William George Aston

“ Now to learn the Way is nothing more than to acquire a true knowledge of this principle, and to practise it effectively until you have the restful feeling of a fish in water, and take the same pleasure in it that a bird does in the groves. It should be made one's very life at all times, never being departed from for a moment. If, so long as we live, we follow the Way, when we die these bodies of ours and the Way come to an end together, and a long peace ensues. Living for a day, let us fulfil the Way for that day and die; living for a month, let us fulfil the Way for that month and die ”

“ If we open our hearts to the beauty of heaven, earth, and the ten thousand created things, they will yield us pleasure without limit, pleasure always before our eyes, night and morning, full and overflowing. The man who takes delight in such things becomes the owner of the mountains and streams, of the moon and flowers, and needs not to pay his court to others in order to enjoy them. They are not bought with treasure. Without the expenditure of a single cash he may use them to his heart's content, and yet never exhaust them. ”

“ The contour of her forehead, from which the hair was combed back in childish fashion, and the style of her hair itself were very lovely. 'What a charming girl she will be when she is grown up!' thought Genji, and his eyes dwelt on her with interest. She greatly resembled one to whom formerly his whole heart had been given, and at the thought his tears began to fall. The nun, stroking the little girl's head, said, 'What beautiful hair, though you think it so much trouble to have it combed! I am greatly concerned that you are so frivolous. At your age some girls are so different. ”

“ Old Man. Whom can I take to be my friend? Except the fir-tree of Takasago, my ancient comrade, there is none to converse with me of the bygone days on which are ever gathering white snows [of forgetfulness] . I grow older and older, accustomed to hear nothing but the wind in the fir-tree either when I rise or go to sleep in my nest of an aged crane, where the night-long moon sheds its rays, and the spring sends down its hoar-frosts. ”

“ Then shall no offences remain unpurged, from the court of the august child of the gods even to the remotest ends of the realm. As the many-piled clouds of heaven are scattered at the breath of the Wind Gods; as the morning breezes and the evening breezes disperse the morning vapours and the evening vapours; as a huge ship moored in a great harbour, casting off its stern moorings, casting off its bow moorings, drives forth into the vast ocean; as yonder thick brushwood is smitten and cleared away by the sharp sickle forged in the fire—so shall all offences be swept utterly away. ”

“ The Kojiki-den is not only valuable for its prodigious learning; it was a vigorous blow aimed at the supremacy of the Chinese school of ethics and philosophy. No opportunity is lost of girding at everything Chinese, and of exalting the old Japanese customs, religion, and language, in a spirit of ardent and undiscriminating patriotism. The Kojiki-den had no small share in producing the reaction against Chinese ideas and institutions which has become so pronounced a characteristic of modern Japan. ”

“ I cannot understand how any one can find pleasure in urging people to drink against their will, as is done the first thing on all occasions. The victim in his distress knits his brows, and watches an opportunity when no one is looking to spill the liquor or to steal away. But he is caught, detained, and made to drink his share as if there was nothing the matter. The nicest fellows suddenly become madmen, and give way to absurd conduct. The healthiest men, before our very eyes, become afflicted with grave illness, and lay themselves down unconscious of past and future. ”

“ Still more foreign to their genius is the personification of abstract qualities. Abstract words are comparatively few, and it does not occur to the Japanese poet (or painter) to represent Truth, Justice, and Faith as comely damsels in flowing robes, or to make Love a chubby naked boy with wings and a bow and arrows. Muses, Graces, Virtues, Furies—in short, the host of personifications without which Western poetry would be only a shadow of itself—have little counterpart in Japanese literature. ”

“ Listening to the nightingale singing among the flowers or to the cry of the frog which dwells in the water, we recognise the truth that of all living things there is not one which does not utter song. It is poetry by which, without an effort, heaven and earth are moved, and gods and demons invisible to our eyes are touched with sympathy. By poetry the converse of lovers is made gentler, and the hearts of fierce warriors soothed. ”

“ Judging from this early poetry of Japan, a want of culture by no means acts as a stimulus to the poetic faculty. We nowhere find "the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief," which Macaulay would have us look for in this product of an age and country which were certainly far less advanced than those of Homer in intellectual culture. Instead of passion, sublimity, and a vigorous imagination, we have little more than mild sentiment, word-plays, and pretty conceits. ”

