Chinese and Japanese Traits

I HAVE repeatedly heard it said, and seen it written, that the Chinese race and civilization, compared with the Japanese, are of a decidedly inferior type. Unprogressive China is supposed to be ugly, prosaic, and degraded ; mechanical in temperament, sordid and practical in aim. The art of Japan, especially, is thought to shine by contrast with that of her western neighbor. It is expressly asserted that the Chinese have never been a nation of artists, poets, and idealists.

This prejudice I believe to be unfounded. Although a lover of things Japanese, I can best show the grounds of my esteem, not by using China as a foil, but by acknowledging her as the classic source of inspiration. Whatever we admire most in the island race, be it the art, the gentle manners, the poetry, the unworldly ideal, — for all these the Japanese himself pays homage to his Chinese masters. Can it be that he knows less about the matter than our Western newspapers ?

Our mistake is doubtless due to a pardonable ignorance of Asiatic history. We cannot truly exhibit the contributions of a great race to the cause of civilization by cutting, as it were, a crosssection through its organic structures. What value would attach to a comparative estimate of the Greek and Italian races drawn solely from a contrast of Florence with Constantinople in the fifteenth century ? What more from a contrast of Tokio with Peking to-day? One is the home of a civilization of hoary age, with strength spent, struggle and crisis long since passed ; the other, that of a youth in experience and temper, who has never till now been forced to grapple with the deepest social problems in a life-and-death struggle. Yet a comparative biography of these two racial lives would exhibit the closest affinities between them. From it we should discover that the specific types of far Eastern civilization have rested upon a common basis of constructive ideas; that the same moving principles which dominated the policy of successive Japanese eras, the same ideals which gave life and form to their myth, their poetry, and their art, had already created structures of similar nature, but on a far vaster scale, beyond the Yellow Sea. The continental art and literature and law, hot from the mortal struggle of China to objectify her highest ideals, were received and gayly worn as beautiful jewels, or wreathed anew into lovely garlands, by the more fortunate island mountaineers. To Chinese art and culture at their best in the Tang and Sung dynasties we must yield the palm for power, dignity, truth, and spiritual earnestness. No doubt there are an elusive subtlety and a buoyant geniality in the subsequent Japanese illuminations which have a distinct charm of their own. No doubt, too, in Japanese character there is something which reminds us strongly of the modern French or of the ancient Athenians. Nevertheless, on the whole, and in spite of temperament, it may be, we are forced to say that China has played the part of Greece for the whole Eastern world. Just as all that is classic and supreme in the inspiration of Western literature and art and philosophy comes down the ages to us from its creative centre at Athens, so all that is vital and classic in Oriental culture radiates from Loyang and Hangchow ; and just as frankly as Rome borrowed her models from Greece, so did Japan borrow hers from China.

Having said something in vindication of the rightful claims of Chinese civilization, I wish now to consider a charge of directly opposite import, which is sometimes made by writers and travelers, for the most part English. The Japanese are accused of being the most fickle and changeable people in the world, unstable, weak in character, vacillating in policy, and are unfavorably compared with the Chinese, who are praised for their solid, reliable, and manly qualities. The prudent conservatism of China condemns the hasty radicalism of Japan. The proof of this moral superiority of the former is supposed to lie in the fact that foreign merchants in Japan have to employ Chinese cashiers.

Now, to appreciate the mistake involved in this estimate, we must again go back to national history. Levity and change on the one side, stolidity and conservatism on the other, are not inexplicable race characteristics. In China there was no blind love for the past, no universal hatred of change or of foreigners, previous to a comparatively recent date. There was as sharp a conscious struggle of the new with the old, as full a development of great individualities, innovating statesmen, constructive philosophers, inspired poets, and original artists, in the great Sung dynasty as at any period of European civilization. Her great seaports harbored large colonies of Arab merchants ; Jewish synagogues flourished in the interior; she gladly learned science and the useful arts from the Venetians. Even more recently, in the days of her decadence, she thankfully made the Jesuit missionaries her teachers.

