I ought really not to say a word about Japan, I suppose, with only six
weeks of scurrying to and fro in it. “Old-timers” of the former
treaty-ports, to say nothing of the more experienced ones of the
interior, would be scathing at the suggestion that so brief a stay could
give the slightest food for thought. But “old-timers” the world over
rarely deign to pour out on paper their own distilled wisdom, and such
bits as are conversationally dropped by those who have spent at least
half a lifetime in an alien land often suggest that their few immediate
trees have long since cut off any clear view of the woods. At any rate,
though China was our real goal, there seemed no good reason to dash
blindly past the still interesting, if better known, empire which
adjoins it to the east; and, once there, no serious harm can be done by
recording a few fleeting impressions.
I am quite willing to have charged to the brevity of our sojourn the
notion that Japan is sometimes overrated,—that Matsushima and Toba are,
to be sure, pretty, pine-clad clusters of islands, but in no way
superior to scores of similar, yet rarely mentioned, scenes of our own
broad land: that the Inland Sea is beautiful, yet no more so than many a
stretch of water along our northern border which has not had its tithe
of publicity; that Enoshima is, after all, a commonplace handful of
earth with some trees and caves and shrines on it; that Miyajima really
consists of a single _torii_ picturesquely set only partly above high
tide—and of absurdly high prices for unpleasing accommodations; that
many a sea-flanked strip of sand, viewed undignifiedly through the
outspread legs, is as genuine a “bridge of heaven” as Ama-no-hashidate.
Yet to say that and cease would be to leave the falsest of impressions.
A wrathful Englishman we ran across within the shadow of the giant
Buddha of Kamakura voiced the conviction, born of a two months’
commercial struggle with its often exasperating people, that “Japan is
nothing more than camouflage, clever publicity, the deliberate spreading
abroad of false notions.” In certain moods it would be easy to agree
with him. With the exception of France, and perhaps of Italy, Japan is,
partly by chance, partly by design, the most advertised country on the
globe; and much preinformation leads inevitably to swollen
anticipations. But once the heat of experience has shrunk these to
normal size, once the traveler realizes that it is delicacy of detail
which he must look for, that intensive cultivation of all they have is
natural, almost inevitable to the crowding people of this constricted
island nation, his disappointment will lessen, perhaps disappear. It is
surely to his credit rather than otherwise that the little brown
_Nihon-jin_ makes the most of his opportunities, and not particularly
reprehensible to have sung, or caused to be sung, to the world praises
of what to him are beloved and genuinely peerless scenes. For the
Japanese truly and frankly loves the beauties of nature. He has a
scenery-worship as well as an ancestor-worship, and his lack, in the
great majority of cases, of a point of comparison sometimes leads to the
veritable adoration of places, scenes, and vistas which for the world at
large are commonplace. At his worst he is an improvement upon those of
some other lands who spend their energies in decrying the paucity of
attractions in their native habitat, treating nothing as worthy of
enthusiasm that is not separated from them by sea or frontier. And, when
all is said and done; if even the mammoth outdoor Buddha looked absurdly
small in comparison with its world-wide fame, and the canal-boat trip
through a tunneled mountain proved a school-boy’s wonder; whatever else
Japanese may seem petty and overdrawn, there is always Fujiyama—except
on those many days of the year when he chooses to veil his peerless face
in the clouds.