Chapter 17

The development of Japanese literature likewise conspicuously reflects the ruling ideas of the social order, and reveals the dependence of literary taste on the order. As in other aspects in Japanese æsthetic development, so in this do we see marked lack of balance. "It is wonderful what felicity of phrase, melody of versification, and true sentiment can be compressed within the narrow limits (of the Tanka). In their way nothing can be more perfect than some of these little poems."[U] The deficiencies of Japanese poetry have been remarked by the foreigners most competent to judge. The following general characterization from the volume just quoted merits attention.

"Narrow in its scope and resources, it is chiefly remarkable for its limitations--for what it has not, rather than what it has. In the first place there are no long poems. There is nothing which even remotely resembles an epic--no Iliad or Divina Commedia--not even a Nibelungen Lied or Chevy Chase. Indeed, narrative poems of any kind are short and very few, the only ones which I have met with being two or three ballads of a sentimental cast. Didactic, philosophical, political, and satirical poems are also conspicuously absent. The Japanese muse does not meddle with such subjects, and it is doubtful whether, if it did, the native Pegasus possesses sufficient staying power for them to be dealt with adequately. For dramatic poetry we have to wait until the fourteenth century. Even then there are no complete dramatic poems, but only dramas containing a certain poetical element.

"Japanese poetry is, in short, confined to lyrics, and what, for want of a better word, may be called epigrams. It is primarily an expression of emotion. We have amatory verse poems of longing for home and absent dear ones, praise of love and wine, elegies on the dead, laments over the uncertainty of life. A chief place is given to the seasons, the sound of purling streams, the snow of Mount Fuji, waves breaking on the beach, seaweed drifting to the shore, the song of birds, the hum of insects, even the croaking of frogs, the leaping of trout in a mountain stream, the young shoots of fern in spring, the belling of deer in autumn, the red tints of the maple, the moon, flowers, rain, wind, mist; these are among the favorite subjects which the Japanese poets delight to dwell upon. If we add some courtly and patriotic effusions, a vast number of conceits more or less pretty, and a very few poems of a religious cast, the enumeration is tolerably complete. But, as Mr. Chamberlain has observed, there are curious omissions. War songs--strange to say--are almost wholly absent. Fighting and bloodshed are apparently not considered fit themes for poetry."[V]

The drama and the novel have both achieved considerable development, yet judged from Occidental standards, they are comparatively weak and insipid. They, of course, conspicuously reflect the characteristics of the social order to which they belong. Critics call repeated attention to the lack of sublimity in Japanese literature, and ascribe it to their inherent race nature. While the lack of sublimity in Japanese scenery may in fact account for the characteristic in question, still a more conclusive explanation would seem to be that in the older social order man, as such, was not known. The hidden glories of the soul, its temptations and struggles, its defects and victories, could not be the themes of a literature arising in a completely communal social order, even though it possessed individualism of the Buddhistic type.[W] These are the themes that give Western literature--poetic, dramatic, and narrative--its opportunity for sustained power and sublimity. They portray the inner life of the spirit.

The poverty of poetic form is another point of Western criticism. Mr. Aston has shown how this poverty is directly due to the phonetic characteristics of the language. Diversities of both rhyme and rhythm are practically excluded from Japanese poetry by the nature of the language. And this in turn has led to the "preference of the national genius for short poems." But language is manifestly the combined product of linguistic heredity and the social order, and can in no sense be ascribed to inherent race nature. Thus directly are social heredity and social order determinative of the literary characteristics and æsthetic tastes of a nation.

Even more manifestly may Japanese architectural development be traced to the social heredity derived from China and India. The needs of the developing internal civilization have determined its external manifestation. So far as Japanese differs from Chinese architecture, it may be attributed to Japan's isolation, to the different demands of her social order, to the difference of accessible building materials, and to the different social heredity handed down from prehistoric times. That the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese architecture are due to the inherent race nature cannot for a moment be admitted.

