A Fantasy of Far Japan Part 9

--'What books written in English on j.a.pan would you recommend me to read?' asked one lady.

--'I cannot say with much authority, because naturally I have not spent much time over those books, but began it from what I have observed and from what I have heard from other people Lafcadio Hearn's are the best to study the j.a.panese character, but his books are generally collections of different essays, so that they do not give a panoramic survey of j.a.pan. In that respect _Advance j.a.pan_, by J. Morris, is said to be very handy and good. Concerning that book, I may mention a rather commendable incident which took place last year. A Russian lady, a lover of her own country, I presume, lamented the great lack of knowledge of j.a.pan among her country people, which was, as she thought, the cause of the many misfortunes to her country. She wrote to an English friend of hers asking what book written in English on j.a.pan she would recommend her to translate into Russian. The English lady recommended the book just mentioned, and it was translated and published in Russia. I have myself seen the Russian edition of it, neatly printed and beautifully ill.u.s.trated. The Rev. William E. Griffis, of America, has written several books on j.a.pan. His _Mikado's Empire_ gives a most excellent generalisation of j.a.panese history. A new book on j.a.pan, ent.i.tled _Imperial j.a.pan_ by Knox, another American, is very good. I have read it through. The only chapter in it which I think very unfair is one relating to j.a.panese women. Of course, even in the best books there are some points which are not quite exact, and they contain many amusing mistakes when scrutinised from our point of view.'

--'What is then your opinion about Lafcadio Hearn's books, for instance? I would like to know your opinion,' said another lady.

--'You make me traverse almost the same field over again,' I said.

--'Never mind! The points are different,' she said.

--'Well, I need not speak of his occasional mistranslations of j.a.panese words or some small technical errors, but I can say that, in my opinion, he sometimes goes a little too far in giving reasons to matters concerning feeling and sentiment. For instance, he raises the question, if a soul be something concrete and suppose it is gone somewhere--heaven or Paradise, as one may term it--how would it be possible to be present simultaneously at the place where it is enshrined, or where offerings are made, and he tries to solve the difficulty philosophically and logically. He seems to place too much stress on our notions of ancestral wors.h.i.+p. We practise it, we like it, and we think it fine and n.o.ble, and yet we do so from a spirit of feeling and sentiment. Many things in connection therewith are done by us, not always with conclusive, logical reasoning. In this respect many Europeans often misjudge us, forgetting that they themselves do the same at home. They canonise meritorious persons, sometimes only legendary; they have their wayside shrines of Madonna; they celebrate All Souls' Day, when the whole town or village flocks to the cemetery; they set up statues of great men,--a statesman, a warrior, a writer, a philanthropist, a musical composer, a sculptor, a scientist, and what not. They construct a grand pantheon or cathedral and consecrate the remains of their distinguished dead therein. They even erect colossal figures of an ideal personification, such as "Liberty" standing on high at the Place de la Republique, and other figures representing great cities, as at the Place de la Concorde. They sometimes decorate such figures on certain days with flowers, as is the case with the statue of Beaconsfield, which is covered with primroses on Primrose League Day, nay, sometimes a figure is decorated with wreaths all the year round, like Strasbourg at the Place de la Concorde. Mind, with regard to this last, I am not speaking of any political aspect of the matter. All this to my mind is very fine in idea. All this, I think, is not done for mere play, nor are those objects set up for mere ornament. The notion contained therein is, I think, intended to perpetuate and sanctify the memory of the person, or of an idea in the minds of the people. If any stranger, for instance, approach any of these objects and insult it in any gross manner, he would be sure to be much hissed, or even punished. From this, it is certain that these matters belong to the sphere of feeling and sentiment and are not exactly within the limits of strict philosophical and logical reasoning.

Our ancestral wors.h.i.+p and things connected with it are of the same kind.

And yet those Occidentals who have themselves very similar things look upon such inst.i.tutions in j.a.pan with amazement or curiosity, or even with contempt, or else like Lafcadio Hearn, try to reason out some points which are not altogether soluable by ordinary reasoning. A Confucian saying has this: "When you perform a commemoration in honour of your dead parents, do it as though their spirit is present before you." And I think it quite right; it is no honour to the dead if one make an offering and reasons in his mind at the same time that the dead is nothing more than dust, or that its spirit could not be in existence, or at all events, far away from us in an unknown region. When a foreigner sees the shrine erected in Tokio where men, generals and soldiers alike, who died for their country, are consecrated as a sort of deity, he is apt to think it a peculiar custom. But what difference is there between our observance of the ill.u.s.trious dead and that of burying a distinguished statesman or soldier in the Pantheon or Westminster Abbey? The only difference in all such matters seems to me to amount to this: the feeling and sentiment of the preservation of the memory of the deserving men is more intent and more general in one case than in the other.'

