The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 3

DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--I am delighted to hear the fire-drill is at last in your hands.

About Shinto ... Of course, as far as its philosophy is concerned (which I am very fond of, in spite of my devotion to Herbert Spencer), and romance of religious sentiment, and legends, and art,--my Izumo experiences have not at all changed my love of Buddhism. If it were possible for me to adopt a faith, I should adopt it. But Shinto seems to me like an occult force,--vast, extraordinary,--which has not been seriously taken into account as a force. I think it is the hopeless, irrefragable obstacle to the Christianization of j.a.pan (for which reason I am wicked enough to love it). It is not all a belief, nor all a religion; it is a thing formless as a magnetism and indefinable as an ancestral impulse. It is part of the Soul of the Race. It means all the loyalty of the nation to its sovereigns, the devotion of retainers to princes, the respect to sacred things, the conservation of principles, the whole of what an Englishman would call sense of duty; but that this sense seems to be hereditary and inborn. I think a baby is Shinto from the time its eyes can see. Here, too, the symbolism of Shinto is among the very first things the child sees (I suppose it is the same in Tokyo). The toys are to a great extent Shinto toys; and the excursions of a young mother with a baby on her back are always to Shinto temples.

How much of Confucianism may have entered into and blended with what is a striking characteristic of j.a.panese boys in their att.i.tude toward teachers and superiors, I do not know; but I think that what is now most pleasing in these boys is the outer reflection of the spirit of Shinto within them,--the hereditary spirit of it.

The Shinshu sect is the only one, as far as I can learn, whose members in Izumo are not also Shintoists; but the sect is very weak here. Even the Nichirenites are Shintoists. The two religions are so perfectly blended here that the lines of demarcation are sometimes impossible to find.

Well, I think we Occidentals have yet to learn the worship of ancestors; and evolution is going to teach it to us. When we become conscious that we owe whatever is wise or good or strong or beautiful in each one of us, not to one particular inner individuality, but to the struggles and sufferings and experiences of the whole unknown chain of human lives behind us, reaching back into mystery unthinkable,--the worship of ancestors seems an extremely righteous thing. What is it, philosophically, but a tribute of grat.i.tude to the past,--dead relatively only,--alive really within us, and about us.

With best regards, in momentary haste,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

MATSUE, May, 1891.

DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just returned from a pilgrimage to the famous Kwannon temple of Kiyomizu--about 18 miles from Matsue--where it is said that the sacred fire has never been extinguished for a thousand years, to find your postal card. I do not wait to receive the delightful gift in order to thank you for it; as I hope to have the pleasure of writing you a letter on my impression of it after reading it. You could have imagined nothing to send me more welcome. Mr. Lowell has, I think, no warmer admirer in the world than myself, though I do not agree with his theory in the "Soul of the Far East," and think he has ignored the most essential and astonishing quality of the race: its genius of eclecticism. The future holds many problems we cannot presume to guess, in regard to the fate of races. But there is not wanting foundation for the belief that the Orient may yet dominate the Occident and absorb it utterly. China seems to many a far greater question than Russia.

About your kind question regarding books. I think I shall be able to get all the books on j.a.pan--in English--that I need; and your "Things j.a.panese" is a mine of good advice on what to buy. But if I need counsel which I cannot find in your book, then I will write and ask.

I venture to say that I think you have underrated the importance of my suggestion about the Sacred Snake,--of which I have not been able to find the scientific name. If they have such a snake at Ise then I am wrong. But, if not, I think the little snake would be worth having.

It does not--like the fire-drill of Kizuki--possess special interest for the anthropologist; but it certainly should have interest for the folk-lorist, as a chapter in one of the most ancient and widely spread (if not universal) religious practices,--the worship of the Serpent. If you ever want an enshrined snake, let me know. It is dried and put into a little _miya_ for the _kamidana_.

Speaking of folk-lore, I have been interesting myself in the fox-superst.i.tion in Izumo. Here, and in Iwami, the superst.i.tion has local peculiarities. It is so powerful as to affect the value of real estate to the amount of hundreds of thousands of yen, and keen men have become rich by speculating upon the strength of it. If you want any facts about it, please tell me.

The scenery at Kiyomizu is superb. But there is no clear water except the view of Nanji-umi from the paG.o.da and the hills. The _mamori_, I regret to say, are uninteresting. There is, however, a curious Inari shrine. Beside it is a sort of huge trough filled with little foxes of all shapes, designs, and material. If you want anything, you pray, and put a fox in your pocket, and take it home. As soon as the prayer is granted you must take the fox back again and put it just where it was before. I should like to have taken one home; but my servants hate foxes and Inari and _tofu_ and _azuki-meshi_ and _abura-gi_ and everything related to foxes. So I left it alone.

You will not be sorry to hear that I am to have the same publishers as Mr. Lowell,--at least according to present indications. I am not vain enough to think I can ever write anything so beautiful as his "Choson" or "Soul of the Far East," and will certainly make a poor showing beside his precise, fine, perfectly worded work. But I am not going to try to do anything in his line. My work will deal wholly with exceptional things (chiefly popular) in an untilled field of another kind.

