Part 2
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 destroyed 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. Psychophysics 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.