A photograph of Pierre Loti.

Pierre Loti

Pierre Loti was born in 1850 in Rochefort, a port town in Brittany, to an old Protestant family that had produced seamen for generations. From an early age, he had a longing for the sea and faraway lands. In 1867, he joined the École navale (French Naval Academy), and spent the following 40 years of his life in the military. During this time, as a naval officer, he visited many countries around the world and wrote exotic novels and travelogues based on his experiences. In 1879, he published his first novel, Aziyadé (also known as Constantinople), followed by Le Mariage de Loti (1880) and Le Roman d’un spahi (1881). All of these works are autobiographical, dealing with his love affair with a foreign woman. After Mon Frère Yves (My Brother Yves) (1883), he wrote his masterpiece Pêcheur d’Islande (An Iceland Fisherman) (1886), which enhanced his literary reputation. With his impressionistic style of writing and exoticism, Loti’s works, which broke through the heavy naturalism of his time, became very popular. In 1891, he was elected a member of the Académie Française. He also visited Japan in 1885 aboard the French frigate Triomphante and stayed in Nagasaki, followed by port calls in Kobe and Yokohama. The fruits of this visit were Madame Chrysanthème (Madam Okiku) (1887) and Japoneries d’Automne (Autumn Japaneries) (1889). In 1900, he made an unexpected return visit to Japan and wrote about his experiences in La Troisième Jeunesse de Madame Prune (The Third Youth of Madam Oume) (1905). He retired from the Navy in 1910 and died in Hendaye near the Spanish border in 1923. His other major works include Fantôme d’Orient (Ghost of the Orient) (1892) and Ramuntcho (1897).

Pierre Loti first stepped on Japanese soil in July 1885 (Meiji 18), in the summer of his 35th year. He saw a Meiji Japan that had undergone a dramatic transformation since the Meiji Restoration. After spending a summer in Nagasaki, Loti visited Kobe, Kyoto, Yokohama, Kamakura, Tokyo, Nikkō, and other cities until the end of the year. Living with a young Japanese woman in Nagasaki resulted in Madame Chrysanthème (Madam Okiku), and his impressions of the various places he visited in Japan were compiled in the book Japoneries d’Automne.

These Japan-related works, like many of Loti’s other works, were born from his experiences as a naval officer touring the world. Unlike Madame Chrysanthème and La Troisième Jeunesse de Madame Prune (The Third Youth of Madam Oume), which are novels, Japoneries d’Automne is a travelogue, which is the best suited writing for us to understand Loti’s view of Japan. The word “japonerie” in the title Japoneries d’Automne generally refers to Japanese works of art, but here it is used in the sense of “things peculiarly Japanese.” In other words, while Madame Chrysanthème is set in summer in Japan, Japoneries d’Automne is about “Japanese autumnal things,” as the title suggests.

One of the most interesting chapters in Japoneries d’Automne is “Kioto: La Ville Sainte” (Kyoto: The Sacred City). Riding in a rickshaw through the streets of Kyoto, he views the city and thinks, “This is truly Japan.” The dizzying changes in scenery that unfold one after another, make a dramatic impression: “What an uneven, changeful, bizarre place this Kyoto is!” Adjectives such as “uneven” (inégal), “bizarre,” and “funny” (drôle) are repeated many times in this chapter. For example, the first gate of Kiyomizu-dera (Le temple de Kio-Midzou) is “monstrous” (monstrueux), and the fan-shaped painting seen at the Juraku-dai residence (Le palais de Taïko-Sama) is “the most bizarre.” In Loti’s eyes, the country of Japan, the Japanese people, and Japanese things are “uneven” and “bizarre.”

Japan is a disharmonious, heterogeneous, and implausible country, infatuated with modernity, which has hit it like vertigo after 1500 to 2000 years of immobility.

As an image of an enlightened Japan seen from the outside, perhaps it hits the nail on the head. For an artist who traveled to foreign lands in search of new tones, it was only natural that he would be drawn to “bizarre” or “funny” things. However, exoticism, which is Loti’s forte, does not always work well with respect to Japan. Faced with the huge gulf between his own familiar European culture and the Japanese culture he witnessed, Loti emphasizes the cultural rift.

We look without understanding, and the symbols escape us. Between this Japan and us, the differences of the first origins dig a great abyss.

Japanese culture is difficult for Europeans to understand, Loti says. In this difficulty of understanding, he sees “the differences of the first origins” or differences in cultural origins. “What a country this Japan is, where everything is bizarre and contrasting!” sighs Loti. Loti does not attempt to understand Japanese culture, rather he treats it as something inexplicable.