--'I cannot agree with you altogether in your philosophy,' said a young lady.

--'That may be,' said I. 'You shut your eyes to things near; we have a saying, "A lighthouse does not see its own base." Oh! I beg your pardon.

I must not make such remarks; you see, too great a freedom of speech is apt to produce an abuse; nay, that very freedom sometimes even wrecks a grand army on an expedition.'

--'I see. That is the reason why you muzzled all the newspaper correspondents who purposely went out to the Far East, and, by doing so, you have nearly wrecked your own country.'

--'Yes, nearly,' I answered, 'but we happily managed to escape their vindictiveness, and won our battles. No one in the world knew that Togo was quietly waiting with his fleets for the ever-memorable Armada behind the islands of Tsus.h.i.+ma, almost on the same spot where the great Mongolian Armada was annihilated some six hundred years ago.'

--'And yet you yourself are rather voluble. You are always talking about something: you talk a good deal more than any ordinary person.'

--'Excuse me,' I retorted, 'I don't think I am voluble at all. By nature I prefer listening to others than talking to them, for in listening to others one can learn something, but nothing when talking to them. I prefer still more to be alone, than either to be listening or talking, for then the waste of time is still less. I only talk when it is absolutely necessary. You know, of course, that from Pythagoras down to Spencer and Huxley, extending, over some four or five thousand years, thousands of philosophers have written books, millions of books, spinning out their thoughts or rather conjectures, like spiders webs, but the essence of it all is summed up in only these few words, "I don't know."'

--'Ah! I see,' cried she, 'you talk nowadays so much, because you think it necessary for the good of your country. Do you know you are generally called the "j.a.panese Mentor," or the "Missionary of things j.a.panese.'"

--'I don't mind by what name they call me. Don't you remember: "That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."'

--'And yet you must not monopolise the time; I must now have my turn of freedom of speech.'

The lady thus claiming her turn of speech was a lively, vigorous, energetic young lady, capable of talking and writing in several languages, confident of herself and of her s.e.x, as confident as though she were carrying on her shoulders the responsibility of half mankind, that is, the whole of womankind. She takes, of course, great interest in women's education and the promotion of women's rights in all matters.

She began by saying, with her face turned towards me:

--'In the letter you have just read--'

--'I did not read it,' I interposed; 'it was that lady.'

--'Well, then,' she said, 'in the letter you have brought in your pocket and have made one of the ladies read to us. In that letter mention is made of j.a.panese ladies--'

--'Oh, no more of the ladies,' I interrupted; 'I have spoken so much of them, that if I repeat too often, I shall weary my readers of _A Summer Dream_.'

--'What!' she said, 'I do not mind if you read or copy the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, or the _Winters Tale_, but I must have my turn of speech. In that letter, the writer speaks of the j.a.panese killing their mothers, wives, and sisters: by that the writer, no doubt, means the affliction which is put upon them by the death of so many men on the battlefields. But in my opinion, it is not only in j.a.pan that women are killed, but in all countries, in England, in France, in America and everywhere else! Man everywhere despises women's education and deprives women of their lives.'

--'Of course, you take great interest in women's education,' I interposed.

--'Not only,' she continued, 'they despise women's education, but they employ every machination to hinder women from developing brain power, which is their only life.'

--'You are too harsh,' I remarked.

--'No, not at all,' she continued. 'People talk about American girls getting the upper hand of their elders, as though they were not capable of giving advice to their somewhat belated relatives. The younger we are, the older and wiser we deem ourselves: such are the real facts of the world, don't you think so, baron?'

--'Well, not exactly,' I replied.

--'I don't think you take much interest in women's education. You are intelligent, but you are, all the same, a man. You men have all one trait in common, and that is, a desire to exclude women from every sphere of action politically and socially.'

