Part 14

The Japanese peasant is ten times more of a gentleman than a foreign merchant could ever learn to be. Unfortunately the Japanese official, with all his civility and morality rubbed off, is something a good deal lower than a savage and meaner than the straight-out Western rough (who always has a kernel of good in him) by an inexpressible per cent. Carpets--pianos--windows--curtains--brass bands--churches! how I hate them!! And white shirts!--and _yōfuku!_ Would I had been born savage; the curse of civilized cities is on me--and I suppose I can't get away permanently from them. You like all these things, I know. I'm not expecting any sympathy--but thought you might like to know about the effect on me of a half-return to Western life. How much I could hate all that we call civilization I never knew before. How ugly it is I never could have conceived without a long sojourn in old Japan--the only civilized country that existed since antiquity. Them's my sentiments!

I have not yet been able to read Lowell's new book through. But he must have worked tremendously to write it. It is a very clever book--though disfigured by absolutely shameless puns. It touches truths to the quick,--with a light sharp sting peculiar to Lowell's art. It is painfully unsympathetic--Mephistophelian in a way that chills me. It is scientific--but the fault of it strikes me as being that the study is applicable equally to Europe or America as to Japan. The same psychical phenomena may be studied out anywhere, with the same result. The race difference in persons, like the difference between life and not-life in biology, is only one of degree, not of kind. Still, it is a wonderful book.

Ever truly, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KŌBE, January, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--To-day is a spring day and I can add a little to my screed. The weather brightens up my eyes.

I was thinking just now about the difference between the Japanese _hyakushō_ and the English merchant.

My servant girl from Imaichi--who cannot read or write--saw you at Kumamoto and said words to this effect: "He speaks Japanese like a great man. And he is so gentle and so kind." Vaguely something of the intellectual and moral side of you had reached and touched her simple mind. The other day a merchant said of you: "Chamberlain--Oh, yes. Met him at Miyanoshita. Tell you, he's a gentleman--plays a good game of whist!" There 's appreciation for you. Which is the best soul of the two--my servant girl's or that merchant's?

A merchant, however, has inspired me with the idea of a sketch, to be entitled "His Josses"!...

On the other hand it strikes me that in another twenty years, or perhaps thirty, after a brief artificial expansion, all the ports will shrink. The foreign commerce will be all reduced to agencies. A system of small persecutions will be inaugurated and maintained to drive away all the foreigners who can be driven away. After the war there will be a strong anti-foreign reaction--outrages--police-repressions--temporary stillness and peace: then a new crusade. Life will be made wretched for Occidentals--in business--just as it is being made in the schools--by all sorts of little tricky plans which cannot be brought under law-provisions, or even so defined as to appear to justify resentment--tricks at which the Japanese are as elaborately ingenious as they are in matters of etiquette and forms of other kinds. The nation will show its ugly side to us--after a manner unexpected, but irresistible.

The future looks worse than black. As for me, I am in a perpetual quandary. I suppose I'll have to travel West,--and console myself with the hope of visiting Japan at long intervals.

Well, there's no use in worrying--one must face the music,

I am sorry your eyes are weak, too. What the devil of a trouble physical trouble is!--a dead weight check on will! Still, you have good luck in other ways, and after all, eye-trouble is only a warning in both our cases.

Ever truly, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KŌBE, February, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I had mailed you the American letter before your own most kind enclosure came, with the note from Makino. Of course this is beyond thanks,--and I can't say very much about it. Since then I received from you also Lowell's six papers on Mars,--which I have read, and return by this mail,--and your friendly lines from Atami.

Just as you suggested in the Atami letter, I was feeling about matters. There would be special conditions in New Orleans, on the paper of which I was ten years a staff-writer. I should have to work only a couple of hours a day in my own room, and would have opportunities of money-making and travel. There are risks, too,--yellow fever, lawlessness, and personal enemies. But to leave Japan now would, of course, be like tearing one's self in two,--and I am not sure but the ultimate nervous result would destroy my capacity for literary work. The best thing, I imagine, will be to ask my friend to keep the gate open for me, in case I have to go. The great thing for me is not to worry: worry and literary work will not harmonize. The work always betrays the strain afterward.

