Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation | Page 2

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, until a study of that literature
shall have been made by some scholar, not only able to understand
Japanese beliefs, but able also to sympathize with them to at least the
same extent that our great humanists can sympathize with the religion
of Euripides, of Pindar, and of Theocritus. Let us ask ourselves how
much of English or French or German or Italian literature could be
fully understood without the slightest knowledge of the ancient and
modern religions of the Occident. I do not refer to distinctly religious
creators,--to poets like Milton or Dante,--but only to the fact that even
one of Shakespeare's plays must remain incomprehensible to a person
knowing nothing either of Christian beliefs or of the beliefs which
preceded them. The real mastery of any European tongue is impossible
[4] without a knowledge of European religion. The language of even
the unlettered is full of religious meaning: the proverbs and
household-phrases of the poor, the songs of the street, the speech of the
workshop,--all are infused with significations unimaginable by any one
ignorant of the faith of the people. Nobody knows this better than a
man who has passed many years in trying to teach English in Japan, to

pupils whose faith is utterly unlike our own, and whose ethics have
been shaped by a totally different social experience.

[5]
STRANGENESS AND CHARM
The majority of the first impressions of Japan recorded by travellers are
pleasurable impressions. Indeed, there must be something lacking, or
something very harsh, in the nature to which Japan can make no
emotional appeal. The appeal itself is the clue to a problem; and that
problem is the character of a race and of its civilization.
My own first impressions of Japan,--Japan as seen in the white
sunshine of a perfect spring day,--had doubtless much in common with
the average of such experiences. I remember especially the wonder and
the delight of the vision. The wonder and the delight have never passed
away: they are often revived for me even now, by some chance
happening, after fourteen years of sojourn. But the reason of these
feelings was difficult to learn,--or at least to guess; for I cannot yet
claim to know much about Japan .... Long ago the best and dearest
Japanese friend I ever had said to me, a little before his death: "When
you find, in four or five years more, that you cannot understand the
Japanese at [6] all, then you will begin to know something about them."
After having realized the truth of my friend's prediction,--after having
discovered that I cannot understand the Japanese at all,--I feel better
qualified to attempt this essay.
As first perceived, the outward strangeness of things in Japan produces
(in certain minds, at least) a queer thrill impossible to describe,--a
feeling of weirdness which comes to us only with the perception of the
totally unfamiliar. You find yourself moving through queer small
streets full of odd small people, wearing robes and sandals of
extraordinary shapes; and you can scarcely distinguish the sexes at
sight. The houses are constructed and furnished in ways alien to all
your experience; and you are astonished to find that you cannot

conceive the use or meaning of numberless things on display in the
shops. Food-stuffs of unimaginable derivation; utensils of enigmatic
forms; emblems incomprehensible of some mysterious belief; strange
masks and toys that commemorate legends of gods or demons; odd
figures, too, of the gods themselves, with monstrous ears and smiling
faces,--all these you may perceive as you wander about; though you
must also notice telegraph-poles and type-writers, electric lamps and
sewing machines. Everywhere on signs and hangings, and on the backs
of people passing by, you will observe wonderful Chinese [7]
characters; and the wizardry of all these texts makes the dominant tone
of the spectacle.
Further acquaintance with this fantastic world will in nowise diminish
the sense of strangeness evoked by the first vision of it. You will soon
observe that even the physical actions of the people are
unfamiliar,--that their work is done in ways the opposite of Western
ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after surprising
methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a hammer such as
no Western smith could use without long practice; the carpenter pulls,
instead of pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is
the right side, and the right side the wrong; and keys must be turned,