The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  This is only a digression. I have no doubt, though, about the depth of our human wonder at discovering the contrast between nature and mankind. It may seem too fanciful, but to say that all human civilization stems from that fact is no mistake. All man’s religion, his philosophy, his art, derives more directly from wonder at the contrast between man and nature. The grievous reality of the contrast between the infinity of nature and the minuteness of man is the stimulus for mankind. In that flash of self-realization, some people have boldly tried to establish something immortal in human striving—a separate human kind of permanence, in contrast to the permanence of nature. Some people believed that by devising certain rules, mankind could be made as eternal as nature, and they searched for those rules. Other people have felt that considering the minute and momentary nature of man’s existence, the price is too high for the pain that must be expended for us humans to get through our fleeting lives. Those people saw nature as deceiving man in giving us an instinctive tenacity for life. The effort to prolong our lives they saw as a form of kneeling in reverence to nature, and instead they were determined to repudiate this life. All the history of philosophy, the history of religion, is nothing but a catalog of these facts. Art had a different means. It undertook to construct an especially agreeable and beautiful world to enable one to confront eternity within the moment, even if momentarily. Whatever the method, whatever the direction, these people devoted all their energies to it. All those who strove with hope for human life, and even those who were skeptical or negative, have displayed a human will. Rather than praise human will, some religions and philosophies have denied such praise. Those who positively repudiated will in their religion or philosophy were as willful as those who praised it. If we call the will of those who praised will a “plus power,” we can say that the others worked with a “minus power.” As soon as human beings have noticed the minuteness of man in relation to nature, each person has demonstrated his will in trying to escape his grievous condition. Like a wild animal trapped in a cage that it cannot break out of. If you call it shameful, it is shameful. But if you call it heroic, it is heroic in the way that man has fought. . . . I don’t know why we do it. We do it because we have the same desire to live as does the wild animal. You can even say the will that works with a minus power is, after all, a means to savor our feeling for life. It is quite reasonable that this power should so suddenly be displayed at that moment when we fully realize how limited is the power of our lives, just like the wild animal in the cage.

  When this spiritual awakening to the contrast between man and nature occurred among our people, nothing less than the “sense of impermanence” was born. That “sense of impermanence” is no more than the sensibility, the sentiment arising from recognition of the momentary, minute nature of man and the eternity and infinity of nature. It is definitely not a philosophical view achieved through hard work. It is the source from which all mankind has fought the willful, heroic, bitter struggle. It is the kind of sensibility or sentiment that a people must acquire without effort while they are still youthful. Among other peoples, too, a prototype of this sensibility or something much akin to it has induced the anguish of their religions, philosophies, and ways of life. Those same feelings that called forth such anguished screams and actions among other peoples were born among our people but grew, not into religion or philosophy, but immediately became aesthetic and then grew easily into the artistic state of the “pathos of things”—the sphere of that single subtle principle where the instant and the eternal become identical.

  I say “easily.” Yes, before it became art, didn’t the reality of anguish linger in the cultural history of our people, whether the anguish came by will or by reason, in the plus direction or the minus direction, in life itself through its grounding in art, through philosophy or through religion? What era shall we see as the spiritual awakening of our people, before the development of the artistic state of the “pathos of things” or after? The culture of the Nara period,3 along with the art of the Man’yōshū, was a lively, innocent culture of human superiority, unaware in its youthfulness of the awakening of spirit. It did have premonitions of spiritual awakening. That was all. Because that was all, it was all the more precious.

  I believe it was the poets who felt the “pathos of things” and caused the true awakening of our spirit. They pioneered the artistic sphere with no feeling for pain. You can call it too easy a miracle. It may have been the influence of Buddhism, but I would like to call it rather more accidental. From my point of view, the poets of the Kokinshū were all in a certain sense decadent. They were exhausted at the limits of their pleasures. They were just plain sentimentalists. But they really harbored a rich talent.

