the epic and the tragic sense of life in japanese literature
Transcript of the epic and the tragic sense of life in japanese literature
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CHAPTER XII. THE EPIC AND THE TRAGIC
EPIC AND TRAGIC VISION
The deepest yearning towards authentic life is expressed both by epic and tragic
poetry. Both in the epic and in tragedy, poets have exerted the greatest efforts to reach
the absolute, to use the capacities of man to their limits. They portray man in his
greatness, in victory or in despair, beyond good and evil. Through this intense use of
man’s efforts, the epic and tragic poets want to explore the depths of truth, to carry to
the end his desperate inquiry into the meaning of life. Without the rational methods of
philosophy, but using all the means of reason and emotion and even the gifts of
prophecy which the gods granted to him, the poet tries to find in the drama of life the
answers for the eternal questions: What is this world? What is life and what is man?
What does man live for? What is truth? Which is the just law and which the correct
behaviour? What is right? Where does man go? What is death?
Epic and tragic vision are the two sides of tragic knowledge: they express man’s
greatness and poverty, strength and weakness. They portray man confronted with a
world like himself, made up of opposites, of contradictory forces that fight against one
another without hope of truce or victory1. Though aware of these contradictions, seeing
the enmity of the world in the light of absolute truth, heroic or tragic man will never
give up his greatness and accept his wretchedness: «Man goes infinitely beyond man.»
Man stands before the world, demanding from the world the things which it cannot give
him, his thirst for the absolute being eternally unquenched.
The wisdom brought by either epic and tragic experience is alike, in spite of the
victory attained in the first and the ruin suffered in the second. Because epic man,
though triumphant, is never content with his victory: his eternal yearning for higher
truth, for seeing deeper into the mysteries of life is in his heroic nature. Thus such
wisdom will be, in the words of Lukács, a wisdom of limits: man finds the limitations of
his nature and life.
1 Lucien Goldmann, «The Tragic Vision: The World», Moderns on Tragedy, ed. Lionel Abel, Fawcett, New York, 1967, p. 294.
Since Greek times epic poetry and tragedy have been considered the two peaks of
aesthetic expression. Aristotle, in his Poetics, was the first to pose with clarity the close
relationship between epic poetry and tragedy: they coincide in so far as both «are an
imitation of serious subjects in a lofty kind of verse»; they differ in that epic poetry is a
narrative made of a variety of episodes with dignity and grandeur, all constructed with
the organic unity of a living being, while tragedy is an imitation of an action that is
serious, has magnitude, and is complete in itself in a dramatic form composed of
incidents arousing pity or fear.
Boileau speaks of the divine greatness of tragedy (hauteur divine) and of the grand
air (un air plus grand encor) of epic poetry. Beyond the differences in form and content,
both epic poetry and tragedy reach the same fundamental knowledge about man. In this
tragic knowledge the attempt to endow life with meaning is the same, only in the issues
do they separate.
THE EPIC AND THE TRAGIC IN EASTERN AND WESTERN THOUGHT
While Western man has attained in epic and tragic genres the summits of his
grandeur, Eastern man never felt the earnestness for such kind of achievement, having
rather channelled his anguish towards the lyric and the mystic planes. Thus, while
Western literature finds in the epic and tragic fields its sublime moments, its greatest
works, Japanese literature is there at its lowest. Why this surprising contrast? It is
through fathoming these deep differences we can reach a better understanding of the
human content in both Japanese and Western literary thought and unearth a host of new
and fertile ideas and reflections on the nature of Eastern and Western civilizations.
Epic and tragic vision have given rise to the greatest Western literary symbols:
Prometheus, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Faust, Siegfried. These symbols spring up from the
wisdom contained in both epic and tragic knowledge – the knowledge that at any
moment the greatest enterprise can fail, and work undertaken stands the risk of not
being achieved. Man’s life, at every moment, is at the mercy of the smallest twist or
chance of fate. Yet in this precarious net of hazards we have to build our hopes.
The East has not the same acute consciousness of this tragic situation, because the
concept of time is different: time is a cyclical and eternally recurrent phenomenon. That
is why there are no great symbols in Eastern literatures. In Japan, probably the greatest
tragic symbol is Yoshitsune; but even Yoshitsune, though lively evoked in the
mediaeval chronicles and tales created by popular imagination, was never given the
stature of a great literary symbol, which could only be done by a great work of art.
THE EPIC POEM AND TRAGEDY AS EXPRESSIONS OF ACTION
Epic poetry and tragedy are essentially expressions of action: the first expresses
action in progress placed in the remoteness of the past; tragedy represents action real
and present. The spirit of epic poetry, writes Augustus von Schlegel, is clear self-
possession, while the essence of tragic representation is earnestness in the highest
degree2.
Both in epic poetry and in tragedy there is tension. In epic poetry, man is exalted
above reality; the hero dominates the world; his action creates a new order of things
which is expressed by a harmonious unity that is his will. In tragedy there is a collision
of independent and sovereign powers; reality is split and truth is divided; thus the tragic
hero is destroyed and falls to his doom. Tragic knowledge, Karl Jaspers adds, has two
forms. One uses myth in the epic form in order to accept as real a world of visual
images, and the other uses knowledge that asks searching questions about deity. Each of
these tragic forms in turn provides a way for man to overcome the tragic itself: the epic
is the root of every enlightenment with its philosophic interpretation of the world;
tragedy is the root of revealed religion3.
Both the epic and the tragic world are prolonged into a complex multiplicity of
meanings, heightened into far-reaching symbols, which correspond to the aspirations
and anxieties of a community. Both epic and tragic heroes transcend the plane of the
personal hero. But, though in both the tension touches the extremes of human capacity,
only the epic world constitutes an organic whole, a complete system of values. As
György Lukács says, what in tragedy is symbol becomes reality in the epic: the weight
of the bond of a destiny with the total. Great epic literature is but the utopia concretely
immanent of the historic moment4.
Great tragedy is a high point chosen in the evolution of the community expressed
in the light of historical consciousness. While tragedy originates in a conflict of values,
the epic constitutes a harmonious system of values, an organic whole from which no
particular element can be detached.
2 Augustus W. von Schlegel, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black, third lecture, Dohn, London, 1846.3 Karl Jaspers, Tragedy Is not Enough, trans. Reiche Moore and Karl Deutsch, Gollancz, London, 1953.4 Lukács, La Théorie du Roman, chap. 3.
Collective ideals appear in classic epic and tragedy with the intervention of gods.
Gods, there, are not only social symbols, but also culminating expressions of human
power and spiritual values. In the epic they intervene as messengers of heaven or as
personifications of natural forces to help or to oppose desires of men; in tragedy they
appear bound to the decrees of destiny and struggling against fate, on a plane above
humanity. The constant presence of gods in classic epic and tragedy are evidence of the
elevated quality, the high sphere of thought, and the aspiration to sublimity contained in
these genres.
THE EPIC AND THE TRAGIC IN THE LIGHT OF BUDDHIST AND
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
The tension in the tragic and the epic exaltation in which man overcomes tragedy
itself is unknown in Japanese literature, and alien to Eastern thought. In the East
tolerance and abstention from action are the dominant tones; the path leading to
enlightenment is in neither dominating reality nor splitting it. Enlightenment comes
from the Buddhist dissolution of self in the ocean of reality; not in superseding reality
but in accepting it as it is, in a universal passive communion. The doctrine of the
dharma teaches that all existence is impermanent and without substance. There is no
substratum, no identity, no individual whole that exists separate from the parts. There is
no ego, no soul.
Dogen, the patriarch of Soto Zen, wrote: «To study Buddhism is to study oneself.
To study oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to realize oneself in all things.
To realize oneself in all things is to divest one’s own mind and body.»
From this thought is not far the one expressed by the Japanese philosopher Kitaro
Nishida in A Study of Good: «Our true self is the basic substance of the universe and
when we know the true self we not only unite with the good of mankind, but we merge
with the basic substance of the universe and spiritually unite with the divine mind.»
Impermanence, the transience of human existence is the cause of suffering; there is
sorrow because all things pass away. Life is a stream becoming5. According to the
5 Kenneth Morgan, ed., The Path of the Buddha: Buddhism Interpreted by Buddhists, Ronald Press, New York, 1956. Furthermore, the belief in karma suppresses the sense of individualism, personal responsibility, and the value of action – which are at the very roots of the tragic and the epic. Note the following passage, quoted from Helen McCullough’s translation of Taiheiki (Columbia University Press, 1959, p. 25): «By this Karma-tie from an earlier life [says the warrior guardian of an aristocratic prisoner], this lay monk was chosen before all others to be your guardian. As though not devoid of mercy, I must say to you that your time is at hand; but indeed a person like myself is without power. Many days have I delayed, awaiting tidings of your pardon, but now urgently from the Kanto there has come a
Mahavagga whatever is subject to origination is also subject to destruction. The world
is fiction: only the Buddha is truth, said Prince Shotoku, the founder of Japanese
Buddhism. The world is delusion, everything is void. The voidness, said Nagarjuna, the
greatest of Buddhist philosophers, represents the truth of absolute and supreme
significance.
It must be added that before Buddhism was introduced into Japan early Shintoist
thinking considered man an integral part of the whole, as a «thinking reed», identified
with the other elements and forces of nature. In life, man lost his identity in the vast
bosom of Mother Nature; in death he was dissolved in the vague communion of the
ancestral spirits. Even today the Shinto prayer, according to Japanese authors, aims at
bringing man about unification with the ancestral spirits. In Japan, writes Hideki
Yukawa, climate is benign; nature, fertile, life, easy and pleasant: «There is little need
for adventure either in action or in thought.» All this explains why there are no epic
poems or tragedies in Japanese literature, and why even tragic themes in some passages
of Noh are expressed in lyric form.
