Part 6 (1/2)
We looked till it was too cold to look longer, then wrapped ourselves in quilts and went to sleep. At midnight I woke. Outside there was a strange moaning. The wind had risen; and the sound of it in that lonely place gave me a shock of fear. The mountain, then, was more than a heap of dead ashes. Presences haunted it; powers indifferent to human fate.
That wind had blown before man came into being, and would blow when he had ceased to exist. It moaned and roared. Then it was still. But I could not sleep again, and lay watching the flicker of the lamp on the long wooden roof, and the streaks of moonlight through the c.h.i.n.ks, till the coolie lit a fire and called us to get up. We started at four. The clouds were still below, and the moon above; but she had moved across to the west, Orion had appeared, and a new planet blazed in the east. The last climb was very steep and our breath very scant. But we had other things than that to think of. Through a rift in a cloud to the eastward dawned a salmon-coloured glow; it brightened to fire; lit up the clouds above and the clouds below; blazed more and intolerably, till, as we reached the summit, the sun leapt into view and sent a long line of light down the tumultuous sea of rolling cloud.
How cold it was! And what an atmosphere inside the highest shelter, where sleepers had been packed like sardines and the newly kindled fire filled the fetid air with acrid smoke! What there was to be seen we saw--the crater, neither wide nor deep; the s.h.i.+nto temple, where a priest was intoning prayers; and the Post Office, where an enterprising Government sells picture-postcards for triumphant pilgrims to despatch to their friends. My friend must have written at least a dozen, while I waited and s.h.i.+vered with numbed feet and hands. But after an hour we began the descent, and quickly reached the shelter where we were to breakfast. Thence we had to plunge again into the clouds. But before doing so we took a long look at the marvellous scene--more marvellous than any view of earth; icebergs tossing in a sea, mountains exhaling and vanis.h.i.+ng, magic castles and palaces towering across infinite s.p.a.ce.
A step, and once more the white-grey mist and the purple-grey soil. But the clouds had moved higher; and it was not long before we saw, to the south, cliffs and the sea, to the east, the gleam of green fields, running up, under cloud-shadows, to mountain ridges and peaks. And so back to Gotemba, and our now odious inn.
We would not stop there. So we parted, my friend for Tokyo, I for Kyoto. But time-tables had been fallacious, and I found myself landed at Numatsa, with four hours to wait for the night train, no comfort in the waiting-room, and no j.a.panese words at my command. I understood then a little better why foreigners are so offensive in the East. They do not know the language; they find themselves impotent where their instinct is to domineer; and they visit on the Oriental the ill-temper which is really produced by their own incompetence. Yes, I must confess that I had to remind myself severely that it was I, and not the j.a.panese, who was stupid. At last the station-master came to my rescue--the station-master always speaks English. He endured my petulance with the unfailing courtesy and patience of his race, and sent me off at last in a rickshaw to the beach and a j.a.panese hotel. But my troubles were not ended. I reached the hotel; I bowed and smiled to the group of kow-towing girls; but how to tell them that I wanted a bathe and a meal?
Signs were unavailing. We looked at one another and laughed, but that did not help. At last they sent for a student who knew a little English.
I could have hugged him. ”It is a great pity,” he said, ”that these people do not know English.” The pity, I replied, was that I did not know j.a.panese, but his courtesy repudiated the suggestion. Could I have a bathing costume? Of course! And in a quarter of an hour he brought me a wet one. Where could I change? He showed me a room; and presently I was swimming in the sea, with such delight as he only can know who has ascended and descended Fuji without the chance of a bath. Returning to the inn, I wandered about in my wet costume seeking vainly the room in which I had changed. Laughing girls pushed me here, and pulled me there, uncomprehending of my pantomime, till one at last, quicker than the rest, pulled back a slide, and revealed the room I was seeking. Then came dinner--soup, fried fish, and rice; and--for my weakness--a spoon and fork to eat them with. The whole house seemed to be open, and one looked into every room, watching the ways of these gay and charming people. At last I paid--to accomplish _that_ by pantomime was easy,--and said good-bye to my hostess and her maids, who bowed their heads to the ground and smiled as though I had been the most honoured of guests instead of a clumsy foreigner, fit food for mirth. A walk in a twilight pine wood, and then back to the station, where I boarded the night train, and slept fitfully until five, when we reached Kyoto, and my wanderings were over. How I enjoyed the comfort of the best hotel in the East! But also how I regretted that I had not long ago learnt to find comfort in the far more beautiful manner of life of j.a.pan!