  In truth, the strenuous activity of life, even when not a life of misery, often makes us think of death. In that moment when we are so tired that the thought of death is pleasing, however, we cling to the instinct for life so long as we live. We can conceive how, by thinking of death, we can enjoy life. The attachment to life, the joy of life in these circumstances, constitutes life at its irreducible minimum. “The pathos of things” and “the sense of impermanence” are no more than the joy of life, the attachment to life at its irreducible minimum. At that moment when a person who is exhausted by his activities thinks unconsciously of repose, his will becomes faint, like a shadow. The feeling for nature’s eternity that comes to such people is expressed in a sad affection, like nostalgia, for the final home that will in time envelop us. But as long as one is alive, one does not wish for death. . . . The instinct to long for death was given never nor in the least to mankind. What was given was the instinct for life. When a feeling like the desire for death occurs, the instinct for life is tired, pained, or crazed. Those who commit suicide have displayed only insanity in respect to the instinct for life, goaded by their dissatisfaction with that life.

  The court nobles of the Kokinshū did not wish for death out of dissatisfaction with life. Considering their excessive exhaustion from the pleasures of life, their desire for quiet must have been a search to renew the pleasures of life. Once they noticed the eternity of nature and the momentary nature of themselves, they must have looked at themselves with undreamed-of terror. Those people, tired in their contentment, their life’s power faded like a shadow, could display no vigor in their terror. Nor did they. As soon as they thought of eternity and infinity, they felt a kind of grief at the total impossibility of their happiness continuing forever. In their faded vitality their grief was fleeting. The grief never deepened. The Buddhist conclusion, and nothing more than the conclusion, may have helped them then. But I wonder if what saved them was not their very rich poetic talent rather than their religion. In their fleeting but deeply rooted grief, they first discovered a new world of poetry. In their joy at discovering this new poetic world and enraptured by their art, these poets easily resolved the sad wonder they had discovered in the contrast between man and nature. That is why I want to use the words “the feeling for the evanescence of beauty” for “the sense of impermanence.” The joy of sadness. The joy of weariness with life. The poetic sentiment of “the pathos of things” is, with no further explanation, a kind of decadence.

  Yet why does this poetic feeling for decadence forever touch our hearts? No doubt we have long been brought up with that sentiment. Why did it become the poetic interest of our people and not lose its fascination over so long a time? . . . Don’t we sometimes sense it vibrantly alive in our hearts even now? This is worth considering. I find rather good reasons for it. First of all, the poetic sentiment of “the pathos of things” is rooted in an important and long-lasting new human condition that we can call the awakening of man’s soul. We can say it grows almost directly out of that condition. Second, in discovering this universal and perpetual human problem, it offered at the same time a solution to that condition. It is no exaggeration to say that the solution was reached simultaneously with the discovery of the problem. . . . At times we find ourselves fully satisfied with
this solution. What kind of solution does “the pathos of things” offer, after all?

  We know how different peoples in their confrontation with nature, sometimes even wishing to conquer nature, have boldly and decisively devised diverse ways, only to find in the end that their anguish was heightened. The novel solution our ancestors chanced on as they faced the problem was, I think, undreamed of by other peoples, especially the Europeans. . . . Nothing less than that. Our ancestors happened (really by chance!) to feel themselves a part of nature. They did not feel themselves to be humans confronting nature. They felt themselves humans embraced by nature. They recognized man straight out as the child of nature. That’s all there was to it. “What a big deal!” You mustn’t laugh. When we think about it in comparison to the way in which other peoples have struggled like the wild animal caught in a cage, of course it makes us laugh. As innocent as child’s play, like Columbus’s egg,4 it was a solution improvised, intuitive, and yet undeniably appropriate.

  But (this “but” is so important it should be printed in red ink) what we must not forget in feeling ourselves to be part of nature is that as we have greatly relieved the anguish in the confrontation between man and nature, we have in so doing depreciated our human will to its irreducible minimum!

