Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  “The Old Man Mad with Painting,” as Hokusai called himself, lived almost four-score years and ten, but mourned the tardiness of perfection and the brevity of life.

  From my sixth year onwards a peculiar mania for drawing all sorts of things took possession of me. At my fiftieth year I had published quite a number of works of every possible description, but none were to my satisfaction. Real work began with me only in my seventieth year. Now at seventy-five the real appreciation of nature awakens within me. I therefore hope that at eighty I may have arrived at a certain power of intuition which will develop further to my ninetieth year, so that at the age of a hundred I can probably assert that my intuition is thoroughly artistic. And should it be granted to me to live a hundred and ten years, I hope that a vital and true comprehension of nature may radiate from every one of my lines and dots. . . . I invite those who are going to live as long as I to convince themselves whether I shall keep my word. Written at the age of seventy-five years by me, formerly Hokusai, now called the Old Man Mad with Painting.84

  Like most of the Ukiyoye artists he was born of the artisan class, the son of a mirror-maker. Apprenticed to the artist Shunso, he was expelled for originality, and went back to his family to live in poverty and hardship throughout his long life. Unable to live by painting, he peddled food and almanacs. When his house burned down he merely composed a hokka:

  It has burned down;

  How serene the flowers in their falling!85

  When, at the age of eighty-nine, he was discovered by death, he surrendered reluctantly, saying: “If the gods had given me only ten years more I could have become a really great painter.”86

  He left behind him five hundred volumes of thirty thousand drawings. Intoxicated with the unconscious artistry of natural forms, he pictured in loving and varied repetition mountains, rocks, rivers, bridges, waterfalls and the sea. Having issued a book of “Thirty-six Views of Fuji,” he went back, like the fascinated priest of Buddhist legend,* to sit at the foot of the sacred mount again, and draw “One Hundred Views of Fuji.” In a series named “The Imagery of the Poets” he returned to the loftier subjects of Japanese art, and showed, among others, the great Li Po beside the chasm and cascade of Lu. In 1812 he issued the first of fifteen volumes called Mangwa—a series of realistic drawings of the homeliest details of common life, piquant with humor and scandalous with burlesque. These he flung off without care or effort, a dozen a day, until he had illustrated every nook and cranny of plebeian Japan. Never had the nation seen such fertility, such swift and penetrating conception, such reckless vitality of execution. As American critics looked down upon Whitman, so Japanese critics and art circles looked down upon Hokusai, seeing only the turbulence of his brush and the occasional vulgarity of his mind. But when he died his neighbors—who had not known that Whistler, in a modest moment, would rank him as the greatest painter since Velasquez87—marveled to see so long a funeral issue from so simple a home.

  Less famous in the West but more respected in the East was the last great figure of the Ukiyoye School—Hiroshige (1796-1858). The hundred thousand distinct prints that claim his parentage picture the landscapes of his country more faithfully than Hokusai’s, and with an art that has earned Hiroshige rank as probably the greatest landscape painter of Japan. Hokusai, standing before nature, drew not the scene but some airy fantasy suggested by it to his imagination; Hiroshige loved the world itself in all its forms, and drew these so loyally that the traveler may still recognize the objects and contours that inspired him. About 1830 he set out along the Tokaido or post road from Tokyo to Kyoto, and, like a true poet, thought less of his goal than of the diverting and significant scenes which he met on his way. When at last his trip was finished, he gathered his impressions together in his most famous work—“The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” (1834). He liked to picture rain and the night in all their mystic forms, and the only man who surpassed him in this—Whistler—modeled his nocturnes upon Hiroshige’s.88 He too loved Fuji, and made “Thirty-six Views” of the mountain; but also he loved his native Tokyo, and made “One Hundred Views of Yedo” shortly before he died. He lived less years than Hokusai, but yielded up the torch with more content:

