Oriental peoples is their marked lack of imagination. This is the
faculty that "may in a certain sense be said to be the creator of the
world." The lack of this faculty, according to Mr. Lowell, is the root
of the Japanese lack of originality and invention; it gives the whole
Oriental civilization its characteristic features. He cites a few
words to prove the essentially prosaic character of the Japanese mind,
such as "up-down" for "pass" (which word, by the way, is his own
invention, and reveals his ignorance of the language), "the being (so)
is difficult," in place of "thank you." "A lack of any fanciful
ideas," he says, "is one of the most salient traits of all Far Eastern
peoples, if indeed a sad dearth can properly be called salient.
Indirectly, their want of imagination betrays itself in their everyday
sayings and doings, and more directly in every branch of thought." I
note, in passing, that Mr. Lowell does not distinguish between fancy
and imagination. Though allied faculties, they are distinct. Mr.
Lowell's extreme estimate of the prosaic nature of the Japanese mind I
cannot share. Many letters received from Japanese friends refute this
view by their fanciful expressions. The Japanese language, too, has
many fanciful terms. Why "pass" is any more imaginative than
"up-down," to accept Mr. Lowell's etymology, or "the being (so) is
difficult" than "thank you," I do not see. To me the reverse
proposition would seem the truer. And are not "breaking-horns" for "on
purpose," and "breaking-bones" for "with great difficulty," distinctly
imaginative terms, more imaginative than the English? In the place of
our English term "sun," the Japanese have several alternative terms in
common use, such as "_hi_," "day," "_Nichirin_," "day-ball," "_Ten-to
Sama_," "the god of heaven's light;" and for "moon," it has "_tsuki_,"
"month," "_getsu-rin_," "month ball." The names given to her
men-of-war also indicate a fanciful nature. The torpedo destroyers are
named "Dragon-fly," "Full Moon," "The Moon in the Cloud," "Seabeach,"
"Dawn of Day," "Clustering Clouds," "Break of Day," "Ripples,"
"Evening Mist," "Dragon's Lamp," "Falcon," "Magpie," "White-naped
Crane," and "White Hawk." Surely, it cannot be maintained that the
Japanese are utterly lacking in fancy.
Distinguishing between fancy as "the power of forming pleasing,
graceful, whimsical, or odd mental images, or of combining them with
little regard to rational processes of construction," and imagination,
in its more philosophical use, as "the act of constructive intellect
in grouping the materials of knowledge or thought into new, original,
and rational systems," we assert without fear of successful
contradiction, that the Japanese race is not without either of these
important mental faculties.
In addition to the preceding illustrations of visionary and fanciful
traits, let the reader reflect on the significance of the comic and of
caricature in art. Japanese _Netsuke_ (tiny carvings of exquisite
skill representing comical men, women, and children) are famous the
world over. Surely, the fancy is the most conspicuous mental
characteristic revealed in this branch of Japanese art. In Japanese
poetry "a vast number of conceits, more or less pretty," are to be
found, likewise manifesting the fancy of both the authors who wrote
and the people who were pleased with and preserved their writings.[AT]
The so-called "impersonal habit of the Japanese mind," with a
corresponding "lack of personification of abstract qualities,"
doubtless prevents Japanese literature from rising to the poetic
heights attained by Western nations. But this lack does not prove the
Japanese mind incapable of such flights. As describing the actual
characteristics of the literature of the past the assertion of "a lack
of imaginative power" is doubtless fairly correct. But the inherent
nature of the Japanese mind cannot be inferred from the deficiencies
of its past literature, without first examining the relation between
its characteristic features and the nature of the social order and the
social inheritance.
Are the Japanese conspicuously deficient in imagination, in the sense
of the definition given above? The constructive imagination is the
creator of civilization. Not only art and literature, but, as already
noted, science, philosophy, politics, and even the practical arts and
prosaic farming are impossible without it. It is the tap-root of
invention, of discovery, of originality.
It is needless to repeat what has been said in previous chapters[AU]
on Japanese imitation, invention, discovery, and originality. Yet, in
consideration of the facts there given, are we justified in counting
the Japanese so conspicuously deficient in constructive, imagination
as to warrant the assertion that such a lack is the fundamental
characteristic of the race psychic nature?