  Some kind of internal discord is surely needed to limit a burning will to its lowest level. One must display a will that works in the minus direction. Buddhism needed a comprehensive philosophy in order to limit the self to its minimum. To give up will is an act of the human will. If human will were not fired up from the start and were already at the minimum level, there should be no need to exert additional will. Our ancestors—at least the poets of “the pathos of things”—did not resolve the problem through exerting a minus will, a will to abandon will. It seems to me, instead, that they accidentally achieved a solution at the moment when the power of life faded on its own—we might better call it the moment when will dropped away, not when will was abandoned. I can see no sign of any effort to achieve that solution. Rather, I see proof to the contrary. As their poetic feeling was acquired in this way, their poetry was realized only in the briefest poetic form, like no other on earth. Dr. von Koeber5 was very perceptive when he expressed the opinion that the poetry of our people was nothing more than theme or title for what is contained in Western poetry. Actually, our people never left the starting point from which other peoples went on to construct a philosophy or religion, or art. They made a world with no room to develop anything beyond theme and title itself.

  The dropping away of human will—that is, the dimming of our life force of itself to its irreducible minimum—is not a condition that a living person can keep going for very long. This alone is why the poetry of our people is sufficient in its shortness; it is why, in the long form of poetry that existed from the Man’yōshū era, shadows disappeared completely as soon as “the pathos of things” had become the poetic feeling of our people. Because the moment of exclamation in wonder followed immediately after the momentary sensation, it was impossible for the poetic feeling of “the pathos of things” to flourish in long poetic forms. (Try comparing this with the long novels of the West!) As a sign of further development of the poetic feeling for “the pathos of things,” even half the poetic length was enough by the time of Bashō’s poetry. . . . The more our people’s artistic style progressed, the simpler it became—isn’t that strange? When we think about it fully, however, that strange phenomenon strikes us as entirely appropriate. The stark secret of literature close to silence, art close to nothingness, is not at all mysterious if we understand that the “sense of impermanence” which forms its base lies in human activity at its irreducible minimum, in the sensibility of an instant existing on the border between being and nonbeing.

  The poetic feeling of “the pathos of things” needed thirty-one syllables. That was to make room not only for the momentary sensation but also for the emotion or even the sentimentality that followed from the momentary sensation. In the art of Bashō, however, the sentimental exclamation of wonder at the “sense of impermanence” has gone. The only thing flung out point-blank is the sensation of the moment when the self has shrunk to its irreducible minimum. All there is, is nature, the sound of the wind, the murmur of the water, the crying of birds, or the blooming of flowers. As the wind made the branches sound, nature itself made man shout. It was so direct that it was symbolic. It was a great leap forward in the literature of elegance. Because “the pathos of things” was an exclamation of wonder, it was subjective. Because it was subjective, its poetic world spoke more of man than of nature. When the poetic world abandoned the exclamation of wonder—no, when it became so instantaneous that it failed to make time for the exclamation, it took the next step. It captured the moment when the subjective world and the objective world—that is, man himself and nature—were exquisitely united, thus depicting precisely one aspect of man at a time when he is embraced within nature. Revealed there is not man living as man but man existing at one with the universe.

  Human will at its irreducible minimum was concealed deeply in “the pathos of things.” That is because the exclamation of wonder could neither synchronize nor coincide with nature; in other words, it was a manifestation of an attachment to life at its irreducible minimum. Because it was the lowest level, it created no contradiction in the mother-and-child relationship of nature and man that they had sensed. It was, however, one step removed from the aspect of man wholly embraced by nature. Not the relationship of a baby at its mother’s breast, it is like that of a fussy child with its mother. The solution was shallow because of their subjectivity—a solution reached expressly by intuition (not by demonstration), by sensibility (not by will), by improvisation (not by asceticism), by sensing (not by spiritual enlightenment).

