Boiled pork with rice wine.Macaroni soup.Chicken with millet wine.Boiled eggs.Pastry.Flour.Sesame and honey pudding.Dried persimmons and roasted rice with honey.
Boiled pork with rice wine.
Macaroni soup.
Chicken with millet wine.
Boiled eggs.
Pastry.
Flour.
Sesame and honey pudding.
Dried persimmons and roasted rice with honey.
Both the Koreans and the Chinese, at least those who can afford it, use very much more meat than do the Japanese.
Sleeping is another great national amusement in Korea. I know no other people that seem to take so much positive enjoyment in sleep, and who go at it so deliberately and systematically. They positively regard it as a pastime.
The Koreans are fond of music, and have many concerts, but then so, too, do the Japanese and the Chinese. Fishing is a popular sport in all three countries.
The Koreans have many festivals, at which they indulge themselves in as much pleasure as possible. As in China, New Year’s day is perhaps the most important, and certainly the most generally observed of the festivals. The Korean New Year customs and the Chinese New Year customs are almost identical. I won’t describe the New Year customs of Korea, because to do so, I should have to say almost word for word what I recently wrote about the Chinese New Year. Kite-flying and top-spinning occupy a good deal of the time of old and young in China, in Korea, and in Japan. Kite fights and top battles are of very frequent occurrence, and are really very pretty to watch.
The Koreans are very fond of visiting, and of being visited, but in this again, they in no way differ from the other peoples of the further Orient.
Besides fishing, there are three manly sports in vogue in Korea, and I believe, three only; all others being considered undignified and ungentlemanly. The three are archery, falconry, and hunting. Indeed, I scarcely know if I am right in including hunting in the list. It is so very generally pursued as a business, and not as a pleasure. I believe that a few Koreans do sometimes hunt for sport, and very good sport they usually get. Deer, tigers, leopards, badgers, bears, martens, otters, sables, wolves, and foxes are abundant, and the peninsula is full of feathered life. Pheasants are as plentiful, as beautiful, and as toothsome in Korea as they are in China. And they have wild geese, plover, snipe, varieties of ducks, teal, water hens, turkeys and turkey-bustards, herons, eagles, and cranes; and the woods are full of hares and of foxes.
Archery is considered in Korea the most distinguished of recreations. Every Korean gentleman, from the king down, is, or tries very hard to be, expert at archery. They use a tight, short bow, never over three feet long, and arrows of bamboo. The Koreans are wonderful marksmen, and professional archers are among the most popular of public entertainers.
Falconry is almost as popular as archery, and every nobleman has at least one falcon. The falcon is invariably extensively and gaudily wardrobed, and has usually a personal attendant. Falcon competitions, both public and private, are frequent, and among the nobility are often made the occasion of elaborate entertainments.
The Koreans have a quaint little festival, called “Crossing the Bridges.” Söul abounds in queer little stone bridges. A moonlight night is chosen for the festival. Usually a man and a woman walk to the centre of the bridge, and make a wish for the ensuing year, or pray for good-luck, and search the stars for some augury of prosperity. They have a number of peculiar, picturesque customs in connection with “Crossing the Bridges,” but I fancy that with both men and women it is more an excuse for a night out than anything else.
The Koreans are even more impersonal than the Chinese. The Japanese are intensely personal. The Korean is impersonal in business, and impersonal in pleasure. He feasts with other men, and mingles with other men in all his amusements, but his interest is absorbed by his surroundings, and not by his companions. Introspection, and the study of other men, are seldom or never methods of Korean self-entertainment. Nature is after all the greatest entertainer of the Koreans; and to study Nature, to watch her, and to fall more and more deeply in love with her, is a Korean’s greatest amusement.
CHAPTER IX.
A GLANCE AT KOREAN ART.
“Far Eastern art draws its inspiration from Nature, not from man. It thus stands, in the objects of its endeavour, in striking contrast to what has ever been the main admiration and study of our own, the human figure. A flower, a face—matter as it affects mind, mind as it affects matter—from such opposite sources spring the two. Art, or the desire to perpetuate and reproduce the emotions, must, of course, depend upon the character of those emotions. Now to a Far Oriental Nature is more suggestive and man less so than with us.”—Percival Lowell.
“Far Eastern art draws its inspiration from Nature, not from man. It thus stands, in the objects of its endeavour, in striking contrast to what has ever been the main admiration and study of our own, the human figure. A flower, a face—matter as it affects mind, mind as it affects matter—from such opposite sources spring the two. Art, or the desire to perpetuate and reproduce the emotions, must, of course, depend upon the character of those emotions. Now to a Far Oriental Nature is more suggestive and man less so than with us.”—Percival Lowell.
The subject of Korean art is vast, intricate, and difficult. It could not possibly be covered, even in the most superficial way, in one chapter, or in a series of several chapters. But it would be preposterous to altogether exclude it from any book whose pages are devoted to Korea generally. For perhaps the most really interesting thing about Korea, and certainly one of the most interesting things to be said about Korea is this:—Korea was the birthplace of a great deal that is finest and highest in the art of that wonderful art country—Japan.
