The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 24

(The work was beautiful in its way, of course, but the way!) After all, it seems to me that j.a.panese life is essentially chaste: its ideals are chaste. I can feel now exactly how a j.a.panese feels about certain foreign tendencies. I know all about j.a.panese picture-books of a certain cla.s.s--innocent things in their very frankness: there is more real evil, or at least more moral weakness in any number of certain French public prints. It strikes me also that the charm even of the _joro_ to the j.a.panese mind is quite different from any corresponding Western feeling. She figures simply as an ideal lady of old time, and the graces cultivated in her, and the costume donned, are those of an ideal past.

The animalism of half-exposures and suggestions of whole exposures is not any more j.a.panese than it was old-Persian. Even the naughty picture-books were intended for imitations, catechism.

Talking of catechism, I have been thinking of making a Buddhist catechism of a somewhat fantastic sort.

"How old are you?"

"I am millions of millions of years old, as a phenomenon. As absolute I am eternal and older than the universe," etc.

Faithfully ever, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

KOBE, September, 1895.

DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... I am waiting every day for the sanction of the minister to change my name; and I think it will come soon. This will make me Koizumi Yak.u.mo, or,--arranging the personal and family names in English order,--"Y. Koizumi." "Eight clouds" is the meaning of "Yak.u.mo," and is the first part of the most ancient poem extant in the j.a.panese language. (You will find the whole story in "Glimpses"--article "Yaegaki.") Well, "Yak.u.mo" is a poetical alternative for Izumo, my beloved province, "the Place of the Issuing of Clouds." You will understand how the name was chosen.

If all goes well, and I am not obliged to return to America, I shall next year probably return to Izumo, and make a permanent home there. So long as I can travel in winter, I need not care about the weather. When my boy grows big enough, if I live, I shall take him abroad, and try to give him a purely scientific education--modern languages if possible, no waste of time on Latin, Greek, and stupidities. (Literature and history can be best learned at home; and the greatest men are not the products of schools, not in England or America, at least: Germany is an exception.) He might turn out to be very commonplace, in which case all plans must be changed; but I suspect he will not be stupid. He says, by the way, that he was a doctor in his former birth. It is quite possible, for he has my father's eyes.

In regard to what you asked me about the English literature business, I think there is no way of teaching English literature except by selections,--joined together with an evolutional study of English emotional life, ill.u.s.trated after the manner of Taine's "Art in Italy," etc. But such work, combining history with literature, would involve the use of an immense library, and would be very costly to the teacher. By the way, I _hate_ English literature. French literature is much more interesting. What I should most like would be to make a study of comparative literature--including Sanscrit, Finnish, Arabic, Persian,--systematizing the best specimens of each into kindred groupings on the evolutional plan. That _would_ be worth doing; for it means a study of the evolutional development of all mankind. But such undertakings, I fear, are for the extremely rich.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

KOBE, Autumn, 1895.

DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... It has often occurred to me to ask whether you think other men feel as I do about some things--you yourself, for example. Work with me is a pain--no pleasure till it is done. It is not voluntary; it is not agreeable. It is forced by necessity. The necessity is a curious one. The mind, in my case, eats itself when unemployed.

Reading, you might suggest, would employ it. No: my thoughts wander, and the gnawing goes on just the same. What kind of gnawing? Vexation and anger and imaginings and recollections of unpleasant things said or done. _Unless somebody does or says something horribly mean to me, I can't do certain kinds of work_,--the tiresome kinds, that compel a great deal of thinking. The exact force of a hurt I can measure at the time of receiving it: "This will be over in six months;" "This I shall have to fight for two years;" "This will be remembered longer." When I begin to think about the matter afterwards, then I rush to work. I write page after page of vagaries, metaphysical, emotional, romantic,--throw them aside. Then next day, I go to work rewriting them. I rewrite and rewrite them till they begin to define and arrange themselves into a whole,--and the result is an essay; and the editor of the _Atlantic_ writes, "It is a veritable illumination,"--and no mortal man knows why, or how it was written,--not even I myself,--or what it cost to write it.

