Out of the East Read online

  Footnote

  1 This essay was written early in 1894. Since then, the study of French and of German has been made optional instead of obligatory, and the Higher School course considerably shortened, by a wise decision of the late Minister of Education, Mr. Inouye. It is to be hoped that measures will eventually be taken to render possible making the study of English also optional. Under existing conditions the study is forced upon hundreds who can never obtain any benefit from it.

  III

  AT HAKATA

  I

  TRAVELING by kuruma one can only see and dream. The jolting makes reading too painful; the rattle of the wheels and the rush of the wind render conversation impossible,—even when the road allows of a Fellow-traveler's vehicle running beside your own. After having become familiar with the characteristics of Japanese scenery, you are not apt to notice during such travel, except at long intervals, anything novel enough to make a strong impression. Most often the way winds through a perpetual sameness of rice-fields, vegetable farms, tiny thatched hamlets,—and between interminable ranges of green or blue hills. Sometimes, indeed, there are startling spreads of color, as when you traverse a plain all burning yellow with the blossoming of the natane or a valley all lilac with the flowering of the gengebana; but these are the passing splendors of very short seasons. As a rule, the vast green monotony appeals to no faculty: you sink into reverie or nod, perhaps, with the wind in your face, to be wakened only by some jolt of extra violence.

  Even so, on my autumn way to Hakata, I gaze and dream and nod by turns. I watch the flashing of the dragon-flies, the infinite network of rice-field paths spreading out of sight on either hand, the slowly shifting lines of familiar peaks in the horizon glow, and the changing shapes of white afloat in the vivid blue above all,—asking myself how many times again must I view the same Kyūshū landscape, and deploring the absence of the wonderful.

  Suddenly and very softly, the thought steals into my mind that the most wonderful of possible visions is really all about me in the mere common green of the world,—in the ceaseless manifestation of life.

  Ever and everywhere, from beginnings invisible, green things are growing,—out of soft earth, out of hard rock,—forms multitudinous, dumb soundless races incalculably older than man. Of their visible history we know much: names we have given them, and classification. The reason of the forms of their leaves, of the qualities of their fruits, of the colors of their flowers, we also know; for we have learned not a little about the course of the eternal laws that give shape to all terrestrial things. But why they are,—that we do not know. What is the ghostliness that seeks expression in this universal green,—the mystery of that which multiplies forever issuing out of that which multiplies not? Or is the seeming lifeless itself life,—only a life more silent still, more hidden?

  But a stranger and quicker life moves upon the face of the world, peoples wind and flood. This has the ghostlier power of separating itself from earth, yet is always at last recalled thereto, and condemned to Feed that which it once Fed upon. It Feels; it knows; it crawls, swims, rims, flies, thinks. Countless the shapes of it. The green slower life seeks being only. But this forever struggles against non-being. We know the mechanism of its motion, the laws of its growth : the innermost mazes of its structure have been explored; the territories of its sensation have been mapped and named. But the meaning of it, who will tell us? Out of what ultimate came it? Or, more simply, what is it? Why should it know pain? Why is it evolved by pain?

  And this life of pain is our own. Relatively, it sees, it knows. Absolutely, it is blind, and gropes, like the slow cold green life which supports it. But does it also support a higher existence,—nourish some invisible life infinitely more active and more complex? Is there ghostliness orbed in ghostliness,—life within life without end? Are there universes interpenetrating universes?

  For our era, at least, the boundaries of human knowledge have been irrevocably fixed; and far beyond those limits only exist the solutions of such questions. Yet what constitutes those limits of the possible? Nothing more than human nature itself. Must that nature remain equally limited in those who shall come after us? Will they never develop higher senses, vaster faculties, subtler perceptions? What is the teaching of science?

  Perhaps it has been suggested in the profound saying of Clifford, that we were never made, but have made ourselves. This is, indeed, the deepest of all teachings of science. And wherefore has man made himself? To escape suffering and death. Under the pressure of pain alone was our being shaped; and even so long as pain lives, so long must continue the ceaseless toil of self-change. Once in the ancient past, the necessities of life were physical; they are not less moral than physical now. And of all future necessities, none seems likely to prove so merciless, so mighty, so tremendous, as that of trying to read the Universal Riddle.

  The world's greatest thinker—he who has told us why the Riddle cannot be read—has told us also how the longing to solve it must endure, and grow with the growing of man.1

  And surely the mere recognition of this necessity contains within it the germ of a hope. May not the desire to know, as the possibly highest form of future pain, compel within men the natural evolution of powers to achieve the now impossible,—of capacities to perceive the now invisible? We of to-day are that which we are through longing so to be; and may not the inheritors of our work yet make themselves that which we now would wish to become?

  II

  I am in Hakata, the town of the Girdle-Weavers,—which is a very tall town, with fantastic narrow ways full of amazing color;—and I halt in the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods because there is an enormous head of bronze, the head of a Buddha, smiling at me through a gateway. The gateway is of a temple of the Jōdō sect; and the head is beautiful.