A great deal that is most distinguished in Korean art, past and present, is undeniably indigenous to Korea, but, on the other hand, the Korean artists have borrowed or absorbed a good deal from the arts of other countries. In the early days of its prosperity Korean art seems to have owed a great deal to China. But, even in its infancy, through the long years of its magnificent splendour, and in these days of its decay or of trance, Korean art always has had, and has, a marked individuality, and bears the indubitable hall-mark of genuine originality.
In the beginning, then, Korean art was probably a mingling of the national expression of an intensely artistic people, and what was most striking in the rich, but less graceful art of China. Under the Sung dynasty, between the years 960 and 1333A.D., lay the most brilliant period of China’s literary existence, and perhaps the most brilliant period of her art life. And it was also between these years that Korean art reached, and for some time maintained, its highest perfection.
No careful art student who visits both countries, or has access to typical collections of the art productions of both countries, can fail to observe that apparently either Persia has distinctly influenced the art of Korea, or Persia’s art been distinctly influenced by Korea. Probably both are true. Persian embassies and Korean embassies were wont to meet in Pekin. Very probably showed each other the presents sent by their respective masters to the Chinese Emperor. These presents were always largely made up of works of art. And their inspection probably led to an interchange of presents between the embassies themselves, and later on, to reciprocal studies, between Persia and Korea, of the art methods of the two countries. Korea has excelled in fret-work, in scroll-work, and in a great variety of arabesque decorations, and in all of these has very largely followed Persian lines.
The key-note of Korean art, as the key-note of all Far Eastern and, indeed, of most Oriental art, is the inferior place held in it by the study of the human figure. Far Eastern art is a study of nature and of decorations. This is even more true of Korea than of China or Japan, though the Koreans excel both the Chinese and the Japanese in their drawing of animals. The chief characteristic of Korean decorative art is its chastity. One cannot fail to be reminded by it of the severe simplicity of old Grecian art. A good specimen of Korean pottery or porcelain is never heavily covered with decoration. A Korean vase, or a Korean bowl, is simple and elegant of outline, and the surface is finely finished, but probably three-fourths of that entire surface is undecorated. The old specimens of Japanese Satsuma (the Koreans taught the Japanese how to make Satsuma) are usually distinguishable from the new and cheaper, because the former are touched with decoration, and the latter are hidden beneath it. The Koreans use colour very lavishly when they use it at all. But conventional design, conventionalized decorations, and decorations which are more exact copies of nature, whether in black and white or in colour, they use very carefully, and never crowd them together. Their porcelains are not so glazed as those of Japan, and the usual, or favourite colour is a creamy white. The dragon, which is so conspicuous a personage in all Far Eastern art, is perpetually drawn by Korean artists in colour, and by Korean artists in black and white, but is rather sparingly used on the Korean pottery; which in this differs from the potteries of China and Japan. The mythical animals and the symbolical animals, though they all figure largely in Korean art, are not often found on Korean porcelain. The Koreans value highly all sorts of crackle ware, and have been excelled, I fancy, in its manufacture by no other people.
Griffis says: “Decoration is the passion of the Orient, and for this, rather than for creative or ideal art, must we look from this nation, to whose language gender is unknown, and in which personification is unthought of, though all nature is animate with malignant or beneficent presences. Abstract qualities embodied in human form are unknown to the Korean, but his refined taste enjoys whatever thought and labour have made charming to the eye by its suggestion of pleasing images to the imagination. His art is decorative, not creative or ideal. His choice pieces of bric-a-brac may be rougher and coarser than those of Japan, but their individuality is as strongly marked as that of the Chinese, while the taste displayed is severer than that of the later Japanese.”
Perhaps the design that they most often employ, in their decorative art, is the well-known “wave-pattern.” We find it on their porcelain, on their bronzes, in the most conventional of their pictures, and even on their coins. Some one has suggested that it is perhaps used on the small copper coins to symbolize their circulation and fluctuation in value. The wave-pattern symbolizes successive and interminable wave-motion. The love of the Korean artist for water in nature, and for conventionalized water effects in decoration, amounts to a passion. Water in some form or phase is introduced into almost every Korean picture, and on to the majority of the porcelains, bronzes, the lacquers, and into the carvings. We find the wave-pattern beautifully executed on curtains and panels, on armour and on weapons. It often circles the columns of a building, and is conspicuous in interior architectural decorations. A strand of twisting, turning, curling waves is commonly the handle of a fine Korean teapot, and many a Korean dish, or vase, or bowl rests upon a porcelain or bronze bed of seemingly angry waves. The Japanese have seized upon the wave-pattern, and have vastly improved it. It is doubtless through their much exported, and much copied wares that we have become very familiar with it; and I have not infrequently seen it mingled with incongruous European patterns, in fancy printing, both in London, on the Continent, and in America—used for the background of decorative initial letters, or introduced into fancy tail-pieces.