We conclude that the Japanese are not possessed of a unique and inherent æsthetic taste. In some respects they are as certainly ahead of the Occidental as they are behind him in other respects. But this, too, is a matter of social development and social heredity, rather than of inherent race character, of brain structure. If æsthetic nature were a matter of inherited brain structure, it would be impossible to account for rapid fluctuations in æsthetic judgment, for the great inequality of æsthetic development in the different departments of life, or for the ease of acquiring the æsthetic development of alien races.[X]

XVI

MEMORY--IMITATION

The differences which separate the Oriental from the Occidental mind are infinitesimal as compared with the likenesses which unite them. This is a fact that needs to be emphasized, for many writers on Japan seem to ignore it. They marvel at the differences. The real marvel is that the differences are so few and so superficial. The Japanese are a race whose ancestors were separated from their early home nearly three thousand years ago; during this period they have been absolutely prevented from intermarriage with the parent stock. Furthermore, that original stock was not the Indo-European race. And no one has ventured to suggest how long before the migration of the ancestors of the Japanese to Japan their ancestors parted from those who finally became the progenitors of modern Occidental peoples. For thousands of years, certainly, the Japanese and Anglo-Saxon races have had no ancestry in common. Yet so similar is the entire structure and working of their minds that the psychological textbooks of the Anglo-Saxon are adopted and perfectly understood by competent psychological students among the Japanese. I once asked a professor of psychology in the Matsuyama Normal School if he had no difficulty in teaching his classes the psychological system of Anglo-Saxon thinkers, if there were not peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon mind which a Japanese could not understand, and if there were not psychological phenomena of the Japanese mind which were ignored in Anglo-Saxon psychological text-books. The very questions surprised him; to each he gave a negative reply. The mental differences that characterize races so dissimilar as the Japanese and the Anglo-Saxon, I venture to repeat, are insignificant as compared with their resemblances.

Our discussions shall have reference, not to those general psychological characteristics which all races have in common, but only to those which may seem to stamp the Japanese people as peculiar. We wish to understand the distinguishing features of the Japanese mind. We wish to know whether they are due to brain structure, to inherent race nature, or whether they are simply the result of education, of social heredity. This is our ever-recurring question.

First, in regard to Japanese brain development. Travelers have often been impressed with the unusual size of the Japanese head. It has sometimes been thought, however, that the size is more apparent than real, and the appearance has been attributed to the relatively short limbs of the people and to the unusual proportion of round heads which one sees everywhere. It may also be due to the shape of the head. But, after all has been said, it remains true that the Japanese head, as related to his body, is unexpectedly large.

Prof. Marsh of Yale University is reported to have said that, on the basis of brain size, the Japanese is the race best fitted to survive in the struggle for existence, or at least in the struggle for pre-eminence.

Statements have been widely circulated to the effect that not only relatively to the body, but even absolutely, the Japanese possess larger brains than the European, but craniological statistics do not verify the assertion. The matter has been somewhat discussed in Japanese magazines of late, to which, through the assistance of a Japanese friend, I am indebted for the following figures. They are given in Japanese measurements, but are, on this account, however, none the less satisfactory for comparative purposes.

According to Dr. Davis, the average European male brain weighs 36,498 momme, and the Australian, 22,413, while the Japanese, according to Dr. Taguchi weighs 36,205. Taking the extremes, the largest English male brain weighs 38,100 momme and the smallest 35,377, whereas the corresponding figures for Japan are 43,919 and 30,304, respectively, showing an astonishing range between extremes. According to Dr. E. Baelz of the Imperial University of Tokyo, the lower classes of Japan have a larger skull circumference than either the middle or upper classes (1.8414, 1.7905, and 1.8051 feet, respectively), and the Ainu (1.8579) exceed the Japanese. From these facts it might almost appear that brain size and civilizational development are in inverse ratio. Were the Japanese brain larger, then, than that of the European, it might plausibly be argued that they are therefore inferior in brain power. This would be in accord with certain of De Quatrefages's investigations. He has shown that negroes born in America have smaller brains, but are intellectually superior to their African brothers. "With them, therefore, intelligence increases, while the cranial capacity diminishes."[Y]

Those who trace racial and civilizational nature to brain development cannot gain much consolation from a comparative statistical study of race brains. De Quatrefages's conclusion is repeatedly forced home: "We must confess that there can be no real relation between the dimension of the cranial capacity and social development."[Z] "The development of the intellectual faculties of man is, to a great extent, independent of the capacity of the cranium and the volume of the brain."[AA]

We may conclude at once, then, that Japanese intellectual peculiarities are in no way due to the size of their brains, but depend rather on their social evolution. Yet it will not be amiss to study in detail the various mental peculiarities of the race, real and supposed, and to note their relation to the social order.

