A TRAVELLER IN THE EAST.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15821, 21 July 1913, Page 3

A TRAVELLER IN THE EAST.

JAPAN. ITS POETRY, POWER, AH) PATHOS. PART I. Specially Written for the Otago Daily Times. , By the Rev. Wru-lAM Hay. Since Japan emerged from isolation and became known to the Western world she has increasingly flung across the 6eas that roll in diapason upon her shores which has a wonderful fascination. The Western world has come mightily under its spell, especially since the little brown man has in bis patriotic bravery and devotion made of Dai. Nippon (Great Japan) a Power in the world, unashamed of its standing and its exploits, and won the respect of. both the Orient and the Occident by its progress and its victories. The raison d'etre is neither empty nor insignificant; it is real and great, although it does not justify a mania that constitutes all things Japanese as both fashioaible and popular. Some Japanese ideals are much less ethical and delicate than our best Western ideals, just as some-Western manners have much less of grace and etiquette than tie best Japanese. When one learns the realities of Japanese life, without being in _ the least degree prudish, one is not inclined on ethical grounds to be enthusiastic about some Japanese elements and institutions that have become popular in the Western world. f] * " MADAME CHRYBANTHEME."

The spell of modem Japan upon the Western mind has prompted a great assortment of literature. Much of it is reliable, much is not. Some have seen so much of one side of Japan and of Japanese life that their description of a Paradise is monotonously superlative. Others have seen so much of the pathetic moral side, and are as monotonously critical. Sweeping generalisations are always inaccurate, because amid the worst people or the best there are many exceptions. It will be remembered how Arthur Diosy, in his "The New Far East," published some years ago, exposed the false general description of the women and girls of Japan in Pierre Loti's "Madame Chrysantheme." "The book should bear on its title page," he says, ( "a warning somewhat in these words: "This is the Btory of a French naval officer's liaison with a Japanese girl oi the lower class and of easy virtue. It must not be taken as purporting to describe, in any way,, the average Japanese women, high-bom or in humble life.' Of the average woman of Japan the brilliant French writer had no experience, engrossed as he was, during •his stay at Nagasaki, in the close study of the fascinating little butterfly whom he has' painted so deftlv that she has been accepted by many thousands of Occidentals as a type of all Japanese womankind. Fair but frail, charming and graceful, but empty-headed, affectionate but fickle, caressing but * mercenary, pretty, unchaste, little Okiku San has unwittingly done grievous harm throughout the world to the fair fame of her countrywomen." How many read "Madame Chrysantheme" to-day, or ever did read it, I do not know, but I saw one elderly gentleman from Australia reading it in Yokohama. He told me he had been asked to record his impressions for the paper of his town. It is to be hoped -they will not be too greatly influenced by the book that he was reading. Mr Arthur Lloyd, _ M.A., Lecturer at the Imperial University Kid Higher Naval College in Tokio, says: "Some Japanese are sensual, but by no means all, and though there is a fleshly school in art, in literature, and in daily conduct, it is by no means characteristic of the whole people. Some Japanese axe purely materialistic, as unblushing and as unscrupulous in their money-grabbing as any Shylock in East or West. But, again, it is not true to say that the whole nation is composed of sordid people whose one idea is "old." Many who visit Japan have a viry limited experience, which is their o\vn fault, because they will be luxuriously Western while visiting an Eastern land. They travel apart from the Japanese; they are almost entirely apart from them socially. They see Japan very much more closely than thev see Japanese life. Some of us have travelled with the Japanese. people and sometimes preferred a Japanese hotel to the European one, and had amusing experiences in consequence. We have talked ,with business men, schoolmasters, students, and university and political, and military representatives. And we can well endorse both / Lloyd's and Diosy's protests against sweeping'generalisations. We have been in close association with the same people for more than a week, joined with them socially, and in recreation, and' worship, and exchange of thought, and while some have been of a type that one felt sorry for, quite as many have commanded the highest esteem. Japanese ladies, wives of business men of an excellent type, have proved themselves to be refined and accomplished, with a grace,, and modesty, and noble bearing that have been the hall-mark of the truest ladv.

THE POETRY OF LIFE. The moTe .one learns of Japan the more one. realises the fascination that has gone forth, like the story of its cherry blossom and the record of its achievements, to captivate the thought of the whole Western world. The ground of the fascination will prove to be found in the poetry, and power, and pathos of Japan. By poetry I do not mean the poetry of literature, but the poetry of life—the life of Nature, the life of the people, the life of all that is beautiful, mythical, and romantic.

