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(★)(From the earliest times the Japanese seem to have believed in and practiced Milton´s 「Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles」, and to have wished to do what Herbert recommends, ´by mere playing go to Heaven.´ The more we smile and laugh, however grimly, the more human we are. From this point of view the Japanese must be called the most human of human beings, for Japanese humour is the best kind in the world, and, as will be inferred from this small book, there is plenty of it. Comparisons are indeed odious, so let us smile or laugh if we can, whenever we can, for laughter is the health of the soul, and the only panacea for curable diseases. Yet to laugh with the laughter of other times and far-off places, --is not this a blessed thing! To see our common humanity and humanness, to feel the same pity and mirth in those who seem to look and speak and feel and act so differently from ourselves,-- this and this alone can universalise our suffering and mitigate the bitterness of death. ◆Dr.R.H. Blyth, the author, professor at Gakushuin University and lecturer at Tokyo University, is a learned scholar of Japanese literature both ancient and modern, as well as an authority on English literature. He has written ´An Outline of English Literature´,´A Survey of English Literature´, four volumes of Haiku, one of Senryu, and a well-known book,´Zen in English Literature.´ A humorist himself, Dr. Blyth is eminently fitted to be an interpreter of Japanese humour, if ever a writer was. He understands the Japanese psychology better than many a native son or daughter, and is able to read the language with ease and to speak and understand it perfectly. All the translations of the Japanese poems and stories used in this work were made by the author himself, who went directly to the original for his material.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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