The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 23

I have not written you before because feeling under the weather--hungry for sympathy I cannot get, and have no reason really to expect. It is only long after one gets credit as a writer that one wins any recognition as a thinker. My critics are careful to discriminate. One a.s.sures me that as a poet I am impeccable, and "a great man," but that I must remember my theories can only be decided by the "serious student."

Or in other words that I am never to be taken seriously. The men taken seriously get $10,000 a year for trying to do what I could do much better. Poor myself must try to live on "dream-stuff."

I am sorry you cannot read. But still you are fortunate, because you are able to live without being at the mercy of cads and clerks. That alone is a great happiness. I am pestered with requests to do vulgar work for fools at prices they would not dare to offer, if they did not imagine me an object of charity. Happily I can get away from them all, and keep the door locked.

What a privilege to live in Kyoto. I should be glad of a very small post there. The Exhibition is marvellous--showing how j.a.pan will revenge herself on the West. Artistically it is very disappointing. There are funny things--a naked woman (not a "nude study," but simply a naked woman in oil) for which the artist insolently asks $3000. It is worth about three rin. The j.a.panese don't like it, and they are right. But I fear they do not know why they are right.

Ever with best regards, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO PAGE M. BAKER

KOBE, May, 1895.

DEAR PAGE,--It was _almost_ unkind, after all to have sent the very dear picture, because it brought back too vividly hours of pleasant talk and kind words and great projects and all sorts of things which have forever pa.s.sed away. But there was a pleasure in the pain too,--for it is quite a help in life to feel that ever so far away there is somebody who loves you, and whom Time will not quickly change. You look just the same. I--I should scare you were I to send you a picture--you would think Time was much faster than he is. For I am very ancient to behold.

Well, love to you for the picture....

Of news little to tell you that you do not get from other sources.

j.a.pan has yielded the Liao-tung Peninsula; but the nation is full of sullen anger against Russia and the interference-powers. The press is officially muzzled; but there is no mistaking the popular feeling. Even an overthrow of the existing Government is not impossible, and a return to that military autocracy which is really the natural government of an essentially military race. If the j.a.panese house of representatives had not interfered seriously and idiotically with naval expansion, Russian interference would have been almost impossible.

I was on the Matsushima yesterday, the flag-ship. She has few scars outside; but she must have been half torn to pieces inside. Her decks were covered only a few months back with blood and brains. She is only 4280 tons; and she had to fight with two 7400 ton battle-ships and European gunners. She lost half her crew, but won gloriously. (The j.a.panese really never lost one ship--only a torpedo-boat that got run aground.) The people are proud of her with good reason; and the officers let them come with their babies to look at the decks where stains still tell of the sacrifices for j.a.pan's sake.

Ever faithfully and affectionately,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO PAGE M. BAKER.

KOBE, July, 1895.

DEAR PAGE,--Your kindest letter has come. Of course my mention of the postage-payment was only playful spite; for I should be glad to get letters from you upon those conditions. The j.a.panese P.O. people don't seem to do things after our fashion just now, since discharging all their foreign employes. The new clerks get about $10.00 a month ($4.50 American money), and most of them are married on that!

No: I do not see the newspapers. The clubs have them; but I take infinite care to avoid the vicinity of clubs. Sometimes a friend sends me a paper (the _Herald_, for example); and the publishers sent me only a few notices this time,--about three, I think. That _Herald_ I saw, through kindness of a man whom I don't even know.

I don't know that you are wrong about not ordering the dress just now.

The taller the little Constance gets, the better she will look in one. I fancy that the summer dress will be best,--it shows the figure a little: the winter dress, for a cold day, makes one look a little bit roly-poly.

Perhaps a little school-girl's dress would please you;--though it is not very dear, but rather very cheap, it is pretty,--quite pretty and of many colours. The j.a.panese robes bought in j.a.pan by foreign ladies are especially made for them;--they are not the real thing. No pretty grown-up American girl would feel comfortable in the j.a.panese girdle, which is not tied round the waist, but round the hips,--so that j.a.panese women, well dressed, look shorter-limbed then they really are, and they are short of limb compared with the women of Northern races. Much stuff has been written, however, about the short-legged j.a.panese. I have seen as well-limbed men as one could care to see:--they are shorter of stature than Northern Europeans or Americans, but they would make a very good comparison with French, Spanish, or Italians--the dark types. They are heavily built, too, sometimes. The k.u.mamoto troops are very st.u.r.dy; and the weight of the men surprised me. But the finest men, except labourers, that I have seen in j.a.pan are the men-of-war's-men,--the blue-jackets. They are picked from the st.u.r.diest fishing population of Southern j.a.pan, where the men grow big, and I have seen several over six feet.

