Japan

A visitor's reflection on Japan opens with the idea that a people's leisure pursuits reveal their character more clearly than their legislation does. Measured that way, the country's theatres are a faithful mirror of its people.

The author argues that Japanese life has no room for a separate category called art. Beauty is pursued deliberately, yet it also comes naturally from inherited taste, and it fills ordinary things such as houses and gardens. A Japanese playhouse, the writer suggests, is best understood as a temple devoted to art.

By contrast, the author finds Western culture lacking in art and prone to self-deception in its theatre. Western habits, in this view, miss the basic truths of Eastern philosophy that dramatic excellence depends on, including the principle of balance, which the Japanese have mastered and which Westerners do not yet grasp.