You say my friend writes nicely. He is about the most lovable man I ever met,--an old-time Southerner, very tall and slight, with a singular face. He is so exactly an ideal Mephistopheles that he would never get his photograph taken. The face does not altogether belie the character,--but the mockery is very tender play, and queerly original. It never offends. The real Mephistopheles appears only when there are ugly obstacles to overcome. Then the diabolical keenness with which motives are read and disclosed, and the lightning moves by which a plot is checkmated, or made a net for the plotter himself, usually startle people. He is a man of immense force--it takes such a one to rule in that community, but as a gentleman I never saw his superior in grace or consideration. I always loved him--but like all whom I like, never could get quite enough of his company for myself.

The papers on Mars are quite weirdly suggestive--are they not? Just how much of the theories and the discoveries were Lowell's very own, I can't make out--though the papers are things to be thankful for. You know the physiological side of his psychology in "Occult Japan" is no more original than the "Miscellany" of a medical weekly.

By the way, I must point out a serious mistake he makes on page 293,--when he says that the absence of the belief in possession by other living men is a proof of the absence of personality in Japan. As a matter of fact there is no such absence. I alone know of three different forms of such belief--and know that one is extremely common. So that all the metaphysical structure of argument built upon the supposed absence of that belief vanishes into nothingness!

As Huxley says, that man who goes about the world "unlabelled" is sure to be punished for it. So I can't help thinking that I ought to have a label. Fancy the man who makes his bear drink champagne seeking my company on the ground that "Neither of us are Christians." The Ama-terasu-Ōmi-kami business first aroused my suspicions, but the phrase itself was so raw!

Compañia de uno 1 Compañia de ninguno; Compañia de dos 2 Compañia de Dios; Compañia de tres 3 Compañia es (but never for me); Compañia de cuatro 4 Compañia del diablo.

This old Spanish hymn might have been made expressly about me,--except in No. 3. I should feel more at home with you if I knew you would share my letters with nobody. This is all for yourself only. Ever gratefully, with more than regards,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KŌBE, February, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I never liked any letter I got from you more than the last--which brings us closer together. I suppose I have often misread you--being more supersensitive than I ought to be,--and also finding certain of my best friends so differently soul-toned that I am often at a loss to understand hows and whys. But it is curious that we are absolutely at one, after all, on sociological questions, as your letter shows. Undoubtedly the "coming slavery," predicted by Spencer, will come upon us. A democracy more brutal than any Spartan oligarchy will control life. Men may not be obliged to eat at a public table; but every item of their existence will be regulated by law. The world will be sickened for all time of democracy as now preached. The future tyranny will be worse than any of old,--for it will be a régime of moral rather than physical pain, and there will be no refuge from it--except among savages. But, for all that, the people are good. They will be trapped through their ignorance, and held in slavery by their ignorance; and made, I suppose, in the eternal order, to develop a still higher goodness before they can reach freedom again.

I believe there is no point of your letter in which we are not thoroughly at accord. I have also been inclined to many schools of belief in these matters: I have been at heart everything by turns. It is like the history of one's religious experiences. And just as when, after emancipating one's self from the last mesh of the net of creeds, one sees for the first time the value-social and meaning of all, and the moral worth of many,--so in sociological questions, it is by emancipation from faiths in politics that one learns what lies behind all politics,--the necessity of the Conservative vs. the Radical, of the pleb. vs. the aristo. Then, if sympathetic with popular needs one still recognizes the æsthetic and moral value of ranks and orders; or, if belonging to the latter, one learns also to understand that the great, good, unhappy, moral, immoral, vicious, virtuous people are the real soil of all future hope,--the field of the divine in Man.

But for all that, when conditions jar on me, I sometimes grumble and see only evil. What matter? I never look for it as a study. My work--though "no great shakes"--must show you that. At the end of all experiences, bitter and pleasant, I try to sum up good only.

What I said about the Germans you may not have understood. I did not explain. There is, I think, a particular German characteristic which has its charm. Accustomed for generations to a communal form of life--totally different from that of the English--there has been developed among them a certain spirit of tolerance and a social inclination essentially German. Also the poverty of their country has nourished a tendency to sobriety of life, while the causes developing their educational system on a wonderful level of economy have brought the race, I believe, to a higher general plane than others. I don't mean that the top-shoots are higher than French or English; but I think the middle growth educationally is. At all events a German community in America or in Japan, while it remains German--has a peculiar charm--an independence of conventions, as distinguished from the religious and social codes,--and an exterior affability,--quite different from the individualism of other communities. Perhaps, however, the friendship never goes quite as deep as in those isolated natures so much harder to win.