On the other hand, it is not true that the history of Japan is characterized by fickleness, blind change, and weak innovation. In unswerving allegiance to the single dynasty of her divinely descended Emperor she exhibits the oldest political institution in all history. Her regard for Buddhism never wavered from the seventh century to the sixteenth. She grasped firmly the ideals of the Sung dynasty nearly five hundred years ago, and has perpetuated them through an unbreakable tradition to our day in the aristocratic courts of the Tokugawa régime. How near the last two centuries of solid despotism came to making of Japan a copy of formalistic China may be seen to-day in a wide streak of stupid conservatism, of which, too, the foreign merchants complain. Both races, then, have exhibited on the scale of centuries, in grand alternation or in strange mixture, the opposite traits of individuality and formalism ; and their peculiar temperaments and national tendencies to-day are only final resultants of vast movements of rise and fall, of hopeful ideal, mortal struggle, and temporary exhaustion.

What now do I mean by individuality ? Surely not that sickly cast of thought, that morbid self-consciousness, which is sometimes spoken of as the feeling of personality. This has been necessarily absent from creative periods, whether in the East or in the West. I mean by individuality, not the self of which we think, but the self by which we do. It is the power to produce freshly from within, to react and adapt under rapid change of environment. It transcends institution, custom, love of approbation, fear of disapproval, all slowly acting forces of sheer mass. It is spontaneous origination, the salt of social life, the last hope of a race.

The problem, therefore, of each successive Oriental dynasty has been how to preserve all its inherited ideals, whether of patriarchal socialism, of Confucian statics, or of Buddhist discipline, by bringing to their support a renewed measure of individuality before success and organization should become so complete as to establish tyrannical rules. This could be done only when the stimulus of prolonged local warfare, or the shock of foreign contact, or the incidence of new constructive philosophies and religions gave a decided change to the conditions of the problem. Only three times in the course of three thousand years of Chinese history did these favorable conditions recur. On the third occasion, eleven centuries after Christ, the statesmen, scholars, poets, artists, priests, and philosophers of the great Sung dynasty waged a final and stupendous struggle with the hosts of formalism. and created the culminating glories of China’s most individualistic illumination in an attempt to fuse together the three great religions of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. The downfall of this last movement, under the Mongol conquest, was the death-knell of Chinese individuality. All subsequent efforts to revive it were too weak and scattered. In the absence of new constructive matter, babbling Confucians of the narrowest commentating school have monopolized power and education for the last five hundred years, and have covered the glow of native genius with such a crust of literary formalism that intelligence has become stunted and government itself petrified.

But in Japan, in the course of the comparatively brief thirteen hundred years of its civilization, the disruptive forces and the renewed attack have recurred at five separate times, the last of which was as recent as the second half of the eighteenth century. It is not necessary for me here more specifically to characterize these five well-defined epochs in Japanese culture. It is enough for us to know that their rapid succession was caused either by the local independence and conflict of numerous feudal centres, or by the perpetual impact of foreign theories and religions. A happy rotation of cultures has prevented the Japanese mental soil from becoming exhausted ; though it must not be inferred from this, as is frequently asserted, that the Japanese have been only borrowers and copyists. If this were true, if there had been no fresh individuality waiting to apprehend and restate the problem for its insular uses, no mere change of atmosphere would have galvanized into life a culture. The Japanese would have passed from idol to idol with the unintelligent submission of savages, and with a benumbing indifference to principles. But in fact Japan has ever and anon renewed her youth ; and to-day one can warm himself at her living fires, kindled from those which grew cold in almost forgotten Chinese dynasties.

Here, then, is the key to the contrast. In China the outbursts of creative effort grew fainter and fainter, until they finally ceased; but in Japan they followed one another with such rapidity that individuality came to ingrain itself into the people as a race characteristic. So strong had this become that it was only half chilled and checked by two hundred and fifty years of the Tokugawa despotism, which it finally overthrew. Slowly and insidiously, during the last few centuries, China has sunk into the night of unthinking like a huge animal in a quicksand ; just as the Greek intelligence sank under the formalism of the Byzantine Empire. But the underlying fact which explains the contradictory elements in the Japanese character of to-day is this: that the old free shoots of individuality, never quite cut away, are sturdily working themselves up through the thin lava crusts of the last two centuries.

