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LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
VOLUME II

THE LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
LAFCADIO HEARN

BY

ELIZABETH BISLAND

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ELIZABETH BISLAND WETMORE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published December 1906

ILLUSTRATIONS

LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

LETTERS
1890-1904

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
1890.

Dear Elizabeth,— ... I feel indescribably towards Japan. Of course Nature here is not the Nature of the tropics, which is so splendid and savage and omnipotently beautiful that I feel at this very moment of writing the same pain in my heart I felt when leaving Martinique. This is a domesticated Nature, which loves man, and makes itself beautiful for him in a quiet grey-and-blue way like the Japanese women, and the trees seem to know what people say about them,—seem to have little human souls. What I love in Japan is the Japanese,—the poor simple humanity of the country. It is divine. There is nothing in this world approaching the naïve natural charm of them. No book ever written has reflected it. And I love their gods, their customs, their dress, their bird-like quavering songs, their houses, their superstitions, their faults. And I believe that their art is as far in advance of our art as old Greek art was superior to that of the earliest European art-gropings—I think there is more art in a print by Hokusai or those who came after him than in a $10,000 painting—no, a $100,000 painting. We are the barbarians! I do not merely think these things: I am as sure of them as of death. I only wish I could be reincarnated in some little Japanese baby, so that I could see and feel the world as beautifully as a Japanese brain does.

And, of course, I am studying Buddhism with heart and soul. A young student from one of the temples is my companion. If I stay in Japan, we shall live together.—Will write again if all goes well.

My best love to you always.

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
1890.

Dear Miss Bisland,—Do you think well enough of me to try to get me employment at a regular salary, somewhere in the United States. I have permanently broken off with the Harpers: I am starved out. My average earnings for the last three years have been scarcely $500 a year. Here in Japan prices are higher than in New York,—unless one can become a Japanese employee. I was promised a situation; but it is now delayed until September.

I shall get along somehow. But I am so very tired of being hard-pushed, and ignored, and starved,—and obliged to undergo moral humiliations which are much worse than hunger or cold,—that I have ceased to be ashamed to ask you to say a good word for me where you can, to some newspaper, or some publishing firm, able to give me steady employ, later on.

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
1890.

My dear Sister Elizabeth,— ... Now, as for myself,—I am going to become country school-master in Japan,—probably for several long years. The language is unspeakably difficult to learn;—I believe it can only be learned by ear. Teaching will help me to learn it; and before learning it, to write anything enduring upon Japan would be absurdly impossible. Literary work will not support one here, where living costs quite as much as in New York. What I wish to do, I want to do for its own sake; and so intend to settle, if possible, in this country, among a people who seem to me the most lovable in the world.

I have been living in temples and old Buddhist cemeteries, making pilgrimages and sounding enormous bells and worshipping astounding Buddhas. Still, I do not as yet know anything whatever about Japan. I have nothing else worth telling you to write just now, and no address to give,—as I do not know where I am going or what I shall be doing next month.

Later on, I shall write again.

Best wishes and affection from

L. H.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kizuki, July, 1890.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I am writing to you from the little beach of Inasa, mentioned in the “Kojiki,”—the etymology of which name, as given by Hirata, I think you say is incorrect, or at least fantastic. But I think you may not know that Inasa beach is in some respects the nicest bathing-place imaginable—certainly by far the best I have ever visited in Japan. The hotels face a beach without a pebble in its sand, and when the water is not rough, it is clear as a diamond; when roughened by a west wind, however, the water sometimes becomes dirty with seaweed, drift and such refuse. This is the great bathing resort of Izumo. But it is much more quiet and pleasant than other Japanese bathing resorts I have seen—such as Ōiso. After the bath, moreover, one can have a hot salt water bath or a cold fresh-water douche. And there is plenty of deep water for swimming. Right opposite our window is the “thousand draught rock” which the son of Ohokuni, etc., lifted on the tips of his fingers.

Kaka is famous for its sea cave, and legend of Jizō. I think I wrote you of this beautiful legend of the child ghosts and the fountain of milk. But it is really too pretty to publish in a matter-of-fact record.

The term “arrows of prayer” which I use, might deceive the reader. The arrows put into the rice-fields to scare away crows are very different in appearance and purpose. I hope to send you some of the former from Mionoseki.

I will stay here some weeks—the sea-bathing is too good to lose. Will write again soon.

Most truly ever,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kizuki, July, 1890.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—We are still at Kizuki—enjoying exquisite weather and delicious sea-bathing. Last evening I dined with the Kokuzō; and I never ate so much dinner or drank so much sake anywhere in Japan. It was a royal feast. I also saw some things that would interest you. A series of letters of Motoori’s,—also two MSS. of flute-music made by him, and the brushes with which his commentaries were written. One of the Senke family, who was his pupil, received these as bequests, and they are preserved in the family.

The conversation turned upon you; and I was asked many questions about you, which I answered as best as I could. From the extreme interest shown, I am sure that Kizuki would be turned inside out to please you if you come down here.

I asked about the deity of Mionoseki; and the learned priest Sasa and others state positively that deity is not Hiruko. The legend concerning him would prove the same fact. The deity detested the cock, and no hens or chickens or eggs or feathers are allowed to exist in Mionoseki. No vessel would take an egg to Mionoseki. It is wrong even to eat eggs the day before going to Mionoseki. A passenger to Mionoseki was once detected smoking a pipe which had the figure of a cock upon it, and that pipe was immediately thrown into the sea. The dislike of the god for the cock is attributed to some adventure of his youthful days,—when the cock had been instructed to wake him up, or call him at a certain hour. The cock did not perform his duty, and Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, had his hand bitten by a crocodile in hurrying to get back home.

There is a temple of Ebisu in Nishinomiya near Ōsaka, where the deity is believed to be identical with Hiruko, but this is not the case at Mionoseki.

Regarding the Deity of Marriage, I must correct an error in my last. The learned priest Sasa states (quoting many ancient poems and authors to prove the fact) that the ancient Deity of Marriage was the Deity of Kizuki. But at Yaegaki Jinja, where there is a tree with two trunks, or two trees with trunks grown into one, and other curious symbolic things, the popular worship of the Deities Susa-no-o and Inada-Hime gradually centred and finally wrested away the rights and privileges of the Kizuki deity in favour of the gods of Yaegaki.

I have had some fine shōryō-bune made. And I can send you one if you would like. There is a special kind of shōryō-bune made here. Mine, though of straw, is an elaborate model of a junk and could sail for miles. Would you like to send one to Dr. Tylor? Anthropologically, these little boats in which to send the souls home have a rare interest.

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, September, 1890.

Dear Professor,—I have just returned from my first really great Japanese experience,—a trip to Kizuki. The two trips were beautiful. From Shōbara the route lies through a superb plain of rice fields, with mountain ranges closing the horizon to left and right.

Reaching Kizuki at night, I sent a letter of introduction from Mr. Nishida of the Chūgakkō to Senke Takamori,—the princely person whose family for 82 generations have been in charge of the great temple. I paid a visit to the grounds the same evening, and was amazed by the great scale and dignity of the buildings, and the nobility of the approaches to them, under succession of colossal torii.

Next morning a messenger came from Mr. Senke, announcing that I would be received at the temple. My attendant had, however, to put on hakamas and perform other personal corrections of dress before entering the august presence.

We were then received with a courtesy and kindness impossible to praise sufficiently or to qualify too gratefully. After performing the requisite ablution of hands, we were received into the inner shrine of the chief deity—(my baggage not yet having arrived, I have not your “Kojiki” by me to correct misspelling, but I think the name is Ōnamuji-no-Mikoto). I was told that I was the first European ever allowed to enter the shrine, though seven or eight other foreigners had visited the grounds.

There are some 19 shrines not consecrated to any particular deities,—in which the Kami are supposed to assemble during the Kami-ari-zuki,—after a preliminary visit to a much smaller temple erected on the seashore,—where, it is said, the sovereignty of Izumo was first divinely guaranteed by the great deity.

We were received by the Gūji (Senke) in ceremonial costumes. His robes were white, those of the attendant priests purple with gold figuring—very beautiful. I acknowledge that I felt considerable awe in the presence of these superb Japanese, who realized for me all that I had imagined about the daimyōs, and grandees of the past. He who used to be called the Iki-gami—said to descend from Susa-no-o-no-Mikoto—is a fine portly man, with a full beard. The ceremonial was imposing, and the sense of the immense antiquity and dignity of the cult, and of the generations of its officiants, might have impressed even a more unbelieving mind than my own.