The poetry of Japanese literature is not to be despised. If Windermere in-

spires a Wordsworth to be the apostle of Nature in the • :m of Western literature, is it not exceedingly probable • that Nature will have her apostle, in the Eastern literature of beautiful Japan? Even allowing for its utilitarianism, it would be no more possible for a country like Japan, with its mythical history and its beauty, and its exploits, to fail to produce its poets, than it was for Greece or Rome to fail. Every season of the year has its beauty and its charm—except when it rains with such a Japanese persistency that you almost become a pessimist. Is it any wonder that in a land where autumn comes aflame with colour with a background of purple haze about 'its mountains dotted with the fires of the maple, that one should sit down and write:— Valley and hill, whene'er I glance, the same Glory of colour! Surely autumn weaves A spell to set the very wind aflame With gold and scarlet of the falling leaves.. _ When one learns of the intense patriotism of this people, the old spirit of busbido, and the ideals of the Samurai, one can understand how the patriotic poet would evolve, and express the extreme passion of devotion that belonged to' "Old Japan," as in such words as those by Toharu Ukichi :— As the one heart's wish of those whq die Has force to work fulfilment, I desire My love for this my land, continually May burn, in death as life, a quenchless fire, So may I grow a 6 pines upon her heights, And flow with all her rivers to the sea And fall on her as dew in summer nights, And guard and serve her thro' eternity. Indeed, most Japanese students have something of the poetic gift. Some of the poeins by the late Emperor, and some by the Empress, are very beautiful, the' latter especially being a revelation of high ideals of life.

j THE INFLUENCE OF A MYTH. i But this is a poetry that grows out of i the Jiving poetry of the land and . race, with all their irstory and achievement, and romance. The mythical element that gives such power and stability to the throne is a part of it, and furnishes poetic stimulus just a<s did the mythical history of Greece and Rome. The myth of Che origin of Japan is intensely poetic, and : still does much to mould "the Japanese male opinion on the subject of the eternal . feminine, When the heaven-bom progenitors of the Japanese race, Izanugi and Izanami, first stood on the floating Bridge : ol Heaven, and had created the Islands : of Japan out of the coagulated foam dripping from the tama boko, the "jewel : spear" of Heaven, wherewith they had stirred up the primaeval ocean of chaos spreading beneath them "like floating oil," they set up the spear as a- Central . Pillar, and walked round it separately, the • male, Izanagi, turning by the left; the female, Izanami, by the right. When they met, the female spoke first, exclaimi ing, "How delightful! I have met with 1 a lovely youth!" But this Japanese Eve was too human to please her Adam. ' Izanagi asserts his superiority to the j feminine, and says, "lima man, and by i right I should have spoken first, How is j it that thou, a woman, shouldst have been I the first to speak? This was unlucky. I Let us go round again." And so they I went round the jewel spear again. When I thev met this time, the male spoke first, saving, "How delightful! I have met a : lovely maiden!" Now that the relation : between the two sexes had been properly I adjusted, the courtship of Ibanagi I and Izanami ran- its smooth course. . The Roman fiction of a divine ; descent by which ' the rulers of the i Julian House sought to establish an un- ■ certain tenure obtains in Japan, in the I mvth that Jimmu Tenno, the first j earthly Emperor, descended upon Japan i from the plains of Heaven in 660 8.C., • and from him all other Emperors are descended in a long and unbroken line, : each, at his decease, returning to the plains ! of Heaven to join the venerable company jof divine ancestors who watch with ' paternal care over • the destinies of the i beloved land.

A LIVING POEM. Japan, however, ■ as it is seen to-day, is a living poem. I have had the privilege of I spending some time in a part of Japan ■ that is regarded as the acme of Nature's beauty. I presume every visitor to Japan has been to Nikko, and knows that Nikko ' is considered the last word that Nature • has to speak upon the subject of beauty? The Japanese say that one cannot pronounce tbo word "kekko" (beautiful) until one has seen Nikko. Beyond the village of Nikko, -which seems to lose itself in 1 foliage and the blossom of cherry and azalea, lie tiers upon tiers of hills sur- . mounted by a. fringe of lordly mountain peaks. There is not'an ugly one among them. The green, which changes to blue and purple as the day passes on to its sunset gate, is relieved by the pink tinge of azaleas, and here and there a macs of cherry blossom in the spring and early ' summer, while on the. lower ground the violets and japonic* blossom wild and luxuriantly. In the autumn the '.•ealth >d coloured foliage, and especially the blaze of the crimson maple, take the place of the more delicate colouts of the spring. The winter has.its glory of glistening frost, and myriad fashions of Nature's own in it* robes of 6iiow. Peeping out between , the trees, and bidding for attention -n ! competition with the green or the pink, I or the snowy white, are the gilded roofs of temples and shrines, and the tapering tower of some pagoda, while the temple gon" flings out from its quiet courts across the whole its musical call to the old, old rites. Steps that were worn by the tread of generations, pressed by the feet of wai-rioTs of old, lead beneath the sombre shadows of the aged cryptomenia to the . resting place of the Shogun dead. From ' Nikko to Lake Chuzonji, through the valley of the Daiyagawa, Nature spreads her- ■ self out in ravishing beauty and variety, i with azaleas and cherry blossom giving ■variety in colour to the green that covers ' the hills, with tumbling cascades, and the Fall of Kegon which pours itself over ' the face of a precipice into a black pool I some 400 feel below, till at last, some I eight miles from Nikko, and at an alt il tilde of over 4000 feet, through a shady | wood, one catches sight of the calm clear | waters of Lake Chuzenji, gleaming with | the suns reflected gold. As I sat on the balcony of a Ja]»nese hotel, overlooking the lake, in company with a Japanese gentleman from Nagasaki, waited upon by a daughter of Japan with arched eyebrows'and bright kimono with brighter obi, with young folk playing below at the waters edge in their picturesque native garb, it was not difficult to realise the