We are now in a position to estimate truly the relative values of these resultant traits. It is the extreme of short-sightedness to ascribe the recent changes of the Japanese to a fickleness of disposition and a lightness or weakness of character, as if they were mere children seeking some new toy for momentary amusement; and equally short-sighted to overpraise the solid or stolid traits of Chinese persistence and uniformity, as if they were grand, conscientious, and constructive moral qualities. That the mutual trust which comes from reliableness is an essential factor of our strong Western civilizations is doubtless true; and it is natural that it should be especially Englishmen, with their dogged tenacity of purpose and their lack of sympathy with alien institutions, who should most esteem this “ staying ” quality of the Chinese. By it, no doubt, they are better fitted to become successful business men. But, from a point of view beyond that of the foreigner who would use them as his tools, the incidence in advantage from national temper is on the other side. It is not blind, useless change that the Japanese is prone to, but the free facility to construct and reconstruct under the necessarily everchanging environment. The very scientific idea of life is perpetual power of readaptation ; and the highest life is reached when this readaptation implies a synthesis of all the organs and faculties through a free presiding intelligence. Failure to change, through the increasing inertia of the constitution, is the beginning of death, and the mere monotonous repetition of a single function is the nature of an automaton.

The success of Japan in taking up and solving the unprecedented, difficult, and sudden problems of the last thirty years certainly exhibits one of the most extraordinary feats of individuality on record. She is now actually putting into operation a new constitution, granted by the free act of her sovereign, in which his absolute power and prerogative become defined in relation to the other political forces of the nation. Imagine the boldest and most intellectual of the Chinese dreaming even for a second of accomplishing such a feat! The relative immobility of the atoms of the Celestial Empire renders all projects of reform well-nigh utopian. But variability, being the very raw metal out of which civilizations are stamped, is Japan’s greatest strength. I go further, and say that it is a national strength in this sense unique in the whole recorded history of man. It lies in this : Japan is privileged to change so rapidly that she is able to pass through every phase of a problem in practical experience within the lifetime of a single individual. This unique circumstance conserves all the experience of the pre-revolutionary era as a basis for intelligent reconstruction at its end. The very samurai, who knew the old Tokugawa system of ideas and government, witnessed the alarming shock of foreign impact : rushed forward to seize the treasures of Western example lavishly offered; studied face to face the inner significance of European principles of organization ; felt the throbs of his own national life, which refused to accept a manufactured civilization, and insisted that native ideals, necessities, and precedents should be taken into account; turned his attention back again to the national and Asiatic point of view, and studied with foreign eyes his own past life and institutions. This person is now the pilot at the helm, who brings the wealth of his cycle of experiences to solve the conscious problems of selfevolutionary reconstruction. In almost every other historical case of a return to ideas swept away by national convulsions, several generations have elapsed, and the consciousness of the past has had coldly to be reproduced by scholars from written documents. Few men can do more than see and state one side of a question strongly. The Japanese statesman has the perplexity, but the unspeakably valuable opportunity, of seeing all sides of all questions. Let us then pardon the pent-up individuality of these Japanese, if at the first moment of relief it carried them to the extreme of extravagant change. It was like the fizzing of a champagne bottle which has just forced out its own cork. But, because it fizzed, did it follow that there was bad wine within? Or, on the other hand, because Chinese customs were apparently strong as steel, did it follow that China could hammer out for herself a newly armored ship of state ? Can a machine clean, oil, and reconstruct itself? The Chinese may be splendid material in the hands of foreigners; but is it strength to have little or no power of self-determination toward rational ends? Is it not nobler to be a free, self-controlling Japanese, bravely meeting the unheard-of responsibilities which his deliberate act brings upon him, even though he be recalcitrant and unusable material in the hands of his neighbors ? So it is that the very weakness of Japan is her strength, and the very strength of China is her weakness.

One more question concerning present Oriental traits remains for me to answer. If it really be that the strength of Japan to-day consists in her having preserved with freshness and vigor the essence of the old Asiatic and lost Chinese ideals, how comes it that she is so willing to masquerade in the custom and costume of antipodal Western races ? Does not her very tergiversation prove the inferiority of the Chinese standard to that not of Europe alone, but of Japan also ? Is not Professor Chamberlain correct when he says that the Japanese very much resent any praise of their finer and more delicate tastes and faculties, and that they are ready to throw these to the winds for a tithe of the wealth and the physical and mechanical vigor which endow England with her supremacy ?

