Translation As a Counter-Colonial Tool

1

Translation as a Counter-Colonial Tool:

Okakura Kakuzo’s The Book of Tea

Naoko Fuwa Thornton

(Japan Women’s University)

Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) wrote three books in his life time, all in English and published not in his native Japan but in the United States and England. Among the three books, in which Okakura introduced Japanese culture to the West, The Book of Tea (1906) has remained in the West one of the most read and esteemed books on Japan. Now almost a century after its first publication, The Book of Tea has been translated into many European languages and in the U. S. it has been published from three publishers and continues to be widely read. There have been several Japanese translations as well.

Okakura wrote this book during his long sojourn in Bostonfor the purpose of introducing to the West the spirit of the tea ceremony as an amalgamation of the Japanese people’s arts and life-style. He also contends that the major ideals of the East, particularly of the Chinese and the Indian, had been assimilated into Japanese culture, which kept them alive even when they lost strength in their original cultures.Translating Japanese and Chinese words and concepts into English, Okakura often introduces English words of his own coinage. He also cites from Japanese and Chinese classical poems and philosophical passages using his own English translations. While no translation can ever be free of some slippage in meaning,Okakura often offers translations based on overtly subjective interpretations of the works, adding words and phrases and attaching explanations to create contexts which suit the objective of his book. In this paper, I would like to show, through examples, how Okakura used translation as a tool to advance his counter-colonial contentions, by appropriating traditional Japanese aesthetics and ideals, and also point out the ironical effectsuch an effort made upon Japan’s later course in history.

Although the purpose of The Book of Tea is without doubt to introduce the traditional aesthetics and life-style of the Japanese to the West, the book also suggests the urgent need the author felt to do so at the time of its publication. The first years of the 20th century marked a unique moment in Japan’s history—unique because, although Japan looked to be on the way to becoming spiritually and culturally a colony of the West, it was at the same time turning toward East Asia with its own colonial ambitions. The nation was developing a double identity of the colonized and the colonizer. The Russo-Japanese War broke out in February 1904 over the control of Manchuria and Korea and Japan’s victory became a reality in September of the following year. A decade earlier the Sino-Japanese War had been fought over the control of Korea, and the result of the so-called North China Affair (1900-1901) had secured Japan a position among the Great European Powers, who had been exploiting China.The content of The Book of Tea reveals that this historical situation incited Okakura to write this book. Already in Chapter I, Okakura states: “[The average Westerner] was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace; he calls her civilised[sic] since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. . . . Fain would we remainbarbarians, if our claim to civilisation [sic] were to be based on the gruesome glory of war. Fain would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to our art and ideals” (2-3). In other words, Okakura is criticizing the West for calling Japan a civilized nation because of its actions in the international world, the actions which made full use of what it had learned from the West, that is, the modern military, modern strategies of invasion, and the modern economic policies of colonialism and imperialism.

WithThe Book of Tea, Okakura apparently attempts to correct this Western view of Japan. Since 1904 Okakura had livedin Boston, where he was to become Advisor and Curator of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He was also warmly received into Isabella S. Gardener’s circle of artists in Boston as an erudite artist from the Orient. It is reported that each time Okakura had completed a certain portion of the book, he would read it to the people in Mrs. Gardener’s salon. In fact, the extremely high style of The Book of Tea is quite appropriate to testify to the writer’s own sophistication and culture. I believe that by writing such a book Okakura wanted to impress upon the West that Japan was neither a nation of savages nor of atrocious militants but a peace-loving, cultured nation which would appeal to the tastes of Mrs. Gardener’s salon. Thus he says early in the first chapter: “We have developed along different lines, but there is no reason why one should not supplement the other. You have gained expansion at the cost of restlessness; we have created a harmony which is weak against aggression. Will you believe it?—the East is better off in some respects than the West!” (5).

As for the practical strategy of his argument, his is remarkably similar to what is now called “appropriation” in postcolonial theory. It is a technique often used by the colonizer in an attempt to explain the colonized, an act of taking in whatever alien elements of the culture of the colonized and explaining them within the colonizer’s own cultural and value system, thus transforming the alien into something controllable. InThe Book of Tea, what Okakura does is to appropriate“tea” from the viewpoint of the West, because his rhetoric is to position the details of Japanese culture symbolized in what he calls Teasim within the system of Western philosophy and aesthetics. Although he sounds as if he is indicating the unique features of Teaism, he is in effect pointing out how comparable objects and features are found in the West. At such times, Okakura often makes full use of his “free translation.”

For instance, “Teasim,” the term I have just used, is a coinage ofOkakura’s and not a translation of any particular Japanese term; what he means must be something like “the spirit behind the various rituals of the tea ceremony.”Although this is not translation in its exact sense, he has in effect translated the concept assomething comparable to a philosophical doctrine or an artistic movement in the West, using the suffix ‘-ism.’In the same way, Okakura freely applies a terminology essentially borrowed from a Western Enlightenment tradition to things and concepts derived from an East and South Asian tradition. Thus early in the book Okakura says: “[The Philosophy of Tea] represents the true spirit of eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste” (1: emphasis mine). Talkingabout the history of tea in China, he asserts: “The Cake-tea which was boiled, the Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the T’ang, the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China . . . we might designate them respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea” (11; emphasis mine). In the same way, Okakura classifies Taoism under individualism and symbolism, and Confucianism under communism (20). The Yangtsee-Kiang and Hoang-Ho are respectively compared to the Mediterranean and the Baltic (20-21), and Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the 12th century Japanese warrior hero, and Chikamatu, the 17th-18th century Japanese playwright, respectively to King Arthur and Shakespeare (54, 44). This kind of parallel between the East and the West, created by simple applications of English words to Japanese and Chinese concepts, is numerous in the book.

