Japan and the Japanese illustrated . nually in a single volume adorned with aquantity of wood engravings. The ethnographical portion of this Avork is the mostinteresting. All that which relates to the clerical and political institutions of theEmpire reduces itself to a dry nomenclature. The chapters devoted to the descriptionof foreign nations are extremely tame and uncritical. One of the most categoricaldeals with the Spaniards and Portuguese, of whom it says, in so many words, thatthey have an extremely bad religion. I do not believe that there exists in Japan any treatise upon religious orp
Japan and the Japanese illustrated . nually in a single volume adorned with aquantity of wood engravings. The ethnographical portion of this Avork is the mostinteresting. All that which relates to the clerical and political institutions of theEmpire reduces itself to a dry nomenclature. The chapters devoted to the descriptionof foreign nations are extremely tame and uncritical. One of the most categoricaldeals with the Spaniards and Portuguese, of whom it says, in so many words, thatthey have an extremely bad religion. I do not believe that there exists in Japan any treatise upon religious orphilosopliical controversy. The doctrine of Confucius excludes every kind of polemics,because if men are beings naturally good, if several of them have during distantcenturies attained perfection, then there is really nothing more to dispute about; 256 LIFE IX JAPAN. perfectil)ility becomes a non-sense, and progress consists in retrogression, as far as thoseEmperors of the ancient ages, who, according to Chinese philosophy, furnished. A JAlANESE WKITKl:. humanity with its supreme and definitive tyj)e. We must, however, acknowhodge,lliiit tlic time has not yet come for us to judge of Japanese literature. Those harncd SrORY-TELLERS. 257 Iluropeans who are by dogrees making it known to us have only translated in thetirst place useful books; treatises whose study nu)y be of innnrdiate service to oneor other of our great industries. Such arc the important -works on the artof sericulture, and the manufacture of porcelain in China and Japan, which liave beenj)ublished since 1848. As for the purely literary productions of Japanese writers, wehave very few of them, and the selections made by the translators have not beenjudicious. No doubt deeper research will give us more valuable results, but theywill oidy be really profitable when we shall have penetrated into the private life ofthe middle classes, and shall have succeeded in getting hold of the repertory of theirplays, their legends,
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