I gave 72 boys, as subject for composition the other day, the question: "What would you most like in this world?" Nine of the compositions contained in substance this answer: "To die for our Sacred Emperor."

That is Shinto. Isn't it grand and beautiful? and do you wonder that I love it after that?

Most grateful regards from yours most sincerely,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

MATSUE, 1891.

DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--I went to Kobe by rail, and thence by jinrikisha across j.a.pan over mountains and through valleys of rice-fields--a journey of four days; but the most delightful in some respects of all my travelling experiences. The scenery had this peculiar effect, that it repeated for me many of my tropical impressions--received in a country of similar volcanic configuration,--besides reviving for me all sorts of early memories of travel in Wales and England which I had forgotten. Nothing could be more beautiful than this mingling of the sensations of the tropics with those of Northern summers. And the people! My expectations were much more than realized: it is among the country-people j.a.panese character should be studied, and I could not give my opinion of them now without using what you would call enthusiastic language. I felt quite sorry to reach this larger city, where the people are so much less simple, charming, and kindly,--although I have every reason to be pleased with them. And in a mountain village I saw a dance unlike anything I ever saw before--some dance immemorially old, and full of weird grace. I watched it until midnight, and wish I could see it again. Nothing yet seen in j.a.pan delighted me so much as this Bon-odori--in no wise resembling the same performance in the north. I found Buddhism gradually weaken toward the interior, while Shinto emblems surrounded the fields, and things suggesting the phallic worship of antiquity were being adored in remote groves.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

MATSUE, June, 1891.

DEAR MR. CHAMBERLAIN,--I am horribly ashamed to confess my weakness; but the truth must be told! After having lived for ten months exclusively upon j.a.panese fare, I was obliged to return (for a couple of days only!!!!) to the flesh-pots of Egypt. Having become sick, I could not recuperate upon j.a.panese eating--even when reenforced with eggs. I devoured enormous quant.i.ties of beef, fowl, and sausage, and fried solid stuffs, and absorbed terrific quant.i.ties of beer,--having had the good luck to find one foreign cook in Matsue. I am very much ashamed! But the fault is neither mine nor that of the j.a.panese: it is the fault of my ancestors,--the ferocious, wolfish hereditary instincts and tendencies of boreal mankind. The sins of the father, etc.

Do you know anything about Chozuba-no-Kami? There are images of him.

He has no eyes--only ears. He pa.s.ses much of his time in sleep. He is angry if any one enters the _koka_ without previously hemming,--so as to give him notice. He makes everybody sick if the place in which he dwells is not regularly cleaned. He goes to Kizuki and to Sada with the other G.o.ds once a year; and after a month's absence returns. When he returns, he pa.s.ses his hand over each member of the family as they go to the Chozuba,--to make sure the family is the same. But one must not be afraid of the invisible hand. I think this kami is an extremely decent, respectable person, with excellent views on the subjects of morality and hygiene. I could not refuse him a lamp nor--for obvious reasons--the worship of incense.

I have not been able to travel yet far enough to find anything novel, but hope soon to do so. Meanwhile I am planning to make, if possible, not only a tour of Izumo, but also a very brief visit to Tokyo in company with Mr. Nishida. Perhaps--I may be able to see both you and Mr.

Lowell for a tiny little while--you will always have a moment to spare.

I am always haunted by a particularly sarcastic translation Mr.

Lowell, in one of his books, made of the name of a gate,--"The Gate of Everlasting Ceremony." (Only an American could have dared to make such a translation.) I have been through the Gate and into the Court of Everlasting Ceremony; but the gate is a marvellous swarming of carven dragons and water, and the court is full of peace and sweetness. Most truly,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

MATSUE, 1891.

DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--Your welcome letter has just reached me, on the eve of a trip to Kizuki, and--unless extraordinary circ.u.mstances prevent--Oki islands. My guest has departed. He was so petted and made much of here, that I could not help regretting you also would not come.

I think I could make you comfortable here,--even in regard to diet,--at any time when you could make the trip; and, as far as the people go, they would embarra.s.s you with kindness. Your name here is--well, more than you would wish it to be.

Your last delightful letter I did not fully answer in my last, being hurried. What you said about the influence of health or sickness on the spiritual life of a man went straight to my heart. I have found, as you have done, that the possessor of pure horse-health never seems to have an idea of the "half-lights." It is impossible to see the psychical undercurrents of human existence without that self-separation from the purely physical part of being, which severe sickness gives--like a revelation. One in good health, who has never been obliged to separate his immaterial self from his material self, always will imagine that he understands much which, even recorded in words, cannot be understood at all without sharp experience. We are all living two lives,--but the revelation of the first seems only to come by accident. There is an essay worth reading, ent.i.tled "Sickness is Health,"--dealing with the physical results of sickness only; but there is a much larger psychological truth in the t.i.tle than the author of it, whose name I forget, ever dreamed of. All the history of asceticism and self-suppression as a religion, appears to me founded upon a vague, blundering, intuitive recognition of the terrible and glorious fact, that we can reach the highest life only through that self-separation which the experiences of illness, that is, the knowledge of physical weakness, brings; perfect health always involves the domination of the spiritual by the physical--at least in the present state of human evolution.

