Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

At the summer examinations of 1893 I submitted to the graduating classes, for a composition theme, the question, "What is eternal in literature?" I expected original answers, as the subject had never been discussed by us, and was certainly new to the pupils, so far as their knowledge of Western thought was concerned. Nearly all the papers proved interesting. I select twenty replies as examples. Most of them immediately preceded a long discussion, but a few were embodied in the text of the essay:--

1. "Truth and Eternity are identical: these make the Full Circle,--in Chinese, Yen-Man."

2. "All that in human life and conduct which is according to the laws of the Universe."

3. "The lives of patriots, and the teachings of those who have given pure maxims to the world."

4. "Filial Piety, and the doctrine of its teachers. Vainly the books of Confucius were burned during the Shin dynasty; they are translated to-day into all the languages of the civilized world."

5. "Ethics, and scientific truth."

6. "Both evil and good are eternal, said a Chinese sage. We should read only that which is good."

7. "The great thoughts and ideas of our ancestors."

8. "For a thousand million centuries truth is truth."

9. "Those ideas of right and wrong upon which all schools of ethics agree."

10. "Books which rightly explain the phenomena of the Universe."

11. "Conscience alone is unchangeable. Wherefore books about ethics based upon conscience are eternal."

12. "Reasons for noble action: these remain unchanged by time."

13. "Books written upon the best moral means of giving the greatest possible happiness to the greatest possible number of people,--that is, to mankind."

14. "The Gokyō (the Five Great Chinese Classics)."

15. "The holy books of China, and of the Buddhists."

16. "All that which teaches the Right and Pure Way of human conduct."

17. "The Story of Kusunoki Masaskigé, who vowed to be reborn seven times to fight against the enemies of his Sovereign."

18. "Moral sentiment, without which the world would be only an enormous clod of earth, and all books waste-paper."

19. "The Tao-te-King."

20. Same as 19, but with this comment. "He who reads that which is eternal, _his soul shall hover eternally in the Universe._"

IV

Some particularly Oriental sentiments were occasionally drawn out through discussions. The discussions were based upon stories which I would relate to a class by word of mouth, and invite written or spoken comment about. The results of such a discussion are hereafter set forth. At the time it took place, I had already told the students of the higher classes a considerable number of stories. I had told them many of the Greek myths; among which that of Œdipus and the Sphinx seemed especially to please them, because of the hidden moral, and that of Orpheus, like all our musical legends, to have no interest for them. I had also told them a variety of our most famous modern stories. The marvelous tale of "Rappacini's Daughter" proved greatly to their liking; and the spirit of Hawthorne might have found no little ghostly pleasure in their interpretation of it. "Monos and Daimonos" found favor; and Poe's wonderful fragment, "Silence," was appreciated after a fashion that surprised me. On the other hand, the story of "Frankenstein" impressed them very little. None took it seriously. For Western minds the tale must always hold a peculiar horror, because of the shock it gives to feelings evolved under the influence of Hebraic ideas concerning the origin of life, the tremendous character of divine prohibitions, and the awful punishments destined for those who would tear the veil from Nature's secrets, or mock, even unconsciously, the work of a jealous Creator. But to the Oriental mind, unshadowed by such grim faith,--feeling no distance between gods and men,--conceiving life as a multiform whole ruled by one uniform law that shapes the consequence of every act into a reward or a punishment,--the ghastliness of the story makes no appeal. Most of the written criticisms showed me that it was generally regarded as a comic or semi-comic parable. After all this, I was rather puzzled one morning by the request for a "very strong moral story of the Western kind."

I suddenly resolved--though knowing I was about to venture on dangerous ground--to try the full effect of a certain Arthurian legend which I felt sure somebody would criticise with a vim. The moral is rather more than "very strong;" and for that reason I was curious to hear the result.

So I related to them the story of Sir Bors, which is in the sixteenth book of Sir Thomas Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur,"--"how Sir Bors met his brother Sir Lionel taken and beaten with thorns,--and of a maid which should have been dishonored,--and how Sir Bors left his brother to rescue the damsel,---and how it was told them that Lionel was dead." But I did not try to explain to them the knightly idealism imaged in the beautiful old tale, as I wished to hear them comment, in their own Oriental way, upon the bare facts of the narrative.

Which they did as follows:--

"The action of Mallory's knight," exclaimed Iwai, "was contrary even to the principles of Christianity,--if it be true that the Christian religion declares all men brothers. Such conduct might be right if there were no society in the world. But while any society exists which is formed of families, family love must be the strength of that society; and the action of that knight was against family love, and therefore against society. The principle he followed was opposed not only to all society, but was contrary to all religion, and contrary to the morals of all countries."

