombstone.


VI

AFTER THE WAR


I

Hyogo, May 5, 1895.

Hyogo, this morning, lies bathed in a limpid magnificence of
light indescribable,--spring light, which is vapory, and lends a
sort of apparitional charm to far things seen through it. Forms
remain sharply outlined, but are almost idealized by faint colors
not belonging to them; and the great hills behind the town aspire
into a cloudless splendor of tint that seems the ghost of azure
rather than azure itself.

Over the blue-gray slope of tiled roofs there is a vast quivering
and fluttering of extraordinary shapes,--a spectacle not indeed
new to me, but always delicious. Everywhere are floating--tied to
very tall bamboo poles--immense brightly colored paper fish,
which look and move as if alive. The greater number vary from
five to fifteen feet in length; but here and there I see a baby
scarcely a foot long, hooked to the tail of a larger one. Some
poles have four or five fish attached to them at heights
proportioned to the dimensions of the fish, the largest always at
the top. So cunningly shaped and colored these things are that
the first sight of them is always startling to a stranger. The
lines holding them are fastened within the head; and the wind,
entering the open mouth, not only inflates the body to perfect
form, but keeps it undulating,--rising and descending, turning
and twisting, precisely like a real fish, while the tail plays
and the fins wave irreproachably. In the garden of my next-door
neighbor there are two very fine specimens. One has an orange
belly and a bluish-gray back; the other is all a silvery tint;
and both have big weird eyes. The rustling of their motion as
they swim against the sky is like the sound of wind in a
cane-field. A little farther off I see another very big fish,
with a little red boy clinging to its back. That red boy
represents Kintoki, strongest of all children ever born in Japan,
who, while still a baby, wrestled with bears and set traps for
goblin-birds.

Everybody knows that these paper carp, or koi, are hoisted only
during the period of the great birth festival of boys, in the
fifth month; that their presence above a house signifies the
birth of a son; and that they symbolize the hope of the parents
that their lad will be able to win his way through the world
against all obstacles,--even as the real koi, the great Japanese
carp, ascends swift rivers against the stream. In many parts of
southern and western Japan you rarely see these koi. You see,
instead, very long narrow flags of cotton cloth, called nobori,
which are fastened perpendicularly, like sails, with little spars
and rings to poles of bamboo, and bear designs in various colors
of the koi in an eddy,--or of Shoki, conqueror of demons,--or of
pines,--or of tortoises,--or other fortunate symbols.


II

But in this radiant spring of the Japanese year 2555, the koi
might be taken to symbolize something larger than parental hope,
--the great trust of a nation regenerated through war. The
military revival of the Empire--the real birthday of New
Japan--began with the conquest of China. The war is ended; the
future, though clouded, seems big with promise; and, however grim
the obstacles to loftier and more enduring achievements, Japan
has neither fears nor doubts.

Perhaps the future danger is just in this immense self-confidence.
It is not a new feeling created by victory. It is a race feeling,
which repeated triumphs have served only to strengthen. From the
instant of the declaration of war there was never the least doubt of
ultimate victory. There was universal and profound enthusiasm, but
no outward signs of emotional excitement. Men at once set to writing
histories of the triumphs of Japan, and these histories--issued to
subscribers in weekly or monthly parts, and illustrated with
photo-lithographs or drawings on wood--were selling all over the country
long before any foreign observers could have ventured to predict the
final results of the campaign. From first to last the nation felt
sure of its own strength, and of the impotence of China. The
toy-makers put suddenly into the market legions of ingenious mechanisms,
representing Chinese soldiers in flight, or being cut down by
Japanese troopers, or tied together as prisoners by their queues, or
kowtowing for mercy to illustrious generals. The old-fashioned
military playthings, representing samurai in armor, were superseded
by figures--in clay, wood, paper, or silk--of Japanese cavalry,
infantry, and artillery; by models of forts and batteries; and
models of men-of-war. The storming of the defenses of Port Arthur by
the Kumamoto Brigade was the subject of one ingenious mechanical
toy; another, equally clever, repeated the fight of the Matsushima
Kan with the Chinese iron-clads. There were sold likewise myriads of
toy-guns discharging corks by compressed air with a loud pop, and
myriads of toy-swords, and countless tiny bugles, the constant
blowing of which recalled to me the tin-horn tumult of a certain New
Year's Eve in New Orleans. The announcement of each victory resulted
in an enormous manufacture and sale of colored prints, rudely and
cheaply executed, and mostly depicting the fancy of the artist
only,--but well fitted to stimulate the popular love of glory. Wonderful
sets of chessmen also appeared, each piece representing a Chinese or
Japanese officer or soldier.

Meanwhile, the theatres were celebrating the war after a much
more complete fashion. It is no exaggeration to say that almost
every episode of the campaign was repeated upon the stage. Actors
even visited the battlefields to study scenes and backgrounds,
and fit themselves to portray realistically, with the aid of
artificial snowstorms, the hardships of the army in Manchuria.
Every gallant deed was dramatized almost as soon as reported. The
death of the bugler Shirakami Genjiro(1); the triumphant courage
of Harada Jiukichi, who scaled a rampart and opened a fortress
gate to his comrades; the heroism of the fourteen troopers who
held their own against three hundred infantry; the successful
charge of unarmed coolies upon a Chinese battalion,--all these
and many other incidents were reproduced in a thousand theatres.
Immense illuminations of paper lanterns, lettered with phrases of
loyalty or patriotic cheer, celebrated the success of the
imperial arms, or gladdened the eyes of soldiers going by train
to the field. In Kobe,--constantly traversed by troop-trains,--such
illuminations continued night after night for weeks
together; and the residents of each street further subscribed for
flags and triumphal arches.

But the glories of the war were celebrated also in ways more
durable by the various great industries of the country. Victories
and incidents of sacrificial heroism were commemorated in
porcelain, in metal-work, and in costly textures, not less than
in new designs for envelopes and note-paper. They were portrayed
on the silk linings of haori(2), on women's kerchiefs of
chirimen(3), in the embroidery of girdles, in the designs of silk
shirts and of children's holiday robes,--not to speak of cheaper
printed goods, such as calicoes and toweling. They were
represented in lacquer-ware of many kinds, on the sides and
covers of carven boxes, on tobacco-pouches, on sleeve-buttons, in
designs for hairpins, on women's combs, even on chopsticks.
Bundles of toothpicks in tiny cases were offered for sale, each
toothpick having engraved upon it, in microscopic text, a
different poem about the war. And up to the time of peace, or at
least up to the time of the insane attempt by a soshi(4) to kill
the Chinese plenipotentiary during negotiations, all things
happened as the people had wished and expected.

But as soon as the terms of peace had been announced, Russia
interfered, securing the help of France and Germany to bully
Japan. The combination met with no opposition; the government
played jiujutsu, and foiled expectations by unlooked-for
yielding. Japan had long ceased to feel uneasy about her own
military power. Her reserve strength is probably much greater
than has ever been acknowledged, and her educational system, with
its twenty-six thousand schools, is an enormous drilling-machine.
On her own soil she could face any foreign power. Her
navy was her weak point, and of this she was fully aware. It was
a splendid fleet of small, light cruisers, and splendidly
handled. Its admiral, without the loss of a single vessel, had
annihilated the Chinese fleet in two engagements, but it was not
yet sufficiently heavy to face the combined navies of three
European powers; and the flower of the Japanese army was beyond
the sea. The most opportune moment for interference had been
cunningly chosen, and probably more than interference was
intended. The heavy Russian battle-ships were stripped for
fighting; and these alone could possibly have overpowered the
Japanese fleet, though the victory would have been a costly one.
But Russian action was suddenly checked by the sinister
declaration of English sympathy for Japan. Within a few weeks
England could bring into Asiatic waters a fleet capable of
crushing, in one short battle, all the iron-clads assembled by
the combination. And a single shot from a Russian cruiser might
have plunged the whole world into war.

But in the Japanese navy there was a furious desire to battle
with the three hostile powers at once. It would have been a great
fight, for no Japanese commander would have dreamed of yielding,
no Japanese ship would have struck her colors. The army was
equally desirous of war. It needed all the firmness of the
government to hold the nation back. Free speech was gagged; the
press was severely silenced; and by the return to China of the
Liao-Tung peninsula, in exchange for a compensatory increase of
the war indemnity previously exacted, peace was secured. The
government really acted with faultless wisdom. At this period of
Japanese development a costly war with Russia could not fail to
have consequences the most disastrous to industry, commerce, and
finance. But the national pride has been deeply wounded, and the
country can still scarcely forgive its rulers.

(1) At the battle of Song-Hwan, a Japanese bugler named
Shirakami Genjiro was ordered to sound the charge (suzume). He
had sounded it once when a bullet passed through his lungs,
throwing him down.. His comrades tried to take the bugle away,
seeing the wound was fatal. He wrested it from them, lifted it
again to his lips, sounded the charge once more with all his
strength, and fell back dead. I venture to offer this rough
translation of a song now sung about him by every soldier and
schoolboy in Japan:--

SHIRAKAMI GENJIRO

(After the Japanese military ballad, Rappa-no-hibiki.)
Easy in other times than this
Were Anjo's stream to cross;
But now, beneath the storm of shot,
Its waters seethe and toss.

In other time to pass that stream
Were sport for boys at play;
But every man through blood must wade
Who fords Anjo to-day.

The bugle sounds;--through flood and flame
Charges the line of steel;--
Above the crash of battle rings
The bugle's stern appeal.

Why has that bugle ceased to call?
Why does it call once more?
Why sounds the stirring signal now
More faintly than before?

What time the bugle ceased to sound,
The breast was smitten through;--
What time the blast rang faintly, blood
Gushed from the lips that blew.

Death-stricken, still the bugler stands!
He leans upon his gun,--
Once more to sound the bugle-call
Before his life be done.

What though the shattered body fall?
The spirit rushes free
Through Heaven and Earth to sound anew
That call to Victory!

Far, far beyond our shore, the spot
Now honored by his fall;--
But forty million brethren
Have heard that bugle-call.

Comrade!--beyond the peaks and seas
Your bugle sounds to-day
In forty million loyal hearts
A thousand miles away!

(2) Haori, a sort of upper dress, worn by men as well as women.
The linings are often of designs beautiful beyond praise.

(3) Chirimen is crape-silk, of which there are many qualities;
some very costly and durable.

(4) Soshi form one of the modern curses of Japan. They are mostly
ex-students who earn a living by hiring themselves out as rowdy
terrorists. Politicians employ them either against the soshi of
opponents, or as bullies in election time. Private persons
sometimes employ them as defenders. They have figured in most of
the election rows which have taken place of late years in Japan,
also in a number of assaults made on distinguished personages.
The causes which produced nihilism in Russia have several points
of resemblance with the causes which developed the modern soshi
class in Japan.



III

Hyogo, May 15.

