Lafcadio Hearn Part 27

On the 16th March, 1909, early in the morning, Mrs. Atkinson, Miss Atkinson and myself, left Kobe, reaching Yokohama late in the evening.

Mrs. Atkinson, who had written from Kobe to her half-sister-in-law, announcing our arrival in j.a.pan, expected to find a letter from Nishi Okubo awaiting us at the Grand Hotel. She had not made allowance for the red tape--the bales of red tape--that surround social as well as official transactions in j.a.pan.

Before we left Kobe, Mr. Robert Young had given us a letter of introduction to Mr. W. B. Mason, Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain's coadjutor in the editing of Murray's "Handbook to j.a.pan," late of the Imperial Department of Communications, also custodian of the Club library at Yokohama, and a person, we were told, to whom every one had recourse in a difficulty. He cast sidelights on the probable reasons for delay in the answer to Mrs. Atkinson's letter.

To begin with, Tokyo covers an area of one hundred square miles, and, though ostensibly modelled on English lines, the j.a.panese postal system leaves much to be desired, especially in dealing with English letters; in finding fault on this score, I wonder what a London postman would do with letters addressed in j.a.panese? Mr. Mason also reminded us that Mrs.

Koizumi did not understand a word of English; she must have recourse to an interpreter before communicating with her Irish sister-in-law, but, above all, in accounting for delay, Mrs. Atkinson had addressed her letter to "Mrs. Lafcadio Hearn," a name by which no properly const.i.tuted j.a.panese postman would find himself justified in recognising Hearn's widow. By nationalising himself a j.a.panese, Hearn's ident.i.ty, so far as his occidental inheritance went, had vanished forever. He and his wife were only known at Tokyo as Mr. and Mrs. Koizumi.

Mr. Mason, like many others whom we met, was full of anecdotes about Lafcadio, his oddities, his caprices. In days gone by he had been extremely intimate with him, but Hearn had put a sudden end to the friendship; Mr. Mason never knew exactly why, but imagined it was in consequence of his neglecting to take off his footgear and put on sandals one day before entering Hearn's house. In pa.s.sing judgment on Hearn for these sudden ruptures with friends, because of their lapses from the punctilio of j.a.panese tradition, it is well to remember that his wife came of the ancient Izumo stock, and was educated according to j.a.panese rules; a dusty or muddy boot placed on her cream-white tatami was almost an indignity. Hearn deeply resented any slight shown to her, and, from the moment he married, observed all old habits and customs, and insisted on his visitors doing the same.

The expression in j.a.pan for an unceremonious or bad-mannered person is "another than expected person"; the definition is delightfully j.a.panese; it explains the traditions of the race: no one ever does anything unexpected--all is arranged by rule and order; in any other civilised country, considering the circ.u.mstances, Mrs. Atkinson would have taken a Tokaido train to Tokyo, and from the Shimbasi station gone immediately in a jinrikisha to see her sister-in-law; the two ladies would have fallen into one another's arms, and a close intimacy would have been begun. Not so in j.a.pan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KAZUO (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVENTEEN).]

"Patience is a virtue inculcated by life in the Far East," said Mr.

Mason. "Come out with me, I will show you some of the most beautiful sights in the world, and in course of time either Mrs. Koizumi or a letter will turn up."

Anxious not to offend the little j.a.panese lady by any proceeding not in consonance with the social etiquette of her country, we took Mr. Mason's advice.

I had been reading "Out of the East," and pleaded that our first pilgrimage might be to the Jizo-Do Temple, scene of Lafcadio Hearn's interview with the old Buddhist priest.

Up a hill above Yokohama we climbed, until we reached the summit, where, embosomed in fairy-like clouds of plum-tree blossom, a carpet of pink-and-white petals round its august feet, stood an ancient shrine.

From the platform in front of the great bronze bell, hanging in a paG.o.da-like tower, we looked out over the city of Yokohama. Again I experienced what I had felt coming up the Inland Sea, an impression, common to almost every one who visits j.a.pan, that I was gazing on a dream world, lying outside everyday experience, a world "having a special sun and tinted atmosphere of its own," arched by a sky of magic light, the very sky of Buddha. Down the hillside a cascade of cl.u.s.tering eaves and quaint curved tiled roofs, surrounded by gardens, descended to the very edge of the sapphire sea. Behind, in the distance, rose a range of dark-blue hills, and enormously above the line of them all, through the vapoury mist, gleamed one solitary snow-capped cone; we knew its familiar outline on j.a.panese fans and screens, in j.a.panese picture-books--the sacred, the matchless mountain--Fuji-no-yama.