In the sacred city of Kyoto, when Loti visited the Sanjūsangendō, a Buddhist temple of the Tendai sect, which he calls “the astonishment of astonishments (l’étonnement des étonnements),” he finally became tired and annoyed while looking at the group of Buddhist statues.

And in the end, it is a weariness and an obsession to think that these expectations, these smiles, the brightness of this golden magnificence, […] all this has been going on for seasons, for years and centuries, since 1000 years ago!

What Loti finds tiring and annoying is a Japanese culture and tradition that he does not understand. The fact that this incomprehensible culture has existed for over a thousand years tires him. Sanjūsangendō teaches him that even incomprehensible cultures have their roots and traditions.

“A Ball in Edo (Un Bal à Yeddo)” is one of the best-known chapters in the Japoneries d’Automne. This is because its descriptions provide a valuable record of the Tenchōsetsu (Emperor’s Birthday) Ball held at the Rokumeikan (Banqueting House), and it was also used by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke as the basis for his short story Butōkai (The Ball, 1920). Loti took full advantage of the privilege of being invited to this ball as a French naval officer to observe the proceedings with a journalistic eye and to criticize the Meiji era’s Westernization, as symbolized by the Rokumeikan.

The Rokumeikan, he writes, “resembles, my God, the casino of one of our bathing cities,” despite its European-style architecture. The “implausible” Japanese ladies “disguise” themselves by dressing reasonably well, but cannot hide their “smiling with slanted eyes, inward-curving legs, and flat noses.” Japanese gentlemen are “a little too gilded, too gaudy.” Loti’s witty and sarcastic writing knows no bounds:

And then, the tailcoat, already so ugly for us, how singularly they wear it! […] impossible to say why, but I think they all always bear some very close resemblance to monkeys.

Japanese people resemble monkeys—the phrase is repeated many times, not only in Japoneries d’Automne, but also in Loti’s Japan-related works. In other words, it is Loti’s basic view of the Japanese. He writes of the Japanese as “this tiny, frivolous people,” and goes on to describe them as “the ugliness of this nation.”

This is nothing but an impression which Loti, a person from a developed European country, receives when looking at Japanese people of a less developed country. A mere hundred years ago, in the eyes of a European, the Japanese looked like monkeys: yellowish-faced, small, gauche, and frivolous. Loti’s words cannot be taken as harsh criticism. Loti, who wrote his impressions of Japan exclusively for French and European readers, was simply speaking frankly about what he felt.

Today, we cannot help but feel uncomfortable and dissatisfied with a view of Japan wherein people from developed countries seem to look down on us. However, at this point, it would be better to confirm the following, rather than to rebel against Loti’s words. The past century has been a period of unprecedented changes for Japan, and Japan was an upstart country like no other in the world arena.

Loti concludes the Ball at the Rokumeikan as follows.

All in all, a very cheerful and pretty festival, […] When I think that these costumes, these manners, this ceremony, these dances, were things learned, learned very quickly, learned by imperial order and perhaps against their will, I believe that these people are marvellous imitators[.]

The Japanese are ‘marvelous imitators,’ says Loti. This view of the Japanese was not uncommon, and it would still be worth considering today. In any field, including science and technology, the Japanese are excellent imitators with a talent for application. However, as creators, they have yet to fully demonstrate their talents. This is a major theme in old and new theses on the Japanese.

Loti’s Japan-related works including Japoneries d’Automne, aroused European readers’ interest in Japan. However, Loti’s Japan-related works was merely an exotic rendering, skimming the surface of Japan and Japanese people. This is why it does not attract our active attention at present.

There are many chapters in Japoneries d’Automne, be it the chapter “The Sacred Mountain of Nikkō” (La Sainte Montagne de Nikko), in which Nikkō’s Tōshō-gū Shrine and nature are described in exquisite detail, or the chapter “Empress Costume” (Toilette d’impératrice), in which Loti visits the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū Shrine in Kamakura to see costumes of Empress Jingū (Jingū-kōgō), or the chapter “At the Tomb of the Samurais” (Au Tombeau des Samouraïs), in which he visits the Sengakuji Temple at Shiba Takanawa and recalls the 47 rönin warriors, where Loti’s colorful writing talent is evident. However, his observations and reflections about Japan are rather conventional and perfunctory.

Loti’s eyes are the passerby’s eyes. That itself is not a problem. However, Loti lacked the curiosity and love for Japan that would have allowed him to make the most of his own observations, and he certainly was aware of this. Finally, let me quote a passage from La Troisième Jeunesse de Madame Prune.

countries where you have neither loved nor suffered leave you nothing

(les pays où l’on n’a ni aimé ni souffert ne vous laissent rien).