The Matsushima Kan, returned from China, is anchored before the
Garden of the Pleasure of Peace. She is not a colossus, though
she has done grand things; but she certainly looks quite
formidable as she lies there in the clear light,--a stone-gray
fortress of steel rising out of the smooth blue. Permission to
visit her has been given to the delighted people, who don their
best for the occasion, as for a temple festival, and I am
suffered to accompany some of them. All the boats in the port
would seem to have been hired for the visitors, so huge is the
shoal hovering about the ironclad as we arrive. It is not
possible for such a number of sightseers to go on board at once,
and we have to wait while hundreds are being alternately admitted
and dismissed. But the waiting in the cool sea air is not
unpleasant; and the spectacle of the popular joy is worth
watching. What eager rushing when the turn comes! what swarming
and squeezing and clinging! Two women fall into the sea, and are
pulled out by blue-jackets, and say they are not sorry to have
fallen in, because they can now boast of owing their lives to the
men of the Matsushima Kan! As a matter of fact, they could not
very well have been drowned; there were legions of common boatmen
to look after them.

But something of larger importance to the nation than the lives
of two young women is really owing to the men of the Matsushima
Kan; and the people are rightly trying to pay them back with
love,--for presents, such as thousands would like to make, are
prohibited by disciplinary rule. Officers and crew must be weary;
but the crowding and the questioning are borne with charming
amiability. Everything is shown and explained in detail:
the huge thirty-centimetre gun, with its loading apparatus and
directing machinery; the quick-firing batteries; the torpedoes,
with their impulse-tubes; the electric lantern, with its
searching mechanism. I myself, though a foreigner, and therefore
requiring a special permit, am guided all about, both below and
above, and am even suffered to take a peep at the portraits of
their Imperial Majesties, in the admiral's cabin; and I am told
the stirring story of the great fight off the Yalu. Meanwhile,
the old bald men and the women and the babies of the port hold
for one golden day command of the Matsushima. Officers, cadets,
blue-jackets, spare no effort to please. Some talk to the
grandfathers; others let the children play with the hilts of
their swords, or teach them how to throw up their little hands
and shout "_Teikoku Banzai!_" And for tired mothers, matting has
been spread, where they can squat down in the shade between
decks.

Those decks, only a few months ago, were covered with the blood
of brave men. Here and there dark stains, which still resist
holy-stoning, are visible; and the people look at them with
tender reverence. The flagship was twice struck by enormous
shells, and her vulnerable parts were pierced by a storm of small
projectiles. She bore the brunt of the engagement, losing nearly
half her crew. Her tonnage is only four thousand two hundred and
eighty; and her immediate antagonists were two Chinese ironclads
of seven thousand four hundred tons each. Outside, her cuirass
shows no deep scars, for the shattered plates have been
replaced;--but my guide points proudly to the numerous patchings
of the decks, the steel masting supporting the fighting-tops, the
smoke-stack,--and to certain terrible dents, with small cracks
radiating from them, in the foot-thick steel of the barbette. He
traces for us, below, the course of the thirty-and-a-half
centimetre shell that pierced the ship. "When it came," he tells
us, "the shock threw men into the air that high" (holding his
hand some two feet above the deck). "At the same moment all
became dark; you could not see your hand. Then we found that one
of the starboard forward guns had been smashed, and the crew all
killed. We had forty men killed instantly, and many more wounded:
no man escaped in that part of the ship. The deck was on fire,
because a lot of ammunition brought up for the guns had exploded;
so we had to fight and to work to put out the fire at the same
time. Even badly wounded men, with the skin blown from their
hands and faces, worked as if they felt no pain; and dying men
helped to pass water. But we silenced the Ting-yuen with one more
shot from our big gun. The Chinese had European gunners helping
them. If we had not had to fight against Western gunners, _our
victory would have been too easy._"

He gives the true note. Nothing, on this splendid spring day,
could so delight the men of the Matsushima Kan as a command to
clear for action, and attack the great belted Russian cruisers
lying off the coast.


IV

Kobe, June 9.

Last year, while traveling from Shimonoseki to the capital, I saw
many regiments on their way to the seat of war, all uniformed in
white, for the hot season was not yet over. Those soldiers looked
so much like students whom I had taught (thousands, indeed, were
really fresh from school) that I could not help feeling it was
cruel to send such youths to battle. The boyish faces were so
frank, so cheerful, so seemingly innocent of the greater sorrows
of life! "Don't fear for them," said an English fellow-traveler,
a man who had passed his life in camps; "they will give a
splendid account of themselves."

"I know it," was my answer; "but I am thinking of fever and frost and
Manchurian winter: these are more to be feared than Chinese rifles(1)."

The calling of the bugles, gathering the men together after dark,
or signaling the hour of rest, had for years been one of the
pleasures of my summer evenings in a Japanese garrison town. But
during the months of war, those long, plaintive notes of the last
call touched me in another way. I do not know that the melody is
peculiar; but it was sometimes played, I used to think, with
peculiar feeling; and when uttered to the starlight by all the
bugles of a division at once, the multitudinously blending tones
had a melancholy sweetness never to be forgotten. And I would
dream of phantom buglers, summoning the youth and strength of
hosts to the shadowy silence of perpetual rest.

Well, to-day I went to see some of the regiments return. Arches
of greenery had been erected over the street they were to pass
through, leading from Kobe station to Nanko-San,--the great
temple dedicated to the hero spirit of Kusunoki Masashige. The
citizens had subscribed six thousand yen for the honor of serving
the soldiers with the first meal after their return; and many
battalions had already received such kindly welcome. The sheds
under which they ate in the court of the temple had been
decorated with flags and festoons; and there were gifts for all
the troops,--sweetmeats, and packages of cigarettes, and little
towels printed with poems in praise of valor. Before the gate of
the temple a really handsome triumphal arch had been erected,
bearing on each of its facades a phrase of welcome in Chinese
text of gold, and on its summit a terrestrial globe surmounted by
a hawk with outspread pinions(2).

I waited first, with Manyemon, before the station, which is very
near the temple. The train arrived; a military sentry ordered all
spectators to quit the platform, and outside, in the street,
police kept back the crowd, and stopped all traffic. After a few
minutes, the battalions came, marching in regular column through
the brick archway,--headed by a gray officer, who limped slightly
as he walked, smoking a cigarette. The crowd thickened about us,
but there was no cheering, not even speaking,--a hush broken only
by the measured tramp of the passing troops. I could scarcely
believe those were the same men I had seen going to the war; only
the numbers on the shoulder-straps assured me of the fact.
Sunburnt and grim the faces were; many had heavy beards. The dark
blue winter uniforms were frayed and torn, the shoes worn into
shapelessness; but the strong, swinging stride was the stride of
the hardened soldier. Lads no longer these, but toughened men,
able to face any troops in the world; men who had slaughtered and
stormed; men who had also suffered many things which never will
be written. The features showed neither joy nor pride; the
quick-searching eyes hardly glanced at the welcoming flags, the
decorations, the arch with its globe-shadowing hawk of battle,
--perhaps because those eyes had seen too often the things which
make men serious. (Only one man smiled as he passed; and I
thought of a smile seen on the face of a Zouave when I was a boy,
watching the return of a regiment from Africa,--a mocking smile,
that stabbed.) Many of the spectators were visibly affected,
feeling the reason of the change. But, for  that, the soldiers
were better soldiers now; and they were going to find welcome,
and comforts, and gifts, and the great warm love of the
people,--and repose thereafter, in their old familiar camps.

I said to Manyemon: "This evening they will be in Osaka and
Nagoya. They will hear the bugles calling; and they will think of
comrades who never can return."

The old man answered, with simple earnestness: "Perhaps by
Western people it is thought that the dead never return. But we
cannot so think. There are no Japanese dead who do not return.
There are none who do not know the way. From China and from
Chosen, and out of the bitter sea, all our dead have come
back,--all! They are with us now. In every dusk they gather to
hear the bugles that called them home. And they will hear them
also in that day when the armies of the Son of Heaven shall be
summoned against Russia."

(1) The total number of Japanese actually killed in battle, from
the fight at A-san to the capture of the Pescadores, was only
739. But the deaths resulting from other causes, up to as late a
date as the 8th of June, during the occupation of Formosa, were
3,148. Of these, 1,602 were due to cholera alone. Such, at least,
were the official figures as published in the Kobe Chronicle.

(2) At the close of the great naval engagement of the 17th of
September, 1894, a hawk alighted on the fighting-mast of the
Japanese cruiser Takachiho, and suffered itself to be taken and
fed.  After much petting, this bird of good omen was presented to
the Emperor. Falconry was a great feudal sport in Japan, and
hawks were finely trained. The hawk is now likely to become, more
than ever before in Japan, a symbol of victory.



VII.

HARU

Haru was brought up, chiefly at home, in that old-fashioned way
which produced one of the sweetest types of woman the world has
ever seen. This domestic education cultivated simplicity of
heart, natural grace of manner, obedience, and love of duty as
they were never cultivated but in Japan. Its moral product was
something too gentle and beautiful for any other than the old
Japanese society: it was not the most judicious preparation for
the much harsher life of the new,--in which it still survives.
The refined girl was trained for the condition of being
theoretically at the mercy of her husband. She was taught never
to show jealousy, or grief, or anger,--even under circumstances
compelling all three; she was expected to conquer the faults of
her lord by pure sweetness. In short, she was required to be
almost superhuman,--to realize, at least in outward seeming, the
ideal of perfect unselfishness. And this she could do with a
husband of her own rank, delicate in discernment,--able to divine
her feelings, and never to wound them.

Haru came of a much better family than her husband; and she was a
little too good for him, because he could not really understand
her. They had been married very young, had been poor at first,
and then had gradually become well-off, because Haru's husband
was a clever man of business. Sometimes she thought he had loved
her most when they were less well off; and a woman is seldom
mistaken about such matters.

She still made all his clothes; and he commended her needle-work.
She waited upon his wants, aided him to dress and undress, made
everything comfortable for him in their pretty home; bade him a
charming farewell as he went to business in the morning, and
welcomed him upon his return; received his friends exquisitely;
managed his household matters with wonderful economy, and seldom
asked any favors that cost money. Indeed she scarcely needed such
favors; for he was never ungenerous, and liked to see her
daintily dressed,--looking like some beautiful silver moth robed
in the folding of its own wings,--and to take her to theatres and
other places of amusement. She accompanied him to
pleasure-resorts famed for the blossoming of cherry-trees in
spring, or the shimmering of fireflies on summer nights, or the
crimsoning of maples in autumn. And sometimes they would pass a
day together at Maiko, by the sea, where the pines seem to sway
like dancing girls; or an afternoon at Kiyomidzu, in the old, old
summer-house, where everything is like a dream of five hundred
years ago,--and where there is a great shadowing of high woods,
and a song of water leaping cold and clear from caverns, and
always the plaint of flutes unseen, blown softly in the antique
way,--a tone-caress of peace and sadness blending, just as the
gold light glooms into blue over a dying sun.