"The story is certainly immoral," said Orito. "What it relates is opposed to all our ideas of love and loyalty, and even seems to us contrary to nature. Loyalty is not a mere duty. It must be from the heart, or it is not loyally. It must be an inborn feeling. And it is in the nature of every Japanese."

"It is a horrible story," said Andō. "Philanthropy itself is only an expansion of fraternal love. The man who could abandon his own brother to death merely to save a strange woman was a wicked man. Perhaps he was influenced by passion."

"No," I said: "you forget I told you that there was no selfishness in his action,--that it must be interpreted as a heroism."

"I think the explanation of the story must be religious," said Yasukochi. "It seems strange to us; but that may be because we do not understand Western ideas very well. Of course to abandon one's own brother in order to save a strange woman is contrary to all our knowledge of right. But if that knight was a man of pure heart, he must have imagined himself obliged to do it because of some promise or some duty. Even then it must have seemed to him a very painful and disgraceful thing to do, and he could not have done it without feeling that he was acting against the teaching of his own heart."

"There you are right," I answered. "But you should also know that the sentiment obeyed by Sir Bors is one which still influences the conduct of brave and noble men in the societies of the West,--even of men who cannot be called religious at all in the common sense of that word."

"Still, we think it a very bad sentiment," said Iwai; "and we would rather hear another story about another form of society."

Then it occurred to me to tell them the immortal story of Alkestis. I thought for the moment that the character of Herakles in that divine drama would have a particular charm for them. But the comments proved I was mistaken. No one even referred to Herakles. Indeed I ought to have remembered that our ideals of heroism, strength of purpose, contempt of death, do not readily appeal to Japanese youth. And this for the reason that no Japanese gentleman regards such qualities as exceptional. He considers heroism a matter of course--something belonging to manhood and inseparable from it. He would say that a woman may be afraid without shame, but never a man. Then as a mere idealization of physical force, Herakles could interest Orientals very little: their own mythology teems with impersonations of strength; and, besides, dexterity, sleight, quickness, are much more admired by a true Japanese than strength. No Japanese boy would sincerely wish to be like the giant Benkei; but Yoshitsune, the slender, supple conqueror and master of Benkei, remains an ideal of perfect knighthood dear to the hearts of all Japanese youth.

Kamekawa said:--

"The story of Alkestis, or at least the story of Admetus, is a story of cowardice, disloyalty, immorality. The conduct of Admetus was abominable. His wife was indeed noble and virtuous--too good a wife for so shameless a man. I do not believe that the father of Admetus would not have been willing to die for his son if his son had been worthy. I think he would gladly have died for his son had he not been disgusted by the cowardice of Admetus. And how disloyal the subjects of Admetus were! The moment they heard of their king's danger they should have rushed to the palace, and humbly begged that they might be allowed to die in his stead. However cowardly or cruel he might have been, that was their duty. They were his subjects. They lived by his favor. Yet how disloyal they were! A country inhabited by such shameless people must soon have gone to ruin. Of course, as the story says, 'it is sweet to live.' Who does not love life? Who does not dislike to die? But no brave man--no loyal man even--should so much as think about his life when duty requires him to give it."

"But," said Midzuguchi, who had joined us a little too late to hear the beginning of the narration, "perhaps Admetus was actuated by filial piety. Had I been Admetus, and found no one among my subjects willing to die for me, I should have said to my wife: 'Dear wife, I cannot leave my father alone now, because he has no other son, and his grandsons are still too young to be of use to him. Therefore, if you love me, please die in my place.'"

"You do not understand the story," said Yasukochi. "Filial piety did not exist in Admetus. He wished that his father should have died for him."

"Ah!" exclaimed the apologist in real surprise,--"that is not a nice story, teacher!"

"Admetus," declared Kawabuchi, "was everything which is bad. He was a hateful coward, because he was afraid to die; he was a tyrant, because he wanted his subjects to die for him; he was an unfilial son because he wanted his old father to die in his place; and he was an unkind husband, because he asked his wife--a weak woman with little children --to do what _he_ was afraid to do as a man. What could be baser than Admetus?"

"But Alkestis," said Iwai,--"Alkestis was all that is good. For she gave up her children and everything,--even like the Buddha [_Shaka_] himself. Yet she was very young. How true and brave! The beauty of her face might perish like a spring-blossoming, but the beauty of her act should be remembered for a thousand times a thousand years. Eternally her soul will hover in the universe. Formless she is now; but it is the Formless who teach us more kindly than our kindest living teachers,--the souls of all who have done pure, brave, wise deeds."

