The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 8

I translated into Hearnian dialect all you said. And my wife, whose name is Setsu, or Chi-yo (alternative), knows you well by your photograph, and said such nice things about that photograph that I dare not tell you. Which is all the more extraordinary because when I showed her some pictures of "distinguished foreigners" she and the girls all said that if they should ever meet such people they would "become Buddhas for fear"--i. e., die of fright. American and English faces--their deep-set eyes--terrify unsophisticated j.a.panese. Children cry with fear at the sight of a foreigner. So your photo must reveal exceptional qualities to make such an impression....

Everybody gets drunk here to-day; but a cultivated j.a.panese is never offensively drunk. To get _properly_, politely drunk upon sake is the _summum bonum_.... Although a gentleman knows how to act, however drunk, it is the custom, when your host makes you drunker than usual (which delights him), to call at the house next morning, and thank him for the entertainment--at the same time apologizing for any _possible_ mistakes.

Of course, there are no ladies at men's dinners--only professional dancing-girls, _maiko_ or _geisha_.

Work progresses; but the barrier of language is a serious one. My project to study Buddhism must be indefinitely delayed on that account.

For the deeper mysteries of Buddhism cannot be explained in the Hearnian dialect.

What some people say about Miss Bisland--ah! I mean Mrs. Wetmore--being only beautiful when she wants to be is, I think, perfectly true. She can change into seventeen different women. She used to make me almost believe the stories about Circe and Lilith. She laughed to scorn the terrible scientific test of the photograph--of the science which reveals new _nebulae_ and tells a man in advance whether he is going to get the small-pox or not. No two photos of her ever represented the same human being. In ordinary mortals the sort of thing called _Ego_, which is not "I" but "They," is worked up into a recognizable composite photo. But in her case, 'tis quite otherwise. The different dead that live in her, live quite separately from each other, in different rooms, and receive upon different afternoons. And yet--if even Rudyard Kipling were to write the truth about that person--or rather that ghostly congregation of persons called Elizabeth Bisland,--who but a crazy man would believe that truth? a.s.suredly Mr. W. ought to think himself lucky. Ever to get tired of Elizabeth is out of human possibility. There are too many different Elizabeths, belonging to different historical epochs, countries, and conditions. If he should tire of one Elizabeth,--lo!

there will appear another. And there is one very terrible Elizabeth, whom I had a momentary glimpse of once, and whom it will not be well for Mr. W. or anybody else to summon from her retirement. But I am glad for the compound Elizabeth that she has this Protector in reserve.--Lord!

how irreverently I have been talking! But that is because you can read under the irreverence....

What can't be insured against is earthquake. I have become afraid.

Do you know that the earthquake the other day in Gifu, Aichi, etc., destroyed nearly 200,000 houses and nearly 10,000 lives? My house in far-off Matsue rocked and groaned like a steamer in a typhoon. It isn't the quake one's afraid of: it is being held down under a ton of timber and slowly burned alive. That is what happened to most of the dead. Five millions of dollars will scarcely relieve the distress....

Well, here's a thousand happy New Years to you and yours,--all luck, all blessings, all glorious sensations.

Ever from your old disoccidentalized chum, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

k.u.mAMOTO, April, 1892.

DEAR HENDRICK,--Just had a long and delightful letter from you, and Mallock's book. I hate the Jesuit; but he has a particular cleverness of his own indeed. I hate him first because he is insincere, as you suggest; then I hate him because he is morbid, with a priestly morbidness--sickly, cynical, unhealthy. I like Kipling's morbidness, which is manly and full of enormous resolve and defiance in the teeth of G.o.d and h.e.l.l and nature,--but the other--no! This book is not free from the usual faults. It is like Paul Bourget boiled into thin soup, and flavoured with a dash of M. de Camors. The Markham girl was certainly Feuillet's imagination; but she is excellently done. Really, I don't know;--I asked myself: "If it was I?" ... And conscience answered: "If it was _you_, in spite of love and duty and honour and h.e.l.lfire staring you in the face you would have gone after her,--and tried to console yourself by considering the Law of Attraction of Bodies and Souls in the incomprehensible cosmical order of things, which is older than the G.o.ds." And I was very much inclined to demur; but conscience repeated: "Oh! don't be such a liar and quibbler;--you know you would! That was the only part of the book you really liked. Your ancestors were not religious people: you lack const.i.tutional morality. That's why you are poor, and unsuccessful, and void of mental balance, and an exile in j.a.pan. You know you cannot be happy in an English moral community. You are a fraud--a vile Latin--a vicious French-hearted scalawag."

And I could not say anything, because what conscience observed was true--to a considerable extent. "_Vive le monde antique!_" ...

I have been thinking a heap, because of being much alone. (The j.a.panese do not understand Western thought at all--at least not its emotional side. Therefore devour time and devour thought even while they stimulate it.) ...

