“Far from being artificial, Far Eastern art is emphatically natural. The reason that it does not so appear to us at first is due to two causes. The first is very simple—an absence with us of what the Far Oriental sees around him at home. A picture of snow-peaks would undoubtedly appear conventional, in the sense used above, to a man who had dwelt all his life on the plains, and never heard of such things as white-headed mountains. The second cause is that certain very salient features of his landscapes have engrossed the Far Oriental attention, to the partial neglect of other less striking but, perhaps, even more common scenes.
“Every traveller knows the effect of this in other things beside art. Narrators insensibly, if not on purpose, pick out the salient points of any land to give an idea of it to those to whom it is an undiscovered country. The result is, that on acquaintance no country seems so odd as imagination, fed on a few startling facts, has pictured it to be; and yet, for all that, the facts may be perfectly true. Now, what we do to give others an idea of foreign lands, the Far Oriental does to give himself an idea of his own. His art, by reason of this strong simplicity, is all the higher art.”
Landscape gardening holds a prominent place among the arts of Korea, and is as well understood, and as generally practised to-day as it has ever been in the history of the peninsula. Water forms the principal, and the indispensable feature of every Korean garden. Indeed, the pond, which must be in the centre of the garden, often takes up nine-tenths of the garden’s entire area. This pond is always called a “lotus pond.” Usually the lotus is there, but not always, and its absence only emphasizes the title of the pond. It is interesting to notice how indispensable the sight of water is to the Koreans, and it speaks a great deal, I think, for their genuine love of Nature.
Korea is so surrounded by water, so intersected with rivers, and has so many high hills from which water can be seen for some distance, and down which rivulets and waterfalls break, that every Korean must be very familiar with water in all its moods and tenses. But he does not tire of it. On the contrary, a Korean who has his domain on the very sea-shore, will dig up the larger part of his garden for the sake of having an artificial lotus-pond; that he may sit on the artificial island in its centre and fish and dream and watch the water. Fantastic groups of strange rock work are put in almost every Korean garden: groups to which European eyes have to grow very used before they can see any beauty in them.
Korean music, like almost all Asiatic music, requires a great deal of study before we can at all understand it or like it. Its scale differs entirely from our gamut—differs even more than do Korean instruments from ours. Japanese music is of Korean origin, but has changed greatly of later years. But all classical Japanese music is still identical with Korean music, which has changed little or not at all. Korean government labourers are called to and released from their day’s work by music, and to music do the gates of a Korean city close or open for the day.
When Korea was in its infancy she was thrown into intimate contact with China. Korea had not had time to develop a literature, and so she very naïvely adopted the literature of China. Chinese literature is the classical literature of Korea still. The great majority of Korean books (and they are not surprisingly many), are written and printed in Chinese. The Koreans have neglected their own language and its literary possibilities for centuries. Still there is considerable poetry written in the Korean tongue (but in the Chinese character almost always), and we may consider the writing of this poetry as one of Korea’s national arts. “Poetry parties” are a popular form of Korean picnics. A number of friends meet at some unusually beautiful spot. They have been preceded by servants carrying writing materials and wine. Very gravely the competitors (for such they are) set to work. They sun and joy themselves in the beauty of the scene, they sip the cup that cheers, but alas! intoxicates too! and when they have enough assimilated the beauty of the scene and the gladness of the wine, then they write verses. The verses take the form of songs, or are ballads in praise of nature. They write of the bamboo, of the stars, of the storm, of moonlight and of sunrise, but never of woman!
CHAPTER X.
KOREA’S IRRELIGION.
Korea has no religion. This is a sweeping statement, I know, and one that is susceptible of a great deal of dispute, but I believe that in the main it is true. The books that have been written during the last hundred years about Korea teem with thick chapters on Korea’s religion, but for all that, I believe that Korea is without religion. There are without doubt Koreans who are deeply and genuinely religious, but they are so infinitesimal a fraction of the population of the peninsula that they no more justify us in crediting Korea with a religion than the handful of Theosophists, who are probably in England to-day, would justify a Korean in crediting England with an at all large acceptance of Theosophy. Buddhism, which was once as dominant in Korea as ever it has been in China or Japan, has been almost destroyed. Confucianism is still a great power in Korea, as it must be in every country where ancestor-worship and the sanctity of the family are the backbone of the nation’s moral existence. But I maintain that Confucianism is not, properly speaking, a religion. It is a theory of ethics, a code of morals, admirable, sublime even, but it is not, as I understand the word religion, a religion. There are superstitions in Korea and to spare. The common people are as superstitious as the common people of any other civilized country, which is saying a great deal, and the upper classes are by no means free from superstition. But who shall venture to call superstition a religion? Unless we call superstition and religion synonymous; unless we accept Confucianism as an individual and actual religion; or unless we say that a few scattered monasteries, that must by law be built far beyond the walls of a city—monasteries inhabited by monks, who are looked down upon even by the common people, and are not allowed within the gates of any city; monasteries that are resorted to by the leisure classes for revel and for roystering, and never for prayer or penitence—unless we say that these constitute a national religion, we must, I think, admit that Korea is distinctly irreligious.
The real difficulty in deciding whether Korea is in any way religious or altogether irreligious lies in the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between religion and superstition. The dividing line between the two is often indistinct—sometimes missing altogether—so perhaps I am wrong in saying that a country so amply dowered with superstition is devoid of religion.