"The wife of Admetus," said Kumamoto, inclined to austerity in his judgments, "was simply obedient. She was not entirely blameless. For, before her death, it was her highest duty to have severely reproached her husband for his foolishness. And this she did not do,--not at least as our teacher tells the story."

"Why Western people should think that story beautiful," said Zaitsu, "is difficult for us to understand. There is much in it which fills us with anger. For some of us cannot but think of our parents when listening to such a story. After the Revolution of Meiji, for a time, there was much suffering. Often perhaps our parents were hungry; yet we always had plenty of food. Sometimes they could scarcely get money to live; yet we were educated. When we think of all it cost them to educate us, all the trouble it gave them to bring us up, all the love they gave us, and all the pain we caused them in our foolish childhood, then we think we can never, never do enough for them. And therefore we do not like that story of Admetus."

The bugle sounded for recess. I went to the parade-ground to take a smoke. Presently a few students joined me, with their rifles and bayonets--for the next hour was to be devoted to military drill. One said: "Teacher, we should like another subject for composition,--not _too_ easy."

I suggested: "How would you like this for a subject, 'What is most difficult to understand?'"

"That," said Kawabuchi, "is not hard to answer,--the correct use of English prepositions."

"In the study of English by Japanese students,--yes," I answered. "But I did not mean any special difficulty of that kind. I meant to write your ideas about what is most difficult for all men to understand."

"The universe?" queried Yasukochi. "That is too large a subject."

"When I was only six years old," said Orito, "I used to wander along the seashore, on fine days, and wonder at the greatness of the world. Our home was by the sea. Afterwards I was taught that the problem of the universe will at last pass away, like smoke."

"I think," said Miyakawa, "that the hardest of all things to understand is why men live in the world. From the time a child is born, what does he do? He eats and drinks; he feels happy and sad; he sleeps at night; he awakes in the morning. He is educated; he grows up; he marries; he has children; he gets old; his hair turns first gray and then white; he becomes feebler and feebler,--and he dies.

"What does he do all his life? All his real work in this world is to eat and to drink, to sleep and to rise up; since, whatever be his occupation as a citizen, he toils only that he may be able to continue doing this. But for what purpose does a man really come into the world? Is it to eat? Is it to drink? Is it to sleep? Every day he does exactly the same thing, and yet he is not tired! It is strange.

"When rewarded, he is glad; when punished, he is sad. If he becomes rich, he thinks himself happy. If he becomes poor, he is very unhappy. Why is he glad or sad according to his condition? Happiness and sadness are only temporary things. Why does he study hard? No matter how great a scholar he may become, what is there left of him when he is dead? Only bones."

Miyakawa was the merriest and wittiest in his class; and the contrast between his joyous character and his words seemed to me almost startling. But such swift glooms of thought--especially since Meiji--not unfrequently make apparition in quite young Oriental minds. They are fugitive as shadows of summer clouds; they mean less than they would signify in Western adolescence; and the Japanese lives not by thought, nor by emotion, but by duty. Still, they are not haunters to encourage.

"I think," said I, "a much better subject for you all would be the Sky: the sensations which the sky creates in us when we look at it on such a day as this. See how wonderful it is!"

It was blue to the edge of the world, with never a floss of cloud. There were no vapors in the horizon; and very far peaks, invisible on most days, now-massed into the glorious light, seemingly diaphanous.

Then Kumashiro, looking up to the mighty arching, uttered with reverence the ancient Chinese words:--

"_What thought is so high as It is? What mind is so wide?_"

"To-day," I said, "is beautiful as any summer day could be,--only that the leaves are falling, and the semi are gone."

"Do you like semi, teacher?" asked Mori.

"It gives me great pleasure to hear them," I answered. "We have no such cicadæ in the West."

"Human life is compared to the life of a semi," said Orito,--"_utsuzemi no yo_. Brief as the song of the semi all human joy is, and youth. Men come for a season and go, as do the semi."

"There are no semi now," said Yasukochi; "perhaps the teacher thinks it is sad."

"I do not think it sad," observed Noguchi. "They hinder us from study. I hate the sound they make. When we hear that sound in summer, and are tired, it adds fatigue to fatigue so that we fall asleep. If we try to read or write, or even think, when we hear that sound we have no more courage to do anything. Then we wish that all those insects were dead."