Doubtless there are such Japanese as this; the more shame to them ! But I believe that I echo the opinion of the majority of the young educated Japanese of to-day when I say that Professor Chamberlain’s mistake is most unfortunate, if not offensive. His covert sneer at those who, like Sir Edwin Arnold, have rendered the Japanese praise is a shaft not aimed in the interests of truth. How then shall I explain the double fact of their earnest adoption of Western practices, and their apparent indifference to Western appreciation of their earlier traits ? In this way : first, because Western appreciation of these traits has been hitherto, for the most part, insufferably superficial. We have mistaken the monstrous and the fantastic for the genuine Japanese. We have praised the trivialities of their lightest fancy and the patient skill of their touch rather than their earnestness and their faith, the bold passion of their individuality. We have failed to see the depth of the great social issues which they have at stake. We have travestied in every way the inner harmony of their souls.

But, in the second place, though of more importance, I know that the readiness of the Japanese to undergo their present Western discipline by no means arises from love for the English type of civilization, but is a deliberate sacrifice, a momentary necessity of developing wealth and military strength, in order to preserve their national independence. This was the policy of all the great liberals who inaugurated the present era. Japan’s position in the East, in close proximity to China, Corea, Russia, and England (at Hong-Kong), is extremely precarious. In the event of a war between any two of these nations, she would find it almost impossible to maintain her neutrality. She wants iron ships, and big battalions, and bags of dollars, to hold an even position in any one of these balances. If, in a terrible emergency, she lose the power of self-determination, what will her artistic instincts, or polite amenities, or peaceful harmonic ideals of civilization avail her ? Therefore she is willing to make every sacrifice, even to the throwing away for a time of her very ideals and choicest qualities, in order in the end to restore and conserve them. No doubt, of recent years, many leading Japanese have come to perceive that the sacrifice is too great, both because the necessity is not so urgent as supposed, and because the experiment is socially too dangerous. This is shown by the popular opposition to proposed treaties and codes of law, which would probably have strengthened Japan for the moment, but, as was believed, eventually at too high a price.

Moreover, there are many Japanese and not a few foreigners who think now that it will never be possible for Japan to develop herself into a great manufacturing nation like England. The temperament, the training, and the necessary materials are, for the most part, lacking. We can pardon the Japanese their quixotic desire to commit intellectual hara-kiri rather than be beheaded by an enemy ; but that it will be hara-kiri, and not any very great strengthening along material lines, seems more and more clear. For the far-seeing are now beginning to recognize that, even in industrial lines, the greatest hope of Japan lies in her very genial and artistic temperament. It is along the way of the development of her indigenous art-industries that she has the greatest natural advantages over competing peoples. In her capacity to design she has stored away an enormous capital, which even the disastrous introduction of a bastard foreign system of pencil-drawing in her public schools has not wholly exhausted. It may be that, at some distant day, China will develop into a fully armed colossus which shall draw the attention of European coalitions to strategic centres far to the east of the Dardanelles and the Neva; but it is much more possible for the perfected arts of Japan, deriving inspiration from carefully nurtured refinement, unworldly ideal, and creative individuality, peacefully to invade the willing marts of the West with her laden “treasure ship of good fortune,’ and conquer the world by the sword of the spirit.

Thus, I believe that, theoretically and practically, it will be best for Japan to hold fast to her own ideals of Asiatic tradition. It is a solemn service which she owes to humanity. She is the last custodian of the sacred fire. She alone has the unspeakable advantage of seeing through the materialistic shams with which Western civilizations delude themselves, while she appropriates their sounder materials to rekindle her flame. In bringing to pass the fusion of Eastern and Western types which, two thousand years after Alexander the Great carried the borders of Greece to India, becomes for a second time possible, and which shall create in both hemispheres a far more rounded civilization than either has ever known, Japan has the inestimable privilege of becoming our most alert pioneer. Through her temperament, her individuality, her deeper insight into the secrets of the East, her ready divining of the powers of the West, and, more than all, through the fact that hers, the spiritual factor of the problem, must hold the master key to its solution, it may be decreed in the secret council chambers of Destiny that on her shores shall be first created that new latter-day type of civilized man which shall prevail throughout the world for the next thousand years.

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa.