Part 9
I said in a former essay that a Japanese city is little more than a wilderness of wooden sheds, and Ōsaka is no exception. But interiorly a very large number of the frail wooden dwellings of any Japanese city are works of art; and perhaps no city possesses more charming homes than Ōsaka. Kyoto is, indeed, much richer in gardens,--there being comparatively little space for gardens in Ōsaka; but I am speaking of the houses only. Exteriorly a Japanese street may appear little better than a row of wooden barns or stables, but the interior of any dwelling in it may be a wonder of beauty. Usually the outside of a Japanese house is not at all beautiful, though it may have a certain pleasing oddity of form; and in many cases the walls of the rear or sides are covered with charred boards, of which the blackened and hardened surfaces are said to resist heat and damp better than any coating of paint or stucco could do. Except, perhaps, the outside of a coal-shed, nothing dingier-looking could be imagined. But the other side of the black walls may be an aesthetic delight. The comparative cheapness of the residence does not much affect this possibility;--for the Japanese excel all nations in obtaining the maximum of beauty with the minimum of cost; while the most industrially advanced of Western peoples--the practical Americans--have yet only succeeded in obtaining the minimum of beauty with the maximum of cost! Much about Japanese interiors can be learned from Morse's "Japanese Homes;" but even that admirable book gives only the black-and-white notion of the subject; and more than half of the charm of such interiors is the almost inexplicable caress of color. To illustrate Mr. Morse's work so as to interpret the colorific charm would be a dearer and a more difficult feat than the production of Racinet's "Costumes Historique." Even thus the subdued luminosity, the tone of perfect repose, the revelations of delicacy and daintiness waiting the eye in every nook of chambers seemingly contrived to catch and keep the feeling of perpetual summer, would remain unguessed. Five years ago I wrote that a little acquaintance with the Japanese art of flower arrangement had made it impossible for me to endure the sight of that vulgarity, or rather brutality, which in the West we call a "bouquet." To-day I must add that familiarity with Japanese interiors has equally disgusted me with Occidental interiors, no matter how spacious or comfortable or richly furnished. Returning now to Western life, I should feel like Thomas-the-Rhymer revisiting a world of ugliness and sorrow after seven years of fairyland.
It is possible, as has been alleged (though I cannot believe it), that Western artists have little more to learn from the study of Japanese pictorial art. But I am quite sure that our house-builders have universes of facts to learn--especially as regards the treatment and tinting of surfaces--from the study of Japanese interiors. Whether the countless styles of these interiors can even be classed appears to me a doubtful question. I do not think that in a hundred thousand Japanese houses there are two interiors precisely alike (excluding, of course, the homes of the poorest classes),--for the designer never repeats himself when he can help it. The lesson he has to teach is the lesson of perfect taste combined with inexhaustible variety. Taste! --what a rare thing it is in our Western world!--and how independent of material,--how intuitive,--how incommunicable to the vulgar! But taste is a Japanese birthright. It is everywhere present,--though varying in quality of development according to conditions and the inheritance depending upon conditions. The average Occidental recognizes only the commoner forms of it,--chiefly those made familiar by commercial export. And, as a general rule, what the West most admires in Japanese conventional taste is thought rather vulgar in Japan. Not that we are wrong in admiring whatever is beautiful in itself. Even the designs printed in tints upon a two-cent towel may be really great pictures: they are sometimes made by excellent artists. But the aristocratic severity of the best Japanese taste--the exquisite complexity of its refinements in the determination of proportion, quality, tone, restraint--has never yet been dreamed of by the West. Nowhere is this taste so finely exhibited as in private interiors,--particularly in regard to color. The rules of color in the composition of a set of rooms are not less exacting: than the rules of color in the matter of dress,--though permitting considerable variety. The mere tones of a private house are enough to indicate its owner's degree of culture. There is no painting, no varnishing, no wall-papering,--only staining and polishing of particular parts, and a sort of paper border about fifteen inches broad fixed along the bottom of a wall to protect it during cleaning and dusting operations. The plastering may be made with sands of different hues, or with fragments of shell and nacre, or with quartz-crystal, or with mica; the surface may imitate granite, or may sparkle like copper pyrites, or may look exactly like a rich mass of bark; but, whatever the material, the tint given must show the same faultless taste that rules in the tints of silks for robes and girdles. ... As yet, all this interior world of beauty--just because it is an interior world--is closed to the foreign tourist: he can find at most only suggestions of it in the rooms of such old-fashioned inns or tea-houses as he may visit in the course of his travels.
