Part 10 (1/2)

But in contrast to this appreciation is a remarkable indifference to certain foul odors. It is amazing what horrid smells the cultivated j.a.panese will endure in his home. What we conceal in the rear and out of the way, he very commonly places in the front yard; though this is, of course, more true of the country than of large towns or cities. It would seem as if a high aesthetic development should long ago have banished such sights and smells. As a matter of fact, however, the aesthetics of the subject does not seem to have entered the national mind, any more than have the hygienics of the same subject.

In explanation of these facts, may it not be that the j.a.panese method of agriculture has been a potent hindrance to the aesthetic development of the sense of smell? In primitive times, when wealth was small, the only easy method which the people had of preserving the fertilizing properties of that which is removed from our cities by the sewer-system was such as we still find in use in j.a.pan to-day. Perhaps the necessities of the case have toughened the mental, if not the physical, sense of the people. Perhaps the unaesthetic character of the sights and smells has been submerged in the great value of fertilizing materials. Then, too, with the Occidental, the thought is common that such odors are indications of seriously unhealthful conditions. We are accordingly offended not simply by the odor itself, but also by the a.s.sociations of sickness and death which it suggests. Not so the unsophisticated Oriental. Such a correlation of ideas is only now arising in j.a.pan, and changes are beginning to be made, as a consequence.

I cannot leave this point without drawing attention to the fact that the development of the sense of smell in these directions is relatively recent, even in the West. Of all the non-European nations and races, I have no doubt j.a.pan is most free from horrid smells and putrid odors. And in view of our own recent emanc.i.p.ation it is not for us to marvel that others have made little progress. Rather is it marvelous that we should so easily forget the hole from which we have been so recently digged.

In turning to study certain features of j.a.panese pictorial art, we notice that a leading characteristic is that of simplicity. The greatest results are secured with the fewest possible strokes. This general feature is in part due to the character of the instrument used, the ”fude,” ”brush.” This same brush answers for writing. It admits of strong, bold outlines; and a large brush allows the exhibition of no slight degree of skill. As a result, ”writing” is a fine art in j.a.pan. Hardly a family that makes any pretense at culture but owns one or more framed specimens of writing. In j.a.pan these rank as pictures do or mottoes in the West, and are prized not merely for the sentiment expressed, but also for the skill displayed in the use of the brush. Skillful writers become famous, often receiving large sums for small ”pictures” which consist of but two or three Chinese characters.

No doubt the higher development of appreciation for natural scenery among the people in general is largely due to the character of the scenery itself. Steep hills and narrow valleys adjoin nearly every city in the land. Seas, bays, lakes, and rivers are numerous; reflected mountain scenes are common; the colors are varied and marked. Flowering trees of striking beauty are abundant. Any people living under these physical conditions, and sufficiently advanced in civilization to have leisure and culture, can hardly fail to be impressed with such wealth of beauty in the scenery itself.

In the artistic reproduction of this scenery, however, j.a.panese artists are generally supposed to be inferior to those of the West.

As often remarked, j.a.panese art has directed its chief endeavor to animals and to nature, thus failing to give to man his share of attention. This curious one-sidedness shows itself particularly in painting and in sculpture. In the former, when human beings are the subject, the aim has apparently been to extol certain characteristics; in warriors, the military or heroic spirit; in wise men, their wisdom; in monks and priests, their mastery over the pa.s.sions and complete attainment of peace; in a G.o.d, the moral character which he is supposed to represent. Art has consequently been directed to bringing into prominence certain ideal features which must be over-accentuated in order to secure recognition; caricatures, rather than lifelike forms, are the frequent results. The images of mult.i.tudes of G.o.ds are frightful to behold; the aim being to show the character of the emotion of the G.o.d in the presence of evil. These idols are easily misunderstood, for we argue that the more frightful he is, the more vicious must be the G.o.d in his real character; not so the Oriental. To him the more frightful the image, the more n.o.ble the character. Really evil G.o.ds, such as demons, are always represented, I think, as deformed creatures, partly human and partly beast. It is to be remembered, in this connection, that idols are an imported feature of j.a.panese religion; s.h.i.+nto to this day has no ”graven image.” All idols are Buddhistic. Moreover, they are but copies of the hideous idols of India; the j.a.panese artistic genius has added nothing to their grotesque appearance. But the point of interest for us is that the aesthetic taste which can revel in flowers and natural scenery has never delivered j.a.panese art from truly unaesthetic representations of human beings and of G.o.ds.