As an extreme case, look for a moment at their imitativeness. Although
imitation is considered a proof of deficient originality, and thus of
imagination, yet reflection shows that this depends on the nature of
the imitation. Japanese imitation has not been, except possibly for
short periods, of that slavish nature which excludes the work of the
imagination. Indeed, the impulse to imitation rests on the
imagination. But for this faculty picturing the state of bliss or
power secured in consequence of adopting this or that feature of an
alien civilization, the desire to imitate could not arise. In view,
moreover, of the selective nature of Japanese imitation, we are
further warranted in ascribing to the people no insignificant
development of the imagination.
In illustration, consider Japan's educational system. Established no
doubt on Occidental models, it is nevertheless a distinctly Japanese
institution. Its buildings are as characteristically Japonicized
Occidental school buildings as are its methods of instruction.
Japanese railroads and steamers, likewise constructed in Japan, are
similarly Japonicized--adapted to the needs and conditions of the
people. To our eyes this of course signifies no improvement, but
assuredly, without such modification, our Western railroads and
steamers would be white elephants on their hands, expensive and
difficult of operation.
What now is the sociological interpretation of the foregoing facts?
How are the fanciful, visionary, and idealistic characteristics, on
the one hand, and, on the other, the prosaic, matter-of-fact, and
relatively unimaginative characteristics, related to the social order?
It is not difficult to account for the presence of accentuated
visionariness in Japan. Indeed, this quality is conspicuous among the
descendants of the military and literary classes; and this fact
furnishes us the clew. "From time immemorial," to use a phrase common
on the lips of Japanese historians, up to the present era, the samurai
as a class were quite separated from the practical world; they were
comfortably supported by their liege lords; entirely relieved from the
necessity of toiling for their daily bread, they busied themselves not
only with war and physical training, but with literary accomplishments,
that required no less strenuous mental exertions.
Furthermore, in a class thus freed from daily toil, there was sure to
arise a refined system of etiquette and of rank distinctions. Even a
few centuries of life would, under such conditions, develop highly
nervous individuals in large numbers, hypersensitive in many
directions. These men, by the very development of their nervous
constitutions, would become the social if not the practical leaders of
their class; high-spirited, and with domineering ideas and scheming
ambitions, they would set the fashion to all their less nervously
developed fellows. Freed from the exacting conditions of a practical
life, they would inevitably fly off on tangents more or less
impractical, visionary.
If, therefore, this trait is more marked in Japanese character than in
that of many other nations, it may be easily traced to the social
order that has ruled this land "from time immemorial." More than any
other of her mental characteristics, impractical visionariness may be
traced to the development of the nervous organization at the expense
of the muscular. This characteristic accordingly may be said to be
more inherently a race characteristic than many others that have been
mentioned. Yet we should remember that the samurai constitute but a
small proportion of the people. According to recent statistics (1895)
the entire class to-day numbers but 2,050,000, while the common people
number over 40,000,000. It is, furthermore, to be remembered that not
all the descendants of the samurai are thus nervously organized. Large
numbers have a splendid physical endowment, with no trace of abnormal
nervous development. While the old feudal order, with its constant
carrying of swords, and the giving of honor to the most impetuous,
naturally tended to push the most high-strung individuals into the
forefront and to set them up as models for the imitation of the young,
the social order now regnant in Japan faces in the other direction.
Such visionary men are increasingly relegated to the rear. Their
approach to insanity is recognized and condemned. Even this trait of
character, therefore, which seems to be rooted in brain and nerve
structure is, nevertheless, more subject to the prevailing social
order than would at first seem possible.
Its rise we have seen was due to that order, and the setting aside of
these characteristics as ideals at least, and thus the bringing into
prominence of more normal and healthy ideals, is due to the coming in
of a new order.