The chrysanthemum was the favourite, the most favoured, and the most studied flower in Korea long before it became the imperial flower, the badge of Japan. The Koreans have always been, and are, wonderfully skilled in rearing it; and in reproducing it in colour, in black and white, in relief, and in conventional designs. We find it whenever we turn our eyes toward Korean objects of art. We find it, or some design suggestive of it, in Korean brocades, and in Korean carvings, and many of the most beautiful Korean borders have been designed from ingenious arrangements of its petals. In several ways the chrysanthemum lends itself with peculiar facility to Korean art ideals. It is rich, splendid, and varied in colour, and the Koreans have a passion for colour. It is interesting and noble in shape, and comes out splendidly in relief, or in half-relief. It is beautiful, but unique, and sometimes even grotesque in outline, and all the Eastern peoples admire the grotesque. Certainly the artists of Korea and of Japan understand the grotesque’s usefulness in art above all other artists, and employ it to relieve gentler, simpler forms of beauty, which might grow monotonous if used perpetually. Clouds and stars and the sun are utilized in a variety of ways by the Korean decorative artist. And a conventional pattern, called “the dragon’s tooth,” is extremely striking, and is nicely adaptable to vases or dishes that are big at the base, and small at the top.
Lacquer has been for centuries as commonly used in Korea as in Japan, but it has never reached the perfection, the artisticness in the former country that it has in the latter.
Korea was once the store-house of innumerable and invaluable works of art; art treasures of great variety, fine in design, excellent in execution, and rich in symbolism. To-day there are comparatively few art treasures in Korea. The nobles and the rich men probably each have a few hidden away. The king has a number. And some are still to be found in the ostracized monasteries, in the nunneries, and in other unexpected places. But Chosön is no longer the great art treasure-house she once was. In the palaces and the temples of China and Japan are to be seen many of what were once Korea’s most prized works of art. And these have been taken as booty from Korea, or sent by Korea as tribute. But the peninsula has not continued in her old glory of art production. Korean art has deteriorated in quality, and in many of its branches shrunk to something nominal in quantity, because great bodies of her best artists and artisans have been sent to Japan, or have gone there. Keenly alive to all that is beautiful in nature, and all that is most exquisite in art, the Japanese readily appreciated the high degree of excellence that had been attained by the artists of Chosön. Not content with taking to Japan the most perfect specimens of Korean art, the Japanese offered every inducement to the best Korean artists to settle in Japan, and spread throughout Japan their superior knowledge of art, and skill in art work. To the instructions of the Koreans the Japanese owed their unrivalled skill in making the beautiful Satsuma faïence, and the almost as beautiful Imari porcelain. The Koreans taught the Japanese how to carve wood, and then, apparently, forgot how to do it themselves; though there are still in Korea some very beautiful specimens of fine carving, especially in the royal palace at Söul. The majority of Japanese patterns for brocades and for stuffs, and many of their favourite designs for embroidery, are purely and indisputably Korean.
A scholar, who seems to me always anxious to do Japan full justice, has written:—
“The existence of any special traits or principles of decoration, or a peculiar set of symbols in Korean art, has been thus far hardly known. When fully studied these will greatly modify our ideas of Oriental art, and especially of the originality of the Japanese designers. Korea was not only the road by which the art of China reached Japan, but it is the original home of many of the art-ideas which the world believes to be purely Japanese.”
The Japanese themselves, to be fair to them, do not claim to have a largely original art, and my attention was first called to the magnitude of Japan’s art debt to Korea by a Japanese gentleman in Tokio.
Old Persian writers express the greatest admiration for Korean porcelains, and for the beautiful decorated saddles that were sent to Persia from Chosön. The Koreans still excel in the making of gorgeous and (after once the eyes grow accustomed to their gorgeousness) really beautiful saddles. They are inlaid with pearls, and are richly embroidered. Bows and arms and fans are among the many things that the Koreans used to, and still do, make. They are beautiful with pearls, with jade, and with gold and silver and iron inlaying. The Koreans once made splendid and beautiful bells, and were expert in all sorts of metal work, but they have lost or laid aside these arts to a very great extent. There are still some very fine bells in the peninsula, and some beautiful Korean bells in Japan, but their manufacture dates back a long time. And this is also usually true of many of the best specimens of all kinds of Korean art-work that we find in Chosön or in Japan. It is true of most of the beautiful images found in the temples, and many of the vases, the braziers, the incense-burners, the trenchers, the kettles, the bowls, the decanters, and the censors, all of which are exceedingly graceful in form, pure in outline, and decorated with simplicity and dignity.
The throne in the palace of Söul is a very beautiful example of well-controlled art. It is simplicity itself, but it is as majestic as it is simple; perfect in every detail, royal in its proportions, and in severe but perfect taste.
Among the minor arts that still flourish in Korea is that of toy-making. The Korean toy-makers really are artists, and the playthings of the children of the well-to-do are so carefully designed and so faithfully executed, that in their little way they have every claim to be considered works of art. Armour, palanquins—indeed, all the impedimenta of Korean daily life, and of the daily life of old Korea—are reproduced with minute exactness, and very wonderful toys are made out of bits of tiger skins and of the fur of the tiger and other wild beasts.
