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 house-hold 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 os moral development.
It has its foibles, its follies, its vices, its cruelties, yet the more one sees it, the more one marvels at its extraordinary goodness, its miraculous patience, its never-failing courtesy, its simplicity of heart, its intuitive charity.
And to our own occidental comprehension, its commonest superstitions, however contemned at Tokyo, have rarest values as fragments of the written literature os its hopes, its fears, its experience with right or wrong—its primitive efforts to find solutions for the riddle of the Unseen.
(Lafcadio Hearn, “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan” First Edition 1894)
———————————————————————————————————–
Beautiful, beautiful writing of Lafcadio Hearn, aka Yakumo KOIZUMI, one of the very few to introduce Japan to outside world in the late 19th century. It was about the time Japan was hastily trying to `catch up` with European countries by industrialisations and introducing many ideas that were previously unfamiliar to Japanese.
Funny enough, I was reading this book completely feeling with the writer: just replace “Western” or “Occidental” with the word “Modern Japanese”, and it all makes sense in this present time.
There is no point in crying over what has been lost, but the true hope is, as PREFACE of this book suggests, that us Japanese might not have changed so much as we seem on superficial level. Yes we do dress in shirts and jeans everyday, there are many cities of skyscrapers, big mall type of supermarkets are taking over small local businesses everywhere, and we may not pray to our ancestors everyday. But what he found truly beautiful there back then, is still within us, as the book suggests. Some little things we do daily without even thinking might be a piece left from our past. We just have to find it, and acknowledge it, before we completely lose sight of it…
小泉八雲、あまりにも有名で、なんとなく知っている気になっていて、きちんと読んだことはなかった。
でも、旅の道連れにと開いた彼の本で、その文章の美しさと意味に打たれて、思わず書き留めてしまったのが上の英文。
訳はこちら↓
しかしながら、日本の日常生活に見受けられる、どこの国とも違った魅力とは、すでにヨーロッパの影響を受けてしまった部分ではないのです。それは、むしろ、他のどの国とも同じように、偉大なる庶民が伝えるもので、その国ならではの価値であるのです。古き佳き慣習を守ろうとする人、美しい着物、仏画、道端にある仏塔、そして心打たれるほどの、先祖への敬意と祈り。これらは、幸運にもその生活の一部を経験できた非日本人からすると、感動せずにはいられないものです。そして、必ずその後には、今もてはやされている西洋の繁栄とは、本当に精神面での向上を伴うものであるのか、疑わずにはいられなくなるのです。
もちろん、日本の生活にも欠点や馬鹿げたこと、悪意や残酷な面もあります。しかし、よく観察すればするほど、その常識を超えた善良さ、奇跡のような辛抱強さ、欠けることのない礼儀、裏表のない心、そして当たり前のように行われる助け合いに、目を見開かずにはいられません。
そして私たち西洋人が考えるに、これらの人々の間で知られているいわゆる迷信ー東京ではすでに忘れ去られているようですがーそれこそは、日本人が生活の中で見出す希望や、抱く恐れや、その善悪の判断を伝える物語の欠片として、大変価値のあるものです。目に見えない力を、少しでも理解しようとしてきた先達の努力を伝えるものだと思うのです。 (知られぬ日本の面影 ラフカディオ・ハーン著 訳：朋）
———————————————————————————————–
前書きでは、日本は随分変わったけれど、その見た目ほどには、
内側は変わっていない、と書かれています。
そうであることを願い、その物語の一部を少しでも見つけたいと思うのです。
Crossing Point 