(1472-1528 A.D.), Chinese philosophical expounders of Confucianism, is
metaphysical. The doctrine of the former was widely studied and was
the orthodox doctrine in Japan for more than two centuries, all other
doctrine and philosophy being forbidden by the state. It is true that
the central interest in this philosophical instruction was the
ethical. It was felt that the entire ethical system rested on the
acceptance of a particular metaphysical system. But so far from
detracting from our argument this statement rather adds. For in what
land has not the prime interest in metaphysics been ethical? A study
of the history of philosophy shows clearly that philosophy and
metaphysics arose out of religious and ethical problems, and have ever
maintained their hold on thinking men, because of their mutually vital
relations. In Japan it has not been otherwise. If anyone doubts this
he should read the Japanese philosophers--in the original, if
possible; if not, then in such translations and extracts as Dr. Knox
has given us in his "A Japanese Philosopher," and Mr. Aston in his
"Japanese Literature." The ethical interest is primary, and the
metaphysical interest is secondary,[AO] to be sure, but not to be
denied.
Occidental philosophy has found many earnest and capable Japanese
students. The Imperial University has a strong corps of philosophical
instructors. Occidental metaphysical thought, both materialistic and
idealistic, has found many congenial minds. Indeed, it is not rash to
say that in the thought of New Japan the distinguishing Oriental
metaphysical conceptions of the universe have been entirely displaced
by those of the West. Christians, in particular, have entirely
abandoned the old polytheistic, pantheistic, and fatalistic
metaphysics and have adopted thoroughgoing monotheism.
Ability to understand and sufficient interest to study through
philosophical and metaphysical systems of foreign lands indicate a
mental development of no slight order, whatever may be the ability, or
lack of it, in making original contributions to the subject. That
educated Japanese have shown real ability in the former sense can
hardly be doubted by those who have read the writings of such men as
Goro Takahashi, ex-president Hiroyuki Kato, Prof. Yujiro Motora, Prof.
Rikizo Nakashima, or Dr. Tetsujiro Inouye. The philosophical
brightness of many of Japan's foreign as well as home-trained scholars
argues well for the philosophical ability of the nation.
A recent conversation with a young Japanese gives point to what has
just been said. The young man suddenly appeared at my study door, and,
with unusually brief salutations, said that he wished me to talk to
him about religion. In answer to questions he explained that he had
been one of my pupils ten years ago in the Kumamoto Boys' School; that
he had been baptized as a Christian at that time, but had become cold
and filled with doubts; that he had been studying ever since, having
at one time given considerable attention to the Zen sect of Buddhism;
but that he had found no satisfaction there. He accordingly wished to
study Christianity more carefully. For three hours we talked, he
asking questions about the Christian conception of God, of the
universe, of man, of sin, of evolution, of Christ, of salvation, of
the object of life, of God's purpose in creation, of the origin and
nature of the Bible. Toward the latter part of our conversation,
referring to one idea expressed, he said, "That is about what Hegel
held, is it not?" As he spoke he opened his knapsack, which I then saw
to be full of books, and drew out an English translation of Hegel's
"Philosophy of History"; he had evidently read it carefully, making
his notes in Japanese on the margin. I asked him if he had read it
through. "Yes," he replied, "three times." He also incidentally
informed me that he had thought of entering our mission theological
training class during the previous winter, but that he was then in the
midst of the study of the philosophy of Kant, and had accordingly
decided to defer entering until the autumn. How thoroughly he had
mastered these, the most profound and abstruse metaphysicians that the
West can boast, I cannot state. But this at least is clear; his
interest in them was real and lasting. And in his conversation he
showed keen appreciation of philosophical problems. It is to be noted
also that he was a self-taught philosopher--for he had attended no
school since he studied elementary English, ten years before, while a
lad of less than twenty.
As a sample of the kind of men I not infrequently meet, let me cite
the case of a young business man who once called on me in the hotel at
Imabari, popularly called "the little philosopher." He wished to talk
about the problem of the future life and to ask my personal belief in
the matter. He said that he believed in God and in Jesus as His unique
son and revealer, but that he found great difficulty in believing in
the continued life of the soul after death. His difficulty arose from
the problems of the nature of future thinking; shall we continue to
think in terms of sense perception, such as time, space, form, color,
pleasure, and pain? If not, how can we think at all? And can we then
remember our present life? If we do, then the future life will not be
essentially different from this, _i.e._, we must still have physical
senses, and continue to live in an essentially physical world. Here
was a set of objections to the doctrine of the future life that I
have never heard as much as mentioned by any Occidental youth. Though
without doubt not original with him, yet he must have had in some
degree both philosophical ability and interest in order to appreciate
their force and to seek their solution.