The battle-flags and the banners of Korea are interesting both to the student of history and the student of art. The mysticism and the symbolism that is so characteristic of all Korean art is noticeable on almost every Korean flag.
The strange animals that we find in Korean art, animals that are like none that ever lived, are symbolical, and, to the Korean mind, typify a great deal that the Koreans think it important to remember.
A branch of art which is much thought of in Chinese-Asia, and is there indeed a fine art, is pen-work or brush-work. In this art the Koreans are as adept to-day as they ever have been—as adept as the Chinese or the Japanese. Fine specimens of calligraphy are written with a brush—written upon scrolls of silk or of soft paper, and are either put away to be treasured, or are hung upon the walls as ornaments of great interest. The last time I was in Tokio the wife of a Japanese official, whose home is very rich in paintings, both European and Japanese, showed me, with great pride, her collection of such scrolls—scrolls, all of which were specimens of fine writing. Very much such scrolls form the principal wall decoration of the study of the Chinese minister in London, and such scrolls are among the most cherished household goods of every well-to-do Korean. The Koreans write with the greatest ease and elegance, and it is almost as natural for them to draw and paint very fairly well as it is for them to write.
The making of fine pottery is almost, if not quite, a lost art in Korea, but they still know the secret of, and still make and use, the exquisite tints and the matchless colours that characterized their glazes in the days when Korean art was at its greatest height. The Korean potters are among the nomads of the peninsula. A family, or several families, of potters choose some spot where wood and clay are convenient, and there they build their huts, and there they live till the wood or the clay is exhausted. All Korean pottery is fired in ovens that are heated with wood. There are no great potteries in Korea or in Japan. Each specimen of their art is the individual work of an individual, and in this, perhaps, lays one of the secrets of the fascination of any genuine work of art from these countries. The most beautiful piece of porcelain that has ever been made in China, Japan, or in Korea, has probably been made in some humble little hut and fired by an insignificant-looking little oven.
I have spoken elsewhere of the famous Chinese lion, or Korean dog. It is more grotesque than beautiful, and is chiefly interesting because it has so strong a hold upon the affections of three so different peoples. For a conservative Asian, he is a very great traveller, is this Korean dog. He has found his way into every fancy bazaar, and every cheap notion shop in Europe and America; and we really feel quite as if we had met an old friend when we stumble upon him in Yeddo, in Pekin, or in quaint Söul.
It is being constantly urged against Far Eastern art that it is artificial. Mr. Lowell refutes this so clearly, so distinctly, with so much discernment, and to my mind, so convincingly, that I feel it would be a pity to refute it in any other words. He says:—
“Far from being artificial, Far Eastern art is emphatically natural. The reason that it does not so appear to us at first is due to two causes. The first is very simple—an absence with us of what the Far Oriental sees around him at home. A picture of snow-peaks would undoubtedly appear conventional, in the sense used above, to a man who had dwelt all his life on the plains, and never heard of such things as white-headed mountains. The second cause is that certain very salient features of his landscapes have engrossed the Far Oriental attention, to the partial neglect of other less striking but, perhaps, even more common scenes.
“Every traveller knows the effect of this in other things beside art. Narrators insensibly, if not on purpose, pick out the salient points of any land to give an idea of it to those to whom it is an undiscovered country. The result is, that on acquaintance no country seems so odd as imagination, fed on a few startling facts, has pictured it to be; and yet, for all that, the facts may be perfectly true. Now, what we do to give others an idea of foreign lands, the Far Oriental does to give himself an idea of his own. His art, by reason of this strong simplicity, is all the higher art.”
Landscape gardening holds a prominent place among the arts of Korea, and is as well understood, and as generally practised to-day as it has ever been in the history of the peninsula. Water forms the principal, and the indispensable feature of every Korean garden. Indeed, the pond, which must be in the centre of the garden, often takes up nine-tenths of the garden’s entire area. This pond is always called a “lotus pond.” Usually the lotus is there, but not always, and its absence only emphasizes the title of the pond. It is interesting to notice how indispensable the sight of water is to the Koreans, and it speaks a great deal, I think, for their genuine love of Nature.
Korea is so surrounded by water, so intersected with rivers, and has so many high hills from which water can be seen for some distance, and down which rivulets and waterfalls break, that every Korean must be very familiar with water in all its moods and tenses. But he does not tire of it. On the contrary, a Korean who has his domain on the very sea-shore, will dig up the larger part of his garden for the sake of having an artificial lotus-pond; that he may sit on the artificial island in its centre and fish and dream and watch the water. Fantastic groups of strange rock work are put in almost every Korean garden: groups to which European eyes have to grow very used before they can see any beauty in them.
Korean music, like almost all Asiatic music, requires a great deal of study before we can at all understand it or like it. Its scale differs entirely from our gamut—differs even more than do Korean instruments from ours. Japanese music is of Korean origin, but has changed greatly of later years. But all classical Japanese music is still identical with Korean music, which has changed little or not at all. Korean government labourers are called to and released from their day’s work by music, and to music do the gates of a Korean city close or open for the day.