  One more step, just one. With this subjectivity in the exclamation of wonder, with this elimination of will, will itself in its true sense had dropped away. The man who achieved this was Matsuo Bashō. Actually, in Bashō’s poetic world, nature and man have readily melted into each other. That is because human will—or, rather, human existence itself—was expressed at its irreducible minimum. In this world of elegance, leaving aside the fine arts for the moment, there was no one who could approach Bashō in the literature of elegance, that is, in the poetry of utter impromptu sensibility. Consider Yosa Buson, for example.6

  Buson was, to the end, a man of elegance. But regrettably, compared with Bashō, his elegance had something about it of “elegance for the sake of elegance.” Too much so. What do I mean by “elegance for the sake of elegance”? Elegance in Buson was no longer the direct child of nature. Buson built a separate world of elegance. The art of Buson lay in that separate world of elegance he built. I see that art not as the child but as the grandchild of nature. His poetry has an excess of elegant retrospection, of elegant fancy, of elegant exclamation, of elegant emphasis.

  Seventh day of flowers

  Even eating nothing

  The painters meet.

  Reciting that, one feels too much elegant will in Buson, beyond the instant sensibility. Buson was a master. So we can say his views on elegance were not mistaken, but even with his correct understanding we feel he presents the thing that is elegant as counter to nature. That may be an exaggeration, but at least one does feel he is posing a world of elegance quite outside the world of nature. Risky, isn’t it? If Buson had missed by a step, he would have degenerated finally into the elegance of a vulgar man’s elegant wild fox,7 the tea ceremony of a rich man! The only thing that saved Buson was that he pursued a life of elegance with sensibility just elegant enough to match his elegant intentions. But for those who have elegant intentions without elegant sensibility! Frightful even to think about in the cause of elegance. Actually, so-called commonplace elegance is a doctrine of intentionally created elegance. Such elegance is destroyed by its triteness. . . . The opinion of the Shinchō8 writers that elegance is a matter of will is, I hope, not the same as that kind of vulgar elegance. Tr
ue elegance, what I consider elegance, has an aversion to human will, to intentional elegance.

  What do I consider true elegance? I can assert it now without the least hesitation. For the spirit of elegance, the less human will there is, the better. Will should be at its lowest level possible, its irreducible minimum. In the language sense, it is the ancient rather than the present, the poet or poetry rather than the novelist or the novel, solitude rather than company, telepathic understanding rather than eloquent discussion. All the former make us think of elegance more than do the latter. That is precisely because less human will is required by the former than by the latter. If you were to show to some artists of elegance a modern novel with all its meaning constructed from the complications in the entanglement of human wills, and you explained that this was a great work of art, they might fall over in an instant swoon. Balzac and Bashō are at the two poles of literature.

  For its main form in literature, the art of elegance chooses impromptu poetry, closest to silence. For its main technique in art, it chooses monochrome painting, closest to emptiness. That is surely no accident. It is not total silence, not total emptiness. In the end something must be expressed. . . . Why does it remain art? While very closely resembling some pessimistic religions and some negativistic philosophies, why is elegance essentially an art and not something else? This fact demands fullest consideration but is easily explained. Although elegance resembles those pessimistic religions and negativistic philosophies, there is a very great difference in the most important point. Elegance has not basically denied or rejected our existence. It feels for life at its irreducible minimum. But in no way have the followers of elegance denied life. Rather, they enjoyed life, though at its irreducible minimum. To put it another way, as people who were embraced within nature, they felt acutely that life was worth living. . . . That’s why I call it the pure white passion. They may have had a special distaste for human society that was built on human will, but they had no dislike for man himself. In the minimum world of human beings perceived as something minimum, they took pleasure in the presence of man. So long as it was a matter of human beings stimulated by nature—by a world that was not empty, that was close to silence but not silence itself—they spoke out happily, whether it had meaning or no meaning for the common man, whether the voice came in joy or anger, smiles or wails. So long as it was a matter of human beings stimulated by nature, they gazed happily, whether at the beauty or the ugliness of the commonplace, at whatever the shapes of trees and grasses, fish and insects, clouds and smoke, streams and mountains. They communicated with joy the voices they uttered, the things they watched. The works they left behind were their objects of proof. . . . Who would have done as much without the joy of life?