Except for such small pleasures and excursions, Haru went out
seldom. Her only living relatives, and also those of her husband,
were far away in other provinces, and she had few visits to make.
She liked to be at home, arranging flowers for the alcoves or for
the gods, decorating the rooms, and feeding the tame gold-fish of
the garden-pond, which would lift up their heads when they saw
her coming.

No child had yet brought new joy or sorrow into her life. She
looked, in spite of her wife's coiffure, like a very young girl;
and she was still simple as a child,--notwithstanding that
business capacity in small things which her husband so admired
that he often condescended to ask her counsel in big things.
Perhaps the heart then judged for him better than the pretty
head; but, whether intuitive or not, her advice never proved
wrong. She was happy enough with him for five years,--during
which time he showed himself as considerate as any young Japanese
merchant could well be towards a wife of finer character than his
own.

Then his manner suddenly became cold,--so suddenly that she felt
assured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have
reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to
persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined
her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, very hard
to please. But he remained unmoved. He spoke no unkind words,--
though she felt behind his silence the repressed tendency to
utter them. A Japanese of the better class is not very apt to be
unkind to his wife in words. It is thought to be vulgar and
brutal. The educated man of normal disposition will even answer a
wife's reproaches with gentle phrases. Common politeness, by the
Japanese code, exacts this attitude from every manly man;
moreover, it is the only safe one. A refined and sensitive woman
will not long submit to coarse treatment; a spirited one may even
kill herself because of something said in a moment of passion,
and such a suicide disgraces the husband for the rest of his
life. But there are slow cruelties worse than words, and safer,--
neglect or indifference, for example, of a sort to arouse
jealousy. A Japanese wife has indeed been trained never to show
jealousy; but the feeling is older than all training,--old as
love, and likely to live as long. Beneath her passionless mask
the Japanese wife feels like her Western sister,--just like that
sister who prays and prays, even while delighting some evening
assembly of beauty and fashion, for the coming of the hour which
will set her free to relieve her pain alone.

Haru had cause for jealousy; but she was too much of a child to
guess the cause at once; and her servants too fond of her to
suggest it. Her husband had been accustomed to pass his evenings
in her company, either at home or elsewhere. But now, evening
after evening, he went out by himself. The first time he had
given her some business pretexts; afterwards he gave none, and
did not even tell her when he expected to return. Latterly, also,
he had been treating her with silent rudeness. He had become
changed,--"as if there was a goblin in his heart,"--the servants
said. As a matter of fact he had been deftly caught in a snare
set for him. One whisper from a geisha had numbed his will; one
smile blinded his eyes. She was far less pretty than his wife;
but she was very skillful in the craft of spinning webs,--webs of
sensual delusion which entangle weak men; and always tighten more
and more about them until the final hour of mockery and ruin.
Haru did not know. She suspected no wrong till after her
husband's strange conduct had become habitual,--and even then
only because she found that his money was passing into unknown
hands. He had never told her where he passed his evenings. And
she was afraid to ask, lest he should think her jealous. Instead
of exposing her feelings in words, she treated him with such
sweetness that a more intelligent husband would have divined all.
But, except in business, he was dull. He continued to pass his
evenings away; and as his conscience grew feebler, his absences
lengthened. Haru had been taught that a good wife should always
sit up and wait for her lord's return at night; and by so doing
she suffered from nervousness, and from the feverish conditions,
that follow sleeplessness, and from the lonesomeness of her
waiting after the servants, kindly dismissed at the usual hour,
had left her with her thoughts. Once only, returning very late,
her husband said to her: "I am sorry you should have sat up so
late for me; do not wait like that again!" Then, fearing he might
really have been pained on her account, she laughed pleasantly,
and said: "I was not sleepy, and I am not tired; honorably please
not to think about me." So he ceased to think about her,--glad to
take her at her word; and not long after that he stayed away for
one whole night. The next night he did likewise, and a third
night. After that third night's absence he failed even to return
for the morning meal; and Haru knew the time had come when her
duty as a wife obliged her to speak.

She waited through all the morning hours, fearing for him,
fearing for herself also; conscious at last of the wrong by which
a woman's heart can be most deeply wounded. Her faithful servants
had told her something; the rest she could guess. She was very
ill, and did not know it. She knew only that she was angry--
selfishly angry, because of the pain given her, cruel, probing,
sickening pain. Midday came as she sat thinking how she could say
least selfishly what it was now her duty to say,--the first words
of reproach that would ever have passed her lips. Then her heart
leaped with a shock that made everything blur and swim before her
sight in a whirl of dizziness,--because there was a sound of
kuruma-wheels and the voice of a servant calling:
"_Honorable-return-is!_"

She struggled to the entrance to meet him, all her slender body
a-tremble with fever and pain, and terror of betraying that pain.
And the man was startled, because instead of greeting him with
the accustomed smile, she caught the bosom of his silk robe in
one quivering little hand,--and looked into his face with eyes
that seemed to search for some shred of a soul,--and tried to
speak, but could utter only the single word, "_Anata(1)?_" Almost
in the same moment her weak grasp loosened, her eyes
closed with a strange smile; and even before he could put out his
arms to support her, she fell. He sought to lift her. But
something in the delicate life had snapped. She was dead.

There were astonishments, of course, and tears, and useless
callings of her name, and much running for doctors. But she lay
white and still and beautiful, all the pain and anger gone out of
her face, and smiling as on her bridal day.

Two physicians came from the public hospital,--Japanese military
surgeons. They asked straight hard questions,--questions that cut
open the self of the man down to the core. Then they told him
truth cold and sharp as edged steel,--and left him with his dead.


The people wondered he did not become a priest,--fair evidence
that his conscience had been awakened. By day he sits among his
bales of Kyoto silks and Osaka figured goods,--earnest and
silent. His clerks think him a good master; he never speaks
harshly. Often he works far into the night; and he has changed
his dwelling-place. There are strangers in the pretty house where
Haru lived; and the owner never visits it. Perhaps because he
might see there one slender shadow, still arranging flowers, or
bending with iris-grace above the goldfish in his pond. But
wherever he rest, sometime in the silent hours he must see the
same soundless presence near his pillow,--sewing, smoothing,
softly seeming to make beautiful the robes he once put on only to
betray. And at other times--in the busiest moments of his busy
life--the clamor of the great shop dies; the ideographs of his
ledger dim and vanish; and a plaintive little voice, which the
gods refuse to silence, utters into the solitude of his heart,
like a question, the single word,--"_Anata?_"
(1) "Thou?"



VIII

A GLIMPSE OP TENDENCIES

I

The foreign concession of an open port offers a striking contrast
to its far-Eastern environment. In the well-ordered ugliness of
its streets one finds suggestions of places not on this side of
the world,--just as though fragments of the Occident had been
magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Marseilles, of
New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in
colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile
buildings--immense by comparison with the low light Japanese
shops--seem to utter the menace of financial power. The
dwellings, of every conceivable design--from that of an Indian
bungalow to that of an English or French country-manor, with
turrets and bow-windows--are surrounded by commonplace gardens of
clipped shrubbery; the white roadways are solid and level as
tables, and bordered with boxed-up trees. Nearly all things
conventional in England or America have been domiciled in these
districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and
telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported
brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-glass
windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning
and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and
bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels.
There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals,
courts, jails, and a foreign police. There are foreign lawyers,
doctors, and druggists; foreign grocers, confectioners, bakers,
dairymen; foreign dress-makers and tailors; foreign
school-teachers and music-teachers. There is a town-hall, for
municipal business and public meetings of all kinds,--likewise
for amateur theatricals or lectures and concerts; and very rarely
some dramatic company, on a tour of the world, halts there awhile
to make men laugh and women cry like they used to do at home.
There are cricket-grounds, racecourses, public parks,--or, as we
should call them in England, "squares,"--yachting associations,
athletic societies, and swimming baths. Among the familiar noises
are the endless tinkling of piano-practice, the crashing of a
town-band, and an occasional wheezing of accordions: in fact, one
misses only the organ-grinder. The population is English, French,
German, American, Danish, Swedish, Swiss, Russian, with a thin
sprinkling of Italians and Levantines. I had almost forgotten the
Chinese. They are present in multitude, and have a little corner
of the district to themselves. But the dominant element is
English and American, the English being in the majority. All the
faults and some of the finer qualities of the masterful races can
be studied here to better advantage than beyond seas,--because
everybody knows all about everybody else in communities so
small,--mere oases of Occidental life in the vast unknown of the
Far East. Ugly stories may be heard which are not worth writing
about; also stories of nobility and generosity--about good brave
things done by men who pretend to be selfish, and wear
conventional masks to hide what is best in them from public
knowledge.

But the domains of the foreigner do not stretch beyond the
distance of an easy walk, and may shrink back again into nothing
before many years--for reasons I shall presently dwell upon. His
settlements developed precociously,--almost like "mushroom
cities" in the great American West,--and reached the apparent
limit of their development soon after solidifying.

About and beyond the concession, the "native town"--the real
Japanese city--stretches away into regions imperfectly known. To
the average settler this native town remains a world of
mysteries; he may not think it worth his while to enter it for
ten years at a time. It has no interest for him, as he is not a
student of native customs, but simply a man of business; and he
has no time to think how queer it all is. Merely to cross the
concession line is almost the same thing as to cross the Pacific
Ocean,--which is much less wide than the difference between the
races. Enter alone into the interminable narrow maze of Japanese
streets, and the dogs will bark at you, and the children stare at
you as if you were the only foreigner they ever saw. Perhaps they
will even call after you "Ijin," "Tojin," or "Ke-tojin,"--the
last of which signifies "hairy foreigner," and is not intended as
a compliment.


II

For a long time the merchants of the concessions had their own
way in everything, and forced upon the native firms methods of
business to which no Occidental merchant would think of
submitting,--methods which plainly expressed the foreign
conviction that all Japanese were tricksters. No foreigner would
then purchase anything until it had been long enough in his hands
to be examined and re-examined and "exhaustively" examined,--or
accept any order for imports unless the order were accompanied by
"a substantial payment of bargain money"(1). Japanese buyers and
sellers protested in vain; they found themselves obliged to
submit. But they bided their time,--yielding only with the
determination to conquer. The rapid growth of the foreign town,
and the immense capital successfully invested therein, proved to
them how much they would have to learn before being able to help
themselves. They wondered without admiring, and traded with the
foreigners or worked for them, while secretly detesting them. In
old Japan the merchant ranked below the common peasant; but these
foreign invaders assumed the tone of princes and the insolence of
conquerors. As employers they were usually harsh, and sometimes
brutal. Nevertheless they were wonderfully wise in the matter of
making money; they lived like kings and paid high salaries. It
was desirable that young men should suffer in their service for
the sake of learning things which would have to be learned to
save the country from passing under foreign rule. Some day Japan
would have a mercantile marine of her own, and foreign banking
agencies, and foreign credit, and be well able to rid herself of
these haughty strangers: in the meanwhile they should be endured
as teachers.