There, in the stillness of the j.a.panese afternoon, we summoned from out the twenty years that had elapsed since Hearn's visit, a vision of the old priest, seated, brush in hand, writing one of the three hundred volumes of the history of the religions of j.a.pan, of the interpreter Akira, and of the little Celtic dreamer seated Buddha-wise between them, while, mingled with the sound of the purring of the cat, and the song of the _uguisu_ from the plum-tree grove, we heard the murmur of their voices.

"That which we are, in the consequence of that which we have been....

Every act contains both merit and demerit, just as even the best painting has defects and excellence. But when the sum of good in any action exceeds the sum of evil, just as in a good painting the merits outweigh the faults, then the result is progress. And gradually by such progress will all evil be eliminated.... They who by self-mastery reach such conditions of temporary happiness, have gained spiritual force also, and some knowledge of truth. Their strength to conquer themselves increases more and more with every triumph, until they reach at last that world of Apparitional Birth, in which the lower forms of temptation have no existence."

Wisely had Mr. Mason counselled patience. The next afternoon, while seated at tea-time in the hall of the Grand Hotel, we saw two figures pa.s.s through the swing door at the entrance ... one was a j.a.panese lady, dressed in the national j.a.panese costume--a kimono of dark iron-grey silk--the other, a tall, slim, near-sighted youth of seventeen dressed also in kimono, wearing a peaked collegiate cloth cap and sandals on his feet. The pair hesitated at the doorway, and after questioning one of the hotel clerks, came towards us under his guidance.

Mrs. Atkinson realised at once that this was her j.a.panese half-sister-in-law. The nearest relations never embrace in j.a.pan, but the two ladies saluted one another with profound bows and smiles.

Mrs. Koizumi could never have been, even according to j.a.panese ideas, good-looking; it was difficult to reconcile this subdued, sad-faced, Quaker-like person with Hearn's description written to Ellwood Hendrik, of the little lady whom he dressed up like a queen, and who nourished dreams of "beautiful things to be bought for the adornment of her person." But the face had a pleasing expression of gentle, sensible honesty. Had it not been for the arched eyebrows, oblique eyes and elaborate coiffure--the usual erection worn by her country-women--she might have been a dignified, well-mannered housekeeper in a large English establishment.

The only exception to the strict nationality of her costume was a shabby, carelessly-folded, American silk umbrella that she carried, instead of the dainty contrivance of oil paper and bamboo so generally used and so typical of j.a.pan. There was something vaguely and indefinably suggestive, like the revival of a sensation, a shadowing of memory, blended in the a.s.sociations of that umbrella; we felt certain it had been used by her "August One" in his "honourable" journeyings to and from the Imperial University.

After having placed this precious possession, with careful precision, leaning against a chair, she turned to introduce her son to his aunt. He was already bowing profoundly over Dorothy Atkinson's hand in the background.

At first the lad had given the impression of being a j.a.panese, but as he laughed and talked with his beautiful cousin, you recognised another race; no child of Nippon was this, the fairy folk had stolen a Celtic changeling and put him into their garb; but he was not one of them, he was an Irishman and a Hearn, bearing a striking resemblance to Carleton Atkinson, Dorothy's brother. The same gentle manner, soft voice, and near-sighted eyes, obliging the wearing of strong gla.s.ses. I remembered his father's words: "The eldest is almost of another race, with brown hair and eyes of the fairy colour, and a tendency to p.r.o.nounce with a queer little Irish accent the words of old English poems which he has to learn by heart."

Then, as the thought pa.s.sed through one's mind of his extraordinary likeness to his Irish relations, an impa.s.sive, Buddha-like, j.a.panese expression--a mask of reserve as it were--fell like a curtain over his face,--he was j.a.panese again.

He spoke English slowly and haltingly; to me it was incomprehensible; his cousin, on the contrary, seemed to understand every word, as if a sort of freemasonry existed between them. There was something pathetic in watching his earnest endeavours to make his occidental relative understand what he wished to say.