In becoming acquainted with the Japanese and Chinese peoples, an Occidental is much impressed with their powers of memory, and this especially in connection with the written language, the far-famed "Chinese Character," or ideograph. My Chinese dictionary contains over 50,000 different characters. The task of learning them is appalling. How the Japanese or Chinese do it is to us a constant wonder. We assume at once their possession of astonishing memories. We argue that, for hundreds of years, each generation has been developing powers of memory through efforts to conquer this cumbersome contrivance for writing, and that, as a consequence for the nations using this system, there is now prodigious ability to remember.

It is my impression, however, that we greatly overrate these powers. In the first place, few Japanese claim any acquaintance with the entire 50,000 characters; only the educated make any pretense of knowing more than a few hundred, and a vast majority even of learned men do not know more than 10,000 characters. Some Japanese newspapers have undertaken to limit themselves in the use of the ideograph. It is said that between four and five thousand characters suffice for all the ordinary purposes of communication. These are, without doubt, fairly well known to the educated classes. But for the masses, there is need that the pronunciation be placed beside each printed character, before it can be read. Furthermore, we must remember that a Japanese youth gives the best years of his life to the bare memorizing of these symbols.[AB]

Were European or American youth to devote to the study of Chinese the same number of hours each day for the same number of years, I doubt if there would be any conspicuous difference in the results. We should not forget also that some Occidentals manifest astonishing facility in memorizing Chinese characters.

In this connection is the important fact that the social order serves to sift out individuals of marked mnemonic powers and bring them into prominence, while those who are relatively deficient are relegated to the background. The educated class is necessarily composed of those who have good powers of memory. All others fail and are rejected. We see and admire those who succeed; of those who fail we know nothing and we even forget that there are such.

In response to my questions Japanese friends have uniformly assured me that they are not accustomed to think of the Japanese as possessed of better memories than the people of the West. They appear surprised that the question should be raised, and are specially surprised at our high estimate of Japanese ability in this direction.

If, however, we inquire about their powers of memory in connection with daily duties and the ordinary acquisition of knowledge and its retention, my own experience of twelve years, chiefly with the middle and lower classes of society, has left the impression that, while some learn easily and remember well, a large number are exceedingly slow. On the whole, I am inclined to believe that, although the Japanese may be said to have good memories, yet it can hardly be maintained that they conspicuously exceed Occidentals in this respect.

In comparing the Occidental with the Oriental, it is to be remembered that there is not among Occidental nations that attention to bare memorizing which is so conspicuous among the less civilized nations. The astonishing feats performed by the transmitters of ancient poems and religious teachings seem to us incredible. Professor Max Müller says that the voluminous Vedas have been handed down for centuries, unchanged, simply from mouth to mouth by the priesthood. Every progressive race, until it has attained a high development of the art of writing, has manifested similar power of memory. Such power is not, however, inherent; that is to say, it is not due to the innate peculiarity of brain structure, but rather to the nature of the social order which demands such expenditure of time and strength for the maintenance of its own higher life. Through the art of writing Occidental peoples have found a cheaper way of retaining their history and of preserving the products of their poets and religious teachers. Even for the transactions of daily life we have resorted to the constant use of pen and notebook and typewriter, by these devices saving time and strength for other things. As a result, our memories are developed in directions different from those of semi-civilized or primitive man. The differences of memory characterizing different races, then, are for the most part due to differences in the social order and to the nature of the civilization, rather than to the intrinsic and inherited structure of the brain itself.

Since memory is the foundation of all mental operations, we have given to it the first place in the present discussion. And that the Japanese have a fair degree of memory argues well for the prospect of high attainment in other directions. With this in mind, we naturally ask whether they show any unusual proficiency or deficiency in the acquisition of foreign languages? In view of her protracted separation from the languages of other peoples, should we not expect marked deficiency in this respect? On the contrary, however, we find that tens of thousands of Japanese students have acquired a fairly good reading knowledge of English, French, and German. Those few who have had good and sufficient teaching, or who have been abroad and lived in Occidental lands, have in addition secured ready conversational use of the various languages. Indeed, some have contended that since the Japanese learn foreign languages more easily than foreigners learn Japanese, they have greater linguistic powers than the foreigner. It should be borne in mind, however, that in such a comparison, not only are the time required and the proficiency; attained to be considered, but also the inherent difficulty of the language studied and the linguistic helps provided the student.

I have come gradually to the conclusion that the Japanese are neither particularly gifted nor particularly deficient in powers of language acquisition. They rank with Occidental peoples in this respect.