poetry of Japan. At times, streams of white-robed pilgrims can be seen ascending Nautaizau, <xc making their way thither to offer their prayers at the summit. Along the road one passes quite a number of peasant girls, in their costume suited to their task, leading pack-horses laden with ore from the gold mines beyond Chuzenji. THE INLAND SEA. The poetry of Japan's beauty, howover, is not only to be found at Nikko. Immediately one crosses from Korea one becomes enthusiastic at the contrasts-bright coloured patches, the ever-changing view, the varying glades and stretches, and bills that open out to one every few minutes-, landscape gardening on a rural scale—till one reaches the Inland Sea, and beautiful sacred Miyajima—the island upon which no birth or death has ever taken' place. The vivid description given by the authoress of "The Lady of the Decoration," is exceedingly apt. "We stopped at the 'House of the White Cloud,' and three little maids took off our shoes and replaced them with pretty sandals. The whole house was of cedar and ebony and • bamboo, and it had been rubbed with oil until it shone like satin. On the floor was a stuffed matting with a heavy

border of crimson silk, and in the' corner of the room was a jar that came to my shoulder, full of wonderfully blended chrysanthemums. All the rooms opened upon a porch, which hung directly above a roaring waterfall, and below us, a dozen steps away, stretched the sparkling sea, full of hundreds of sailing vessels and junks. In the afternoon we wandered over the island, visiting the old, old temples, listening to the mysterious wailing of the weird bells, feeding the deer and crane, and drinking in the beauty of it all. I felt like a disembodied spirit, travelling back, back over the centuries into dim forgotten ages. The dead seemed close about me, yet they brought no gloom, for I, too, was dead. All the afternoon I had the impression of trying to keep my consciousness from drifting into oblivion through the gate of this magical dream." "THE PEERLESS MOUNTAIN."

And what can one say of Fujiyama, or "Fuji," as it is usually called? Other mountains in the world are greater. Mount Cook, in New Zealand, is about the same height, but while Mount Cook has a glorious grandeur it has not the fascination that Fuji has. " Mount Cook " is not musical. "Fujiyama,'' or "Fuji," especially with the soft sound that the Japanese give it, is. Though the Japanese Empire were to extend over all the earth, no mountain would be so'dear or sacred as Fuji. When the white-robed pilgrims have offered their prayers on the peaks of Nautaizau and others, they will never really complete their pilgrimage till they have been to Fuji, and prayed to the deity that resides in the little, shrine by the now extinct crater. The' peerless mountain, as it is called sometimes, from the fact that its name may be written with two Chinese characters meaning respectively "hot" and ''.two," and conveying the idea that there are not two mountains in the world like Fuji, has a grandeur that is exceedingly beautiful, as it stands out a symmetrical cone with a sweeping graceful curve from the lower ground. I have watched it near and from afar. In the village of Gotemba,. quite near to the mountain, I stood one evening on a little bridge beneath which the stream murmured aJong over its- stony bed, and watched the sun go down over the snow-robed mighty shoulder of Fuji. As the pink tinge in the evening sky deepened into darker hues, and girls with bright kimonos made patches of fading colours along the little paths of the village gardens, and the little dark-faced children gathered round me to see the white stranger, and passers-by went clicking over the bridge with their wooden sandals, and the gong -in the temples in the shadow of the mountain sent their ohim'e of music far and wide into the still, calm evening air, in spite of all the meaning of that temple bell, which I longed were otherwise, I realised thai I stood at the very heart of the natural poetry of Japan. And when, in later days, from the steamer's deck, I saw the same glorious Fuii rising towards the heavens in the purple and gold of the retting sun like Nature's mighty guardian of the land looking far out across the seas, it Eeemed to speak with awe and pathos, a " sayonara." a farewell of beautiful sweet, majesty, and, as my soul responded, I knew that I had witnessed a final grand exoression of the poetry of Japan that will leave a fascinating'memory through all the years.

Tho soft colours of the kinomos, the brighter rainbow shades of the obi, wherever one goes in Japan, giving colour to the city streets and the field? and gardens of the peaceful country, the oT;:cefu! bowing of little peonlo, the delicate colours of the cherry blossoms. <md the picturesque scenes of garlanded festivals must live as poetry .among the morp commonplace nrose of the Western world, and the shuffling click of the sandals along the street will make music in memorv's chamber-for many a day amid the discords of life in some far-off land.