Things Japanese by Basil Hall Chamberlain

Author:Basil Hall Chamberlain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press

(3) Tokugawa Jû-go-dai Shi.

(4) Bakufu Suibō Ron.

(5) Shōrai no Nihon.

(6) Yoshida Shōin.

(7) Kokken Hanron.

(8) Saikoku Risshi Hen.

(9) Nihon Bungaku Shi.

(10) Genkai.

(11) Kotoba no Izumi.

(12) I-ro-ha Jiten.

(13) Nihon Shakwai Jii.

(14) Eibun-gaku Shi.

(15) Ten-jin Ron.

(16) Seiyō Jijō.

(17) Fukuō Hyaku-wa.

(18) Fukuō Jiden.

And now it may be asked: What is the value of this Japanese literature—so ancient, so voluminous, locked up in so recondite a written character? We repeat what we have already said of the “Collection of a Myriad Leaves,”—that it is invaluable to the philologist, the archæologist, the historian, the student of curious manners which have disappeared or are fast disappearing. We may add that there are some clever and many pretty things in it. The Tosa Niki, for instance, is charming—charming in its simplicity, its good taste, its love of scenery and of children. The Makura no Sōshi teems with touches of wit and delicate satire. Several of the lyric dramas are remarkable poems in their way. Some of the Lilliputian odes in the “Songs Ancient and Modern” sparkle like dew-drops in the sun; and of Bashō’s still tinier poems—the wee seventeen syllable mites—many are flashes of delicate fancy, atoms of perfect naturalistic description, specks of humour, truth, or wisdom. For Jippensha Ikku, the Rabelais of Japan, we have already expressed our warm admiration. Not a few of the writers of the present reign would, if born under other skies, have taken a respectable rank among European litterateurs. On the other hand, much of that which the Japanese themselves prize most highly in their literature seems intolerably flat and insipid to the European taste. The romances—most of them—are every bit as dull as the histories, though in another way:—the histories are too curt, the romances too long-winded. If the authoress of the Genji Mono-gatari, though lauded to the skies by her compatriots, has been branded by Georges Bousquet as cette ennuyeuse Scudéry japonaise, she surely richly deserves it.* And what shall we say of Bakin, on whom her mantle fell in modern times,—Bakin and his Hakken Den, which every Japanese has read and re-read till he knows it almost by heart? “How inimitable!” cries the enraptured Japanese reader, “how truly excellent!” “Excellent, yes!” the European retorts, “excellent to send one to sleep, with its interminable accounts of the impossible adventures of eight knights, who personify the eight cardinal virtues through the labyrinth of a hundred and six volumes!”

Sum total: what Japanese literature most lacks is genius. It lacks thought, logical grasp, depth, breadth, and many-sidedness. It is too timorous, too narrow to compass great things. Perhaps the Court atmosphere and predominantly feminine influence in which it was nursed for the first few centuries of its existence stifled it, or else the fault may have lain with the Chinese formalism in which it grew up. But we suspect that there was some original sin of weakness as well. Otherwise the clash of India and China with old mythological Japan, of Buddhism with Shintō, of imperialism with feudalism, and of all with Catholicism

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