Besides fishing, there are three manly sports in vogue in Korea, and I believe, three only; all others being considered undignified and ungentlemanly. The three are archery, falconry, and hunting. Indeed, I scarcely know if I am right in including hunting in the list. It is so very generally pursued as a business, and not as a pleasure. I believe that a few Koreans do sometimes hunt for sport, and very good sport they usually get. Deer, tigers, leopards, badgers, bears, martens, otters, sables, wolves, and foxes are abundant, and the peninsula is full of feathered life. Pheasants are as plentiful, as beautiful, and as toothsome in Korea as they are in China. And they have wild geese, plover, snipe, varieties of ducks, teal, water hens, turkeys and turkey-bustards, herons, eagles, and cranes; and the woods are full of hares and of foxes.
Archery is considered in Korea the most distinguished of recreations. Every Korean gentleman, from the king down, is, or tries very hard to be, expert at archery. They use a tight, short bow, never over three feet long, and arrows of bamboo. The Koreans are wonderful marksmen, and professional archers are among the most popular of public entertainers.
Falconry is almost as popular as archery, and every nobleman has at least one falcon. The falcon is invariably extensively and gaudily wardrobed, and has usually a personal attendant. Falcon competitions, both public and private, are frequent, and among the nobility are often made the occasion of elaborate entertainments.
The Koreans have a quaint little festival, called “Crossing the Bridges.” Söul abounds in queer little stone bridges. A moonlight night is chosen for the festival. Usually a man and a woman walk to the centre of the bridge, and make a wish for the ensuing year, or pray for good-luck, and search the stars for some augury of prosperity. They have a number of peculiar, picturesque customs in connection with “Crossing the Bridges,” but I fancy that with both men and women it is more an excuse for a night out than anything else.
The Koreans are even more impersonal than the Chinese. The Japanese are intensely personal. The Korean is impersonal in business, and impersonal in pleasure. He feasts with other men, and mingles with other men in all his amusements, but his interest is absorbed by his surroundings, and not by his companions. Introspection, and the study of other men, are seldom or never methods of Korean self-entertainment. Nature is after all the greatest entertainer of the Koreans; and to study Nature, to watch her, and to fall more and more deeply in love with her, is a Korean’s greatest amusement.
CHAPTER IX.
A GLANCE AT KOREAN ART.
“Far Eastern art draws its inspiration from Nature, not from man. It thus stands, in the objects of its endeavour, in striking contrast to what has ever been the main admiration and study of our own, the human figure. A flower, a face—matter as it affects mind, mind as it affects matter—from such opposite sources spring the two. Art, or the desire to perpetuate and reproduce the emotions, must, of course, depend upon the character of those emotions. Now to a Far Oriental Nature is more suggestive and man less so than with us.”—Percival Lowell.
The subject of Korean art is vast, intricate, and difficult. It could not possibly be covered, even in the most superficial way, in one chapter, or in a series of several chapters. But it would be preposterous to altogether exclude it from any book whose pages are devoted to Korea generally. For perhaps the most really interesting thing about Korea, and certainly one of the most interesting things to be said about Korea is this:—Korea was the birthplace of a great deal that is finest and highest in the art of that wonderful art country—Japan.
A great deal that is most distinguished in Korean art, past and present, is undeniably indigenous to Korea, but, on the other hand, the Korean artists have borrowed or absorbed a good deal from the arts of other countries. In the early days of its prosperity Korean art seems to have owed a great deal to China. But, even in its infancy, through the long years of its magnificent splendour, and in these days of its decay or of trance, Korean art always has had, and has, a marked individuality, and bears the indubitable hall-mark of genuine originality.