The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 9

I always wear j.a.panese clothes in the house, of course. We rest, eat, talk, read, and sleep on the floor. But then, you do not know, perhaps, what a j.a.panese floor is. It is like a great soft mattress: the real floor is covered by heavy mats, fitted to one another like mattresses set edge to edge; and these cannot be lifted up except by a workman: they are really part of the building. Then this floor is spotlessly clean. No dust is ever suffered upon it,--not a speck. Therefore we live barefooted in summer, or wearing only stockings in winter. The bed consists of a series of heavy quilts of pretty colours--like very thick comforts, piled one upon the other on the floor. By day these are rolled up and stowed out of sight. So in a j.a.panese house you see no furniture,--only in some recess, a graceful vase, and one _kakemono_, or hanging picture painted on silk. That is all--except the smoking-box (_hibachi_) in the middle of the room, surrounded by kneeling-cushions.

In the evening the j.a.panese bath is ready. It is _almost_ scalding always--hard to get used to; but the best in the world because you can't take cold after it. It consists of an immense tub, with a little furnace _in_ it which heats the water. For amus.e.m.e.nts we have the j.a.panese theatres, the street-festivals, visits of friends, j.a.panese newspapers, occasional pilgrimages to curious places, and--delight of delights in some cities--_shopping_, j.a.panese shopping.

Bad boys,--and not obliged to give good and great moral examples,--people who are not strictly moral in their virtues like you and me,--sometimes hire _geisha_ or dancing girls to amuse them....

At all banquets--except those of teachers here--there are _geisha_. When you sit down (I mean kneel down) to eat, a band of beautiful girls come in to wait upon you, with exquisite voices, and beautiful dresses, etc.

These are _geisha_. After a while they dance. If you wish to fall in love with them, you may....

In Matsue I often saw _geisha_ dance: they were at all banquets. But at teachers' banquets in k.u.mamoto they are not allowed. We are strictly moral in Kyushu....

Lo!--it's nearly time to close the mail for the outgoing steamer. So, dear Page, I must conclude for the moment in great haste.

With best regards to Mrs. Baker, best remembrances and grat.i.tude to you, excuse this scrawl, and believe me ever faithfully

Your friend, LAFCADIO HEARN.

Really, it seems to me as if I hadn't thanked you at all. You are simply divine about doing kind things. My little wife sends you this greeting with her own hand,--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It means: "_May you live a thousand years!_"

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

KAGAWA, SAKAI, August, 1892.

DEAR NISHIDA,-- ... It made us both very happy to hear you had been persuaded to stop at our little house; for although it is hot and small, still you would feel more homelike there, with Izumo folk, than at the big dreary hotels of k.u.mamoto. I hope you will be able to stop a little while with us now at Mionoseki.

I like Oki very, very much--much better than k.u.mamoto. I like country people, fishermen, sailors, primitive manners, simple ways: all these delight me, and they are in Oki. To watch the life and customs of those people is very pleasant, and would be profitable to me in a literary way if I had time to spare. Oki is worth six months' literary study for me.

I hope to see it again. The only unpleasant thing is the awful smell of the cuttle-fish. But I will tell you all my impressions when we meet....

With kindest regards from myself and Setsu,--hoping to see you soon, as ever,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

MIONOSEKI, August, 1892.

DEAR NISHIDA,--We felt quite lonesome after you went away, and especially at supper-time,--when there were only two mats, instead of three, laid upon the _suzumi-dai_, overlooking the bay, and the twinkling of the Golden Dragon.

Next morning the water was rough, and made a great noise; and I said, "That is because Nishida San has sent us some eggs." But in the afternoon the bay again became like a mirror; and I succeeded in teaching Masayoshi to lie on his back in the water. Quite late in the afternoon the little Sakai Maru came in, and brought a magnificent box of eggs, and your letter, and a copy of the _Nippon_.

You are too good; and I felt not less pleased to find myself so kindly remembered than sorry to think of the trouble you took for us. But the eggs were more than welcome. The landlord cooked them in a little quadrangular pan; and each one looked like a j.a.panese flag, with the Red Sun in the middle. A thousand thanks to you, and to your kindest mother,--and to all your family warmest regards.