The impact of Christian doctrine on European tragic thought should not have had a
very different result from the effects of Buddhism on Japanese aesthetics. Christianity
introduced into the pagan world ideas of humility, peace and non-resistance. This meant
returning good for evil, together with the promise of a life after death in which suffering
and injustice would receive heavenly recompense. All the mundane conflicts would lose
meaning before the terrible problem of the soul’s salvation. With this new knowledge
based on forgiveness and charity, the old Greek tragic questions of sin, guilt, and
revenge disappear. However, the docility of the Christian doctrine did not penetrate
deeply into the heart of Western man. Violence and wars continued to spread. To the old
heritage of grudges borne by man one more was added, the impetus to crusade and fight
in the name of Christ. The tragic was not removed from human life, but the wages of sin
now required new scales and the fight of the soul acquired a new dimension, infinity.
Redemption and condemnation were projected on a plane of eternity; the fight within
man’s inner self became clearer and more desperate, since faith did not come to resolve
the great historical contradictions6.
command to destroy you. Please console yourself by remembering that all things are the results of deeds of previous lives.»6 Richard B. Sewall, «Tragedy and Christianity», The Vision of Tragedy, Yale University Press, 1962, chap. 5.
In these few lines we can see how differently Buddhism and Christianity influenced
the highest aesthetic expressions. Buddhism posed itself on the moral thought and
behaviour of the Japanese people, dominating nearly completely their intellectual life.
Christianity was brought to Europe after the flowering of the Greek and Roman
civilizations. The philosophy of Plato deeply influenced St. Augustine as Aristotle
influenced St. Thomas, and Latin learning has marked the life of the Catholic Church
until today.
Through these differences we can understand how Buddhism influenced the
evolution of Japanese thought and literature as a determining factor, while in the West,
together with the Christian influences, the heritage of Greek and Roman philosophical
and literary thought have influenced the development of literature and art, the weight of
the influences changing with the epochs. This should be kept in mind especially when
we consider literary forms which are more imbued with metaphysical thought, as are the
epic and tragedy7.
(Japanese and Western Literature, 235-239)
7 In his book Tragedy Is Not Enough Karl Jaspers mentions the following instances of tragic knowledge as they were expressed in artistic form:
a) Homer; the Edda and Icelandic sagas; heroic legends of all peoples from Europe to China.b) Greek tragedy: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, all later tragedy being dependent on, or
(through Seneca) inspired by, Greek tragedy.c) Modern tragedy represented by three national figures: Shakespeare, Calderón, Racine.d) Tragedy representing the ideals of German culture: Schiller and Lessing.e) Other poetry such as the Book of Job and several Indic dramas, though the latter are not entirely
tragic.f) Tragic knowledge of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche.Such enumeration depends, of course, on personal taste; one could also add Dante, Camoëns, and Wagner.
CHAPTER XIV. THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE
THE NATURE OF TRAGEDY
Miguel de Unamuno, in his well-known book The Tragic Sense of Life, did not
define clearly what this sense consists of. But he tries to explain it by an anecdote: A
pedant who saw Solon weeping for the death of his son asked him, «Why do you weep?
You know that it avails nothing.» The philosopher answered, «On account of that
precisely, because it avails nothing.» This tragic sense of life, which has behind it a
whole conception of life and the universe and a whole philosophy, «more or less
formulated, more or less conscious», is more pronounced in certain peoples and in
certain men. Unamuno mentions that among these men were Marcus Aurelius, Saint
Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, Leopardi, Vigny, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard.
Suffering is inevitable and there are misfortunes for which there is no consolation –
like the death of a son. This idea is common to Christianity and Buddhism, to both
Eastern and Western thought. But thereafter they separate: while the former accepts
suffering passively, the latter makes every effort to transcend it. In Western thought and
experience suffering is a probation of the great qualities of man and through it man can
elevate himself to higher levels of humanity. Oedipus, after having experienced the most
terrible sorrows of the Greek stage, acquires a magic power of good which spreads a
beneficial influence even after his death. A metaphysical consolation is left by every
great tragic work, says Nietzsche in his The Birth of Tragedy – the thought that life after
all and in spite of the variety of its appearances remains invariably powerful and full of
joy. It is surmounting suffering that makes the greatness of man, brings out his qualities
of courage, loyalty, and love. Even when man is destroyed by irresistible forces of evil
or by a decree of fate, his unbending will standing against adversity shows the freedom
of his mind. Thus from the chaos of the human heart, from the dark world of passion
and mystery, man lifts himself to the luminous consciousness of his condition: by his
sacrifice he redeems the faults of the community, quiets its anguish, and shows it the
road to a new life.
But to surpass suffering is not enough, man’s yearning aims higher – to surpass life
itself. «Man is perishable, but he perishes resisting and yearning for immortality.» This
vital yearning comes from the depth of human nature; there is no rational justification
for it. Reason does not offer a definite consolation to our suffering nor tell us the true
purpose of our life. From the depth of this abyss where sentimental desperation and
rational doubt meet and embrace each other, the tragic sense of life emerges. For
Unamuno the very essence of tragedy is in the combat of life with reason8.
Tragedy expresses essentially the conflict between man and his destiny, a conflict
in which the whole of society is involved, and thence the magnitude of it emerges. The
writing of tragedy itself is the artist’s way of taking action, of measuring himself with
destiny.
Destiny for the individual is represented by the ensemble of events affecting his life
and the profound impression left by those events on his soul; thus the tragic always
expresses a deep crisis between man and his world. Destiny is also in the making of
human nature itself, in the fact that life and death are one. The highest and purest of
human joys are never absolute, because disaster is hidden in the sombre shadow of
every moment.
Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms expresses a tragic quality in the scene of a
woman happily in love who dies giving birth to a child: the culmination of the intense
aspirations of love ends in destruction and despair, and a universal force crushes under
its irresistible power the innocent victim. The impression left by such events decides the
interpretation that man will make of the world and its events, as well as its influencing
the scale of values by which every man directs his life. As everyone’s scale of values is
different and frequently the individual scale of values opposes that of society, a conflict
will ensue, generating suffering and revolt. This conflict is not only between man and
society, but also within man himself, in the form of doubt, fear, and despair. What is
«good» for one man may be «evil» for another and for the society; the violence of this
conflict in its ultimate form may bring a man to ruin and death. Thus, this conflict of
values, which the tragic essentially is, represents an «opposition between to conflicting
goods» imposed by necessity. Eternal necessity and inward liberty are the two poles of
the tragic world – not mere natural necessity, but one which lies beyond the world of
sense in the abyss of infinitude, showing itself as an unfathomable power of destiny,
writes Schlegel.
Tragedy is not a conflict between duty and passion, but between two planes of
existence: one which is held to be of the highest value by the person who acts, and the
8 Miguel de Unamuno, Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida, Espasa Calpe, Buenos Aires, 1919. Unamuno quotes this passage of Étienne de Senancour: «Man is perishable. That is so; but let us perish resisting, and, if nothingness is reserved for us, let us not accept it as if it were just.» Mario J. Valdes, in his book Death in the Literature of Unamuno, notes that in Unamuno’s thought death makes life meaningful and authentic, and thus emphasizes the tragic quality of life.
other held of the highest value by those who do not act. Both planes are opposed and
each one denies the other’s validity9.
THE TRAGIC VISION AND MODERN MAN
This tremendous conflict and the suffering which it brings for the individual opens
his eyes to the arbitrary and changing ways of the world, the unreliability of men, the
inconstancy of human existence: it widens his outlook on life, provokes his search for a
meaning and a goal in life. Through the tragic, man can see the ways which lead to his
greatness and to his liberation. Through the catharsis of the soul he becomes purified of
guilt, fear, and everything that restrained his true sense of humanity.
The tragic vision reflects, of course, the conditions of the time and represents a
certain moment of culture. In Greece, tragedy reflected the opposition between the
values of the family and the values of the state. Some authors contend that after the
Greeks the tragic sense of life has been weakening, that the only modern tragedies are
tragedies about intellectuals – Hamlet and Faust –, tragedies of inaction: the intellectual,
instead of acting, just reasons.
Today’s society is too much divided, confused, and perplexed before a multiplicity
of possible ways and under a mass of events, sometimes catastrophic, provocative of
fear and awful suffering, but those in which we cannot see the unity and hidden
intention which the Greeks named fate.
We cannot see unity in the events of the modern world because the flux of things is
too rapid. No generation has lived in a world so impermanent as ours. And this lack of
permanence is also tragic. Death was before us, the ultimate cause that made life tragic.
Today the murder story and the scorn for humanity, exemplified in the cruelties of
modern political persecutions and technological wars, have numbed, by their excesses,
the horror of death. Man is becoming blunt to tragedy. Thus we risk losing the clear
conscience of human dignity, the sense of responsibility and the desire for freedom
which are present in tragedy.
THE TRAGIC AND THE COMIC
The sense of the tragic also penetrates comedy; without it comedy loses heart,
becomes brittle, it has animation but no life. Without the recognition of the truths of
9 Lionel Abel, ed., Moderns on Tragedy, Fawcett, New York, 1967.
comedy, tragedy becomes bleak and intolerable10. In both tragedy and comedy there is a
subversive attitude towards the accepted values and established order. They can only
exist when there is liberty.
As earnestness in highest degree is the essence of tragic representation, Augustus
von Schlegel writes, so is sport the essence of the comic: the characters and the
situations are worked up into a comic picture of real life and the frame of the society
and its ideals are fantastically painted in laughable colours. The disposition to mirth
spreads a pleasant feeling of happiness and joy and the critical spirit is sharpened.