The temple is really very noble, with its huge pillars, and the solidity of its vast beamwork. Since the prehistoric era it has been rebuilt 28 times. It is said to be the oldest of all Shintō places of worship, and holier than Ise. There are many curiosities and valuable historical documents. The chief shrine faces west,—unlike others.

We were shown the primitive method of lighting the sacred fire—a simple board in holes of which a rapidly revolving stick kindles the spark. Also we saw the hierophantic dance, and heard the strange old song sung—An-un—to the accompaniment of sticks tapped on curiously shaped wooden boxes, or drums.

Subsequently we were invited to the house of Mr. Senke, where other curious things were shown to us. I have had a rare and delightful experience, and I hope to write of it for one of the English reviews later on.

My attendant—unwarrantably, perhaps—mentioned me as a friend of yours; and the statement provoked a murmur of pleasure. Your name is held, I can assure you, in very great reverence at Kizuki; and I feel assured, should you go there, that you would be received as if you were the chief of the Kami. And I am also sure you would like these really fine and noble men.

I have written enough to tire you perhaps, but I believe the subject may, at least, suggest questions of value from you, if not otherwise interesting. Kizuki is certainly the chief place of interest in Izumo; and I have all details and documents. They will take me some months to digest, but I shall do something pretty.

The jinrikisha ride is a little tiring. Kizuki is very, very pretty. From 200,000 to 250,000 pilgrims go there yearly. All day the sound of the clapping of hands is unbroken, like the sound of a cataract. At least it was when I was there.

Best regards to you.

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, September, 1890.

Dear Professor,—On second thought I have set to work to obtain the information you wish as fully as possible from trustworthy Japanese,—as I fear it could only be gathered by my own exertions alone, too late to be serviceable. I shall send as soon as possible, and if there be time I will supplement the notes with some observations of my own.

I think I shall be very happy in Matsue, and every one assures me it is not so cold as in Tōkyō in winter, although there is more snow.

On the way here I stopped at a very primitive village where there are volcanic springs, and nearly every house has a “natural bathtub” always hot and fresh. And the good old man in whose house I stopped said he only once before in all his life saw a European,—but he did not know whether the European was a man or a woman. The European had very long hair, of a curious colour, and wore a long dress reaching its feet, and its manners were gentle and kind. I found out afterwards it was a Norwegian missionary-girl, having the courage to travel alone.

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, October, 1890.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I received your last kind letter just after having posted a note to you. As for what information I could send, I am surprised and delighted to find that it was of some use. I never expected to be so kindly thanked for it,—deeming it too scanty.

I do not think I shall have any difficulty in getting a model made of the fire-drill, which at Kizuki is a thick board of dense white wood, all the holes being drilled near one edge, in an almost parallel line. Perhaps it may take some little time to arrange the matter; but if there be no hurry, I am almost certain I can get the model made. I am a member of the society now for the preservation of the Kizuki buildings, and am sure my request will be kindly considered.

There are coloured prints here enough: Samurai-no-ehon they call the old picture-books here. But they do not relate to Izumo. I hope to procure some soon which will do.

I am more and more impressed with the ascendency of Shintō here. Everybody is a Shintōist; and every house seems to have both its kamidana and its butsudan. One street is almost entirely composed of Buddhist temples—the Teramachi; but all the worshippers also attend the Shintō services on certain days. The charms suspended over doors, etc., are Shintō. Most of the mamori on the kamidana of a house are sure to be Shintō. The Gods (1) Ebisu and (2) Daikoku, here respectively identified with (1) Koto-shiro-nushi-no Kami and (2) Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, are monopolized by Shintō. Its signs and mysteries are everywhere: the atmosphere is full of magic.

I suppose some people would think this sort of worship shocking, but I must say I could not laugh at it: the childish naïveté of the prayers and the offerings—the idea of a kami in the tree, able to heal—seemed to me rather touching than absurd, and delightfully natural. One feels what pastoral life in the antique world must have been, on studying the artless notions of these good country-folk, whom no one could live among without loving,—unless he were strangely brutal or bigoted.

I had to make a speech before the educational association of Izumo the other day, and in citing the labours of Darwin, Lubbock, Huxley, and others, I quoted also Tylor’s delightful little book on Anthropology. My speech was on the Value of the Imagination as a Factor in Education. The Governor ordered it to be translated and printed;—so that I am being for the moment perhaps much more highly considered than I ought to be.

I have become so accustomed to Japanese food and habits, that it would now be painful to me to change them. The only extras, besides sake, which I take, are plenty of fried and raw eggs. So far I am in better health than I hoped to be in Japan.

I am very sorry you are not quite well. Here the weather is what they call “mad weather”—rain alternating with sun, and chilly winds.

With best regards,

Faithfully yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
November, 1890.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—You will remember having invited humble me to make a few criticisms if I could, about “Things Japanese.” I am now going to pray you with all my heart and soul to change that article about Japanese Music in the next edition of the book. I am, and have been for months unspeakably charmed with Japanese music,—I think it is as dainty and playfully sweet and pretty as the Japanese girls who sing it and play it; and I feel sure there is a very fine subtle art-feeling in it. I am sorry to say, however, that while making this plea, I must in honesty confess that I am not an appreciant of Wagner, and that I have always been much impressed and charmed by primitive music. African music, and Spanish-American melodies I am quite infatuated about, and neither of these would be considered as related to the higher musical sense. But I feel sure if you were in Izumo, I could make you hear some music, both instrumental and vocal, which you would acknowledge to be more than “pretty.”

I think I will be able to get a model of the fire-drill made in a while. I have arranged for a week at Kizuki during the coming vacation.

The importance of Shintō here as compared with Buddhism impresses me more and more every day. Most of the kakemono in the tokonomas are Shintō rather than Buddhist. The story of the Sun-goddess is a favourite theme with local artists. Here also the gods of Good-Fortune have become after a fashion adopted by Shintō.

I expect to send you some mamori shortly from two places—Ichibata and Sakusa. The Shintō shrine at Sakusa would probably interest you. Lovers in doubt go there to pray to the kami who set the single in family, and who have decided in advance the coupling of all human creatures. In this shrine are the spirits of Susa-no-o-no-Mikoto and his wife enshrined,—his first wife whom he met accompanied by her father before he went to kill the Serpent. The ghost of the father-in-law, “Foot-stroking Elder,” is supposed to reside in the same place,—also that of the mother-in-law. Almost every spot in hill or valley here has a shrine marking an act or footstep of Susa-no-o. Every place where the Serpent (Orochi) could possibly have been, still holds a legend of it.

I am no longer in a hotel, but have a very beautiful house, fronting on the lake, and from my window I could see with a telescope almost to Kizuki over a beautiful stretch of blue water. And every peak I see has some divine story attached to it, and several are named after the primæval gods.

I am perfectly treated here, and would be very, very happy if I had only a little more time to work. It is now a busy season. The examinations have come upon me; and I interrupted this letter twice before sending it, in order to get some examination papers done. I have twelve large classes to examine and give marks to on Dictation, Reading, Composition, and Conversation. But now the trouble is over, and I shall have plenty of time to write again.

Hoping you will excuse silence, I am always

Sincerely yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

I enclose a few mamori of Kishibojin,—the Sanscrit Harite,—to whom wives pray for children. I suppose you know more about her worship than I do. But in the Northern temples of her the votive offerings of children dresses are large dresses. Here the dresses are only models of dresses—doll size. The pregnant woman picks one out of a thousand, keeping her eyes shut. When she looks, if she has picked out a girl’s dress, she is sure the child in her womb is a boy!—and vice versa. When the child is born she makes another dress and brings it to the temple. I am very fond of Kishibojin, and I think her worship beautiful.

Verily I have become quite as much of an idolater as any of these.

L. H.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, 1890.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I returned last Sunday from Ichibata, but was too tired and busy to write at once. I have already sent you some mamori from the famed temple of Yakushi Nyorai.

The little steamer—the very smallest I ever saw—which carries pilgrims and others from Matsue to Kozakai—makes the trip to the latter village in about two hours. Then the task of climbing the mountain is not over-easy. The scenery, however, both on the lake and at Ichibata is grand, and the peaks of the ranges have all their legends. There are nearly 600 steps of stone to climb before the temple,—situated on a windy summit whence the view extends for many luminous miles. The temple is new,—the ancient one having been de stroyed by fire. There is a large hotel where guests are entertained upon a strictly Buddhist diet—no fish, no eggs; but a little cheap sake is tolerated. No girls,—only young men as servants and waiters. The priests made some demonstrations at my appearance in their courts; but a few words from the pilgrims with me settled me in their good opinions, and they became kind, and showed me their kakemonos of the Great Physician. All afflicted with eye-troubles journey here and pray,—repeating always the same prayer according to long established usage—“On koro-koro Sendai,” etc. Little water vessels are sold bearing the mon of the temple, and these are filled from the temple spring, and the sick bathe their eyes therewith. The trip was altogether a very charming one for me, and not the less interesting because I had to get back to Matsue in a sampan.