When Korea was in its infancy she was thrown into intimate contact with China. Korea had not had time to develop a literature, and so she verynaïvelyadopted the literature of China. Chinese literature is the classical literature of Korea still. The great majority of Korean books (and they are not surprisingly many), are written and printed in Chinese. The Koreans have neglected their own language and its literary possibilities for centuries. Still there is considerable poetry written in the Korean tongue (but in the Chinese character almost always), and we may consider the writing of this poetry as one of Korea’s national arts. “Poetry parties” are a popular form of Korean picnics. A number of friends meet at some unusually beautiful spot. They have been preceded by servants carrying writing materials and wine. Very gravely the competitors (for such they are) set to work. They sun and joy themselves in the beauty of the scene, they sip the cup that cheers, but alas! intoxicates too! and when they have enough assimilated the beauty of the scene and the gladness of the wine, then they write verses. The verses take the form of songs, or are ballads in praise of nature. They write of the bamboo, of the stars, of the storm, of moonlight and of sunrise, but never of woman!
CHAPTER X.
KOREA’S IRRELIGION.
Korea has no religion. This is a sweeping statement, I know, and one that is susceptible of a great deal of dispute, but I believe that in the main it is true. The books that have been written during the last hundred years about Korea teem with thick chapters on Korea’s religion, but for all that, I believe that Korea is without religion. There are without doubt Koreans who are deeply and genuinely religious, but they are so infinitesimal a fraction of the population of the peninsula that they no more justify us in crediting Korea with a religion than the handful of Theosophists, who are probably in England to-day, would justify a Korean in crediting England with an at all large acceptance of Theosophy. Buddhism, which was once as dominant in Korea as ever it has been in China or Japan, has been almost destroyed. Confucianism is still a great power in Korea, as it must be in every country where ancestor-worship and the sanctity of the family are the backbone of the nation’s moral existence. But I maintain that Confucianism is not, properly speaking, a religion. It is a theory of ethics, a code of morals, admirable, sublime even, but it is not, as I understand the word religion, a religion. There are superstitions in Korea and to spare. The common people are as superstitious as the common people of any other civilized country, which is saying a great deal, and the upper classes are by no means free from superstition. But who shall venture to call superstition a religion? Unless we call superstition and religion synonymous; unless we accept Confucianism as an individual and actual religion; or unless we say that a few scattered monasteries, that must by law be built far beyond the walls of a city—monasteries inhabited by monks, who are looked down upon even by the common people, and are not allowed within the gates of any city; monasteries that are resorted to by the leisure classes for revel and for roystering, and never for prayer or penitence—unless we say that these constitute a national religion, we must, I think, admit that Korea is distinctly irreligious.
The real difficulty in deciding whether Korea is in any way religious or altogether irreligious lies in the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between religion and superstition. The dividing line between the two is often indistinct—sometimes missing altogether—so perhaps I am wrong in saying that a country so amply dowered with superstition is devoid of religion.
I base my statement that Korea has no religion not upon the absence of religion from Korea, not upon the paucity of religion in Korea, but upon the fact that in Korea religion is neither respected nor respectable. Of course, if we define religion as broadly as do some of the most eminent authorities (Rossiter Johnson, W. Smith, Bishop Taylor, Macaulay, and a host of others), and admit that atheism and superstition are forms of religion—and I am far from sure that they are not—my statement totters, if it does not altogether tumble.
Buddhism was until three hundred years ago strong in Korea, and Confucianism, which, if not a religion, is the most elaborate, and one of the most perfect systems of morality that the world has ever known, and has served humanity better than most religions, is strong in Korea still. A study of these two is, as is the study of all the higher Oriental doctrines, beliefs, and systems of thought, intensely interesting, and the temptation to dwell here upon Buddhism and Confucianism is great. But I fancy that everyone who is interested in reading about so remote a part of the East as Korea is more or less familiar with the outlines at least of both Buddhism and Confucianism, and so I will content myself with trying to tell how the first was driven out of Chosön, and how the second is still the guardian angel of such morality as the peninsula possesses.
Buddhism flourished there for centuries, and it was at least tolerated until the Japanese invasion in 1592. Indeed, up to that time Korea was not only not without a religion, but she was not without several. The religions of the Far East are as easy-going as the peoples—they are modest as a rule, the beliefs of further Asia—and rub along together very amicably, no one of them seeming over-sure that it is better than its fellows.
