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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN, ESQ.
Emeritus Professor of Philology and Japanese in the
Imperial University of Tokyo
I DEDICATE THESE VOLUMES
IN TOKEN OF
AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE
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
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