Japanese prosaic matter-of-factness may similarly be shown to have
intimate relations to the nature of the social order. Oppressive
military feudalism, keeping the vast majority of the people in
practical bondage, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, would
necessarily render their lives and thoughts narrow in range and
spiritless in nature. Such a system crushes out hope. From sunrise to
sunset, "_nembyaku nenju_," "for a hundred years and through all the
year," the humdrum duties of daily life were the only psychic stimuli
of the absolutely uneducated masses. Without ambition, without
self-respect, without education or any stimulus for the higher mental
life, what possible manifestation of the higher powers of the mind
could be expected? Should some "sport" appear by chance, it could not
long escape the sword of domineering samurai. Even though originally
possessing some degree of imagination, cringing fear of military
masters, with the continuous elimination by ruthless slaughter of the
more idealizing, less submissive, and more self-assertive individuals
of the non-military classes, would finally produce a dull, imitative,
unimaginative, and matter-of-fact class such as we find in the
hereditary laboring and merchant classes.
Furthermore, Japanese civilization, like that of the entire Orient,
with its highly communalized social order, is an expression of passive
submission to superior authority. Although an incomplete
characterization, there is still much truth in saying that the Orient
is an expression of Fate, the Occident of Freedom. We have seen that a
better contrasted characterization is found in the terms communal and
individual. The Orient has known nothing of individualism. It has not
valued the individual nor sought his elevation and freedom. In every
way, on the contrary, it has repressed and opposed him. The high
development of the individual culminating in powerful personality has
been an exceptional occurrence, due to special circumstances. A
communal social order, often repressing and invariably failing to
evoke the higher human faculties, must express its real nature in the
language, literature, and customs of the people. Thus in our chapter
on the Æsthetic Characteristics of the Japanese[AV] we saw how the
higher forms of literature were dependent on the development of
manhood and on a realization of his nature. A communal social order
despising, or at least ignoring the individual, cannot produce the
highest forms of literature or art, because it does not possess the
highest forms of psychic development. Take from Western life all that
rests on or springs from the principles of individual worth, freedom,
and immortality, and how much of value or sublimity will remain? The
absence from Japanese literature and language of the higher forms of
fancy, metaphor, and personification on the one hand, and, on the
other, the presence of widespread prosaic matter-of-factness, are thus
intimately related to the communal nature of Japan's long dominant
social order.
Similarly, in regard to the constructive imagination, whose
conspicuous lack in Japan is universally asserted by foreign critics,
we reply first that the assertion is an exaggeration, and secondly,
that so far as it is fact, it is intimately related to the social
order. In our discussions concerning Japanese Intellectuality and
Philosophical Ability,[AW] we saw how intimate a relation exists
between the social order, particularly as expressed in its educational
system, and the development of the higher mental faculties. Now a
moment's reflection will show how the constructive imagination,
belonging as it does to the higher faculties, was suppressed by the
system of mechanical and superficial education required by the social
order. Religion apotheosized ancestral knowledge and customs, thus
effectively condemning all conscious use of this faculty. So far as it
was used, it was under the guise of reviving old knowledge or of
expounding it more completely.
This, however, has been the experience of every race in certain
stages of its development. Such periods have been conspicuously
deficient in powerful literature, progressive science, penetrating
philosophy, or developing political life. When a nation has once
entered such a social order it becomes stagnant, its further
development is arrested. The activity of the higher faculties of the
mind are in abeyance, but not destroyed. It needs the electric shock
of contact and conflict with foreign races to startle the race out of
its fatal repose and start it on new lines of progress by demanding,
on pain of death, or at least of racial subordination, the
introduction of new elements into its social order by a renewed
exercise of the constructive imagination. For without such action of
the constructive imagination a radical and voluntary modification of
the dominant social order is impossible.
Old Japan experienced this electric shock and New Japan is the result.
She is thus a living witness to the inaccuracy of those sweeping
generalizations as to her inherent deficiency of constructive
imagination.
It is by no means our contention that Japanese imagination is now as
widely and profoundly exercised as that of the leading Western
nations. We merely contend that the exercise of this mental faculty is
intimately related to the nature of the whole social order; that under
certain circumstances this important faculty may be so suppressed as
to give the impression to superficial observers of entire absence, and
that with a new environment necessitating a new social order, this
faculty may again be brought into activity.
