The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 7

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

k.u.mAMOTO, December, 1891.

DEAR FRIEND NISHIDA,--Your letter has just reached me. I am more sorry than I can express to hear of the death of Yokogi. Nature seems strangely cruel in making such a life, and destroying it before the time of ripeness. And the good hearts and the fine brains pa.s.s to dust, while the coa.r.s.e and the cunning survive all dangers....

The name of the delightful old Samurai who teaches Chinese here, I think you know,--Akizuki. He was at Aizu, and made a great soldier's name; and he is just as gentle and quiet as Mr. Katayama,--and still more paternally charming in his manner. He is sixty-three years old....

I have made no friends among the teachers yet. I attended my first j.a.panese dinner with them the night before last; and, because _you_ were not there, I think I made some queer mistakes about the dishes--when to use chopsticks, etc. There were no _geishas_: the former director had forbidden their employment at teachers' dinners; and I don't think that Mr. Kano is going to revoke the order. The reason for it was not prudery; but the opposition paper used to take advantage of the presence of _geishas_ at the teachers' banquets to print nasty things against the school. So it was determined not to give the paper a chance to say anything more....

I have been very cautious in writing you about the climate, because I wanted to be very sure that, in case you should come here, it would be for the best. So far the climate is like this: every morning and night cold, with white frost; afternoons so warm that one can go out without an overcoat. Very little rain. No snow yet; but I am told that it will come.

As for me, I have become stronger than I have been for years. All my clothes, even my j.a.panese _kimono_, have become too small!! But I cannot say whether this be the climate or the diet or what. Setsu says it is because I have a good wife;--but she might be prejudiced, you know! My lungs are sound as a bell; I never cough at all. This is all that I can tell you at present.

No: O-Yone came with us. She took O-Yoshi's place, when O-Yoshi went back to live with her mother. I am sorry to say I had to send the _kurumaya_ away. He abandoned his wife in Matsue, and she went to the house of the Inagaki, crying and telling a very pitiful story. When I heard this, I told the man he must go back. But on the same days later, I found he had been doing very wrong things,--trying to make trouble among the other servants, and playing tricks upon us by making secret arrangements with the shopkeepers. I had bought him clothes, and given him altogether 14 yen and 50 sen, besides his board and lodging--including 5 yen to go back with. But he had squandered his little money and how he managed afterward I don't know. I could not help him any more; for his cunningness and foolishness together made it impossible to keep him a day longer in the house. The cook is from the _Nisho-tei_,--to which you first introduced me. The _kurumaya's_ place would have been a nice place for a good man. I shall be very careful about employing another _kurumaya_ by the month.

Now about the question you asked me. The words you underlined are from the Jewish Bible. The ideas of VALUE and of WEIGHT were closely connected in the minds of the old Semites, as they are still, to some extent, in our own. Everything was sold by WEIGHT, and according to the WEIGHT was the VALUE. The weighing was done with the SCALES or BALANCE, of which there were several kinds. The balancing was done by suspending a weight at one end of the "balance," or scales, as in j.a.pan, and the article to be sold in the other. If too light, the article was "found wanting"--(i. e.: in weight). So in such English expressions as "to make LIGHT of" (to ridicule, to belittle, to speak contemptuously of)--the idea of WEIGHT thus estimated survives. Now, in the mythology of the Jews G.o.d is represented as one who WEIGHS, in a scale or balance, the good that is in a man--(his MORAL WEIGHT or VALUE)--and sends him to h.e.l.l if he proves too light. Public opinion is now the G.o.d with the scales. If I am an author, for example, I (that is, my work) will be WEIGHED in the BALANCE (of public or of literary opinion) and found perhaps WANTING. Poor Ito was weighed many, many times, and found wanting--before being expelled. I am afraid he will be found wanting also by the world into which he must enter.

As for the phrase, "not a hair of their _head_," the singular is often used for the plural in the old English of the Bible, and other books.

(To-day, we should use only the plural,--as a general rule.)

_Examples from the Bible:_

1. "The fire had no power upon their bodies, nor singular was the hair of _their_ HEAD singed."

--_Daniel, 3d Chap. 27th verse._

plural singular 2. "But the very hairs of your HEAD are all numbered."

--_Luke_ 12. 7.

singular 3. "And he bowed the HEART of _all the men of Judah_"

--_II Samuel_ 19. 14.

Poets to-day, or writers of poetical prose, may take similar liberties with grammar as that in No. 3.

There are very many quotations in the Bible about the words "weighed in the balance;" the most famous being that in the story of Belshazzar, in the book of Daniel. The first poetical use of the phrase is in the book of Job--supposed, you know, to have been written by an Arab, not a Jew.

Now I hope and pray that you will take good care of yourself, and not allow your Samurai-spirit of self-denial to urge you into taking any risks on bitterly cold days. Many, many happy new years to you and yours.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

k.u.mAMOTO, November, 1891.

DEAR PROFESSOR,--Your welcome postal to hand. One must travel out of Izumo after a long residence to find out how utterly different the place is from other places,--for instance, this country. Matsue is incomparably prettier and better built and in every way more interesting than k.u.mamoto. What k.u.mamoto is religiously, I have not yet been able to find out. There are no shops here full of household shrines of _hinoki_-wood for sale, no display of _shimenawa_ over doors, no charms in the fields, no _o fuda_ pasted upon house-doors, no profusion of Shinto emblems, no certainty of seeing a _kamidana_ or a _butsudan_ in every house, and a strange scarcity of temples and images. Religiously, the place seems to be uninteresting; and to-day it is infernally cold. Everything is atrociously dear, and the charming simplicity of the Izumo folk does not here exist. My own people--four came with me--feel like fish out of water. My little wife said the other morning, with an amusing wonder in her eyes, that there was a _mezurashii kedamono_ in the next yard. We looked out, and the extraordinary animal was a goat. Some geese were also a subject of wonder, and a pig. None of these creatures are to be seen in Izumo.

