Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, First Series

CONTENTS
PREFACE
1 MY FIRST DAY IN THE ORIENT
2 THE WRITING OF KOBODAISHI
3 JIZO
4 A PILGRIMAGE TO ENOSHIMA
5 AT THE MARKET OF THE DEAD
6 BON-ODORI
7 THE CHIEF CITY OF THE PROVINCE OF THE GODS
8 KITZUKI: THE MOST ANCIENT SHRINE IN JAPAN
9 IN THE CAVE OF THE CHILDREN'S GHOSTS
10 AT MIONOSEKI
11 NOTES ON KITZUKI
12 AT HINOMISAKI
13 SHINJU
14 YAEGAKI-JINJA
15 KITSUNE


PREFACE

In the Introduction to his charming Tales of Old Japan, Mr. Mitford
wrote in 1871:

'The books which have been written of late years about Japan have either
been compiled from official records, or have contained the sketchy
impressions of passing travellers. Of the inner life of the Japanese the
world at large knows but little: their religion, their superstitions,
their ways of thought, the hidden springs by which they move--all these
are as yet mysteries.'

This invisible life referred to by Mr. Mitford is the Unfamiliar Japan
of which I have been able to obtain a few glimpses. The reader may,
perhaps, be disappointed by their rarity; for a residence of little more
than four years among the people--even by one who tries to adopt their
habits and customs--scarcely suffices to enable the foreigner to begin
to feel at home in this world of strangeness. None can feel more than
the author himself how little has been accomplished in these volumes,
and how much remains to do.

The popular religious ideas--especially the ideas derived from Buddhism
-and the curious superstitions touched upon in these sketches are
little shared by the educated classes of New Japan. Except as regards
his characteristic indifference toward abstract ideas in general and
metaphysical speculation in particular, the Occidentalised Japanese of
to-day stands almost on the intellectual plane of the cultivated
Parisian or Bostonian. But he is inclined to treat with undue contempt
all conceptions of the supernatural; and toward the great religious
questions of the hour his attitude is one of perfect apathy. Rarely does
his university training in modern philosophy impel him to attempt any
independent study of relations, either sociological or psychological.
For him, superstitions are simply superstitions; their relation to the
emotional nature of the people interests him not at all. [1] And this
not only because he thoroughly understands that people, but because the
class to which he belongs is still unreasoningly, though quite
naturally, ashamed of its older beliefs. Most of us who now call
ourselves agnostics can recollect the feelings with which, in the period
of our fresh emancipation from a faith far more irrational than
Buddhism, we looked back upon the gloomy theology of our fathers.
Intellectual Japan has become agnostic within only a few decades; and
the suddenness of this mental revolution sufficiently explains the
principal, though not perhaps all the causes of the present attitude of
the superior class toward Buddhism. For the time being it certainly
borders upon intolerance; and while such is the feeling even to religion
as distinguished from superstition, the feeling toward superstition as
distinguished from religion must be something stronger still.

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.
This is the life of which a foreign observer can never weary, if
fortunate and sympathetic enough to enter into it--the life that forces
him sometimes to doubt whether the course of our boasted Western
progress is really in the direction of moral development. Each day,
while the years pass, there will be revealed to him some strange and