  I leave my brush at Azuma

  And go on the journey to the Holy West,

  To visit the famous scenery there.*89

  XI. JAPANESE ART AND CIVILIZATION

  A retrospect—Contrasts—An estimate—The doom of the old Japan

  The Japanese print was almost the last phase of that subtle and delicate civilization which crumbled under the impact of Occidental industry, just as the cynical pessimism of the Western mind today may be the final aspect of a civilization doomed to die under the heel of Oriental industry. Because that medieval Japan which survived till 1853 was harmless to us, we can appreciate its beauty patronizingly; and it will be hard to find in a Japan of competing factories and threatening guns the charm that lures us in the selected loveliness of the past. We know, in our prosaic moments, that there was much cruelty in that old Japan, that peasants were poor and workers were oppressed, that women were slaves there, and might in hard times be sold into promiscuity, that life was cheap, and that in the end there was no law for the common man but the sword of the Samurai. But in Europe too men were cruel and women were a subject class, peasants were poor and workers were oppressed, life was hard and thought was dangerous, and in the end there was no law but the will of the lord or the king.

  And as we can feel some affection for that old Europe because, in the midst of poverty, exploitation and bigotry, men built cathedrals in which every stone was carved in beauty, or martyred themselves to earn for their successors the right to think, or fought for justice until they created those civil liberties which are the most precious and precarious portion of our inheritance, so behind the bluster of the Samurai we honor the bravery that still gives to Japan a power above its numbers and its wealth; behind the lazy monks we sense the poetry of Buddhism, and acknowledge its endless incentives to poetry and art; behind the sharp blow of cruelty, and the seeming rudeness of the strong to the weak, we recognize the courtliest manners, the most pleasant ceremonies, and an unrivaled devotion to nature’s beauty in all her forms. Behind the enslavement of women we see their beauty, their tenderness, and their incomparable grace; and amid the despotism of the family we hear the happiness of children playing in the garden of the East.

  We are not much moved today by the restrained brevity and untranslatable suggestiveness of Japanese poetry; and yet it was this poetry, as well as the Chinese, that suggested the “free verse” and “imagism” of our time. There is scant originality in Japan’s philosophers, and in her historians a dearth of the high impartiality that we expect of those whose books are not an annex to their country’s armed or diplomatic force. But these were minor things in the life of Japan; she gave herself wisely to the creation of beauty rather than to the pursuit of truth. The soil she lived on was too treacherous to encourage sublime architecture, and yet the houses she built “are, from the esthetic point of view, the most perfect ever designed.”90 No country in modern times has rivaled her in the grace and loveliness of little things—the clothing of the women, the artistry of fans and parasols, of cups and toys, of inro and netsuke, the splendor of lacquer and the exquisite carving of wood. No other modern people has quite equaled the Japanese in restraint and delicacy of decoration, or in widespread refinement and sureness of taste. It is true that Japanese porcelain is less highly valued, even by the Japanese, than that of Sung and Ming; but if only the Chinese product surpasses it, the work of the Japanese potter still ranks above that of the modern European. And though Japanese painting lacks the strength and depth of Chinese, and Japanese prints are mere poster art at their worst, and at their best the transient redemption of hurried trivialities with a national perfection of grace and line, nevertheless it was Japanese rather than Chinese painting, and Japanese prints rather than Japanese water-colors, that revolutionized pictori
al art in the nineteenth century, and gave the stimulus to a hundred experiments in fresh creative forms. These prints, sweeping into Europe in the wake of reopened trade after 1860, profoundly affected Monet, Manet, Degas and Whistler; they put an end to the “brown sauce” that had been served with almost every European painting from Leonardo to Millet; they filled the canvases of Europe with sunshine, and encouraged the painter to be a poet rather than a photographer. “The story of the beautiful,” said Whistler, with the swagger that made all but his contemporaries love him, “is already complete—hewn in the marbles of the Parthenon, and broidered, with the birds, upon the fan of Hokusai—at the foot of Fuji-yama.”91

  We hope that this is not quite true; but it was unconsciously true for the old Japan. She died four years after Hokusai. In the comfort and peace of her isolation she had forgotten that a nation must keep abreast of the world if it does not wish to be enslaved. While Japan carved her inro and flourished her fans, Europe was establishing a science that was almost entirely unknown to the East; and that science, built up year by year in laboratories apparently far removed from the stream of the world’s affairs, at last gave Europe the mechanized industries that enabled her to make the goods of life more cheaply—however less beautifully—than Asia’s skilful artisans could turn them out by hand. Sooner or later those cheaper goods would win the markets of Asia, ruining the economic and changing the political life of countries pleasantly becalmed in the handicraft stage. Worse than that, science made explosives, battleships and guns that could kill a little more completely than the sword of the most heroic Samurai; of what use was the bravery of a knight against the dastardly anonymity of a shell?