Now about these Shadows. Yes, there are forces about one,--vague, working soundlessly, imperceptibly, softening one as the action of air softens certain surfaces of rock while hardening others. The magnetism of another faith about you necessarily polarizes that loose-quivering needle of desire in a man that seeks source of attraction in spite of synthetic philosophy. The general belief in an infinite past and future interpenetrates one somehow. When you find children who do wrong are always warned, "Ah! your future birth will be unhappy;" when you find two lovers drinking death together, and leaving behind them letters saying, "This is the influence of our last birth, when we broke our promise to become husband and wife;" and last, but not least, when some loving woman murmurs, laughingly: "In the last life thou wert a woman and I a man, and I loved thee much; but thou didst not love me at all,"--you begin to doubt if you do not really believe like everybody else.

About the training of the senses. The idea is admirable, but _alas!_--a very clever Frenchman five years ago, in the _Revue Politique et Litteraire_, almost exhausted it. He represented a man who had cultivated his eye so that he could see the bacteria in the air, and the grain of metals,--also being able to adjust his eyes to distance. He had trained his ear so as to hear all sounds of growth and decomposition. He had trained his nose to smell all substances supposed to have no smell.

He made a diagram of the five senses thus:--

The way impressions come to--

YOU [Ill.u.s.tration] ME [Ill.u.s.tration]

I translated it for the _T.-D._

For a little while, good-bye and best happiness.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

k.u.mAMOTO, 1892.

DEAR E. H.,-- ... Your thoughts about the Shadows of the East are touching. You ought to be able to write something beautiful and quite new if you had time....

You have been seized by the fascination of monstrous cities built up to heaven, and eternally sending their thunder to the smoke-blacked sky,--cities where we live by machinery. I can shudder now only to think of walking down a street between miles of houses two hundred feet high, with a roaring of traffic through them as of a torrent in a canon. And that fascination means elegance, fashion, social duties.... I have been trying to deal with these two problems: "What has been the moral value of Christianity to mankind?" and "Why is Western civilization still in slavery to religious hypocrisy?" The answer to the former seems to be that without the brutal denial of the value of life and pleasure by Christianity, we could never have learned that the highest enjoyments are, after all, intellectual, and that progress can be effected only by self-sacrifice to interest and indifference to physical gratifications.

And the latter question, though I have not yet solved it, seems to suggest that the hypocrisy itself may have large hidden value,--may be in process of trans.m.u.tation into a truth.

Yes, j.a.panese women are all that your question implies you would wish them to be. They are children, of course. They perceive every possible shade of thought,--vexation, doubt, or pleasure,--as it pa.s.ses over the face; and they know all you do not tell them. If you are unhappy about anything, then they say: "I will pray to the Kami-sama for my lord,"--and they light a little lamp, and clap their hands and pray.

And the ancient G.o.ds hearken unto them; and the heart of the foreign barbarian is therewith lightened and made luminous with sunshine. And he orders the merchants of curious textures to bring their goods to the house, which they do--piling them up like mountains; and there is such choice that the pleasure of the purchase is dampened by the sense of inability to buy everything in this world. And the merchants, departing, leave behind them dreams in little j.a.panese brains of beautiful things to be bought next year.

Also j.a.panese women have curious Souls. The other day in Nagano, a politician told a treacherous lie. Whereupon his wife robed herself all in white as those are robed who are about to journey to the world of ghosts, and purified her lips according to the holy rite, and, taking from the storeroom an ancient family sword, thereupon slew herself.

And she left a letter, regretting that she had but one life to give in expiation of the shame and the wrong of that lie. And the people do now worship at her grave, and strew flowers thereupon, and pray for daughters with hearts as brave.... But the worms are eating her.

Because you sent me that horrid book, I revenge myself. I send you a much more horrid book. But if you do not enjoy it, I shall commit _hara kiri_, or _seppuku_, which is the polite name. And a woman wrote it--a woman! Christopher Columbus! what a _terrible_ woman she must be!...

The "tract" you sent is giving much amus.e.m.e.nt to friends here. Send anything _really_ good of that sort you can find: it makes life happier for the exile.

I am not easy about my book, of which I now await the proofs. It lacks colour--it isn't like the West Indian book. But the world here is not forceful: it is all washed in faint blues and greys and greens. There are really gamboge, or saffron-coloured valleys,--and lilac fields; but these exist only in the early summer and the rape-plant season, and ordinarily j.a.pan is chromatically spectral. My next book will probably be on Buddhism in common life.

You write me delightful letters, which, alas! I can't answer. Well, they are not answerable in themselves. They are thinking. I can only say this about one point: the isolation ought--unless you are physically tired by the day's work--to prove of value. All the best work is done the way ants do things--by tiny but tireless and regular additions. I wouldn't recommend introspection,--except in commentary. You _must_ see interesting life. Of course only in flashes and patches. But preserve in writing the memory of these. In a year you will be astounded to find them self-arranging, kaleidoscopically, into something symmetrical,--and trying to live. Then play G.o.d, and breathe into the nostrils,--and be astonished and pleased.

Lovingly ever yours LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO PAGE M. BAKER

k.u.mAMOTO, June, 1892.