Both tragedy and comedy draw their inspiration from the disorder and
disharmonies of the world, the former expressing them with earnestness and rising
moral indignation, the latter with detachment and exploration of their contradictions,
their ludicrous, laughable aspects.
In this emphasizing the poles of contradiction of man’s existence, this exploring the
shocking disharmonies of the world, both tragedy and comedy raise a challenge to the
conditions laid for man by the gods. Both tragedy and comedy are essentially
subversive.
THE TRAGIC CONFLICT IN EASTERN AND WESTERN THOUGHT
It is in the tragic conflict, in the rebellion against destiny expressed in extremes of
tension, that the fundamental difference between Western and Eastern thought lies.
Eastern thought found a plane of harmony between man and the universe. The ideal of
serenity of mind, of composure and restraint in action, has opened the way to quiet
contentment and spiritual peace. Experience has taught man to be superior to the
sufferings and horrors of life. Literature, for many centuries, has been impregnated with
this wisdom – more preoccupied with ideals of serenity and conservation of values,
avoiding the conflicts which originate the great crisis of the soul and consequent
destruction of values.
It is true that underneath the tragic lies a deep imperceptible harmony. Western man
had to dramatize his inner contradictions in order to throw the fullest light on the
sources of his anxiety and find spiritual rest. Eastern man could attain inner rest and
harmony with the world through meditation. Religion helps him to attain serenity; in
Buddhism there is no passion and no sacrifice of a god for the sake of man, as in
Christianity.
10 Richard B. Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy, Yale University Press, 1962, p. 1.
The Buddhist philosophy which deeply impregnates Japanese literature teaches that
the world is merely an illusion and proclaims as a highest ideal the escape from life and
even from the human condition itself. While Christianity embodies the idea of God
within a man and teaches the reintegration of an immortal soul into resurrected flesh,
Buddhism proclaims as its supreme ideal the annihilation of everything that is human,
the dissolution of man into naught. From the universal reality of suffering man can only
escape after a long period of purification – which might take millions of years and
efforts through successive reincarnations – by ascending into nothingness. One life is
therefore only a brief and transitory stage, and before such a perspective it seems
ludicrous to fight against fate. Man has to resign himself to suffering, and as the world
is illusory it does not seem important to change it by action. Thus Buddhism has
soothed the qualities of active courage, virile initiative and heroism. Everything is
mutable and unseizable, even truth, and the purest beauty is the most ephemeral.
We can see these principles exemplified in the two most outstanding forms of
Japanese drama: in the Noh plays and in the plays of Chikamatsu. A parallel between
Noh and Greek tragedy has never been made. It will be enough here to point out how
different is the spirit of the two11.
We can find in Noh the six constituent elements indicated by Aristotle for the
Greek tragedy: spectacle, melody, diction, character, thought, and plot. Aristotle
considered plot the very soul of tragedy. Plot in Noh is certainly not essential, but
neither is what Schopenhauer designated «character revelation» (the latent disposition
in the nature of a character).
In Noh, like in Greek tragedy, we have a chorus limited to the passive role of
commenting on the incidents and lamenting the misfortunes of the protagonist in a calm
attitude of lyrical meditation over the whole. This augments the dramatic rhythm,
conveys lyrically the tragic idea, and strengthens the unity of the play. If it is true,
though, that Greek tragedy sprang from the tragic chorus and was originally only chorus
(as Nietzsche affirms), it is certain that Noh sprang from dance. A Noh chorus sits
motionless, while a Greek tragedy’s chorus dances at certain passages. In some Greek
tragedies, like Medea and Antigone, the chorus, by changing sides, increases the
dramatic momentum.
There is a quality of artistic purity and simplicity which is common to Noh and to
Greek tragedy, especially before Sophocles added the third actor and introduced
11 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Athenean, New York, 1968, p. 163 ff.
scenery. Noël Peri compared the role of the two main actors in Noh, the shite and the
waki, to the protagonist and deuteragonist of the Greek theatre12.
Suffering, guilt, expiation, and salvation take a prominent part in both these
theatrical forms, but there is a main difference in the nature of thought and emotion:
Noh develops no conflict; everything happens on the lyrical plane. Thus, Noh can be
called lyrical drama. We can see this difference clearly in comparing a scene in
Antigone, which Schlegel considered the «perfect exemplar of tragedy», with a scene in
the Noh drama Kagetsu. In Antigone, Haemon, resentful of his father Creon because he
condemned to death his bride Antigone, accuses him in hard words: «You desecrate by
trampling on Heaven’s honour.» At the end of the play, we are told, Haemon spits at his
father’s face and draws his sword against him in an outburst of rage. Sophocles wants to
overwhelm the audience with terror by a display of harrowing emotion.
Kagetsu is the story of a father from whom his young son was stolen. After a long
search, the father finds his son and they face each other for the first time after many
years of painful separation. The moment is of high, breathless emotion. How are they
going to express this emotion, by falling into each other’s arms? That would be
inconceivable by Japanese mediaeval rules of education which command restraint and
the hiding of inner feelings. Such a display would be incompatible with Noh technique.
The solution is a typical Japanese one: a third character in the play breaks the height of
emotion with this dryly witty question: «How does it happen that you, being a priest,
have got a son?» In these two images we can see the ocean that separates Western and
Eastern ways of expressing the heart of man.
The other Japanese plays which naturally suggest a parallel with Western tragedy
are those of Chikamatsu. Donald Keene holds that Chikamatsu’s plays are «the first
mature tragedies written about the common man»13. Strictly, they cannot be considered
tragedies, though in many passages they show a truly tragic sense of life. Chikamatsu is
a romantic; his emotive temperament, like an impetuous river, breaks all the barriers set
by Japanese tradition and education.
His masterpiece is the Love Suicide of Amijima, which is an example of a typical
Japanese play if we want to judge it by Western standards. The story can be summed up
thus: Jihei, a paper dealer, married Osan and became the father of two children. He was
passionately in love with the prostitute Koharu and made a suicide pact with her. Jihei’s
12 H. D. Kitto, Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study, Doubleday, New York, 1954.13 Donald Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 1.
brother and wife try to sever the relationship. In consequence Koharu breaks with Jihei,
who feels himself betrayed by her. Osan, the wife, fearing that Koharu would kill
herself on account of the letter she wrote imploring her to leave her husband, confesses
this to Jihei and decides to pawn her best kimonos to redeem Koharu from the brothel,
before she can be redeemed by Jihei’s rival, a rich man, whom Koharu hates. In the
meanwhile Osan’s father, an obstinate, narrow-minded old man, indignant with Jihei’s
liaison comes to take Osan away with him, in spite of the touching scene of his
grandchildren crying for their mother. Jihei, torn between pity for his wife and children
and his passion for Koharu, runs away with the prostitute. They decide to die in separate
places because they do not want people to think they committed a love suicide. He kills
her near the river (the narrator gives a detailed description of her painful agony). Then
Jihei kills himself on a nearby mountain. The murmur of prayers comes from the
temple. They die in the hope of being reborn on the same lotus, of climbing into the
Western Paradise to become a buddha.
Love Suicide of Amijima was written for the puppet theatre and built on the peculiar
social realities of the Osaka gay quarters at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Chikamatsu has written fourteen plays classified as «love-suicide pieces», though in
some of these the suicide is not consummated. In most of these plays the protagonist is a
prostitute of the gay quarters of Osaka. Love Suicide of Amijima is embellished by
Chikamatsu with a religious aura. The title of the play itself suggests that the lovers will
be rewarded or saved by Heaven. It is interesting to note the observation of Donald
Shively that there is a strong trend towards the convention of the three unities in
Chikamatsu’s domestic plays, though it did not become a consciously sought
convention in the Japanese theatre.
Chikamatsu develops a particular concept of honour concerning his amorous
merchants and prostitutes: they committed suicide for love as the samurai did for the
sake of their lord. The concept of honour and sacrifice of the aristocratic class was
transferred to the new rising bourgeoisie. Thus Chikamatsu kept the illicit relations of
the lovers from seeming immoral, just as he kept suicides from being tragedies14.
Chikamatsu’s heroes are sacrificed to the morals of the society without any protest
or rebellion. Both Koharu and Jihei felt guilty about Jihei’s wife and children,
convinced as they were of the righteousness of social laws. They attributed their
misfortune to Buddhist predestination, to their karma. They accepted fate with the
14 Donald H. Shively, The Love Suicide at Amijima, Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 26.
evasive hope that their love and sacrifice would bring them to Buddhist Paradise. In
Chikamatsu’s suicide plays nobody is condemned; there is no place to expiate sins nor
to redeem guilt, because death is a means to salvation.
The conflict in the play is represented by Jihei’s duty towards his wife, Osan, and
children on the one hand, and his love for Koharu on the other. But the author does not
try to exhaust all the possible contradictions of the conflict; on the contrary, Osan and
Koharu act towards each other with extreme kindness and even self-sacrifice. Even in
the suicide the lovers are careful not to offend the social rules, by the expedient of dying
in different places.
There is in this play of Chikamatsu deep human emotion and delicate sensibility,
even though marred sometimes by his usual romantic excesses. But it never rises to the
force of tragedy: the characters, whose personality is not depicted very distinctly, never
rise above themselves, never attain that state of consciousness which impels man to
fight his destiny and become «a symbol of the ultimate relationship between man and
his fate».