  There is no more amazing or portentous phenomenon in modern history than the way in which sleeping Japan, roughly awakened by the cannon of the West, leaped to the lesson, bettered the instruction, accepted science, industry and war, defeated all her competitors either in battle or in trade, and became, within two generations, the most aggressive nation in the contemporary world.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  The New Japan

  I. THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION

  The decay of the Shogunate—America knocks at the door—The Restoration—The Westernization of Japan—Political reconstruction—The new constitution—Law—The army—The war with Russia—Its political results

  THE death of a civilization seldom comes from without; internal decay must weaken the fibre of a society before external influences or attacks can change its essential structure, or bring it to an end. A ruling family rarely contains within itself that persistent vitality and subtle adaptability which enduring domination requires; the founder exhausts half the strength of the stock, and leaves to mediocrity the burdens that only genius could bear. The Tokugawas after Iyeyasu governed moderately well, but, barring Yoshimune, they numbered no positive personalities in their line. Within eight generations after Iyeyasu’s death the feudal barons were disturbing the Shogunate with sporadic revolts; taxes were delayed or withheld, and the Yedo treasury, despite desperate economies, became inadequate to finance national security or defense.1 Two centuries and more of peace had softened the Samurai, and had disaccustomed the people to the hardships and sacrifices of war; epicurean habits had displaced the stoic simplicity of Hideyoshi’s days, and the country, suddenly called upon to protect its sovereignty, found itself physically and morally unarmed. The Japanese intellect fretted under the exclusion of foreign intercourse, and heard with restless curiosity of the rising wealth and varied civilization of Europe and America; it studied Mabuchi and Moto-ori, and secretly branded the shoguns as usurpers who had violated the continuity of the Imperial dynasty; it could not reconcile the divine descent of the Emperor with the impotent poverty to which the Tokugawas had condemned him. From their hiding-places in the Yoshiwara and elsewhere, subterranean pamphleteers began to flood the cities with passionate appeals for the overthrow of the Shogunate, and the restoration of the Imperial power.

  Upon this harassed and resourceless Government the news burst in 1853 that an American fleet, ignoring Japanese prohibitions, had entered Uraga Bay, and that its commander insisted upon seeing the supreme authority in Japan. Commodore Perry had four ships of war and 560 men; but instead of making a display of even this modest force, he sent a courteous note to the Shogun Iyeyoshi, assuring him that the American Government asked nothing more than the opening of a few Japanese ports to American trade, and some arrangements for the protection of such American seamen as might be shipwrecked on Japanese shores. The T’ai-p’ing Rebellion called Perry back to his base in Chinese waters; but in 1854 he returned to Japan armed with a larger squadron and a persuasive variety of gifts—perfumes, clocks, stoves, whiskey . . .—for the Emperor, the Empresses, and the princes of the blood. The new Shogun, Iyesada, neglected to transmit these presents to the royal family, but consented to sign the Treaty of Kanagawa, which conceded in effect all the American demands. Perry praised the courtesy of the islanders, and announced, with imperfect foresight, that “if the Japanese came to the United States they would find the navigable waters of the country free to them, and that they would not be debarred even from the gold-fields of California.”2 By this and later treaties the major ports of Japan were open to commerce from abroad, tariffs were specified and limited, and Japan agreed that Europeans and Americans accused of crime in the islands should be tried by their own consular courts. Stipulations were made and accepted that all persecution of Christianity should cease in the Empire; and at the same time the United States offered to sell to Japan such arms and battleships as she might need, and to lend officers and craftsmen for the instruction of this absurdly pacific nation in the arts of war.3