DEAR PAGE,--To-day, second of June, your kind letter came, enclosing a draft for 163; and I write in haste to catch the mail....

And now, ten thousand thanks, from the bottom of my much-scarified heart.

I am sorry I did not get the _T.-D._, as it would have helped me to get out my book quicker,--my first book. It ought to be out this Fall; and I think it will be tolerably large,--a little larger than "Two Years in the French West Indies;" but it is only an introductory book.

Really, it is very queer; but you seem to be the best friend I've got outside of j.a.pan. You really do things for a fellow--great big things; and n.o.body else seems inclined to do much of anything....

I send you to-day a better photo of my little wife, and some other things; and you will shortly get a copy of Chamberlain's "Things j.a.panese" I have ordered for you.... As for making a present to Setsu (that is her name in j.a.panese; in Chinese Chi-yo, or Tchi-yo[1]), I don't think you could send her anything Western she would understand.

And I would not wish you to take so much trouble. The best thing you can do to please her is to be good to me. She has really everything she wants (you know j.a.panese women wear no earrings, necklaces, or jewelry as ours do); and what she really wants is only made in j.a.pan; and I am wickedly trying to keep her as innocent of foreign life as possible.

So whenever she shows a liking even for foreign textures (many are now thrown on the market) I persuade her that j.a.panese goods are twice as pretty and durable, and for fear she might not believe me I usually manage to find some j.a.panese stuff that really is much better than the foreign article on sale....

[1] (Like Tchi-Nim?)--It means "Life-for-a-Thousand-Years,"--a name of good omen.]

Oh, about distances. I am in Kyushu, the southern island, you know,--very far from Tokyo, and by the route much farther than as the crow flies. What I meant by 2000 miles south of Tokyo was the Loochoo Islands. You know they belong to j.a.pan, but perhaps I am wrong as to distance. The Loochoo Islands compose what is called _Okinawa Ken_ (ken is province).... I find I shall not be able to go to Loochoo this summer, however; I must make studies somewhere else for a new book. Of course you will get my book as soon as it comes out.

In that book you will find a good deal about what you ask in relation to my way of living, etc. But as to eating, I have said very little.

The fact is I lived for one year exclusively on j.a.panese food, which Europeans, among others Mr. Chamberlain, consider almost impossible.

I must confess, however, that it broke me down. After twelve months I could not eat at all. You know j.a.panese food is raw fish and fresh fish, rice, bean-curds (they look like custard), seaweed, dried cuttle-fish,--rarely chicken or eggs. In short, of five hundred j.a.panese dishes, the basis is rice, fish, beans, lotus, various vegetables, including bamboo shoots, and seaweed. Confectionery is eaten between meals only, and sparingly. Tea is never allowed to become strong: it is a pale straw-colour, without sugar or milk, and once used to it, you cannot bear the sight of European tea any more. But I had to return to the flesh-pots of Egypt. I now eat j.a.panese food only once a day; and morning and evening indulge in beefsteak, bread, and Ba.s.s's Ale.

One becomes fond of j.a.panese sake (rice-wine); but it can only be eaten with j.a.panese food. A barrel of the best costs about $3.50. It is extremely deceiving. It looks like lemonade; but it is heavy as sherry.

Happily it has not the after-effects of sherry. There is no liquor in the world upon which a man becomes so quickly intoxicated, and yet none of which the effects last so short a time. The intoxication is pleasant as the effect of opium or hasheesh. It is a soft, pleasant, luminous exhilaration: everything becomes brighter, happier, lighter;--then you get very sleepy. At j.a.panese dinners it is the rule to become slightly exhilarated; but not to drink enough to talk thickly, or walk crooked.

The ability to drink at banquets requires practice--long practice. With European wines, the rule is, I believe, that hearty eating prevents the drink from taking too much effect. But with j.a.panese sake it is exactly the opposite. There are banquets of many kinds, and the man who is invited to one at which extensive drinking may be expected is careful to start in upon an empty, or almost empty, stomach. By not eating one can drink a good deal. The cups are very small, and of many curious shapes; but one maybe expected to empty fifty. A quart of sake is a good load; two quarts require iron nerves to stand. But among the j.a.panese there are wonderful drinkers. At a military officer's banquet a captain offered me a tumbler holding a good pint of sake,--I almost fainted at the sight of it; for it was only the first. But a friend said to me: "Only drink a little, and pa.s.s it back"--which I did. Stronger heads emptied cup after cup like water. "Oh, that is nothing," my friend said; "wait till you see an old-fashioned cup." He showed me something like a wash-basin for size,--a beautiful lacquered bowl, holding, I should guess, at the very least a quart and a half. "A valiant warrior was expected," he said, "to swallow this at one draft, and wait for more." I should not like to attempt it, unless I were suffering very badly from chills and fever. When very tired and cold, one can drink a great deal of sake without harm.

About my every-day life. Well, it is the simplest and most silent of lives,--in a simple j.a.panese house. I use one chair, only for writing at a high table on account of my eyes. Most of my life I spend squatting on the floor. Europeans can seldom get used to this; but it has become second nature to me.