Kokoro | Page 7

land
composed mainly of mountain chains, they recognize no obstacles to
travel. The Japanese who travels most is not the man who needs
railways or steamers to carry him.
Now, with us, the common worker is incomparably less free than the
common worker in Japan. He is less free because of the more
complicated mechanism of Occidental societies, whose forces tend to
agglomeration and solid integration. He is less free because the social
and industrial machinery on which he must depend reshapes him to its
own particular requirements, and always so as to evolve some special
and artificial capacity at the cost of other inherent capacity. He is less
free because he must live at a standard making it impossible for him to
win financial independence by mere thrift. To achieve any such
independence, he must possess exceptional character and exceptional
faculties greater than those of thousands of exceptional competitors
equally eager to escape from the same thralldom. In brief, then, he is
less independent because the special character of his civilization numbs
his natural power to live without the help of machinery or large capital.
To live thus artificially means to lose, sooner or later, the power of

independent movement. Before a Western man can move he has many
things to consider. Before a Japanese moves he has nothing to consider.
He simply leaves the place he dislikes, and goes to the place he wishes,
without any trouble. There is nothing to prevent him. Poverty is not an
obstacle, but a stimulus. Impedimenta he has none, or only such as he
can dispose of in a few minutes. Distances have no significance for him.
Nature has given him perfect feet that can spring him over fifty miles a
day without pain; a stomach whose chemistry can extract ample
nourishment from food on which no European could live; and a
constitution that scorns heat, cold, and damp alike, because still
unimpaired by unhealthy clothing, by superfluous comforts, by the
habit of seeking warmth from grates and stoves, and by the habit of
wearing leather shoes.
It seems to me that the character of our footgear signifies more than is
commonly supposed. The footgear represents in itself a check upon
individual freedom. It signifies this even in costliness; but in form it
signifies infinitely more. It has distorted the Western foot out of the
original shape, and rendered it incapable of the work for which it was
evolved. The physical results are not limited to the foot. Whatever acts
as a check, directly or indirectly, upon the organs of locomotion must
extend its effects to the whole physical constitution. Does the evil stop
even there? Perhaps we submit to conventions the most absurd of any
existing in any civilization because we have too long submitted to the
tyranny of shoemakers. There may be defects in our politics, in our
social ethics, in our religious system, more or less related to the habit of
wearing leather shoes. Submission to the cramping of the body must
certainly aid in developing submission to the cramping of the mind.
The Japanese man of the people--the skilled laborer able to underbid
without effort any Western artisan in the same line of industry--remains
happily independent of both shoemakers and tailors. His feet are good
to look at, his body is healthy, and his heart is free. If he desire to travel
a thousand miles, he can get ready for his journey in five minutes. His
whole outfit need not cost seventy-five cents; and all his baggage can
be put into a handkerchief. On ten dollars he can travel for a year
without work, or he can travel simply on his ability to work, or he can

travel as a pilgrim. You may reply that any savage can do the same
thing. Yes, but any civilized man cannot; and the Japanese has been a
highly civilized man for at least a thousand years. Hence his present
capacity to threaten Western manufacturers.
We have been too much accustomed to associate this kind of
independent mobility with the life of our own beggars and tramps, to
have any just conception of its intrinsic meaning. We have thought of it
also in connection with unpleasant things,--uncleanliness and bad
smells. But, as Professor Chamberlain has well said, "a Japanese crowd
is the sweetest in the world" Your Japanese tramp takes his hot bath
daily, if he has a fraction of a cent to pay for it, or his cold bath, if he
has not. In his little bundle there are combs, toothpicks, razors,
toothbrushes. He never allows himself to become unpleasant Reaching
his destination, he can transform himself into a visitor of very nice
manners, and faultless though simple attire(1).
Ability to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the least
possible amount of neat