I visited upon one of the missionaries to whom I had more confidence than any other. I told him my intention to go to America in hope that he might be able to give me some useful information. To my great disappointment he exclaimed, ‘What, You are intending to go to America?’ His wife was in the same room, and they both sneered at me! At the moment I felt as if all the blood in my head went down to my feet! I stood on the same point for a few seconds in silence, then came back to my room without saying ‘goodbye.’ I said to myself, ‘Everything is quite finished.’
On the next morning I ran away. Now I want to write the reason. I always believe that insincerity is the greatest crime in this world, and nothing could be more insincere than to sneer!
I always forgive the other’s anger, because it is the human nature to get into bad temper. I generally forgive if one tells me a lie, because the human nature is very weak and very often one cannot have a steady mind to face the difficulty and tell all the truth. I also forgive if one makes any foundless rumor or gossip against me, because it is a very easy temptation when some others persuade in that way.
Even murderers I may forgive according to their condition. But about sneering, there is no excuse. Because one cannot sneer at innocent people without intentional insincerity.
Let me give you my own definition of two words. Murderer: one who assassinates some human flesh. Sneerer: one who assassinates others’ SOUL and heart.
Soul and heart are far dearer than the flesh, therefore sneering is the worst crime. Indeed, that missionary and his wife tried to assassinate my soul and heart, and I had a great pain in my heart, which cried out, ‘Why you?’
The next morning he departed with his entire possessions tied in a handkerchief.
He had been ‘assassinated,’ as he felt, by the missionary’s incredulity about a penniless provincial boy’s going to the United States to become an artist. His name was besmirched until he had cleared it by carrying out his purpose and after the missionary’s ‘sneer’ he had no alternative but to leave the place and prove his ability to get to America. In English it reads curiously that he charges the missionary with ‘insincerity’; the American’s exclamation seems to us quite ‘sincere’ in our sense of the word. But he is using the word in its Japanese meaning and they regularly deny sincerity to anyone who belittles any person whom he does not wish to provoke to aggression. Such a sneer is wanton and proves ‘insincerity.’
‘Even murderers I may forgive according to their condition. But about sneering there is no excuse.’ Since it is not proper to ‘forgive,’ one possible reaction to a slur is revenge. Markino cleared his name by getting to America but revenge ranks high in Japanese tradition as a ‘good thing’ under circumstances of insult or defeat. Japanese who write books for Western readers have sometimes used vivid figures of speech to describe the Japanese attitudes about revenge. Inazo Nitobe, one of the most benevolent men in Japan, writing in 1900, says: ‘In revenge there is something that satisfies one’s sense of justice. Our sense of revenge is as exact as our mathematical faculty and until both terms of the equation are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone.’ Yoshisaburo Okakura in a book on The Life and Thought of Japan uses a particularly Japanese custom as a parallel:
Many of the so-called mental peculiarities of the Japanese owe their origin to the love of purity and its complementary hatred of defilement. But, pray, how could it be otherwise, being trained, as we actually are, to look upon slights inflicted, either on our family honour or on the national pride, as so many defilements and wounds that would not be clean and heal up again, unless by a thorough washing through vindication? You may consider the cases of vendetta so often met with in the public and private life of Japan, merely as a kind of morning tub which a people take with whom love of cleanliness has grown into a passion.
And he continues, saying that thus the Japanese ‘live clean, undefiled lives which seem as serene and beautiful as a cherry tree in full bloom.’ This ‘morning tub,’ in other words, washes off dirt other people have thrown at you and you cannot be virtuous as long as any of it sticks to you. The Japanese have no ethic which teaches that a man cannot be insulted unless he thinks he is and that it is only ‘what comes out of a man’ that defiles him, not what is said or done against him.
Japanese tradition keeps constantly before the public this ideal of a ‘morning bath’ of vendetta. Countless incidents and hero tales, of which the most popular is the historical Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin, are known to everybody. They are read in their school books and played in the theater, made up into contemporary movies, and printed in popular publications. They are a part of the living culture of Japan today.
Many of these tales are about sensitivity to casual failures. For instance, a daimyo called on three of his retainers to name the maker of a certain fine sword. They disagreed and when experts were caned in it was found that Nagoya Sanza had been the only one who had correctly identified it as a Muramasa blade. The ones who were wrong took it as an insult and set out to kill Sanza. One of them found Sanza asleep and stabbed him with Sanza’s own sword. Sanza, however, lived, and his attacker thereafter dedicated himself to his revenge. In the end he succeeded in killing him and his giri was satisfied.