VI
j.a.pAN AND AMERICA
On the reasons, real or alleged, for the hostility of the Californians to the j.a.panese this is not the place to dwell. At bottom, it is a conflict of civilisations, a conflict which is largely due to ignorance and misunderstanding, and which should never be allowed to develop into avowed antagonism. For with time, patience, and sympathy it will disappear of itself. The patience and sympathy, I think, are not lacking on the side of the j.a.panese, but they are sadly lacking among the Californians, and indeed among all white men in Western America. The truth is that the Western pioneer knows nothing of j.a.pan and wants to know nothing. And he would be much astonished, not to say indignant, were he told that the civilisation of j.a.pan is higher than that of America. Yet there can, I think, be no doubt that this is the case, if real values be taken as a standard. America, and the ”new” countries generally, have contributed, so far, nothing to the world except material prosperity. I do not under-estimate this. It is a great thing to have subdued a continent. And it may be argued that those who are engaged in this task have no energy to spare for other activities. But the j.a.panese subdued their island centuries, even millenniums, ago. And, having reduced it to as high a state of culture as they required, they began to live--a thing the new countries have not yet attempted.
To live, in the sense in which I am using the term, implies that you reflect life in the forms of art, literature, philosophy, and religion.
To all these things the j.a.panese have made notable contributions; less notable, indeed, than those of China, from whom they derived their inspiration, but still native, genuine, and precious. To take first bare externals, the physical life of the j.a.panese is beautiful. I read with amazement the other day a quotation from a leading Californian newspaper to the effect that ”there is an instinctive sense of physical repugnance on the part of the Western or European races towards the j.a.panese race”!
Had the writer, I wonder, ever been in j.a.pan? Perhaps it would have made no difference to him if he had, for he is evidently one of those who cannot or will not see. But to me the first and chief impression of j.a.pan is the physical attractiveness of the people. The j.a.panese are perfectly proportioned; their joints, their hands, their feet, their hips are elegant and fine; and they display to the best advantage these natural graces by a costume which is as beautiful as it is simple. To see these perfect figures walking, running, mounting stairs, bathing, even pulling rickshaws, is to receive a constant stream of shocks of surprise and delight. In so much that, after some weeks in the country, I begin to feel ”a sense of physical repugnance” to Americans and Europeans--a sense which, if I were as uneducated and inexperienced as the writer in the _Argonaut_, I should call ”instinctive,” and make the basis of a campaign of race-hatred. The misfortune is that the j.a.panese abandon their own dress when they go abroad. And in European dress, which they do not understand, and which conceals their bodies, they are apt to look mean and vulgar. Similarly, in European dress, they lose their own perfect manners and mis-acquire the worst of the West. So that there may be some excuse for feeling ”repugnance” to the j.a.panese abroad, though, of course, it is merely absurd and barbarous to base upon such superficial distaste a policy of persecution and insult.
If we turn from the body to the mind and the spirit, the j.a.panese show themselves in no respect inferior, and in some important respects superior, to the Americans. New though they are to the whole mental att.i.tude which underlies science and its applications, they have already, in half a century, produced physicians, surgeons, pathologists, engineers who can hold their own with the best of Europe and America.