So the import and export trade remained entirely in foreign
hands, and it grew from nothing to a value of hundreds of
millions; and Japan was well exploited. But she knew that she was
only paying to learn; and her patience was of that kind which
endures so long as to be mistaken for oblivion of injuries. Her
opportunities came in the natural order of things. The growing
influx of aliens seeking fortune gave her the first advantage.
The intercompetition for Japanese trade broke down old methods;
and new firms being glad to take orders and risks without
"bargain-money," large advance-payments could no longer be
exacted. The relations between foreigners and Japanese
simultaneously improved,--as the latter showed a dangerous
capacity for sudden combination against ill-treatment, could not
be cowed by revolvers, would not suffer abuse of any sort, and
knew how to dispose of the most dangerous rowdy in the space of a
few minutes. Already the rougher Japanese of the ports, the dregs
of the populace, were ready to assume the aggressive on the least
provocation.

Within two decades from the founding of the settlements, those
foreigners who once imagined it a mere question of time when the
whole country would belong to them, began to understand how
greatly they had underestimated the race. The Japanese had been
learning wonderfully well--"nearly as well as the Chinese." They
were supplanting the small foreign shopkeepers; and various
establishments had been compelled to close because of Japanese
competition. Even for large firms the era of easy fortune-making
was over; the period of hard work was commencing. In early days
all the personal wants of foreigners had necessarily been
supplied by foreigners,--so that a large retail trade had grown
up under the patronage of the wholesale trade. The retail trade
of the settlements was evidently doomed. Some of its branches had
disappeared; the rest were visibly diminishing.

To-day the economic foreign clerk or assistant in a business
house cannot well afford to live at the local hotels. He can hire
a Japanese cook at a very small sum per month, or can have his
meals sent him from a Japanese restaurant at five to seven sen
per plate. He lives in a house constructed in "semi-foreign
style," and owned by a Japanese. The carpets or mattings on his
floor are of Japanese manufacture. His furniture is supplied by a
Japanese cabinet-maker. His suits, shirts, shoes, walking-cane,
umbrella, are "Japanese make": even the soap on his washstand is
stamped with Japanese ideographs. If a smoker, he buys his Manila
cigars from a Japanese tobacconist half a dollar cheaper per box
than any foreign house would charge him for the same quality. If
he wants books he can buy them at much lower prices from a
Japanese than from a foreign book dealer,--and select his
purchases from a much larger and better-selected stock. If he
wants a photograph taken he goes to a Japanese gallery: no
foreign photographer could make a living in Japan. If he wants
curios he visits a Japanese house;--the foreign dealer would
charge him a hundred per cent. dearer.

On the other hand, if he be a man of family, his daily marketing
is supplied by Japanese butchers, fishmongers, dairymen,
fruit-sellers, vegetable dealers. He may continue for a time to
buy English or American hams, bacon, canned goods, etc., from
some foreign provision dealer; but he has discovered that
Japanese stores now offer the same class of goods at lower
prices. If he drinks good beer, it probably comes from a Japanese
brewery; and if he wants a good quality of ordinary wine or
liquor, Japanese storekeepers can supply it at rates below those
of the foreign importer. Indeed, the only things he cannot buy
from the Japanese houses are just those things which he cannot
afford,--high-priced goods such as only rich men are likely to
purchase. And finally, if any of his family become sick, he can
consult a Japanese physician who will charge him a fee perhaps
one tenth less than he would have had to pay a foreign physician
in former times. Foreign doctors now find it very hard to
live,--unless they have something more than their practice to
rely upon. Even when the foreign doctor brings down his fee to a
dollar a visit, the high-class Japanese doctor can charge two,
and still crush competition; for, he furnishes the medicine
himself at prices which would ruin a foreign apothecary. There
are doctors and doctors, of course, as in all countries; but the
German-speaking Japanese physician capable of directing a public
or military hospital is not easily surpassed in his profession;
and the average foreign physician cannot possibly compete with
him. He furnishes no prescriptions to be taken to a drugstore:
his drugstore is either at home or in a room of the hospital he
directs.


These facts, taken at random out of a multitude, imply that
foreign shops or as we call them in America, "stores," will soon
cease to be. The existence of some has been prolonged only by
needless and foolish trickery on the part of some petty Japanese
dealers,--attempts to sell abominable decoctions in foreign
bottles under foreign labels, to adulterate imported goods, or to
imitate trade-marks. But the common sense of the Japanese
dealers, as a mass, is strongly opposed to such immorality, and
the evil will soon correct itself. The native storekeepers can
honestly undersell the foreign ones, because able not only to
underlive them, but to make fortunes during the competition.

This has been for some time well recognized in the concessions.
But the delusion prevailed that the great exporting and importing
firms were impregnable; that they could still control the whole
volume of commerce with the West; and that no Japanese companies
could find means to oppose the weight of foreign capital, or to
acquire the business methods according to which it was employed.
Certainly the retail trade would go. But that signified little.
The great firms would remain and multiply, and would increase
their capacities.

(1) See Japan Mail, July 21, 1895.


III

During all this time of outward changes the real feeling between
the races--the mutual dislike of Oriental and Occidental--had
continued to grow. Of the nine or ten English papers published in
the open ports, the majority expressed, day after day, one side
of this dislike, in the language of ridicule or contempt; and a
powerful native press retorted in kind, with dangerous
effectiveness. If the "anti-Japanese" newspapers did not actually
represent--as I believe they did--an absolute majority in
sentiment, they represented at least the weight of foreign
capital, and the preponderant influences of the settlements. The
English "pro-Japanese" newspapers, though conducted by shrewd
men, and distinguished by journalistic abilities of no common
order, could not appease the powerful resentment provoked by the
language of their contemporaries. The charges of barbarism or
immorality printed in English were promptly answered by the
publication in Japanese dailies of the scandals of the open
ports,--for all the millions of the empire to know. The race
question was carried into Japanese politics by a strong
anti-foreign league; the foreign concessions were openly denounced as
hotbeds of vice; and the national anger became so formidable that
only the most determined action on the part of the government
could have prevented disastrous happenings. Nevertheless oil was
still poured on the smothered fire by foreign editors, who at the
outbreak of the war with China openly took the part of China.
This policy was pursued throughout the campaign. Reports of
imaginary reverses were printed recklessly, undeniable victories
were unjustly belittled, and after the war had been decided, the
cry was raised that the Japanese "had been allowed to become
dangerous" Later on, the interference of Russia was applauded and
the sympathy of England condemned by men of English blood. The
effect of such utterances at such a time was that of insult never
to be forgiven upon a people who never forgive. Utterances of
hate they were, but also utterances of alarm,--alarm excited by
the signing of those new treaties, bringing all aliens under
Japanese jurisdiction,--and fear, not unfounded, of another
anti-foreign agitation with the formidable new sense of national
power behind it. Premonitory symptoms of such agitation were
really apparent in a general tendency to insult or jeer at
foreigners, and in some rare but exemplary acts of violence. The
government again found it necessary to issue proclamations and
warnings against such demonstrations of national anger; and they
ceased almost as quickly as they began. But there is no doubt
that their cessation was due largely to recognition of the
friendly attitude of England as a naval power, and the worth of
her policy to Japan in a moment of danger to the world's peace.
England, too, had first rendered treaty-revision possible,--in
spite of the passionate outcries of her own subjects in the Far
East; and the leaders of the people were grateful. Otherwise the
hatred between settlers and Japanese might have resulted quite as
badly as had been feared.

In the beginning, of course, this mutual antagonism was racial,
and therefore natural; and the irrational violence of prejudice
and malignity developed at a later day was inevitable with the
ever-increasing conflict of interests. No foreigner really
capable of estimating the conditions could have seriously
entertained any hope of a rapprochement. The barriers of racial
feeling, of emotional differentiation, of language, of manners
and beliefs, are likely to remain insurmountable for centuries.
Though instances of warm friendship, due to the mutual attraction
of exceptional natures able to divine each other intuitively,
might be cited, the foreigner, as a general rule, understands the
Japanese quite as little as the Japanese understands him. What is
worse for the alien than miscomprehension is the simple fact that
he is in the position of an invader. Under no ordinary
circumstances need he expect to be treated like a Japanese, and
this not merely because he has more money at his command, but
because of his race. One price for the foreigner, another for the
Japanese, is the common regulation,--except in those Japanese
stores which depend almost exclusively upon foreign trade. If you
wish to enter a Japanese theatre, a figure-show, any place of
amusement, or even an inn, you must pay a virtual tax upon your
nationality. Japanese artisans, laborers, clerks, will not work
for you at Japanese rates--unless they have some other object in
view than wages. Japanese hotel-keepers--except in those hotels
built and furnished especially for European or American
travelers--will not make out your bill at regular prices. Large
hotel-companies have been formed which maintain this rule,--
companies controlling scores of establishments throughout the
country, and able to dictate terms to local storekeepers and to
the smaller hostelries. It has been generously confessed that
foreigners ought to pay higher than Japanese for accommodation,
since they give more trouble; and this is true. But under even
these facts race-feeling is manifest. Those innkeepers who build
for Japanese custom only, in the great centres, care nothing for
foreign custom, and often lose by it,--partly because well-paying
native guests do not like hotels patronized by foreigners, and
partly because the Western guest wants all to himself the room
which can be rented more profitably to a Japanese party of five
or eight. Another fact not generally understood in connection
with this is that in Old Japan the question of recompense for
service was left to honor. The Japanese innkeeper always supplied
(and in the country often still supplies) food at scarcely more
than cost; and his real profit depended upon the conscience of
the customer. Hence the importance of the chadai, or present of
tea-money, to the hotel. From the poor a very small sum, from the
rich a larger sum, was expected,--according to services rendered.
In like manner the hired servant expected to be remunerated
according to his master's ability to pay, even more than
according to the value of the work done; the artist preferred,
when working for a good patron, never to name a price: only the
merchant tried to get the better of his customers by bargaining,
--the immoral privilege of his class. It may be readily imagined
that the habit of trusting to honor for payment produced no good
results in dealing with Occidentals. All matters of buying and
selling we think of as "business"; and business in the West is
not conducted under purely abstract ideas of morality, but at
best under relative and partial ideas of morality. A generous man
extremely dislikes to have the price of an article which he wants
to buy left to his conscience; for, unless he knows exactly the
value of the material and the worth of the labor, he feels
obliged to make such over-payment as will assure him that he has
done more than right; while the selfish man takes advantage of
the situation to give as nearly next to nothing as he can.
Special rates have to be made, therefore, by the Japanese in all
dealings with foreigners. But the dealing itself is made more or
less aggressive, according to circumstance, because of race
antagonism. The foreigner has not only to pay higher rates for
every kind of skilled labor; but must sign costlier leases, and
submit to higher rents. Only the lowest class of Japanese
servants can be hired even at high wages by a foreign household;
and their stay is usually brief, as they dislike the service
required of them. Even the apparent eagerness of educated
Japanese to enter foreign employ is generally misunderstood;
their veritable purpose being simply, in most cases, to fit
themselves for the same sort of work in Japanese business houses,
stores, and hotels. The average Japanese would prefer to work
fifteen hours a day for one of his own countrymen than eight
hours a day for a foreigner paying higher wages. I have seen
graduates of the university working as servants; but they were
working only to learn special things.


