Part 3

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 concentrated 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.

[Illustration: 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 reference 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.

[Illustration: 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.

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