*
I wonder how many foreign travelers understand the charm of a Japanese inn, or even think how much is done to please them, not merely in the matter of personal attentions, but in making beauty for their eyes. Multitudes write of their petty vexations,--their personal acquaintance with fleas, their personal dislikes and discomforts; but how many write of the charm of that alcove where every day fresh flowers are placed,--arranged as no European florist could ever learn to arrange flowers,--and where there is sure to be some object of real art, whether in bronze, lacquer, or porcelain, together with a picture suited to the feeling of the time and season? These little aesthetic gratifications, though never charged for, ought to be kindly remembered when the gift of "tea-money" is made. I have been in hundreds of Japanese hotels, and I remember only one in which I could find nothing curious or pretty,--a ramshackle shelter hastily put up to catch custom at a newly-opened railway station.
A word about the alcove of my room in Osaka:--The wall was covered only with a mixture of sand and metallic filings of some sort, but it looked like a beautiful surface of silver ore. To the pillar was fastened a bamboo cup containing a pair of exquisite blossoming sprays of wistaria,--one pink and the other white. The kakemono--made with a few very bold strokes by a master-brush--pictured two enormous crabs about to fight after vainly trying to get out of each other's way;--and the humor of the thing was enhanced by a few Chinese characters signifying, _Wōko-sékai,_ or, "Everything goes crookedly in this world."
VII
My last day in Ōsaka was given to shopping,--chiefly in the districts of the toy-makers and of the silk merchants. A Japanese acquaintance, himself a shopkeeper, took me about, and showed me extraordinary things until my eyes ached. We went to a famous silk-house,--a tumultuous place, so crowded that we had some trouble to squeeze our way to the floor-platform, which, in every Japanese shop, serves at once for chairs and counter. Scores of barefooted light-limbed boys were running over it, bearing bundles of merchandise to customers;--for in such shops there is no shelving of stock. The Japanese salesman never leaves his squatting-place on the mats; but, on learning what you want, he shouts an order, and boys presently run to you with armfuls of samples. After you have made your choice, the goods are rolled up again by the boys, and carried back into the fire-proof storehouses behind the shop. At the time of our visit, the greater part of the matted floor-space was one splendid shimmering confusion of tossed silks and velvets of a hundred colors and a hundred prices. Near the main entrance an elderly superintendent, plump and jovial of aspect like the God of Wealth, looked after arriving customers. Two keen-eyed men, standing upon an elevation in the middle of the shop, and slowly turning round and round in opposite directions, kept watch for thieves; and other watchers were posted at the side--doors. (Japanese shop-thieves, by the way, are very clever; and I am told that nearly every large store loses considerably by them in the course of the year.) In a side-wing of the building, under a low skylight, I saw busy ranks of bookkeepers, cashiers, and correspondents squatting before little desks less than two feet high. Each of the numerous salesmen was attending to many customers at once. The rush of business was big; and the rapidity with which the work was being done testified to the excellence of the organization established. I asked how many persons the firm employed, and my friend replied:--
"Probably about two hundred here; there are several branch houses. In this shop the work is very hard; but the working-hours are shorter than in most of the silk-houses,--not more than twelve hours a day."
"What about salaries?" I inquired.
"No salaries."
"Is all the work of this firm done without pay?"
"Perhaps one or two of the very cleverest salesmen may get something,--not exactly a salary, but a little special remuneration every month; and the old superintendent--(he has been forty years in the house)--gets a salary. The rest get nothing but their food."
"Good food?"
"No, very cheap, coarse food. After a man has served his time here,--fourteen or fifteen years,--he may be helped to open a small store of his own."