By the way, speaking of the Great Deity of Mionoseki, last evening we had a good laugh at the arguments of a clever barber, who came to cut my _kappa_-hair. I noticed he had a soldier's belt instead of an _obi_.

I questioned him, through Setsu; and found he had been many years in the army. In the army they gave the soldiers eggs; and he hated eggs at first. But he learned to eat them, and found that they made him stronger. Whenever he ate many eggs, he could blow his bugle much better. Then he became fond of eggs. Still he gets his friends secretly to send him eggs; and the Great Deity of Mionoseki is not angry. He says: "What nonsense! Suppose the c.o.c.k _did_ crow at the wrong hour, is not Koto-shiro-nushi no Mikoto a _Kami sama_?--and how are we to believe that a _Kami sama_ does not know the right time? And suppose the _wanizame_ did bite him,--then it is at the _wanizame_ he ought to have been angry,--not at the c.o.c.k. I don't believe Koto-shiro-nushi no Kami could be so foolish. Indeed it is very wrong to tell such a story about him. I like eggs. I pity the people of Mionoseki, who do not know the rare pleasure of eating a well-cooked egg" (etc., etc.). "If the Deity was angry with the c.o.c.k, he should have eaten him." ...

With many grateful regards, Ever most truly, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

November, 1892.

DEAR OLD FELLOW,-- ... What a beastly nightmare that woman who married the preacher! High-pressure civilization only produces these types.--But, Lord! what is to be the end?... The race will still be to the mentally strong as well as to the physically strong. But the women fit for fertile maternity, and equally fit to discuss the fourth dimension of s.p.a.ce, are yet rare,--and apt to be a little terrible. The cost of intellectual race-expansion is more terrible,--is frightful; and then the expansion cannot _ever_ become universal. The many must profit by the few. To make 1 of the few, there must be, I suppose, at least 111,111 of such monstrosities created as that one you wrote of.

Isn't the hunger for the eternal feminine much like the other hunger?--to be completely exorcised in the same way. Marriage seems to me the certain destruction of all that emotion and suffering,--so that one afterwards looks back at the old times with wonder. One cannot dream or desire anything more after love is trans.m.u.ted into the friendship of marriage. It is like a haven from which you can see the dangerous sea-currents, running like violet bands beyond you out of sight. It seems to me (though I'm a poor judge of such matters) that it doesn't make a man any happier to have an intellectual wife--unless he marries for society. The less intellectual, the more lovable: so long as there is neither coa.r.s.eness nor foolishness. For intellectual converse a man _can't_ have really with women: womanhood is antagonistic to it. And emotional truth is quite as plain to the childish mind as to the mind of Herbert Spencer or of Clifford. The child and the G.o.d come equally near to the eternal truth. But then marriage in a complex civilization is really a terrible problem: there are so _many_ questions involved.

Oh!--_you_ talk of being without intellectual companionship! O ye Eight Hundred Myriads of G.o.ds! What would you do if you were me. Lo! the illusion is gone!--j.a.pan in Kyushu is like Europe;--except I have no friend. The differences in ways of thinking, and the difficulties of language, render it impossible for an _educated_ j.a.panese to find pleasure in the society of a European. Here is an astounding fact. The j.a.panese child is as close to you as the European child--perhaps closer and sweeter, because infinitely more natural and naturally refined.

Cultivate his mind, and the more it is cultivated, the _further you push him_ from you. Why? Because there the race-antipodalism shows itself.

As the Oriental thinks naturally to the left where we think to the right, the more you cultivate him the more strongly will he think in the opposite direction from you. Finis sweetness, sympathy, friendship.

Now, my scholars in this great Government school are not boys, but men. They speak to me only in cla.s.s. The teachers never speak to me at all. I go to the college (two miles away) by jinrikisha and return after cla.s.s,--always alone, no mental company but books. But at home everything is sweet.

At the college there is always a recess of half an hour at noon, for dining. I do not dine, but climb the hill behind the college. There is a grey old cemetery, where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." From between the tombs I can look down on the Dai Go Koto Chugakko, with its huge modern brick buildings and its tumultuous life, as in a bird's-eye view. I am only there never alone. For Buddha sits beside me, and also looks down upon the college through his half-closed eyelids of stone. There is moss on his nose and his hands,--moss on his back, of course! And I always say to him: "O Master, what do you think of all this?--is it not vanity? There is no faith there, no creed, no thought of the past life nor of the future life, nor of Nirvana,--only chemistry and cube-geometry and trigonometry,--and the most d.a.m.nable 'English language.'" He never answers me; but he looks very sad,--smiles just like one who has received an injury which he cannot return,--and you know that is the most pathetic of all smiles.

