ABSTRACT
Perhaps only a Japanese representative of the older culture could fully inform us to what degree the mental soil of the race has been saturated and fertilized by Buddhist idealism. At all events, no European could do so; for to understand the whole relation of Far-Eastern religion to Far-Eastern life would require, not only such scholarship, but also such experience as no European could gain in a lifetime. Yet for even the Western stranger there are everywhere signs of what Buddhism has been to Japan in the past. All the arts and most of the industries repeat Buddhist legends to the eye trained in symbolism; and there is scarcely an object of handiwork possessing any beauty or significance of form — from the plaything of a child to the heirloom of a prince — which does not in some way proclaim the ancient debt to Buddhism of the craft that made it. One may discern Buddhist thoughts in the cheap cotton prints from an Ōsaka mill not less than in the figured silks of Kyōto. The reliefs upon an iron kettle, or the elephant-heads of bronze making the handles of a shopkeeper’s hiba-chi; — the patterns of screen-paper, or the commonest ornamental woodwork of a gateway; — the etchings upon a metal pipe, or the enameling upon a costly vase, — may all relate, with equal eloquence, the traditions of faith. There are reflections or echoes of Buddhist teaching in the composition of a garden; — in the countless ideographs of the long vistas of shop-signs; — in the wonderfully expressive names given to certain fruits and flowers; — in the appellations of mountains, capes, waterfalls, villages, — even of modern railway stations. And the new civilization would not yet seem to have much affected the influence thus manifested. Trains and steamers now yearly carry to famous shrines more pilgrims than visited them ever before in a twelvemonth; — the temple bells still, in despite of clocks and watches, mark the passing of time for the millions; — the speech of the people is still poetized with Buddhist utterances; — literature and drama still teem with Buddhist expressions; — and the most ordinary voices of the street — songs of children playing, a chorus of laborers at their toil, even cries of itinerant street-venders — often recall to me some story of saints and Bodhisattvas, or the text of some sutra.