I am becoming a good pilgrim.

I do not think I am the first European to visit Ichibata, however: there were some German naval officers here, according to tradition, eight or ten years ago.

With best regards, always yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA
Matsue, 1890.

Dear Mr. Nishida,— ... Last evening, the servant of Governor Koteda came to the house with a curious-looking box, which contained a present from Miss Koteda,—an uguisu: the bird which sings “Hokkekyō,” and ought, therefore, for its piety, according to the sutra of the good law, to be endowed with six hundred good qualities of Eye, six hundred good qualities of Hearing, twelve hundred good qualities of Smelling power, and twelve hundred supernatural excellences of the tongue, or of Speech. I am almost ready to believe the last compensation has been given it,—for its voice is superlatively sweet.—But what to say or do in the way of thanking the giver I don’t know: this is really too kind.

So yesterday, despite the hideous weather, was a fortunate day: it brought to my house the sacred bird and your delightful postal news;—and for all things my grateful thanks and best wishes.

Most faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO YRJÖ HIRN
Tōkyō, December, 1890.

Dear Professor,—I have just finished the reading of your “Origins of Art.” ... Some years ago I remember that I wanted very much to produce an ideal essay upon the “ghostliness” of fine art,—the element of thrill common to all forms of it: painting, sculpture, music, or architecture. The notion is not original, I suppose,—but it came to me with such an intensity that I imagined a general truth behind it. This was the possible fact that no existing æsthetic sentiment had a primarily æsthetic origin, and that all such sentiment must simply represent emotional accumulation,—organic memory or inherited tendency. But I could not develop my notion judiciously. Your fine book shows me how such things should have been done, and it expresses convictions and ideas which I lacked the scientific training to utter consistently.

I found a particular satisfaction in your critique of the Darwinian hypothesis as to sexual æsthetic sensibility in animals and birds. Though I am an “extreme” evolutionist, this hypothesis always seemed to me essentially wrong,—essentially opposed to the facts of psychical evolution. You have more than convinced me of what I suspected. Also I think that, even while occasionally diverging from Spencer’s views, you have reënforced his main positions, and shed fresh light upon various shadowy regions of the new psychology. I liked very much your treatment of the difficult topic of pleasure-pain: indeed, I like the whole book more than I feel able to tell you.

My own slight knowledge of these matters is based chiefly upon a study of Spencer. Although I have played “æsthetically” with metaphysical ideas in my books, I believe that I have a fair knowledge of the whole system of Synthetic Philosophy, and that I may call myself a disciple of its author. Therefore,—or rather by reason of this private study only,—can I presume even to discuss your work as an admirer. You place the study of æsthetics upon a purely natural and common-sense basis, even while considering its multiple aspects; and I am persuaded that this must be the system of the future. Psycho physics and psycho-dynamics have of late years been applied to æsthetic problems with the naked result of leaving the main question exactly where it was before, or of landing the student in a cul-de-sac; and I imagine that much intellectual labour has been wasted in such paths merely through cowardice of conventions. It is a delight to meet with a book like this, in which science quietly ignores cant, and opens a new clearing through the blinding maze of mediæval cobwebs. Again, I must say that a more lucid, strong, and pleasing style I have not found in any modern work on æsthetics.

I want, however, to make a small protest about the second paragraph on page 233. Perhaps in the second edition you might think it worth your while to modify the statement as to the “gross” character of Japanese dancing. I should question the fairness of classing together—except as to probable emotional origins—Asiatic and African dances (i.e. negro dances). But I shall speak of the Japanese dances only. To make any general statement about anything Japanese is always risky; for customs here (differing in every province and every period) exhibit a most bewildering variety. It is not correct to say that the dancing is performed by “outcast women” mostly; for there are many respectable forms of dancing. The maiko is not perhaps a very respectable person;—but the miko, or Shintō priestesses (daughters of priests), certainly are worthy of all respect. Well, there are the temple-dances, before the old gods,—the dances of children at the temples upon holidays,—the dances of the peasants, etc., etc. None of these could be called gross,—however amorous their origin. Men dance as well as women: all children dance; and in some conservative provinces dancing is a part of female education. To come back to the maiko or geisha, however, let me assure you that although some of their dances may be passionally mimetic, even the passionate acting could not be termed “gross” with justice: on the contrary it is a very delicate bit of refined acting,—acting of eyes and lips and hands,—which requires a sharp eye to follow. There are in Japan, as everywhere else, dances that would not bear severe moral criticism; but the fine forms of Oriental dancing are really dramatic performances,—silent monologues of a most artistic kind.—Perhaps you will be interested in a book which an acquaintance of mine, Mr. Osman Edwards, is bringing out through Mr. Heinemann of London, “The Theatre in Japan.” The fact of the old lyric drama seems to me to call for a modification of the statement on page 233. Of course I am not questioning the suggestion of origins.

Excuse these hasty and insufficient expressions of appreciation. Now to the question of a former letter received from you, on the subject of a selection of papers translated from various books of mine, by Mrs. Hirn.

You have my full consent to publish such a translation.... I should certainly accept no pay either from translator or publisher; and a single copy of such translation, when published, would be favour enough....

On the subject of a photograph and biographical notice, however, will you not excuse me for saying that I do not think the circumstances justify such an introduction to a strange public?...

With renewed thanks for your most precious book, believe me, dear Professor, very sincerely yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, January, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I am sorry not to have heard from you,—fearing you may have been ill. The weather here has become something very disagreeable—I was going to say infernal; but I think this word better describes the weather of the North Atlantic Coast. The changes of temperature here are less extreme, the cold is milder, but the temperature may change three times in twenty-four hours,—which seems to me extraordinary. There is almost perpetual rain and gloom, and I would almost dislike Izumo were it not that one lovely day in a month is enough to make me forgive and forget all the bad weather. The “Izumo Fuji”—Dai sen (which is not, however, in Izumo at all)—was beautifully visible the day before yesterday, and the landscape was unspeakably beautiful.

I am now arranging, as best I can, to get the fire-drill model made in Kizuki. My friends have been ill and my best friend, Mr. Nishida, is still so ill that he cannot travel with me. But I think the drill can be made very soon now. I have a passport for all Izumo; but the weather is diabolical; and though my chest is very strong, I feel that it is a severe strain to keep well even at home. So I shall not travel much before the summer.

I send you some clean new “fire-insurance mamori.” I found out only two weeks ago where they are sold,—at the great Inari temple in the grounds of Matsue Castle, where there are enormous stone foxes, and perhaps two thousand small foxes sitting all round the court with their tails perpendicularly elevated. The most extraordinary thing of the kind I ever saw. They showed me at the temple a kakemono of a ghostly fox, with a phosphoric jewel in its tail,—said to have been painted ages ago. I think I shall buy it from them. It is not beautiful, but quite curious.

I wish you a very, very happy new year and many of them.

Faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, January, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—Your kindness in sending me a postal card while suffering so much yourself from sickness, is something that touches me very much. I hope to thank you better later on.

I myself am very sick. I boasted too soon about my immunity from cold. I have been severely touched where I thought myself strongest—in my lungs—and have passed some weeks in bed. My first serious discouragement came with this check to my enthusiasm; I fear a few more winters of this kind will put me underground. But this has been a very exceptional winter, they say. The first snowstorm piled five feet of snow about my house, which faces the lake, looking to Kizuki. All the mountains are white, and the country is smothered with snow, and the wind is very severe. I never saw a heavier snowfall in the United States or Canada. The thermometer does not go so low as you might suppose, not more than about 12 above zero; but the houses are cold as cattle barns, and the hibachi and the kotatsu are mere shadows of heat,—ghosts, illusions. But I have the blues now; perhaps to-morrow everything will be cheerful again. The authorities are astonishingly kind to me. If they were not, I do not know what I should do.

I trust you are now strong again. I send you a few mamori from the famous shrine of Sakusa (county I-yu) where Yaegaki-san are worshipped, the “Deities who couple and set the single in families.” It is said that these, so soon as a boy or girl is born, decide the future love and marriage of the child,—betrothing all to all from the moment of birth. Three Shintō deities are the presiding gods: Susa-no-o-no-Mikoto, his wife Inada-Hime-no-Mikoto, and their son Sakusa-no-Mikoto, from whom, I suppose, the place takes its name. The mother of Inada-Hime and Taka o gami-no-Mikoto, and Ama-terasu-Omi-Kami, are also there enshrined.