IV

Really the dullest foreigner could not have believed that a
people of forty millions, uniting all their energies to achieve
absolute national independence, would remain content to leave the
management of their country's import and export trade to aliens,
--especially in view of the feeling in the open ports. The
existence of foreign settlements in Japan, under consular
jurisdiction, was in itself a constant exasperation to national
pride,--an indication of national weakness. It had so been
proclaimed in print,--in speeches by members of the anti-foreign
league,--in speeches made in parliament. But knowledge of the
national desire to control the whole of Japanese commerce, and
the periodical manifestations of hostility to foreigners as
settlers, excited only temporary uneasiness. It was confidently
asserted that the Japanese could only injure themselves by any
attempt to get rid of foreign negotiators. Though alarmed at the
prospect of being brought under Japanese law, the merchants of
the concessions never imagined a successful attack upon large
interests possible, except by violation of that law itself. It
signified little that the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha had become, during
the war, one of the largest steamship companies in the world;
that Japan was trading directly with India and China; that
Japanese banking agencies were being established in the great
manufacturing centres abroad; that Japanese merchants were
sending their sons to Europe and America for a sound commercial
education. Because Japanese lawyers were gaining a large foreign
clientele; because Japanese shipbuilders, architects, engineers
had replaced foreigners in government service, it did not at all
follow that the foreign agents controlling the import and export
trade with Europe and America could be dispensed with. The
machinery of commerce would be useless in Japanese hands; and
capacity for other professions by no means augured latent
capacity for business. The foreign capital invested in Japan
could not be successfully threatened by any combinations formed
against it. Some Japanese houses might carry on a small import
business, but the export trade required a thorough knowledge of
business conditions on the other side of the world, and such
connections and credits as the Japanese could not obtain.
Nevertheless the self-confidence of the foreign importers, and
exporters was rudely broken in July, 1895, when a British house
having brought suit against a Japanese company in a Japanese
court, for refusal to accept delivery of goods ordered, and
having won a judgment for nearly thirty thousand dollars,
suddenly found itself confronted and menaced by a guild whose
power had never been suspected. The Japanese firm did not appeal
against the decision of the court: it expressed itself ready to
pay the whole sum at once--if required. But the guild to which it
belonged informed the triumphant plaintiffs that a compromise
would be to their advantage. Then the English house discovered
itself threatened with a boycott which could utterly ruin it,--a
boycott operating in all the industrial centres of the Empire.
The compromise was promptly effected at considerable loss to the
foreign firm; and the settlements were dismayed. There was much
denunciation of the immorality of the proceeding(1). But it was a
proceeding against which the law could do nothing; for boycotting
cannot be satisfactorily dealt with under law; and it
afforded proof positive that the Japanese were able to force
foreign firms to submit to their dictation,--by foul means if not
by fair. Enormous guilds had been organized by the great
industries,--combinations whose moves, perfectly regulated by
telegraph, could ruin opposition, and could set at defiance even
the judgment of tribunals. The Japanese had attempted boycotting
in previous years with so little success that they were deemed
incapable of combination. But the new situation showed how well
they had learned through defeat, and that with further
improvement of organization they could reasonably expect to get
the foreign trade under control,--if not into their own hands. It
would be the next great step toward the realization of the
national desire,--Japan only for the Japanese. Even though the
country should be opened to foreign settlement, foreign
investments would always be at the mercy of Japanese
combinations.

(1) A Kobe merchant of great experience, writing to the Kobe
Chronicle of August 7, 1895, observed:--"I am not attempting to
defend boycotts; but I firmly believe from what has come to my
knowledge that in each and every case there has been provocation
irritating the Japanese, rousing their feelings and their sense
of justice, and driving them to combination as a defense."


V

The foregoing brief account of existing conditions may suffice to
prove the evolution in Japan of a social phenomenon of great
significance. Of course the prospective opening of the country
under new treaties, the rapid development of its industries, and
the vast annual increase in the volume of trade with America and
Europe, will probably bring about some increase of foreign
settlers; and this temporary result might deceive many as to the
inevitable drift of things. But old merchants of experience even
now declare that the probable further expansion of the ports will
really mean the growth of a native competitive commerce that must
eventually dislodge foreign merchants. The foreign settlements,
as communities, will disappear: there will remain only some few
great agencies, such as exist in all the chief ports of the
civilized world; and the abandoned streets of the concessions,
and the costly foreign houses on the heights, will be peopled and
tenanted by Japanese. Large foreign investments will not be made
in the interior. And even Christian mission-work must be left to
native missionaries; for just as Buddhism never took definite
form in Japan until the teaching of its doctrines was left
entirely to Japanese priests,--so Christianity will never take
any fixed shape till it has been so remodeled as to harmonize
with the emotional and social life of the race. Even thus
remodeled it can scarcely hope to exist except in the form of a
few small sects.

The social phenomenon exhibited can be best explained by a
simile. In many ways a human society may be compared biologically
with an individual organism. Foreign elements introduced forcibly
into the system of either, and impossible to assimilate, set up
irritations and partial disintegration, until eliminated
naturally or removed artificially. Japan is strengthening herself
through elimination of disturbing elements; and this natural
process is symbolized in the resolve to regain possession of all
the concessions, to bring about the abolishment of consular
jurisdiction, to leave nothing under foreign control within the
Empire. It is also manifested in the dismissal of foreign
employes, in the resistance offered by Japanese congregations to
the authority of foreign missionaries, and in the resolute
boycotting of foreign merchants. And behind all this
race-movement there is more than race-feeling: there is also the
definite conviction that foreign help is proof of national
feebleness, and that the Empire remains disgraced before the eyes
of the commercial world, so long as its import and export trade
are managed by aliens. Several large Japanese firms have quite
emancipated themselves from the domination of foreign middlemen;
large trade with India and China is being carried on by Japanese
steamship companies; and communication with the Southern States
of America is soon to be established by the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha,
for the direct importation of cotton. But the foreign settlements
remain constant sources of irritation; and their commercial
conquest by untiring national effort will alone satisfy the
country, and will prove, even better than the war with China,
Japan's real place among nations. That conquest, I think, will
certainly be achieved.


VI

What of the future of Japan? No one can venture any positive
prediction on the assumption that existing tendencies will
continue far into that future. Not to dwell upon the grim
probabilities of war, or the possibility of such internal
disorder as might compel indefinite suspension of the
constitution, and lead to a military dictatorship,--a resurrected
Shogunate in modern uniform,--great changes there will assuredly
be, both for better and for worse. Supposing these changes
normal, however, one may venture some qualified predictions,
based upon the reasonable supposition that the race will
continue, through rapidly alternating periods of action and
reaction, to assimilate its new-found knowledge with the best
relative consequences.


Physically, I think, the Japanese will become before the close of
the next century much superior to what they now are. For such
belief there are three good reasons. The first is that the
systematic military and gymnastic training of the able-bodied
youth of the Empire ought in a few generations to produce results
as marked as those of the military system in Germany,--increase
in stature, in average girth of chest, in muscular development
Another reason is that the Japanese of the cities are taking to a
richer diet,--a flesh diet; and that a more nutritive food must
have physiological results favoring growth. Immense numbers of
little restaurants are everywhere springing up, in which "Western
Cooking" is furnished almost as cheaply as Japanese food.
Thirdly, the delay of marriage necessitated by education and by
military service must result in the production of finer and finer
generations of children. As immature marriages become the
exception rather than the rule, children of feeble constitution
will correspondingly diminish in number. At present the
extraordinary differences of stature noticeable in any Japanese
crowd seem to prove that the race is capable of great physical
development under a severer social discipline.

Moral improvement is hardly to be expected--rather the reverse.
The old moral ideals of Japan were at least quite as noble as our
own; and men could really live up to them in the quiet benevolent
times of patriarchal government. Untruthfulness, dishonesty, and
brutal crime were rarer than now, as official statistics show,
the percentage of crime having been for some years steadily on
the increase--which proves of course, among other things, that
the struggle for existence has been intensified. The old standard
of chastity, as represented in public opinion, was that of a less
developed society than our own; yet I do not believe it can be
truthfully asserted that the moral conditions were worse than
with us. In one respect they were certainly better; for the
virtue of Japanese wives was generally in all ages above
suspicion(1). If the morals of men were much more open to
reproach, it is not necessary to cite Lecky for evidence as to
whether a much better state of things prevails in the Occident.
Early marriages were encouraged to guard young men from
temptations to irregular life; and it is only fair to suppose
that in a majority of cases this result was obtained.
Concubinage, the privilege of the rich, had its evil side; but it
had also the effect of relieving the wife from the physical
strain of rearing many children in rapid succession. The social
conditions were so different from those which Western religion
assumes to be the best possible, that an impartial judgment of
them cannot be ecclesiastical. One fact is indisputable,--that
they were unfavorable to professional vice; and in many of the
larger fortified towns,--the seats of princes,--no houses of
prostitution were suffered to exist. When all things are fairly
considered, it will be found that Old Japan might claim, in spite
of her patriarchal system, to have been less open to reproach
even in the matter of sexual morality than many a Western
country. The people were better than their laws asked them to be.
And now that the relations of the sexes are to be regulated by
new codes,--at a time when new codes are really needed, the
changes which it is desirable to bring about cannot result in
immediate good. Sudden reforms are not made by legislation. Laws
cannot directly create sentiment; and real social progress can be
made only through change of ethical feeling developed by long
discipline and training. Meanwhile increasing pressure of
population and increasing competition must tend, while quickening
intelligence, to harden character and develop selfishness.


Intellectually there will doubtless be great progress, but not a
progress so rapid as those who think that Japan has really
transformed herself in thirty years would have us believe.
However widely diffused among the people, scientific education
cannot immediately raise the average of practical intelligence to
the Western level. The common capacity must remain lower for
generations. There will be plenty of remarkable exceptions,
indeed; and a new aristocracy of intellect is coming into
existence. But the real future of the nation depends rather upon
the general capacity of the many than upon the exceptional
capacity of the few. Perhaps it depends especially upon the
development of the mathematical faculty, which is being
everywhere assiduously cultivated. At present this is the weak
point; hosts of students being yearly debarred from the more
important classes of higher study through inability to pass in
mathematics. At the Imperial naval and military colleges,
however, such results have been obtained as suffice to show that
this weakness will eventually be remedied. The most difficult
branches of scientific study, will become less formidable to the
children of those who have been able to distinguish themselves in
such branches.