"Are the conditions the same in all the shops of Osaka?"
"Yes,--everywhere the same. But now many of the detchi are graduates of commercial schools. Those sent to a commercial school begin their apprenticeship much later; and they are said not to make such good detchi as those taught from childhood."
"A Japanese clerk in a foreign store is much better off."
"We do not think so," answered my friend very positively. "Some who speak English well, and have learned the foreign way of doing business, may get fifty or sixty dollars a month for seven or eight hours' work a day. But they are not treated the same way as they are treated in a Japanese house. Clever men do not like to work under foreigners. Foreigners used to be very cruel to their Japanese clerks and servants."
"But not now?" I queried.
"Perhaps not often. They have found that it is dangerous. But they used to beat and kick them. Japanese think it shameful to even speak unkindly to detchi or servants. In a house like this there is no unkindness. The owners and the superintendents never speak roughly. You see how very hard all these men and boys are working without pay. No foreigner could get Japanese to work like that, even for big wages. I have worked in foreign houses, and I know."
*
It is not exaggeration to say that most of the intelligent service rendered in Japanese trade and skilled industry is unsalaried. Perhaps one third of the business work of the country is done without wages; the relation between master and servant being one of perfect trust on both sides, and absolute obedience being assured by the simplest of moral conditions. This fact was the fact most deeply impressed upon me during my stay in Osaka.
I found myself wondering about it while the evening train to Nara was bearing me away from the cheery turmoil of the great metropolis. I continued to think of it while watching the deepening of the dusk over the leagues of roofs,--over the mustering of factory chimneys forever sending up their offering of smoke to the shrine of good Nintoku. Suddenly above the out-twinkling of countless lamps,--above the white star-points of electric lights,--above the growing dusk itself,--I saw, rising glorified into the last red splendor of sunset, the marvelous old pagoda of Tennōji. And I asked myself whether the faith it symbolized had not helped to create that spirit of patience and love and trust upon which have been founded all the wealth and energy and power of the mightiest city of Japan.
VIII
BUDDHIST ALLUSIONS IN JAPANESE FOLK-SONG
Perhaps only a Japanese representative of the older culture could fully inform us to what degree the mental soil of the race has been saturated and fertilized by Buddhist idealism. At all events, no European could do so; for to understand the whole relation of Far-Eastern religion to Far-Eastern life would require, not only such scholarship, but also such experience as no European could gain in a lifetime. Yet for even the Western stranger there are everywhere signs of what Buddhism has been to Japan in the past. All the arts and most of the industries repeat Buddhist legends to the eye trained in symbolism; and there is scarcely an object of handiwork possessing any beauty or significance of form--from the plaything of a child to the heirloom of a prince--which does not in some way proclaim the ancient debt to Buddhism of the craft that made it. One may discern Buddhist thoughts in the cheap cotton prints from an Osaka mill not less than in the figured silks of Kyoto. The reliefs upon an iron kettle, or the elephant-heads of bronze making the handles of a shopkeeper's _hibachi_ the patterns of screen-paper, or the commonest ornamental woodwork of a gateway--the etchings upon a metal pipe, or the enameling upon a costly vase,--may all relate, with equal eloquence, the traditions of faith. There are reflections or echoes of Buddhist teaching in the composition of a garden;--in the countless ideographs of the long vistas of shop-signs;--in the wonderfully expressive names given to certain fruits and flowers;--in the appellations of mountains, capes, waterfalls, villages,--even of modern railway stations. And the new civilization would not yet seem to have much affected the influence thus manifested. Trains and steamers now yearly carry to famous shrines more pilgrims than visited them ever before in a twelvemonth;--the temple bells still, in despite of clocks and watches, mark the passing of time for the millions;--the speech of the people is still poetized with Buddhist utterances;--literature and drama still teem with Buddhist expressions;--and the most ordinary voices of the street--songs of children playing, a chorus of laborers at their toil, even cries of itinerant street-venders--often recall to me some story of saints and Bodhisattvas, or the text of some sutra.