“ Foreign countries, however, not having attained to the knowledge that everything is the doing of the gods, may be pardoned for believing this Doctrine of the Way of Ten or the Principle of Ten. But what is to be thought of those who, in this imperial country, where a knowledge of the true way has been handed down, do not take the trouble to examine it, but, simply accepting the erroneous doctrines of foreign lands, imagine that that which they call Ten is a thing of peerless excellence, and in all matters can talk of nothing but its principle? ”

“ There are in the Genji pathos, humour, an abundant flow of pleasing sentiment, keen observation of men and manners, an appreciation of the charms of nature, and a supreme command of the resources of the Japanese language, which in her hands reached its highest point of excellence. Though never melodramatic, she gives us plenty of incident, and is seldom dull. ”

“ Stay a little and do not destroy my life, for I am a filial child, the support of my mother, who lives all alone in a ruined house, without parents, or brothers, or any one to attend upon her. As I could do nothing for her in the village where we live, I come to this mountain to get her fruit and roots. Having to climb up lofty peaks, and to descend into deep valleys, I leave home in the morning and return when it is dark. ”

“ A woman's first duty was to be faithful and obedient to her husband. Second marriages of widows were not absolutely forbidden, but women who refused to contract such unions were highly commended, and when we meet with the word "chastity" in a Japanese book, it is generally this form of the virtue which is meant. A wife was bound to revenge her husband's murder, and in fiction at least was permitted to sacrifice her own honour with this praiseworthy object. Some European travellers and novelists speak as if an unmarried woman's maiden fame were a thing of no account in Japan. ”

“ Kenkō goes so far as to allow that with intimate friends it is permissible occasionally to drink deeply.
"There is no greater pleasure than alone, by the light of a lamp, to open a book and make the men of the unseen world our companions."
"Nothing opens one's eyes so much as travel, no matter where."
"I love to shut myself up in a mountain temple and attend to the services to Buddha. Here there is no tedium, and one feels that his heart is being purged of its impurities." ”

“ There is little word-painting or description of scenery, but the human life of the great highways is depicted with photographic accuracy, and with a verve and humour which no mere observation, however minute, could ever impart. We see the Daimio's train, slow-moving, silent, and imposing—but nevertheless containing a rowdy element—and hear Yaji and Kida's very free criticisms as they squat humbly by the roadside until the great man has passed. The religious processions, noisy and disorderly, are treated by them with more open ridicule. ”

“ He spent thirty years in a small cabin remote from Kiōto, but finding even this seclusion not sufficiently restful—
"Five springs and autumns," he says, "came and went to me making my bed among the clouds of Mount Ōhara. And now at sixty, when the dew does not easily evaporate, [1] I again built myself a last leaf of a dwelling, something like the shelter which a traveller might erect for one night's lodging, or the cocoon spun for itself by an aged silkworm. It is not a hundredth part so commodious as the habitation of my middle-time. ”

“ Such a hero as the nineteenth-century novelist Bakin's Tametomo, who has two pupils to his eyes and one arm longer than the other, and who, after falling over a cliff many thousand feet high, presently picks himself up and walks home several miles as if nothing had happened, would have seemed to her as ridiculous as he does to ourselves. There are few dramatic situations in the Genji, and what little of miraculous and supernatural it contains is of a kind which might well be believed by a contemporary reader. ”

“ It is wonderful what felicity of phrase, melody of versification, and true sentiment can be compressed within these narrow limits. In their way nothing can be more perfect than some of these little poems. They remind us of those tiny carvings known to us as Netsuke, in which exquisite skill of workmanship is displayed in fashioning figures an inch or two in height, or of those sketches where the Japanese artist has managed to produce a truly admirable effect by a few dexterous strokes of the brush.
Next to the Tanka, the most common kind of classical metre is the Naga-uta or "long poetry." ”

“ But while the new literature is much richer and of a more vigorous growth than the old, there is a sad falling off in point of form. With few exceptions it is disfigured by the grossest and most glaring faults. Extravagance, false sentiment, defiance of probability whether physical or moral, pedantry, pornography, puns and other meretricious ornaments of style, intolerable platitudes, impossible adventures, and weary wastes of useless detail meet us everywhere. ”