Moreover, Okakura’s practice of appropriation extends to more complex areas of aesthetics and philosophy. He explains that the essence of the aesthetics and philosophy of the tea ceremony is the avoidance of symmetry because symmetry implies completion, which kills the possibility of further growth, and that the spiritual basis of the avoidance of symmetry is Lao Tzu’s advocacy of “vacuum”or emptiness.Okakura’s translation of the passages on “vacuum” from theTao-te-king, or the Book of Lao Tzu, and his explanation which follows are a good example of his skillful application of Western aesthetics to thinking essentially quite alien to the West. A literal translation of the original Chinese passagemay be: “By kneading the clay, one makes a container. In the emptiness exists the usefulness of the container. By making a hole, one makes a room. In the emptiness exists the usefulness of the room. Therefore, the usefulness of something derives from the usefulness of non-existence” (XXX, 11).Now here is Okakura’s “free translation” and explanation:

The reality of a room, for instance, was to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. The usefulness of a water pitcher dwelt in the emptiness where water might be put, not in the form of the pitcher or the material of which it was made. Vacuum is all-potent because all-containing. In vacuum alone motion becomes possible.. . . In art the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up to the full measure of your aesthetic emotion. (24-5)

One cannot but be reminded that Okakura’s choice of the word “vacuum,”a term with a distinctly scientific resonance since Robert Boyle’s early experiments in the Age of Enlightenment, testifies to his outgiving attitude of what we call “appropriation.” Thus, again,Okakura calls the tendency of Teaism to avoid symmetry“the worship of the Imperfect” (8, 31) and sees a similarity in the French and British poets of the Decadence at the turn of the century. In other words, for what he considers most uniquely Japanese he tries to find an equivalent in the West.

Another extreme instance of this kind appears when Okakura explains the aesthetics of the garden path leading to the tea-room. He mentions Kobori Enshu, a famous tea master and garden designer, who compared the essence of the garden path to a haiku. A literal translation of the haiku would be: “Early evening moon: / a bit of the lake / is seen through the trees.” According to the commonly accepted interpretation, Enshu meant that when one designs a garden path, one should remember that it is more interesting to have only a glimpse of the lake through the trees along the path rather than a broad view of a great expanse of water—in other words, a suggestion of greatness afforded by a glimpse of it is more effective than the whole view of the greatness. But Okakura’s translation of the haiku and his explanation which follows are nothing but subjective:

Enshu said the idea of the garden path was to be found in the following verses:

A cluster of summer trees,

A bit of the sea,

A pale evening moon.

It is not difficult to gather his meaning. He wished to create the attitude of a newly awakened soul still lingering amid shadowy dreams of the past, yet bathing in the sweet unconsciousness of a mellow spiritual light, and yearning for the freedom that lay in the expanse beyond. (35)

Unlike the practicality of the commonly accepted interpretation of the haiku as advice on the landscaping of the tea garden, Okakura substitutes a kind of mysticism using such words as “soul,”“unconsciousness,”“spiritual light,” or “freedom,” words which must have implied to the Western reader a spiritual depth worthy of great respect.

It is noteworthy that, although“appropriation” generally applies to tactics practiced by the West or the colonizer to attain a sense of control over the alien qualities of the colonized,The Book of Teaoffers, from the side of the alien, instances in which apparently alien qualities of Japanese culture are in effect explicable through Western terminology and can be appreciated from the Western aesthetic viewpoints as well. What Okakura has done in The Book of Tea is to show that Japan’s civilization should be understood by its “gentle arts of peace” (2), not by its military and colonial success. Ultimately, hewanted to emphasize that Japan, which had so far avoided becoming politically colonized by the West, would not become spiritually and culturally colonized either, since Japan had developed such a highly sophisticated, peace-loving culture. Thus Okakura’s translations overly stress spirituality and harmony and constantly seek similarity and correspondence between Japanese concepts and Western counterparts. I believe the book’s success owes considerably to his way of “appropriating” Japanese philosophical and aesthetic ideas to adapt them to Western patterns so that English and American readers could easily accept Japan as a nation of modern sophistication comparable to the West’s

The book’s success in the West allowed the Japanese to recognize that their traditional, pre-modern arts could withstand the scrutiny of modern Western aesthetics and it ultimately helped the Japanese to develop a reciprocal self-esteem. Yet the story did not end there. Decades after his death, it had an ironic sequel, of which Okakura would never have even dreamed.Japan’s mitigated inferiority complex toward the West would very easily transform into a sense of superiority about Japanese tradition and the elitism of the Japanese people.Okakura’s belief that the major ideals of East and South Asia had been epitomized into the tea ceremony, along withthe idea of harmony,which Okakura had indicated as the essence of Japanese culture, was later to be utilized by Japanese nationalists to form the notorious political-economic designof a“harmonious utopia” called the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was nothing less than a colonial empire in which heterogeneous cultures of the colonized were to be consolidated and controlled under the banner of harmony. Okakura’s original intended purpose for the book—to prevent Japan from becoming a colony of the West—was, thus, in effect usurped as an excuse for Japan’s colonial ambitions toward South-East Asia.

Work Cited

Okakura, Kakuzo. The Book of Tea. New York: Dover, 1964.