Japan

“ And if you think this Japanese ideal too simple, too naive, if you say there are experiences of the material life more worthy of portrayal in a picture of heaven than any memory of days passed in Japanese gardens and temples and tea-houses, it is perhaps because you do not know Japan, the soft, sweet blue of its sky, the tender colour of its waters, the gentle splendour of its sunny days, the exquisite charm of its interiors, where the least object appeals to one's sense of beauty with the air of something not made, but caressed, into existence. ”

“ But I must describe Japan as it appeared to me, even though it brings upon me an abusive editorial from far Cathay.
The Japanese are super-sensitive. If they were not, they could not be the most exquisite artists, the daintiest artisans on earth. We owe Japan so much—so much that we can perhaps never pay—that we owe it to ourselves to deal very gently with her few faults. And they are such gentle faults! Let us remember that the Japanese are the most sensitive nation on earth, and that for all their genius of assimilation they are not wholly en rapport with our coarser Western ways. ”

“ Now the only islands spoken of by the early Chinese historians in terms suggesting Japan, are described as the abode of genii, the land of immortals possessing the elixir of life, a corpse-reviving drug, golden peaches weighing a pound each, timber of immense strength yet so buoyant that no superimposed weight would sink it, rare trees, a mountain plant that could be plaited into mats and cushions, mulberries an inch long, and an environment of black sea, where the waves, not driven by any wind, rose to a height of a thousand feet. ”

“ After the muddy rivers, dreary flats, and brown hills of China, after the desolate shores of Korea, with their unlovely and unwashed peoples, Japan is a dream of Paradise, beautiful from the first green island off the coast to the last picturesque hill-top. ”

“ Japan, by right of self-acquired strength, has entered into the circle of the modern civilized powers,—formidable by her new military organization, respectable through her achievements in the domain of practical science. And the force to effect this astonishing self-improvement, within the time of thirty years, she owes assuredly to the moral habit derived from her ancient cult,—the religion of the ancestors. To fairly measure the feat, we should remember that Japan was evolutionally younger than any modern European nation, by at least twenty-seven hundred years, when she went to school! ”

“ Western civilization has taken a firm hold on the Japanese people. They have been rapidly adopting, and, in fact, improving on, Western methods, customs, and manners. The fear of the globe-trotter of to-day is whether he will be in time to see the Japan of his dreams and of romance, before this great Western wave of progress and reform has divested the Land of the Rising Sun of its quaint originality and fascinating charm. ”

“ The enthusiastic admirer of Japan hardly finds words wherewith sufficiently to praise the simplicity of her pre-Meiji civilization. No furniture brings confusion to the room; no machinery distresses the ear with its groanings or the eye with its unsightliness. No factories blacken the sky with smoke. No trains screeching through the towns and cities disturb sleepers and frighten babies. ”

“ When compared with Western civilization, that of Japan is seen to be less organized and developed, less hasty and feverish in its movements, It does not impress one so much with its hugeness and ponderosity. It is lighter, brighter, quieter, more soothing. It is the civilization of the West robbed of its immensity and seriousness, and reflecting the national characteristics of these light-hearted sons of the East. ”

“ More clearly here than in any other works of Japan's present transformation, more clearly perhaps than anywhere else in the world, can we see an entire nation changing not only its outer garments, but its views, its ways of thought, almost its very soul. ”

“ Japan is a land for poetry and song, a land to awaken the loftiest patriotism, a land to inspire and lead the world. Provided, ah yes! provided, it can be converted to Christ, and made his servant. The Japanese is a natural orator; he has organizing ability of the highest order; he is accessible, yet independent. Now is the time to make him a preacher of the gospel to all the East. China and India have already felt the influence of his military and political progress. Let us, by pouring in the light of Christianity, make him also their leader in true religion! ”

“ Japan has been called ‘the Paradise for Babies,’ and the Japanese ‘a nation at play.’ Certainly these titles seemed to me appropriate as I took my first drive through the narrow Japanese streets, and saw at every turn the crowds of happy-faced little beings, either flying huge kites--whose long strings got sadly in the way of our rickshaws, though no one seemed to care--or spinning tops on the pavement, a fatal practice to short-sighted pedestrians. ”

“ But the rare charm of Japanese life, so different from that of all other lands, is not to be found in its Europeanised circles. It is to be found among the great common people, who represent in Japan, as in all countries, the national virtues, and who still cling to their delightful old customs, their picturesque dresses, their Buddhist images, their household shrines, their beautiful and touching worship of ancestors. ”

“ HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN
At the head of the list of Makers of Modern Japan stands by right the name of the illustrious ruler, not merely in virtue of his imperial position, but of the supreme efforts which throughout his reign of thirty-eight years to the present time he has made to raise the status of his country among nations and to confer upon his subjects the blessings of enlightened government. ”

“ Japan, up to a very short time ago, through the pen and tongue of poets and artists, who have visited this land, has been thought to be merely a country of beautiful flowers, charming mademoiselles, fantastic parasols, fans and screens. ”

“ It is high time that Western people were beginning [Pg 166] to have a few sane thoughts about Japan, and stop speaking of it as "an Oriental puzzle, a nation of recluses, a land of fabulous wealth, of universal licentiousness, or of Edenic purity, the fastness of a treacherous and fickle crew, a Paradise of guileless children, a Utopia of artists and poets." ”

“ Once more on the land the Japanese army stormed Port Arthur, the strongest naval fort, known as the Gibraltar of China.
All these facts are viewed with amazement by the eyes of the world. For all that the people know about Japan and the Japanese is that the people of Japan are very artistic, as the producers of beautiful porcelain, embroidery, lacquer work and all sorts of artistic fancy goods, and they wonder how it is possible that such an artistic people as the Japanese could fight against sober, calm Chinamen. ”