Here, amid stone foxes and stone lions, a priest sells love-charms. Some of these consist of the leaves of Camellia Japonica.

There is a tree in the temple court (or rather two trees, which have grown into one); this is considered both symbolical and magical. There is also a pond in which newts live. The flesh of these newts, reduced to ashes, is considered an efficacious aphrodisiac. It is also the custom for lovers to throw offerings wrapped in bits of white paper into the pond, and watch. If the newts at once run to it, the omen is good; if they neglect it, it is bad.

In the Middle Ages this temple used to be in the village of Ushio, on the boundary of the counties of O hara and Ni ta, but was removed to its present site many hundred years ago. There are curious traditions and poems, mostly of an erotic character, regarding this shrine.

Trusting you will soon be quite well, believe me always sincerely yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, April, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I am delighted to hear the fire-drill is at last in your hands.

About Shintō ... Of course, as far as its philosophy is concerned (which I am very fond of, in spite of my devotion to Herbert Spencer), and romance of religious sentiment, and legends, and art,—my Izumo experiences have not at all changed my love of Buddhism. If it were possible for me to adopt a faith, I should adopt it. But Shintō seems to me like an occult force,—vast, extraordinary,— which has not been seriously taken into account as a force. I think it is the hopeless, irrefragable obstacle to the Christianization of Japan (for which reason I am wicked enough to love it). It is not all a belief, nor all a religion; it is a thing formless as a magnetism and indefinable as an ancestral impulse. It is part of the Soul of the Race. It means all the loyalty of the nation to its sovereigns, the devotion of retainers to princes, the respect to sacred things, the conservation of principles, the whole of what an Englishman would call sense of duty; but that this sense seems to be hereditary and inborn. I think a baby is Shintō from the time its eyes can see. Here, too, the symbolism of Shintō is among the very first things the child sees (I suppose it is the same in Tōkyō). The toys are to a great extent Shintō toys; and the excursions of a young mother with a baby on her back are always to Shintō temples. How much of Confucianism may have entered into and blended with what is a striking characteristic of Japanese boys in their attitude toward teachers and superiors, I do not know; but I think that what is now most pleasing in these boys is the outer reflection of the spirit of Shintō within them,—the hereditary spirit of it.

The Shinshū sect is the only one, as far as I can learn, whose members in Izumo are not also Shintōists; but the sect is very weak here. Even the Nichirenites are Shintōists. The two religions are so perfectly blended here that the lines of demarcation are sometimes impossible to find.

Well, I think we Occidentals have yet to learn the worship of ancestors; and evolution is going to teach it to us. When we become conscious that we owe whatever is wise or good or strong or beautiful in each one of us, not to one particular inner individuality, but to the struggles and sufferings and experiences of the whole unknown chain of human lives behind us, reaching back into mystery unthinkable,—the worship of ancestors seems an extremely righteous thing. What is it, philosophically, but a tribute of gratitude to the past,—dead relatively only,—alive really within us, and about us.

With best regards, in momentary haste,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, May, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I have just returned from a pilgrimage to the famous Kwannon temple of Kiyomizu—about 18 miles from Matsue—where it is said that the sacred fire has never been extinguished for a thousand years, to find your postal card. I do not wait to receive the delightful gift in order to thank you for it; as I hope to have the pleasure of writing you a letter on my impression of it after reading it. You could have imagined nothing to send me more welcome. Mr. Lowell has, I think, no warmer admirer in the world than myself, though I do not agree with his theory in the “Soul of the Far East,” and think he has ignored the most essential and astonishing quality of the race: its genius of eclecticism. The future holds many problems we cannot presume to guess, in regard to the fate of races. But there is not wanting foundation for the belief that the Orient may yet dominate the Occident and absorb it utterly. China seems to many a far greater question than Russia.

About your kind question regarding books. I think I shall be able to get all the books on Japan—in English—that I need; and your “Things Japanese” is a mine of good advice on what to buy. But if I need counsel which I cannot find in your book, then I will write and ask.

I venture to say that I think you have underrated the importance of my suggestion about the Sacred Snake,—of which I have not been able to find the scientific name. If they have such a snake at Ise then I am wrong. But, if not, I think the little snake would be worth having. It does not—like the fire-drill of Kizuki—possess special interest for the anthropologist; but it certainly should have interest for the folk-lorist, as a chapter in one of the most ancient and widely spread (if not universal) religious practices,—the worship of the Serpent. If you ever want an enshrined snake, let me know. It is dried and put into a little miya for the kamidana.

Speaking of folk-lore, I have been interesting myself in the fox-superstition in Izumo. Here, and in Iwami, the superstition has local peculiarities. It is so powerful as to affect the value of real estate to the amount of hundreds of thousands of yen, and keen men have become rich by speculating upon the strength of it. If you want any facts about it, please tell me.

The scenery at Kiyomizu is superb. But there is no clear water except the view of Nanji-umi from the pagoda and the hills. The mamori, I regret to say, are uninteresting. There is, however, a curious Inari shrine. Beside it is a sort of huge trough filled with little foxes of all shapes, designs, and material. If you want anything, you pray, and put a fox in your pocket, and take it home. As soon as the prayer is granted you must take the fox back again and put it just where it was before. I should like to have taken one home; but my servants hate foxes and Inari and tofu and azuki-meshi and abura-gi and everything related to foxes. So I left it alone.

You will not be sorry to hear that I am to have the same publishers as Mr. Lowell,—at least according to present indications. I am not vain enough to think I can ever write anything so beautiful as his “Chosōn” or “Soul of the Far East,” and will certainly make a poor showing beside his precise, fine, perfectly worded work. But I am not going to try to do anything in his line. My work will deal wholly with exceptional things (chiefly popular) in an untilled field of another kind.

I gave 72 boys, as subject for composition the other day, the question: “What would you most like in this world?” Nine of the compositions contained in substance this answer: “To die for our Sacred Emperor.” That is Shintō. Isn’t it grand and beautiful? and do you wonder that I love it after that?

Most grateful regards from yours most sincerely,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I went to Kōbe by rail, and thence by jinrikisha across Japan over mountains and through valleys of rice-fields—a journey of four days; but the most delightful in some respects of all my travelling experiences. The scenery had this peculiar effect, that it repeated for me many of my tropical impressions—received in a country of similar volcanic configuration,—besides reviving for me all sorts of early memories of travel in Wales and England which I had forgotten. Nothing could be more beautiful than this mingling of the sensations of the tropics with those of Northern summers. And the people! My expectations were much more than realized: it is among the country-people Japanese character should be studied, and I could not give my opinion of them now without using what you would call enthusiastic language. I felt quite sorry to reach this larger city, where the people are so much less simple, charming, and kindly,—although I have every reason to be pleased with them. And in a mountain village I saw a dance unlike anything I ever saw before—some dance immemorially old, and full of weird grace. I watched it until midnight, and wish I could see it again. Nothing yet seen in Japan delighted me so much as this Bon-odori—in no wise resembling the same performance in the north. I found Buddhism gradually weaken toward the interior, while Shintō emblems surrounded the fields, and things suggesting the phallic worship of antiquity were being adored in remote groves.

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, June, 1891.

Dear Mr. Chamberlain,—I am horribly ashamed to confess my weakness; but the truth must be told! After having lived for ten months exclusively upon Japanese fare, I was obliged to return (for a couple of days only!!!!) to the flesh-pots of Egypt. Having become sick, I could not recuperate upon Japanese eating—even when reënforced with eggs. I devoured enormous quantities of beef, fowl, and sausage, and fried solid stuffs, and absorbed terrific quantities of beer,—having had the good luck to find one foreign cook in Matsue. I am very much ashamed! But the fault is neither mine nor that of the Japanese: it is the fault of my ancestors,—the ferocious, wolfish hereditary instincts and tendencies of boreal mankind. The sins of the father, etc.

Do you know anything about Chōzuba-no-Kami? There are images of him. He has no eyes—only ears. He passes much of his time in sleep. He is angry if any one enters the koka without previously hemming,—so as to give him notice. He makes everybody sick if the place in which he dwells is not regularly cleaned. He goes to Kizuki and to Sada with the other gods once a year; and after a month’s absence returns. When he returns, he passes his hand over each member of the family as they go to the Chōzuba,—to make sure the family is the same. But one must not be afraid of the invisible hand. I think this kami is an extremely decent, respectable person, with excellent views on the subjects of morality and hygiene. I could not refuse him a lamp nor—for obvious reasons—the worship of incense.

