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362 well as to his invention, and, what is worse, he constantly overleaps the bounds of possibility to an extent which tries the patience of the most indulgent reader. The deus ex machinâ, in the shape of a ghost, demon, or supernaturally gifted animal, is in far too frequent requisition. His moral ideals are of the common conventional type of his day and country, the product of the teachings of China grafted on a Japanese stock. His power of delineating character is extremely limited, and reminds us very much of the portrait-painting of Japanese pictorial art. He has little or no humour, and his wit is mainly of the verbal kind. The sentiment of love is dealt with by him in a way which is to us very unsatisfactory. While he can describe the mischief produced by unlawful passion, and wifely fidelity and devotion are his frequent themes, such things as the gradual growth of the sentiment in man or woman, the ennobling influence of a pure love, and all the more delicate shades of feeling are wholly neglected by him. The pathos which native admirers find in his works fails to move his European readers, although they are not insensible to the same quality in other Japanese authors. In short, human nature as depicted by Bakin is far too sophisticated to appeal to our sympathies. He shows us men and women as they might be if constructed on principles derived from the Chinese sages and their Japanese expositors, and goes for his material to books rather than to real life. It is characteristic of him, that unlike many of the dramatists and novelists of his time, he avoids the common speech for his dialogue, and confines himself entirely to the more stilted literary language.

Bakin's style, which is his strong point, is occasionally disfigured by lapses into fine writing adorned with