Standing recently before a toy store and looking at the numberless dolls offered for sale, I was impressed afresh with the lack of taste displayed, both in coloring and in form; their conventionality was exceedingly tiresome; their one attractive feature was their absurdity. But the moment I turned away from the imitations of human beings to look at the imitations of nature, the whole impression was changed. I was pleased with the artistic taste displayed in the perfectly imitated, delicately colored flowers. They were beautiful indeed.

Why has j.a.panese art made so little of man as man? Is it due to the ”impersonality” of the Orient, as urged by some? This suggests, but does not give, the correct interpretation of the phenomenon in question. The reason lies in the nature of the ruling ideas of Oriental civilization. Man, as man, has not been honored or highly esteemed. As a warrior he has been honored; consequently, when pictured or sculptured as a warrior, he has worn his armor; his face, if visible, is not the natural face of a man, but rather that of a pa.s.sionate victor, slaying his foe or planning for the same. And so with the priests and the teachers, the emperors and the generals; all have been depicted, not for what they are in themselves, but for the rank which they have attained; they are accordingly represented with their accouterments and robes and the characteristic att.i.tudes of their rank. The effort to preserve their actual appearance is relatively rare. Manhood and womanhood, apart from social rank, have hardly been recognized, much less extolled by art. This feature, then, corresponds to the nature of the j.a.panese social order. The art of a land necessarily reveals the ruling ideals of its civilization. As j.a.pan failed to discover the inherent nature and value of manhood and womanhood, estimating them only on a utilitarian basis, so has her art reflected this failure.

Apparently it has never attempted to depict the nude human form. This is partly explained, perhaps, by the fact that the development of a perfect physical form through exercise and training has not been a part of Oriental thought. Labor of every sort has been regarded as degrading. Training for military skill and prowess has indeed been common among the military cla.s.ses; but the skill and strength themselves have been the objects of thought, rather than the beauty of the muscular development which they produce. When we recall the prominent place which the games of Greece took in her civilization previous to her development of art, and the stress then laid on perfect bodily form, we shall better understand why there should be such difference in the development of the art of these two lands. I have never seen a j.a.panese man or youth bare his arm to show with pride the development of his biceps; and so far as I have observed, the pride which students in the United States feel over well-developed calves has no counterpart in j.a.pan--this, despite the fact that the average j.a.panese has calves which would turn the American youth green with envy.

From the absence of the nude in j.a.panese art it has been urged that j.a.pan herself is far more morally pure than the West. Did the moral life of the people correspond to their art in this respect, the argument would have force. Unfortunately, such does not seem to be the case. It is further suggested as a reason that the bodily form of Oriental peoples is essentially unaesthetic; that the men are either too fat or too lean, and the women too plump when in the bloom of youth and too wrinkled and flabby when the first bloom is over. The absurdity of this suggestion raises a smile, and a query as to the experience which its author must have had. For any person who has lived in j.a.pan must have seen individuals of both s.e.xes, whom the most fastidious painter or sculptor would rejoice to secure as models.

It might be thought that a truly artistic people, who are also somewhat immoral, would have developed much skill in the portrayal of the nude female form. But such an attempt does not seem to have been made until recent times, and in imitation of Western art. At least such attempts have not been recognized as art nor have they been preserved as such. I have never seen either statue or picture of a nude j.a.panese woman. Even the pictures of famous prost.i.tutes are always faultlessly attired. The number and size of the conventional hairpins, and the gaudy coloring of the clothing, alone indicate the immoral character of the woman represented.