It is a myth that Mrs. Koizumi talks English; her "Reminiscences" have been taken down and translated by interpreters; princ.i.p.ally by the j.a.panese poet Yone Noguchi. If she ever knew any, it has been entirely forgotten. Indeed, had it not been for the intervention of Mr. Mason, who is a first-rate j.a.panese scholar, we should have found ourselves considerably embarra.s.sed. One thing, however, she certainly possessed--that most desirable thing in woman, to which her husband had been so sensitive--a soft and musical voice.

Mrs. Atkinson had brought some gifts for the four children from England, and an old-fashioned gold locket, which had belonged to Lafcadio's father, for her sister-in-law. She tried playfully to pa.s.s the chain round Mrs. Koizumi's neck, but the little lady crossed her hands on her bosom and declined persistently to allow her to do so. Mr. Mason then told us that it was against all the rules of decorum for a j.a.panese woman to wear any article of jewellery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARLETON ATKINSON.]

Towards the end of her visit, which lasted an interminable time--j.a.panese visits usually do--Mrs. Koizumi gave us an invitation for the following Sunday to come to dinner at 266, Nishi Okubo, and promised that her son Kazuo should come to fetch us. Needless to say, this invitation was the acme of our hopes; we accepted eagerly, and, to save Kazuo the trouble of coming to Yokohama, we determined to flit the next day, Sat.u.r.day, from Yokohama to Tokyo.

The Metropole, or, as Hearn dubbed it, "The Palace of Woe," was the hotel we selected. Our dinner that night was eaten in the room where Professor Foxwell, in his delightful "Reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn,"

describes him leaping from the table, darting to the window, and making for the garden, on catching sight of a young lady tourist, a friend of Professor Foxwell's, at the farther end of the room.

Next morning, as arranged, Kazuo Koizumi arrived to escort us to Nishi Okubo. That particular Sunday was the anniversary of the Festival of the Spring Equinox (_Shunki Korei-sai_). There is an autumn and a spring equinox festival when days and nights are equal. The pullulating population of Tokyo seemed to have emptied itself, like a rabbit warren, into the streets. The ladies were in their best _kimonos_, their hair elaborately dressed, set round with pins, and the men, some of them bareheaded, j.a.panese fashion, in j.a.panese garb, others wearing bowler hats, others again dressed in ill-fitting American clothes, carrying American umbrellas. These umbrellas, I think, are one of the features that you resent most in the occidentalising of the j.a.panese man and woman. A pretty _musume's_ ivory-coloured oval face against the cream-colour background of an oiled-paper j.a.panese umbrella, makes a delightful picture, and nothing can be imagined more fantastically picturesque than a Tokyo street in brilliant sunshine, or under a flurry of rain when hundreds of these ineffective shelters with their quaint designs of chrysanthemums, cherry-blossom, or wisteria, are suddenly opened. Alas! in ten years' time, like many other quaint and beautiful j.a.panese productions, these oil-paper umbrellas will have pa.s.sed away into the region of faintly-remembered things.

The gentle decorous politeness of the crowd was remarkable. If any of the men had a little too much _sake_ on board, their tipsiness was only betrayed by their aimlessly happy, smiling expression. Sometimes, indeed, it could only be guessed at by the gentle sway of a couple walking arm-in-arm down the street. In the luke-warm air was a mingling of odours peculiar to j.a.pan, smells of _sake_, smells of seaweed soup, smells of _daikon_ (the strong native radish), and, dominating all, a sweet, thick, heavy scent of incense that floated out from the shadows behind the temple doors, while above all was a speckless azure sky arching this fantastical world. The city lay glorified in a joy of sunshine.

Kazuo Koizumi had told us that it was only a short walk to the trams, and that by them we could get close to Nishi Okubo. It seemed to us an interminable journey as we followed the tall, slim figure over bridges, down miles of paved streets, and at last, when we did reach the trams, we found them full to overflowing, not only with men and women, but with babies, babies tumbling, rolling, laughing on the floor, on their mothers' laps, on their mothers' backs; there was certainly no doubt of j.a.pan having that most valuable a.s.set to a fighting country, male children, and that most necessary adjunct, female children; nowhere was there an ill-fed, ill-cared for one to be seen.

Finding the trams impossible, we induced Kazuo to hail jinrikishas, and still on and on for miles, behind our fleet-footed _kuruma_ men, did our journey last, through the quarter of the foreign legations, past government offices and military stations, beside the moat surrounding the mikado's palace, with its gra.s.s slopes and pine-clad fosse, down declivities and up others, through endless lanes, bordered by one-storeyed houses standing in shrubberies behind bamboo fences.