"Perhaps you like the dragon-flies," I suggested. "They are flashing all around us; but they make no sound."

"Every Japanese likes dragon-flies," said Ivumashiro. "Japan, you know, is called Akitsusu, which means the Country of the Dragon-fly."

We talked about different kinds of dragon-flies; and they told me of one I had never seen,--the Shōro-tombo, or "Ghost dragon-fly," said to have some strange relation to the dead. Also they spoke of the Yamma--a very large kind of dragon-fly, and related that in certain old songs the samurai were called Yamma, because the long hair of a young warrior used to be tied up into a knot in the shape of a dragon-fly.

A bugle sounded; and the voice of the military officer rang out,--

"_AtsumarÉ!_" (fall in!) But the young men lingered an instant to ask,--

"Well, what shall it be, teacher?--that which is most difficult to understand?"

"No," I said, "the Sky."

And all that day the beauty of the Chinese utterance haunted me, filled me like an exaltation:--

"_What thought is so high as It is? What mind is so wide?_"

V

There is one instance in which the relation between teachers and students is not formal at all,--one precious survival of the mutual love of other days in the old Samurai Schools. By all the aged Professor of Chinese is reverenced; and his influence over the young men is very great. With a word he could calm any outburst burst of anger; with a smile he could quicken any generous impulse. For he represents to the lads their ideal of all that was brave, true, noble, in the elder life,--the Soul of Old Japan.

His name, signifying "Moon-of-Autumn," is famous in his own land. A little book has been published about him, containing his portrait. He was once a samurai of high rank belonging to the great clan of Aidzu. He rose early to positions of trust and influence. He has been a leader of armies, a negotiator between princes, a statesman, a ruler of provinces--all that any knight could be in the feudal era. But in the intervals of military or political duty he seems to have always been a teacher. There are few such teachers. There are few such scholars. Yet to see him now, you would scarcely believe how much he was once feared--though loved--by the turbulent swordsmen under his rule. Perhaps there is no gentleness so full of charm as that of the man of war noted for sternness in his youth.

When the Feudal System made its last battle for existence, he heard the summons of his lord, and went into that terrible struggle in which even the women and little children of Aidzu took part. But courage and the sword alone could not prevail against the new methods of war;--the power of Aidzu was broken; and he, as one of the leaders of that power, was long a political prisoner.

But the victors esteemed him; and the Government he had fought against in all honor took him into its service to teach the new generations. From younger teachers these learned Western science and Western languages. But he still taught that wisdom of the Chinese sages which is eternal,--and loyalty, and honor, and all that makes the man.

Some of his children passed away from his sight. But he could not feel alone; for all whom he taught were as sons to him, and so reverenced him. And he became old, very old, and grew to look like a god,--like a Kami-Sama.

The Kami-Sama in art bear no likeness to the Buddhas. These more ancient divinities have no downcast gaze, no meditative impassiveness. They are lovers of Nature; they haunt her fairest solitudes, and enter into the life of her trees, and speak in her waters, and hover in her winds. Once upon the earth they lived as men; and the people of the land are their posterity. Even as divine ghosts, they remain very human, and of many dispositions. They are the emotions, they are the sensations of the living. But as figuring in legend and the art born of legend, they are mostly very pleasant to know. I speak not of the cheap art which treats them irreverently in these skeptical days, but of the older art explaining the sacred texts about them. Of course such representations vary greatly. But were you to ask what is the ordinary traditional aspect of a Kami, I should answer: "An ancient smiling man of wondrously gentle countenance, having a long white beard, and all robed in white with a white girdle."

Only that the girdle of the aged Professor was of black silk, just such a vision of Shintō he seemed when he visited me the last time.

He had met me at the college, and had said: "I know there has been a congratulation at your house; and that I did not call was not because I am old or because your house is far, but only because I have been long ill. But you will soon see me."

So one luminous afternoon he came, bringing gifts of felicitation,--gifts of the antique high courtesy, simple in themselves, yet worthy a prince: a little plum-tree, every branch and spray one snowy dazzle of blossoms; a curious and pretty bamboo vessel full of wine; and two scrolls bearing beautiful poems,--texts precious in themselves as the work of a rare calligrapher and poet; otherwise precious to me, because written by his own hand. Everything which he said to me I do not fully know. I remember words of affectionate encouragement about my duties,--some wise, keen advice,--a strange story of his youth. But all was like a pleasant dream; for his mere presence was a caress, and the fragrance of his flower-gift seemed as a breathing from the Takama-no-hara. And as a Kami should come and go, so he smiled and went,--leaving all things hallowed. The little plum-tree has lost its flowers: another winter must pass before it blooms again. But something very sweet still seems to haunt the vacant guest-room. Perhaps only the memory of that divine old man;--perhaps a spirit ancestral, some Lady of the Past, who followed his steps all viewlessly to our threshold that day, and lingers with me awhile, just because he loved me.