I have not been able to travel yet far enough to find anything novel, but hope soon to do so. Meanwhile I am planning to make, if possible, not only a tour of Izumo, but also a very brief visit to Tōkyō in company with Mr. Nishida. Perhaps—I may be able to see both you and Mr. Lowell for a tiny little while—you will always have a moment to spare.

I am always haunted by a particularly sarcastic translation Mr. Lowell, in one of his books, made of the name of a gate,—“The Gate of Everlasting Ceremony.” (Only an American could have dared to make such a translation.) I have been through the Gate and into the Court of Everlasting Ceremony; but the gate is a marvellous swarming of carven dragons and water, and the court is full of peace and sweetness. Most truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—Your welcome letter has just reached me, on the eve of a trip to Kizuki, and—unless extraordinary circumstances prevent—Oki islands. My guest has departed. He was so petted and made much of here, that I could not help regretting you also would not come. I think I could make you comfortable here,—even in regard to diet,—at any time when you could make the trip; and, as far as the people go, they would embarrass you with kindness. Your name here is—well, more than you would wish it to be.

Your last delightful letter I did not fully answer in my last, being hurried. What you said about the influence of health or sickness on the spiritual life of a man went straight to my heart. I have found, as you have done, that the possessor of pure horse-health never seems to have an idea of the “half-lights.” It is impossible to see the psychical undercurrents of human existence without that self-separation from the purely physical part of being, which severe sickness gives—like a revelation. One in good health, who has never been obliged to separate his immaterial self from his material self, always will imagine that he understands much which, even recorded in words, cannot be understood at all without sharp experience. We are all living two lives,—but the revelation of the first seems only to come by accident. There is an essay worth reading, entitled “Sickness is Health,”—dealing with the physical results of sickness only; but there is a much larger psychological truth in the title than the author of it, whose name I forget, ever dreamed of. All the history of asceticism and self-suppression as a religion, appears to me founded upon a vague, blundering, intuitive recognition of the terrible and glorious fact, that we can reach the highest life only through that self-separation which the experiences of illness, that is, the knowledge of physical weakness, brings; perfect health always involves the domination of the spiritual by the physical—at least in the present state of human evolution.

Perhaps it will interest you to know the effect of Japanese life upon your little friend after the experiences of a year and a half. At first, the sense of existence here is like that of escaping from an almost unbearable atmospheric pressure into a rarefied, highly oxygenated medium. That feeling continues: in Japan the law of life is not as with us,—that each one strives to expand his own individuality at the expense of his neighbour’s. But on the other hand, how much one loses! Never a fine inspiration, a deep emotion, a profound joy or a profound pain—never a thrill, or, as the French say so much better than we, a frisson. So literary work is dry, bony, hard, dead work. I have confined myself strictly to the most emotional phases of Japanese life,—popular religion and popular imagination, and yet I can find nothing like what I would get at once in any Latin country, a strong emotional thrill. Whether it is that the difference in our ancestral history renders what we call soul-sympathy almost impossible, or whether it is that the Japanese are psychically smaller than we, I cannot venture to decide—I hope the former. But the experience of all thinking persons with whom I have had a chance to speak seems to be the same.

But how sweet the Japanese woman is!—all the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be con centrated in her. It shakes one’s faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression,—then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamond-hard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the subject. In the eternal order of things which is the highest being,—the childish, confiding, sweet Japanese girl,—or the superb, calculating, penetrating Occidental Circe of our more artificial society, with her enormous power for evil, and her limited capacity for good? Viscount Torio’s idea haunts me more and more;—I think there are very formidable truths in his observations about Western sociology. And the question comes: “In order to comprehend the highest good, is it necessary that we must first learn the largest power of evil?” For the one may be the Shadow of the other.

I am very much disappointed with Rein. I got much more information about my own particular line of study from your “Things Japanese” than from Rein. Rein himself confesses, after seven or eight years’ labour, that he has only been able to make “a patchwork”! What, then, can a man like myself hope to do,—without scientific knowledge, and without any hope of even acquiring the language of the country so as to read even a newspaper? Really it seems to me almost an impertinence on my part to try to write anything about Japan at all, and the only fact which gives me courage is that there exists no book especially devoted to the subject I hope to consider.

The deity of Mionoseki is called always by the people Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami;—in the guide the deity is said to be Hiruko, who, I believe, has been identified by Shintō commentators with Hiruko, as I find in the article on the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, in the Asiatic Transactions. But I am not sure what to say about Hiruko being the deity of Mio Jinja, as a general statement. My friends say that only a Shintō priest can decide, and I am going to see one.

Most truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, August, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I have just received and read your most interesting letter on my return from Kizuki,—where I should have liked to remain longer, but I must go to see the Bon-odori at Shimo-ichi, where it is danced differently from anywhere else, so far as I can learn, and in a thrillingly ghostly manner,—so that one thinks he is looking at a Dance of Souls.

Before leaving I had a copy of Murray’s Guide sent to the Kokuzō, who was more than pleased to see the picture of the great temple reproduced and to hear what was said about it. Before I went away, he gave me another singular entertainment, such as he alone could do—for he is King of Kizuki. (By the way, the old reverence for the Kokuzō is not dead. Folks do not believe now that whoever he looks at immediately becomes unable to move; but as I and my companion followed him to the great shrine, the pilgrims fell down and worshipped him as he passed.)

This was the entertainment he gave me:—Having invited me to the temple grounds, where seats were prepared, and a supper got ready for us, Mr. Senke gave some order, and the immense court immediately filled with people,—thousands. Then at a signal began a round dance, such as I had never seen before,—the Hōnen-odori, as anciently performed in Kizuki. It was so fascinating that I watched it until two o’clock in the morning. At least three hundred dancers were in the ring;—and the leader, standing on a mochi-mortar turned upside down, with an umbrella over his head, formed the axis of the great round, and turned slowly within it upon his pedestal. He had a superb voice. The Kokuzō also got the beautiful miko dances photographed to please me, and presented me with many curious MSS., some of which I hope to show you later on. They were written expressly for me.

Now as to the shōryō-bune. Just as the Bon-odori differs in every part of Japan, and just as everything at Kizuki is totally different from everything at Ise, even to the Miko-kagura, so is the custom of sending away the Ships of the Souls different here. In many parts the ships are launched at two or three o’clock in the morning of the day after the Bon; or if ships are not launched, then floating lanterns are sent out by way of guiding the dead home. But in Kizuki the shōryō-bune are launched only by day and for those who have been drowned at sea, and the shapes of the ships vary according to the kind of ship in which the lost man or woman perished. And they are launched every year for ten years after the death:—and when the soul returns yearly to visit the home, the ship is made ready, and a little stick of incense is lighted before launching it to take the beloved ghost back again, and a little stock of provisions is placed in it upon kawarake (principally dango). And the kaimyō of the dead is written upon the sail. And these boats are launched,—not at night, as elsewhere, but in the daytime.

I have had the shōryō-bune boxed and addressed to you, and a priest wrote for me the kaimyō upon the sail and the date of death, according to the usual custom. But you will not get the thing before three weeks, as I am forwarding it by express, and you know how slow the process is!

As for my letters, use anything you wish, and, if you desire, my name. The only matter is this: that I am so small a personage as an author that I am much in doubt whether the use of my name attached to any opinion would give the opinion more weight than if expressed impersonally. Unless it should, it might not be good for the book. I leave the decision entirely to you.

I have been reading Mr. Lowell’s book over again; for it is one thing to read it in Philadelphia, and quite another thing to read it after having spent a year and a half in Japan. And the power and the charm impress me more than ever. But I am so much horrified by its conclusions—at least a few of them—that I try very hard to find a flaw therein. I think the idea that the degree of the development of individuality in a people necessarily marks its place in the great march of mind is not true necessarily. At least it may be argued about. For as the tendency of the age is toward class specialization and interdependent subdivision of all branches of knowledge and all practical application of that knowledge, the development of the individuality of every integer of a community would seem to me to unfit the unit to form a close part of any specialized class. In brief, I doubt, or rather I wish to doubt, that the development of individuality is a lofty or desirable tendency. Much of what is called personality and individuality is intensely repellent, and makes the principal misery of Occidental life. It means much that is connected with pure aggressive selfishness: and its extraordinary development in a country like America or England seems a confirmation of Viscount Torio’s theory that Western civilization has the defect of cultivating the individual at the expense only of the mass, and giving unbounded opportunities to human selfishness, unrestrained by religious sentiment, law, or emotional feeling.