In other respects, some temporary retrogression is to be looked
for. Just so certainly as Japan has attempted that which is above
the normal limit of her powers, so certainly must she fall back
to that limit, or, rather, below it. Such retrogression will be
natural as well as necessary: it will mean nothing more than a
recuperative preparation for stronger and loftier efforts. Signs
of it are even now visible in the working of certain
state-departments,--notably in that of education. The idea of
forcing upon Oriental students a course of study above the
average capacity of Western students; the idea of making English
the language, or at least one of the languages of the country;
and the idea of changing ancestral modes of feeling and thinking
for the better by such training, were wild extravagances. Japan
must develop her own soul: she cannot borrow another. A dear
friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me
while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the
students of Japan: "_Why, the English language itself has been a
demoralizing influence!_" There was much depth in that
observation. Setting the whole Japanese nation to study English
(the language of a people who are being forever preached to about
their "rights," and never about their "duties") was almost an
imprudence. The policy was too wholesale as well as too sudden.
It involved great waste of money and time, and it helped to sap
ethical sentiment. In the future Japan will learn English, just
as England learns German. But if this study has been wasted in
some directions, it has not been wasted in others. The influence
of English has effected modifications in the native tongue,
making it richer, more flexible, and more capable of expressing
the new forms of thought created by the discoveries of modern
science. This influence must long continue. There will be a
considerable absorption of English--perhaps also of French and
German words--into Japanese: indeed this absorption is already
marked in the changing speech of the educated classes, not less
than in the colloquial of the ports which is mixed with curious
modifications of foreign commercial words. Furthermore, the
grammatical structure of Japanese is being influenced; and though
I cannot agree with a clergyman who lately declared that the use
of the passive voice by Tokyo street-urchins announcing the fall
of Port Arthur--("_Ryojunko ga senryo sera-reta!_") represented
the working of "divine providence," I do think it afforded some
proof that the Japanese language, assimilative like the genius of
the race, is showing capacity to meet all demands made upon it by
the new conditions.


Perhaps Japan will remember her foreign teachers more kindly in
the twentieth century. But she will never feel toward the
Occident, as she felt toward China before the Meiji era, the
reverential respect due by ancient custom to a beloved
instructor; for the wisdom of China was voluntarily sought, while
that of the West was thrust upon her by violence. She will have
some Christian sects of her own; but she will not remember our
American and English missionaries as she remembers even now those
great Chinese priests who once educated her youth. And she will
not preserve relics of our sojourn, carefully wrapped in septuple
coverings of silk, and packed away in dainty whitewood boxes,
because we had no new lesson of beauty to teach her,--nothing by
which to appeal to her emotions.

(1) The statement has been made that there is no word for
chastity in the Japanese language. This is true in the same sense
only that we might say there is no word for chastity in the
English language,--became such words as honor, virtue, purity,
chastity have been adopted into English from other languages.
Open any good Japanese-English dictionary and you will find many
words for chastity. Just as it would be ridiculous to deny that
the word "chastity" is modern English, because it came to us
through the French from the Latin, so it is ridiculous to deny
that Chinese moral terms, adopted into the Japanese tongue more
than a thousand years ago are Japanese to-day. The statement,
like a majority of missionary statements on these subjects, is
otherwise misleading; for the reader is left to infer the absence
of an adjective as well as a noun,--and the purely Japanese
adjectives signifying chaste are numerous. The word most commonly
used applies to both sexes,--and has the old Japanese sense of
firm, strict, resisting, honorable. The deficiency of abstract
terms in a language by no means implies the deficiency of
concrete moral ideas,--a fact which has been vainly pointed out
to missionaries more than once.



IX

BY FORCE OF KARMA

"The face of the beloved and the face of the risen sun cannot be
looked at."--Japanese Proverb.

I

Modern science assures us that the passion of first love, so far
as the individual may be concerned, is "absolutely antecedent to
all relative experience whatever(1)." In other words, that which
might well seem to be the most strictly personal of all feelings,
is not an individual matter at all. Philosophy discovered the
same fact long ago, and never theorized more attractively than
when trying to explain the mystery of the passion. Science, so
far, has severely limited itself to a few suggestions on the
subject. This seems a pity, because the metaphysicians could at
no time give properly detailed explanations,--whether teaching
that the first sight of the beloved quickens in the soul of the
lover some dormant prenatal remembrance of divine truth, or that
the illusion is made by spirits unborn seeking incarnation. But
science and philosophy both agree as to one all-important fact,
that the lovers themselves have no choice, that they are merely
the subjects of an influence. Science is even the more positive
on this point: it states quite plainly that the dead, not the
living, are responsible. There would seem to be some sort of
ghostly remembrance in first loves. It is true that science,
unlike Buddhism, does not declare that under particular
conditions we may begin to recollect our former lives. That
psychology which is based upon physiology even denies the
possibility of memory-inheritance in this individual sense. But
it allows that something more powerful, though more indefinite,
is inherited,--the sum of ancestral memories incalculable,--the
sum of countless billions of trillions of experiences. Thus can
it interpret our most enigmatical sensations,--our conflicting
impulses,--our strangest intuitions; all those seemingly
irrational attractions or repulsions,--all those vague sadnesses
or joys, never to be accounted for by individual experience. But
it has not yet found leisure to discourse much to us about first
love,--although first love, in its relation to the world
invisible, is the very weirdest of all human feelings, and the
most mysterious.

In our Occident the riddle runs thus. To the growing youth, whose
life is normal and vigorous, there comes a sort of atavistic
period in which he begins to feel for the feebler sex that
primitive contempt created by mere consciousness of physical
superiority. But it is just at the time when the society of girls
has grown least interesting to him that he suddenly becomes
insane. There crosses his life-path a maiden never seen
before,--but little different from other daughters of men,--not
at all wonderful to common vision. At the same instant, with a
single surging shock, the blood rushes to his heart; and all his
senses are bewitched. Thereafter, till the madness ends, his life
belongs wholly to that new-found being, of whom he yet knows
nothing, except that the sun's light seems more beautiful when it
touches her. From that glamour no mortal science can disenthrall
him. But whose the witchcraft? Is it any power in the living
idol? No, psychology tells us that it is the power of the dead
within the idolater. The dead cast the spell. Theirs the shock in
the lover's heart; theirs the electric shiver that tingled
through his veins at the first touch of one girl's hand.

But why they should want her, rather than any other, is the
deeper part of the riddle. The solution offered by the great
German pessimist will not harmonize well with scientific
psychology. The choice of the dead, evolutionally considered,
would be a choice based upon remembrance rather than on
prescience. And the enigma is not cheerful.

There is, indeed, the romantic possibility that they want her
because there survives in her, as in some composite photograph,
the suggestion of each and all who loved them in the past. But
there is the possibility also that they want her because there
reappears in her something of the multitudinous charm of all the
women they loved in vain.

Assuming the more nightmarish theory, we should believe that
passion, though buried again and again, can neither die nor rest.
They who have vainly loved only seem to die; they really live on
in generations of hearts, that their desire may be fulfilled.
They wait, perhaps though centuries, for the reincarnation of
shapes beloved,--forever weaving into the dreams of youth their
vapory composite of memories. Hence the ideals unattainable,--the
haunting of troubled souls by the Woman-never-to-be-known.

In the Far East thoughts are otherwise; and what I am about to
write concerns the interpretation of the Lord Buddha.

(1) Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology: "The Feelings."


II

A priest died recently under very peculiar circumstances. He was
the priest of a temple, belonging to one of the older Buddhist
sects, in a village near Osaka. (You can see that temple from the
Kwan-Setsu Railway, as you go by train to Kyoto.)

He was young, earnest, and extremely handsome--very much too
handsome for a priest, the women said. He looked like one of
those beautiful figures of Amida made by the great Buddhist
statuaries of other days.

The men of his parish thought him a pure and learned priest, in
which they were right. The women did not think about his virtue
or his learning only: he possessed the unfortunate power to
attract them, independently of his own will, as a mere man. He
was admired by them, and even by women of other parishes also, in
ways not holy; and their admiration interfered with his studies
and disturbed his meditations. They found irreproachable pretexts
for visiting the temple at all hours, just to look at him and
talk to him; asking questions which it was his duty to answer,
and making religious offerings which he could not well refuse.
Some would ask questions, not of a religious kind, that caused
him to blush. He was by nature too gentle to protect himself by
severe speech, even when forward girls from the city said things
that country-girls never would have said,--things that made him
tell the speakers to leave his presence. And the more he shrank
from the admiration of the timid, or the adulation of the
unabashed, the more the persecution increased, till it became the
torment of his life(1).

His parents had long been dead; he had no worldly ties: he loved
only his calling, and the studies belonging to it; and he did not
wish to think of foolish and forbidden things. His extraordinary
beauty--the beauty of a living idol--was only a misfortune.
Wealth was offered him under conditions that he could not even
discuss. Girls threw themselves at his feet, and prayed him in
vain to love them. Love-letters were constantly being sent to
him, letters which never brought a reply. Some were written in
that classical enigmatic style which speaks of "the Rock-Pillow
of Meeting," and "waves on the shadow of a face," and "streams
that part to reunite." Others were artless and frankly tender,
full of the pathos of a girl's first confession of love.

For a long time such letters left the young priest as unmoved, to
outward appearance, as any image of that Buddha in whose likeness
he seemed to have been made. But, as a matter of fact, he was not
a Buddha, but only a weak man; and his position was trying.

One evening there came to the temple a little boy who gave him a
letter, whispered the name of the sender, and ran away in the
dark. According to the subsequent testimony of an acolyte, the
priest read the letter, restored it to its envelope, and placed
it on the matting, beside his kneeling cushion. After remaining
motionless for a long time, as if buried in thought, he sought
his writing-box, wrote a letter himself, addressed it to his
spiritual superior, and left it upon the writing-stand. Then he
consulted the clock, and a railway time-table in Japanese. The
hour was early; the night windy and dark. He prostrated himself
for a moment in prayer before the altar; then hurried out into
the blackness, and reached the railway exactly in time to kneel
down in the middle of the track, facing the roar and rush of the
express from Kobe. And, in another moment, those who had
worshiped the strange beauty of the man would have shrieked to
see, even by lantern-light, all that remained of his poor
earthliness, smearing the iron way.



The letter written to his superior was found. It contained a bare
statement to the effect that, feeling his spiritual strength
departing from him, he had resolved to die in order that he might
not sin.

The other letter was still lying where he had left it on the
floor,--a letter written in that woman-language of which every
syllable is a little caress of humility. Like all such letters
(they are never sent through the post) it contained no date, no
name, no initial, and its envelope bore no address. Into our
incomparably harsher English speech it might be imperfectly
rendered as follows:--

_To take such freedom may be to assume overmuch; yet I feel that
I must speak to you, and therefore send this letter. As for my
lowly self, I have to say only that when first seeing you in the
period of the Festival of the Further Shore, I began to think;
and that since then I have not, even for a moment, been able to
forget. More and more each day I sink into that ever-growing
thought of you; and when I sleep I dream; and when, awaking and
seeing you not, I remember there was no truth in my thoughts of
the night, I can do nothing but weep. Forgive me that, having
been born into this world a woman, I should utter my wish for the
exceeding favor of being found not hateful to one so high.
Foolish and without delicacy I may seem in allowing my heart to
be thus tortured by the thought of one so far above me. But only
because knowing that I cannot restrain my heart, out of the depth
of it I have suffered these poor words to come, that I may write
them with my unskillful brush, and send them to you. I pray that
you will deem me worthy of pity; I beseech that you will not send
me cruel words in return. Compassionate me, seeing that this is
but the overflowing of my humble feelings; deign to divine and
justly to judge,--be it only with the least of kindliness,--this
heart that, in its great distress alone, so ventures to address
you. Each moment I shall hope and wait for some gladdening
answer_.