The inevitable conclusion of the above line of thought is that the
activity and the manifestation of the higher faculties is so
intimately related to the nature of the social order as to prevent our
attributing any particular mental characteristics to a race as its
inherent and unchangeable nature. The psychic characteristics of a
race at any given time are the product of the inherited social order.
To transform those characteristics changes in the social order,
introduced either from without, or through individuals within the
race, are alone needful. This completes our specific study of the
intellectual characteristics of the Japanese. It may seem, as it
undoubtedly is, quite fragmentary. But we have purposely omitted all
reference to those characteristics which the Japanese admittedly have
in common with other races. We have attempted the consideration of
only the more outstanding characteristics by which they seem to be
differentiated from other races. We have attempted to show that in so
far as they are different, the difference is due not to inherent
psychic nature transmitted by organic heredity, but to the nature of
the social order, transmitted by social heredity.
XXII
MORAL IDEALS
Even a slight study of Japanese history suffices to show that the
faculty of moral discrimination was highly developed in certain
directions. In what land have the ideal and practice of loyalty been
higher? The heroes most lauded by the Japanese to-day are those who
have proved their loyalty by the sacrifice of their lives. When
Masashige Kusunoki waged a hopeless war on behalf of one branch of the
then divided dynasty, and finally preferred to die by his own hand
rather than endure the sight of a victorious rebel, he is considered
to have exhibited the highest possible evidence of devoted loyalty.
One often hears his name in the sermons of Christian preachers as a
model worthy of all honor. The patriots of the period immediately
preceding the Meiji era, known as the "Kinnoka," some of whom lost
their lives because of their devotion to the cause of their then
impotent Emperor, are accorded the highest honor the nation can give.
The teachings of the Japanese concerning the relations that should
exist between parents, and children, and, in multitudes of instances,
their actual conduct also, can hardly be excelled. We can assert that
they have a keen moral faculty, however further study may compel us to
pronounce its development and manifestations to be unbalanced.
Better, however, than generalizations as to the ethical ideals of
Japan, past and present, are actual quotations from her moral
teachers. The following passages are taken from "A Japanese
Philosopher," by Dr. Geo. W. Knox, the larger part of the volume
consisting of a translation of one of the works of Muro Kyuso--who
lived from 1658 to 1734. It was during his life that the famous
forty-seven ronin performed their exploit, and Kyu-so gave them the
name by which they are still remembered, Gi-shi, the "Righteous
Samurai." The purpose of the work is the defense of the Confucian
faith and practice, as interpreted by Tei-shu, the philosopher of
China whom Japan delighted to honor. It discusses among other things
the fundamental principles of ethics, politics, and religion. Dr. Knox
has done all earnest Western students of Japanese ethical and
religious ideas an inestimable service in the production of this work
in English.
"The 'Way' of Heaven and Earth is the 'Way' of Gyo and Shun
[semi-mythical rulers of ancient China idealized by Confucius]; the
'Way' of Gyo and Shun is the 'Way' of Confucius and Mencius, and
the 'Way' of Confucius and Mencius is the 'Way' of Tei-Shu.
Forsaking Tei-Shu, we cannot find Confucius and Mencius; forsaking
Confucius and Mencius, we cannot find Gyo and Shun; and forsaking
Gyo and Shun, we cannot find the 'Way' of Heaven and Earth. Do not
trust implicitly an aged scholar; but this I know, and therefore I
speak. If I say that which is false, may I be instantly punished by
Heaven and Earth."[AX]
"Recently I was astounded at the words of a philosopher: 'The "Way"
comes not from Heaven,' he said, 'it was invented by the sages. Nor
is it in accord with nature; it is a mere matter of æsthetics and
ornament. Of the five relations, only the conjugal is natural,
while loyalty, filial obedience, and the rest were invented by the
sages, and have been maintained by their authority ever since.'