The essay by Spencer you will find in a volume sent you by mail, and sent to me by my American friend. It did not appear in the old editions. Perhaps I may try the feat some day of a Japanese study on those lines,--though I must acknowledge that I now perceive several of my views entirely wrong. I also perceive how closely Lowell reached the neighbourhood of truth without being able, nevertheless, (or willing?) to actually touch it. My conclusion is that the charm of Japanese life is largely the charm of childhood, and that the most beautiful of all race childhoods is passing into an adolescence which threatens to prove repulsive. Perhaps the manhood may redeem all,--as with English "bad boys" it often does.

I fear I can scarcely finish "Occult Japan," and that I praised it too much in my late letter, after hasty examination. It strikes me only as a mood of the man, an ugly, supercilious one, verging on the wickedness of a wish to hurt. When my eyes improve, I should like better to see his work on Mars. I don't wish to say that my work is as good as Lowell's "Soul of the Far East;" but it is a curious fact that in at least a majority of the favourable criticisms I have been spoken of as far more successful than Lowell. Why? Certainly not because I am his equal, either as a thinker or an observer. The reason is simply that the world considers the sympathetic mood more just than the analytical or critical. And except when the critic is a giant like Spencer or his peers,--I fear the merely critical mood will always be blind to the most vital side of any human question. For the more vital side is feeling,--not reason. This, indeed, Spencer showed long ago. But there was in the "Soul of the Far East" an exquisite approach to playful tenderness--utterly banished from "Occult Japan."

Ever yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KŌBE, February, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Thanks for the curious historical envelopes. My eyes are nearly well: there is still one small black spot in the centre of the field of vision; but I trust it will go away as soon as the weather becomes warm.

I am delighted to know you like the book. A curious fact is that out of fifty criticisms sent me, in which the critics select "favourites," I find that almost every article in the book has been selected by somebody. It thus seems to appeal to persons of totally different temperament in different ways, and this fact suggests itself,--that perhaps no book written entirely in one key can please so well as a book written in many keys. However, the work must be unconscious. If you are curious about any of the "inside facts," I shall be glad to tell you. The "Teacher's Diary" is, of course, strictly true as to means and facts; and the artistic work is simply one of "grouping." The cruiser at Mionoseki was the Takachiho,--since become famous. Hino-misaki and Yaegaki ought to contain something you would like,--so I trust you will peep at them some time. The Gūji of Hino-misaki is my wife's relative, and the story of his ancestor is quite true.

As for Japanese words, you might like "Out of the East" better. I don't think there are five Japanese words in the book. But it is chiefly reverie--contains little about facts or places. Perhaps you will be less pleased with it in another way.

As for changing my conclusions,--well, I have had to change a good many. The tone of "Glimpses" is true in being the feeling of a place and time. Since then I've seen how thoroughly detestable Japanese can be, and that revelation assisted in illuminating things. I am now convinced, for example, that the deficiency of the sexual instinct (using the term philosophically) in the race is a serious defect rather than a merit, and is very probably connected with the absence of the musical sense and the incapacity for abstract reasoning. It does not follow, however, that the same instinct may not have been overdeveloped in our own case. To an Englishman, it would appear that such overdevelopment among Latin races would account for the artistic superiority as well as the moral weakness of French and Italians in special directions;--and the fact that even certain classes of music are now called sensual (not sensuous), and that there is a tendency to abjure Italian music in favour of the more aspirational German music,--would seem to show that the largest-brained races are reaching a stage in abstract æsthetics still higher than the highest possible development of the æsthetics based on the sexual feeling. That the Japanese can ever reach our æsthetic stage seems to me utterly impossible, but assuredly what they lack in certain directions they may prove splendidly capable of making up in others. Indeed the development of the mathematical faculty in the race--unchecked and unmollified by our class of æsthetics and idealisms--ought to prove a serious danger to Western civilization at last. At least it seems to me that here is a danger. Japan ought to produce scientific, political, and military haters of "ideologists,"--Napoleons of practical applications of science. All that is tender and manly and considerate and heroic in Northern character has certainly grown out of the sexual sentiment: but the same class of feelings in the far East would seem to have been evolved out of a different class of emotional habits, and a class bound to disappear. Imagine a civilization on Western lines with cold calculation universally substituted for ethical principle! The suggestion is very terrible and very ugly. One would prefer even the society of the later Roman Empire.

I am sorry your eyes are not all you could wish. Do you not think it may be the weather? The doctor tells me my eyes will be all right in summer, but that I have to be careful in cold weather. And the tropics did me wonderful good. I want to get to the warm zones occasionally--perhaps shall be able to. There are some tropics bad for the eyes,--lacking verdure. I have been unable to get facts about tropical conditions on this side of the world,--except through Wallace. Ceram suggests possibilities. But one must be well informed before going. Then there are the French Marquesas. A French colony ought to be full of romance, and void of missionaries. But all these are dreams.