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 natané, 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, runs, 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?

[1] _First Principles_ (The Reconciliation).

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 declares, "The Mirror is the Sold 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,[2] 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 Ōsaka 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.

[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_.

[2] 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 Tōkyō.

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 be 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.

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 ourshadow everywhere.
WATSON.

I

What every intelligent foreigner dwelling in Japan must sooner or later perceive is, that the more the Japanese learn of our æsthetics 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 intellect, 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.

II

"Teacher, please tell us why there is so much about love and marrying in English novels;--it seems to us very, very strange."

This question was put to me while I was trying to explain to my literature class--young men from nineteen to twenty-three years of age--why they had failed to understand certain chapters of a standard novel, though quite well able to understand the logic of Jevons and the psychology of James. Under the circumstances, it was not an easy question to answer; in fact, I could not have replied to it in any satisfactory way had I not already lived for several years in Japan. As it was, though I endeavored to be concise as well as lucid, my explanation occupied something more than two hours.

There are few of our society novels that a Japanese student can really comprehend; and the reason is, simply, that English society is something of which he is quite unable to form a correct idea. Indeed, not only English society, in a special sense, but even Western life, in a general sense, is a mystery to him. Any social system of which filial piety is not the moral cement; any social system in which children leave their parents in order to establish families of their own; any social system in which it is considered not only natural but right to love wife and child more than the authors of one's being; any social system in which marriage can be decided independently of the will of parents, by the mutual inclination of the young people themselves; any social system in which the mother-in-law is not entitled to the obedient service of the daughter-in-law, appears to him of necessity a state of life scarcely better than that of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, or at best a sort of moral chaos. And all this existence, as reflected in our popular fiction, presents him with provoking enigmas. Our ideas about love and our solicitude about marriage furnish some of these enigmas. To the young Japanese, marriage appears a simple, natural duty, for the due performance of which his parents will make all necessary arrangements at the proper time. That foreigners should have so much trouble about getting married is puzzling enough to him; but that distinguished authors should write novels and poems about such matters, and that those novels and poems should be vastly admired, puzzles him infinitely more,--seems to him "very, very strange."

My young questioner said "strange" for politeness' sake. His real thought would have been more accurately rendered by the word "indecent." But when I say that to the Japanese mind our typical novel appears indecent, highly indecent, the idea thereby suggested to my English readers will probably be misleading. The Japanese are not morbidly prudish. Our society novels do not strike them as indecent because the theme is love. The Japanese have a great deal of literature about love. No; our novels seem to them indecent for somewhat the same reason that the Scripture text, "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," appears to them one of the most immoral sentences ever written. In other words, their criticism requires a sociological explanation. To explain fully why our novels are, to their thinking, indecent, I should have to describe the whole structure, customs, and ethics of the Japanese family, totally different from anything in Western life; and to do this even in a superficial way would require a volume. I cannot attempt a complete explanation; I can only cite some facts of a suggestive character.

To begin with, then, I may broadly state that a great deal of our literature, besides its fiction, is revolting to the Japanese moral sense, not because it treats of the passion of love per se, but because it treats of that passion in relation to virtuous maidens, and therefore in relation to the family circle. Now, as a general rule, where passionate love is the theme in Japanese literature of the best class, it is not that sort of love which leads to the establishment of family relations. It is quite another sort of love,--a sort of love about which the Oriental is not prudish at all,--the _mayoi_, or infatuation of passion, inspired by merely physical attraction; and its heroines are not the daughters of refined families, but mostly hetæræ, or professional dancing-girls. Neither does this Oriental variety of literature deal with its subject after the fashion of sensuous literature in the West,--French literature, for example: it considers it from a different artistic standpoint, and describes rather a different order of emotional sensations.

