by Will Durant
2. History
The historians—Arai Hakuseki
We shall not find Japanese historiography so interesting as its fiction, though we may have some difficulty in distinguishing them. The oldest surviving work in Japanese literature is the Kojiki, or “Record of Ancient Things,” written in Chinese characters by Yasumaro in 712; here legend so often takes the place of fact that the highest Shinto loyalty would be needed to accept it as history.31 After the Great Reform of 645 the government thought it advisable to transform the past again; and about 720 a new history appeared, the Nihongi, or “Record of Nippon,” written in the Chinese language, and adorned with passages bravely stolen from Chinese works and sometimes placed, without any fetichism of chronology, in the mouths of ancient Japanese. Nevertheless the book was a more serious attempt to record the facts than the Kojiki had been, and it provided the foundation for most later histories of early Japan. From that time to this there have been many histories of the country, each more patriotic than the last. In 1334 Kitabatake wrote a “History of the True Succession of the Divine Monarchs”—the Jintoshotoki—on this modest and now familiar note:
Great Yamato (Japan) is a divine country. It is only our land whose foundations were first laid by the Divine Ancestor. It alone has been transmitted by the Sun Goddess to a long line of her descendants. There is nothing of this kind in foreign countries. Therefore it is called the Divine Land.32
First printed in 1649, this work began that movement for the restoration of the ancient faith and state which culminated in the passionate polemics of Moto-ori. The very grandson of Iyeyasu, Mitsu-kuni, by his Dai Nihonshi (“The Great History of Japan,” 1851)—a 240-volume picture of the imperial and feudal past—played a posthumous part in preparing his countrymen to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Perhaps the most scholarly and impartial of Japanese historians was Arai Hakuseki, whose learning dominated the intellectual life of Yedo in the second half of the seventeenth century. Arai smiled at the theology of the orthodox Christian missionaries as “very childish,”33 but he was bold enough to ridicule also some of the legends which his own people mistook for history.34 His greatest work, the Hankampu, a thirty-volume history of the Daimyo, is one of the marvels of literature; for though it must have required much research, it appears to have been composed within a few months.35 Arai derived something of his learning and judgment from his study of the Chinese philosophers. When he lectured on the Confucian classics the Shogun Iyenobu, we are told, listened with rapt and reverent attention, in summer refraining from brushing the mosquitoes from his head, in winter turning his head away from the speaker before wiping his running nose.36 In his autobiography Arai paints a devout picture of his father, and shows the Japanese citizen at his simplest and best:
Ever since I came to understand the heart of things, my memory is that the daily routine of his life was exactly the same. He never failed to get up an hour before daybreak. He then had a cold bath, and did his hair himself. In cold weather the woman who was my mother would propose to order hot water for him, but this he would not allow, as he wished to avoid giving the servants trouble. When he was over seventy, and my mother also was advanced in years, sometimes, when the cold weather was unendurable, a lighted brazier was brought in, and they lay down to sleep with their feet against it. Beside the fire was placed a kettle with hot water, which my father drank when he got up. Both of them honored the way of Buddha. My father, when he had arranged his hair and adjusted his clothing, never neglected to make obeisance to Buddha. . . . After he was dressed he waited quietly for the dawn, and then went out to his official duty. . . . He was never known to betray anger, nor do I remember that, even when he laughed, he gave way to boisterous mirth. Much less did he ever descend to violent language when he had occasion to reprimand anyone. In his conversation he used as few words as possible. His demeanor was grave. I have never seen him startled, flurried, or impatient. . . . The room he usually occupied he kept cleanly swept, had an old picture hung on the wall, and a few flowers which were in season were set out in a vase. He would spend the day looking at them. He painted a little in black and white, not being fond of colors. When in good health he never troubled the servant, but did everything for himself.37
3. The Essay
The Lady Sei Shonagon—Kamo no-Chomei
Arai was an essayist as well as an historian, and made brilliant contributions to what is perhaps the most delightful department of Japanese literature. Here, as in fiction, a woman stands at the top; for Lady Sei Shonagon’s “Pillow Sketches” (Makura Zoshi) is usually accorded the highest as well as the earliest place in this field. Brought up in the same court and generation as Lady Murasaki, she chose to describe the refined and scandalous life about her in casual sketches whose excellence in the original can only be guessed at by us from the charm that survives in translation. Born a Fujiwara, she rose to be a lady in waiting to the Empress. On the latter’s death Lady Sei retired, some say to a convent, others say to poverty. Her book shows no touch of either. She takes the easy morals of her time according to the easy judgment of her time, and does not think too highly of spoil-sport ecclesiastics.