THE CITY OF MATSUE

What you say about your experience with Japanese poetry is indeed very telling and very painful to one who loves Japan. Depth, I have long suspected, does not exist in the Japanese soul-stream. It flows much like the rivers of the country,—over beds three quarters dry,—very clear and charmingly beshadowed;—but made temporarily profound only by some passional storm. But it seems to me that some tendencies in Japanese prose give hope of some beautiful things. There was a story some time ago in the Asahi Shimbun about a shirabyōshi that brought tears to my eyes, as slowly and painfully translated by a friend. There was tenderness and poetry and pathos in it worthy of Le Fanu (I thought of the exquisite story of Le Fanu, “A Bird of Passage,” simply as a superb bit of tender pathos) or Bret Harte—though, of course, I don’t know what the style is. But the Japanese poem, as I judge from your work and the “Anthologie Japonaise,” seems to me exactly the Japanese coloured print in words,—nothing much more. Still, how the sensation of that which has been is flashed into heart and memory by the delicious print or the simple little verse.

I go to-morrow or the next day to Shimo-ichi. If you get the shōryō-bune, let me know. Any of your servants can, I think, fix the little masts and pennons in place. A small incense vessel and kawarake with dango, or models of dango, might be added by Dr. Tylor to the exhibit; but I suppose these are not essential.

With sincerest regards, ever truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, August, 1891.

Dear Mr. Chamberlain,—Before leaving, I must trouble you with another note or two.

For “Things Japanese,” I would like to make a suggestion about the article “Theatre.” The refer ence to O-Kuni seems to me extremely severe; for her story is very beautiful and touching. She was a miko in the Great Temple of Kizuki, and fell in love with a ronin named Nagoya Sanza, and she fled away with her lover to Kyōto. On the way, another ronin, who fell in love with her extraordinary beauty, was killed by Sanza. Always the face of the dead man haunted the girl.

At Kyōto she supported her lover by dancing the Miko-kagura in the dry bed of the river Kamogawa.

Then they went to Tōkyō (Yedo) and began to act. Sanza himself became a famous and successful actor. The two lived together until Sanza died.

Then she came back to Kizuki. She was learned, and a great poet in the style called renga. After Sanza’s death she supported herself, or at least occupied herself, in teaching this poetic art. But she shaved off her hair and became a nun, and built the little Buddhist temple in Kizuki called Rengaji, in which she lived, and taught her art. And the reason she built the temple was that she might pray for the soul of the ronin whom the sight of her beauty had ruined. The temple stood until thirty years ago. Nothing is now left of it but a broken statue of Jizō. Her family still live in Kizuki, and until the restoration the chief of the family was always entitled to a share of the profits of the Kizuki theatre, because his ancestress, the beautiful miko, had founded the art.

So I would like to suggest that poor O-Kuni have a kind word said for her. And I am sure we would both think very highly of her if she were alive.

There is a little Japanese book about her history; but I do not know the title. With best regards,

Lafcadio.

TO PAGE M. BAKER
Matsue, August, 1891.

Dear Page,—I answer your dear letter at once, as you wished me to do. It reached me to-day, on my return from Kizuki, the Holy City of Japan,—where I have become something of a favourite with the high pontiff of the most ancient and sacred shrine of the land,—which no other European was ever permitted to enter before me. And I am travelling now,—stopping at home only on my way to other curious and unknown places. For this part of Japan is so little known that I was the first to furnish Murray’s Guidebook editors with some information thereabout....

But I had unknown friends here who knew me through my “Chinese Ghosts”—so they applied to the Government for me, and I got an educational position under contract. The contract was renewed last March for a year—the extreme term allowed by law. My salary is only $100 per month; but that is equal here to more than double the sum in America. So that I am able to keep up nearly the nicest house in town,—outside of a few very rich men,—to have several servants, to give dinners, and to dress my little wife tolerably nicely. Moreover, life in Japan is something so placid and kindly and gentle—that it is just like one of those dreams in which everybody is good-natured about everything. The missionaries have no reason to like me,—for one had to be discharged to secure me; and I teach the boys to respect their own beautiful faith and the gods of their fathers, and not to listen to proselytism. However, the missionaries leave me alone. We have a tiff about Spencer in the Japan Mail sometimes; but as a rule I am completely isolated from all Europeans. It is only at long intervals one ever gets so far,—with the exception of an austere female stationed here in the vague hope of making a convert.

Of course I will send you a photograph of my little wife. I must tell you I am married only in the Japanese manner as yet,—because of the territorial law. Only by becoming a Japanese citizen, which I think I shall do, will it be possible to settle the matter satisfactorily. By the present law, the moment a foreigner marries a native according to English law, she becomes an English citizen, and her children English subjects, if she have any. Therefore she becomes subject to territorial laws regarding foreigners,—obliged to live within treaty limits, and virtually separated from her own people. So it would be her ruin to marry her according to English form, until I become a Japanese in law;—for should I die, she would have serious reason to regret her loss of citizenship.

As for going abroad—I mean back to you all—I don’t know what to say. Just now, of course, I could not if I would; for I am under legal contract. Then my plans for a book on Japan are but a quarter finished. Then, my little woman would be very unhappy, I fear, away from her people and her gods;—for this country is so strange that it is impossible for any who have never lived here for a long time to understand the enormous difference between the thought and feeling of the Japanese and our own. But, later on, perhaps I must go back for a time to see about getting out a book. Then I will probably appeal to you for a year’s employ or something. The Orient is more fascinating than you may suppose: here, remember, the people really eat lotuses: they form a common article of diet. But no human being can tell exactly what the future has in store for him. So I cannot for the life of me say now what I shall do....

We are many years behind you here. In Matsue there is a little newspaper of which I must send you a copy as a curiosity. Every week or two there is an article in it about me. For “the foreigner’s” every act is a subject for comment. There is no such thing in Japan as privacy. There are no secrets. Every earthly thing a man does is known to everybody, and life is extravagantly, astoundingly frank. The moral effect is, in my opinion, extremely good,—though the missionaries, who lie hard about this country, say the reverse. Think of nothing but a paper screen dividing all your life from the lives about you,—a paper screen to poke a hole through, which is not considered outrageous, unless the screen be decorated with celebrated paintings. That is common life here. As for me, I have a secluded house, with three gardens round it. But, according to popular custom, I must never shut the door, or lock myself up except at night. One must not be nervous here, or impatient: it is impossible to remain either in such an atmosphere, or to be ill-natured, or to hide anything. And just think of it!—I having to give lectures and make speeches through an interpreter, which lectures and speeches are duly printed in a Japanese magazine! To speak before a Japanese audience, however, is delightful. One look at all the placid smiling faces reassures the most shrinking soul at once.

Well, at all events, I shall write you often, and send you something queer betimes. I must now get ready to take the little steamer by which I start.

With best regards to all, and to you best love, I remain,

Lafcadio Hearn.

This is my legal seal.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Yabase, August, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I have discovered Yabase. No European seems to have ever been here before. On arriving at Shimo-ichi to see the Bon-odori, I found I had come three days too soon, and the little town is very hot and uncomfortable.

Well, Yabase is an extremely quiet, pretty little town, with a much better hotel than I have seen for quite a while,—and a superb beach. Strange to say, there are no boats and nobody ever thinks of going into the sea, except children. So whenever I go to swim, the entire population crowd the beach to look on. Happily I am a very good swimmer,—could swim for twenty-four hours without fatigue. Thus the people have a mezurashii mono to behold. Another queer thing about Yabase is that it is the only place I have seen in Japan where there is no shrine of Inari. It is a strictly Buddhist town, and Nichiren prevails. There is a yashiro on a neighbouring mountain, however. There is no Bon-odori here, one must go to the next town to see it, which I will do to-night. There has been much rough weather—tremendous seas breaking along the coast. At Kizuki I thought the hotel was going to be carried away; and all the approaches to it, bridges, etc., were dashed to pieces. Here, the sea is opposed by a loftier coast, but it becomes something one cannot laugh at on a windy day.

I must tell you an incident of the revival of pure Shintō. At Kizuki, until very recently, two of the hotels were kept by families belonging to some Buddhist sect, as well as to the Kizuki sect of Shintō, and so in their establishments, as in nearly every Izumo household, there was a butsudan as well as a kamidana. But some pilgrims who came to Kizuki, full of fiery Shintō zeal, were wroth to see a butsudan in the inns of the Sacred City, and girded up their loins, and sought out an hotel where no Buddha was, and went there,—and sent out word to their fellow pilgrims. The result has been that all the hotels in Kizuki have suppressed Buddhism, or at least its externals: they have become pure Shintō. This incident is rather anomalous, but it is a confirmation of what I said before, regarding the predominance of Shintō.