CHARACTERISTIC JAPANESE ELEMENTS OF THE TRAGIC:
COMPASSION AND EVANESCENCE
In the transience of life and inconstancy of the world, Japanese literature has found
the main source of humanism. This humanism is expressed mainly by a sentiment of
compassion towards all living beings. Kindness to animals and even to inanimate
objects, the passing of time and the repetition of the seasons bringing death and rebirth
spreads a deep note of sadness in poetry, in the diary, in the novel. The moon, the
blossoms, the snow are, as we saw, a constant leitmotif. Sadness of human beings (sabi)
and sadness of things (mono no aware) is a kind of cosmic solidarity, flowing in a
profound emotion but generally declared in words which suggest restrained feelings,
timorous of falling into sentimentality. Pathos therefore is not grief, misery, or despair;
it is gentle, calm, passive, and refined. Refinement is the main characteristic of Japanese
beauty15. The artists avoid the expression of strong emotions and often refuse to get
interested in crude realities or even in people who work in low professions or are badly
dressed.
Zeami ranks imitation of all objects, whatever they may be, as the first rule of his
theory of art. He wrote that the actor can imitate in detail the poetic figure of a wood-
15 Ueda, Literary and Art Theories in Japan, p. 222.
cutter, a grass-mower, a charcoal-burner, a salt-water drawer, but not the people of
meaner occupations. Toraaki Okura confirms that when an actor performs a beggar’s or
a peasant’s role, he cannot appear in dirty rags: «The actor would look filthy if, when
imitating a man of low class, he wore a tattered garment on the stage.» Norinaga
Motoori expressed the same idea when he said that seeing a man suffer from disaster
gives a very different impression depending upon whether he is a noble courtier or a
lowly person: «Our sympathy would be particularly deep if we see a noble person
overwhelmed by disaster.»
In its evolution, Noh acting always avoided reproducing shabbiness or poverty. For
instance, the role of a peasant or a beggar would never be played by an actor in filthy
rags. This was never allowed by the elegant harmony of the Noh. By these limitations,
Zeami tried to elevate stylization and artistic symbolism. Thus he introduced the
concept of yugen (graceful, elegant beauty), suggested by Zeami’s image: a swan with a
flower in its bill. But the seed for superb yugen flowers lies not in delicate beauty, but in
deep, sombre beauty of tragic characters – the spirits of haunting women (such as Aoi
and Rokujo), women taken away by a ghost (Yugao), or women possessed by a
supernatural being (Ukifune). Thus, dramatic treatment never goes as far as the
development of the tragic content of the characters; it only projects the light of their
tragic fate.
AESTHETICISM AND DEHUMANIZATION
Japanese mediaeval theories required the hiding of human feelings; they proposed,
affirms Makoto Ueda, a complete dehumanization of the artist in his creative activity.
They advocate not only detachment but dissolution of the artist as a man. The artist
must dissolve completely into nature: it is not enough to admire the bamboo, one must
become a bamboo.
The tendency to dissolve into nature gradually weakens the individual quality of
human emotions and consequently their intrinsic value. Takeshi Umehara has made an
interesting study on the evolution of the expressions of Buddha as represented by
Japanese sculptors: while the social customs mould an impassive type of man, who
suppresses, under an armour of self-discipline, all exterior signs of emotion, Buddha’s
images in successive epochs change in their attitude towards man – from a sitting
position Buddha stands up, opens his arms, takes a step towards the believer.
Chamberlain, dispraising the traditional rigidity of Japanese life, speaks of the
court noble sitting with «his countenance impassable, his few gestures stiff as the starch
of his marvellous robes, his whole being hedged round with the prescription of an
elaborate and rigid etiquette», to this adding the despotism of the government, spies
swarming everywhere, solemn ceremonies making up for pleasures, the whole life
«swathed in formalism like a mummy in its grave-clothes»16.
This is an obvious exaggeration. It should not be forgotten that Japanese education
and social manners tended to form a stern character by teaching maintenance of a serene
composure and a tranquil mind. Confucianism helped to encourage people to subdue
their emotions, not to show anger or sorrow, to avoid tears. Self-control, among the
Japanese, provokes respect. Mental training, another form of self-control, is taught by
Zen, and practised through calligraphy, tea ceremony, flower arrangement, waterfall
ablution, fasting, and other forms of systematic training17.
The emphasis on balanced tranquillity of mind has cultivated among the Japanese a
particular ability to meet difficult situations and developed the virtue of facing any
difficulty with calmness and courage.
This inner harmony and the tendency to reach a complete union between man and
nature, which at his highest produces a feeling of serene happiness, has led to the
general appreciation of beauty and the mass cultivation of fine arts. The feeling for
beauty is apparent in every aspect of Japanese life.
This sense of beauty permeates the style of social life, through elaborate forms of
propriety and courtesy. Under these forms of human relationship lies a tendency to
respect the feelings of other men, in which Japanese thinkers have seen an influence of
Buddhist benevolence and compassion.
But even in the sophistication of the rules of etiquette, commonly practised by all
classes, we can see the predominant bend to aestheticism. This tendency has even been
pointed out in the expression of the Japanese language.
Tagore wrote that aestheticism is the Japanese dharma, or in Masaaki Kosaka’s
words, «aestheticism constitutes the core of the Japanese mind».
A SPECIAL AESTHETIC VOCABULARY
16 Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese, Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, 5th
ed., Murray, London, 1905, p. 196.17 Hideo Kishimoto, «Some Japanese Cultural Traits and Religions», The Japanese Mind, ed. Charles Moore.
The suppression of deep emotion in art brought subdued feelings, discrete shades
of expression, and gentle, modest attitudes for which the writers found particular words:
wabi, sabi, karumi, shiori, shibui, yugen. The definition of these terms is extremely
vague, and every writer delights in adding new shades of meaning to them. Wabi could
be translated, for instance, as «beauty in poverty» or «splendid poverty»; Daisetsu
Suzuki defines if philosophically as «aloofness in the middle of multiplicities». Sabi
expresses the loneliness of man when confronted by the joyous beauty of nature, a
resigned solitude, a kind of contented sorrow. Karumi designates a combination of
surface simplicity and subtle contentment. In shiori, the feeling of loneliness emanated
from a poem is linked with style. Shibui means hidden refinement, austere beauty.
Yugen designates that beauty which at its highest point vanishes and fades, or «elegance,
calm profundity mixed with a feeling of evanescence», writes Zeami, who suggested it
by an image of blossoms on a crag. All this aesthetic vocabulary, for which it is
impossible to give definitions, emphasizes reserve, understatement, austere beauty, and
refined modesty18.
AESTHETICISM IN JAPANESE LIFE: THE FLORAL ART AND THE ART OF
TEA
Aestheticism is not only predominant in Japanese literature but also in Japanese
life. The outstanding examples are the floral art and the art of tea.
One could almost say that floral art (ikebana) provided a centre of daily life, writes
Makodo Ueda referring to the Japanese home. One of the main theorists of floral art,
Senno, in his essay Senden Sho (How to Arrange Ten-Thousand Flowers, 1542), insists
on the same ideas of simplicity and elegant sobriety. «With a spray of flowers, a bit of
water, one can evoke the vastness of rivers and mountains.» In the season of
chrysanthemums and gentians, he advises, flower arrangement should suggest the
desolation of a withered winter moor: thus flowers are not used for beauty, but for
inspiring an austere feeling of loneliness and desolation, for bringing us into the sad
atmosphere of winter, into the cycle of the seasons, into the universe. Senno goes as far
as indicating the proper flower arrangement for a war camp – crooked plants, branches
with torn leaves or dead branches should be avoided: he advises only «victory» plants.
18 Senichi Hisamatsu, The Vocabulary of Japanese Literary Aesthetics, Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Tokyo, 1963, p. 58.
The arrangement of flowers represents the innermost essence of nature, brings the artist
into cosmic truth and can open the way to enlightenment.
In the art of tea, cha-no-yu, the point of modesty is still more emphasized. Rikyu
(1522-1591), the greatest theorist of this art, taught that in the tearoom the ideal state of
mind is one of modesty and poverty, of simplicity that brings calm, complete inner
peace, and purity of a mind emptied of all earthly things. He stressed modesty so much
that he once broke the handle of a pot to make it look poor, for he preferred the
imperfect to the perfect.
As Japanese moved more towards aestheticism and quasi mysticism, they became
disinterested in the world of men and human actions, observes Tokoku Kitamura: «That
is why literature excels in elegance and refinement and has been deficient in seriousness
and sublimity; there is too much lyricism but no epic, no tragedy, nor comedy.»
RESTRAINT OF HUMAN EMOTIONS AND PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF
HUMOUR
To the predominant aesthetic trend of all Japanese literature can be attributed that
particular Asiatic skill for the delicate shades, the subtlety and refinement which finds
its culmination in extremely synthetic forms of poetry, in aristocratic dilettantism and
remoteness from coarse realities; on the other hand, we find the most exacerbated
artistic expressions of cruelty. In these two extremes, there is frequently an absence of
human warmth, of an uninhibited expression of human values and profound human
relationships, a lack of that human love that gives a living grandeur to the major
novelists of the nineteenth century in England, in France, in Germany and above all in
Russia. When we look at the panorama of Japanese literature we miss this generous
flow of human love. This does not mean that by nature the Japanese is less generous or
less ardent than his Western brother; but he is certainly more restrained, and is forced by
an education of many centuries to hide his feelings, to repress his emotions. The general
absence of individualism explains the lack of strong and original fictional characters.
The Japanese atmosphere is built in order to help this work of impersonalization: the
Japanese house is conceived to inspire calm and spiritual serenity with its vacant spaces
in which the only personal touch is represented by a small pot of flowers and a painting
hanging in the tokonoma; the flimsy paper doors impose a constant control of
movements, impede physical outbursts, as well as oblige a communal living in which
solitary thinking and concentration become impossible. There is little or no furniture.