And the snakes twist before my feet as I descend to the sound of the bell.--There is my only companion for you! but I like him better than those who look like him waiting for me in the cla.s.sroom. Ever with best regards,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

k.u.mAMOTO, January, 1893.

DEAR NISHIDA,--I do not know how to thank you enough for your last letter;--indeed I must tell you frankly that I felt ashamed of having put you to such trouble involuntarily, for I had no idea how complicated the matter was when I wrote to you for information about the origin of the belief. And now let me beg of you never to take so much trouble again on my account. I think I can hear you protesting that it was only a pleasure. I am sure it was a pleasure to help me; but I am too much of a literary man not to know exactly the time-cost of the work, especially in a language not your own. So I will again beg you not to take so much trouble for me at any future time--as it would cause me pain.

And now let me say something else about other letters. You spoke of _mistakes_. Do you know that I think your letters are very wonderful?

There are extremely few mistakes; and there are very seldom even incorrectnesses in the use of idioms. This is rare in j.a.pan. Very few j.a.panese, even among those who have been abroad, can write an informal letter without mistakes of a serious kind. You write letters much as a well-educated German or Frenchman would--showing only rarely, by some unfamiliar turn of expression, by the elision of a preposition, or (but this is very seldom indeed) by a sudden change of tense, that it is not an Englishman who writes. And in a few years more, even these little signs will disappear. It is very wonderful to me to see how a few j.a.panese have been able to master English without ever leaving j.a.pan.

A point of much value to me in your explanation was the fact that too many souls are held to be as bad as too few. I had imagined the opposite to be the case, and had so written. But as I put the statement into the mouth of a story-teller, it will read all right enough; and I can correct the erroneous impression by a footnote.

There is rejoicing here over the non-abolition of the school. Your predictions have been well fulfilled. Several new books I recommended have been adopted; but there were changes made in my list, I think for the worse. Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" (Ginn, Heath & Co.'s school-text edition) has been adopted for the younger cla.s.s. I recommended this book for the extreme purity and simplicity of its English, which reads like a song. I tried to get "Cuore" adopted, but could not succeed: they said it was "too childish." I tried Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome;"

and that I think they will get. Then some cla.s.sic texts--Burke's Essays (selected) were adopted instead of a volume of stories I proposed. They adopted also "The Book of Golden Deeds," a volume of anecdotes of virtue and courage. As for my own cla.s.ses, they still give me no books at all; and I teach entirely by word of mouth and chalk. Still, considering the short time given to each cla.s.s, I believe this is best. The main thing is to teach them to express themselves in English without books to help them. I have noticed that at one period of the course there is always a sudden improvement, as if there had been also a sudden development of intelligence,--between the third and fourth cla.s.s. It corresponds to a change of capacity I noticed also in the Jinjo Chugakko. It might be indicated by lines, thus:--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Between 3 and 4 the increase of power is like a leap. But after that (in the higher schools) I don't think there is much progress. Thereafter I fancy that in most cases the highest capacity has been reached, and then the strain comes. The students attempt to do on rice and gruel what foreign students can only do on beef, eggs, puddings, heavy nutritious diet. In the eternal order of things the overstrain comes.

The higher education will not give the desired results for at least another generation,--because the physique of the student must be raised to meet it. The higher education requires a physiological change,--an increase of brain capacity in actual development of tissue, an increase of nervous energy, and consequently a higher standard of living. That there have been wonderful exceptions in j.a.panese scholarship makes no difference: it is a question of general averages. The student of to-day is not sufficiently strong and sufficiently nourished to bear the tremendous strain put upon him at the higher schools and the university. Wherefore he loses some of his best qualities in mere effort. The higher schools don't feed their boys well--not so well by half as the Government feeds the soldiers. At least so I have been a.s.sured.... Yours faithfully,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

k.u.mAMOTO, January, 1893.

DEAR NISHIDA,--Your charming letter has just come, full of news and things to be grateful for. There is some news here too. Mr. Kano is gone! We are all very, very sorry....