Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

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Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

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Title: Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation
Author: Lafcadio Hearn
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5979] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 5, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAPAN ***

[Transcriber's Note: Page numbers are retained in square brackets.]

JAPAN AN ATTEMPT AT INTERPRETATION
BY LAFCADIO HEARN

1904

Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DIFFICULTIES.........................1
II. STRANGENESS AND CHARM................5
III. THE ANCIENT CULT....................21
IV. THE RELIGION OF THE HOME............33
V. THE JAPANESE FAMILY.................55
VI. THE COMMUNAL CULT...................81
VII. DEVELOPMENTS OF SHINTO.............107
VIII. WORSHIP AND PURIFICATION...........133
IX. THE RULE OF THE DEAD...............157
X. THE INTRODUCTION OF BUDDHISM.......183
XI. THE HIGHER BUDDHISM................207
XII. THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION............229
XIII. THE RISE OF THE MILITARY POWER.....259
XIV. THE RELIGION OF LOYALTY............283
XV. THE JESUIT PERIL...................303
XVI. FEUDAL INTEGRATION.................343
XVII. THE SHINTO REVIVAL.................367
XVIII. SURVIVALS..........................381
XIX. MODERN RESTRAINTS..................395
XX. OFFICIAL EDUCATION.................419
XXI. INDUSTRIAL DANGER..................443
XXII. REFLECTIONS........................457
APPENDIX...........................481
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES..............487
INDEX..............................489

"Perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced back to a time of rigid and pervading discipline"--WALTER BAGEHOT.

[1] DIFFICULTIES
A thousand books have been written about Japan; but among these,--setting aside artistic publications and works of a purely special character,--the really precious volumes will be found to number scarcely a score. This fact is due to the immense difficulty of perceiving and comprehending what underlies the surface of Japanese life. No work fully interpreting that life,--no work picturing Japan within and without, historically and socially, psychologically and ethically,--can be written for at least another fifty years. So vast and intricate the subject that the united labour of a generation of scholars could not exhaust it, and so difficult that the number of scholars willing to devote their time to it must always be small. Even among the Japanese themselves, no scientific knowledge of their own history is yet possible; because the means of obtaining that knowledge have not yet been prepared,--though mountains of material have been collected. The want of any good history upon a modern plan is but one of many discouraging wants. Data for the study of sociology [2] are still inaccessible to the Western investigator. The early state of the family and the clan; the history of the differentiation of classes; the history of the differentiation of political from religious law; the history of restraints, and of their influence upon custom; the history of regulative and cooperative conditions in the development of industry; the history of ethics and aesthetics,--all these and many other matters remain obscure.
This essay of mine can serve in one direction only as a contribution to the Western knowledge of Japan. But this direction is not one of the least important. Hitherto the subject of Japanese religion has been written of chiefly by the sworn enemies of that religion: by others it has been almost entirely ignored. Yet while it continues to be ignored and misrepresented, no real knowledge of Japan is possible. Any true comprehension of social conditions requires more than a superficial acquaintance with religious conditions. Even the industrial history of a people cannot be understood without some knowledge of those religious traditions and customs which regulate industrial life during the earlier stages of its development .... Or take the subject of art. Art in Japan is so intimately associated with religion that any attempt to study it without extensive knowledge of the [3] beliefs which it reflects, were mere waste of time. By art I do not mean only painting and sculpture, but every kind of decoration, and most kinds of pictorial representation,--the image on a boy's kite or a girl's battledore, not less than the design upon a lacquered casket or enamelled vase,--the figures upon a workman's towel not less than the pattern of the girdle of a princess,--the shape of the paper-dog or the wooden rattle bought for a baby, not less than the forms of those colossal Ni-O who guard the gateways of Buddhist temples .... And surely there can never be any just estimate made of Japanese literature,