Family life does not leave on the home the impress of their particular habits or distinct
needs, generations having passed there without leaving a sign of their individual
affirmation. Between the placid evenness of the plain and the volcanic explosion of the
summit, there is repression of all manifestations: that «unspeakable absence of
sympathy» which made Lafcadio Hearn suffer so much and pains every foreigner in
Japan.
This repression of human emotion is reflected in various aspects of Japanese
literature. We spoke of the restrained manifestations of human affection. But it is also
evident in the quality of irony and social satire. Here, again, we find the subdued
shades, the veiled allusions, the subtle traits of distinct Japanese wit: a kind of wit so
particular and so original that it brought into existence a peculiar form of humorous
verse, the senryu. There is a sharp intellectual wit in Sei Shonagon, a tender, kind wit in
Soseki Natsume, a tolerant wit, sympathetic with men’s folly in Masuji Ibuse. But these
never go beyond soft tints and brief allusions. There is no Japanese work built on comic
strength, sailing freely on the gushing stream of humour. (Even Shank’s Mare, so fertile
in anecdote and humorous incident is weak in construction and so artistically aimless
that it sometimes becomes tiring and repetitive.) At the other extreme, there is the
grotesque, in which Japanese literature is particularly rich. The evident proof of these
limitations is the absence of comedy and tragedy19.
LACK OF COMEDY
As we have seen, Japanese literature has no tragedy. Neither does it have what we
call comedy. There is a broad form of farce, kyogen, which, in Chamberlain’s words, is
a mere outline sketch «of some little drollery». The literary value of these sketches is
little or none; they don’t deserve a place of their own in literature. The kyogen are
played in the intermission between Noh plays in order to relieve tension. Kyogen
players display a highly elaborated art of mime. The aristocratic and sophisticated
action of the actors lessens the comic salt, as the laughter it provokes, according to
Toraaki Okura, must never destroy the elegant and noble austere mood of the Noh.
In the field of comedy, a glaring example is the lack of comic works on triangular
themes of love, which has inspired some of the best Western comedies and novels,
especially in France. In Japan the sentiment of love is contained in reasonable limits,
both in its serious and comic aspects. Here, as in painting all human feelings, the
19 Nakamura, Japanese Fiction in the Meiji Era, p. 15.
Japanese writer uses only medium tints. When the writer does decide on the strong
colours, he goes into the bloody extremes of double suicide – so frequent in some
epochs that it received a particular designation, shinju (sincerity of heart). The nihilist
tendency, so strongly marked through influences of Buddhist thought, did not allow the
rise of tragedy. The limitations originating in social conduct and the inclination to
dissolve the self into nature are the main explanation for the serious lack of comedy and
tragedy, which Japanese thinkers were the first to point out.
JAPANESE AND WESTERN HUMANISM
We have stressed the tendency to restrain emotion, which has influenced the
evolution of Japanese literature since a warrior class took power and imposed their stoic
morality. Before that, Heian literature is impressively free and outspoken compared with
that which came after it. The Tale of Genji is imbued with a deep feeling of Buddhist
humanism; suffering flows there like a sombre, deep river on whose still-water banks
the lotuses of compassion bloom. With the decadence of the samurai class in the
Genroku era, the best writers preferred the lively aspects of the social scene to the
traditional, aristocratic ones; they become interested not only in the rising merchant
class but also in the poor people. Thus a new breath of humanism blew into Japanese
literature.
But it was with the opening of Japanese literature to Western influences that its
writers became conscious of a new value of man and began to express man’s problems
with revolutionary enthusiasm. Toson Shimazaki’s Hakai (The Breaking of the
Commandment, 1906) is the first important novel inspired by deep humanist intention.
It is the story of a young teacher belonging to the caste of the Eta, who were proscribed
from Japanese society. Ushimatsu, the teacher, confesses his shameful origin against his
father’s command. Thus he purified himself of lies and hypocrisy and challenged
society, proclaiming that the value of man is in himself.
All the great Meiji writers profited from the lesson of Western humanism. Some of
them, like Soseki Natsume and Ogai Mori, were influenced by the West during part of
their lives, but at the end they returned to their old fold: each had a Japanese death.
Others, like Akutagawa and Osamu Dazai, suffered from such anguish in their
discordant mixture of Eastern and Western feelings and thoughts that they ended
shattered by contradictions in suicide.
The humanitarianism of the neo-romantics of the Shirakaba (White Birch) school,
whose leader was Saneatsu Mushanokoji, a fervent admirer of Tolstoy, accumulated
more sentimentalism than true humanism.
Among today’s writers we note still an aesthetic bias, sometimes represented by an
excessive concentration on form or a preference for exploration of the peculiar and the
strange. We seldom find real, live characters capable of human sympathy in depth.
Indeed, creative imagination is not very developed in Japanese literature and most
modern writers limit themselves to realistically portraying the Japanese as he is today,
with his inhibitions, remains of feudal morality, ideas of restrained behaviour,
impassivity, and self-control, which are probably excellent qualities for an orderly and
affluent society but can supply no matter for a literature inspired by a wide breath of
humanism.
The Western tragic sense of life has not impressed Japanese literature except for
two authors, Osamu Dazai and mainly Fumiko Hayashi – again a Japanese woman
exceeds Japanese men in the building of a world of deep human emotions.
At this point, we should remember that we cannot pretend to measure the Japanese
humanism by Western standards and ways: Japanese people can find deep feeling in the
brief and subtle movement of the sleeves of a Noh actor on the stage; a fierce Japanese
warrior can see the divine trees and lakes of Paradise in a few flowers arranged with
sublime simplicity in a rustic flowerpot. Genji’s father-in-law for example, though badly
disposed towards Genji, wept openly when he saw him dancing «very quietly a
fragment of the sleeve-turning passage of the Wave Dance». The most famous theme of
all Japanese drama is Chushingura (the story of forty-seven ronin), treated by
playwrights from Chikamatsu and Izumo Takeda to Jiro Osaragi, who recently gave us a
modern version. The faithful retainers of a feudal lord have spurned their parents,
wives, and children only to be free to avenge the death of their lord. This Japanese
concept of justice based on loyalty and devotion to one’s lord is the reverse of the
Chinese principle of filial piety and duty towards one’s parents; it is also inconceivable
in Western ethics and incomprehensible to a Western spectator, who will never be
moved by it like a Japanese will.
Japanese and Western humanism use different forms of expression. Western
humanism is always expressed with eloquence, and in the epic and in tragedy we find
its highest examples. On the other hand, in Japanese literature we find the highest and
most beautiful expressions of humanism in restraint. To be clear, I will give two
characteristic examples. In the impressive Tanizaki novel Shunkinsho (The Story of
Shunkin), the lover of the blind, beautiful, enigmatic teacher of the samisen, Sasuke,
blinds himself because he wants to be like her, to give her the greatest proof of love, to
attain with her a state of absolute love. It is difficult to imagine greater proof of
complete dedication of a man to a woman. In Shichiro Fukazawa’s novel Narayama
Bushi Ko (On the Narayama Ballad), the mother, O-Rin, taken to a mountain by her son
to die because she is too old and useless to their poor home, gives her son, at the
moment he is abandoning her to her lonely death, a little packet with rice balls that she
had carefully cooked for that moment. Again, here, there is the most selfless love, the
absolute dedication of one human being to another. In both cases humanism is
expressed by methods which are opposite to the usual Western ones: there is a dry stark,
synthetic expression of humanism, touching the limits of human pain, confounding
itself with cruelty. Its pungency and strength are overwhelming. Pathos comes from an
absence of words, from an insupportable silence; the symbol and the gesture attain
unutterable significance.
After reflection, this naked, dry humanism, so peculiar to Japanese literature, may
have greater force than the Western forms of humanism. Its nature, though, makes it
improper for use in tragedy: it is too condensed, too brief to produce dramatic effects.
This does not mean that it may not attain the same, or even greater, depths, but its
expression, and the profound spring it comes from, are fundamentally different from
those of the West. Besides, Japanese forms of humanism show a tendency towards
aestheticism.
And aestheticism can never make up for the lack of humanism, as Japanese
literature shows when in periods of extreme formal perfection it falls into hollow
repetition and aimless skill. But it should not be forgotten that aestheticism, the
prevalent trait of Japanese culture, is responsible for some very fine literary and artistic
works and for the constant aspiration of beauty which encompasses beauty and charm in
Japanese life. In cinema, Japan has found the way to adapt old aesthetic canons for the
creation of the most modern and highest expressions of the art.
THE CONCEPT OF LIFE AND DEATH
What in Japanese culture is fluid and nebulous and in Western culture is profound
and immense is the concept of life and consciousness of the value of death20. It is not in
the divergent concepts of sin that one of the greatest differences between East and West
lies; it is in something deeper, of which the extent of sin depends: the reverence for life
and the value of death. In the philosophy of Western man, formed by twenty centuries
of Christian influence, death is the measure of all things, the absolute, ultimate measure.
Death is the tragic limit; it confers to life the highest of values because there is but one
life: man has no chances to try to save or redeem himself in future reincarnations. In the
East (China, Korea, Japan) death is synonymous with nothingness. In the unfathomable
distance between these two opposites live all the great creations of Western and Eastern
literature and art.
The sorrow of loss is deeper in the West; the joy of a never-to-be-repeated
enlightenment is higher when it is attained. To reach happiness is more difficult, as the
way to perfection is steeper and more painful. It is easy to be happy for a Shintoist; his
gods are easy to satisfy and do not demand much from men. The Christian God
demands from man more than he can reach. Hence the tension of Western man and his
anxiety to attain absolute perfection.
