THE IDEA OF A GAP
Bold is the donkey driver, O Khedive, and bold is the Khedive who dares to say what he will believe, not knowing in any wise the mind of Allah, not knowing in any wise his own heart.
The "Japanese Carlyle" is getting grey. It seemed well to seek out some young Japanese thinker and take his view of that "heathenism" concerning which Uchimura had delivered himself so unsparingly. Let me speak of my first visit to my friend Yanagi.
As a youth Yanagi was a lonely student. He took his own way to knowledge and religion. The famed General Nogi had been given by the Emperor the direction of the Peers' School, but even under such distinguished tutelage the stripling made his stand. His reading led him to write for the school magazine an anti-militarist article. The veteran, as I once learned from a friend of Yanagi, promptly paraded the school, boys and masters. He spoke of disloyal, immoral, subversive ideas, and bade the youthful disturber of the peace attend him at his own house. When Yanagi stood before Nogi and was asked what he had to say, he replied with the question, "Don't you feel pain because of sending so many men to death before Port Arthur[[107]]?"
Again I found my prophet in a cottage. It was a cottage overlooking rice fields and a lagoon. From the Japanese scene outdoors I passed indoors to a new Japan. Cezanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Beardsley, Van Gogh, Henry Lamb, Augustus John, Matisse and Blake—Yanagi has written a big book on Blake which is in a second edition—hung within sight of a grand piano and a fine collection of European music[[108]]. Chinese, Korean and Japanese pottery and paintings filled the places in the dwelling not occupied by Western pictures and the Western library of a man well advanced with an interpretative history of Eastern and Western mysticism. An armful of books about Blake and Boehme, all Swedenborg, all Carlyle, all Emerson, all Whitman, all Shelley, all Maeterlinck, all Francis Thompson, and all Tagore, and plenty of other complete editions; early Christian mystics; much of William Law, Bergson, Eucken, Caird, James, Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Jefferies, Havelock Ellis, Carpenter, Strindberg, "Æ," Yeats, Synge and Shaw; not a little poetry of the fashion of Vaughan, Traherne and Crashaw; a well-thumbed Emily Brontë; all the great Russian novelists; numbers of books on art and artists—it was an arresting collection to come on in a Japanese hamlet, and odd to sit down beside it in order to talk of "heathen."
"Yes," said Yanagi—he speaks an English which reflects his wide reading—"our young maid, on being shown the full moon the other night, bowed her head. I find this natural instinct of some value. Our people have much natural feeling towards Nature. If modern Japanese art has degenerated it is because it does not sufficiently find out life in things. The sough of the wind in the trees may have only a slight influence on character, but it is a vital influence. I do not like, of course, the word 'heathendom' of which Uchimura seems so fond. I dearly admire Christ, but most of the Christianity of to-day is not Christ. It is largely Paul. It is a mixture. It is not the clear, pure, original thing. Christians must reform their Christianity before it can satisfy us. In the East we now see clearly enough to seek only the best that the West can offer."
Yanagi said that the spontaneity and naturalness of Eastern religions ought to be recognised. "You will find Christians admiring Walt Whitman, but it is Whitman the democrat they admire, not Whitman the prophet of naturalness." He spoke with appreciation of the Zen sect of Buddhists. Many of the Zen devotees were "noble and had a profound idea." He was unable to see "any difference at all" between the best part of Buddhism and the best part of Christianity. He said that his own mysticism was based on science, art, religion and philosophy. "My sincerest wish," he declared, "is to produce a beautiful reconciliation of these four. As it is, too often scientists and philosophers have no deep knowledge of religion or art, artists have no deep knowledge of religion or science, and the religious have no idea of art. Surely the deepest religious idea is the deepest artistic and philosophic idea. Perhaps our scientists are in the poorest state just now with no understanding of art or religion. Our scientists are immersed in the problem of matter, our religious people in the problem of spirit, and our artists forget that in dealing with nature they are dealing with spirit as well as body."
Faced by force and science when Commander Perry came, Japan, in order to save herself from foreign colonisation, had had to concentrate all her attention on force and science. She had concentrated her attention with signal success. But naturally she had had, in the process, to slacken her hold somewhat on the spiritual life.