“ She speedily grew up to womanhood, when her beauty attracted numerous admirers. To each of them she assigned a quest, promising that she would marry the suitor who successfully accomplished the task allotted to him. One lover was told to fetch Buddha's begging-bowl of stone from India; another to bring her a branch of the tree with roots of silver, stem of gold, and fruit of jewels, which grew in the fabulous island Paradise of Mount Hōrai. ”

“ China, with its ancient civilisation, its copious and in many respects remarkable literature, and a history which goes back for more than two thousand years, has for many centuries exercised a commanding influence over all its neighbours. What Greece and Rome have been to Europe, China has been to the nations of the far East. Japan, in particular, is very deeply indebted to it. There is no department of Japanese national life and thought, whether material civilisation, religion, morals, political organisation, language, or literature, which does not bear traces of Chinese influence. ”

“ How can one take any interest in a heroine of fifteen years of age who sets out to travel through Japan in quest of her father's murderer with the intention of making love to him and thus finding an opportunity for putting him to death? ”

“ In describing men and events, his style changed with the change of subject. Many there have been in ancient and modern times who gave their attention to style, each of whom has his own particular merits. Some excel in depicting scenes of grief and affliction, some of gladness and jollity, while others possess unrivalled gifts of indignant or satirical language. But how many are there who, like Bakin, can build on so vast a scale, and include within their scope the billows of mankind with all their varied capacities and qualities? ”

“ Such a one reminds me of a costly wine-cup that has no bottom."
"That man is to be envied whose mind is fixed on futurity, and to whom the way of Buddha is familiar."
"What strikes men's eyes most of all in a woman is the beauty of her hair. Her quality and disposition may be gathered from the manner of her speech, even though a screen be interposed. There are occasions too when her very posture when seated leads a man's heart astray. Then, until his hopes are realised, he bears patiently what is not to be borne, regardless even of his life. It is only love which can do this. ”

“ Shinto taught a reverence for the Divine powers which created and govern the universe and man. But none of the three sufficed by itself to meet the heart, soul, and mind want of the Japanese nation. Can it be imagined that when a religion is presented to them which alone is adapted to satisfy far more completely all the cravings of their higher nature, the Japanese, with their eminently receptive minds, will fail in time to recognise its immense superiority? [6] They have already accepted European philosophy and science. It is simply inconceivable that the Christian religion should not follow. ”

“ Genji smiled, thinking of something of the same kind, though not absolutely so, in his own experience, and said, 'But surely they have all some good points?' 'Just so,' replied the Chiujō. 'If they had none, who would be taken in? Of those utterly sorry creatures who are beneath notice, and of the superior women for whose accomplishments we feel an unqualified admiration, the numbers are alike few. Those born in a high station are made much of by their friends, and their faults are concealed, so that in outward appearance they are naturally second to none. ”

“ Niidono turned her face to her child-lord, and with tears that fell bara-bara, 'Do you not know, my lord,' said she, 'that although, by virtue of your keeping the Ten Commandments in a previous state of existence, you have been born into this world as the ruler of ten thousand chariots, yet having become involved in an evil destiny, your good fortune is now at an end? ”

“ In general, vulgar pleasures corrupt the heart, injure the constitution, and end in misery. The pleasures of the man of worth, on the other hand, nourish the heart and do not entice us astray. To speak in terms of outward things, the pleasures which we derive from the love of the moon or of flowers, from gazing on the hills and streams, from humming to the wind or following the flight of birds with envy, are of a mild nature. We may take delight in them all day long and do ourselves no harm. Man will not blame us, nor God remonstrate with us for indulgence in it. ”

“ In the Japanese poetical language all the vowels are of the same length, so that quantity, such as we find in the poetry of Greece and Rome, is unknown. Nor is there any regular succession of accented and unaccented syllables as in the poetry of modern Europe, the Japanese laying hardly any greater stress on one part of a word than on another. In short, the only thing in the mechanism of Japanese poetry which distinguishes it from prose is the alternation of phrases of five and seven syllables each. It is, in fact, a species of blank verse. ”