  But there is only the head. What supports it above the pavement of the court is hidden by thousands of metal mirrors heaped up to the chin of the great dreamy face. A placard beside the gateway explains the problem. The mirrors are contributions by women to a colossal seated figure of Buddha—to be thirty-five Feet high, including the huge lotus on which it is to be enthroned. And the whole is to be made of bronze mirrors. Hundreds have been already used to cast the head; myriads will be needed to finish the work. Who can venture to assert, in presence of such an exhibition, that Buddhism is passing away?

  Yet I cannot Feel delighted at this display, which, although gratifying the artistic sense with the promise of a noble statue, shocks it still more by ocular evidence of the immense destruction that the project involves. For Japanese metal mirrors (now being superseded by atrocious cheap looking-glasses of Western manufacture) well deserve to be called things of beauty. Nobody unfamiliar with their gracious shapes can Feel the charm of the Oriental comparison of the moon to a mirror. One side only is polished. The other is adorned with designs in relief: trees or flowers, birds or animals or insects, landscapes, legends, symbols of good fortune, figures of gods. Such are even the commonest mirrors. But there are many kinds; and some among them very wonderful, which we call "magic mirrors,"—because when the reflection of one is thrown upon a screen or wall, you can see, in the disk of light, luminous images of the designs upon the back.1

  Whether there be any magic mirrors in that heap of bronze ex-votos I cannot tell; but there certainly are many beautiful things. And there is no little pathos in the spectacle of all that wonderful quaint work thus cast away, and destined soon to vanish utterly. Probably within another decade the making of mirrors of silver and mirrors of bronze will have ceased forever. Seekers for them will then hear, with something more than regret, the story of the fate of these.

  Nor is this the only pathos in the vision of all those domestic sacrifices thus exposed to rain and sun and trodden dust of streets. Surely the smiles of bride and babe and mother have been reflected in not a Few : some gentle home life must have been imaged in nearly all. But a ghostlier value than memory can give also attaches to Japanese mirrors. An ancient proverb decla
res, "The Mirror is the Soul of the Woman,"—and not merely, as might be supposed, in a figurative sense. For countless legends relate that a mirror Feels all the joys or pains of its mistress, and reveals in its dimness or brightness some weird sympathy with her every emotion. Wherefore mirrors were of old employed—and some say are still employed—in those magical rites believed to influence life and death, and were buried with those to whom they belonged.

  And the spectacle of all those mouldering bronzes thus makes queer fancies in the mind about wrecks of Souls,—or at least of soul-things. It is even difficult to assure one's self that, of all the movements and the faces those mirrors once reflected, absolutely nothing now haunts them. One cannot help imagining that whatever has been must continue to be somewhere ;—that by approaching the mirrors very stealthily, and turning a Few of them suddenly face up to the light, one might be able to catch the Past in the very act of shrinking and shuddering away.

  Besides, I must observe that the pathos of this exhibition has been specially intensified for me by one memory which the sight of a Japanese mirror always evokes,—the memory of the old Japanese story Matsuyama no Kagami. Though related in the simplest manner and with the Fewest possible words,1 it might well be compared to those wonderful little tales by Goethe, of which the meanings expand according to the experience and capacity of the reader. Mrs. James has perhaps exhausted the psychological possibilities of the story in one direction ; and whoever can read her little book without emotion should be driven from the society of mankind. Even to guess the Japanese idea of the tale, one should be able to Feel the intimate sense of the delicious colored prints accompanying her text,—the interpretation of the last great artist of the Kano school. (Foreigners, unfamiliar with Japanese home life, cannot fully perceive the exquisiteness of the drawings made for the Fairy-Tale Series; but the silk-dyers of Kyōto and of Osaka prize them beyond measure, and reproduce them constantly upon the costliest textures.) But there are many versions; and, with the following outline, readers can readily make nineteenth-century versions for themselves.

  III

  Long ago, at a place called Matsuyama, in the province of Echigo, there lived a young samurai husband and wife whose names have been quite forgotten. They had a little daughter.

  Once the husband went to Yedo,—probably as a retainer in the train of the Lord of Echigo. On his return he brought presents from the capital,—sweet cakes and a doll for the little girl (at least so the artist tells us), and for his wife a mirror of silvered bronze. To the young mother that mirror seemed a very wonderful thing; for it was the first mirror ever brought to Matsuyama. She did not understand the use of it, and innocently asked whose was the pretty smiling face she saw inside it. When her husband answered her, laughing, "Why, it is your own face! How foolish you are!" she was ashamed to ask any more questions, but hastened to put her present away, still thinking it to be a very mysterious thing. And she kept it hidden many years,—the original story does not say why. Perhaps for the simple reason that in all countries love makes even the most trifling gift too sacred to be shown.

