ART IN PRACTICAL LIFE
CHAPTER V
ART IN PRACTICAL LIFE
Throughout this book I have talked of Japan purely from the artistic standpoint. I have talked principally of the living art of the country and of its exquisite productions, and I firmly believe that it is because the Japs are a people of imagination that they will at no distant date forge ahead of other nations (who are depending solely upon their muscle) and become a dominating power.
At the same time, it must be clearly understood that the artistic is not the only quality in which the Japs excel. Take them from any side, and it will be found that they have achieved remarkable success. Yet the average Westerner, on returning from a visit to Japan, has always the same superficial observation to make on the Japanese people. He has spent a few weeks in the Land of the Rising Sun; he has seen the dainty tea-houses, the miniature bridges, the paper walls and umbrellas, their works of art modelled in lead—everything suggesting the dainty and the exquisite (and therefore, in his opinion, the flimsy); and he tells you that the people over there are all dear little Noah’s Ark folk living in tissue-paper houses, very charming as dolls, but useless as men. “These people,” he says, “have no physique; they would be incapable of building battleships, for example.” For this critic one can entertain only the faintest possible feeling of tender pity. Is he not aware that these Noah’s Ark folk are actually building battleships, that they have already a fine army superbly equipped with the finest of swords and guns, and that they have the power to handle these weapons far better than we can handle ours? Every soldier in the Japanese army understands the mechanism of his rifle, and can at any moment pull it to pieces and put it together again, even substituting a missing portion if necessary. Could the same be said of our beloved Tommy? The Japanese officers are no less capable than the privates, and I would guarantee that if by some mischance the sword of a Japanese officer, being badly tempered, should become bent, that officer would be capable of retempering his blade—one of the most difficult and delicate tasks imaginable.