Pain is therefore to me of exceeding value betimes; and everybody who does me a wrong indirectly does me a right. I wonder if anybody else works on this plan. The benefit of it is that a _habit_ is forming,--a habit of studying and thinking in a way I should otherwise have been too lazy-minded to do. But whenever I begin to forget one burn, new caustic from some unexpected quarter is poured into my brain: then the new pain forces other work. It strikes me as being possibly a peculiar morbid condition. If it is, I trust that some day the power will come to do something really extraordinary--I mean very unique. What is the good of having a morbid sensitive spot, if it cannot be utilized to some purpose worth achieving?

There was a funny suicide here the other day. A boy of seventeen threw himself on the railroad track and was cut to pieces by a train. He left a letter to his employer, saying that the death of the employer's little son had made the world dark for him. The child would have n.o.body to play with: so, he said, "I shall go to play with him. But I have a little sister of six;--I pray you to take care of her."

Ever affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

SEPTEMBER, 1895.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Your paper on Luchu gave me more pleasure, I am sure, than it even did to the president of the society before whom it was read; and I was delighted with the nice things said of you.

Of course this paper--being a much more elaborate monograph than the other--differs from its predecessor in the matter of suggestiveness.

To me it is like a graded anthropological map,--shading off the direction of character-tendencies, language, customs, to the uttermost limit of the subject. I had no idea how much you had been doing in the Archipelago--your own field of research by unquestionable right.

If I ever go down there I shall certainly attempt nothing out of the much humbler line which I can follow: there is really nothing left for another man to do in the way of gathering general knowledge about an unfamiliar region.

There is one expression of opinion in the monograph which I may venture a remark about. The idea is growing upon me, more and more each day I live, that the supposed indifferentism of the j.a.panese in religious matters is affected indifferentism--that it is put on like _yof.u.ku_, only for foreigners. I see too much of the real life, even here in Kobe, to think the indifferentism real. And I believe the Jesuits, who are better judges far than our comfortable modern proselytizers, never accused the j.a.panese of indifference. However, this is but suggestive: I think that should you ever find time to watch the incidents of common life minutely, you will recognize the Jesuits as the keenest observers. As for the educated cla.s.ses, I have also reason to know that in most cases the indifference is feigned. This will show you how my own opinions have changed in five years' time.

Very truly yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

KOBE, October, 1895.

DEAR NISHIDA,--Kazuo knows your picture, always hanging on the wall by my desk, and your name--so that if you see him soon, he will not think you a stranger. He talks well now, but is getting naughty, like his father used to be--very naughty. I see my own childish naughtiness all over again. I think he will be cleverer than his father. If he shows real talent, I shall try to take him to France or to Italy, later on in life. English schools I don't like: they are too rough. New England schools are better; especially for the earlier teaching. The systems of Spencer and others have been much better followed out in Eastern Ma.s.sachusetts than in England, where religious conservatism persists in loading the minds with perfectly useless acquirements. The future demands scientific education--not ornamented; and the thoroughly trained man never needs help. I remember a friend in the United States Army,--engineer and graduate of West Point (a splendid inst.i.tution): he was coaxed out of the army by an electrical company because of his knowledge of applied mathematics. What wonderful men one meets among the scientifically educated to-day one must go abroad to know. Such men, unfortunately, do not come to j.a.pan. If _they_ had been chosen for teachers, I fancy that education would have felt their influence. It does not feel the influence of common foreign teachers. But, a student said to me, "We must cultivate our own powers through our own language hereafter,"--and I think he expressed the sensible general feeling of the day.

Ever with kindest hopes and wishes for you,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KOBE, November, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Your more than gracious flying visit, having set in motion the machinery of converse, left me long continuing a phantom talk with a phantom professor across a real table,--which I touched to make sure.

Then my wife's delight with her Miyako-miyage, and the boy's with the pictures, you can imagine,--though not perhaps my own feeling of mingled pleasure and sorrow. Whatever you do is done so delicately and finely that I fear I could show no appreciation of it in writing.