  But in the time of her last sickness she gave the mirror to her daughter, saying, "After I am dead you must look into this mirror every morning and evening, and you will see me. Do not grieve." Then she died.

  And the girl thereafter looked into the mirror every morning and evening, and did not know that the face in the mirror was her own shadow,—but thought it to be that of her dead mother, whom she much resembled. So she would talk to the shadow, having the sensation, or, as the Japanese original more tenderly says, "having the heart of meeting her mother" day by day; and she prized the mirror above all things.

  At last her father noticed this conduct, and thought it strange, and asked her the reason of it, whereupon she told him all. "Then," says the old Japanese narrator, "he thinking it to be a very piteous thing, his eyes grew dark with tears."

  IV

  Such is the old story. . . . But was the artless error indeed so piteous a thing as it seemed to the parent? Or was his emotion vain as my own regret for the destiny of all those mirrors with all their recollections?

  I cannot help fancying that the innocence of the maiden was nearer to eternal truth than the Feeling of the father. For in the cosmic order of things the present is the shadow of the past, and the future must he the reflection of the present. One are we all, even as Light is, though unspeakable the millions of the vibrations whereby it is made. One are we all,—and yet many, because each is a world of ghosts. Surely that girl saw and spoke to her mother's very soul, while seeing the fair shadow of her own young eyes and lips, uttering love!

  And, with this thought, the strange display in the old temple court takes a new meaning,—becomes the symbolism of a sublime expectation. Each of us is truly a mirror, imaging something of the universe,—reflecting also the reflection of ourselves in that universe; and perhaps the destiny of all is to be molten by that mighty Image-maker, Death, into some great sweet passionless unity. How the vast work shall be wrought, only those to come after us may know. We of the present West do not know: we merely dream. But the ancient East believes. Here is the simple imagery of her faith. All forms must vanish at last to blend with that Being whose smile is immutable Rest,—whose knowledge is Infinite Vision.

  Footnotes

  1 First Principles (The Reconciliation).

  1 See article entitled "On the Magic Mirrors of Japan," by Professors Ayrton and Perry, in vol. xxvii. of the Proceedings of the Royal Society; also an article treating the same subject by the same authors in vol. xxii of The Philosophical Magazine.

  1 See, for Japanese text and translation, A Romanized Japanese Reader, by Professor B. H. Chamberlain. The beautiful version for children, written by Mrs. F. H. James, belongs to the celebrated Japanese Fairy-Tale Series, published at Tokyo.

  IV

  OF THE ETERNAL FEMININE

  For metaphors of man we search the skies,

  And find our allegory in all the air;—

  We gaze on Nature with Narcissus-eyes,

  Enamoured of our shadow everywhere.

  WATSON.

  I

  WHAT every intelligent foreigner dwelling in Japan must sooner or later perceive is, that the more the Japanese learn of our aesthetics and of our emotional character generally, the less favorably do they seem to be impressed thereby. The European or American who tries to talk to them about Western art, or literature, or metaphysics will Feel for their sympathy in vain. He will be listened to politely ; but his utmost eloquence will scarcely elicit more than a Few surprising comments, totally unlike what he hoped and expected to evoke. Many successive disappointments of this sort impel him to judge his Oriental auditors very much as he would judge Western auditors behaving in a similar way. Obvious indifference to what we imagine the highest expression possible of art and thought, we are led by our own Occidental experiences to take for proof of mental incapacity. So we find one class of foreign observers calling the Japanese a race of children; while another, including a majority of those who have passed many years in the country, judge the nation essentially materialistic, despite the evidence of its religions, its literature, and its matchless art. I cannot persuade myself that either of these judgments is less fatuous than Goldsmith's observation to Johnson about the Literary Club: "There can now be nothing new among us; we have traveled over one another's minds." A cultured Japanese might well answer with Johnson's famous retort: "Sir, you have not yet traveled over my mind, I promise you!" And all such sweeping criticisms seem to me due to a very imperfect recognition of the fact that Japanese thought and sentiment have been evolved out of ancestral habits, customs, ethics, beliefs, directly the opposite of our own in some cases, and in all cases strangely different. Acting on such psychological material, modern scientific education cannot but accentuate and develop race differences. Only half-education can tempt the Japanese to servile imitation of Western ways. The real mental and moral power of the race, its highest int
ellect, strongly resists Western influence; and those more competent than I to pronounce upon such matters assure me that this is especially observable in the case of superior men who have traveled or been educated in Europe. Indeed, the results of the new culture have served more than aught else to show the immense force of healthy conservatism in that race superficially characterized by Rein as a race of children. Even very imperfectly understood, the causes of this Japanese attitude to a certain class of Western ideas might well incite us to reconsider our own estimate of those ideas, rather than to tax the Oriental mind with incapacity. Now, of the causes in question, which are multitudinous, some can only be vaguely guessed at. But there is at least one—a very important one—which we may safely study, because a recognition of it is forced upon any one who passes a Few years in the Far East.