But I have been digressing. It was very sweet,--your little picture of home life with the darling _fillette_. She is much more advanced than my boy. He is younger, of course; but girls mature intellectually so much quicker than boys. He is puzzled, too, by having to learn two languages,--each totally different in thought construction; but he knows, when the postman gives him a letter, which language it is written in. I think, though it is not for me to say it, that the whole street loves him;--for everybody brings him presents and pets him. At first he worried me a little by calling out to every foreigner,--some rough ones into the bargain,--"Hei, papa!" But the old sea-captains and the mercantile folk thus addressed would take him up in their arms and pet him; and there is a big captain with a red face who watches for him regularly, to give him candies, etc. We are going soon to another house; and we shall miss the good kind captain.

I'm still out of work, and going to stay out of it. I think I can live by my pen. I am not sure, of course; but I can hang out here a couple of years more, anyhow,--and trust to luck. My publishers seem to be all right.

Infinite thanks about the syndicate project. I can certainly undertake the matter for the figure named,--for I won't be away more than six months. I have written my publishers to ask if I can get certain proofs of a new book (not quite finished yet--so please don't mention it) early enough to start about October. I should like one provision,--that I may choose another point, such as Java, in preference to Manila or Ryukyu,--supposing ugly circ.u.mstances, such as cholera, intervene.

I might try a French colony,--Tonkin, Noumea, or Pondicherry. At all events this would not hurt the syndicate's interests. I should hope to be back in spring; and I would not disappoint you as to quality. Perhaps the more queer places I go to, the better for the syndicate.

I don't know what to tell you about war-matters. The unjust interference of the three powers has to be considered, though, from two points of view. The first is, that the anger of the nation may create such a feeling in the next Diet as to provoke a temporary suspension of the const.i.tution. The second is that most of us feel the check to j.a.pan was rather in the interest of foreign residents. The feeling against foreigners had been very strong, not without reason, as the foreign newspapers, excepting the _Mail_ and the _Kobe Chronicle_, had mostly opposed the new treaties, and criticized the war in an unkindly spirit.

Besides, there never had been any really good feeling between foreigners and j.a.panese in the open ports. Now there was really danger that after a roaring triumph, without check, over China, the previous feeling against foreigners would take more violent form. The sympathetic action of England improved the feeling very much; and really I think the check will in the end benefit j.a.pan. She will be obliged to double or triple her naval strength, and wait a generation. In the meantime she will gain much in other power, military and industrial. Then she will be able to tackle Russia,--if she feels as she now does. The army and navy were furiously eager to fight Russia. But Russia has enormous staying power; and the fleets of three nations stood between the 150,000 men abroad and the sh.o.r.es of j.a.pan. Of course it was a risk. England might have settled the naval side of the matter in j.a.pan's favour. But war would have had sad consequences to industry and commerce. The j.a.panese statesmen were right. Besides, what does j.a.pan lose?--Nothing, except a position; for the retrocession must be heavily paid for. The anger of the people is only a question of national vanity wounded;--and though they would sacrifice everything for war, it is better that they were not suffered by the few wise heads to do so.

I was sorry about your having to slap that fellow. But you will always be the old-style Knight--preferring to give a straight-out blow, than simply to sit down at a desk and score a man every day, unwearyingly, as Northern editors do.

I am glad to hear of Matas. I used to love him very much....

As to kissing in j.a.pan, there is no kissing. Kissing is not "forbidden"

at all;--there is simply no impulse to kiss among the Turanian races.

All Aryan races have the impulse, as an affectionate greeting. Children do not kiss their parents;--but the pressing of cheek to cheek is nearly the same thing--as a demonstration. Mothers lip their little ones;--but--how shall I explain? The kiss, as we understand it in the Occident, is considered not as an affectionate, but as a _s.e.xual_ impulse, or as of kin to such an impulse. Now this is absolutely true.

Undoubtedly the modern kiss of the cultivated West may have no such meaning in 99,997 cases out of 99,998. But the original primitive signification of pressing lip to lip, as Aryan races do, or even lip to cheek, is physiologically traceable to the love which is too often called _l'amour_, but which has little to do with the higher sense of affection. With us the impulse of a child to kiss is absolutely _instinctive_. The j.a.panese child has no such impulse whatever; but his way of caressing is none the less delicious.

On the other hand, it is significant that the j.a.panese word for "dear," "lovable" is also used to signify "sweetness" of the material saccharine kind. But perhaps this is offset by the fact that j.a.panese confectionery, though delicious, never nauseates through over-sweetness; and that the quant.i.ty of sugar used is very much less than with us.

One never gets tired of _kwashi_; but plumcake and bonbons in the West need to be sparingly used. Perhaps we want too much sweetness of all kinds. The j.a.panese are in all things essentially temperate and self-restrained--as a people. Of course, Western notions and examples begin to spoil them a little.

It is possible by the time this reaches you that I shall have become a j.a.panese citizen,--for legal reasons. (Say nothing yet about it.) If I marry my wife before the consul, then she becomes English, and loses the right to hold property in her own country. Marrying her by j.a.panese custom will not be acknowledged as legal, without special permission of the minister of foreign affairs,--but if I get the permission, then she becomes English, and the _boy_ too. So my marriage, though legal according to every moral code, and according to the old law, becomes illegal by new law, and the wife and family--as I really follow the j.a.panese code, supporting father, mother, and grandparents--have no rights except through a will, which relatives can dispute. I therefore cut the puzzle by changing nationality, and becoming a j.a.panese. Then I lose all chance of Government employ at a living salary; for the Englishman who becomes a j.a.panese is only paid by the j.a.panese scale.