All that the West can do in this, its own special sphere, the j.a.panese, late-comers though they be, are showing that they can do too. In particular, to apply the only test which the Western nations seem really to accept, they can build s.h.i.+ps, train men, organise a campaign, and beat a great Western Power at the West's own game of slaughter. But all this, of science and armaments, big though it bulks in our imagination, is secondary and subordinate in a true estimate of civilisation. The great claim the j.a.panese may make, as I began by saying, is that they have known how to live; and they have proved that by the only test--by the way they have reflected life.
j.a.panese literature and art may not be as great as that of Europe; but it exists, whereas that of America and all the new countries is yet to seek. While Europe was still plunged in the darkest of the dark ages, j.a.panese poets were already producing songs in exquisite response to the beauty of nature, the pa.s.sion and pathos of human life. From the seventh century on, their painting and their sculpture was reflecting in tender and gracious forms the mysteries of their faith. Their literature and their art changed its content and its form with the centuries, but it continued without a break, in a stream of genuine inspiration, down to the time when the West forced open the doors of j.a.pan to the world. From that moment, under the new influences, it has sickened and declined. But what a record! And a record that is also an incontrovertible proof that the j.a.panese belong to the civilised nations--the nations that can live and express life.
But perhaps this test may be rejected. Morals, it may be urged, is the touchstone of civilisation, not art. Well, take morals. The question is a large one; but, summarily, where do the j.a.panese fail, as compared with the Western nations? Is patriotism the standard? In this respect what nation can compete with them? Is it courage? What people are braver? Is it industry? Who is more industrious? It is their very industry that has aroused the jealous fears of the Californians. Is it family life? Where, outside the East, is found such solidarity as in j.a.pan? Is it s.e.xual purity? On that point, what Western nation can hold up its head? Is it honesty? What of the honesty of the West? No; no Westerner, knowing the facts, could for a moment maintain that, all round and on the whole, the morals of the j.a.panese are inferior to those of Europe or America. It would probably be easier to maintain the opposite. Judged by every real test the j.a.panese civilisation is not lower, it is higher than that of any of the new countries who refuse to permit the j.a.panese to live among them.
That, I admit, does not settle the question. Competent and impartial men like Admiral Mahan, who would admit all that I have urged, still maintain that the j.a.panese ought not to be allowed to settle in the West. This conclusion I do not now discuss. The point I wish to make is that the question can never be fairly faced, in a dry light, and with reference only to the simple facts, until the prejudice is broken up and destroyed that the j.a.panese, and all other Orientals, are ”inferior”
races. It is this prejudice which distorts all the facts and all the values, which makes Californians and British Columbians and Australians sheerly unreasonable, and causes them to jump at one argument after another, each more fallacious than the last, to defend an att.i.tude which at bottom is nothing but the childish and ignorant hatred of the uncultivated man for everything strange. If the j.a.panese had had white skins, should we ever have heard of the economic argument? And should we ever have been presented with that new s.h.i.+bboleth ”una.s.similable”?
VII
HOME
Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London! What a crescendo of life! What a quickening of the flow! What a gathering intensity! ”Whatever else we may think of the West,” I said to the young French artist, ”it is, at any rate, the centre of life.” ”Yes,” he replied, ”but the curious thing is that that Life produces only Death. Dead things, and dead people.” I reflected. Yes! The _things_ certainly were dead. Look at the Louvre!
Look at the Madeleine! Look at any of the streets! Machine-men had made it all, not human souls. The men were dead, then, too? ”Certainly!” he insisted. ”Their works are a proof. Where there is life there is art.
And there is no art in the modern world--neither in the East nor in the West.” ”Then what is this that looks like Life?” I said, looking at the roaring streets. He shrugged his shoulders and said, ”Steam.”
With that in my mind, I crossed to England, and forgot criticism and speculation in the gleam of the white cliffs, in the trim hedgerows and fields, in the sound of English voices and the sight of English faces.
In London it was the same. The bright-cheeked messenger boys, the discreetly swaggering chauffeurs, the quiet, competent young men in City offices who rea.s.sured me about my baggage, the autumn sun on the maze of misty streets, the vast picturesqueness of London, its beauty as of a mountain or the sea, fairly carried me off my feet. And pa.s.sing St.