Three hundred years ago, when two great Japanese warriors, Konishi and Kato, with their respective armies landed in Korea, each was so anxious to have the glory of reaching and conquering the capital before the other, that neither dare pause to subdue the towns and the fortresses (and many of these latter were monasteries) that lay along his route. Yet neither dare leave behind him a long track of unsubdued and, for those days, well-armed country. In this dilemma they dressed themselves and their followers in the garbs of Buddhist priests, and so by strategy made their entrance into the walled cities, and into the forts, and once in, put the inhabitants, the unprepared soldiers and monks, to death. About thirty years afterwards, when Korea had shaken off, for the time at least, the Japanese yoke, the Korean priests suffered for the cupidity of the Japanese generals; as the innocent so generally do suffer for the guilty in this nice world of ours. The royal decree went throughout Korea that no Buddhist priest might dwell or even pass within the gates of a walled city. The priests fled to the mountains, and there erected themselves such dwellings as they could. The monasteries, in which they had lived within the city’s walls, crumbling away with time, and decaying with disuse, ceased to be architectural features of any Korean city. And this is why all Korean cities are so monotonous in aspect. For religion has been the patron of architecture as of art, of music, of literature, and of drama the world over, and more especially so in the Orient. The priests of the temples of Buddha, having incurred the disfavour of the government, rapidly lost what hold they had had upon the people. And the nation, which had always considered its king almost mightier and more divine than its very gods, soon ceased to pay tribute to, or ask the services of, a body of men who had lost the royal countenance. Then, too, the Koreans are great dwellers in cities. They go far into the country to look at Nature, to rest, and to amuse themselves, but it would never occur to the Korean mind to journey far for prayer or sacrifice. So the revenues of the monasteries fell off. Men well-born and well-to-do ceased to join the order. And little by little Korean Buddhism passed away, until now it is but a wraith of its old self.
This at least is the most general account of how Korea ceased to be Buddhist, but its authenticity is disputed by several of the most reliable historians, and by one, at least, who has written in English. These historians claim that some centuries ago all the powerful people in Korea were divided into two factions—one Buddhist, one Confucist—and great was the rivalry between these two. Social war ensued, and the Buddhists, who had become corrupt and enervated, were terribly defeated. Buddhism was forbidden to dwell within the capital or within the cities. True, the monasteries that had always been important features of the rural landscape were in no way interfered with, but “banishment from the cities produced two results. First, desuetude rendered the mass of the people quite oblivious to religious matters; and secondly, the withdrawal of religion from the seats of power threw the profession into disfavour with the aristocracy. . . . Here, then, we have a community without a religion—for the cities are to a peculiar degree the life of the land—a community in which the morality of Confucius for the upper classes, and the remains of old superstitions for the lower, takes its place.”
How, then, in Korea have the religiously mighty fallen! For Buddhist monks once formed a fourth portion of the entire male population of Chosön, and there were tens of thousands of them in Söul alone. At first thought it seems strange that now any Korean should be found willing to embrace the monastic life; but the Koreans are not industrious, many of them are wretchedly poor, and life in the monasteries affords the greatest opportunity for the indolent, dreamy, and meditative life, and the proximity to Nature, which is so dear to the Korean heart. No Korean monk is called upon to do hard manual labour, and it is still almost a religion with the Koreans, rich and poor, to give something toward the sustenance, and even toward the creature comforts of the brothers. So laziness, and poverty, and misery keep the Korean monasteries and the Korean nunneries from falling into utter disuse. Strangely enough, the monks of Korea rarely or never have the brutal sinful-looking faces that characterize so many of their brethren in China.
I should divide the religion, or the irreligion, of Korea into rationalism: the religion of the patricians; and superstition: the religion of the plebeians. Both rationalism and superstition are well controlled by a system of morality which is rooted in Confucianism, and impregnably enwalled by ancestor-worship.
Rationalism and superstition have their points of touch—points at which the one is indistinguishable from the other—lost in the other—in Korea as everywhere else.
I do not mean that reason and unreason ever lose themselves in each other, though, like other rival powers, the boundary line between them may be narrower than any fraction of any hair, and quite imperceptible to human eyes.
Korean rationalism is practically identical with rationalism the world over. Korean superstitions are unique in form if not in essence. It merits at least passing notice that Reason expresses herself in one way everywhere, and that Unreason in different parts of the earth speaks in tongues as differing as fantastic.
The expression of Korean superstition is picturesque. The more picturesque a superstition is the more impregnable it is.
Korean demon-worship is positively fascinating. Superstition has not always been the power in Korea that it is now. In Korea religion and superstition have played a long game of see-saw. The Koreans outgrew their early superstitions, discarded them, and embraced a highly civilized and civilizing form of religion; then they discarded that religion. Now, the average human mind must believe in something outside of its own material ken, beyond its own demonstrating.Quod erat demonstrandumforms no part of the rituals and the creeds of most religions, so when the time came that Buddha and his coterie of well-bred and fairly rational deities had practically been banished from Korea, the Koreans fell back on their old superstitions, and to-day superstition and its ridiculous rites are more rife in Korea than in any other civilized country.