Such an experience first gave me the idea of making a collection of songs containing Buddhist expressions or allusions. But in view of the extent of the subject I could not at once decide where to begin. A bewildering variety of Japanese songs--a variety of which the mere nomenclature would occupy pages--offers material of this description. Among noteworthy kinds may be mentioned the _Utai,_ dramatic songs, mostly composed by high priests, of which probably no ten lines are without some allusion to Buddhism;--the _Naga-uta,_ songs often of extraordinary length;--and the _Jōruri,_ whole romances in verse, with which professional singers can delight their audiences for five or six hours at a time. The mere dimension of such compositions necessarily excluded them from my plan; but there remained a legion of briefer forms to choose among. I resolved at last to limit my undertaking mainly to _dodoitsu_,--little songs of twenty-six syllables only, arranged in four lines (7, 7, 7, 5). They are more regular in construction than the street-songs treated of in a former paper; but they are essentially popular, and therefore more widely representative of Buddhist influences than many superior kinds of composition could be. Out of a very large number collected for me, I have selected between forty and fifty as typical of the class.
*
Perhaps those pieces which reflect the ideas of preëxistence and of future rebirths will prove especially interesting to the Western reader,--much less because of poetical worth than because of comparative novelty. We have very little English verse of any class containing fancies of this kind; but they swarm in Japanese poetry even as commonplaces and conventionalisms. Such an exquisite thing as Rossetti's "Sudden Light,"--bewitching us chiefly through the penetrative subtlety of a thought anathematized by all our orthodoxies for eighteen hundred years,--could interest a Japanese only as the exceptional rendering, by an Occidental, of fancies and feelings familiar to the most ignorant peasant. Certainly no one will be able to find in these Japanese verses--or, rather, in my own wretchedly prosy translations of them--even a hint of anything like the ghostly delicacy of Rossetti's imagining:--
I have been here before,-- But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet, keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights along the shore.
You have been mine before,-- How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar Your neck turned so, Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.
Yet what a queer _living_ difference between such enigmatically delicate handling of thoughts classed as forbidden fruit in the Western Eden of Dreams and the every-day Japanese utterances that spring directly out of ancient Eastern faith!--
_Love, it is often said, has nothing to do with reason._ _The cause of ours must be some_ En _in a previous birth._[1]
[Footnote 1:
Iro wa shian no Hoka to-wa iédo, Koré mo saki-sho no En de arō.
"En" is a Buddhist word signifying affinity,--relation of cause and effect from life to life.]
_Even the knot of the rope tying our boats together_ _Knotted was long ago by some love in a former birth._
_If the touching even of sleeves be through En of a former existence,_ _Very much deeper must be the_ En _that unites us now!_[2]
[Footnote 2:
Sodé suri-ō no mo Tashō no en yo, Mashité futari ga Fukai naka.
Allusion is here made to the old Buddhist proverb: _Sodé no furi-awasé mo tashō no en,--_"Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by some affinity operating from former lives."]
Kwahō[3] _this life must be,--this dwelling with one so tender;_ _--I am reaping now the reward of deeds in a former birth!_
[Footnote 3: The Buddhist word "Kwahō" is commonly used instead of other synonyms for Karma (such as ingwa, innen, etc.), to signify the good, rather than the bad results of action in previous lives. But it is sometimes used in both meanings. Here there seems to be an allusion to the proverbial expression, _Kwahō no yoi hito_ (lit.: a person of good Kwahō), meaning a fortunate individual.]
Many songs of this class refer to the customary vow which lovers make to belong to each other for more lives than one,--a vow perhaps originally inspired by the Buddhist aphorism,--
_Oya-ko wa, is-sé;_ _Fūfu wa, ni-sé;_ _Shujū wa, san-zé._
"The relation of parent and child is for one life; that of wife and husband, for two lives; that of master and servant, for three lives." Although the tender relation is thus limited to the time of two lives, the vow--(as Japanese dramas testify, and as the letters of those who kill themselves for love bear witness)--is often passionately made for seven. The following selections show a considerable variety of tone,--ranging from the pathetic to the satirical,--in the treatment of this topic:
_I have cut my hair for his sake; but the deeper relation between us_ _Cannot be cut in this, nor yet in another life._[4]
[Footnote 4:
Kami wa kitté mo Ni-sé made kaketa Fukai enishi wa Kiru mono ka?