_Concerning all things fortunate, felicitation_.

_To-day,--
from the honorably-known,
to the longed-for, beloved, august one,
this letter goes._

(1) Actors in Japan often exercise a similar fascination upon
sensitive girls of the lower classes, and often take cruel
advantage of the power so gained. It is very rarely, indeed, that
such fascination can be exerted by a priest.


III

I called upon a Japanese friend, a Buddhist scholar, to ask some
questions about the religious aspects of the incident. Even as a
confession of human weakness, that suicide appeared to me a
heroism.

It did not so appear to my friend. He spoke words of rebuke. He
reminded me that one who even suggested suicide as a means of
escape from sin had been pronounced by the Buddha a spiritual
outcast,--unfit to live with holy men. As for the dead priest, he
had been one of those whom the Teacher called fools. Only a fool
could imagine that by destroying his own body he was destroying
also within himself the sources of sin.

"But," I protested, "this man's life was pure.... Suppose he
sought death that he might not, unwittingly, cause others to
commit sin?"

My friend smiled ironically. Then he said:--"There was once a
lady of Japan, nobly torn and very beautiful, who wanted to
become a nun. She went to a certain temple, and made her wish
known. But the high-priest said to her, 'You are still very
young. You have lived the life of courts. To the eyes of worldly
men you are beautiful; and, because of your face, temptations to
return to the pleasures of the world will be devised for you.
Also this wish of yours may be due to some momentary sorrow.
Therefore, I cannot now consent to your request.' But she still
pleaded so earnestly, that he deemed it best to leave her
abruptly. There was a large hibachi--a brazier of glowing
charcoal--in the room where she found herself alone. She heated
the iron tongs of the brazier till they were red, and with them
horribly pierced and seamed her face, destroying her beauty
forever. Then the priest, alarmed by the smell of the burning,
returned in haste, and was very much grieved by what he saw. But
she pleaded again, without any trembling in her voice: 'Because I
was beautiful, you refused to take me. Will you take me now?' She
was accepted into the Order, and became a holy nun.... Well,
which was the wiser, that woman, or the priest you wanted to
praise?"

"But was it the duty of the priest," I asked, "to disfigure his
face?"

"Certainly not! Even the woman's action would have been very
unworthy if done only as a protection against temptation.
Self-mutilation of any sort is forbidden by the law of Buddha; and
she transgressed. But, as she burned her face only that she might
be able to enter at once upon the Path, and not because afraid of
being unable by her own will to resist sin, her fault was a minor
fault. On the other hand, the priest who took his own life
committed a very great offense. He should have tried to convert
those who tempted him. This he was too weak to do. If he felt it
impossible to keep from sinning as a priest, then it would have
been better for him to return to the world, and there try to
follow the law for such as do not belong to the Order."

"According to Buddhism, therefore, he has obtained no merit?" I
queried.

"It is not easy to imagine that he has. Only by those ignorant of
the Law can his action be commended."

"And by those knowing the Law, what will be thought of the
results, the karma of his act?"

My friend mused a little; then he said, thoughtfully:--"The whole
truth of that suicide we cannot fully know. Perhaps it was not
the first time."

"Do you mean that in some former life also he may have tried to
escape from sin by destroying his own body?"

"Yes. Or in many former lives."

"What of his future lives?"

"Only a Buddha could answer that with certain knowledge."

"But what is the teaching?"

"You forget that it is not possible for us to know what was in
the mind of that man."

"Suppose that he sought death only to escape from sinning?"

"Then he will have to face the like temptation again and again,
and all the sorrow of it, and all the pain, even for a thousand
times a thousand times, until he shall have learned to master
himself. There is no escape through death from the supreme
necessity of self-conquest."


After parting with my friend, his words continued to haunt me;
and they haunt me still. They forced new thoughts about some
theories hazarded in the first part of this paper. I have not yet
been able to assure myself that his weird interpretation of the
amatory mystery is any less worthy of consideration than our
Western interpretations. I have been wondering whether the loves
that lead to death might not mean much more than the ghostly
hunger of buried passions. Might they not signify also the
inevitable penalty of long-forgotten sins?



X


A CONSERVATIVE

Amazakaru
Hi no iru kuni ni
Kite wa aredo,
Yamato-nishiki no
Iro wa kawaraji.

I

He was born in a city of the interior, the seat of a daimyo of
three hundred thousand koku, where no foreigner had ever been.
The yashiki of his father, a samurai of high rank, stood within
the outer fortifications surrounding the prince's castle. It was
a spacious yashiki; and behind it and around it were landscape
gardens, one of which contained a small shrine of the god of
armies. Forty years ago there were many such homes. To artist
eyes the few still remaining seem like fairy palaces, and their
gardens like dreams of the Buddhist paradise.

But sons of samurai were severely disciplined in those days; and
the one of whom I write had little time for dreaming. The period
of caresses was made painfully brief for him. Even before he was
invested with his first hakama, or trousers,--a great ceremony in
that epoch,--he was weaned as far as possible from tender
influence, and taught to check the natural impulses of childish
affection. Little comrades would ask him mockingly, "Do you still
need milk?" if they saw him walking out with his mother, although
he might love her in the house as demonstratively as he pleased,
during the hours he could pass by her side. These were not many.
All inactive pleasures were severely restricted by his
discipline; and even comforts, except during illness, were not
allowed him. Almost from the time he could speak he was enjoined
to consider duty the guiding motive of life, self-control the
first requisite of conduct, pain and death matters of no
consequence in the selfish sense.

There was a grimmer side to this Spartan discipline, designed to
cultivate a cold sternness never to be relaxed during youth,
except in the screened intimacy of the home. The boys were inured
to sights of blood. They were taken to witness executions; they
were expected to display no emotion; and they were obliged, on
their return home, to quell any secret feeling of horror by
eating plentifully of rice tinted blood-color by an admixture of
salted plum juice. Even more difficult things might be demanded
of a very young boy,--to go alone at midnight to the
execution-ground, for example, and bring back a head in proof of
courage. For the fear of the dead was held not less contemptible
in a samurai than the fear of man. The samurai child was pledged
to fear nothing. In all such tests, the demeanor exacted was
perfect impassiveness; any swaggering would have been judged
quite as harshly as any sign of cowardice.

As a boy grew up, he was obliged to find his pleasures chiefly in
those bodily exercises which were the samurai's early and
constant preparations for war,--archery and riding, wrestling and
fencing. Playmates were found for him; but these were older
youths, sons of retainers, chosen for ability to assist him in
the practice of martial exercises. It was their duty also to
teach him how to swim, to handle a boat, to develop his young
muscles. Between such physical training and the study of the
Chinese classics the greater part of each day was divided for
him. His diet, though ample, was never dainty; his clothing,
except in time of great ceremony, was light and coarse; and he
was not allowed the use of fire merely to warm himself. While
studying of winter mornings, if his hands became too cold to use
the writing brush, he would be ordered to plunge them into icy
water to restore the circulation; and if his feet were numbed by
frost, he would be told to run about in the snow to make them
warm. Still more rigid was his training in the special etiquette
of the military class, and he was early made to know that the
little sword in his girdle was neither an ornament nor a
plaything. He was shown how to use it, how to take his own life
at a moment's notice, without shrinking, whenever the code of his
class might so order(1).

Also in the matter of religion, the training of a samurai boy was
peculiar. He was educated to revere the ancient gods and the
spirits of his ancestors; he was well schooled in the Chinese
ethics; and he was taught something of Buddhist philosophy and
faith. But he was likewise taught that hope of heaven and fear of
hell were for the ignorant only; and that the superior man should
be influenced in his conduct by nothing more selfish than the
love of right for its own sake, and the recognition of duty as a
universal law.

Gradually, as the period of boyhood ripened into youth, his
conduct was less subjected to supervision. He was left more and
more free to act upon his own judgment,--but with full knowledge
that a mistake would not be forgotten; that a serious offense
would never be fully condoned, and that a well-merited reprimand
was more to be dreaded than death. On the other hand, there were
few moral dangers against which to guard him. Professional vice
was then strictly banished from many of the provincial
castle-towns; and even so much of the non-moral side of life as
might have been reflected in popular romance and drama, a young
samurai could know little about. He was taught to despise that
common literature appealing either to the softer emotions or the
passions, as essentially unmanly reading; and the public theatre
was forbidden to his class(2). Thus, in that innocent provincial
life of Old Japan, a young samurai might grow up exceptionally
pure-minded and simple-hearted.


So grew up the young samurai concerning whom these things are
written,--fearless, courteous, self-denying, despising pleasure,
and ready at an instant's notice to give his life for love,
loyalty, or honor. But though already a warrior in frame and
spirit, he was in years scarcely more than a boy when the country
was first startled by the coming of the Black Ships.


II

The policy of Iyemitsu, forbidding any Japanese to leave the
country under pain of death, had left the nation for two hundred
years ignorant of the outer world. About the colossal forces
gathering beyond seas nothing was known. The long existence of
the Dutch settlement at Nagasaki had in no wise enlightened Japan
as to her true position,--an Oriental feudalism of the sixteenth
century menaced by a Western world three centuries older.
Accounts of the real wonders of that world would have sounded to
Japanese ears like stories invented to please children, or have
been classed with ancient tales of the fabled palaces of Horai.
The advent of the American fleet, "the Black Ships," as they were
then called, first awakened the government to some knowledge of
its own weakness, and of danger from afar.

National excitement at the news of the second coming of the Black
Ships was followed by consternation at the discovery that the
Shogunate confessed its inability to cope with the foreign
powers. This could mean only a peril greater than that of the
Tartar invasion in the days of Hojo Tokimune, when the people had
prayed to the gods for help, and the Emperor himself, at Ise, had
besought the spirits of his fathers. Those prayers had been
answered by sudden darkness, a sea of thunder, and the coming of
that mighty wind still called Kami-kaze,--"the Wind of the Gods,"
by which the fleets of Kublai Khan were given to the abyss. Why
should not prayers now also be made? They were, in countless
homes and at thousands of shrines. But the Superior Ones gave
this time no answer; the Kami-kaze did not come. And the samurai
boy, praying vainly before the little shrine of Hachiman in his
father's garden, wondered if the gods had lost their power, or if
the people of the Black Ships were under the protection of
stronger gods.

