What is a barbarian? In many of the Chinese edicts we see the term
perpetually applied to those people outside the Celestial Kingdom, and
to all those who are not Chinese. The Japanese are far too polite to
use such a word. Yet I have spoken to Japanese artists who, in
referring to European taste in Art, used a word equivalent to
barbarous. The average free-born Briton travelling round the world
carries with him, or is supposed to carry with him, his Bible, and a
taste for Bass's beer and beefsteak. According as a country does or
does not possess these essentials, and according as its own attributes
of civilisation are removed from his own standards of perfection, so
does he regard its inhabitants as more or less barbarians. (I was
rather amused watching a play in Tokio once, where the villain of the
piece was a red-whiskered Englishman, in a loud crossbar suit and a
fore-and-aft cap, who was always shown on the stage with half a dozen
bottles of Bass on a table beside him.) When we bear in mind how much
Britishers despise their next-door neighbours across the Channel for
their defective beefsteakiali-ties, it is not surprising that such a
feeling should be greatly intensified when they come in contact with a
civilisation so much more alien and remote from their own as that of
China and Japan. It needs only a quiet observation and the smallest
degree of intellectual elasticity to be forced to the conclusion that
the advantages are not altogether on our side, and that there is great
scope for the East to send social missionaries to the West. Socially,
I think we have far more to learn from them than they have to learn
from us. And, curiously enough, if such a mission were started, it
would not be entirely to teach us new things, but in many ways it
would be recalling us to points which we have hurried away from in the
rapid progress of our material civilisation for the last couple of
hundred years.
The central idea, the social pivot, the focus of the life, of the
civilisation of the East is to be found in their idea of the home. The
home is the centre of gravity of their existence, round which
everything else revolves. In China it is the all-pervading,
all-vivifying idea of social life, of religion, and of government. The
life of the family is not only of to-day, but extends back into a
venerable past, and is the hope and care of the future.
For us, the dead past buries its dead, and the flowers that we lay on
the newly-made grave quickly wither on the freshly-turned clay on
which we have left them--except where the place of natural ones is
taken by those deliciously ironical representations in the shape of
tin--waterproof imitations which save the mourner the trouble of
renewal.
As to the love of the Chinese and Japanese for their children, it has
to be seen to be appreciated. Those wise-eyed little mites, who before
they can walk sit perpetually enthroned upon their mothers' backs
throughout the livelong day, are a source of so much joy and adoration
to their parents that one feels no surprise at not hearing them cry as
other children do. I only recollect hearing a child cry once during a
two months' stay in Japan, and then there was an excuse for its
dolorous plaint, because its mother was shaving its little head with a
blunt razor and no soap. It must be obvious to the student of our
Western civilisation that the cult of family life is on the decline.
The ties and obligations which hold children and parents together are
visibly slackening, and this is the more obvious amongst those nations
which have been taking the lead in the material progress of our time.
Take the United States, for instance. There, up to a certain point,
the father is regarded as the dollar-grinding machine. The tendency is
for both sons and daughters to cast themselves loose from parental
ties, and strike out afresh for themselves. And their parents are as
little responsible for them as they are for the maintenance or
happiness of their parents.
Any one who is familiar with life in the East End of London will
appreciate how little these worn-out toilers, when old age
incapacitates them from work, can rely on being kept out of the Union
by their children. With the experience of nearly two thousand years of
the progress of Christendom, it is not surprising that a short time
ago we should hear the present occupant of the Papal Throne raising
his aged voice to recall the attention of the West to how rapidly the
idea of the family was being lost, as Leo XIII. did in the Encyclical
Address to the Catholic Church on the subject of the Holy Family.
From the more important teaching as regards family life, these
Oriental missionaries might then endeavour to tell us something of the
Fine Arts in the East, and yet more of the spirit which animates their
artists. They would be able to show us that "art for art's sake" with
them is no empty phrase. It would doubtless surprise many Westerners
to know that a Chinese painter would not think of selling his pictures
for money, but paints them for his own pleasure, and gives his work as
presents to his friends, and would no more dream of selling a picture
than an English girl would of selling a kiss.
The Japanese would have a lot to tell us about bringing art, and that
their highest and best art, into the utensils of everyday life, and
that there is nothing demeaning in expending the best work on things
one handles and uses every day. What a lot they would have to tell us
of the cultivation and their love of flowers--a love which seems
instinct in the poorest peasant, and which in the more cultivated
classes is carried to an exquisite degree of refined development! And
again, a Japanese incense party, where different qualities of
delicately aromatic incense are passed round--and the pastime consists
in placing the different qualities in the order of the beauty of their
perfume--would almost suggest that the West had neglected the
cultivation of one of the five senses.