"Always remember how difficult the Japanese find it to know which way to take. Their whole basis has been shaken and on the surface all has become chaotic. Ten years hence it will be possible to take a just view. There is much reason for high hopes. For one thing, the burden of old thought does not rest so heavily on us as might be supposed. We are very free in many ways. In the matter of religion Japan is the most free nation in the world. If England were to become Buddhist it would sound strange or exotic, but Japan is free to become what she may."
"There may be a great difference between one of our temples and shrines and an English church," Yanagi proceeded, "but I cannot believe in the gap which some people seem to see yawning between East and West. It is deplorable that the world should think that there is such a complete difference between East and West. It is usually said that self-denial, asceticism, sacrifice, negation are opposed to self-affirmation, individualism, self-realisation; but I do not believe in such a gap. I wish to destroy the idea of a gap. It is an idea which was obtained analytically. The meeting of East and West will not be upon a bridge over a gap, but upon the destruction of the idea of a gap.
"In future, religion cannot be limited by this or that sect or idea. Religion cannot be limited to Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism or Mahomedanism. Uchimura says that it is the essence of Christianity which has the power to rescue Japan from its chaotic state. But the essence of Buddhism can also contribute some important element to the future of Japan. The notion that the essence of Christianity and the essence of Buddhism are far apart is artificial and prejudiced."
One day some weeks later I walked with Yanagi on the hills. He said: "The weakest point in the Japanese character is the lack of the power of questioning. We are repressed by our educational system. And so many things come here at one time that it makes confusion. What is so often taken for a lack of originality in us is a state resulting from an immense importation of foreign ideas. They have been overpowering. Many of us have no clear ideas on life, society, sex and so on, and you will find it difficult to get satisfactory answers to many questions which you will want to ask."
As to morality, it was dangerous to say "this or that is immoral." Morality was often merely custom. Ordinary morality had scant authority. Critics of Japanese morality should not forget that, in the opinion of Japanese, Western people were more erotic than they were. Western dancing—not to speak of Western women's evening costumes—was undoubtedly more erotic than Japanese dancing. Again, the sexual curiosity of foreigners seemed stronger than that manifested by Japanese. It was a well-known fact that the girls at many hotels and restaurants had not a little to complain of from foreign men who misjudged their naïve ways. It must be remembered that Japanese were franker in sexual matters than Europeans and Americans. Sexual ill-doing was not so much concealed as in Europe. A wrong impression of Japanese morality was taken away by tourists whose guides showed them, as in Paris, what they expected to see.
"I wonder," he said, "that Western visitors to Tokyo who talk of our immorality are not struck by the fact that in an Eastern capital a foreign lady may walk home at night and be practically safe from being spoken to. The Japanese are undoubtedly a very kind people. They may be unmoral, but they are not immoral."
"Most of our people do not understand liberty in the mental sexual relations. Love is not free. In a very large proportion of cases, indeed, parents would oppose a match because a son or daughter had fallen in love. And if it is difficult to marry for love it is not easy to fall in love.[ [109]] Society in which young men and young women meet is restricted; there are few opportunities of conversation. Without liberty towards women there can be no perfect sense of responsibility towards them."
What had been taught to women as the supreme virtue was the virtue of sacrifice for father, husband, children. It was most important to let women know the significance of individualism. They were always offering themselves for others before they became themselves. But the idea of individuality was very little clearer to the Japanese man than to the Japanese woman. People were too prone to wish to give 100 yen before they had 100 yen. The Japanese were the most devotional people in the world, but they hardly knew yet the things to be devoted to.
Yanagi is a leading member of a small association of literary men, artists and students who graduated together from the Peers' School. They call themselves for no obvious reason the Shirakaba or Silver Birch Society. The intelligent and consistent efforts of these young men to introduce vital Western work in literature, philosophy, painting, sculpture, draughtsmanship and music, and the large measure of success they have attained is of some significance. Several members of the group belong to the old Kuge families, that is the ancient nobility which surrounded the Emperor at Kyoto before the Restoration. Cut off for centuries from military and administrative activities by the dominance of the Shogunate Government, the Kuge devoted themselves to the arts and the refinements of life. For the exclusiveness of the past some of their descendants substitute artistic integrity. The Shirakaba has had for several years a remarkable magazine. Its editor and its publisher, its size, its price and its date of publication are continually changed; it never makes any bid for popularity; it expresses its sentiments in a downright way and it has always been anti-official: yet it survives and pays its way. Beyond the magazine, the Society has had every year at least one exhibition of what its members conceive to be significant modern European work. The members have also supported a few Japanese artists of outstanding sincerity. Through the Shirakaba the influence of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Blake, Delacroix, Matisse, Augustus John, Beardsley, Courbet,Daumier, Maillol, Chavannes and Millet, particularly Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin and Blake, has been marked. The Silver Birch group has never tired of extolling the great names of Rembrandt, Dürer, El Greco, Van Eyck, Goya, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Tintoretto, Giotto and Mantegna [[110]].