In conversation not long since with a Buddhist priest of the Tendai
sect, after responding to his request for a criticism of Buddhism, I
asked him for a similarly frank criticism of Christianity. To my
surprise, he said that while Christianity was far ahead of Buddhism in
its practical parts and in its power to mold character, it was
deficient in philosophical insight and interest. This led to a
prolonged conversation on Buddhistic philosophy, in which he explained
the doctrines of the "Ku-ge-chu," and the "Usa and Musa." Without
attempting to explain them here, I may say that the first is amazingly
like Hegel's "absolute nothing," with its thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis, and the second a psychological distinction between
volitional and spontaneous emotions.
In discussing Japanese philosophical ability, a point often forgotten
is the rarity of philosophical ability or even interest in the West.
But a small proportion of college students have the slightest interest
in philosophical or metaphysical problems. The majority do not
understand what the distinctive metaphysical problems are. In my
experience it is easier to enter into a conversation with an educated
man in Japan on a philosophical question than with an American. If
interest in philosophical and metaphysical questions in the West is
rare, original ability in their investigation is still rarer.
We conclude, then, that in regard to philosophical ability the
Japanese have no marked racial characteristic differentiating them
from other races. Although they have not developed a distinctive
national philosophy, this is not due to inherent philosophical
incompetence. Nor, on the other hand, is the relatively wide interest
now manifest in philosophical problems attributable to the inherent
philosophical ability of the race. So far as Japan is either behind or
in advance of other races, in this respect, it is due to her social
order and social inheritance, and particularly to the nature, methods,
and aims of the educational system, but not to her intrinsic psychic
inheritance.
XXI
IMAGINATION
In no respect, perhaps, have the Japanese been more sweepingly
criticised by foreigners than in regard to their powers of imagination
and idealism. Unqualified generalizations not only assert the entire
lack of these powers, but they consider this lack to be the
distinguishing inherent mental characteristic of the race. The
Japanese are called "prosaic," "matter-of-fact," "practical,"
"unimaginative."
Mr. Walter Dening, describing Japanese mental characteristics, says:
"Neither their past history nor their prevailing tastes show any
tendency to idealism. They are lovers of the practical and the
real; neither the fancies of Goethe nor the reveries of Hegel are
to their liking. Our poetry and our philosophy and the mind that
appreciates them are alike the results of a network of subtle
influences to which the Japanese are comparative strangers. It is
maintained by some, and we think justly, that the lack of idealism
in the Japanese mind renders the life of even the most cultivated a
mechanical, humdrum affair when compared with that of Westerners.
The Japanese cannot understand why our controversialists should wax
so fervent over psychological, ethical, religious, and
philosophical questions, failing to perceive that this fervency is
the result of the intense interest taken in such subjects. The
charms that the cultured Western mind finds in the world of fancy
and romance, in questions themselves, irrespective of their
practical bearings, is for the most part unintelligible to the
Japanese."[AP]
Mr. Percival Lowell expends an entire chapter in his "Soul of the Far
East," in showing how important imagination is as a factor in art,
religion, science, and civilization generally, and how strikingly
deficient Japanese are in this faculty. "The Far Orientals," he
argues, "ought to be a particularly unimaginative set of people. Such
is precisely what they are. Their lack of imagination is a
well-recognized fact."[AQ]
Mr. Aston, characterizing Japanese literature, says:
"A feature which strikingly distinguishes the Japanese poetic muse
from that of Western nations is a certain lack of imaginative
power. The Japanese are slow to endow inanimate objects with life.
Shelley's 'Cloud,' for example, contains enough matter of this kind
for many volumes of Japanese verse. Such lines as:
'From my wings are shaken
The dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest
On their mother's breast
As she dances about the sun,'
would appear to them ridiculously overcharged with metaphor, if not
absolutely unintelligible."[AR]
On the other hand, some writers have called attention to the contrary
element of Japanese mental nature. Prof. Ladd, for instance, maintains
that the characteristic mental trait of the Japanese is their
sentimentality. He has shown how their lives are permeated with and
regulated by sentiment. Ancestral worship, patriotism, Imperial
apotheosis, friendship, are fashioned by idealizing sentiment. In our
chapters on the emotional elements of Japanese character we have
considered how widespread and powerful these ideals and sentiments
have been and still are.
Writers who compare the Chinese with the Japanese remark the practical
business nature of the former and the impractical, visionary nature of
the latter.