“ The scientists, scholars, and specialists, the poetic and the political writers, who have written so fully of Japan, have omitted many little things which leave the pleasantest impressions on lighter minds. Each decade presents a new Japan, as the wonderful empire approaches nearer to modern and European standards in living, and, in becoming one of the eight great civilized world-powers, Japan has put aside much of its mediæval and Oriental picturesqueness. ”

“ Then began such a story of Japan and of Tokio that the past lived and the present blossomed for them. The Japanese, he said, had never been a roving people. They did not live by conquest. Japan’s rulers are well beloved, guiding their industrious subjects with kindly wisdom, as they forge ahead in agriculture and the arts on a high plane of civilization. Centuries ago, while all the rest of the world was new and racked by conflict, civil and foreign, the Japanese were taught to read and write. ”

“ We reached Yokohama one night after dark. When I woke in the early morning I dressed quickly and went out for a ramble alone,—as I love to do in a new place. I felt as if I had fallen asleep and dreamed of a fairy land peopled by the figures off my best tea-cups and off my summer fans. Japan is perpetually blessed with an atmosphere as clear as crystal, as soft as down, and as sweet as incense. Nature loves Japan with the tender, yearning love of a mother for a favourite child. On Japan Nature lavishes her most fragrant verdure and her utmost picturesqueness of life. ”

“ The first exception of any consequence is the wonderful rise of Japan within the last generation—a phenomenon unexampled in history; for both in blood and in culture the Japanese line of ancestral descent is as remote as possible from ours, and yet Japan, while hitherto keeping most of what was strongest in her ancient character and traditions, has assimilated with curious completeness most of the characteristics that have given power and leadership to the West. ”

“ Yet they have few or none of the qualities of statesmen, but they are to the men of Japan what Japan is to the world,—they are models of beauty, exemplifications of grace, flowers of courtesy, acmes of hospitality; they are sweet refuges of rest, something to be looked upon with delight and to be loved. ”

“ Japan has a brilliant civilisation of which we can justly be proud. In fine art, we have painting, sculpture, architecture, lacquer-work, metal-carving, ceramics, etc.,—all of striking quality; in literature, our poetry, fiction and drama are worthy of serious study; in music and on the stage our progress has been along lines which accord with [Pg iv] the development of our distinctive national character, and is by no means behind that of Europe. ”

“ I hear a whisper too often at some street corner: “Is it really our Japan?” I know that old true Japan, every inch of it, was the very handiwork of the people in general, while “New Japan,” “the rising country of first class in the world,” as it was proudly written by a newspaper man, as I can imagine, who wears a single eyeglass straight from London, was created by a few hundred men, we might say, the Westerners born in Japan, whose hopeless ignorance of the old civilization of their old country, strange to say, helped them up to fill the highest place in the public estimate. ”

“ The most striking geographical feature of Japan is the Inland Sea, which is one of the beauties of the world. It is a long, irregularly shaped arm of the sea, with tides and rapid currents, of variable width and no great depth, studded with innumerable thickly wooded islands. It is the water area which separates Hondo from Shikoku and Kiushiu, and is often spoken of as the Japanese Mediterranean. ”

“ Under the other, Japan will enter into an inheritance, wider, more glorious and more assured than any Asiatic Power has attained for many centuries.... Japan has it in her to be, not the Mistress of the East, reigning, sword in hand, over subject races—for that she can never permanently be—but the bringer of peace to, and the teacher of, the East. ”

“ It is at once the centre of business, and the scene of uproar, riot, and confusion. In the comparative nakedness of the women, in the noise and violence of the shopkeepers, in the litter of the streets, there is nothing to suggest the delicate culture of Japan. The modesty, cleanliness, and politeness, so characteristic of the Japanese, are conspicuously absent in their settlements in this country. ”

“ From the beginning Japan has been a land of mystery. Foreigners were permitted to land only at certain points on her shores, and nothing whatever was known of her civilization and history, her romance and magnificence, her wealth and art. ”

“ Japan’s beautiful old civilization has given its strength to you young women of to-day. Now it is your duty to grow bravely and give to new Japan, in return, a greater strength and beauty than even the old possessed. ”

“ For the people, of all sorts, ages, and sizes, were gathered in groups, with that mild-mannered and unabashed curiosity which characterises the old-fashioned country folk of Japan, to watch the doings of the strangers who had so suddenly and unexpectedly appeared within their borders. ”

“ The Restoration statesmen were the men who had made Modern Japan; the men who had raised her, in the face of immense obstacles, from the position of an insignificant Oriental state to that of a formidable unit in the comity of nations; the men, finally, who had given to her a constitution and representative institutions. ”

“ Perhaps, first, as Englishmen or Irishmen, you would have said, ‘Give us islands, inseparably and for ever united, give us islands which can hold their sea-girt independence, and yet near enough to the mainland to exert influence there.’ Such is Japan—the Land of the Rising Sun. ‘Give us a hardy race, not untrained in war by land and sea; for a nation of soldiers, when won for Christ, fights best under the banner of the Cross—for we are of the Church militant here on earth: give us brave men;’ and such are the descendants of the old Daimios and two-sworded Samurai of Japan. ”

“ From thy letter the fragrance of the rose garden of significances was inhaled, that praise be to God, thou art assisted by the Divine confirmations, hast found the way to the Kingdom of God and thy heart and soul are quickened. Arise thou to perform the blessed intention thou art holding and travel thou to Japan and lay there the foundation of the Cause of God, that is, summon the people to the Kingdom of God. Japan has great capacity, but there needs be a teacher who will speak by the confirmations of the Holy Spirit. I hope thou wilt become assisted in this. ”