Part 7

One becomes fond of Japanese sake (rice-wine); but it can only be eaten with Japanese food. A barrel of the best costs about $3.50. It is extremely deceiving. It looks like lemonade; but it is heavy as sherry. Happily it has not the after-effects of sherry. There is no liquor in the world upon which a man becomes so quickly intoxicated, and yet none of which the effects last so short a time. The intoxication is pleasant as the effect of opium or hasheesh. It is a soft, pleasant, luminous exhilaration: everything becomes brighter, happier, lighter;--then you get very sleepy. At Japanese dinners it is the rule to become slightly exhilarated; but not to drink enough to talk thickly, or walk crooked. The ability to drink at banquets requires practice--long practice. With European wines, the rule is, I believe, that hearty eating prevents the drink from taking too much effect. But with Japanese sake it is exactly the opposite. There are banquets of many kinds, and the man who is invited to one at which extensive drinking may be expected is careful to start in upon an empty, or almost empty, stomach. By not eating one can drink a good deal. The cups are very small, and of many curious shapes; but one maybe expected to empty fifty. A quart of sake is a good load; two quarts require iron nerves to stand. But among the Japanese there are wonderful drinkers. At a military officer's banquet a captain offered me a tumbler holding a good pint of sake,--I almost fainted at the sight of it; for it was only the first. But a friend said to me: "Only drink a little, and pass it back"--which I did. Stronger heads emptied cup after cup like water. "Oh, that is nothing," my friend said; "wait till you see an old-fashioned cup." He showed me something like a wash-basin for size,--a beautiful lacquered bowl, holding, I should guess, at the very least a quart and a half. "A valiant warrior was expected," he said, "to swallow this at one draft, and wait for more." I should not like to attempt it, unless I were suffering very badly from chills and fever. When very tired and cold, one can drink a great deal of sake without harm.

About my every-day life. Well, it is the simplest and most silent of lives,--in a simple Japanese house. I use one chair, only for writing at a high table on account of my eyes. Most of my life I spend squatting on the floor. Europeans can seldom get used to this; but it has become second nature to me.

I always wear Japanese clothes in the house, of course. We rest, eat, talk, read, and sleep on the floor. But then, you do not know, perhaps, what a Japanese floor is. It is like a great soft mattress: the real floor is covered by heavy mats, fitted to one another like mattresses set edge to edge; and these cannot be lifted up except by a workman: they are really part of the building. Then this floor is spotlessly clean. No dust is ever suffered upon it,--not a speck. Therefore we live barefooted in summer, or wearing only stockings in winter. The bed consists of a series of heavy quilts of pretty colours--like very thick comforts, piled one upon the other on the floor. By day these are rolled up and stowed out of sight. So in a Japanese house you see no furniture,--only in some recess, a graceful vase, and one _kakemono_, or hanging picture painted on silk. That is all--except the smoking-box (_hibachi_) in the middle of the room, surrounded by kneeling-cushions. In the evening the Japanese bath is ready. It is _almost_ scalding always--hard to get used to; but the best in the world because you can't take cold after it. It consists of an immense tub, with a little furnace _in_ it which heats the water. For amusements we have the Japanese theatres, the street-festivals, visits of friends, Japanese newspapers, occasional pilgrimages to curious places, and--delight of delights in some cities--_shopping_, Japanese shopping.

Bad boys,--and not obliged to give good and great moral examples,--people who are not strictly moral in their virtues like you and me,--sometimes hire _geisha_ or dancing girls to amuse them....

At all banquets--except those of teachers here--there are _geisha_. When you sit down (I mean kneel down) to eat, a band of beautiful girls come in to wait upon you, with exquisite voices, and beautiful dresses, etc. These are _geisha_. After a while they dance. If you wish to fall in love with them, you may....

In Matsue I often saw _geisha_ dance: they were at all banquets. But at teachers' banquets in Kumamoto they are not allowed. We are strictly moral in Kyūshū....

Lo!--it's nearly time to close the mail for the outgoing steamer. So, dear Page, I must conclude for the moment in great haste.

With best regards to Mrs. Baker, best remembrances and gratitude to you, excuse this scrawl, and believe me ever faithfully

Your friend, LAFCADIO HEARN.

