I thought it strange that out of hundreds of frog-poems collected for me
I could not discover a single mention of the coldness and clamminess of
the frog. Except a few jesting lines about the queer attitudes sometimes
assumed by the creature, the only reference to its uninviting qualities
that I could find was the mild remark,
_Seen in the daytime, how uninteresting you are, O frog!_
While wondering at this reticence concerning the chilly, slimy,
flaccid nature of frogs, it all at once occurred to me that in other
thousands of Japanese poems which I had read there was a total absence
of allusions to tactual sensations. Sensations of colors, sounds,
and odors were rendered with exquisite and surprising delicacy; but
sensations of taste were seldom mentioned, and sensations of touch
were absolutely ignored. I asked myself whether the reason for this
reticence or indifference should be sought in the particular temperament
or mental habit of the race; but I have not yet been able to decide
the question. Remembering that the race has been living for ages upon
food which seems tasteless to the Western palate, and that impulses to
such action as hand-clasping, embracing, kissing, or other physical
display of affectionate feeling, are really foreign to far-Eastern
character, one is tempted to the theory that gustatory and tactual
sensations, pleasurable and otherwise, have been less highly evolved
with the Japanese than with us. But there is much evidence against such
a theory; and the triumphs of Japanese handicraft assure us of an almost
incomparable delicacy of touch developed in special directions. Whatever
be the physiological meaning of the phenomenon, its moral meaning
is of most importance. So far as I have been able to judge, Japanese
poetry usually ignores the inferior qualities of sensation, while making
the subtlest of appeals to those superior qualities which we call
æsthetic. Even if representing nothing else, this fact represents the
healthiest and happiest attitude toward Nature. Do not we Occidentals
shrink from many purely natural impressions by reason of repulsion
developed through a morbid tactual sensibility? The question is at least
worth considering. Ignoring or mastering such repulsion,--accepting
naked Nature as she is, always lovable when understood,--the Japanese
discover beauty where we blindly imagine ugliness or formlessness or
loathsomeness,--beauty in insects, beauty in stones, beauty in frogs.
Is the fact without significance that they alone have been able to make
artistic use of the form of the centipede?... You should see my Kyōtō
tobacco-pouch, with centipedes of gold running over its figured leather
like ripplings of fire!