At a dinner-party at a well-known restaurant, the other night, it was
forcibly brought to my mind what a lot they would have to teach us
regarding the enjoyment of such social functions. A perfect din and
rattle of plates and knives filled the air, a mob of undisciplined
servants charged about tumultuously, garish lights lit up vulgar
ornamentation, and one almost had to shout to be heard across the
table, while a band of music outside ineffectually endeavoured to
drown the din within. There were flowers, it is true, but their
profusion was no compensation for an utter lack of artistic
arrangement. But there was a complete absence of that repose, that
restfulness, that calm, which is considered, and justly considered,
amongst Easterns as the essential atmosphere for the enjoyment of a
social repast. The Japanese have raised entertainment to the level of
a fine art. Their tea ceremonies, as we have badly translated the
"Cha'-no-yu," but which might be preferably rendered as "The Fine Art
of Welcome and Hospitality," have been a strong influence in
preventing them from drifting into the meretricious gaudiness so
blatantly _en évidence_ in restaurants like the Carlton, and minister
to that purity and simplicity of taste which is so characteristic of
Japanese art. Five is considered by them the best number for a
dinner-party, as with a larger number separate conversational groups
are apt to be formed. The Japanese gentleman has rooms specially built
for these parties, and rooms only just large enough to hold his guests
comfortably. One scroll is hung in the kakemono, and in front of it
one ornament, and afterwards a solitary flower. It would be
considered by them extremely bad taste to confuse or dissipate the
attention by a variety of ornaments.
A Japanese lady once showed me a photo of the drawing-room at
Sandringham, which greatly amused her, and which she kept as a
curiosity. (She was too polite to say as a curiosity of barbarism.)
But she said, laughing, "Is it not just like a curio-dealer's shop?"
The dinner, which actually precedes the tea-drinking, is served by the
host in person, thus doing away with the intrusion of even their deft
and quiet-moving servants. Every cup, every plate, is an individual
art treasure, from the Godown in which the host's artistic treasures
are kept in a seclusion that his most intimate friends have never
penetrated. They have probably never seen the same picture or the same
ornament twice in the kakemono. From the soft mellow music of the old
gong which summons them to the repast, on through its various stages,
until the rare and beautiful bowl out of which they have had tea is
passed round for appreciative inspection, an air of refined repose
has characterised the whole proceedings.
[Illustration: General White And Staff On Black Monday.]
These social missionaries might progress from giving us some insight
into these things to the introduction of another institution which
would be an unquestionable advantage to our civilisation--I refer to
the Geisha. Supposing that they were successful in grafting this
Japanese idea, the Western edition would work out somewhat thuswise.
Take, for instance, a bachelor coming up from Oxford or Cambridge, or,
say, a merchant up from Liverpool or Manchester, instead of having a
solitary dinner at his club, if he wished for the relaxation of
vivacious female companionship, he would go to the telephone, and ring
up "Geishas, Limited," and send word that he wanted one, or more, for
dinner that evening. There would in due course, at the restaurant
appointed, appear a girl with the dress, appearance, and manners of a
lady. Whatever her looks might be, whatever her attractions, she would
unfailingly be bright, intelligent, well-mannered, and, above all,
entertaining, for her being entertaining would be her _métier_, her
occupation, her _raison d'être_. And, contrary to what is frequently
supposed from a mistaken acquaintance with this Japanese institution,
she would not be in the least facile or accessible. Our ideas of
feminine Japan are too much based on the circumscribed experiences of
holiday travellers, or books of the bad taste of Pierre Loti's "Madame
Chrysanthème." We do not judge the women of England by Leicester
Square, nor of Paris by those of the Moulin Rouge. Amongst the
accomplishments of these Geisha girls music and singing would be most
important. There seems much more refinement and comfort in bringing
the music and singing to you than in going to the singing and music. A
party of men dining together would not be driven to adjourn to a
music-hall after dinner. They could order it as part of the menu.
But these Oriental missionaries, in addition to introducing such an
institution, would have a field for their labours in raising their
clients and customers to the standard of Japanese civilisation in the
enjoyment of it. I present the idea gratis to any enterprising people
who are troubled with the question. What to do with our girls!
But Orientals would have little to teach us in what the Chinese call
"make face," which enters into many of the actions of our daily life
quite as much as it does into theirs. How thankful we should be that
it does not also enter into our religious life! How thoroughly the
Chinese must be impressed with this by their recent experiences of our
Latest Crusaders! I was listening the other day to a gentleman
descanting "on the darkness that enveloped those Pagan barbarians,"
and I was thinking of another darkness or blindness which prevented
the speaker, and many like him, from seeing the least gleam of light
in the East. Yet it does not require much hand-shading of our
intellectual eyes to see EX ORIENTE LUX.