From Mionoseki, I hope to send you some o fuda of interest. The prospects of getting to Oki are growing small, however,—for the time being.

P.S. Alas! I have not discovered Yabase! Some detestable missionary was here before me—for one hour only, it is true, but he was here!—And to-day, being a day of high surf, there came down to the beach with planks, divers boys, who swam far out and came in, as the Americans say, “a-kite-ing,” on the crests of waves—swimming unspeakably well, after the fashion of the Polynesian islanders. So that I feel small! I offered to teach them what I know in exchange for instruction as to how to come “a-kite-ing” on the top of a wave.

As for the little Japanese pipe:—

I cannot think that its form and dimensions simply evidence the Japanese fondness for “small things.” The ancient Samurai pipes, of which I have seen many fine specimens, were very much larger than the modern kiseru. The pipe seems to me rather the natural evolution of a utensil in its relation to the domestic life of Japan. The little pipe is admirably adapted to the multifarious interruptions of Japanese occupations. Long-sustained effort, protracted and unbroken study, are things foreign to Japanese existence. The Western pipe is good between the teeth of a man trained to remain on duty without remission of mental labour or relaxation of muscle for five or six hours at a stretch. But the Japanese idea of labour is blessed and full of interruptions as his year is full of matsuri. Thus, the little pipe, with its three conventional whiffs, exactly suits his wants. Its artistic evolution is also a matter worthy of study. Some of the best metal-work has been done upon it. From the pipe of 3 sen to the pipe of 30 yen, there is as great a range of artistic design and finish as in the realm of kakemono. Pipes of silver are the fashion. Without engraving, the silver must be very heavy. If the two metal parts be elaborately engraved and inlaid, the metal may be made as light as possible. A really fine pipe becomes an heirloom.

The introduction of European costume among the class of officials and teachers necessarily produced a change in the smoking paraphernalia which formed a part of the native Japanese outfit. The tabako-ire was reshaped, so as to accommodate itself to a breast or side pocket, and the little pipe shortened so as to be enclosed without the tobacco pouch, much as a pencil is enclosed in a pocket-book. Many beautifully designed things thus came into existence. A nice small pipe of silver may now be had to order for about 3 yen,—(designed). The netsuke has, of course, no place in this form of the tabako-ire. I have collected over a hundred different forms of the new pipe. This has no bamboo: the whole thing is one solid piece of metal. The best are inlaid or engraved:—the bowl and mouthpiece (at least) being usually of silver, worked into steel or brass.

Pipes with long stems are preferable for house use. They do not burn the tongue so quickly as the short pipe. However, the tobacco itself has much to do with this matter. Those jōros, geishas, and others, who smoke the greater part of the time, use a special tobacco which does not blister the tongue or lips.

With the pipe for an evolutionary centre, a whole intricate and complex world of smoking-furniture has come into existence,—of which the richest specimens are perhaps those lacquered tabako-bon for the use of aristocratic ladies, with plated or solid silver hibachi and haifuki. The winter hibachi for smoking purposes has, of course, many forms;—some of the daintiest being those invented for use in theatres, to be carried in the hand. The smoker, who finds a handsome bronze hibachi placed before him on a winter’s day, is not supposed to empty his pipe into it by knocking the metal head of the pipe upon the rim: if genteel, he will always insert the leather flap of his tobacco pouch between the pipehead and the hibachi—so as to prevent the tapping of the pipehead from causing a dent in the bronze. At present the most genteel tabako-bon for summer use has a small cup of bronze, instead of the usual cup of porcelain. The smoker empties his pipe, not into the hibachi of bronze or porcelain, but into the bamboo haifuki which is an indispensable part of the summer tabako-bon.

The foreigner who uses the Japanese pipe commences his experience with that apparently simple article by burning small round holes in everything near him—the tatami, the zabuton, and especially his own yukata or kimono. The small pellet of ignited tobacco contained in the kiseru becomes, after a few whiffs, a fiery pill, loose, and ready to leap from the pipe at a breath. Wherever it falls, it pierces holes like a red-hot shot. But the Japanese expert smoker rarely burns anything. He draws from his pipe at the very most three whiffs and at once empties it into the haifuki. To smoke a Japanese pipe to the bottom, moreover, results in clogging up the pipe. The art of cleaning it out afterwards is quite elaborate. A common plan is to heat the pipehead in the charcoal of the hibachi, and then blow out the refuse. But this method corrodes and spoils a fine pipe. The cleaning of the fine pipe must be done with a twist of tough fine paper passed up the stem and pulled out through the head.

Besides smoking-furniture, a special code of politeness has been evolved around the Japanese pipe.

The pipe, I regret to say, is in vulgar circles used as a domestic rod. The wife or child who is very naughty may receive a severe blow with the kiseru, or even many. However, it is not so bad as the instruments of punishment in vogue elsewhere.

I am not sure if I have been able to say anything worth your while to read about the pipe, but I think the Japanese pipe is really worth more consideration than is usually given it.

Note. Women’s pipes have a special, delicate form—and are made very small and dainty—also their tabako-ire.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Yura, August, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—If you are not frightfully busy, which I suppose nobody is at this time of the year, perhaps some of my adventures will interest you.

I found that the Bon-odori is different, not only in every village, but even in every commune. So I was very anxious to see all the varieties of this curious dance that I could. I heard that at Ōtsuka, near Yabase, there was a very remarkable kind of dance danced; and I went, in Japanese costume, with a dozen citizens of Yabase, to see it. It turned out to be not worth seeing at all: the people had no more knowledge of dancing—or rather, much less, than Sioux or Comanches.

Ōtsuka is a stony, large, primitive-looking village,—full of rude energy and, I am sorry to say, of bad manners,—a terrible thing to say about any Japanese town. But I have been in about 50 Japanese villages, where I loved all the people, and always made a few of them love me, and Ōtsuka is the first exception I found to the general rule about the relation between foreigners and hyakushō-no-jin. At Ōtsuka the people left their dance to pelt the foreigner with little pellets of sand and mud,—crying out: “Bikki!—bikki!” What that means I do not know. So both I and the whole of the Yabase people turned back. The pelting was not very savage—it was just like the work of naughty children: a foreign mob would have thrown stones, which these folk were very careful not to do—in spite of the fact that there were no police. I passed through this village twice since, and found the attitude of its people peculiarly rough—bordering upon hostility. Compared with the roughness of—say a Barbadoes mob—it was a very gentle thing, but it gave me the first decidedly unpleasant sense of being an alien that I have ever had in Japan.

I have just returned from Togo-ike,—a place described in your Guide.

Frankly, I detest Togo-ike. But it is extremely popular with travelling Japanese—especially the shōbai. Imagine a valley of rice-fields, ringed in by low jagged wooded hills, with a lakelet in the middle of it about a mile and a quarter long (at most) by half a mile broad, and hotels built out into the water. The coldest place I have yet been in Japan. The hotels are supplied with hot water from the volcanic springs through bamboo pipes, but the baths do not compare with those of the much humbler Izumo resort—Tama-tsukuri. The cold air to me was penetrating, sickly, but this may be idiosyncrasy. To one who has lived in the tropics the chill of rice-fields means fever and death; and some of my old tropical fears came up. Then the hotel has only mishido, no karakami,—so that one is never alone. One hour of Yabase is worth a season at Togo-ike—free of expense—to one who loves quiet and simple ways. So I shall spend a couple more days there before going to Mionoseki.

I have given up Oki, until winter. The health and strength I get from seawater bathing have made me delay too long. But I will get to Oki later.

Ever yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA
Yabase, August, 1891.

Dear Mr. Nishida,—I have had a pleasant time in different little drowsy sea-villages,—sleeping, eating, drinking sake, and bathing. Yabase is about the most pleasant place I ever stopped at here.

But, alas!—I saw no Bon-odori at all at Shimo-ichi. I seemed to have gone too soon;—at Yabase, there is no Bon-odori; and at Ōtsuka, where I next travelled, on foot, to see the Bon-odori, I had an adventure of a peculiar kind.

