I just finished the chapter called "In a Japanese Garden" and LH did a magnificent job of describing the beauty of nature. The chapter concludes with a note of sadness as industrialization was destroying many of the great gardens in each of the communities. Here is the passage from pp90-91:
Yet all this--the old katchiu-yashiki and its gardens--will doubtless have vanished forever before many years. Already a multitude of gardens, more spacious and more beautiful than mine, have been converted into rice-fields or bamboo groves; and the quaint Izumao city, touched at last by some long-projected railway line,--perhaps even within the present decade,--will swell, and change, and grow commonplace, and demand these grounds for the building of factories and mills. Not from here alone, but from all the land the ancient peace and the ancient charm seem doomed to pass away. For impermanency is the nature of things, more particularly in Japan; and the changes and the changers shall be changed until there is found no place for them,--and regret is vanity. The dead art that made the beauty of this place was the art, also, of that faith...
It reminds me of the regret that JRR Tolkien felt as the Midlands where he lived most of his life were destroyed to make way for progress.
I think it doesn't have to be this way if those involved were content with slightly less profit, development could be done in a way that would not destroy nature, but coexist in balance so that technology could advance and jobs be had and the beauty not effaced.
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Here are a few more passages from the book that I want to post without comment:
"Returning-time-in-to-look-as-for-is-good." As we descend to the bay, the whole of Kaka-ura, including even the long-invisible ancients of the village accompanies us; making no sound except the pattering of geta. Thus we are escorted to our boat. Into all the other craft drawn up on the beach the younger folk clamber lightly, and seat themselves on the prows and gunwales to gaze at the marvelous Thing-that-by-looking-at-worn-out-is-not. And all smile, but say nothing, even to each other: somehow the experience gives me the sensation of being asleep; it is so soft, so gentle, and so queer withal, just like things seen in dreams. And as we glide away over blue lucent water I look back to the people all waiting and gazing still from the great semicircle of boats; all the slender brown child-limbs dangling from the prows; all the velvety-black heads motionless in the sun; all the boy-faces smiling Jizo-smiles; all the black soft eyes still watching, tirelessly watching, the Thing-that-by-looking-at-worn-out-is-not. And as the scene, too swiftly receding, diminishes to the width of a kakemono, I vainly wish that I could buy this last vision of it, to place it in my toko, and delight my soul betimes with gazing thereon. Yet another moment, and we round a rocky point; and Kaka-ura vanishes from my sight forever. So all things pass away.
Assuredly those impressions which longest haunt recollection are the most transitory: we remember many more instants than minutes, more minutes than hours; and who remembers an entire day? The sum of the remembered happiness of a lifetime is the creation of seconds. What is more fugitive than a smile? yet when does the memory of a vanished smile expire? or the soft regret which that memory may evoke?
Regret for a single individual smile is something common to normal human nature; but regret for the smile of a population, for a smile considered as an abstract quality, is certainly a rare sensation, and one to be obtained, I fancy, only in this Orient land whose people smile forever like their own gods of stone. And this precious experience is already mine; I am regretting the smile of Kaka.
Simultaneously there comes to the recollection of a strangely grim Buddhist legend. Once the Buddha smiled; and by the wondrous radiance of that smile were countless worlds illuminated. But there came a Voice, saying: "It is not real! It cannot last!" And the light passed.
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--Evil winds from the West are blowing over Horai;--and the magical atmosphere, alas! is shrinking away before them. It lingers now in patches only, and bands,--like those long bright bands of cloud that trail across the landscapes of Japanese painters. Under these shreds of elfish vapor you still can find Horai--but not elsewhere....Remember that Horai is also called Shinkaro, which signifies Mirage,--the Vision of the Intangible. And the Vision is fading,--never again to appear save in pictures and poems and dreams....
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