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KŌBE, March, 1895.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--It was very comforting to get a letter from you; for I wanted an impulse to write. I have been blue--by reason partly of the weather; and partly because of those reactions which follow all accomplished work in some men's cases. Everything done then seems like an Elle-woman,--a mere delusive shell; and one marvels why anybody should have been charmed.

Of course I did not ask point-blank for criticisms, because you told me long ago, "Every man should make his own book,"--and, although it is the literary custom in America to consult friends, I could see justice in the suggestion. The title "Out of the East" was selected from a number. It was suggested only by the motto of the Oriental Society, "Ex Oriente lux." The "Far East" has been so monopolized by others that I did not like to use the phrase. "Out of the Uttermost East" would sound cacophonously,--besides suggesting a straining for effect. I thought of Tennyson's "most eastern east," but the publishers didn't approve it. The simpler the title, and the vaguer--in my case--the better: the vagueness touches curiosity. Besides, the book is a vague thing. Sound has much to do with the value of a title. If it hadn't, you would have written "Japanese Things" instead of "Things Japanese"--which is entirely different, and so pretty that your admirers and imitators snapped it up at once. So we have "Things Chinese" by an imitator, and "Things Japanese" is a phrase which has found its recognized place in the vocabulary of critics of both worlds. Your criticism on "Out of the East," though, would have strongly influenced me, if you had sent it early enough. I noticed the very same suggestion in the _Athenæum_ regarding the use of the word "Orient" and the phrase "Far East" by Americans. For our "Orient" is, as you say, still the Orient of Kinglake, of De Nerval, etc. But why should it be? To Milton it was the Indian East with kings barbaric sitting under a rain of pearls and gold.

Manila was long my dream. But, although my capacity for sympathy with the beliefs of Catholic peasantry anywhere is very large,--the ugly possibility exists that the Inquisition survives in Manila, and I have had the ill-fortune to make the Jesuits pay some attention to me. You know about the young Spaniard who had his property confiscated, and who disappeared some years ago,--and was restored to liberty only after heaven and earth had been moved by his friends in Spain. I don't know that I should disappear; but I should certainly have obstacles thrown in my way. Mexico would be a safer country for the same class of studies,--Ceram ought to be interesting: in Wallace's time the cost of life per individual was only about 8s. 6d. a year! A moist, hot tropical climate I like best. The heat is weakening, I know, but that moisture means the verdure that is a delight to the eyes, and palms, and parrots, and butterflies of enormous size;--and no possibility of establishing Western conditions of life. I should like very much to see the book you kindly offered to lend me. It might create new aspirations: I am always at night dreaming of islands in undiscovered seas, where all the people are gods and fairies.

Of course I cannot know much about it now, but I am almost sure of having been in Malta as a child. At a later time my father, who was long there, told me queer things about the old palaces of the knights, and a story about a monk who, on the coming of the French, had the presence of mind to paint the gold chancel-railing with green paint. Southern Italy and the Mediterranean islands are especially fitted for classical scholars, like Symonds; but what a world of folk-lore also is there still ungathered! I should think that, next to Venice, Malta must be the most romantic spot in Europe.

I see your paper on Loochoo must have been much more than what you said of it,--viz., that only some snuffy German would read it. Or was the London report about the paper on Loochoo which I have? (There must be a wonderful ghost-world in those islands,--though it would be quite hard to get at: probably three years' work.)

You can't imagine my feeling of reaction in the matter of Japanese psychology. It seems as if everything had quite suddenly become clear to me, and utterly void of emotional interest: a race primitive as the Etruscan before Rome was, or more so, adopting the practices of a larger civilization under compulsion,--five thousand years at least emotionally behind us,--yet able to suggest to us the existence of feelings and ideals which do not exist, but are simulated by something infinitely simpler. Wonder if our own highest things have not grown up out of equally simple things. The compulsion first--then the sense of duty become habit, automatic, the conviction expanding into knowledge of ethical habit,--then the habit creating conviction,--then relations,--then the capacity for general ideas. But all the educational system now seems to me farcical and wrong,--except in mere dealing with facts apparent to common sense. There are no depths to stir, no race-profundities to explore: all is like a Japanese river-bed, through which the stones and rocks show up all the year round,--and is never filled but in time of cataclysm and destruction.

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KŌBE, March, 1895.