Kokoro | Page 5

the questioned; to see, to understand, to move in
that high-pressure medium, needs experience. The unaccustomed feels
the sensation of being in a panic, in a tempest, in a cyclone. Yet all this

is order.
The monster streets leap rivers, span sea-ways, with bridges of stone,
bridges of steel. Far as the eye can reach, a bewilderment of masts, a
web-work of rigging, conceals the shores, which are cliffs of masonry.
Trees in a forest stand less thickly, branches in a forest mingle less
closely, than the masts and spars of that immeasurable maze. Yet all is
order.

III
Generally speaking, we construct for endurance, the Japanese for
impermanency. Few things for common use are made in Japan with a
view to durability. The straw sandals worn out and replaced at each
stage of a journey, the robe consisting of a few simple widths loosely
stitched together for wearing, and unstitched again for washing, the
fresh chopsticks served to each new guest at a hotel, the light shoji
frames serving at once for windows and walls, and repapered twice a
year; the mattings renewed every autumn,--all these are but random
examples of countless small things in daily life that illustrate the
national contentment with impermanency.
What is the story of a common Japanese dwelling? Leaving my home
in the morning, I observe, as I pass the corner of the next street crossing
mine, some men setting up bamboo poles on a vacant lot there.
Returning after five hours' absence, I find on the same lot the skeleton
of a two-story house. Next forenoon I see that the walls are nearly
finished already,--mud and wattles. By sundown the roof has been
completely tiled. On the following morning I observe that the mattings
have been put down, and the inside plastering has been finished. In five
days the house is completed. This, of course, is a cheap building; a fine
one would take much longer to put up and finish. But Japanese cities
are for the most part composed of such common buildings. They are as
cheap as they are simple.
I cannot now remember where I first met with the observation that the

curve of the Chinese roof might preserve the memory of the nomad tent.
The idea haunted me long after I had ungratefully forgotten the book in
which I found it; and when I first saw, in Izumo, the singular structure
of the old Shinto temples, with queer cross-projections at their
gable-ends and upon their roof-ridges, the suggestion of the forgotten
essayist about the possible origin of much less ancient forms returned
to me with great force. But there is much in Japan besides primitive
architectural traditions to indicate a nomadic ancestry for the race.
Always and everywhere there is a total absence of what we would call
solidity; and the characteristics of impermanence seem to mark almost
everything in the exterior life of the people, except, indeed, the
immemorial costume of the peasant and the shape of the implements of
his toil. Not to dwell upon the fact that even during the comparatively
brief period of her written history Japan has had more than sixty
capitals, of which the greater number have completely disappeared, it
may be broadly stated that every Japanese city is rebuilt within the time
of a generation. Some temples and a few colossal fortresses offer
exceptions; but, as a general rule, the Japanese city changes its
substance, if not its form, in the lifetime of a man. Fires, earth-quakes,
and many other causes partly account for this; the chief reason,
however, is that houses are not built to last. The common people have
no ancestral homes. The dearest spot to all is, not the place of birth, but
the place of burial; and there is little that is permanent save the
resting-places of the dead and the sites of the ancient shrines.
The land itself is a land of impermanence. Rivers shift their courses,
coasts their outline, plains their level; volcanic peaks heighten or
crumble; valleys are blocked by lava-floods or landslides; lakes appear
and disappear. Even the matchless shape of Fuji, that snowy miracle
which has been the inspiration of artists for centuries, is said to have
been slightly changed since my advent to the country; and not a few
other mountains have in the same short time taken totally new forms.
Only the general lines of the land, the general aspects of its nature, the
general character of the seasons, remain fixed. Even the very beauty of
the landscapes is largely illusive,--a beauty of shifting colors and
moving mists. Only he to whom those landscapes are familiar can
know bow their mountain vapors make mockery of real changes which

have been, and ghostly predictions of other changes yet to be, in the
history of