The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition

Chinese and Japanese Traits

144 Chinese and Japanese Traits E r n e s t F e n o l l o s a (1892) 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. UnprogressiveChinaissupposedtobeugly,prosaic,anddegraded;mechanicalin 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 cross-section 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 civilizationofhoaryage,withstrengthspent,struggleandcrisislongsincepassed; Chinese and Japanese Traits 145 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 gaily 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 146 Ernest Fenollosa...