A TRAVELLER IN THE EAST.

Otago Witness, Issue 3099, 6 August 1913, Page 80

A TRAVELLER IN THE EAST.

By the Rev. William Hay.

JAPAN. ITS POETRY, POWER, AND PATHOS. PART I.

Since Japan emerged from isolation and became known to the Western -world she has increasingly tiling across the seas that roll in diapason upon her shores which lias a wonderful fascination. The Western world has come mightily under its spell, especially since the little brown man has in his patriotic bravery and devotion made of Dai Nippon (Great Japan) a Power in the world, unashamed of its standing and its exploits, and Avon 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 groat, although it does not justify a mania that constitutes all things Japanese as both fashionable 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 the 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. “ MADAME CHRYSANTHEME.” The spell of modern Japan upon the Western mind has prompted a great assortment of literature. Much of it is reliable, much is not. Smne have seen so much of one side of Japan and cf 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 Dicsy, in his “The New Far East/ published some years ago, exposed the false general description of the women and girls of Japan in Pierre Eoti's “Madame Chrysantheme.” “The book should bear on its title page,” he “a warning somewhat in these words: “This story of a French naval officer s liaison with a Japanese girl of the lower class and of easy virtue. It must not be taken as purporting to describe, in any way, the average Japanese women, high-boni or in humble life.’ Of the average woman of Japan the brilliant French writer had no. experience, engrossed as he was, during h : s stay at Nagasaki, in the close study of the fascinating little butterfly whom he has painted so deftly 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 wbrld 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 ha”d 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 readiim. Mr Arthur Lloyd, M.A., Lecturer at the Imperial University and Higher Naval College in lokio, says: “Some Japanese are sensual, but bv 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 are 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 gold.” Many who visit Japan have a very limited experience, which is their own fault, because they will he luxuriously Western while visiting an Eastern land. They travel apart from the Japanese; they are almost entirely apart from them socially. hey see Japan very much more closely than they see Japanese life. Some of us have travelled with the Japanese people and sometimes preferred a Japanese hotel to the European one, and hail amusing experiences in consequence. Wo 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 lady. THE POETRY OF LIFE.

The more 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 cl Japan. By poetry I do not mean the poetyy of ‘literature, but the poetry of fife—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 inspires a Wordsworth to be the apostle of Nature in the realm 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 leayns of the intense patriotism of this people, the old spirit of bushido, 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 loharu Ukichi:— As the one heart’s wish of those who die Has force to work fulfilment, I desire Mv love for this my land, continually May burn, in death as life, a quenchless fire, > * 1 grow as pines upon her heights, And now with all her rivers to the sea f‘*ll on her as dew in summer jiigiits, And guard and serve her thro’ eternity. Indeed, most Japanese students have something of the poetic gift. Some of the poems by the late Emperor, and some bv the Empress, are very beautiful, the latter especially being a revelation cf high ideals of life. THE INFLUENCE OF A MYTH. But tins is a poetry that gix>ws out of the Jiving poetry of the land and race, with all their history and achievement and romance. The mythical element that gives such power and stability to die throne is a part of it, and furnishes poetic stimulus just as Mid the mythical history of Greece and Rome. The myth of the origin of Japan is intensely poetic, and still does much to mould the Japanese male opinion on the subject'of the eternral feminine. When the heaven-born progenitors of the Japanese race, Izanagi and fzanami, first stood on the floating Bridge ot 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, exclaiming, “How delightful! I have met with a lovely youth!” But this Japanese Eve was too human to please her Adam. Izanagi asserts his superiority to the feminine, and says', “ I am a man, and by right I should have spoken first. How is it that thou, a woman, shouldst have been the first to speak?. This was unlucky. Lot ns go round again.” And so they

went round the jewel spear again. When they met this time, the male spoke first, saying, “How delightful! I have met a lovely maiden!” Now that the relation between the two sexes had been properly adjusted, the courtship of Ibanagi and Izanami ran its smooth course. The Roman fiction of a divine descent by which the rulers of the Julian Hohse sought to establish art uncertain tenure obtains in Japan in the mvth that Jimmu Tenno, the first earthly Emperor, descended upon Japan 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 of divine ancestors who watch with paternal care over the destinies of the beloved land. „ A LIVING POEM.

Japan, however, ao it is been to-day, is a living poem. I have had the privilege of sueudiug some time in a part of Japan that iii regarded as the acme of Nature’s beauty. 1 presume every visitor to Japan lias been to Nikko, and knows that Nikko is considered the last word that Nature lias to speak upon the subject of beauty? The Japanese say that one cannot pronounce the word “kekko” (beautiful) until one has seen Nikko. Beyond the village of Nikko, which seems to lose itself in foliage and the- blossom of cherry and azalea, lie tiers upon tiers of hills surmounted by a fringe of lordly mountain peaks. There is not an ugly one among them. The green, which changes to bine and purple as the day passes on to its sunset gale, is relieved by the pink tinge of azaleas, and here and there a mass of cherry blossom in the spring, and early summer, while on the lower ground the violets and japonica blossom wild and luxuriantly. In the autumn the wealth of coloured foliage, and especially the blaze of the ct-imson maple, take the place of the more delicate colours of the spring. The winter has its glory of glistening frost, and myriad fashions of Nature’s own in its robes of snow. Peeping out between the trees, and bidding for attention -n competition with the green or the pink, or the snowy white, are the gilded roofs of temples and shrines, and the tapering lower of some pagoda, while the temple gong 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 warriors of old, lead beneath the sombre shadows of the aged cryptomenia to the resting place of the Shogun dead. From Nikko to Lake Chuzenji, through the valley of the Daiyagawa, Nature spreads herself out in ravishing beauty and variety, 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 some 400 feet below, till at last, some eight miles from Nikko, and at an altitude 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 Japanese 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 Nnutaizau, or making their way thither to offer their prayers at the summit. Along the poad 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, however, is not only to be found at Nikko. Immediately one crosses from Korea one becomes enthusiastic at the contrast —bright 'coloured patches, the ever-changing view, the varying glades and stretches, and hills 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 lias 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 nibbed 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 h umireds 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 dbad seemed, close about me, yet they brought no glrtom, for I, too, was dead. AH 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 Coofc ” 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 teen 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 “not” 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 along over its stony hed, 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 tiro gong in the temples in the shadow of the mountain sent their chime 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 that 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 Fuji rising towards the heavens in the purple and gold of the setting sun like Nature’s mighty guardian of the land looking far out across the seas, it seemed to speak with awe and pathos, a “ sayonara,” a farewell of beautiful sweet majesty, and, as my eoul responded, I knew that I had witnessed a final gland expression of the poetry of Japan that will leave a fascinating memory through all the vears.

The soft colours of the kinomog, the brighter rainbow shades of the obi, wherever one goes in Japan, giving colour to the city sheets and the fields and gardens of the peaceful country, the graceful bowing of little people, the delicate colours of the cherrv blossoms, and the picturesque scenes of garlanded festivals must live as poetry among the more commonplace prose of the Western world, and the shuffling click of the sandals along the street will make music in memory’s chamber for many a day amid the discords of life in some far-off land.