For a proper estimate of our problem we should clearly distinguish
between the various forms of imagination. It reveals itself not merely
in art and literature, in fantastic conception, in personification and
metaphor, but in every important department of human life. It is the
tap-root of progress, as Mr. Lowell well points out. It pictures an
ideal life in advance of the actual, which ideal becomes the object of
effort. The forms of imagination may, therefore, be classified
according to the sphere of life in which it appears. In addition to
the poetic fancy and the idealism of art and literature generally, we
must distinguish the work of imagination in the æsthetic, in the
moral, in the religious, in the scientific, and in the political life.
The manifestation of the imaginative faculty in art and in literature
is only one part of the æsthetic imagination.
In studying Japanese æsthetic characteristics, we noted how unbalanced
was the development of their æsthetic sense. This proposition of
unbalanced development applies with equal force to the imaginative
faculty as a whole. Conspicuously lacking in certain directions, it is
as conspicuously prominent in others. Rules of etiquette are the
products of the æsthetic imagination, and in what land has etiquette
been more developed than in feudal Japan? Japanese imagination has
been particularly active in the political world. The passionate
loyalty of retainers to their lord, of samurai to their daimyo, of all
to their "kuni," or clan, in ancient times, and now, of the people to
their Emperor, are the results of a vivid political idealizing
imagination. Imperial apotheosis is a combination of the political and
religious imagination. And in what land has the apotheosizing
imagination been more active than in Japan? Ambition and self-conceit
are likewise dependent on an active imaginative faculty.
There can be no doubt the writers quoted above have drawn attention to
some salient features of Japanese art. In the literature of the past,
the people have not manifested that high literary imagination that we
discover in the best literature of many other nations.
This fact, however, will not justify the sweeping generalizations
based upon it. Judging from the pre-Elizabethan literature, who would
have expected the brilliancy of the Elizabethan period? Similarly in
regard to the Victorian period of English literature. Because the
Japanese have failed in the past to produce literature equal to the
best of Western lands, we are not justified in asserting that she
never will and that she is inherently deficient in literary
imagination. In regard to certain forms of light fancy, all admit that
Japanese poems are unsurpassed by those of other lands. Japanese
amative poetry is noted for its delicate fancies and plays on words
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of translation, or even of
expression, to one unacquainted with the language.
The deficiencies of Japanese literature, therefore, are not such as to
warrant the conclusion that they both mark and make a fundamental
difference in the race mind. For such differences as exist are capable
of a sociological explanation.
The prosaic matter-of-factness of the Japanese mind has been so widely
emphasized that we need not dwell upon it here. There is, however,
serious danger of over-emphasis, a danger into which all writers fall
who make it the ground for sweeping condemnatory criticism.
They are right in ascribing to the average Japanese a large amount of
unimaginative matter-of-factness, but they are equally wrong in
unqualified dogmatic generalizations. They base their inductions on
insufficient facts, a habit to which foreigners are peculiarly liable,
through ignorance of the language and also of the inner thoughts and
life of the people.
The prosaic nature of the Japanese has not impressed me so much as the
visionary tendency of the people, and their idealism. The Japanese
themselves count this idealism a national characteristic. They say
that they are theorizers, and numberless experiences confirm this
view.
They project great undertakings; they scheme; they discuss
contingencies; they make enormous plans; all with an air of
seriousness and yet with a nonchalance which shows a semi-conscious
sense of the unreality of their proposals. In regard to Korea and
China and Formosa, they have hatched political and business schemes
innumerable. The kaleidoscopic character of Japanese politics is in
part due to the rapid succession of visionary schemes. One idea reigns
for a season, only to be displaced by another, causing constant
readjustment of political parties. Frequent attacks on government
foreign policy depend for their force on lordly ideas as to the part
Japan should play in international relations. Writing about the recent
discussions in the public press over the question of introducing
foreign capital into Japan, one contributor to the _Far East_ remarks
that "It has been treated more from a theoretical than from a
practical standpoint.... This seems to me to arise from a peculiar
trait of Japanese mind which is prone to dwell solely on the
theoretical side until the march of events compels a sudden leap
toward the practical." This visionary faculty of the Japanese is
especially conspicuous in the daily press. Editorials on foreign
affairs and on the relations of Japan to the world are full of it.
I venture to jot down a few illustrations of impractical idealism out
of my personal knowledge. An evangelist in the employ of the Kumamoto
station exemplified this visionary trait in a marked degree. Nervous
in the extreme, he was constantly having new ideas. For some reason
his attention was turned to the subject of opium and the evils China
was suffering from the drug, forced on her by England. Forthwith he
came to me for books on the subject; he wished to become fully
informed, and then he proposed to go to China and preach on the
subject. For a few weeks he was full of his enterprise. It seemed to
him that if he were only allowed the opportunity he could convince the
Chinese of their error, and the English of their crime. One of his
plans was to go to England and expostulate with them on their
un-Christian dealings with China. A few weeks later his attention was
turned to the wrongs inflicted on the poor on account of their
ignorance about law and their inability to get legal assistance. This
idea held him longer than the previous.
