The Japanese Spirit
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798634854984
- Series
- The Japanese Spirit
- Pages
- 134
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-04-07
- Author
- Okakura-Yoshisaburo
Description
To the lover of Japanese literary art this book will prove an immeasurable delight while all who have studied Japan by means of the works of earlier authors will find much information confirmed and expanded within the volume. Mr. Okakura-Yoshisaburo, like his brother, Professor K. Okakura, has acquainted himself with much of our own literature, and has been filled with admiration at the analogy of thought existent between the poets of the East and the West."The Japanese Spirit" leads us gently step by step through the shadowy regions of mysticism and symbolic influences, and allows a gleam of light occasionally to penetrate our understanding of a nation which has been upheld by a mighty creed of unwritten tenets - a creed which finds but little expression save in the joy of the utter forgetfulness of gloom and dissolution; for the author remarks: "Until death stares us right in the face, we do not care to be religious in the ordinary sense of the term. True, we say and think we believe in death, but all the while this so-called death is nothing else than a new life in this present world of ours led in a supernatural way." As we inhale the perfume of sweet blossoms and the resinous fragrance from autumn's vanishing glories, so the Japanese draw from all their surroundings a subtle religious symbolism, which finds no adequate language to express its potentiality-a symbolism that can be conveyed to the meanest and most untutored mortals in a wordless beauty that influences every thought and action of their lives. Pages relative to religion, poetry, and the ancient ceremony of "Cha-no-e," will be helpful to those still searching for a better understanding of the "unknowable" Japanese.
