Quaint Korea

by Louise Jordan Miln

At this moment Japan evidently believes that her present victories are attributable more to her own skill and prowess than to her exact and servile adoption of European methods and models, and so she is tossing her head and treating us a little rudely.

Ah, well! we all have to learn some sharp lessons, whether we are individuals or nations. China is learning such a lesson now. I wonder whose turn it will be next—Japan’s?

This, at least, when next Japan fights let us hope that she may have become Europeanized enough not to wage war before she declares it.

Ingratitude seems to me to have been the trait most pronounceably shown by the Japanese during this present struggle. And the desire of some Japanese women to join the army as combatants seems to me the most amusing incident in a war that has had more than one funny side to it. But there is one other thing to have been noticed about Japan of late: a thing that seems to have rather escaped notice—Japan is trembling.

In the glowing moment of her supreme victories, in this long hour of her almost unprecedented run of luck, does it seem more stupid, or more impertinent to speak of Japan as being a-tremble? The laws of some countries hold that truth is no libel. The laws of other countries hold that truth is the greatest libel. I am uttering libel or I am not uttering libel, according to the country by whose laws I may be judged. Most emphatically, I am uttering the truth. No other word so truly adjectives Japan as does the word trembling.

This is the age of earthquakes. Almost daily the papers record the upheaval of some part or other of the world. And earthquakes are becoming almost common where they used to be nearly or quite unheard of. Japan, as far we know, always has been, and probably always will be, the stronghold of earthquakes. That inscrutable some one whom some of us call God; that inscrutable something which some of us call Fate; that inscrutable some one or something of which the bravest of us, the most phlegmatic of us, the most callous of us, one and all, stand in more than wholesome dread; for uncountable centuries, has seen fit, and will see fit, to hold over the flower-crowned head of Japan a Damoclean sword. The thread by which that sword is held is very much frailer than the thread that, in the classic days of old Greece, held that sword’s prototype. It breaks, does the Japanese thread. It breaks very often. It breaks with a persistent irregularity that is almost regular in its frequency. And Japan is disembowelled with a Hari-Kari far more terrible, far more merciless than the Hari-Kari which used to be the glory of the well-born criminals, or the well-born unfortunates of old Japan.

The first time I ever saw a Japanese earthquake (and I have had the misfortune to see many), it occurred to me that the Japanese, who create nothing, who imitate and ornament everything, had caught from the brutal butchery of Nature (Nature who is worshipped in Japan, as she is worshipped almost nowhere else), the idea of that terrible self-annihilation which was for centuries the gruesome glory of Japan. Japan is the pet lamb of Nature, the favourite home of art, the chosen throne of beauty, and yet the Japanese always have had the greatest enthusiasm for the horrible in Nature, and the horrible in art.

Nature is, perhaps, the most convenient term by which we, who believe in God, we who believe in Fate, and we who believe in nothing, can agree to commonly express our common wish to personify that of which none of us know too much, but of which we all think, more or less, and of which most of us wish to speak rather frequently.

I have called Japan the pet child of Nature, and so she is. Not all the earthquakes that have ever out-canniballed the cannibals; not all the earthquakes that ever swallowed houses and gulped down humans, could counterbalance the enormous partiality which Nature shows for Japan. Never bloomed such flowers, never grew such trees, never did such moonlight, with such dappled gold and silver, glorify such landscapes. Verily doth Nature love Japan as she loves no other spot on earth. Out of the great womb of Nature Japan was born, and truly every star in heaven danced and shone the brighter. But Nature, like many another mother, seems to have overtaxed herself in giving to the world so sublime a child. The umbilical cord has never been cut between Nature and Japan. The Japanese have never ceased to suck the wonderful milk of Nature, the milk that has nourished in them their great love for the beautiful, their great appreciation of the beautiful, and their supreme gift of reproducing the beautiful. But all this seems to have worn on Nature. The mother who nurses her child beyond a physically reasonable period invariably suffers. The child may thrive, but the mother grows ill: most women who are ill are hysterical. Nature, if there is such a thing as Nature, is a mother. Nature, if there is such a thing as Nature, is a woman. Nature is a mother, because from Nature have we, all parts of our world, and all other worlds, been born. Nature is a woman, because no manly thing could be so cruel to its offspring as Nature is. The child is so over-grown, so hungry, so perpetually demanding of, draining Nature, that Nature, veriest woman that she is, must needs, once in a way, lose patience with Japan.

But save for her momentary losses of temper, Nature is to Japan the tenderest of mothers, fashioning for her, as all mothers love to fashion for their favourite children, the daintiest of garments. And never yet did pet child wear such fine frocks, such robes of soft but splendid beauty, as Nature makes, year in year out, season in season out, for Japan. She weaves them of flowers, she buckles them with brilliant berries, and she sprays them with a drench of soft, warm, unsoiling, and altogether incomparable perfume. She sings sweet songs of mother-love to her pet child. Such lullabies she croons to it! She keeps for it the most wonderful of orchestras. An orchestra that makes ceaseless, but everchanging music. Humming birds wing notes of music into that marvellous concerto, silver rills “that gush out i’ the midst of roses,” waterfalls that in the moonlight and in the sunlight kiss the moss-warmed rocks, and leap in passionate ecstasy into the arms of the flower-dressed earth, drip liquid notes of beauty into that wondrous symphony. The wings of butterflies add falsetto, but, oh! so sweet, notes, and the wind, as it wantons between the wanton trees, and kisses the fragrant flowers, steals from them their honey, and adds perfume unto perfume, and music unto music, until Japan, Nature’s pet baby, cuddles down into the warm eider-down of its cradle, an eider-down that is incomparably soft with flower-petals, and that smells of blossoms that are sweeter than music.