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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
represents in itself a check upon individual freedom. It signifies this even in costliness; but in form it
signifies infinitely more. It has distorted the Western foot out of the original shape, and rendered it
incapable of the work for which it was evolved. The physical results are not limited to the foot. Whatever
acts as a check, directly or indirectly, upon the organs of locomotion must extend its effects to the whole
physical constitution. Does the evil stop even there? Perhaps we submit to conventions the most absurd
of any existing in any civilization because we have too long submitted to the tyranny of shoemakers.
There may be defects in our politics, in our social ethics, in our religious system, more or less related to
the habit of wearing leather shoes. Submission to the cramping of the body must certainly aid in
developing submission to the cramping of the mind.
The Japanese man of the people - the skilled laborer able to underbid without effort any Western artisan
in the same line of industry - remains happily independent of both shoemakers and tailors. His feet are
good to look at, his body is healthy, and his heart is free. If he desire to travel a thousand miles, he can
get ready for his journey in five minutes. His whole outfit need not cost seventy-five cents; and all his
baggage can be put into a handkerchief. On ten dollars he can travel for a year without work, or he can
travel simply on his ability to work, or he can travel as a pilgrim. You may reply that any savage can do
the same thing. Yes, but any civilized man cannot; and the Japanese has been a highly civilized man for
at least a thousand years. Hence his present capacity to threaten Western manufacturers.
We have been too much accustomed to associate this kind of independent mobility with the life of our
own beggars and tramps, to have any just conception of its intrinsic meaning. We have thought of it also
in connection with unpleasant things, - uncleanliness and bad smells. But, as Professor Chamberlain has
well said, "a Japanese crowd is the sweetest in the world" Your Japanese tramp takes his hot bath daily, if
he has a fraction of a cent to pay for it, or his cold bath, if he has not. In his little bundle there are combs,
toothpicks, razors, toothbrushes. He never allows himself to become unpleasant Reaching his destination,
he can transform himself into a visitor of very nice manners, and faultless though simple attire(1).
Ability to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing,
shows more than the advantage held by this Japanese race in the struggle of life; it shows also the real
character of some weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the useless multiplicity of
our daily wants. We must have meat and bread and butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and
woolen underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses, sheets, and blankets:
all of which a Japanese can do without, and is really better off without. Think for a moment how
important an article of Occidental attire is the single costly item of white shirts! Yet even the linen shirt,
the so-called "badge of a gentleman," is in itself a useless garment. It gives neither warmth nor comfort.
It represents in our fashions the survival of something once a luxurious class distinction, but to-day
meaningless and useless as the buttons sewn on the outside of coat-sleeves.
(1) Critics have tried to make fun of Sir Edwin Arnold's remark that a Japanese crowd smells like a
geranium-flower. Yet the simile is exact! The perfume called jako, when sparingly used, might easily be
taken for the odor of a musk-geranium. In almost any Japanese assembly including women a slight
perfume of jako is discernible; for the robes worn have been laid in drawers containing a few grains of
jako. Except for this delicate scent, a Japanese crowd is absolutely odorless.
V
The absence of any huge signs of the really huge things that Japan has done bears witness to the very
peculiar way in which her civilization has been working. It cannot forever so work; but it has so worked
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