Surely, among all heresies from ancient days until now, none has
been so monstrous as this."[AY]
"Kujuro, a lad of fifteen years, quarreled with a neighbor's son
over a game of _go_, lost his self-control, and before he could be
seized, drew his sword and cut the boy down. While the wounded boy
was under the surgeon's care, Kujuro was in custody, but he showed
no fear, and his words and acts were calm beyond his years. After
some days the boy died, and Kujuro was condemned to hara-kiri. The
officers in charge gave him a farewell feast the night before he
died. He calmly wrote to his mother, took ceremonious farewell of
his keeper and all in the house, and then said to the guests: 'I
regret to leave you all, and should like to stay and talk till
daybreak; but I must not be sleepy when I commit hara-kiri
to-morrow, so I'll go to bed at once. Do you stay at your ease and
drink the wine.' So he went to his room and fell asleep, all being
filled with admiration as they heard him snore. On the morrow he
rose early, bathed and dressed himself with care, made all his
preparations with perfect calmness, and then, quiet and composed,
killed himself. No old, trained, self-possessed samurai could have
excelled him. No one who saw it could speak of it for years without
tears.... I have told you this that Kujuro may be remembered. It
would be shameful were it to be forgotten that so young a boy
performed such a deed."[AZ]
"We are not to cease obeying for the sake of study, nor must we
establish the laws before we begin to obey. In obedience we are to
establish its Tightness and wrongness."[BA]
"We learn loyalty and obedience as we are loyal and obedient.
To-day I know yesterday's short-comings, and to-morrow I shall know
to-day's.... In our occupations we learn whether conduct conforms
to right and so advance in the truth by practice."[BB]
"Besides a few works on history, like the Sankyo Ega Monogatari,
which record facts, there are no books worth reading in our
literature. For the most part they are sweet stories of the
Buddhas, of which one soon wearies. But the evil is traditional,
long-continued, and beyond remedy. And other books are full of
lust, not even to be mentioned, like the Genji Monogatari, which
should never be shown to a woman or a young man. Such books lead to
vice. Our nobles call the Genji Monogatari a national treasure,
why, I do not know, unless it is that they are intoxicated with its
style. That is like plucking the spring blossom unmindful of the
autumn's fruit. The book is full of adulteries from beginning to
end. Seeing the right, ourselves should become good, seeing the
wrong, we should reprove ourselves. The Genji Monogatari, Chokonka,
and Seishoki are of a class, vile, mean, comparable to the books of
the sages as charcoal to ice, as the stench of decay to the perfume
of flowers."[BC]
"To the samurai, first of all is righteousness; next life, then
silver and gold. These last are of value, but some put them in the
place of righteousness. But to the samurai even life is as dirt
compared to righteousness. Until the middle part of the middle ages
customs were comparatively pure, though not really righteous.
Corruption has come only during this period of government by the
samurai. A maid servant in China was made ill with astonishment
when she saw her mistress, soroban (abacus) in hand, arguing prices
and values. So was it once with the samurai. They knew nothing of
trade, were economical and content."[BD]
"Even in the days of my youth, young folks never mentioned the
price of anything; and their faces reddened if the talk was of
women. Their joy was in talk of battles and plans for war. And they
studied how parents and lords should be obeyed, and the duty of
samurai. But nowadays the young men talk of loss and gain, of
dancing girls and harlots and gross pleasures. It is a complete
change from fifty or sixty years ago.... Said Aochi to his son:
'There is such a thing as trade. See that you know nothing of it.
In trade the profit should always go to the other side.... To be
proud of buying high-priced articles cheap is the good fortune of
merchants, but should be unknown to samurai. Let it not be even so
much as mentioned.... Samurai must have a care of their words, and
are not to speak of avarice, cowardice, or lust.'"[BE]
A point of considerable interest to the student of Japanese ethical
ideals is the fact that the laws of Old Japan combined legal and moral
maxims. Loyalty and morality were conceived as inseparable. Ieyasu
(abdicated in 1605, and died in 1616), the founder of the Tokugawa
Shogunate, left a body of laws to his successors as his last will, in
accordance with which they should rule the land. These laws were not
made public, but were kept strictly for the guidance of the rulers.
They are known as the Testament or "Honorable Will" of Ieyasu, and
consist of one hundred rules. It will serve our purpose here to quote
some of those that refer to the moral ideal.