(1) "Is that really the head of your father?" a prince once asked
of a samurai boy only seven years old. The child at once realized
the situation. The freshly-severed head set before him was not
his father's: the daimyo had been deceived, but further deception
was necessary. So the lad, after having saluted the head with
every sign of reverential grief, suddenly cut out his own bowels.
All the prince's doubts vanished before that bloody proof of
filial piety; the outlawed father was able to make good his
escape, and the memory of the child is still honored in Japanese
drama and poetry.

(2) Samurai women, in some province, at least, could go to the
public theatre. The men could not,--without committing a breach
of good manners. But in samurai homes, or within the grounds of
the yashiki, some private performances of a particular character
were given. Strolling players were the performers. I know several
charming old samurai who have never been to a public theatre in
their lives, and refuse all invitations to witness a performance.
They still obey the rules of their samurai education.


III

It soon became evident that the foreign "barbarians" were not to
be driven away. Hundreds had come, from the East as well as from
the West; and all possible measures for their protection had been
taken; and they had built queer cities of their own upon Japanese
soil. The government had even commanded that Western knowledge
was to be taught in all schools; that the study of English was to
be made an important branch of public education; and that public
education itself was to be remodeled upon Occidental lines. The
government had also declared that the future of the country would
depend upon the study and mastery of the languages and the
science of the foreigners. During the interval, then, between
such study and its successful results, Japan would practically
remain under alien domination. The fact was not, indeed, publicly
stated in so many words; but the signification of the policy was
unmistakable. After the first violent emotions provoked by
knowledge of the situation,--after the great dismay of the
people, and the suppressed fury of the samurai,--there arose an
intense curiosity regarding the appearance and character of those
insolent strangers who had been able to obtain what they wanted
by mere display of superior force. This general curiosity was
partly satisfied by an immense production and distribution of
cheap colored prints, picturing the manner and customs of the
barbarians, and the extraordinary streets of their settlements.
Caricatures only those flaring wood--prints could have seemed to
foreign eyes. But caricature was not the conscious object of the
artist. He tried to portray foreigners as he really saw them; and
he saw them as green-eyed monsters, with red hair like Shojo(1),
and with noses like Tengu(2), wearing clothes of absurd forms and
colors; and dwelling in structures like storehouses or prisons.
Sold by hundreds of thousands throughout the interior, these
prints must have created many uncanny ideas. Yet as attempts to
depict the unfamiliar they were only innocent. One should be able
to study those old drawings in order to comprehend just how we
appeared to the Japanese of that era; how ugly, how grotesque,
how ridiculous.


The young samurai of the town soon had the experience of seeing a
real Western foreigner, a teacher hired for them by the prince.
He was an Englishman. He came under the protection of an armed
escort; and orders were given to treat him as a person of
distinction. He did not seem quite so ugly as the foreigners in
the Japanese prints: his hair was red, indeed, and his eyes of a
strange color; but his face was not disagreeable. He at once
became, and long remained, the subject of tireless observation.
How closely his every act was watched could never be guessed by
any one ignorant of the queer superstitions of the pre-Meiji era
concerning ourselves. Although recognized as intelligent and
formidable creatures, Occidentals were not generally regarded as
quite human; they were thought of as more closely allied to
animals than to mankind. They had hairy bodies of queer shape;
their teeth were different from those of men; their internal
organs were also peculiar; and their moral ideas those of
goblins. The timidity which foreigners then inspired, not,
indeed, to the samurai, but to the common people, was not a
physical, but a superstitious fear. Even the Japanese peasant has
never been a coward. But to know his feelings in that time toward
foreigners, one must also know something of the ancient beliefs,
common to both Japan and China, about animals gifted with
supernatural powers, and capable of assuming human form; about
the existence of races half-human and half-superhuman; and about
the mythical beings of the old picture-books,--goblins
long-legged and long-armed and bearded (ashinaga and tenaga),
whether depicted by the illustrators of weird stories or
comically treated by the brush of Hokusai. Really the aspect of
the new strangers seemed to afford confirmation of the fables
related by a certain Chinese Herodotus; and the clothing they
wore might seem to have been devised for the purpose of hiding
what would prove them not human. So the new English teacher,
blissfully ignorant of the fact, was studied surreptitiously,
just as one might study a curious animal! Nevertheless, from
his students he experienced only courtesy: they treated him by
that Chinese code which ordains that "even the shadow of a
teacher must not be trodden on." In any event it would have
mattered little to samurai students whether their teacher were
perfectly human or not, so long as he could teach. The hero
Yoshitsune had been taught the art of the sword by a Tengu.
Beings not human had proved themselves scholars and poets(3). But
behind the never-lifted mask of delicate courtesy, the stranger's
habits were minutely noted; and the ultimate judgment, based upon
the comparison of such observation, was not altogether
flattering. The teacher himself could never have imagined the
comments made upon him by his two-sworded pupils; nor would it
have increased his peace of mind, while overlooking compositions
in the class-room, to have understood their conversation:--

"See the color of his flesh, how soft it is! To take off his head
with a single blow would be very easy."

Once he was induced to try their mode of wrestling, just for fun,
he supposed. But they really wanted to take his physical measure.
He was not very highly estimated as an athlete.

"Strong arms he certainly has," one said. "But he does not know
how to use his body while using his arms; and his loins are very
weak. To break his back would not be difficult."

"I think," said another, "that it would be easy to fight with
foreigners."

"With swords it would be very easy," responded a third; "but they
are more skilful than we in the use of guns and cannon."

"We can learn all that," said the first speaker. "When we have
learned Western military matters, we need not care for Western
soldiers."

"Foreigners," observed another, "are not hardy like we are. They
soon tire, and they fear cold. All winter our teacher must have a
great fire in his room. To stay there five minutes gives me the
headache."


But for all that, the lads were kind to their teacher, and made
him love them.

(1) Apish mythological beings with red hair, delighting in
drunkenness.

(2) Mythological beings of several kinds, supposed to live in the
mountains. Some have long noses.

(3) There is a legend that when Toryoko, a great poet, who was
the teacher of Sugiwara-no-Michizane (now deified as Tenjin), was
once passing the Gate called Ra-jo-mon, of the Emperor's palace
at Kyoto, he recited aloud this single verse which he had just
composed:--

"Clear is the weather and fair;--and the wind waves the hair of
young willows."
Immediately a deep mocking voice from the gateway continued the
poem, thus:--

"Melted and vanished the ice; the waves comb the locks of old
mosses."

Toryoko looked, but there was no one to be seen. Reaching home,
he told his pupil about the matter, and repeated the two
compositions. Sugiwara-no-Michizane praised the second one,
saying:--

"Truly the words of the first are the words of a poet;
but the words of the second are the words of a Demon!"



IV

Changes came as great earthquakes come, without warning: the
transformation of daimyates into prefectures, the suppression of
the military class, the reconstruction of the whole social
system. These events filled the youth with sadness, although he
felt no difficulty in transferring his allegiance from prince to
emperor, and although the wealth of his family remained
unimpaired by the shock. All this reconstruction told him of the
greatness of the national danger, and announced the certain
disappearance of the old high ideals, and of nearly all things
loved. But he knew regret was vain. By self-transformation alone
could the nation hope to save its independence; and the obvious
duty of the patriot was to recognize necessity, and fitly prepare
himself to play the man in the drama of the future.

In the samurai school he had learned much English, and he knew
himself able to converse with Englishmen. He cut his long hair,
put away his swords, and went to Yokohama that he might continue
his study of the language under more favorable conditions. At
Yokohama everything at first seemed to him both unfamiliar and
repellent. Even the Japanese of the port had been changed by
foreign contact: they were rude and rough; they acted and spoke
as common people would not have dared to do in his native town.
The foreigners themselves impressed him still more disagreeably:
it was the period when new settlers could assume the tone of
conquerors to the conquered, and when the life of the "open
ports" was much less decorous than now. The new buildings of
brick or stuccoed timber revived for him unpleasant memories of
the Japanese colored pictures of foreign manners and customs; and
he could not quickly banish the fancies of his boyhood concerning
Occidentals. Reason, based on larger knowledge and experience,
fully assured him what they really were; but to his emotional
life the intimate sense of their kindred humanity still failed to
come. Race-feeling is older than intellectual development; and
the superstitions attaching to race-feeling are not easy to get
rid of. His soldier-spirit, too, was stirred at times by ugly
things heard or seen,--incidents that filled him with the hot
impulse of his fathers to avenge a cowardice or to redress a
wrong. But he learned to conquer his repulsions as obstacles to
knowledge: it was the patriot's duty to study calmly the nature
of his country's foes. He trained himself at last to observe the
new life about him without prejudice,--its merits not less than
its defects; its strength not less than its weakness. He found
kindness; he found devotion to ideals,--ideals not his own, but
which he knew how to respect because they exacted, like the
religion of his ancestors, abnegation of many things.

Through such appreciation he learned to like and to trust an aged
missionary entirely absorbed in the work of educating and
proselytizing. The old man was especially anxious to convert this
young samurai, in whom aptitudes of no common order were
discernible; and he spared no pains to win the boy's confidence.
He aided him in many ways, taught him something of French and
German, of Greek and Latin, and placed entirely at his disposal a
private library of considerable extent. The use of a foreign
library, including works of history, philosophy, travel, and
fiction, was not a privilege then easy for Japanese students to
obtain. It was gratefully appreciated; and the owner of the
library found no difficulty at a later day in persuading his
favored and favorite pupil to read a part of the New Testament.
The youth expressed surprise at finding among the doctrines of
the "Evil Sect" ethical precepts like those of Confucius. To the
old missionary he said: "This teaching is not new to us; but it
is certainly very good. I shall study the book and think about
it."


V

The study and the thinking were to lead the young man much
further than he had thought possible. After the recognition of
Christianity as a great religion came recognitions of another
order, and various imaginings about the civilization of the races
professing Christianity. It then seemed to many reflective
Japanese, possibly even to the keen minds directing the national
policy, that Japan was doomed to pass altogether under alien
rule. There was hope, indeed; and while even the ghost of hope
remained, the duty for all was plain. But the power that could be
used against the Empire was irresistible. And studying the
enormity of that power, the young Oriental could not but ask
himself, with a wonder approaching awe, whence and how it had
been gained. Could it, as his aged teacher averred, have some
occult relation to a higher religion? Certainly the ancient
Chinese philosophy, which declared the prosperity of peoples
proportionate to their observance of celestial law and their
obedience to the teaching of sages, countenanced such a theory.
And if the superior force of Western civilization really
indicated the superior character of Western ethics, was it not
the plain duty of every patriot to follow that higher faith, and
to strive for the conversion of the whole nation? A youth of that
era, educated in Chinese wisdom, and necessarily ignorant of the
history of social evolution in the West, could never have
imagined that the very highest forms of material progress were
developed chiefly through a merciless competition out of all
harmony with Christian idealism, and at variance with every great
system of ethics. Even to-day in the West unthinking millions
imagine some divine connection between military power and
Christian belief, and utterances are made in our pulpits implying
divine justification for political robberies,

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