George Trumbull Ladd

“ The most beautiful and perfect of the gardens of Japan, in the old-fashioned Chino-Japanese style, which I have ever seen, are the Kōrakuen in Tokyo, and the Katsura-no-Rikyū in Kyoto. The former was originally the garden of the Prince of Mito, the site of whose mansion is now occupied by the Koishikawa Arsenal. Thus the quiet beauty of the art of the “Old Japan” is brought into contrast with the preparations for displaying its strength of the “New Japan.” ”

“ For have not the greatly and permanently influential benefactors of the race always been teachers? Were not Confucius, and Sakya-Muni, and Jesus, all teachers? And in Japan itself, only a few years ago, did not a certain man who had refused offers of government positions deemed higher by most, in order that he might remain a teacher of Japanese youth, when his work was ended, have his coffin attended to its resting-place by ten thousand of his fellow citizens of all classes, walking bareheaded through the rain? ”

“ The party took boats across the lake and, before starting for the climb, had luncheon at a pleasant tea-house on its shores. We then walked up to the top of the gorge and part way down on the other side. As it has been facetiously said, neither name for the place is a misnomer; and, indeed, one does well to guide one’s steps as religiously when going through this gorge as though walking on the very brink of perdition. For the whole gorge is weird and desolate and reeking with the sulphurous fumes that perpetually rise from the ground. ”

“ It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the enjoyment of the Japanese garden in a social way is confined to the wealthy and the nobles with their large estates. All over the country the multitude of the people love nature and have it abundantly at their command to enjoy in quiet ways. In Tokyo thousands of artisans and common labourers and coolies, with wives and children, will trudge for miles to view the plum or cherry blossoms, or to see the morning-glories open at four o’clock of a Summer morning. ”

“ When we remember what risks his nation ran, under his leadership, in order to solve peacefully the vexed question of foreign trade and foreign residence, may we not also remind ourselves of the propriety that somewhat more of the same spirit of chivalry should govern our conduct in dealing with the same question, now that a half-century of continued friendship has bound together the two nations, whose representatives—the one so patiently, the other so bravely—solved it in that older time of agitation and threatened disaster? ”

“ The temple groves on all the many holidays are thronged with crowds, [155] who combine their unintelligent and not even half-hearted worship with a much more intelligent and heartfelt appreciation of the beauties of nature. Indeed, with these multitudes, the worship of the departed ancestor in the family shrine in-doors, and the worship of nature in the open air constitutes their only religion.
How profoundly influenced is all the art and all the national life of the Japanese by this love and æsthetical appreciation of all forms of natural beauty, it is not necessary to say in detail. ”

“ In Japan every national festival and, indeed, almost every form of social gathering or species of entertainment partakes more or less of the character of a garden party. At the remotest and meanest tea-house in the mountains or by the sea, if the weather permits, you take your cup of tea where you can look upon a scene which nature or man has made into a work of art. ”

“ Between Vancouver, so like one of our own Western towns, and the Land of the Rising Sun, nature provided nothing to prepare the mind for a distinctly different type of landscape and of civilisation. There was only the monotonous watery waste of the Northern Pacific, and the equally monotonous roll of the Empress of China, as she mounted one side and slid down the other, of its long-sweeping billows. ”

“ But the eagerness with which these humble men (for, unlike-the case with us, the great majority of the common-school teachers are males,—many of them in middle life and beyond) avail themselves of every opportunity to see and hear anything which may help them in their work, is both encouraging and pathetic. Where in the United States, for example, could a voluntary class of more than eight hundred teachers be held together for twenty hours of lectures on education,—each session more than filling up the period between four and six o’clock of the afternoon, during the busiest part of term-time? ”

“ There are few memories in the life-time of at least one American teacher, which he more gladly recalls, and more delights to cherish, than those which signalise his many meetings with the school children of Japan: and among them all, not the least pleasant is that of the three hundred boys of Kameoka, standing in a row upon the banks of the Katsura-gawa and shouting their “banzais” to the departing boat. ”

“ We invite only those whom we, for one reason or another, want to have come; and, if we are truly self-respecting, we do not ourselves want to go where we are not wanted.
The two most conspicuous of the ceremonial occasions which are open to a selected few among the foreign residents or visitors in Japan, and to which invitations are especially coveted, are, perhaps the Court Ball given by the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the evening of the Emperor’s birthday, and the Audience given by both Their Majesties, on New Year’s morning, in the throne-room of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. ”

“ Without laying any stress upon the traditional way among the Japanese of ascribing all manner of success and prosperity to the virtues of the Emperor, it is simple matter of historical fact that the patience, wisdom, and benevolence of their present ruler are, either directly or indirectly, responsible for the escaping of much evil and the securing of much good on the nation’s behalf. Japan has been guided out of the old era into the new by a very remarkable body of men ”