The traditional Japanese ethics, when man fails, requires his self-sacrifice, his stoic
death by hara-kiri. But when Western man fails, his duty is to rise again, and to fight
again against his own weakness, against the temptation of foundering into an easy,
though courageous, death: life is the only value, the only true possession of man, before
he disappears into the infinite silence. Life is action, and action is a means of
affirmation of being. To find the origins and the final ain to action, Greek tragedy
explored piety and horror to the last extremity. Thus was affirmed the dignity of man,
and his personality and humanity exalted. Before God, the ultimate value, is man.
This was the substratum of Greek thought to which Christianity added a new
element: infinity. This is also the substratum of Western civilization, which still prevails
even in Russian literature today. (When we talk in this book about Christian ideas, we
never mean a religious confession, but a civilizational substratum accumulated during
twenty centuries of Christian influence.) This exploration of the tragic opposition
between life and death gave Western literature a depth and vastnesses to which Japanese
literature offers nothing similar.20 The difficulty of the Japanese in understanding the Western concept of death, the living quality of death as it has inspired Rilke and impressed Unamuno, can be seen in Seiichi Hatano’s Time and Eternity (trans. Ichiro Suzuki, Ministry of Education, Tokyo, 1963, chap. 2).
To those who find these conclusions pessimistic, consider the sober assessment
made by the first English historian of Japanese literature, W. G. Aston:
It is the literature of a brave, courteous, light-hearted, pleasure-loving people,
sentimental rather passionate, witty and humorous, of nimble apprehension, but
not profound; ingenious and inventive, but hardly capable of high intellectual
achievements, with a turn for neatness and elegance, but seldom or never rising to
sublimity.21
The assessment made by Chamberlain was still more pessimistic:
Sum total: what Japanese literature most lacks is genius. It lacks thought,
logical grasp, depth, breadth, and many-sidedness. It is too timorous, too narrow
to compass great things. Perhaps the Court atmosphere and the predominantly
feminine influence in which it was nursed for the first few centuries of its
existence stifled it, or else the fault may have lain with the Chinese formalism in
which it grew up. But we suspect that there was some original sin of weakness as
well. Otherwise the clash of India and China with old mythological Japan, of
Buddhism with Shinto, of imperialism with feudalism, and of all with Catholicism
in the sixteenth century and with Dutch ideas a little later, would have produced
more important results. If Japan has given us no music, so also has she given us
no immortal verse, neither do her authors atone for lack of substance by any
special beauties of form. But Japanese literature has occasional graces, and is full
of incidental scientific interest. The intrepid searcher of facts and ‘curious’ will,
therefore, be rewarded if he has the courage to devote to it the study of many
years.22
Despite some truth contained in these two judgements, they omit important
achievements and valuable aspects of Japanese literature. At the time of Aston and
Chamberlain, great Japanese works were not yet sufficiently known or evaluated by the
light of modern criticism. It is enough to mention how much Tanizaki’s and Arthur
Waley’s work endeared The Tale of Genji to Japanese and foreign readers and critics.
21 W. G. Aston, A History of Japanese Literature, Heinemann, London, 1899, p. 4.22 Chamberlain, Things Japanese, pp. 295-296.
However, the assessment made by Karl Florenz is, as always, much better balanced
and deeper:
The Japanese character tends generally more towards humorism than towards
seriousness (Ernst). The occasional melancholic atmosphere is, I believe, not even
truly Japanese but rather inoculated into the gay, green scion of Japanese soul
through Chinese and Buddhist influence.23
The insular position and political independence of Japan, mentioned by Aston (to
which Japanese literature owes retaining its native originality and character), the
formalism referred to by Chamberlain, and the gay beauty of the land and the carefree
lightness of existence of which Florenz speaks are no doubt the main factors accounting
for the limitations in the tragic sense of life.
We could end here with the conclusion of Florenz in his history of Japanese
literature – so far the best written in a Western language: «The Japanese spirit will work
vigorously to free itself from all that is conventional, obsolete, unfruitful and such
endeavour will not fail to bring in the future splendid results.»
Japanese literature is not only freeing itself gradually from what is obsolete and
unfruitful but is even discarding some of its traditional sources of inspiration and
fundamental characteristics. The poetic meaning of the change of the seasons, which
marked so deeply Japanese poetry and prose, is fading away; lyricism, the central tone
of Japanese literature – a delicate lyricism tinged with melancholy, renunciation, and an
oppressive feeling of evanescence of all things – is giving place to a dramatic approach
to the problems of man, with which Japanese writers always preferred to deal in
nebulous terms rather than challenge.
These are changes brought by the impact of modern life, with its mechanicism, its
cogent moral problems, and immense social implications which can no longer be
escaped. Japanese man can no more enjoy the blissful pleasures of feeling one with, and
dissolved in, the serene beauty of nature, because he is more and more separated from
nature by the brutal wave of industrialization, by the effort of intense technical
competition.
The evolution from an absorbing lyricism, from the dissolution of man in nature,
by which, as we saw, the absence of epic and tragic works is largely explained, towards
23 Karl Florenz, Geschichte der Japanischen Literatur, Amelangs, Leipzig, 1906, p. 626.
a concentration on the powers of man, is producing completely new traits in Japanese
culture.
The individual begins to stand in the family and the social group, becoming the
centre of the act of literary and artistic creation. In painting, man dominates the
landscape and in literature his inner struggles become the absorbing subject of fiction
and poetry in modern form. We are in the presence of an artistic redemption of man – a
full man created anew, standing solitary before a world stripped of its lyrical charms and
traditional benevolence, a world to be conquered by man’s effort and painfully rebuilt in
beauty and purity.
This is the new humanism beyond the Kawabatan phase of harmonization of
modernity and tradition, the humanism announced by the writers and artists of the
youngest generations.
The transition from the lyrical world, which began in the Meiji era, towards a
dramatic and tragic world is near its completion. It is to be expected, after this cycle is
complete, that powerful Japanese works animated by an epic and tragic breadth will
appear24.24 The thesis that Japanese literature has no true epic or tragic works seems not to raise much controversy, but there are many writers who defend the existence of literary works built on the comic vein, based especially on the existence of kyogen and senryu. R. H. Blyth, in his most interesting book, Oriental Humour, is the champion of this thesis.Nobody denies that Japanese character and life are full of humour. The Zen priest Ikkyu in the fifteenth century was the centre of numerous anecdotes and outrageous stories, and was called the founder of «mad poetry». There is a rich popular literature, sometimes wittily illustrated, in which are the comical story books kokkeibon and the short witty story books hanashibon and sharebon. Shokusanjin, in the second half of the eighteenth century, is celebrated for this kind of literature. The first collection of humorous stories was edited by a priest named Sakuden in 1623. Such collections multiplied afterwards, and from 1772 until 1880 ninety collections were published. They continued to appear not only in Japanese but also in Chinese. Japanese storytellers continue today to stir audiences of yose theatres with waves of laughter. The old comic art is nourished by the rich vein of humour, gaiety, and drollery of the mass of the people.In poetry and belles-lettres, when laughter is admitted it is reduced to soft tones and gentle insinuations. Though not so averse to laughter as Chinese literature in which, as R. H. Blyth states, «humour is rather latent and suppressed», Japanese literature has never fully explored the vein of comic creation. This does not mean, of course, that there are not many humorous remarks in many Japanese writers, from Sei Shonagon to Akiyuki Nozaka.Kyogen are not real comedy or farce. «Kyogen», writes Michael Revon, «were buffooneries without importance, which do not deserve even a place in literature, except as an annex to the Noh plays. Among the two hundred sixty extant Kyogen plays we would try in vain to find a true comedy. They are brief fantasies, composed in a vulgar prose and with a nearly infantile spirit» (Anthologie de la Littérature Japonaise, Delagrave, Paris, 1919, p. 312).As for senryu, the humour about which he is so enthusiastic, Blyth says «Japanese humour is at its best, is most Japanese, in senryu». It will be enough to note that most of these brief humorous poems require explanation before the meaning and flavour are evident. In senryu, humour has perhaps less a literary than a philosophical character. Its extreme condensation makes it penetrable only after reflection. Senryu has a nature similar to a Zen koan. It is known how much the value of laughter has been enhanced by Japanese Zen masters; we can read about cases in which enlightenment was caused only by laughter. Daisetsu Suzuki, the last great Zen philosopher, in his later years «was often seen laughing good humouredly and innocently. He attached must interest to laughing, especially ‘Zen laughter’. For him laughing was also the ‘boiling out’ of absolute affirmation» (The Eastern Buddhist, vol. 2, no. 1, August 1967, p. 53). This
(Japanese and Western Literature, 255-273)
digression provides further proof that the Japanese, though being a witty and humorous people, have no comic literary works.
CHAPTER XVI. ORIGINALITY OF JAPANESE CULTURE
CHINESE INFLUENCE AND JAPANESE CULTURAL INDIVIDUALITY
There is no other country either in the East or in the West which has developed its
own particular tradition and national character like that of Japan. «Here is a racial
group», writes Nyozekan Hasegawa, «which has succeeded for a period of thousands of
years within the same era and under the same line of rulers, in perpetuating without any
revolutionary changes and in developing without interruption a civilization that has
remained steadfastly the same in essence as in origin». At the same time no other
country has shown «the same readiness to welcome contacts with other peoples and
other faiths»25.
It is know that Japan received from China the art of writing in the fifth century;
through China and Korea Buddhism came in the sixth century. Painting, sculpture, and
architecture, music, and court dance also came from China. During the seventh and
eighth centuries many scholars and artists were exchanged between Japan and China. At
this time the T’ang dynasty, which began in 618, was at its peak (between 650 and 680).