There are three classes of supernatural beings in whom the people of Korea believe—the demons who work all manner of evil, the beneficent spirits whose practice it is to do good occasionally, and who semi-occasionally combat the evil spirits, and an intermediate class of spirits who dwell, as a rule, on the mountains, and neither work good nor evil, but who, in themselves and in their lives, are the subjects of much charming folk-lore. The Korean—the Korean of the populace—the superstitious Korean attributes all his ills to demons. He, being a Korean, cannot conceive that Nature can be malignant, nor can he conceive that he is ever punished for breaking laws of whose very existence he is ignorant. So he peoples the air, the sea, and the rocks with devils of earthquake, devils of pestilence, devils of lightning, devils of hurricane, and a thousand other devils of blight and of sorrow. Having determined that they cause all his troubles, he then sets about doing the best he can to propitiate the spirits of evil. Korean demons are supposed to be very small, and I have never heard of one to whom much physical strength was attributed; and almost always when it comes to a face-to-face contest between one of them and a powerful man (and such contests occur very often in Korean myths), the demon has the worst of it. Still, the majority of the Korean populace live in unceasing terror and dread of these demons. Korean methods of circumventing them are delightful, and delightfully simple. I have already spoken of the beasts that sit on guard on many Korean roofs. They are supposed to be the most efficacious combatants of the Korean devils; but the privilege of having them is rather monopolized by royalty and by the high favourites of the royal family. On lintels of the houses of well-to-do Koreans are usually hung two oblong pieces of coloured paper upon which are drawn in black, or two oblong pieces of white paper on which are drawn in colours, terrible enough portraits of two famous old generals. One of these warriors was a Chinaman, the other was a Korean, and both are renowned in the legends of the peninsula as having waged highly successful warfare against several evil spirits of Chosön, and their portraits are supposed to protect the houses, outside of which they hang, from the invasion of the imps of mischief and of misery. Korean devils, for some unfathomable reason, are supposed to be far more powerful indoors than out, and so the Koreans are at special pains to exclude their devilships from Korean interiors. The Korean householder, who is debarred by poverty or by his own social inferiority both from using the roof-scarecrows, and from hanging counterfeit presentments of the two old warriors on his portals, fastens a strip of cloth and some wisps of rice straw outside his door. He fastens the rice straw there in the hope that the devil about to enter may be hungry, and stop to gorge himself and then go away. He fastens the bit of cloth (which must be torn from some old garment of his own), because the Koreans have the nice taste to consider their devils extremely stupid, and so believe that any devil who is confronted with a fragment of a man’s garment will mistake it for the man himself, and, in view of how often men have defeated devils, fly and trouble that house no more.
The evil spirits of Korea are also frightened away by noise; noise so enormous, so metallic, so discordant, so altogether diabolical, that it is no wonder the devils rush from it, rush on their wings of sulphurous flame, and the only wonder is that any human person or persons can endure to make it. This practice of frightening with noise the evil ones of heaven (for mark you, the peoples of the Far East, unlike the Greeks, have no belief in Hades) is common to China, to Siam, to Korea, and to Burmah. The devil-jails and the devil-trees, and the professional devil-catchers, of which I have spoken before, come in importance next to the roof-beasts, and then, I think, come the prayer-poles. A prayer-pole may be a straight, symmetrical, polished piece of wood, or it may be a carelessly cut branch of a tree. In either case it is stuck in the earth a few feet from the doorway, and on it are hung prayers to the good spirits, and bits of rag, and bits of refreshment to allure and deceive the evil spirits. Sometimes a bell is hung on the top of the branch to attract the attention of both the cursers and the blessers of the land.
The good spirits that inhabit the big kingdom of Korean credulity are unfortunately lazy, and have to be rather urgently supplicated when their good services are needed. When their good services are not needed they are left, to do the Koreans justice, beautifully alone. But when the evil-doers who dwell in the Korean heaven get altogether unmanageable, the good spirits are called upon with dance and with song, with counting of rosaries and with ringing of bells, to wage war against their wicked brethren. Often the Korean angels, being Korean, go to sleep, forget to wake up, and neglect to send rain. The sending of rain is one of their few active offices. If it does not rain in Korea the rice does not grow in Korea, and then, indeed, are the Korean devils to pay. When drought falls upon Korea all Korea prays. The superstitious and the rational kneel down together, and if their united invocations fail to pierce the slumber of their well-meaning deities, then the king goes beyond the city’s walls, and entering into a temple, or a sort of rustic palace that is kept in readiness for the purpose, throws himself upon the ground, and prays that his people may be blessed with rain. The rain may fall the next day, it may fall the next moon; but whenever it falls the loyal Koreans attribute it altogether to the intercession of their king. It is only when drought falls upon the land that the ordinary Korean is allowed to pray directly to most of the Korean gods. But every Korean has a household spirit—a good guardian angel of his own hearthside—to whom he may pray as often as he likes. And best beloved, most god-like, most fit to be worshipped, most fit to be prayed to, most fit to be loved of the Korean gods, and of all the Korean spirits, is one called “the blesser of little children.” He is the favourite vassal of the great spirit: the phrase “great spirit” is as often upon the tongue of a Korean as upon the tongue of a North American Indian. “The blesser of little children” has under his personal charge every home in Korea. He journeys from house to house scattering blessings upon the baby heads, and forbidding evil to approach the baby people.