Really, it seems to me as if I hadn't thanked you at all. You are simply divine about doing kind things. My little wife sends you this greeting with her own hand,--

[Illustration]

It means: "_May you live a thousand years!_"

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA

KAGAWA, SAKAI, August, 1892.

DEAR NISHIDA,-- ... It made us both very happy to hear you had been persuaded to stop at our little house; for although it is hot and small, still you would feel more homelike there, with Izumo folk, than at the big dreary hotels of Kumamoto. I hope you will be able to stop a little while with us now at Mionoseki.

I like Oki very, very much--much better than Kumamoto. I like country people, fishermen, sailors, primitive manners, simple ways: all these delight me, and they are in Oki. To watch the life and customs of those people is very pleasant, and would be profitable to me in a literary way if I had time to spare. Oki is worth six months' literary study for me. I hope to see it again. The only unpleasant thing is the awful smell of the cuttle-fish. But I will tell you all my impressions when we meet....

With kindest regards from myself and Setsu,--hoping to see you soon, as ever,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA

MIONOSEKI, August, 1892.

DEAR NISHIDA,--We felt quite lonesome after you went away, and especially at supper-time,--when there were only two mats, instead of three, laid upon the _suzumi-dai_, overlooking the bay, and the twinkling of the Golden Dragon.

Next morning the water was rough, and made a great noise; and I said, "That is because Nishida San has sent us some eggs." But in the afternoon the bay again became like a mirror; and I succeeded in teaching Masayoshi to lie on his back in the water. Quite late in the afternoon the little Sakai Maru came in, and brought a magnificent box of eggs, and your letter, and a copy of the _Nippon_.

You are too good; and I felt not less pleased to find myself so kindly remembered than sorry to think of the trouble you took for us. But the eggs were more than welcome. The landlord cooked them in a little quadrangular pan; and each one looked like a Japanese flag, with the Red Sun in the middle. A thousand thanks to you, and to your kindest mother,--and to all your family warmest regards.

By the way, speaking of the Great Deity of Mionoseki, last evening we had a good laugh at the arguments of a clever barber, who came to cut my _kappa_-hair. I noticed he had a soldier's belt instead of an _obi_. I questioned him, through Setsu; and found he had been many years in the army. In the army they gave the soldiers eggs; and he hated eggs at first. But he learned to eat them, and found that they made him stronger. Whenever he ate many eggs, he could blow his bugle much better. Then he became fond of eggs. Still he gets his friends secretly to send him eggs; and the Great Deity of Mionoseki is not angry. He says: "What nonsense! Suppose the Cock _did_ crow at the wrong hour, is not Koto-shiro-nushi no Mikoto a _Kami sama_?--and how are we to believe that a _Kami sama_ does not know the right time? And suppose the _wanizame_ did bite him,--then it is at the _wanizame_ he ought to have been angry,--not at the Cock. I don't believe Koto-shiro-nushi no Kami could be so foolish. Indeed it is very wrong to tell such a story about him. I like eggs. I pity the people of Mionoseki, who do not know the rare pleasure of eating a well-cooked egg" (etc., etc.). "If the Deity was angry with the Cock, he should have eaten him." ...

With many grateful regards, Ever most truly, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

November, 1892.

DEAR OLD FELLOW,-- ... What a beastly nightmare that woman who married the preacher! High-pressure civilization only produces these types.--But, Lord! what is to be the end?... The race will still be to the mentally strong as well as to the physically strong. But the women fit for fertile maternity, and equally fit to discuss the fourth dimension of space, are yet rare,--and apt to be a little terrible. The cost of intellectual race-expansion is more terrible,--is frightful; and then the expansion cannot _ever_ become universal. The many must profit by the few. To make 1 of the few, there must be, I suppose, at least 111,111 of such monstrosities created as that one you wrote of.

Isn't the hunger for the eternal feminine much like the other hunger?--to be completely exorcised in the same way. Marriage seems to me the certain destruction of all that emotion and suffering,--so that one afterwards looks back at the old times with wonder. One cannot dream or desire anything more after love is transmuted into the friendship of marriage. It is like a haven from which you can see the dangerous sea-currents, running like violet bands beyond you out of sight. It seems to me (though I'm a poor judge of such matters) that it doesn't make a man any happier to have an intellectual wife--unless he marries for society. The less intellectual, the more lovable: so long as there is neither coarseness nor foolishness. For intellectual converse a man _can't_ have really with women: womanhood is antagonistic to it. And emotional truth is quite as plain to the childish mind as to the mind of Herbert Spencer or of Clifford. The child and the god come equally near to the eternal truth. But then marriage in a complex civilization is really a terrible problem: there are so _many_ questions involved.