While an ardent Young Japan has formed and dissolved many societies, movements and fashions, this Shirakaba group has held fast and has gained friends by its sincerity, its vision and its audacity[[111]]. Rodin encouraged the Shirakaba efforts to reproduce the best Western art by presenting it with three pieces of sculpture.
"The intellectual man does no fighting," Froude has written. Why do not Yanagi and his friends make a stand on public questions? "Because," he said, "at the present stage of our development it is almost impossible to take up a strong attitude, and because, important though political and social questions are, they are not, in our opinion, of the first importance. To artists, philosophers, students of religion, such problems are secondary. More important problems are: What is the meaning of this world? What is God? What is the essence of religion? How can we best nourish ourselves so as to realise our own personalities? Political and social problems are secondary for us at present; they are not related emotionally to our present conditions[[112]].
For the East the Root,
For the West the Fruit.
"If we faced such problems directly we should probably make them primary problems, as you do in Great Britain. Our present attitude does not prove, however, that we are cold to political and social problems. In fact, when we think of these terrible political and social questions they make us boil. But you will understand that in order to have something to give to others, we must have that something. We are seeking after that something."
Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution which the new artistic movement in Japan, under the influence of modern Western art, was making to the solution of political and social questions[[113]]. The interest of the younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite disharmonious with the ordinary attitude towards militarism." European art broke down barriers in the Japanese mind. When the younger generation, nourished on higher ideals, grew up, it would be the State, and there would be a more hopeful condition of affairs. People generally supposed that social questions were the most practical; but religious, artistic, philosophic questions were, in the truest sense of the word, the most practical.
Yanagi went on to tell of his devotion to Blake. He could not understand "why Englishmen are so cool to him." He asked me how it was that there was no word about Blake in Andrew Lang's work on English literature. "I cannot imagine," he said, "why such an intelligent man could not appreciate Blake." Yanagi regarded Blake as "the artist of immense will, of immense desire, and a man in whom can be seen that affirmative attitude towards life, exhibited later by Whitman." Yanagi spoke also of "Anglo-Saxon nobility, liberty, depth of character and healthiness," and of "a deep and noble character" in English literature which he did not find elsewhere. Whitman, Emerson, Poe and William James were "the crown of America."
As I close this chapter I recall Yanagi's library, in the service of which, bettering Mark Pattison's example, two-thirds of its owner's income was for some time expended. I remember the thatched dwelling overlooking the quiet reed-bound lagoon with its frosty sunrises, red moonrises and apparitions of Fuji above the clouds seventy miles away. No Western visitor whom I took to Abiko failed to be moved by that room, designed by Yanagi himself in every detail, wherein East meets West in harmony. I have made note of his Western books but not of the classics and strange mystic writings of Chinese and Korean priests in piles of thin volumes in soft bindings of blue or brown. I have not mentioned a Rembrandt drawing and next to it the vigorous but restful brush lines of an artist priest of the century that brought Buddhism to Japan; severe little gilt-bronze figures of deities from China, a little older; pottery figures of exquisite beauty from the tombs of Tang, a little later; Sung pottery, a dynasty farther on; Korai celadons from Korean tombs of the same epoch; and whites and blue and whites of Ming and Korean Richo. On the wall a black and yellow tiger is "burning bright" on a strip of blood-red silk tapestry woven on a Chinese loom for a Taoist priest 500 years ago. Cimabue's portrait of St. Francis breathes over Yanagi's writing desk from one side, while from the other Blake's amazing life mask looks down "with its Egyptian power of form added to the intensity of Western individualism." These are Yanagi's silent friends. His less quiet friends of the flesh have felt that this room was a sanctuary and Yanagi a priest of eternal things, but a priest without priestcraft, a priest living joyously in the world. Above his desk is inscribed the line of Blake:
Thou also, dwellest in eternity
and Kepler's aspiration, "My wish is that I may perceive God whom I find everywhere in the external world in like manner within and without me."