The Koreans emphatically believe that Korea was originally peopled by spirits and by fairies, and this belief has developed a folk-lore that is delightful and interesting in the extreme, and that often reminds us of the Norwegian folk-lore.
“When a belief rational and pure enough to be called a religion disappears, the stronger minds among the community turn in self-reliance to a belief in nothing; the weaker, in despair, to a belief in anything. This happened here; and the anything to which they turned in this case was what had never quite died out, the old aboriginal demon-worship.”
And the stronger minds among the Korean community turned to the belief in nothing, which is so often called rationalism. But in Korea rationalism is tinged with, almost disguised by, that strange phenomenon of Asiatic mentality, of Asiatic belief, of Asiatic instinct called ancestor-worship.
Ancestor-worship in Korea, and ancestor-worship in China, are almost identical. The most thorough-going, the most uncompromising agnostic I ever knew was a Korean. The most thorough-going, the most uncompromising atheist I ever knew was a Chinaman, but both were staunch and uncorruptible ancestor-worshippers. Korean ancestor-worship is more than interesting, but it is merely a vassal of Chinese ancestor-worship. Like, and with Confucianism, it has come from China to Korea, and like and with Confucianism it is the mainstay of Korean morality. The worship of ancestors is an almost daily detail of Korean life. The observances of ancestor-worship are more rigidly carried out by the well-to-do Korean rationalist than by the poor superstitious Korean peasant. Death and burial mark the first, the greatest, and the most picturesque of the functions of ancestor-worship. Logically enough, the death and the interment of a child or of any unmarried person involves almost no expense, and demands no ceremonial. The infant (an unmarried man or woman of eighty is an infant in Korea) is wrapt about with the mats, the tiger skins, or the rugs upon which he died. These are wrapt about with rice straw, and the bundle is buried. That is the end of a Korean who leaves no descendants. When the father of a family dies his eldest son closes the eyes as the breath leaves the body, and the family (men and women gather together for once) let loose their hair, and shriek and sob, and, if possible, weep. So long as the dead remains in the house his relatives eat the food they like least, and as little of that as will sustain life. Indeed, the eldest son is supposed to eat nothing. Four days after the death, the members of the family redress their hair, and put on their first mourning. In Korea, as in all the Far East, mourning consists of coarse, unbleached fabrics that are commonly called, but are not quite, white. On this fourth day the family, friends, and acquaintances prostrate, prostrate, and prostrate themselves before the dead, and an exceptionally good dinner is laid beside him. Huge loaves of especially prepared bread also, and as many kinds of fruit as the market affords—the rarer, the more expensive, and the more hard to obtain, the better. A dinner is also prepared for the friends, but not for the family. About the body, and throughout the house, candles and incense burn, and wailing is incessant. The mourners and the professional wailers take turns in sleeping, and relieve each other in the audible grieving. Paper money, that is, imitation money, and long paper banners covered with the titles and the good qualities of the dead, are burned. With the poor, burial takes place five, or at the most nine days after death. With the rich the body remains unburied for at least three months. Korean coffins, like Chinese coffins, are, or are supposed to be, air-tight. But the Korean coffin is much smaller than the Chinese coffin, and the spaces left between the outlines of the coffin and the outlines of the body are, in Korea, filled up with the old clothing of the dead. If the dead had not enough clothing, pieces of linen or of silk are added to it. The rich Koreans usually employ a geomancer to indicate the most auspicious day for burial. The coffin is covered with beautiful brocaded silk, or with beautifully carved pieces of wood. Prayers are said almost continuously, from the hour of death until some time after the interment. The coffin is borne on a death-car, a unique Korean vehicle, or by men who are hired for a small sum and who do nothing else. Beside the coffin are carried the banners, recording the rank and the virtues of the dead, and the lanterns which in life he was entitled to use. His sons follow him, in Korean mourning, and Chinese-like, leaning heavily upon sticks. Acquaintances and friends bring up the rear, in sedan chairs and on horseback.
Korean graves are usually on hill sides, and are decorated at the utmost possible expense. Even the graves of the Korean poor are well tended, and covered with the gentle green grass, and with the soft flowers of spring, if no monument or temple is possible. But if it can be managed, a miniature temple is erected near the grave—a temple which is a shelter for those who come periodically to mourn the dead—and the grave is guarded with quaint stone images of men and other animals.
If a Korean family is unlucky they are very apt to think that one or more of their ancestors has been buried in an uncongenial spot. Then, no matter what the cost, no matter what the trouble, the grave is, or the graves are, opened, and the dead moved to some more desirable place. Korean mourning is as long or longer, as intricate or more intricate, than Chinese mourning, but so similar to Chinese mourning, which has been so often and so fully described, that it would be superfluous to here more than mention Korean mourning.
Such, then, is the religion or the irreligion of Korea. Superstition for the people; ancestor-worship for the people, the princes, and for those who are between. Strange that a nation that has driven from its midst one of the great religions of this earth, and has unrelentingly persecuted the religion of Christ, should be so devoted in its ancestor-worship. But which of us that has ever lain awake through the wordless watches of the lonely night and longed in vain—