A preacher ought to be a good-looking man. It is then easier to keep your eyes fixed on his face, without which it is impossible to benefit by his discourse. Otherwise the eyes wander and you forget to listen. Ugly preachers have therefore a grave responsibility. . . . If preachers were of a more suitable age I should have pleasure in giving a more favorable judgment. As matters actually stand, their sins are too fearful to think of.38
She adds little lists of her likes and dislikes:
Cheerful things:
Coming home from an excursion with the carriages full to overflowing;
To have lots of footmen who make the oxen and the carriages speed along;
A river-boat going down stream;
Teeth nicely blackened. . . .
Dreary things:
A nursery where a child has died;
A brazier with the fire gone out;
A coachman who is hated by his ox;
The birth of a succession of female children in the house of a scholar.
Detestable things:
People who, when you are telling a story, break in with “Oh, I know,” and give quite a different version from your own. . . .
While on friendly terms with a man, to hear him sound the praises of a woman whom he has known. . . .
A visitor who tells a long story when you are in a hurry. . . .
The snoring of a man whom you are trying to conceal, and who has gone to sleep in a place where he has no business. . . .
Fleas.39
The Lady’s only rival for the highest place in the Japanese essay is Kamo no-Chomei. Being refused the succession to his father as the superior guardian of the Shinto shrine of Kamo at Kyoto, Chomei became a Buddhist monk, and at fifty retired to a contemplative life in a mountain hermitage. There he wrote his farewell to the busy world under the title of Hojoki (1212)—i.e., “The Record of Ten Feet Square.” After describing the difficulties and annoyances of city life, and the great famine of 1181,* he tells how he built himself a hut ten feet square and seven feet high, and settled down contentedly to undisturbed philosophy and a quiet comradeship with natural things. An American, reading him, hears the voice of Thoreau in thirteenth-century Japan. Apparently every generation has had its Walden Pond.
IV. THE DRAMA
The “No” plays—Their character—The popular stage—The Japanese Shakespeare—Summary judgment
Last of all, and hardest to understand, is the Japanese drama. Brought up in our English tradition of the theatre, from Henry IV to Mary of Scotland, how shall we ever attune ourselves to tolerate what must seem to us the fustian and pantomime of the No plays of Japan? We must forget Shakespeare and go back to Everyman, and even farther to the religious origins of Greek and modern European drama; then we shall be oriented to watch the development of the ancient Shinto pantomime,
the ecclesiastical kagura dance, into that illumination of pantomime by dialogue which constitutes the No (or lyrical) form of Japanese play. About the fourteenth century Buddhist priests added choral songs to their processional pantomimes; then they added individual characters, contrived a plot to give them action as well as speech, and the drama was born.40
These plays, like the Greek, were performed in trilogies; and occasionally Kyogen, or farces (“mad words”), were acted in the intervals, to relieve and facilitate the tension of emotion and thought. The first part of the trilogy was devoted to propitiating the gods, and was hardly more than a religious pantomime; the second was performed in full armor, and was designed to frighten all evil spirits away; the third was of a milder mood, and sought to portray some charming aspect of nature, or some delightful phase of Japanese life.41 The lines were written for the most part in blank verse of twelve syllables. The actors were men of standing, even among the aristocracy; a playbill survives which indicates that Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu all participated as actors in a No play about 1580.42 Each actor wore a mask, carved out of wood with an artistry that makes such masks a prize for the art collector of today. Scenery was meagre; the passionate imagination of the audience could be relied upon to create the background of the action. The stories were of the simplest, and did not matter much: one of the most popular told of the impoverished Samurai who, to warm a wandering monk, cut down his most cherished plants to make a fire; whereupon the monk turned out to be the Regent, and gave the knight a goodly reward. But as we in the West may go again and again to hear an opera whose story is old and perhaps ridiculous, so the Japanese, even today, weep over this oft-told tale43 because the excellence of the acting renews on each occasion the power and significance of the play. To the hasty and businesslike visitor such performances as he may find of these dramatized lyrics are rather amusing than impressive; nevertheless a Japanese poet says of them: “Oh, what a tragedy and beauty in the No stage! I always think that it would certainly be a great thing if the No drama could be properly introduced into the West. The result would be no small protest against the Western stage. It would mean a revelation.”44 Japan itself, however, has not composed such plays since the seventeenth century, though it acts them devotedly today.
