EPILOGUE

Spring and fall are the seasons of Japan. The Japanese have made a cult of them, deeper than the natural fascination which other peoples feel for the times of change. There is no tradition in Japan to match New England winters or summers in the Lake Country. The static seasons do not encroach on the reign of the changeful ones. In April and May the millions go out, as if driven, to watch the white of the opening cherry blossoms creep northward along their hills. It is hanami—the flower-seeing time. In October the maple leaves are a brighter crimson than anywhere else in the world. The Japanese have a name also for this experience—momijigari—the maple-viewing season. They are awesomely touched.

The change and movement of nature meets empathy in the Japanese soul. They are a restless people, impatient, changeful and subject to change. They live on fragile islands, crowded, treacherous and beautiful. The earth shakes beneath them and coughs through their mountains; the seas smash without end on their chipped coast; the winds tear the leaves from their bent trees. Their life is mortgaged to the uncertainties of nature and crimped by the smallness of nature's goods. Their roots are uncertain, transplanted from the solidness of others. Climate and geography have left them little that abides. Theirs is no brotherhood to feel among the nations. Their strength is in their community and the fearful, prideful impulses that drive it as one.

It is not hyperbole to call the Japanese a dynamic people. They do not sit as the great peoples of the continent—Russians, Chinese, or Americans, fortified in their confidence by the breadth of their land. They move. It is their destiny to move, not sweepingly but in starts, not smoothly but with tremors and convulsions.

Struggle is in their bones and hard work is the condition of their life. Perhaps that is why their small children are so pampered and indulged—the parents pity the stress that is to come. They do not shirk struggle—and its rigors have made them hard but not brittle, pliant but never dissolving. It has not yet made them weary. It has never bowed them for long. It has not lessened the extent of their art and their capacity to feel. It has left their culture narrow but deep. The Japanese artist scorns the mountain and dotes on the small flower at its base. The flower he is sure of—and he knows. The mountain is uncertain and may be hostile. He is disturbed, if he looks at it too long.

The Japanese have been dangerous and may be dangerous again; in the intensity of their feelings, in the power and violence of their acts, in the cramped complexity inside their heads. A bold trepanning has been attempted on them, not without trauma, not without worry and confusion among those who carried it through. For the moment, it has relieved the pressure. With artificial helps, the subject has lived well and hopefully through a trying period in his life.

The helps are withdrawn. The Japanese faces the world of nature again, to live in it by his own resource. His course is begun well, but he has no knowledge where it will lead him. He has no certainty but the power of his own deeds, and the poor rock of his four fragile islands. The deeds must be his granary. Dynamism and wits must do for the broad fields, the deep mines and the sweeping frontiers which he does not have.

He feels his insecurity. He hopes it will not betray him, as once it did. His goal is not fixed, but need and spirit drive him on, and the challenge of the time has come to him. Struggle, pride, fear—march. The 85 millions of Japan seek their fate.