Oh!--_you_ talk of being without intellectual companionship! O ye Eight Hundred Myriads of Gods! What would you do if you were me. Lo! the illusion is gone!--Japan in Kyūshū is like Europe;--except I have no friend. The differences in ways of thinking, and the difficulties of language, render it impossible for an _educated_ Japanese to find pleasure in the society of a European. Here is an astounding fact. The Japanese child is as close to you as the European child--perhaps closer and sweeter, because infinitely more natural and naturally refined. Cultivate his mind, and the more it is cultivated, the _further you push him_ from you. Why? Because there the race-antipodalism shows itself. As the Oriental thinks naturally to the left where we think to the right, the more you cultivate him the more strongly will he think in the opposite direction from you. Finis sweetness, sympathy, friendship. Now, my scholars in this great Government school are not boys, but men. They speak to me only in class. The teachers never speak to me at all. I go to the college (two miles away) by jinrikisha and return after class,--always alone, no mental company but books. But at home everything is sweet.

At the college there is always a recess of half an hour at noon, for dining. I do not dine, but climb the hill behind the college. There is a grey old cemetery, where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." From between the tombs I can look down on the Dai Go Kōtō Chūgakkō, with its huge modern brick buildings and its tumultuous life, as in a bird's-eye view. I am only there never alone. For Buddha sits beside me, and also looks down upon the college through his half-closed eyelids of stone. There is moss on his nose and his hands,--moss on his back, of course! And I always say to him: "O Master, what do you think of all this?--is it not vanity? There is no faith there, no creed, no thought of the past life nor of the future life, nor of Nirvana,--only chemistry and cube-geometry and trigonometry,--and the most damnable 'English language.'" He never answers me; but he looks very sad,--smiles just like one who has received an injury which he cannot return,--and you know that is the most pathetic of all smiles. And the snakes twist before my feet as I descend to the sound of the bell.--There is my only companion for you! but I like him better than those who look like him waiting for me in the classroom. Ever with best regards,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA

KUMAMOTO, January, 1893.

DEAR NISHIDA,--I do not know how to thank you enough for your last letter;--indeed I must tell you frankly that I felt ashamed of having put you to such trouble involuntarily, for I had no idea how complicated the matter was when I wrote to you for information about the origin of the belief. And now let me beg of you never to take so much trouble again on my account. I think I can hear you protesting that it was only a pleasure. I am sure it was a pleasure to help me; but I am too much of a literary man not to know exactly the time-cost of the work, especially in a language not your own. So I will again beg you not to take so much trouble for me at any future time--as it would cause me pain.

And now let me say something else about other letters. You spoke of _mistakes_. Do you know that I think your letters are very wonderful? There are extremely few mistakes; and there are very seldom even incorrectnesses in the use of idioms. This is rare in Japan. Very few Japanese, even among those who have been abroad, can write an informal letter without mistakes of a serious kind. You write letters much as a well-educated German or Frenchman would--showing only rarely, by some unfamiliar turn of expression, by the elision of a preposition, or (but this is very seldom indeed) by a sudden change of tense, that it is not an Englishman who writes. And in a few years more, even these little signs will disappear. It is very wonderful to me to see how a few Japanese have been able to master English without ever leaving Japan.

A point of much value to me in your explanation was the fact that too many souls are held to be as bad as too few. I had imagined the opposite to be the case, and had so written. But as I put the statement into the mouth of a story-teller, it will read all right enough; and I can correct the erroneous impression by a footnote.