The history of the drama, in most countries, is a gradual change from the predominance of the chorus to the supremacy of some individual rôle—at which point, in most such sequences, development ends. As the histrionic art advanced in tradition and excellence in Japan it created popular personalities who subordinated the play to themselves. Finally pantomime and religion sank to a subordinate rôle, and the drama became a war of individuals, full of violence and romance. So was born the kabuki shibai, or popular theatre, of Japan. The first such theatre was established about the year 1600 by a nun who, tired of convent walls, set up a stage at Osaka, and practised dancing for a livelihood.45 As in England and France, the presence of women on the stage seemed revolting and was forbidden; and since the upper classes (except in safe disguise) shunned these performances, the actors became almost a pariah caste, with no social incentive to keep their profession from immorality and corruption. Men perforce took the parts of women, and carried their imitation to such a point as to deceive not only their audiences but themselves; many of these actors of female rôles remained women off the stage.46 Perhaps because lighting was poor, the actors painted their faces with vivid colors, and wore robes of gorgeous designs to indicate and dignify their rôles. Back of the stage and about it, usually, were choral and individual reciters, who sometimes carried on the vocal parts while the actors confined themselves to pantomime. The audience sat on the matted floor, or in tiers of boxes at either side.47
The most famous name in the popular drama of Japan is Chikamatsu Monzayemon (1653-1724). His countrymen compare him with Shakespeare; English critics, resenting the comparison, accuse Chikamatsu of violence, extravagance, bombast, and improbable plots, while granting him “a certain barbaric vigor and luxuriance”;48 apparently the similarity is complete. Such foreign plays seem mere melodrama to us, because either the meaning or the nuances of the language are concealed from us; but this would probably be the effect of a Shakespearean play upon one unable to appreciate its language or follow its thought. Chikamatsu seems to have made undue use of lovers’ suicides to cap his climaxes, in the style of Romeo and Juliet; but perhaps with this excuse, that suicide was almost as popular in Japanese life as on the stage.
A foreign historian, in these matters, can only report, but cannot judge. Japanese acting, to a transient observer, seems less complex and mature, but more vigorous and exalting than the European; Japanese plays seem more plebeianly melodramatic, but less emasculated with superficial intellectualism, than the plays of France, England and America today. So, reversely, Japanese poetry seems slight and bloodless, and too aristocratically refined, to us whose appetite has taken in lyrics of almost epic length (like Maud), and epics of such dulness that doubtless Homer himself would nod if he were compelled to read the accumulated Iliad. The Japanese novel seems sensational and sentimental; and yet two of the supreme masterpieces of English fiction—Tom Jones and Pickwick Papers—have apparently their equal counterparts in the Genji Monogatari and the Hizakurige, and perhaps Lady Murasaki excels in subtlety, grace and understanding even the great Fielding himself. All things are dull that are remote and obscure; and things Japanese will remain obscure to us until we can completely forget our Western heritage and completely absorb Japan’s.