In the eighth century, Chinese influence in Japan reached its zenith. Nearly everything
was copied – the form of government, legal institutions, educational system,
architecture, planning of the capital city, arts, literature, dress, decor, and so forth. From
the ninth century relations with China became less frequent. Between the tenth and the
twelfth centuries, for three hundred years, the flowing of culture from China to Japan
was practically nonexistent26.
In spite of these vast and rich contributions which have so much widened Japanese
cultural horizons, it is remarkable that there was no definite influence of Chinese
literature on the Japanese great writers. There were many Japanese authors who wrote
in direct imitation of Chinese models, some of them very highly valued in their day, but
all their works are now completely dead27. The beauty of Japanese poetry and fiction, as
well as Japanese art in general, owes practically nothing to foreign inspiration, though
motives and themes were sometimes borrowed28.
It is during the period of seclusion, in the Heian era, that Japanese literature shows
its greatest works. As mentioned before, the greatest works of Japanese literature, The 25 Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, p. 8. See also James Clark Moloney, Understanding the Japanese Mind, Tuttle, Tokyo, 1966.26 George Sansom, A History of Japan, 3 vols., Cresset Press, London, 1958-64, vol. 1.27 Keene, Japanese Literature, p. 85.28 Ingram Bryan, The Literature of Japan, Butterworth, London, 1929, p. 234.
Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book, were written as a reaction against the then prevailing
Chinese influence. The substantial poetry and scenic art of Noh, one of the wonders of
world theatre, has no counterpart in any other country. The novels of Ihara Saikaku, the
greatest novelist after Murasaki, and the plays of Chikamatsu were exclusively inspired
by the life of the seventeenth-century Japanese bourgeoisie. In poetry, from the
Manyoshu to the poets who write haiku today, the uniqueness in form and content is
undeniable.
ORIGINALITY OF JAPANESE ART
In the field of art, the greatest Japanese sculpture is that of eighth-century Nara,
when the grace of the distant Hellas added its beautiful smile to the serenity of the East.
In the second great period of sculpture, the fifteenth century, the art is marked by a
particular Japanese sense of force and realism.
In the field of painting, it was about the twelfth century when some very original
styles came into being. They are beautifully exemplified in the scrolls of The Tale of
Genji attributed to Fujiwara no Takayoshi. His work is remarkable for its fine contours,
intense colours, and charming sense of decor. All of this is expressed in the gorgeous
dresses and on the screens, suggesting well the calm, sumptuous atmosphere of the
court life. Other examples are the works of the Tosa school: freer, richer in details of
daily life. A third example is the brush drawings with caricatures in the figures of
rabbits and frogs, drawn with such a lively shape and humour that they still make us
laugh today.
None of these styles of painting owes anything to the Chinese. In spite of the
number of Chinese paintings collected in the palaces and monasteries and their being
overrated by the Japanese, the Japanese genius found independent means of artistic
expression.
The universality and profound humanity of thirteenth-century Yamato-e painting –
with its realism describing the life of the poor in street and field scenes – has been
celebrated by foreign critics.
Sinicism in fifteenth-century painting has been overestimated by the Japanese but
rather disregarded by some Western critics. Some of these critics even look with
indifference on the works of Sesshu (1420-1506) because he followed the Chinese
school, in spite of the fact that he became so famous in China that the emperor asked
him to decorate his palace in Peking. Ernest Fenollosa considers the style of Sesshu
unique and central in the whole range of Asiatic art, and holds Sesshu as «the greatest
master of straight line and angle in the whole range of world’s art»29.
Sesshu brought to perfection the new style of black and white (suiboku) introduced
into Japan from China. The painting of manners and customs shows a particular aspect
of Japanese genius – its gift for realist detail and love of very stylized forms, rich
colour, and a sumptuous harmony stressed by rich backgrounds in gold. A particular
category of this painting is represented by the namban byobu, the folding screens
depicting Portuguese sailors and merchants in everyday scenes in the port of Nagasaki.
They show in the background Portuguese caravels, stretches of blue sea, or interiors of
Japanese houses. These screens were painted at a time when the persecutions of
Christians were rigorously carried on, after the death of Hideyoshi, and the painters
probably were not Christians. Painting in oils with European techniques would have
been dangerous, and would have caused suspicions that the artist was a Christian.
Nevertheless, such techniques were permitted for painting the «southern barbarians»
(namban) as long as they were treated with humour and ridicule, in amazing caricatures
that sometimes show biting verve and fine stylization30.
With Korin (1658-1716), Japanese painting again found individual expression.
Korin has created a marvellous synthesis of an abundant variety of artistic traditions
which animated the end of the seventeenth century. He has an unmistakable personal
style. Like the writers of the Genroku period, Korin is attracted by the joie de vivre, the
full beauty of forms and colours, the refinement, the amazing atmosphere of his time.
Later, after the second half of the seventeenth century, if we consider the school of
ukiyo-e, its lively democratic atmosphere, the city and the countryside, the work of the
poor people – the carpenter and the goldsmith in their workshops, the actor on a gaudy
stage, the courtesan bathing or progressing on the street wrapped in a gorgeous kimono
and followed by a colourful procession, the shopkeeper at the door calling his clients, in
other words, all the aspects of the life of the people in a burst of liveliness and colour,
through a new conception of line and space – we are again before a strong and original
creation, a most interesting contribution to world painting.
Hokusai was the greatest in this trend, and a genius in the world of painting. His
tremendous, restless personality was marked from his early years, when he was
29 Ernest F. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, vol. 2, Dover, New York, 1963, p. 81. See also Pageant of Japanese Art, Painting, vol. 2, Toto Bunka, Tokyo, 1962, p. 10.30 Jean Buhot, Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, vol. 1, Histoire de l’Art. Remis Inglis Hall published a translation in Anchor Books, New York, 1967.
«forbidden to publish useless books» until an advanced age. He moved his home ninety-
three times and changed his name almost as many. The originality of Hokusai’s art has
been greatly admired in the West. «The Storm», «The Clearing», and a few other of his
paintings are recognized by Europeans as «singularly authoritative forerunners of the
major discoveries of impressionism, such as knowledge that colour does not exist alone,
but as creation of light»31.
Hiroshige, probably greater in landscape, comes next to Hokusai in pictures of
manners which catch vividly the multiple manifestations of life. Important indeed was
the lesson that the ukiyo-e painters taught the impressionists. Hiroshige taught them how
to obtain new effects from black and neutral tones, and Kiyonaga’s strong contrasts of
black and white were adopted by Toulouse-Lautrec. The oil painting made by van Gogh
of a Japanese woman in a direct and amusing imitation of a beauty by Utamaro shows
how much the new techniques of ukiyo-e surprised the impressionists.
The asymmetrical composition, the use of black as a real colour and the interplay
with white and grey, the dramatic silhouette of facial expressions, the skilful use of
empty spaces, the intense sense of reality in spite of its disregard for realism – all these
were novelties to the French painters. After the universal exhibition in 1878, Japanese
art helped the French painters to renew their inspiration and their visual habits32.
Thus the Japanese influence, with its freshness, purity, and elegance of image,
aided the impressionists to remove the feeling of nature from a heavy load of
intellectual and sentimental meanings that was hiding the true beauty of things, and help
stagnant Western painting out of its classic reality and rigid rules of perspective. The
Japanese emphasis on the decorative enhanced the simplification achieved by the
impressionists.
In architecture Japan shows, on one hand, masterpieces of naturalness and
prehistoric simplicity in the pure Japanese creation of the Shinto shrines at Ise and
Izumo; on the other hand, there are beautiful temples and monasteries at Nara and
Kyoto inspired by Chinese models. In our days Japan is building, according to a concept
of its own, a new architecture in which the traditional forms embrace felicitously the
concepts and needs of the modern world. The immense and ugly vastness of the world’s
biggest metropolis, Tokyo, shows some of the most harmonious and original buildings
created by mass civilization.31 Ibid., p. 291.32 Henri Focillon, Hokusaï, Alcan, Paris, 1914, p. 5. See also Louis Gonse, L’Art Japonais, Gründ, Paris, 1926.
Through this brief outline we can see that the great Japanese master never accepted
the inflexible realism of China. There is always a distinct idealistic stylization even if in
some cases it has become simple decorative art. To this stream of original creations
should be added the impressive originality of popular Japanese arts which have been
found by some critics to be «even more valuable than everything else they copied from
the Chinese». It should be mentioned also that Japanese cinema has also shown an
undeniable individuality.
GENUINE JAPANESE CREATION
Apart from literature and the arts, in the realm of science Japanese contribution was
remarkable only in the field of algebra when they took up the forgotten Sung
mathematics and brought it to a culmination in the last quarter of the seventeenth
century. Japan’s economic «miracle» is certainly a creation of her spirit, performed
against many consecrated rules of classic Western economy and also against American
experts’ theories and advice33.
Though Japanese have received a great part of their ideas from abroad – and this is
true of any country – it would be erroneous and unfair to think that they limited
themselves to copying and reproducing foreign ideas. When we look at Japanese
cultural life, we see that the great creations of Japanese spirit show no direct influence
from abroad. As we have seen with Buddhism, the Japanese have a great gift for
simplifying complex systems of ideas and for reducing them to the essential principles
by employing the well-known Japanese capacity for assimilation. Nearly every activity
pursued to a higher level in Japan has a Chinese or foreign antecedent; yet it rarely is
wholly imitative, and sometimes surpasses its prototype in quality and pattern, writes A.
L. Kroeber. This same process is happening today with things which originated in the
West from clock-making to shipbuilding or electronic instruments.