About Inari. I may enquire again, but I think that the representation of Inari as a man with a beard, riding upon a white fox, in the pictures of Toyokuni, for instance, and in the sacred _kakemono_ is tolerably good evidence. Also the relief carving I have seen representing him as a man. Also the general popular idea concerning him, about which there is no mistake. Also the letter of Hideyoshi to Inari Daimyojin cited in Walter Dening's Readers, under the heading: "Hideyoshi's Letter to G.o.ds."

As to Kwannon, it is true that in Buddhist history she figures both as a man and woman (as also does the daughter of the Serpent-King in the astounding _sutra_ of the Lotus of the Good Law),--she is identified with the Sanscrit Avalokitesvara,-- about whose s.e.x there may be some doubt. I have a translation of her j.a.panese _sutra_, in which she is female, however;--and in China and in j.a.pan she has come to be considered the ideal of all that is sweet in womanliness, and her statues and the representations of her in the numerous pictures of the Buddhist pantheon are of a woman,--maiden. And after all, the people, not the scholars, make the G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds they make are the best.

I cannot help thinking that the identification of the j.a.panese Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with those of India is not sufficiently specified by Eitel and others as an identification of origin only. They have become totally transformed here,--they have undergone perfect avatars, and are not now the same. Shaka, Amida, Yakushi, Fudo, Dainichi, etc., may have been in India distinct personalities: in j.a.pan they are but forms of the One,--as indeed are the innumerable Buddhas of the Lotus of the True Law. All are one. And Ks.h.i.tigarbha is not our j.a.panese Jizo,--and Kwannon is not Avalokitesvara, and the Ni-o are not the figures of Indra, and Emma-O is not Yama. "They were and are not." Don't you agree with me that the popular idea of a divinity is an element of weight in such questions of doubt as we are chatting about?

With every wish that you may enjoy your journey in Shikoku, I remain, most truly ever,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

P. S.... I have been teaching three days, and find no difference in the boys from those of Izumo, --they are gentle, polite, manly and eager.

But I am greatly hampered by the books. There are not books enough, and the reading-books chosen are atrociously unsuited for the students.

Fancy "Silas Marner" and "John Halifax," with the long double-compound complex semiphilosophical sentences of George Eliot, as text-books for boys who can scarcely speak in English! A missionary's choice!

Ye G.o.ds of old j.a.pan! I think the Mombusho is economical in the wrong direction. Too much money cannot be spent on good reading-books.

Less money on buildings and more for books would give better results.

Buildings worth a quarter of a million (as building costs in America), and "Lovell's Library" and "George Munro's" piracies bought for text-books. I could scream!!

TO MASAn.o.bU OTANI

k.u.mAMOTO, January, 1892.

DEAR OTANI,--Your long and most interesting letter gave me much pleasure, as well as much information. I am very glad to have had my questions so nicely answered; for I am writing an essay on Shinto home-worship in Izumo,--all about the _kamidana_, etc. I know a good deal about general forms and rules, but very little about the reverence paid _in the house_ to the family dead (forefathers, father, mother, dead children, etc.)--in Shinto, which is very interesting to know.

I think much of the modern customs shows a Chinese origin, though the spirit of pure Shinto seems to be wholly j.a.panese.

I think your first explanation of the form of the _omiki dokkuri no kuchi-sashi_ is the correct one,--so far as this is concerned. I am not sure, but the shape is strikingly like that of the mystic jewel of Buddhist art. There is another form in bra.s.s, which I have, that seems intended to represent a folded paper; but I am not sure what it means.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Many thanks for your very valuable notes about the January customs.

You told me quite a number of things I did not know before,--such as the rules about the twist of the straw-rope, and the symbolism of the charcoal and many other articles. But I would like to know why the pendent straws should be 3-5-7: is there any mystic signification in those numbers? I thought the j.a.panese mystic number was 8....

Take good care of your health.

Ever very truly yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

k.u.mAMOTO, January, 1892.

DEAR HENDRICK,--Your jolly letter just came--Jan. 3rd,--to find me celebrating the new year after the j.a.panese fashion. There is not one New Year's day here, but three. Over the gate, and all the alcoves of each apartment, the straw rope (_shimenawa_), which is the Shinto emblem of the G.o.ds, is festooned; upon the _kamidana_, or "G.o.d-shelf,"

lights are burning before the tablets of those deities who have pledged themselves in j.a.panese ideographs to love and protect this foreigner,--and I have given to them offerings of rice-cakes and sake.

For the guests are dishes of raw fish, and others which it would take too long to describe, and hot sake. My little wife does the honours.

Before the gate are j.a.panese flags and pine-trees--emblems of green old age and unflinching purpose.

--Well, here I am in Kyushu, a thousand miles and more south of Yokohama, at a salary of 200 yen a month. All my Izumo servants came with me. Our house is not nearly so beautiful as that in Matsue, and the city is devilishly ugly and commonplace,--an enormous, half-Europeanized garrison-town, full of soldiers. I don't like it; but Lord! I must try to make money, for nothing is sure in j.a.pan, and I am now so tied down to the country that I can't quit it, except for a trip, whether the Government employs me or not. I have nine lives depending on my work--wife, wife's mother, wife's father, wife's adopted mother, wife's father's father, and then servants, and a Buddhist student. How would _you_ like that? It wouldn't do in America. But it is nothing here--no appreciable burden. The _moral_ burden, however, is heavy enough. You can't let a little world grow up around you, to depend on you, and then break it all up--not if you are a respectable person. And I indulge in the luxury of "filial piety"--a virtue of which the good and evil results are only known to us Orientals.