V. THE ART OF LITTLE THINGS
Creative imitation—Music and the dance—“Inro” and “netsuke”—Hidari Jingaro—Lacquer
The outward forms of Japanese art, like almost every external feature of Japanese life, came from China; the inner force and spirit, like everything essential in Japan, came from the people themselves. It is true that the wave of ideas and immigration that brought Buddhism to Japan in the seventh century brought also, from China and Korea, art forms and impulses bound up with that faith, and no more original with China and Korea than with Japan; it is true, even, that cultural elements entered not only from China and India, but from Assyria and Greece—the features of the Kamakura Buddha, for example, are more Greco-Bactrian than Japanese. But such foreign stimuli were used creatively in Japan; its people learned quickly to distinguish beauty from ugliness; its rich men sometimes prized objects of art more than land or gold,* and its artists labored with self-effacing devotion. These men, though arduously trained through a long apprenticeship, seldom received more than an artisan’s wage; if for a moment wealth came to them they gave it away with Bohemian recklessness, and soon relapsed into a natural and comfortable poverty.50 But only the artist-artisans of ancient Egypt and Greece, or of medieval China, could rival their industry, taste and skill.
The very life of the people was instinct with art—in the neatness of their homes, the beauty of their clothing, the refinements of their ornaments, and their spontaneous addiction to song and dance. For music, like life, had come to Japan from the gods themselves; had not Izanagi and Izanami sung in choruses at the creation of the earth? A thousand years later the Emperor Inkyo, we read, played on a wagon (a kind of zither), and his Empress danced, at an imperial banquet given in 419 to signalize the opening of a new palace. When Inkyo died a Korean king sent eighty musicians to attend the funeral; and these players taught the Japanese new instruments and new modes—some from Korea, some from China, some from India. When the Daibutsu was installed in the temple of Todaiji at Nara (752), music from T’ang Chinese masters was played in the ceremony; and the Shoso-in, or Imperial Treasure-house, at Nara still shows the varied instruments used in those ancient days. Singing and recitative, court music and monastic dance music, formed the classical modes, while popular airs were strummed on the biwa—a lute—or the samisen—a three-stringed banjo.51 The Japanese had no great composers, and wrote no books about music; their simple compositions, played in five notes of the harmonic minor scale, had n
o harmony, and no distinction of major and minor keys; but almost every Japanese could play some one of the twenty instruments which had come over from the continent; and any one of these, when properly played, said the Japanese, would make the very dust on the ceiling dance.52 The dance itself enjoyed “a vogue unparalleled in any other country”53—not so much as an appendage to love as in the service of religious or communal ceremony; sometimes a whole village turned out in costume to celebrate a joyful occasion with a universal dance. Professional dancers entertained great audiences with their skill; and men as well as women, even in the highest circles, gave much time to the art. When Prince Genji, says the Lady Murasaki, danced the “Waves of the Blue Sea” with his friend To no-Chujo, everyone was moved. “Never had the onlookers seen feet tread so delicately, nor heads so exquisitely poised So moving and beautiful was this dance that at the end of it the Emperor’s eyes were wet, and all the princes and great gentlemen wept aloud.”54
Meanwhile all who could afford it adorned their persons not only with fine brocades and painted silks, but with delicate objects characteristic, almost definitive, of the old Japan. Shrinking ladies flirted from behind fans of alluring loveliness, while men flaunted netsuke, inro and expensively carved swords. The inro was a little box attached to the belt by a cord; it was usually composed of several infolding cases carefully carved in ivory or wood, and contained tobacco, coins, writing materials, or other casual necessities. To keep the cord from slipping under the belt, it was bound at the other end to a tiny toggle or netsuke (from ne, end, and tsuke, to fasten), upon whose cramped surface some artist had fashioned, with lavish care, the forms of deities or demons, philosophers or fairies, birds or reptiles, fishes or insects, flowers or leaves, or scenes from the life of the people. Here that impish humor in which Japanese art so far excels all others found free and yet modest play. Only the most careful examination can reveal the full subtlety and significance of these representations; but even a glance at this microcosm of fat women and priests, of agile monkeys and delightful bugs, cut upon less than a cubic inch of ivory or wood, brings home to the student the unique and passionately artistic quality of the Japanese people.*