At last Kazuo Koizumi, whose _kuruma_ led the way, halted before a small gateway, surmounted by a lamp in an iron stand, stamped, as we understood afterwards, with Hearn's monogram in j.a.panese ideographs.

Pa.s.sing through, we found ourselves opposite the entrance of a lightly-built two-story house, rather resembling a suburban bungalow in England. Directly we entered we were transported into a different era. Here no modern j.a.pan was visible. On the threshold, waiting to receive us, was an "august residence maid," kneeling, palms extended on the floor. I glanced at the ebon head touching the matting, and wondered if it belonged to Hana, the unsympathetic Hana who had let the gra.s.s-lark die. Beside her was Setsu-ko, Hearn's youngest child, in a brilliantly-coloured _kimono_, while on the step above stood Professor Tanabe, who had been one of Hearn's pupils at Matsue, now an intimate friend of the Koizumi family, living near by, and acting occasionally as interpreter for Mrs. Hearn. What a picture--as an eastern philosopher, for instance--he would have made for Moroni or Velasquez, with the delicate grey and cream background of the j.a.panese _tatami_ and paper _shoji_. He had the clear olive complexion and intellectually-spiritualised expression, result of the discipline and thought enjoined by his far eastern religion. He looked tall as he stood above us, the close folds of his black silk college gown descending to his feet. With all the courtesy and dignity of a Spanish Hidalgo did he receive us, holding out a slim, delicately-modelled hand, and bidding us welcome in our native tongue, in a voice harmonious and clear as one of his own temple bells. To take off our foot-gear in so dignified a presence, and put on the rice sandals offered us by the maid, was trying; for the little girl had raised her forehead from the matting, and, with hands on knees, with many bows, had first of all surveyed us sideways like a bird, and then, gently approaching with deferential liftings of the eyes and deprecating bows, she took a pair of sandals from a row that stood close by, helped us to take off our boots and put on the sandals. We then remarked that she was not at all unsympathetic-looking, but a nice, chubby, rosy-faced handmaiden. We hoped devoutly we had no holes in our stockings, and after a considerable amount of awkward fumbling, got through the ordeal in time to curtsey and bow to Mrs. Koizumi, who appeared beside Professor Tanabe on the step above us, softly inviting us to "honourably deign to enter her unworthy abode."

The best rooms in a j.a.panese house are always to the rear, and so arranged as to overlook the garden. We followed our hostess to the _engawa_ (verandah) leading to the guest-room next to what had been Hearn's study. The _fusima_ or paper screens separating the two rooms were pushed back in their grooves, we pa.s.sed through the opening and stood within what they called the "Buddha-room." At first I thought it was so named because of a bronze figure of Buddha, standing on a lotus flower, with hand upraised in exhortation, on the top of the bookcase, but afterwards ascertained that it was because of the _Butsudan_, or family shrine, that occupied an alcove in the corner.

Every one after death is supposed to become a Buddha; this was the spirit chamber where the memory of the august dead was worshipped.

At last I stood where ate, slept, thought and wrote (for bedroom and sitting-room are identical in j.a.pan) the author of "Kokoro," "j.a.pan, an Interpretation," and so many other wonderful books, and I felt as I looked at that room of Lafcadio Hearn's that the dead were more alive than the quick. The walls--or rather the paper panels and wood laths that did duty for walls--were haunted with memories.

I pictured the odd little figure--dressed in the _kimono_ given him by Otani embroidered in characters of letters or poems--"Surely just the kind of texture which a man of letters ought to wear!"--with the prominent eyes, intellectual brow, and sensitive mouth, squatting "in the ancient, patient manner" on his _zabuton_--smoking his _kiseru_, or standing at the high desk, his nose close to the paper, covering sheets and sheets with his delicate handwriting, every now and then turning over the leaves of the quarto, calf-bound, American edition of Webster's Dictionary that stood on a stand next his desk.

There was an atmosphere of daintiness, of refined clean manners, of a sense of beauty and purity in the room; with its stillness, almost eerie stillness, offering an arresting contrast to the mult.i.tudinous rush and clamour of the city outside--it gave an impression of restfulness, of calm, almost of regeneration, with its cool, colourless, stainless matting and delicate grey walls, lighted by the clear light of the j.a.panese day that fell beneath the verandah through the window panels that, like the _fusima_, ran in grooves on the garden side of the room.