Ōtsuka seems to be a rough sort of place. Its folk are big hustling noisy countrymen; and when they are full of sake inclined to be mischievous. They stopped dancing to see the foreigner. The foreigner took refuge from the pressure of the crowd in a house, where he sat upon the floor, and smoked. The crowd came into the house and round the house, and uttered curious observations and threw sand and water at the foreigner. Therefore the people of Yabase, who had accompanied the foreigner to Ōtsuka, arose and made vigorous protests; and we all returned to Yabase together. At Yabase, the police and some of the principal people more than made up to me for the rudeness of the Ōtsuka folk,— they apologized for the Ōtsuka folk until I was really ashamed of being so kindly looked after; and I was entertained very generously; and the police told me that anything in the world I wished their advice or help about, only to send them word. (The hostility of the Ōtsuka folk was really a very childish sort of thing, not worth making a fuss about;—a Western crowd would have thrown stones or rotten eggs. Indeed I am not sure whether the crowd was really hostile at all. I rather think that they wanted to see the foreigner move,—so they tried to make him stir about,—like a kedamono in a cage.)

To-morrow I return to Matsue, by way of Mionoseki;—I really regret leaving Yabase: the people are the kindest, most honest, straightforward folk imaginable. And I have made several friends;—at the temple of Nichiren here, I got some beautiful o fuda.

Lafcadio Hearn..

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, August, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—Having reached a spot where I can write upon something better than a matted floor, I find three most pleasant letters from you. The whole of the questions in them I cannot answer to-night, but will do so presently, when I obtain the full information.

However, as to cats’ tails I can answer at once. Izumo cats—(and I was under the impression until recently that all Japanese cats were alike)—are generally born with long tails. But there is a belief that any cat whose tail is not cut off in kittenhood, will become an obake or a nekomata, and there are weird stories about cats with long tails dancing at night, with towels tied round their heads. There are stories about petted cats eating their mistress and then assuming the form, features, and voice of the victim. Of course you know the Buddhist tradition that no cat can enter paradise. The cat and the snake alone wept not for the death of Buddha. Cats are unpopular in Izumo, but in Hōki I saw that they seemed to exist under more favourable conditions. The real reason for the unpopularity of the cat is its powers of mischief in a Japanese house;—it tears the tatami, the karakami, the shōji, scratches the woodwork, and insists upon carrying its food into the best room to eat it upon the floor. I am a great lover of cats, having “raised,” as the Americans say, more than fifty;—but I could not gratify my desire to have a cat here. The creature proved too mischievous, and wanted always to eat my uguisu.

The oscillation of one’s thoughts concerning the Japanese—the swaying you describe—is and has for some time been mine also.

There are times when they seem so small! And then again, although they never seem large, there is a vastness behind them,—a past of indefinite complexity and marvel,—an amazing power of absorbing and assimilating,—which forces one to suspect some power in the race so different from our own that one cannot understand that power. And as you say, whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one’s self:—“Well, who are the best people to live with?” For it is a question whether the intellectual pleasures of social life abroad are not more than dearly bought at the cost of social pettinesses which do not seem to exist in Japan at all.

Would you be horrified to learn that I have become passionately fond of daikon,—not the fresh but the strong ancient pickled daikon? But then the European Stilton cheese, or Limburger, is surely quite as queer. I have become what they call here a jōgo,—and find that a love of sake creates a total change in all one’s eating habits and tastes. All the sweet things the geko likes, I cannot bear when taking sake. By the way, what a huge world of etiquette, art, taste, custom, has been developed by sake. An article upon sake,—its social rules,—its vessels,—its physiological effects,—in short the whole romance and charm of a Japanese banquet, ought to be written by somebody. I hope to write one some day, but I am still learning.

As to Dr. Tylor and the anthropological institute. If he should want any paper that I could furnish, I would be glad and consider myself honoured to please him. As for your question about the o fuda, why, I should think it no small pleasure to be mentioned merely as one of your workers and friends. Though the little I have been able to send does not seem to me to deserve your kindest words, it is making me very happy to have been able to please you at all. Whatever I can write or send, make always any use of you please.

About “seeing Japan from a distance,”—I envy you your coming chance. I could not finish my book on the West Indies until I saw the magical island again through regret, as through a summer haze,—and under circumstances which left me perfectly free to think, which the soporific air of the tropics makes difficult. (Still the book is not what it ought to be, for I was refused all reasonable help, and wrote most of it upon a half-empty stomach, or with my blood full of fever.) But to think of Japan in an English atmosphere will be a delicious experience for you after so long an absence. I should not be surprised should the experience result in the creation of something which would please your own feelings as an author better than any other work you have made. Of course it is at the time one is best pleased that one does one’s real best in the artistic line.

By the way, since you like those Shintō prints,—and I might get you others,—what about a possible edition of your “Kojiki” illustrated by Japanese conceptions of this kind, colours and all? Such work can be so cheaply done in Japan! And an index! How often I wished for an index. I have made an imperfect one of my own. It is believed here that Hahaki is the ancient name of the modern Hōki. I was told this when I wanted to go to the legendary burial-place of Izanami.

As usual, I find I have been too presumptuous in writing offhand about cats’ tails. On enquiring, I learn that there are often, born of the same mother, Izumo kittens with short tails, and kittens with long tails. This would show that two distinct species of cats exist here. The long-tailed kittens are always deprived when possible of the larger part of their caudal appendage. The short tails are spared. If an old cat be seen with a short tail, people say,—“this cat is old, but she has a short tail: therefore she is a good cat.” (For the obake cat gets two tails when old, and every wicked cat has a long tail.) I am told that at the recent bon, in Matsue, cats of the evil sort were seen to dance upon the roofs of the houses.

What you tell me about those Shintō rituals and their suspicious origin seems to me quite certainly true. So the kara-shishi and the mon and the dragon-carvings and the tōrōs,—all stare me in the face as pillage of Buddhism. But the funeral rite which I saw and took part in, on the anniversary of the death of Prince Sanjō, struck me as immemorially primitive. The weird simplicity of it—the banquet to the ghost, the covering of the faces with white paper, the moaning song, the barbarian music, all seemed to me traditions and echoes of the very childhood of the race. I shall try to discover the genesis of the book you speak of as dubious in character. The Shintō christening ceremony is strictly observed here, and there are curious facts about the funeral ceremonies—totally at variance with and hostile to Buddhism.

By the way, when I visited a tera in Mionoseki after having bought o fuda at the Miojinja, I was told I must not carry the o fuda into the court of the tera. The Kami would be displeased.

For the moment, good-bye.

Ever faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Matsue, 1891.

Dear Hendrick,— ... My household relations have turned out to be extremely happy, and to bind me very fast here at the very time that I was beginning to feel like going away. It does not now seem possible for me ever to go away. To take the little woman to another country would be to make her extremely unhappy; for no kindness or comfort could compensate for the loss of her own social atmosphere—in which all thoughts and feelings are so totally different from our own.

I find literary work extremely difficult here. The mental air about one has a totally disintegrating effect upon Western habits of thinking;—no strong emotion, no thrills or inspirations ever come to me, so I am still in doubt how to work. Whether I shall ever be able to make a really good book on Japan is still a question; but if I do, it will require years of steady dry work, without one real flash in it. The least fact in this Oriental life is so different from ours, and so complex in its relationship to other facts, that to explain it requires enormous time and patience.

I was made a little homesick by your letter about New Orleans, mentioning so many familiar names. It brought back many pleasant memories.

Ah! you are in a dangerous world now. You will meet some charming, unsophisticated Southern girl, so much nicer than most Northern girls, that the South may fascinate you too much.

My correspondents have all dropped off except you. Sometimes a letter wanders to me—six months old—announcing my nomination as vice-president of some small literary society; but the outer world is slowly and surely passing away. At the same time the harder side of Japanese character is beginning to appear—in spots. The women are certainly the sweetest beings I have ever seen, as a general rule: all the good things of the race have been put into them. They are just loving, joyous, simple-hearted children with infinite surprises of pretty ways. About the men,—one never gets very close to them. One’s best friends have a certain far-offness about them, even when breaking their necks to please you. There is no such thing as clapping a man on the back and saying, “Hello! old boy!” There is no such thing as clapping a fellow on the knee, or chucking a fellow under the ribs. All such familiarities are terribly vulgar in Japan. So each one has to tickle his own soul and clap it on the back, and say “Hello” to it. And the soul, being Western, says: “Do you expect me always to stay in this extraordinary country? I want to go home, or get back to the West Indies, at least. Hurry up and save some money.” As it is, I have two hundred dollars saved up, even after dressing my little wife like a queen.

And now I am about to journey to outrageous places, among very strange gods. Good-bye for a while.

Ever most affectionately,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Matsue, October, 1891.