It was lucky that we had returned from Kyoto just so as to be here for your visit. What pleased me most of all, perhaps, was your seeing my boy. I have often thought if I can realize my dream of taking him to Europe, which now seems quite possible, I might some day have the pleasure of presenting him as a man.

You wanted a thinking book; and I must confess that is now my own want: I care only for a novel when it ill.u.s.trates some new philosophical idea, or when it possesses such art that it can be studied for the art alone.

Perhaps Lombroso would interest (and revolt) you at the same time: Nordau is only a new edition of Lombroso, I think--a journalistic one.

I detest his generalizations, so far as I know them through extracts: all being false that I have seen. Progress depends on variation; and the morale of Nordau would lead to, or accentuate, already existing Chinese notions in the conventional world, that all departures from formality and humbug are to be explained by degeneration. Without having read it, I should judge the book a shallow one,--much at variance with Spencer's views on eccentricity and its values. Of the Italian school, Mantegazza most appeals to me, and would, I think to you--though he is sentimental as Michelet in "L'Amour." ...

You think me too dissatisfied, don't you? It is true I am not satisfied, and already unable to look at my former work. But the moment a man can feel satisfied with himself, progress stops. He can only move along a level afterwards; and I hope the level is still some years off. (I see a possibility to strive for; but I am afraid even to speak of it--so well out of reach it now is.) But what you will be glad to hear is that my publishers are treating me well enough. I have up to September made about 2000 yen (j.a.panese money), and prospects of making about 4000 in 1896. It is now largely a question of eyes.

I visited the grave of Yuko Hatakeyama last week at Kyoto,--and saw all the touching relics of her, and of her suicide: also secured copies of her letters, etc. A nice monument has been erected over her resting-place by public subscription; and there was a little cup of tea before the _sekito_ when I arrived.

Needless to say that I am asked to send messages which could only be spoiled by putting them into English, and my wife is ashamed, or at least shy, of writing what she would like to write if possessing more self-confidence in matters epistolary. But you will understand without more words.

Most gratefully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

KOBE, December, 1895.

DEAR NISHIDA,--I suppose we have both been very busy--you with the winter school-term, and I with my new book. I trust you got my last letter, and that you know how grateful we feel to you for the advice and help given to Mr. Takaki, and for smoothing matters. We are also anxious to hear that you are well, and are hoping to see you this coming summer.

As for the naturalization business, it seems to hang fire.[2] A couple of months ago, there came to the house an official, who asked us many questions. What he asked me was not important or interesting; but his questions to Setsu were amusing. He enquired how long we had been together--whether I had always been kind--whether she thought I would always be good to her--whether she would be content always to have such a husband--whether she was in earnest--whether she had made the application of her own free will, or under pressure from relations--whether I had not forced her to make such an application--whether she held any property in my name. Afterwards she had to go to some office where she was asked the same questions over again. Since that time we have heard nothing. I am wondering if my request (or her request, I should say) will be refused. I suppose it could be; and I have not been over-prudent, for I did not reply respectfully to the offer of a place of some sort in the university--what kind of place I don't know--made through Kano,--and I think Saionji has charge of the foreign business just now. Perhaps it is all right;--the delay, however, has its legal vexations:--money-orders having been made out, for example, in a j.a.panese name,--a little too soon. What a funny thing it all is.

[2] I am not sure if you know this expression;--it is said of a gun or pistol which does not go off when the trigger is pulled.

I made the acquaintance some ten days ago of Wadamori Kikujiro,--the memory-man. He is a native of Shimane. I did all I could to please him, and hope to do more. He gave me an exhibition of his wonderful power,--and another exhibition to a small circle of foreigners to whom I was able to introduce him. They were very much pleased.

I think I told you that "Kokoro" is printed,--that is, in type. I am waiting only for the proofs. I think you will get a copy in March or April. Half of another j.a.panese book has been written, and part of another book (not on j.a.panese subjects)--so you will see how hard I have been working. Also my eyes are very much better. It seems to have been a case of blood to the eyes; and a doctor told me that if I took violent exercise I should get well. I did so,--and got quite well. I have only now to be careful.