A few weeks’ stay among them is, of course, not sufficient time to judge
any people. But there are some things which make themselves as apparent
in days as in years. Perhaps what impressed itself most strongly upon us
were the mistakes we commonly make about the Japanese, false
impressions, which have come to be accepted among us almost as truisms.
Because they have shown themselves clever—“cribber,” one of my Japanese
acquaintances pronounced it, and there seemed something amusingly
significant in this form of the word; because they have shown more than
a Yankee cuteness in copying the point of view and the institutions, the
articles and the trade-marks, of other civilizations—many of us have
hastily concluded that they are a very intelligent people. Because we
hear with wondering interest that they never enter their houses with
their shoes on, that they are always bathing, we think of them as a very
cleanly people. Therefore it was something akin to a shock to us to find
that in the mass the Japanese seem stupid, and that they are by no means
as clean as we fancied.
To give the less important precedence, even their famous mat floors,
untouched by shod feet, are often so dirty that to walk across them
means to carry off a black sole. Frequent bathing is all very well, but
when dozens habitually do so in the same water, Western notions may
suggest quite another descriptive adjective. No wonder a Japanese doctor
startled the medical world a few years ago by the assertion that bathing
is unhealthful! Having in mind the skin-diseases alone that are passed
along in Japanese bath-rooms, he was easily within the bounds of reason.
Not even to mention the unspeakable Oriental manner in which they
fertilize their fields, the “cleanly little Japanese” are more indecent
in public customs than even the Spanish, even more frank about certain
natural functions. But perhaps it is all in the point of view. These
same public bathers consider our hand-shaking a dirty habit, especially
prone to spread disease; they are shocked at the custom of blowing the
nose and carrying the soiled handkerchief along—though not at the
intolerable noses of nearly all small Japanese youngsters, even of the
higher classes.
Quite aside from the difficulties of the language, we had frequent
distinct examples, and the testimony of almost every frank and observing
foreign resident with whom we talked, of Japanese stupidity. The rank
and file at least are slow-witted—or shall I say, in order to be wholly
on the safe side and avoid any false impression of wishing to give
offense, that they are a surprisingly slow-thinking people? They catch
an idea with exasperating sluggishness, by no means as quickly as more
than one “wild” tribe with which I have come in contact. There are
constant evidences of this mental deliberation,—their dragging,
never-ending theatrical performances, for example. Observers in a
position to know assure me that the Japanese are extremely poor
aviators, because their minds will not work with the swiftness required
in such a calling; or they suddenly let go of the controls to “look in
the book and see” what they should do next. In the average interview
their single-track minds run round and round in the same small circle,
and nothing short of a mental earthquake will shake them out of it. With
patience you can get them just so far in their thinking, and then you
run again and again up against a stone wall. No doubt there are cases in
which they make a pretense of this in order to avoid committing
themselves or giving information which they are not sure has been
released by the powers-that-be higher up; but that after all is only
another proof of limited intelligence, since a brilliant people would
find some smoother means of covering the retreat.
But perhaps our experience was limited as to class as well as in time. I
have been assured by men who come into contact with Japanese in high
places that these are unusually sharp-minded men, who at the same time
admitted that the masses are stupid even by the standards of our own. I
have heard this from several reputable sources; I have had a few hints
of it myself. But I have yet to meet a dozen Japanese men whom I can
vizualize as worthy opponents across a conference-table of even our own
homespun diplomats and statesmen. Is there perhaps something in the
Japanese form of government which brings the more brilliant men to the
top more often than in our own; or is there naturally a wider gulf
between the masses and the bright few? In this connection one recalls
that the really oblique eye, which most of us assumed to be universal in
Japan, is almost rare; and this is said to be the mark of the patrician,
of the aristocratic, intelligent handful which built up Japan on the
broad base of the heavier featured, the racially quite different,
plebeian, gullible millions.
[Illustration: In building a Japanese bridge the first thing needed is a
compact framework of bamboo tied with vines]
[Illustration: Making paper from mulberry-leaves by spreading the sheets
on boards out in the blazing sunshine of southern Japan]
[Illustration: Stripping off the _kozu_, or mulberry-leaf paper, when
dry; among other things it is used in making Japanese parasols]
[Illustration: Bringing in the sheaves from a Japanese rice-field]
Of course it is partly their long-winded Japanese formalities that give
the impression of mental inertness. Unless they have lived long abroad
they cannot understand our abrupt way of asking or giving directions or
of making arrangements. They prefer the circuitous route of
ultra-politeness—or ultra-deviousness; they accuse us of being
“fire-engines” because we expect a ten-word instruction to be
interpreted in less than that many minutes. It is really, I suppose, the
long set forms in which they must address one another, their endless
honorifics, that take much of the time and the energy which might
otherwise express itself in mental alertness. Greetings and farewells of
the most casual, meet-on-the-street kind are interminable, accompanied
by innumerable low bows at strictly fixed intervals. A formal
conversation reminds one of a Broadway musical comedy of some years back
in which a foreigner talked incessantly for ten minutes, at the end of
which the “interpreter” informed the audience that “He said, ‘Yes.’” We
got the impression, too, that it is difficult to hold the average
Japanese to the point, whether because of a naturally wandering
attention or the custom of making mental side excursions into recesses
to which the Westerner is never admitted.