“ The entertainment over, and the uneaten portion of each guest’s food neatly boxed and placed under the seat of his jinrikisha for distribution among his servants on the home-coming, I was taken back to my lodgings through streets as brilliantly lighted as lanterns and coal-oil lamps can well do, and crowded with a populace of both sexes and all ages who were spending the greater part of the night in the celebration of a local religious festival. ”

“ But if we ask ourselves, “Where in the world is another city of 45,000 inhabitants to be found, which has produced in this generation six generals who are the equals of Field Marshall Oyama, Admiral Togo, and Generals Oku, Count Nodzu, and the two Saigos?” I imagine the answer would be exceedingly hard to find. Perhaps the truth is, as one of my [21] best informed Japanese friends once quaintly said: “In America you have a few big, bad men, and a good many small good men; but in Japan we have a few big, good men and a good many small bad men.” ”

“ At the period of first excitement over the action of the School Board of San Francisco, in 1906, a Japanese friend of mine, a professor in the Imperial University of Tokyo, who had spent some fifteen years of his earlier life in this country, remarked to me with extreme concern and sadness, that now his countrymen were wounded by us at their most sensitive point. “Nothing else,” he added, “do all our common people prize so much, for their children and for themselves, as education.” ”

“ Perhaps nowhere else has the development of this more primitive form of religion been on the whole so strong on the side of its more salutary influences, and more free from the most objectionable and degrading of the features which have generally characterised it. To-day it is probably the most powerful of all bonds to unite the nation’s present with its own past, and to bind together for defence and for progress the different classes and elements of the national life. ”

“ Japanese Buddhism is feeling now much more than formerly the obligation of any religion which asks the adherence and support of the people, to help the people, in a genuine and forceful way, to a nobler and better way of living. Hitherto in Japan it has been that peculiar development of Confucian ethics called Bushidō, which has embodied and cultivated the nobler moral ideals. Religion, at least in the form [246] which Buddhism has taken in Japan, has had little to do with inspiring and guiding men in the life which is better and best, here and now. ”

“ In spite of the sincere and largely intelligent interest which both Government and people take in matters of education, the public-school teachers of the country are heavily overworked and lamentably underpaid. But the ideal of His Majesty’s celebrated Imperial Rescript is steadily held up before them—namely, that there shall be no household in the land, and no member of any household, to whom the benefits of education shall not have been supplied in liberal measure. To realise this ideal, Japan must have an entire generation or more of peace and of peaceful development. ”

“ Even to-day, in the school-rooms and university halls and public playgrounds of the children and youth of Japan, it is not the trophies of some individual player or team of athletes, but the mottoes and injunctions and other relics of the great and the good, not only of the present, but also and chiefly of the older, and the most ancient times, which excite their feelings of pride and emulation. ”

“ The roadway for the entire two miles from Omori to Ikegami was lined with either the more permanent shops of the village through which we were passing or with booths extemporised for the occasion, all gaily lighted with lamps and coloured lanterns, and so thronged with surging crowds that independent progress was nearly or quite impossible. Indeed, when we reached the one hundred stone steps which ascend the hill on whose top the buildings of the monastery are standing, there was no other way than to allow ourselves to be slowly borne upward by the weight of the human mass. ”

“ On visiting the famous garden of Count Okuma, in the late Autumn, we found two-score and more of persons, working under expert direction in this way. The same pains is taken in holding up to view the work of nature in marring her own products or in removing them utterly, in order to make room for the fresh creations of her bounteous life. Worn rocks, worm-eaten woods, bare trunks, broken stumps, and all the other results of the ceaseless forces that minister decay and death, have an important place in the Japanese art of gardening. ”

“ To understand thoroughly and appreciate justly the theory and history of the art of landscape and other gardening in Japan would require the study of a life-time. It is doubtful if any foreigner could accomplish this task even at the expense of so great devotion;—so subtle and in some respects bizarre and whimsical is the philosophy of nature implied in the tenets of some of the various schools. ”

“ Thus the pride and ambition of all are called out by the effort to succeed and to excel. The Imperial rescripts, the wise sayings and noble achievements of ancient sages and heroes, the arousement of that spirit which is called “Bushidō” or “Yamato-Damashii,” the appeal to the pride and love of country, and instruction in ethics—as the Japanese understand ethics—prolonged from the kindergarten to the University;—all these means are employed in the public system of education with the intention of producing citizens serviceable to the State. ”

“ The principal rooms added in this way were a large salon, or assembly hall, and a refreshment hall. Both these rooms were beautifully decorated, with that mixture of lavishness and reserve in which the best Japanese art of decoration so much excels, with silks, flags of the nations, artificial cherry trees in full bloom, and real pomegranate and persimmon trees loaded with fruit. ”