between them, is well known. It shows that there is a common ground in human nature, that there are more links between men than we yet scientifically know. The sociological aspects of literature have been little explored. Still less explored are the comparative aspects and encounters between Eastern and Western literature. We cannot see any acceptable explanation for some phenomena of Japanese literature without introducing the experience of Western literature. Why did the Japanese novel and diary appear suddenly with such native strength, apart from the Chinese erudition which prevailed in the Japanese world of culture in the Heian period? Why cannot epic poetry be found in a country that has practised the ideals of hero worship more than any other nation?
We must not forget that Japan lived long on the edge of Chinese civilization, as it lives today on the edge of Western culture. This gives Japanese culture more fluidity and makes Japan more permeable to external influences. It should be remembered that Japan remained during long periods of its history closed to any intercourse with foreign lands. Maybe this aloofness made Japan more permeable during the times of contact. These unique circumstances throw light on, and provoke interest in, a study of cultural development. Within this wide cultural framework, it is possible to see with more clarity what springs from native sources and develops independently, and what is imported and grows out of foreign influences.
The influence of Japanese literature on Western writers has been very small so far. The interest that Japan aroused in the imagist writers in England and America at the end of the last century was associated with an urge for new themes and new forms of expression, but this enthusiasm has not produced any great writers. Maybe the interest was only superficial, absorbed in exoticism and trivial picturesque detail. It was only when Japan was taken seriously and objectively by a less romantic generation that Japanese culture began to inspire great poets like Yeats, Claudel, and Pound and to exert a real influence on Western literature- Of the three, we can say that only Pound has had deep significance in regards to Japan. He worked on Noh poetry through Fenollosa's translations, and acquired an understanding of Japanese poetry that enabled him in his Cantos to make a synthesis of the poetry of East and West.
Pound thought Japanese culture to be the one Oriental culture that could serve as an intermediary between East and West. Before and after mm this same hope was expressed by Walt Whitman and Amy Lowell, not to mention Lafcadio Hearn and Fenollosa. Today, Prof. Earl Miner also thinks that "almost alone of the Asiatic cultures, Japan has played the important role of providing a meeting ground for East and West."4
The high economic development which has brought Japan to the front of the most progressive nations, and the innovations added by the Japanese to Western techniques tend to lessen each day the gap between Japan and the West. We must say, though, that the Western world does not think Japan to be as near to it as the Japanese themselves feel near to the West.
Western culture is widely known in the Far East; the main English, American, German, French, and Russian writers influence Japanese novels and poems. Japanese psychology presents to the West peculiarities and mysteries that an already abundant number of books has not yet exhausted. The Japanese way of life presents secrets and enchantments which have been praised by Western enthusiasts for about a century. It is undeniable, however, that the Japanese attitude towards life, the unique social atmosphere which originated in immutable old insular traditions, and the particular light that Buddhism gives to the Asiatic continent are things the Western man does not yet fully understand.
Since the beginning of our century there has been an important trend towards the serious study of the culture of the Eastern countries in its various aspects, and towards the bringing together of the knowledge and wisdom of East and West. Valuable studies have been done in sociology, comparative religion, historiography, and other fields. It is time to enlarge this new trend to include literature, to look into what is similar and what is different in the ideas and forms created in Japan and in the West. We will see then, for instance, that picaresque novels appear at about the same time in Japan (at a time when she was closed to the West) and in Spain, showing surprising similarities. We are faced not with a merely superficial and casual coincidence but indeed with equivalent literary expressions which originated in the particularity of Japanese and Spanish societies. Their evolutions from ruralism and military feudalism towards mercantilism and progressive urbanism show fundamental similarities. On the other hand, there is epic poetry, where the contrast we find between samurai Japan and Christian Europe can help us to see the rise of the great European epic poems in a new light.
A parallel between two different cultures as far as they are manifested in literature cannot fail to be fruitful, because they reveal such a rich variety of elements: a variety of form and ideas, different experiences and wisdoms, different popular traditions, different philosophies of life, and different religions—a ground of fertile contrasts and provocative similarities from which great myths and symbols have arisen.
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PART ONE. A WESTERN INTERPRETATION OF JAPANESE LITERARY CULTURE |
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CHAPTER I. CLASSIC POETRY |
INTRODUCTION TO CLASSIC LITERATURE
When we consider Japanese literature in its entirety and compare it with the great literatures of the West, we first notice its importance, being one of the richest literatures in the world; second, its early maturity; and third, its inclusion of the main genres developed in the Western literatures, though the degree of their importance is different. With great surprise we find that some genres were developed in Japan and in Europe at the same time, though there was no possible communication between them, for Japan had closed its doors to the West.
The first genre to appear fully developed in Japanese literature is poetry. We notice a similar phenomenon in all literatures—all men begin their artistic attempts by praising in musical words the beauty of the world.
The first, and greatest, compilation of Japanese poetry is the Manyoshu (Collection of Myriad Leaves), made in the latter part of the eighth century. It includes poems from the fourth to the eighth centuries, but the greatest part belongs to poets from the seventh and the first part of the eighth.
The Manyoshu comes after Greek and Roman poetry, but four or five centuries before the European national literatures began to make their first attempts. England was still one or two centuries from the Anglo-Saxon poetry of the heathen lay of Beowulf and the Christian poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf and still about six centuries from the first English lyric, which appeared in the fourteenth century. In France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain, vernacular literature would come much later, in the eleventh century; in Italy, later still, in the thirteenth.
The Japanese followed the example of the Chinese. In China, poetic anthologies appeared much earlier. The first, the Shi Ching (Book of Songs), is supposed to have been compiled by Confucius in the fifth century b.c.; another, the Ch'u-Tz'u (Poems of the Kingdom of Ch'i), was compiled at the end of the first century b.c., the same century in which Meleager compiled his Garland, the first Greek poetic anthology. An anthology of prose and poetry, the Wên Hsüan (Literary Selections), was compiled in the sixth century by Hsiao Tung. These and other Chinese anthologies were widely read by Japanese poets. The glorious period of Chinese poetry was in the T'ang dynasty with Li Po and Tu Fu (eighth century) at the time when the Manyoshu was being compiled.
If we consider world literature as a whole, Japan has been a forerunner in the novel, the diary, and drama about the common man. It was in Japan that the novel was born, in the tenth century, at a time when Europe was still plunged in the dark Middle Ages. Western European literature was making strenuous efforts to break through the heavy crust of their barbarian