To my mind language affords one of the best possible proofs of the general contention of this volume that the characteristics which distinguish the races are social rather than biological. The reason why the languages of the different races differ is not because the brain-types of the races are different, but only because of the isolated social evolution which the races have experienced. Had it been possible for Japan to maintain throughout the ages perfect and continuous social intercourse with the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon race, while still maintaining biological isolation, _i.e._, perfect freedom from intermarriage, there is no reason to think that two distinct languages so different as English and Japanese would have arisen. The fact that Japanese children can accurately acquire English, and that English or American children can accurately acquire Japanese, proves conclusively that diversities of language do not rest on brain differences and brain heredity, but exclusively on social differences and social heredity.

If this is true, then the argument can easily be extended to all the features that differentiate the civilizations of different races; for the language of any race is, in a sense, the epitome of the civilization of that race. All its ideas, customs, theologies, philosophies, sciences, mythologies; all its characteristic thoughts, conceptions, ideals; all its distinguishing social features, are represented in its language. Indeed, they enter into it as determining factors, and by means of it are transmitted from age to age. This argument is capable of much extension and illustration.

The charge that the Japanese are a nation of imitators has been repeated so often as to become trite, and the words are usually spoken with disdain. Yet, if the truth were fully told, it would be found that, from many points of view, this quality gives reason rather for congratulation. Surely that nation which can best discriminate and imitate has advantage over nations that are so fixed in their self-sufficiency as to be able neither to see that which is advantageous nor to imitate it. In referring to the imitative powers of the Japanese, then, I do not speak in terms of reproach, but rather in those of commendation. "Monkeyism" is not the sort of imitation that has transformed primitive Japan into the Japan of the early or later feudal ages, nor into the Japan of the twentieth century. Bare imitation, without thought, has been relatively slight in Japan. If it has been known at times, those times have been of short duration.

In his introduction to "The Classic Poetry of the Japanese" Professor Chamberlain has so stated the case for the imitative quality of the people that I quote the following:

"The current impression that the Japanese are a nation of imitators is in the main correct. As they copy us to-day, so did they copy the Chinese and Koreans a millennium and a half ago. Religion, philosophy, laws, administration, written characters, all arts but the very simplest, all science, or at least what then went by that name, everything was imported from the neighboring continent; so much so that of all that we are accustomed to term 'Old Japan' scarce one trait in a hundred is really and properly Japanese. Not only are their silk and lacquer not theirs by right of invention, nor their painting (albeit so often praised by European critics for its originality), nor their porcelain, nor their music, but even the larger part of their language consists of mispronounced Chinese; and from the Chinese they have drawn new names for already existing places, and new titles for their ancient Gods."

While the above cannot be disputed in its direct statements, yet I can but feel that it makes, on the whole, a false impression. Were these same tests applied to any European people, what would be the result? Of what European nation may it be said that its art, or method of writing, or architecture, or science, or language even, is "its own by right of invention"? And when we stop to examine the details of the ancient Japanese civilization which is supposed to have been so, slavishly copied from China and India, we shall find that, though the beginnings were indeed imitated, there were also later developments of purely Japanese creation. In some instances the changes were vital.

In examining the practical arts, while we acknowledge that the beginnings of nearly all came from Korea or China, we must also acknowledge that in many important respects. Japan has developed along her own lines. The art of sword-making, for instance, was undoubtedly imported; but who does not know of the superior quality and beauty of Japanese swords, the Damascus blades of the East? So distinct is this Japanese production that it cannot be mistaken for that of any other nation. It has received the impress of the Japanese social order. Its very shape is due to the habit of carrying the sheath in the "obi" or belt.

If we study the home of the laborer, or the instruments in common use, we shall find proof that much more than imitation has been involved.

Were the Japanese mere imitators, how could we explain their architecture, so different from that of China and Korea? How explain the multiplied original ways in which bamboo and straw are used?

For a still closer view of the matter, let us consider the imported ethical and religious codes of the country. In China the emphasis of Confucianism is laid on the duty of filial piety. In Japan the primary emphasis is on loyalty. This single change transformed the entire system and made the so-called Confucianism of Japan distinct from that of China. In Buddhism, imported from India, we find greater changes than Occidental nations have imposed on their religion imported from Palestine. Indeed, so distinct has Japanese Buddhism become that it is sometimes difficult to trace its connections in China and India. And the Buddhistic sects that have sprung up in Japan are more radically diverse and antagonistic to each other and to primitive Buddhism than the denominations of Christianity are to each other and to primitive Christianity.