Part 4

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.

DEAR DEVILISHLY DELIGHTFUL OLD FELLOW,--I have been dancing an Indian war-dance of exultation in my Japanese robes, to the unspeakable astonishment of my placid household. After which I passed two hours in a discourse in what my Japanese friends ironically term "The Hearnian Dialect." Subject of exultation and discourse,--the marriage of Miss Elizabeth Bisland. If she only knew how often I have written her name upon the blackboard for the eyes of the students of the Normal School to look upon when they asked me to tell them about English names! And they pronounce it after me with a pretty Japanese accent and lisp: "_Aileesabbet Beeslan_!" Well, well, well!--you most d--nably jolly fellow!!

... Civilization is full of deadly perils in small things,--isn't it? and horrors in large things--railroad collisions, steamboat explosions, elevator accidents,--all nightmares of machinery. How funny the quiet of this Oriental life. The other day a man brought a skin to the house to sell,--a foreign skin. Very beautiful the animal must have been, and the price was cheap. But the idea of murder the thing conveyed was horrible to me, and I was glad to find my folks of the same mind. "No, no!--we don't like to see it," they said. And the man departed, and in his heart pain was lord.