While the Chinese invented silk, paper, book printing, gunpowder, paper-money,
porcelain, playing cards, and other things, Japan can claim as her original contribution
to world civilization only the revolving stage and the folding fan, in addition to the arts
of gardens and flower arrangement. As we generally tend to compare Japan with the
33 At the end of the American occupation, Joseph Dodge left to the Japanese government seventeen fundamental rules which could not be violated without the risk of ruining the national economy. The Japanese government went against more than half of those rules of classic economy, and yet attained the greatest rate of economic growth in the world (Consider Japan, by correspondents of The Economist, London, 1963, chap. 1; G. C. Allen, Japan’s Economic Expansion, Oxford University Press, London, 1965).
West, these individual Japanese contributions to civilization seem small when put beside
Chinese and European creations. But we forget that, individually considered, not many
countries can show achievements comparable to Japan’s. No country in Europe
independently created its own system of writing, its own religion, or its art. On the other
hand, Europe is a very particular case within the phenomena of civilizations: currents of
ideas crossed the small continent easily, spreading over an immense variety of national
conditions and aptitudes; and it is as if every particular stream of ideas had fecundated
the peculiar disposition of each nation so that, historically, a florescence of civilization
blooms first in Greece, to be revived in Rome and in Italy. The craving for adventure
and discovery and the epic ideas of Italian Renaissance passed on to Portugal, giving
rise to the great sea travels and to the greatest modern epic poem. Literary types and
ideas from the Spanish «golden century» inspired the eighteenth-century French
playwrights, and the great French and English novelists have inspired the great
generation of Russian writers of last century. The tide seems to have waned here to rise
there, with new force and splendour. These complex phenomena of cultural fecundation
still remain to be clearly explained.
Japan, due to her insularity, could never experience such an enrichening surge.
Neither was there a similar sharing by the Asian countries of the continent that were
closed in by autocratic governments, hostile to international intercourse.
Japan owes the progress of her culture to her capacity to assimilate, fostered over a
long period of history. The national personality shows traits for conciliation and
progress which prevailed over exclusionist tendencies, says Nyozekan Hasegawa in his
important book The Japanese Character: «Although the Japanese in practice created
their own culture via inspiration from foreign cultures, they themselves constituted from
early times a powerful entity in their own right, both as a nation and as a people.»34
Examples are here cited to explain how that which was adopted from foreign
origins was transformed into genuine native forms, into purely Japanese tradition
through the uninterrupted maintenance of Japanese spirit and sensibility. Thus, the
continental manner of reading Buddhist scriptures gave rise to the characteristic
chanting of Noh; the purely continental gagaku was transformed into the music of the
Noh, and these in turn gave rise to Kabuki. The first Japanese imitations of continental
buildings, such as the Horyu-ji, show results finer than the Chinese originals, though the
34 Hasegawa, The Japanese Character. See also Arthur Waley, The Originality of Japanese Civilization, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, Tokyo, 1941.
Imperial Palace in Kyoto is far from displaying the richness and splendour of the
emperor’s palace in Peking. This is because in Japan there prevailed a tradition of
simplicity even at the centre of political power, and also because this power did not
dispose of a large supply of slave labour such as existed in China, India, Europe, and
North Africa, where the temple of Karnak took nearly seven centuries to build.
Another important trait in the evolution of Japanese culture is, in the words of
Hasegawa, «that it is truly national in the sense that it is of the whole people». It
developed in towns unlike those in China and the West: the Japanese aristocracy, as
intelligentsia, spread the culture to the lowest classes. Even today, the practice of
writing poetry or conducting the tea ceremony is carried out by members of all classes.
The woodblock print, ukiyo-e, was created specifically to bring the works of the great
painters within the price range of the masses.
To all this is added another historical characteristic – economic evenness. The
government generally avoided economic extremes, such as unequal amassing of wealth
through excessive expansion of the economy. Thus there has been neither extreme
wealth nor extreme poverty: the traditional type of cultural expression in Japan is the
opposite of the trend on the mainland of both East and West, says Hasegawa, in that the
greater the power and wealth becomes, the greater is the emphasis on ideals of plainness
and modesty. For this, Japan is certainly the most original country in world history, if
we consider that such policies seem to be characteristic of the ruling classes through the
centuries. This preference for simplicity and modesty, this love for simple things like
insects, stones, dwarf trees, in an Orient which displays pageantry and splendour beside
abject poverty, still persists today in Japan35.
THE SENSE OF INFERIORITY TOWARDS THE WEST AS A CHALLENGING
FORCE
After the opening of Japan in the Meiji era, a frequent expression of a sense of
inferiority was shown by Japanese writers and politicians. The first man who tried to
build a bridge between Japan and the West, Yukichi Fukuzawa, felt the overwhelming
Western superiority. In the West he recognized two main advantages: «a learning based
in mathematics and reason, and a spirit of independence.» Moreover, he adds: «The 35 The highest example of Japanese simplicity is Shinto architecture. Shinto shrines existed long before Buddhism came to Japan. We may conclude that the artistic temperament of the Japanese which led them to place their religious buildings in harmony with nature was indigenous. Shinto architecture is an authentic expression of Japan’s original religious and aesthetic sensibilities (Sidney Lewis Gulick, The East and the West: A Study of their Psychic and Cultural Characteristics, Tuttle, Tokyo, 1963).
West reached the stage of specialization after more than one hundred years; if Japan
tries to reach the same level in half the time, by physical and mental exertion, the result
will be nervous collapse.» It is curious that a few years ago Bertrand Russell attributed
the nervousness and hesitation he noticed in Japanese people to the too rapid transition
into industrial living and the modern mass organization in which all individuality is
smothered.
Katsuichiro Kamei refers to a sense of inferiority before Western science in Asian
thought. «My ignorance and indifference to China and India did not trouble me in the
least», he writes, «and I was constantly fascinated by Europe». Kojiro Serizawa
explains further: «Foreigners say that Japanese are arrogant. This arrogance disguises
most of the time a complex of inferiority.»
The early Meiji writers, like Shimei Futabatei and Kafu Nagai, felt the shallowness
of Japanese literature when compared with Western literature. Futabanei became so
deeply conscious of this difference through his knowledge of Russian literature that he
decided to abandon literature in desperation. This feeling of the acute differences in
quality between Western and Japanese literature is as strong for modern Japanese
writers as it was for Futabatei. Koichi Isoda, Futabatei’s biographer, who is also a
novelist and playwright, has developed this theme in his recent novel Nise no Guzo (A
False Idol) as well as in essays about the Japanese realist novel, which had both a great
influence on today’s fiction and criticism.
Another contemporary novelist and playwright, Saneatsu Mushanokoji, in his novel
Ai to Shi (Love and Death) describes the feeling of young Japanese in Paris. He was
impressed by finding Europeans everywhere who, he felt, despised him. He wrote:
I will never fall behind them in beauty of mind. But it is not so desirable to
see a Japanese among Western people. In my opinion this may partly be due to the
clothes which he wears, but I feel that I cannot boast of the complexion and
physical constitution of Japanese people, however hard I may try.
We have already referred to Shusaku Endo’s novel Studying Abroad. The hero of
this novel, a Japanese teacher of French who goes to Paris, at his contact with the
brilliant Western civilization faces a crisis and is depressed by an inferiority complex.
He has a terrible psychological shock, falls sick, and has to go to a hospital. There he
finds his friend, an architect, afflicted by the same inferiority complex and suffering
from the same illness.
However surprising it may be, it is in this feeling of inferiority that the Japanese
people found the energy and determination to challenge the West. Instead of remaining
aloof behind pretensions of cultural superiority over the West, like the Chinese, the
Japanese decided to surpass the West in the proper Western field – and this is one of the
reasons for the amazing Japanese technological and economic progress. But in spite of
such progress it seems that the inferiority complex persists.
This source of inner conflict will end only when the Japanese realize that there is
today only one culture – a universal culture to which all the peoples of the world
contribute with their national creations. At the same time, the Japanese will become
conscious of the value of their own national culture. Kitaro Nishida, who was a follower
of Zen Buddhism and studied Western philosophy, devoted his life to the work of
adding Western philosophy to Japanese life, in a supreme effort to find a new way for
both Eastern and Western man. Nishida hoped for a new civilization based on new
morals, created by a common effort of Christianity and Buddhism. The same was
thought by Tokoku Kitamura in his attempt to reconcile East and West, insisting on the
retention of the best of native Japanese culture and its integration into the modern
synthesis.
We mentioned several times before the coexistence in Japanese culture of the
classic and the modern. This, of course, is a trait we can find in every country. But in no
other country is the dichotomy so pronounced, provoking such a strong intellectual
impact and showing such a wide span of time between the old and the new.
We can see today in the Shinto shrines sacred dances contemporary of the cult of
Osiris, which in the country of their origin, China, have disappeared long ago. And we
can also see in Japan the fastest trains in the world. The vast range between these two
opposites is a source of creative imagination. It keeps in Japanese life a fine sense of
style, in man’s spirit a dignity, pride, and nobility which the modern forms of sociability
and publicity have not yet spoilt.
This unique trait of Japanese culture must be emphasized because it is a source of
inspiration for the arts and a source of courage and self-assurance for every Japanese. In
the arts, in literature, and in theatre it is responsible for the two trends, traditional and
modern. In ordinary life, it brings old practices like the arts of tea and flower
arrangement into the most modernized homes and offices. Japan keeps the oldest
architecture in the world together with the newest. Thus Japanese receive stimuli from a
remote past and also from the most modern present, which in some aspects has
overtaken even the United States. The existence of these contrasts can of course be of
immense worth for artistic and literary creation, in the hands of great artists capable of
achieving a harmonious fusion of the disparate values.
(Japanese and Western Literature, 290-298)
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