He desired to study law and become a public pleader in order to
defend the poor against unjust men of wealth. In his theological ideas
he was likewise extreme and changeable; swinging from positive and
most emphatic belief to extreme doubt, and later back again. In his
periods of triumphant faith it seemed to him that he could teach the
world; and his expositions of truth were extremely interesting. He
proposed to formulate a new theology that would dissolve forever the
difficulties of the old theology. In his doubts, too, he was no less
interesting and assertive. His hold on practical matters was
exceedingly slender. His salary, though considerably larger than that
of most of the evangelists, was never sufficient. He would spend
lavishly at the beginning of the month so long as he had the money,
and then would pinch himself or else fall into debt.
Mr. ----, the head of the Kumamoto Boys' School during the period of
its fierce struggles and final collapse, whom I have already referred
to as the Hero-Principal,[AS] is another example of this impractical
high-strung visionariness. No sooner had he reached Kumamoto, than
there opened before our enchanted eyes the vision of this little
insignificant school blooming out into a great university. True, there
had been some of this bombast before his arrival; but it took on new
and gorgeous form under his master hand. The airs that he put on,
displaying his (fraudulent) Ph.D., and talking about his schemes, are
simply amusing to contemplate from this distance. His studies in the
philosophy of religion had so clarified his mind that he was going to
reform both Christianity and Buddhism. His sermons of florid eloquence
and vociferous power, never less than an hour in length, were as
marked in ambitious thoughts as in pulpit mannerisms. He threw a spell
over all who came in contact with him. He overawed them by his
vehemence and tremendous earnestness and insistence on perfect
obedience to his masterful will. In one of his climactic sermons,
after charging missionaries with teaching dangerous errors, he said
that while some were urging that the need of the times was to "his
back to Luther," and others were saying, that we must "his back to
Christ" (these English words being brought into his Japanese sermon),
they were both wrong; we must "hie back to God"; and he prophesied a
reformation in religion, beginning there in Kumamoto, in that school,
which would be far and away more important in the history of the world
than was the Lutheran Reformation.
The recent history of Christianity in Japan supplies many striking
instances of visionary plans and visionary enthusiasts. The confident
expectation entertained during the eighties of Christianizing the
nation before the close of the century was such a vision. Another,
arising a few years later, was the importance of returning all foreign
missionaries to their native lands and of intrusting the entire
evangelistic work to native Christians, and committing to them the
administration of the immense sums thus set free. For it was assumed
by these brilliant Utopians that the amount of money expended in
supporting missionaries would be available for aggressive work should
the missionaries be withdrawn, and that the Christians in foreign
lands would continue to pour in their contributions for the
evangelization of Japan.
Still another instance of utopian idealism is the vision that Japan
will give birth to that perfect religion, meeting the demands of both
heart and head, for which the world waits. In January, 1900, Prof. T.
Inouye, of the Imperial University, after showing quite at length, and
to his own satisfaction, the inadequacy of all existing religions to
meet the ethical and religious situation in Japan, maintained this
ambitious view.
Some Japanese Christians are declaring the need of Japonicized
Christianity. "Did not the Greeks transform Christianity before they
accepted it? And did not the Romans, and finally the Germans, do the
same? Before Japan will or can accept the religion of Christ, it must
be Japonicized." So they argue; "and who so fit to do it as we?" lies
in the background of their thought.
Many a Christian pastor and evangelist, although not sharing the
ambition of Prof. Inouye, nevertheless glows with the confident
expectation that Japonicized Christianity will be its most perfect
type. "No one need wonder if Japan should be destined to present to
the world the best type of Christianity that has yet appeared in
history," writes an exponent of this view, at one time a Christian
pastor. In this connection the reader may recall what was said in
chapter xiv. on Japanese Ambition and Conceit, qualities depending on
the power of seeing visions. We note, in passing, the optimistic
spirit of New Japan. This is in part due, no doubt, to ignorance of
the problems that lie athwart their future progress, but it is also
due to the vivid imaginative faculty which pictures for them the
glories of the coming decades when they shall lead not only the
Orient, but also the Occident, in every line of civilization, material
and spiritual, moral and religious. A dull, unimaginative, prosaic
nature cannot be exuberantly optimistic. It is evident that writers
who proclaim the unimaginative matter-of-factness of the Japanese as
universal and absolute, have failed to see a large side of Japanese
inner life.