Perhaps it will interest you to know the effect of j.a.panese life upon your little friend after the experiences of a year and a half. At first, the sense of existence here is like that of escaping from an almost unbearable atmospheric pressure into a rarefied, highly oxygenated medium. That feeling continues: in j.a.pan the law of life is not as with us,--that each one strives to expand his own individuality at the expense of his neighbour's. But on the other hand, how much one loses! Never a fine inspiration, a deep emotion, a profound joy or a profound pain--never a thrill, or, as the French say so much better than we, a _frisson_. So literary work is dry, bony, hard, dead work. I have confined myself strictly to the most emotional phases of j.a.panese life,--popular religion and popular imagination, and yet I can find nothing like what I would get at once in any Latin country, a strong emotional thrill. Whether it is that the difference in our ancestral history renders what we call soul-sympathy almost impossible, or whether it is that the j.a.panese are psychically smaller than we, I cannot venture to decide--I hope the former. But the experience of all thinking persons with whom I have had a chance to speak seems to be the same.

But how sweet the j.a.panese woman is!--all the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her. It shakes one's faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression,--then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamond-hard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the subject. In the eternal order of things which is the highest being,--the childish, confiding, sweet j.a.panese girl,--or the superb, calculating, penetrating Occidental Circe of our more artificial society, with her enormous power for evil, and her limited capacity for good? Viscount Torio's idea haunts me more and more;--I think there are very formidable truths in his observations about Western sociology. And the question comes: "In order to comprehend the highest good, is it necessary that we must first learn the largest power of evil?" For the one may be the Shadow of the other.

I am very much disappointed with Rein. I got much more information about my own particular line of study from your "Things j.a.panese" than from Rein. Rein himself confesses, after seven or eight years' labour, that he has only been able to make "a patchwork"! What, then, can a man like myself hope to do,--without scientific knowledge, and without any hope of even acquiring the language of the country so as to read even a newspaper? Really it seems to me almost an impertinence on my part to try to write anything about j.a.pan at all, and the only fact which gives me courage is that there exists no book especially devoted to the subject I hope to consider.

The deity of Mionoseki is called always by the people Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami;--in the guide the deity is said to be Hiruko, who, I believe, has been identified by Shinto commentators with Hiruko, as I find in the article on the Seven G.o.ds of Good Fortune, in the Asiatic Transactions. But I am not sure what to say about Hiruko being the deity of Mio Jinja, as a general statement. My friends say that only a Shinto priest can decide, and I am going to see one.

Most truly, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

MATSUE, August, 1891.

DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just received and read your most interesting letter on my return from Kizuki,--where I should have liked to remain longer, but I must go to see the Bon-odori at Shimo-ichi, where it is danced differently from anywhere else, so far as I can learn, and in a thrillingly ghostly manner,--so that one thinks he is looking at a Dance of Souls.

Before leaving I had a copy of Murray's Guide sent to the Kokuzo, who was more than pleased to see the picture of the great temple reproduced and to hear what was said about it. Before I went away, he gave me another singular entertainment, such as he alone could do--for he is King of Kizuki. (By the way, the old reverence for the Kokuzo is not dead. Folks do not believe now that whoever he looks at immediately becomes unable to move; but as I and my companion followed him to the great shrine, the pilgrims fell down and worshipped him as he pa.s.sed.)

This was the entertainment he gave me:--Having invited me to the temple grounds, where seats were prepared, and a supper got ready for us, Mr.

Senke gave some order, and the immense court immediately filled with people,--thousands. Then at a signal began a round dance, such as I had never seen before,--the Honen-odori, as anciently performed in Kizuki. It was so fascinating that I watched it until two o'clock in the morning. At least three hundred dancers were in the ring;--and the leader, standing on a mochi-mortar turned upside down, with an umbrella over his head, formed the axis of the great round, and turned slowly within it upon his pedestal. He had a superb voice. The Kokuzo also got the beautiful _miko_ dances photographed to please me, and presented me with many curious MSS., some of which I hope to show you later on.

They were written expressly for me.

Now as to the shoryo-bune. Just as the Bon-odori differs in every part of j.a.pan, and just as everything at Kizuki is totally different from everything at Ise, even to the Miko-kagura, so is the custom of sending away the Ships of the Souls different here. In many parts the ships are launched at two or three o'clock in the morning of the day after the Bon; or if ships are not launched, then floating lanterns are sent out by way of guiding the dead home. But in Kizuki the shoryo-bune are launched only by day and for those who have been drowned at sea, and the shapes of the ships vary according to the kind of ship in which the lost man or woman perished. And they are launched every year for ten years after the death:--and when the soul returns yearly to visit the home, the ship is made ready, and a little stick of incense is lighted before launching it to take the beloved ghost back again, and a little stock of provisions is placed in it upon _kawarake_ (princ.i.p.ally _dango_). And the _kaimyo_ of the dead is written upon the sail. And these boats are launched,--not at night, as elsewhere, but in the daytime.