It is not to be inferred, however, that immoral pictures have been unknown in j.a.pan, for the reverse is true. Until forcibly suppressed by the government under the incentive of Western criticism, there was perfect freedom to produce and sell licentious and lascivious pictures. The older foreign residents in j.a.pan testify to the frequency with which immoral scenes were depicted and exposed for sale. Here I merely say that these were not considered works of art; they were reproduced not in the interests of the aesthetic sense, but wholly to stimulate the taste for immoral things.

The absence of the nude from j.a.panese art is due to the same causes that led to the relative absence of all distinctively human nature from art. Manhood and womanhood, as such, were not the themes they strove to depict.

A curious feature of the artistic taste of the people is the marked fondness for caricature. It revels in absurd accentuations of special features. Children with protruding foreheads; enormously fat little men; grotesque dwarf figures in laughable positions; these are a few common examples. Nearly all of the small drawings and sculpturings of human figures are intentionally grotesque. But the j.a.panese love of the grotesque is not confined to its manifestation in art. It also reveals itself in other surprising ways. It is difficult to realize that a people who revel in the beauties of nature can also delight in deformed nature; yet such is the case. Stunted and dwarfed trees, trees whose branches have been distorted into shapes and proportions that nature would scorn--these are sights that the j.a.panese seem to enjoy, as well as ”natural” nature. Throughout the land, in the gardens of the middle and higher cla.s.ses, may be found specimens of dwarfed and stunted trees which have required decades to raise. The branches, too, of most garden shrubs and trees are trimmed in fantastic shapes. What is the charm in these distortions? First, perhaps, the universal human interest in anything requiring skill.

Think of the patience and persistence and experimentation necessary to rear a dwarf pear tree twelve or fifteen inches high, growing its full number of years and bearing full-size fruit in its season! And second is the no less universal human interest in the strange and abnormal. All primitive people have this interest. It shows itself in their religions. Abnormal stones are often objects of religious devotion. Although I cannot affirm that such objects are wors.h.i.+ped in j.a.pan to-day, yet I can say that they are frequently set up in temple grounds and dedicated with suitable inscriptions. Where nature can be made to produce the abnormal, there the interest is still greater. It is a living miracle. Witness the c.o.c.ks of Tosa, distinguished by their two or three tail feathers reaching the extraordinary length of ten or even fifteen feet, the product of ages of special breeding.

According to the ordinary use of the term, aesthetics has to do with art alone. Yet it also has intimate relations with both speech and conduct. Poetry depends for its very existence on aesthetic considerations. Although little conscious regard is paid to aesthetic claims in ordinary conversation, yet people of culture do, as a matter of fact, pay it much unconscious attention. In conduct too, aesthetic ideas are often more dominant than we suppose. The objection of the cultured to the ways of the boorish rests on aesthetic grounds. This is true in every land. In the matter of conduct it is sometimes hard to draw the line between aesthetics and ethics, for they shade imperceptibly into one another; so much so that they are seen to be complementary rather than contradictory. Though it is doubtless true that conduct aesthetically defective may not be defective ethically, still is it not quite as true that conduct bad from the ethical is bad also from the aesthetical standpoint?

In no land have aesthetic considerations had more force in molding both speech and conduct than in j.a.pan. Not a sentence is uttered by a j.a.panese but has the characteristic marks of aestheticism woven into its very structure. By means of ”honorifics” it is seldom necessary for a speaker to be so pointedly vulgar as even to mention self. There are few points in the language so difficult for a foreigner to master, whether in speaking himself, or in listening to others, as the use of these honorific words. The most delicate shades of courtesy and discourtesy may be expressed by them. Some writers have attributed the relative absence of the personal p.r.o.nouns from the language to the dominating force of impersonal pantheism. I am unable to take this view for reasons stated in the later chapters on personality.

Though the honorific characteristics of the language seem to indicate a high degree of aesthetic development, a certain lack of delicacy in referring to subjects that are ruled out of conversation by cultivated people in the West make the contrary impression upon the uninitiated.

