George Fitch - The Critic in the Orient

This book of impressions of the Far East is called "The Critic in the Orient," because the writer for over thirty years has been a professional critic of new books – one trained to get at the best in all literary works and reveal it to the reader. This critical work – a combination of rapid reading and equally rapid written estimate of new publications – would have been deadly, save for a love of books, so deep and enduring that it has turned drudgery into pastime and an enthusiasm for discovering good things in every new book which no amount of literary trash was ever able to smother.

After years of such strenuous critical work, the mind becomes molded in a certain cast. It is as impossible for me to put aside the habit of the literary critic as it would be for a hunter who had spent his whole life in the woods to be content in a great city. So when I started out on this trip around the world the critical apparatus which I had used in getting at the heart of books was applied to the people and the places along this great girdle about the globe.

Much of the benefit of foreign travel depends upon the reading that one has done. For years my eager curiosity about places had led me to read everything printed about the Orient and the South Seas. Add to this the stories which were brought into a newspaper office by globe trotters and adventurers, and you have an equipment which made me at times seem to be merely revising impressions made on an earlier journey. When you talk with a man who has spent ten or twenty years in Japan or China or the Straits Settlements, you cannot fail to get something of the color of life in those strange lands, especially if you have the newspaper training which impels you to ask questions and to drag out of your informant everything of human interest that the reader will care to know.

This newspaper instinct, which is developed by training but which one must possess in large measure before he can be successful in journalism, seizes upon everything and transmutes it into "copy" for the printer. To have taken this journey without setting down every day my impressions of places and people would have been a tiresome experience. What seemed labor to others who had not had my special training was as the breath in my nostrils. Even in the debilitating heat of the tropics it was always a pastime, never a task, to put into words my ideas of the historic places which I knew so well from years of reading and which I had just seen. And the richer the background of history, the greater was my enjoyment in painting with words full of color a picture of my impressions, for the benefit of those who were not able to share my pleasure in the actual sight of these famous places of the Far East.

From the mass of newspaper letters written while every impression was sharp and clear, I have selected what seemed to me most significant and illustrative. It is only when the traveler looks back over a journey that he gets the true perspective. Then only is he able to see what is of general and permanent interest. Most of the vexations of travel I have eliminated, as these lose their force once they have gone over into yesterday. What remains is the beauty of scenery, the grandeur of architecture, the spiritual quality of famous paintings and statues, the appealing traits of various peoples.

This volume includes impressions of the first half of a trip around the world. The remainder of the journey will fill a companion volume, which will comprise two chapters devoted to New York and the effect it produced on me after seeing the great cities of the world. As I have said in the preface, these are necessarily first impressions, jotted down when fresh and clear; but it is doubtful whether a month spent in any of these places would have forced a revision of these first glimpses, set in the mordant of curiosity and enthusiasm. When the mind is saturated with the literature of a place, it is quick to seize on what appeals to the imagination, and this appeal is the one which must be considered in every case where there is an historical or legendary background to give salient relief to palace or temple, statue or painting. Without this background the noblest work seems dull and lifeless. With it the palace stamps itself upon the imagination, the temple stirs the emotions, the statue speaks, the painting has a direct spiritual message.

Certain parts of the Orient are not rich in this imaginative material which appeals to one fond of history or art; but this defect is compensated for by an extraordinary picturesqueness of life and a wonderful luxuriance of nature. The Oriental trip also makes less demand on one's reading than even a hasty journey through Europe. There are few pictures, few statues. Only India and Egypt appeal to the sense of the historical, Japan stands alone, alien to all our ways of life and thought, but so intensely artistic, so saturated with the intellectual spirit that it seems to belong to another world than this material, commercial existence that stamps all European and American life. The new China furnishes an attractive field of study, but unfortunately when I visited the country it was in the throes of revolution and travel was dangerous anywhere outside the great treaty ports.

One of the best results of foreign travel is that it makes one revise his estimate of alien races. When I started out it was with a strong prejudice against the Japanese, probably due to my observation of some rather unlovely specimens whom I had encountered in San Francisco. A short stay in Japan served to give me a new point of view in regard to both the people and the country of the Mikado. It was impossible to escape from the fact that here is a race which places loyalty to country and personal honor higher than life, and this sentiment was not confined to the educated and wealthy classes but was general throughout the nation. Here also is a people so devoted to the culture of beauty that they travel hundreds of miles to see the annual chrysanthemum and other flower festivals. And here is a people so devoted to art for art's sake that even the poor and uneducated have little gardens in their back yards and houses which reveal a refined taste in architecture and decoration. The poorest artisans are genuine artists and their work shows a beauty and a finish only to be found in the work of the highest designers in our country.

In one chapter of the section on Japan, I have dwelt on the ingenious theory that it is their devotion to the garden that has kept the Japanese from being spoiled by the great strides they have made in the last twenty years in commerce and conquest. To take foremost place among the powers of the world without any preliminary struggle is an achievement which well might turn the heads of any people; yet this exploit has simply confirmed the Japanese in the opinion that their national training has resulted in this success that other nations have won only by the expenditure of years of labor and study. When you see the reverence which every one in Japan shows at the tombs of the Forty-seven Ronins, you feel that here is a spiritual force which is lacking in every European country; here is something, whether you call it loyalty or patriotism or fanaticism, which makes even the women and children of Japan eager to sacrifice all that they hold most dear on the altar of their country. No less striking than their loyalty is the courtesy of the Japanese which makes travel in their country a pleasure. Even the poor and ignorant country people show in their mutual relations a politeness that would do credit to the most civilized race, while all exhibit toward foreigners a courtesy and consideration that is often repaid by boorishness and insult on the part of tourists and foreign residents of Japan. Another feature of Japanese life that cannot fail to impress the stranger is the small weight that is given to wealth. In their relations with foreigners the governing class and the wealthy people are sticklers for all the conventional forms; but among themselves the simplicity of their social life is very attractive. Elaborate functions are unknown and changes of costume, which make women's dress so large an item of family expense in any European country, are unnecessary. Some of the rich Japanese are now lavishing money on their homes, which are partly modeled on European plans; but in the main the residences, even of rich people, are very simple and unpretentious. These homes are filled with priceless porcelains, jades, paintings and prints, but there is no display merely for the sake of exhibiting art treasures.