  The Japanese people suffered keenly from the humiliation of these treaties, though later they acknowledged them as the impartial instruments of evolution and destiny. Some of them wished to fight the foreigners at any cost, to expel them all, and restore a self-contained agricultural and feudal regime. Others saw the necessity of imitating rather than expelling the West; the only course by which Japan could avoid the repeated defeats and the economic subjection which Europe was then imposing upon China was by learning as rapidly as possible the methods of Western industry, and the technique of modern war. With astonishing finesse the Westernizing leaders used the baronial lords as aides in overthrowing the Shogunate and restoring the Emperor, and then used the Imperial authority to overthrow feudalism and introduce Occidental industry. So in 1867 the feudal lords persuaded the last of the shoguns, Keiki, to abdicate. “Almost all the acts of the administration,” said Keiki, “are far from perfect, and I confess it with shame that the present unsatisfactory condition of affairs is due to my shortcomings and incompetence. Now that foreign intercourse becomes daily more extensive, unless the government is directed from one central authority, the foundations of the state will fall to pieces.”4 The Emperor Meiji replied tersely that “Tokugawa Keiki’s proposal to restore the administrative authority to the Imperial Court is accepted”; and on January 1, 1868 the new “Era of Meiji” was officially begun. The old religion of Shinto was revised, and an intensive propaganda convinced the people that the restored emperor was divine in lineage and wisdom, and that his decrees were to be accepted as the edicts of the gods.

  Armed with this new power, the Westernizers achieved almost a miracle in the rapid transformation of their country. Ito and Inouye braved their way through every prohibition and obstacle to Europe, studied its industries and institutions, marveled at the railroad, the steamship, the telegraph and the battleship, and came back inflamed with a patriotic resolve to Europeanize Japan. Englishmen were brought in to superintend the construction of railways, the erection of telegraphs, and the building of a navy; Frenchmen were commissioned to recast the laws and train the army; Germans were assigned to the organization of medicine and public health; Americans were engaged to establish a system of universal education; and to make matters complete, Italians were imported to instruct the Japanese in scul
pture and painting.5 There were temporary, even bloody, reactions, and at times the spirit of Japan rebelled against this hectic and artificial metamorphosis; but in the end the machine had its way, and the Industrial Revolution added Japan to its realm.

  Of necessity that Revolution (the only real revolution in modern history) lifted to wealth and economic power a new class of men—manufacturers, merchants and financiers—who in the old Japan had been ranked at the very bottom of the social scale. This rising bourgeoisie quietly used its means and influence first to destroy feudalism, and then to reduce to an imposing pretense the restored authority of the throne. In 1871 the Government persuaded the barons to surrender their ancient privileges, and consoled them with government bonds in exchange for their lands.* Bound by ties of interest to the new society, the old aristocracy gave its services loyally to the Government, and enabled it to effect with bloodless ease the transition from a medieval to a modern state. Ito Hirobumi, recently returned from a second visit to Europe, created, in imitation of Germany, a new nobility of five orders—princes, marquises, counts, viscounts and barons; but these men were the rewarded servants, not the feudal enemies, of the industrial regime.

  Modestly and tirelessly Ito labored to give his country a form of government that would avoid what seemed to him the excesses of democracy, and yet enlist and encourage the talent of every class for a rapid economic development. Under his leadership Japan promulgated, in 1889, its first constitution. At the top of the legal structure was the emperor, technically supreme, owning all land in fee simple, commander of an army and a navy responsible to him alone, and giving to the Empire the strength of unity, continuity, and regal prestige. Graciously he consented to delegate his law-making power, so long as it pleased him, to a Diet of two chambers—a House of Peers and a House of Representatives; but the ministers of state were to be appointed by him, and to be accountable to him rather than to the Diet. Underneath was a small electorate of some 460,000 voters, severely limited by a property qualification; successive liberalizations of the franchise raised the number of voters to 13,000,000 by 1928. Corruption in office has kept pace with the extension of democracy.6