Superficiality

Abstract

In September 1916, an interview with a visiting Chinese scholar by the name of Hain Jou-Kia appeared in the New York Times. Before coming to the United States, the newspaper’s readers were told, Hain had spent several years studying “social conditions” in Japan. As his interests were “chiefly literary,” however, he had also “made a careful study of Japanese literature, and [had] arrived at some interesting conclusions on the subject.” These conclusions were as follows:

Japanese literature differs from Chinese literature chiefly in that it is not concerned, as Chinese literature is, with morals and philosophy. Japanese literature is light. One thousand years ago there were published in Japan two famous books, Genji-Monogatari and Ise-Monogatari. These are the origins of Japanese literature as we know it today. They are very famous. They deal merely with the times of their authors, with the surface of things, manners, customs, gossip. They do not deal with the great basic things of life, with morals and philosophy. These books are studied in the Japanese schools and universities, and their influence is responsible for the lightness of modern Japanese literature … You see the same thing in Japanese paintings. The thing which interests the Japanese painter, however skillful he may be, is the thing that he sees—the superficial and momentary thing …