Literally: "Hair have-cut although, two existences until, deep relation, cut-how-can-it-be?" By the mention of the hair-cutting we know the speaker is a woman. Her husband, or possibly betrothed lover, is dead; and, according to the Buddhist custom, she signifies her desire to remain faithful to his memory by the sacrifice of her hair. For detailed information on this subject see, in my _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ the chapter, "Of Women's Hair."]
_She looks at the portrait of him to whom for two lives she is promised:_ _Happy remembrances come, and each brings a smile to her face._[5]
[Footnote 5:
Ni-sé to chigirishi Shashin we nagamé Omoi-idashité Warai-gao.
Lit.: "Two existences that made alliance, photograph look-at, thinking bring-out smiling face." The use of the term _shashin,_ photograph, shows that the poem is not old.]
_If in this present life we never can hope for union,_ _Then we shall first keep house in the Lotos-Palace beyond._[6]
[Footnote 6:
Totémo kono yo dé Sowaré-nu naraba Hasu no uténa dé Ara sėtai.
Lit.: "By-any-means, this-world-in, cannot-live-together if, Lotos-of Palace-in, new-housekeeping." It is with this thought that lovers voluntarily die together; and the song might be called a song of _jōshi._]
_Have we not spoken the vow that binds for a double existence?_ _If we must separate now, I can only wish to die._
_There!--oh, what shall we do?... Pledged for a double existence,--_ _And now, as we sit together, the string of the samisen snaps!_[7]
[Footnote 7: Among singing-girls it is believed that the snapping of a samisen-string under such circumstances as those indicated in the above song is an omen of coming separation.]
_He woos by teaching the Law of Cause and Effect for three lives,_ _And makes a contract for two--the crafty-smiling priest!_[8]
[Footnote 8: This song is of a priest who breaks the vow of celibacy.]
Every mortal has lived and is destined to live countless lives; yet the happy moments of any single existence are not therefore less precious in themselves:--
_Not to have met one night is verily cause for sorrow;_ _Since twice in a single birth the same night never comes._
But even as a summer unusually warm is apt to herald a winter of exceptional severity, so too much happiness in this life may signify great suffering in the next:--
_Always I suffer thus!... Methinks, in my last existence._ _Too happy I must have been,--did not suffer enough._
Next in point of exotic interest to the songs expressing belief in preëxistence and rebirth, I think I should place those treating of the doctrine of _ingwa,_ or Karma. I offer some free translations from these, together with one selection from a class of compositions more elaborate and usually much longer than the _dodoitsu,_ called _hauta._ In the original, at least, my selection from the _hauta--_which contains a charming simile about the firefly--is by far the prettiest:--
_Weep not!--turn to me!... Nay, all my suspicions vanish!_ _Forgive me those words unkind: some_ ingwa _controlled my tongue!_
Evidently this is the remorseful pleading of a jealous lover. The next might be the answer of the girl whose tears he had caused to flow:
_I cannot imagine at all by what strange manner of ingwa_ _Came I to fall in love with one so unkind as you!_
Or she might exclaim:--
_Is this the turning of_ En?--_am I caught in the Wheel of Karma?_ _That, alas! is a wheel not to be moved from the rut!_[9]
[Footnote 9:
Meguru en kaya? Kuruma no watashi Hiku ni hikarénu Kono ingwa.
There is a play on words in the original which I have not attempted to render. The idea is of an unhappy match--either betrothal or marriage--from which the woman wishes to withdraw when too late.]
A more remarkable reference to the Wheel of Karma is the following:--
_Father and mother forbade, and so I gave up my lover;_ _--Yet still, with the whirl of the Wheel, the thought of him comes and goes._[10]
[Footnote 10:
Oya no iken dé Akirameta no we Mata mo rin-yé dé Omoi-dasu.