As to that far-famed Japanese courtesy, it was, of course, in constant
evidence. Groups of a dozen or a score of men often stood on railway
platforms bowing to a departing friend in exact unison, like a field of
wheat over which strong gusts of wind are passing, until the train
carried him out of sight. Leave a native inn and you will have the whole
personnel bobbing up and down at the threshold and wishing you until you
are out of hearing a continued life of ease and prosperity—provided you
have remembered every one in your parting distributions. Yet, like some
of the European nations famed for their politeness, theirs is largely a
courtesy of forms rather than a genuine consideration for the rights and
convenience of others. There is often much more real courtesy among
peoples who take fewer pains to show it outwardly.
I have mentioned the complete disrespect for the sleeper, whether in
train, inn, or home. The street manners of Japan are not on the whole
good; when it comes to public conveyances they are almost barbaric. The
same man who has bowed himself nearly to the ground a score of times in
parting from the kowtowing group of friends on the platform will not
have the slightest compunction in stretching out across four seats and
letting three fellow-travelers stand for a hundred miles. As far as our
observations carry, the giving up of a place to a woman is unheard of;
even if she has a baby on her back she has been so well trained to take
second place that astonishment would overwhelm her if the rule were
broken. It is a rare foreign visitor, I am sure, who has not had the
humiliating and probably anger-producing experience of entering some
important establishment, or one announcing itself grandiloquently in
English, not only to find no one with the slightest knowledge of that
tongue, but to have the entire staff leave its typewriters and desks and
come to laugh at him, as at some ungainly creature escaped from the zoo.
This form of rudeness is so common in Japan as to suggest that it is not
recognized there as such, any more than is their frank, incessant
staring; but it is one of the things that is most likely to leave
resentment in the soul of the traveler long after he has departed. I
wonder what habits of our own offend, entirely “unbeknownst” to us, the
visitor to our own land. As to the silly giggling that often besets the
Japanese when they hear, or particularly when they attempt to speak, our
tongue, we should not forget that under their skins they are as timid
and self-conscious as any civilized race on earth.
On the other hand it would not be difficult to make up quite a long list
of the good qualities of the Japanese. Their unbounded patience might
head it—though that has also the germs of vice in it. Rarely indeed is a
Japanese visibly angry; to show wrath or impatience is the height of
ill-breeding, as with several other Oriental peoples; which perhaps is
why the Westerner who complains about anything, who even asks to have
the slightest custom altered, is more or less secretly ranked as “queer”
or of low social standing. Many a passing traveler forgets this, to his
and his country’s disadvantage. They are a remarkably uncomplaining
people; there is said to be no profanity in the language—which is enough
in itself to make the national pace slow. Their quietness is as pleasing
as is their almost complete lack of jewelry. They certainly have none of
the indolence of so many Oriental races—unless the multitudes of monks
and bonzes squatting in motionless contentment in temples and
monasteries is evidence of it. They certainly are not expansive, be that
a fault or a virtue; life on the whole is very solemn to the Japanese,
and only once in a blue moon does the visitor meet one with a suggestion
of the saving sense of humor. A joke goes a very long way without
exploding, and except among those who have traveled abroad it is quite
likely never to reach its goal. Not only is life itself no joking matter
with them; I can recall no people, either in frock-coats or loin-cloths,
that takes itself, its customs, and its institutions more seriously.
Even the children have little fun in them. Young or old they are a
disciplined people, in great contrast to their near neighbors, the
Chinese, to the Latin-American, who keeps constantly recurring to my
mind in this connection, and to a large extent to us Americans. That
this may be due as much to temperament as to centuries of training was
often suggested. The striking difference of deportment between our, I
believe, quite normal American small son and Japanese children of
similar age was constant evidence on this point. While he showed endless
curiosity at everything about him, and incessant inventiveness in
satisfying it, or in amusing himself with whatever chanced to be
available, the kimono-clad youngsters in trains or street sat hour after
hour without speaking or playing, almost without moving, their minds
apparently wholly dormant. A nurse-maid could have taken care of ten of
them more easily than of one of him. Yet it is not, I feel sure, because
they are unduly suppressed, but because they are born that way.
[Illustration: Japanese threshing usually consists of beating the heads
of bundles of grain on a round stone]
[Illustration: After it has been winnowed by the wind and swept up, the
rice or other grain is spread out on the grass mats to dry in the
sunshine]
[Illustration: The never-failing picturesqueness of Miyajima]
[Illustration: After all this is almost all there is worth while at
Miyajima nowadays]
Though their code of morality deviates considerably from our own, we did
not find the Japanese, for all the assertions one hears to that effect,
particularly in the East, especially dishonest, or at least no more so
than the average of most races. The time-worn statement so often quoted
as evidence of their untrustworthiness, that even in their own banks
they find it necessary to use Chinese cashiers, is mainly nonsense. I
know of no American or European bank in the Far East that does not
recruit its personnel chiefly among the Celestials, and I am sure it is
not because of their extraordinary honesty. Japanese banks, on the other
hand, even in China, choose by far the majority of their employees from
among their own people. It is quite true that one soon learns not to
intrust the development of important films to Japanese photographers,
finding by sad experience that they are very likely to fade a few weeks
later even if they seem well done at the time, and that any unusual
successes among them may shortly afterward appear for sale on
news-stands, or in the pages of Japanese periodicals. It is equally true
that Japanese factory imitations of either their own once excellent
products or of foreign wares are prone to prove great disappointments.
But let us be charitable and believe that this is due to Western notions
too hastily swallowed to be thus far properly digested, as well as to
their great anxiety to gather quickly the large sums demanded by their
gluttonous army and navy, under the perhaps mistaken impression that
only their armed strength will save them from domination or complete
absorption by Western nations.