A national literature is of necessity reflective: and we may presume that what it fails to portray can have little or no outward manifestation in the national life. Now, the reserve of Japanese literature regarding that love which is the great theme of our greatest novelists and poets is exactly paralleled by the reserve of Japanese society in regard to the same topic. The typical woman often figures in Japanese romance as a heroine; as a perfect mother; as a pious daughter, willing to sacrifice all for duty; as a loyal wife, who follows her husband into battle, fights by his side, saves his life at the cost of her own; never as a sentimental maiden, dying, or making others die, for love. Neither do we find her on literary exhibition as a dangerous beauty, a charmer of men; and in the real life of Japan she has never appeared in any such rôle. Society, as a mingling of the sexes, as an existence of which the supremely refined charm is the charm of woman, has never existed in the East. Even in Japan, society, in the special sense of the word, remains masculine. Nor is it easy to believe that the adoption of European fashions and customs within some restricted circles of the capital indicates the beginning of such a social change as might eventually remodel the national life according to Western ideas of society. For such a remodeling would involve the dissolution of the family, the disintegration of the whole social fabric, the destruction of the whole ethical system,--the breaking up, in short, of the national life.

Taking the word "woman" in its most refined meaning, and postulating a society in which woman seldom appears, a society in which she is never placed "on display," a society in which wooing is utterly out of the question, and the faintest compliment to wife or daughter is an outrageous impertinence, the reader can at once reach some startling conclusions as to the impression made by our popular fiction upon members of that society. But, although partly correct, his conclusions must fall short of the truth in certain directions, unless he also possess some knowledge of the restraints of that society and of the ethical notions behind the restraints. For example, a refined Japanese never speaks to you about his wife (I am stating the general rule), and very seldom indeed about his children, however proud of them he may be. Rarely will he be heard to speak about any of the members of his family, about his domestic life, about any of his private affairs. But if he should happen to talk about members of his family, the persons mentioned will almost certainly be his parents. Of them he will speak with a reverence approaching religious feeling, yet in a manner quite different from that which would be natural to an Occidental, and never so as to imply any mental comparison between the merits of his own parents and those of other men's parents. But he will not talk about his wife even to the friends who were invited as guests to his wedding. And I think I may safely say that the poorest and most ignorant Japanese, however dire his need, would never dream of trying to obtain aid or to invoke pity by the mention of his wife--perhaps not even of his wife and children. But he would not hesitate to ask help for the sake of his parents or his grandparents. Love of wife and child, the strongest of all sentiments with the Occidental, is judged by the Oriental to be a selfish affection. He professes to be ruled by a higher sentiment,--duty: duty, first, to his Emperor; next, to his parents. And since love can he classed only as an ego-altruistic feeling, the Japanese thinker is not wrong in his refusal to consider it the loftiest of motives, however refined or spiritualized it may he.

In the existence of the poorer classes of Japan there are no secrets; but among the upper classes family life is much less open to observation than in any country of the West, not excepting Spain. It is a life of which foreigners see little, and know almost nothing, all the essays which have been written about Japanese women to the contrary notwithstanding.[1] Invited to the home of a Japanese friend, you may or may not see the family. It will depend upon circumstances.

If you see any of them, it will probably be for a moment only, and in that event you will most likely see the wife. At the entrance you give your card to the servant, who retires to present it, and presently returns to usher you into the zashiki, or guest-room, always the largest and finest apartment in a Japanese dwelling, where your kneeling-cushion is ready for you, with a smoking-box before it. The servant brings you tea and cakes. In a little time the host himself enters, and after the indispensable salutations conversation begins. Should you be pressed to stay for dinner, and accept the invitation, it is probable that the wife will do you the honor, as her husband's friend, to wait upon you during an instant. You may or may not be formally introduced to her; but a glance at her dress and coiffure should be sufficient to inform you at once who she is, and you must greet her with the most profound respect. She will probably impress you (especially if your visit be to a samurai home) as a delicately refined and very serious person, by no means a woman of the much-smiling and much-bowing kind. She will say extremely little, but will salute you, and will serve you for a moment with a natural grace of which the mere spectacle is a revelation, and glide away again, to remain invisible until the instant of your departure, when she will reappear at the entrance to wish you good-by. During other successive visits you may have similar charming glimpses of her; perhaps, also, some rarer glimpses of the aged father and mother; and if a much favored visitor, the children may at last come to greet you, with wonderful politeness and sweetness. But the innermost intimate life of that family will never be revealed to you. All that you see to suggest it will be refined, courteous, exquisite, but of the relation of those souls to each other you will know nothing. Behind the beautiful screens which mask the further interior, all is silent, gentle mystery. There is no reason, to the Japanese mind, why it should be otherwise. Such family life is sacred; the home is a sanctuary, of which it were impious to draw aside the veil. Nor can I think this idea of the sacredness of home and of the family relation in any wise inferior to our highest conception of the home and the family in the West.