Such language in j.a.pan cannot be counted impure, for no such idea accompanies the words. They must be described simply as aesthetically defective. Far be it from me to imply that there is no impure conversation in j.a.pan. I only say that the particular usages to which I refer are not necessarily a proof of moral tendency. A realistic baldness prevails that makes no effort to conceal even that which is in its nature unpleasant and unaesthetic. A spade is called a spade without the slightest hesitation. Of course specific ill.u.s.trations of such a point as this are out of place. aesthetic considerations forbid.

And how explain these unaesthetic phenomena? By the fact that j.a.pan has long remained in a state of primitive development. Speech is but the verbal expression of life. Every primitive society is characterized by a bald literalism shocking to the aesthetic sense of societies which represent a higher stage of culture. In j.a.pan, until recently, little effort has been made to keep out of sight objects and acts which we of the West have considered disagreeable and repulsive. Language alters more slowly than acts. Laws are making changes in the latter, and they in time will take effect in the former. But many decades will doubtless pa.s.s before the cultivated cla.s.ses of j.a.pan will reach, in this respect, the standard of the corresponding cla.s.ses of the West.

As for the aesthetics of conduct in j.a.pan, enough is indicated by what has been said already concerning the aesthetics of speech. Speech and conduct are but diverse expressions of the same inner life. j.a.panese etiquette has been fas.h.i.+oned on the feudalistic theory of society, with its numberless gradations of inferior and superior. a.s.sertive individualism, while allowed a certain range among the samurai, always had its well-marked limits. The ma.s.s of the people were compelled to walk a narrow line of respectful obedience and deference both in form and speech. The constant aim of the inferior was to please the superior. That individuals of an inferior rank had any inherent rights, as opposed to those of a superior rank, seldom occurred to them. Furthermore, this whole feudal system, with its characteristic etiquette of conduct and speech, was authoritatively taught by moralists and religious leaders, and devoutly believed by the n.o.blest of the land. Ethical considerations, therefore, combined powerfully with those that were social and aesthetic to produce ”the most polite race on the face of the globe.” Recent developments of rudeness and discourtesy among themselves and toward foreigners have emphasized my general contention that these characteristics are not due to inherent race nature, but rather to the social order.

How are we to account for the wide aesthetic development of all cla.s.ses of the j.a.panese? As already suggested, the beautiful scenery explains much. But I pa.s.s at once to the significant fact that although the cla.s.ses of j.a.panese society were widely differentiated in social rank, yet they lived in close proximity to each other. There was no spatial gulf of separation preventing the lower from knowing fully and freely the thoughts, ideals, and customs of the upper cla.s.ses. The transmission of culture was thus an easy matter, in spite of social gradations.

Moreover, the character of the building materials, and the methods of construction used by the more prosperous among the people, were easily imitated in kind, if not in costliness, by the less prosperous. Take, for example, the structure of the room; it is always of certain fixed proportions, that the uniform mats may be easily fitted to it. The mats themselves are always made of a straw ”toko,” ”bed,” and an ”omote,” ”surface,” of woven straw; they vary greatly in value, but, of whatever grade, may always be kept neat and fresh at comparatively small cost. The walls of the average houses are made of mud wattles.

The outer layers of plaster consist of selected earth and tinted lime.

Whether put up at large or small expense, these walls may be neat and attractive. So, too, with other parts of the house.

The utter lack of independent thinking throughout the middle and lower cla.s.ses, and the constant desire of the inferior to imitate the superior, have also helped to make the culture of the cla.s.ses the possession of the ma.s.ses. This subserviency and spirit of imitation has been further stimulated by the enforced courtesy and deference and obedience of the common people.

In this connection it should be noted, however, that the universality of culture in j.a.pan is more apparent than real. The appearance is due in part to the lack of furniture in the homes. Without chairs or tables, bedsteads or washstands, and the mult.i.tude of other things invariably found in the home of the Occidental, it is easy for the j.a.panese housewife to keep her home in perfect order. No special culture is needful for this.