Also I lose the really powerful protection given to Englishmen by their own nation. Finally I have to pay taxes much bigger than consular fees, and my boy becomes liable to military service. (But that won't hurt him.) I hope in any case to give him a scientific education abroad.

The trouble is I am now forty-five. I'll be sleeping in some Buddhist cemetery before I can see him quite independent....

I have lost friends because their wives didn't like me--more than once;--as Chamberlain says, "No: you'll never be a ladies' man." But the kindly spirit of Mrs. Baker shows even through your own letters;--and if I can ever see you again, I know that, although not a ladies' man, I won't be disliked in one friend's home as a fugitive visitor. Say everything grateful to her for me that you can.

Good-bye, with love to your pretty gold-head,--and regards to all friends.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KOBE, July, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--In reading Schopenhauer (I believe you have the splendid Haldane & Kemp version in three volumes: it is said to preserve even the remarkable sonority of the German original), you may notice where Schopenhauer failed, only through want of knowledge undeveloped in his time. While highly appreciating Lamarck,--the greatest of the evolutionists before Darwin, greater even than Goethe,--he finds fault with his theory as not showing proof of the prototype formless animal from which all organic forms existing are derived. Therefore Schopenhauer insisted on the potential prototype existing in the Will only. But since Schopenhauer's day, the material formless prototypal animal has been found; and the theory of Schopenhauer as to forms falls back into a region of pure metaphysics.

He is none the less valuable on that account. He represents the soul (psyche) of an enormous fact, or at least a soul which can be fitted to the body of science for the time being. He has been justly called a German Buddhist; and his philosophy is entirely based on the study of Brahmanic and Buddhist texts. The only absolutely novel theory in his book is the essay on s.e.xual love,--vol. 3 in your edition. There is one defect in it, but that does not hurt the value of the whole. And then the splendour of style, of self-a.s.sertion, of imagery Huxley equalled only, I think twice, in all of his essays. Of course Schopenhauer belongs to the evolutional school; that is the reason why he has been taken up to-day after long neglect. His work gives new force to evolutional psychology of the new school. The most remarkable popular effect of the newer school has not, I think, yet been noticed. It is in fiction; and the success of a work taken in this line recently has made a fortune for publishers and author. Unfortunately, poor I have not the constructive art necessary to attempt anything of the kind--not yet!

Perhaps in twenty years more.

Very faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KOBE, August, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--A delicious surprise,--though one that gave some pain; for I suffered to think you should have used your eyes to such an extent for my sake. Mason, too, one day actually wrote me that he would copy something for me if I needed it (which luckily I had got from another source): I should be pained to have either of you try your eyes for my poor vagaries. Please don't think me too selfish;--it was simply lovable of you, but don't do it again.

I think I may be able to use a fragment or two effectively: what I want now to get is the rhythm used in the singing,--and that none of my people can remember. They said it was very wonderful, but very difficult to catch: so that it would seem some melodies are as hard for the j.a.panese themselves to learn by ear, as they are for us to so learn.

I had the same curious experience at Sakai and in Kizuki; yet I asked persons who had been listening to the singing for several hours, and were natives of the place. They all said, "Ah! that is very difficult.

So a good _ondo tori_ is hard to find; and they are paid well to come to our festivals." But when the woman comes again I shall try to syllabify the measure on paper.

I can feel the popular mind in the peasant songs: in the military songs I cannot. But there is a queer variation in tone used in military singing which is very effective. The leader suddenly turns down his voice nearly a full octave, and all the chorus follow: it is like a sudden and terrible menace,--then all go back to high tenor notes again.

What you tell me about Ryukyu priests' songs surprised me. You must have got everything that could be got there in an astonishingly short time. I sent you the Nara _miko_-songs,--mystical hymns about sowing, etc.,--very artless. The Nara and Kompira _miko_ are really virgins. _Entre nous_ I am sorry to say that the _miko_ of Kizuki are not: but, as they ought to be, there is no use specifying in any public way. It would be like denying the virtue of nuns in general, because one or two sisters fall from grace. While the ideal lives anywhere it strikes me as wrong to insist too much on realism.

I know you make a collection of everything relating to j.a.pan, so I must send you a photo of Yuko Hatakeyama. I had it copied from a badly faded one--so it does not come out well. You are not of those who refuse to see beyond the visible; and though there is nothing beautiful or ideal in this figure, it was certainly the earthly chrysalis of a very precious and beautiful soul, which I have tried to make the West love a little bit. So you may prize it.

Some one, thinking to please me, sent me by this mail a large French periodical, full of gravures p.o.r.no-or semi-p.o.r.nographiques, Saint Anthony and French courtesans and angels mixed up together. I burned the thing,--astonished at the revulsion of feeling it produced in myself.