--'No, far from it,' I answered. 'I am a great advocate of the mental and physical development of women. My only desire as man is that the time should soon arrive when we could elect women as deputies to the Chamber; send them to the barracks and s.h.i.+ps as soldiers and sailors, and to the field of campaign in time of emergency; select the most beautiful as our amba.s.sadors and ministers to the courts of different countries and win over the hearts of the nation to which they are sent, while all this time we men might stay at home and calmly nurse the babies or indulge in a quiet smoke, of which I am very fond.'

--'Let's have some more serious talk,' remarked another lady. 'You have not yet told us of the foundation of Bus.h.i.+do and its ethics. Let us hear something of that.'

--'It is rather complicated. It will take much time. It won't do for my _Summer Dream_.'

--'What?' she asked.

--'Nothing. I mean it is too complicated and serious to tell you in this place. On those points, I must refer you to my book ent.i.tled _The Risen Sun_, published by Archibald Constable, the best publisher in London. It is one of the most important books published in the twentieth century; otherwise Archibald Constable would never have published it.'

--'I see a j.a.panese gentleman is sometimes capable of indulging in a little bluff.'

--'But the twentieth century has only just begun: besides, this kind of bluff is quite harmless. It is very different from that which some people are fond of indulging in, and, above all, it cannot bring about a national catastrophe.'

--'Enough, we all see what you mean. "Their rising senses," as the poet says, will soon "begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason." Let us go now,' said one of them, and they all dispersed.

Thereupon I also having left the room, sprang into the air, and once more floated away like a sprite, humming as I did so:--

'... I do fly After summer, merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.'

[1] For these 'singing insects,' which are a distinctive feature in the Far East, see Lafcadio Hearn on 'Insect-Musicians' in his _Exotics and Retrospectives_ (1898), pp. 39-80. The practice of caging them dates at least from 1095 A.D. Insects are now bred for this purpose in enormous numbers.

IV

A talk on brackens--Eating of fruits without peeling--A pet tortoise--Remarks on languages--Discourses on jiujitsu--Comparison of jiujitsu and wrestling--j.a.panese art and the Kokkwa--Pictures in the Gospel--Discourse on Bus.h.i.+do, its history and the origin of the term--Explanation of the terms Daimio, Samurai, and Bus.h.i.+--Its literature--j.a.panese revenge and European duel--j.a.panese sword--Soul of Samurai--General Stoessel and a broken sword--Discussion on j.a.panese social morality--j.a.pan far cleaner than any other nation--The condition at the time of the transition--General view of the westernised j.a.pan--Occidental vulgarity

I was at the luncheon table of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Fairfield: quite _en famille_, there being present only a young n.o.bleman of Italian descent besides the duke and d.u.c.h.ess and their two daughters.

In the course of luncheon, casual mention was made by one of the young ladies of the fronds of bracken, called _warabi_ in j.a.pan, regarding which I had made some remarks in England as to its edible properties.

--'I have read in some English papers all that you said about it,' said the young n.o.bleman; 'and, indeed, most of the French journals have also reported it since.'

--'Yes, after I had initiated the matter, almost all the English papers, both in town and country, made some comments. I have even read that a philanthropic gentleman had reproduced the necessary information in leaflet form, for distribution amongst the needy people in some parts of Wales, where there is often a scarcity of food. The starch made from the roots of bracken is considered in j.a.pan the best, and is used very widely. There is a similar vegetable called _jemmai_; it is larger than bracken and used in a dried form. It is very soft and palatable, and is very extensively used in j.a.panese cookery. I do not know for certain if the latter kind exists in Europe, though I believe it does. As to bracken, it grows everywhere. I am, however, but little sanguine that my recommendation will be utilised in England, though the method of preparation is very simple. The secret of the preliminary preparation lies in soaking it, from ten to fifteen hours in water with soda. I revealed it from a philanthropic motive. But, you see, the British are so conservative in such matters. I even noticed, in a newspaper, a letter wherein the writer stated that he had cooked some bracken, but it turned out unpalatable, although quite tender. He did not wait to find out if there might not be room for improvement in his method of cooking: people are so apt to discredit others before they make sure of a fact.'

--'That is generally the case in this world,' said the d.u.c.h.ess; 'but I wonder if French bracken is equally good.'

--'Surely it is,' I replied, 'even that in the neighbourhood of Paris: the bracken in Fontainebleau forests is said to be very fine. Only in May last, a number of j.a.panese ladies in Paris made a special excursion there, and brought back bunches of it. I was one of those who enjoyed the dishes resulting.'