He considers that only with the vice brought over from the
Continent of Asia were ethics both imported and made necessary.[18]
All this has been solemnly taught by famous Shint[=o] scholars of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is still practically
promulgated in the polemic Shint[=o] literature of to-day, even after
the Kojiki has been studied and translated into European languages. The
Kojiki shows that whatever the men may have been or done, the gods were
abominably obscene, and both in word and deed were foul and revolting,
utterly opposed in act to those reserves of modesty or standards of
shame that exist even among the cultivated Japanese to-day.[19] Even
among the Ainos, whom the Japanese look upon as savages, there is still
much of the obscenity of speech which belongs to all society[20] in a
state of barbarism; but it has been proved that genuine modesty is a
characteristic of the Aino women.[21] A literal English translation of
the Kojiki, however, requires an abundant use of Latin in order to
protect it from the grasp of the law in English-speaking Christendom. In
Chamberlain's version, the numerous cesspools are thus filled up with a
dead language, and the road is constructed for the reader, who likes the
language of Edmund Spencer, of William Tyndale and of John Ruskin kept
unsoiled.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121