I understood from Mrs. Koizumi that when Hearn had added on the study and guest-room to the existing house, gla.s.s had been subst.i.tuted for paper in these window panels. He, who had so devoutly hoped years before that gla.s.s would never replace paper in the window panels of j.a.panese houses! Not only that, but an American stove, with a stove pipe, had occupied the corner where now stands the _Butsudan_, contaminating that wonderful j.a.panese atmosphere he had raved about, that "translucent, crystalline atmosphere" unsullied by the faintest breath of coal smoke.

These hardy folk told us that they were always catching coughs and colds when they had the stove and gla.s.s windows, so they took both out, and put back the paper _shoji_ and the charcoal brazier.

It was illuminating indeed to see many western innovations against which Hearn had railed in his earlier days in j.a.pan, in various parts of his study. The _andon_--tallow-candle--stuck in a paper shade--national means of lighting a room--had apparently been discarded, and a Queen's reading lamp stood in all its electro-plated hideousness on a little table in the corner. On another was an electric bell with india-rubber tube.

j.a.panese rooms are never enc.u.mbered by ornament, a single _kakemono_, or piece of fine lacquer or china appearing for a few days, and then making room for something else; but here, the oriental and occidental thought and life--that Hearn blended so deftly in his work--joined hands. Round the room at the height of about four feet from the floor, bookcases were placed, filled with books, English most of them--De Quincey, Herbert Spencer, Barrie, were a few of the names I caught a glimpse of; against the laths separating the household shrine from the shelves near the _Butsudan_ rested volumes of Browning and Kipling.

I wondered where the many things that Hearn must have collected, the old prints, and bronzes, and enamelled ware, he so often alluded to, had been put away. Above all, where was the photograph of the "Lady of a Myriad Souls," and the one of Mitch.e.l.l McDonald that he mentioned as hanging on the ceiling?

It is customary in Tokyo, we were told afterwards, to warehouse in a depository or "go-down" (a name derived from the Malay _G.o.dong_ given to the fire-proof storehouses in the open ports of the Far East) all valuable and artistic objects; the idyllic innocence of Tokyo is a thing of the past; thieving is rife; it is well also to protect them from fire, earthquakes and floods.

Above the bookcases all was thoroughly j.a.panese in character; the ceiling mostly composed of unpainted wood laths, traversing a delicate grey ground.

On the wall opposite the guest-room hung a _kakemono_ or scroll-picture representing a river running quickly between rocks. "The water runs clear from the heights," was the translation given to us of the j.a.panese ideographs in the corner--by Professor Tanabe. It had been a present from Kazuo to his father.

Two of the younger children now appeared, the third boy Iwayo, we heard, was away, visiting some of the ships in the harbour; the two we saw were Idaho, the second son, and Setsu-ko, the little girl.

Presently, I don't quite know how, it was intimated that the dinner-hour had arrived, and I must confess that the announcement was a welcome one.

Owing to our wanderings in the Tokyo streets, and the lateness of the hour, our "honourable insides" were beginning to clamour for sustenance of some sort.

j.a.panese dinners have been described so often that it is unnecessary to go into all the details of the one of which we partook at Nishi Okubo that Sunday afternoon. It was served in the guest-room next Hearn's study, and lasted well over an hour. To me it was exasperating beyond measure. My impression is that the j.a.panese delight in discomfort. They own a country in which any one could be happy. A climate very much like our own, with a dash of warmth and more sunshine than we can boast, a climate where anything grows and flourishes and an atmosphere clear as crystal; instead of enjoying it and expanding to the delightful circ.u.mstances surrounding them, they set to work to make themselves uncomfortable in what seemed to me such an irritating and futile way.

That any sane people should eat a succession of horrible concoctions made up of raw fish, lotus roots, bamboo shoots, and sweets that tasted of Pears' soap, whisked into a lather, with a little sugar added as an afterthought, eaten j.a.panese fashion, was worse than the judgment pa.s.sed on Nebuchadnezzar, and with the beasts of the field Nebuchadnezzar, at least, had no appearances to keep up, whereas we had to respond to a courtesy that was agonising in the exquisiteness of its delicacy.