There is rejoicing here over the non-abolition of the school. Your predictions have been well fulfilled. Several new books I recommended have been adopted; but there were changes made in my list, I think for the worse. Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" (Ginn, Heath & Co.'s school-text edition) has been adopted for the younger class. I recommended this book for the extreme purity and simplicity of its English, which reads like a song. I tried to get "Cuore" adopted, but could not succeed: they said it was "too childish." I tried Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome;" and that I think they will get. Then some classic texts--Burke's Essays (selected) were adopted instead of a volume of stories I proposed. They adopted also "The Book of Golden Deeds," a volume of anecdotes of virtue and courage. As for my own classes, they still give me no books at all; and I teach entirely by word of mouth and chalk. Still, considering the short time given to each class, I believe this is best. The main thing is to teach them to express themselves in English without books to help them. I have noticed that at one period of the course there is always a sudden improvement, as if there had been also a sudden development of intelligence,--between the third and fourth class. It corresponds to a change of capacity I noticed also in the Jinjō Chūgakkō. It might be indicated by lines, thus:--

[Illustration]

Between 3 and 4 the increase of power is like a leap. But after that (in the higher schools) I don't think there is much progress. Thereafter I fancy that in most cases the highest capacity has been reached, and then the strain comes. The students attempt to do on rice and gruel what foreign students can only do on beef, eggs, puddings, heavy nutritious diet. In the eternal order of things the overstrain comes. The higher education will not give the desired results for at least another generation,--because the physique of the student must be raised to meet it. The higher education requires a physiological change,--an increase of brain capacity in actual development of tissue, an increase of nervous energy, and consequently a higher standard of living. That there have been wonderful exceptions in Japanese scholarship makes no difference: it is a question of general averages. The student of to-day is not sufficiently strong and sufficiently nourished to bear the tremendous strain put upon him at the higher schools and the university. Wherefore he loses some of his best qualities in mere effort. The higher schools don't feed their boys well--not so well by half as the Government feeds the soldiers. At least so I have been assured.... Yours faithfully,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA

KUMAMOTO, January, 1893.

DEAR NISHIDA,--Your charming letter has just come, full of news and things to be grateful for. There is some news here too. Mr. Kano is gone! We are all very, very sorry....

Perhaps I might go to Niigata during the summer. Setsu is always, always, always talking about Tōkyō. I suppose I shall have to take her there. And I want to visit Kompira, and Zenkōji in Nagano (?)--where all the Souls of the Dead go,--and one might do all that and see Niigata too. I am very anxious to see the dear kind Governor and his daughter again. That kind of Governor is rare, and I think will soon cease to exist in Japan. He always seemed to me a delightful type of the old days,--like the princes of the _ehon_: the modernized Governor scarcely seems to belong to the same race. And the Japanese of the next generation will not be kind and open-hearted and unselfish, I fear: they will become hard of character like the Western people,--more intellectual and less moral. For old Japan, in unselfishness, was as far in advance of the West as she was materially behind it.

[Illustration: THE SHINTŌ TEMPLE OF KIZUKI]

The curling-up of the toe in the statue of Inada-Hime is not according to the canons of Western sculpture (which is still generally governed by the Greek spirit),--because it shows the member in what is considered an ungraceful position. But I thought after looking awhile at it, that it was really natural. Not natural from the standpoint of a modern people whose toes have lost both symmetry and flexibility owing to the wearing of leather shoes; but natural among a people whose feet are well shaped and whose toes remain supple, and to some degree, prehensile. Among tropical races the toes retain extraordinary flexibility; but I don't think any English girl could put her great-toe into the attitude taken by that of Inada-Hime. I imagined that this movement represented in the statue a little nervous feeling,--the involuntary shrinking of a woman from sharp cold steel. But that is only a guess. What it really means I should like to know.

I forgot in another letter to tell you that Herbert Spencer, in one of his recent volumes ("Individual Life") severely criticized some of the Mombushō Readers and other publications as immoral,--because appealing to the desire of revenge and the passion of hatred and bloodshed.... One thing is certain, that Readers for Japanese students ought to be edited in Japan, and edited in a particular manner with especial reference to national character and feeling. I prize the Mombushō Readers, because I learn so much from them; but as text-books they are not well written, and they do not appeal to the student's natural love of novelty. It is hopeless to interest boys in stories they know already by heart in their own language. They want what is new and strange and beautiful.--But no thanks will ever be given to the man who tries to do the work well; and his work itself will almost certainly be spoiled by the emendations and interpolations of a committee of men without knowledge or taste,--unless the thing should be done quite independently of officialdom.

I am trying to teach Setsu English by a fast memory-system. I can't tell whether I will succeed or not: if I find it strains her too much I must stop,--for the system is exhausting. In the course of teaching I notice something of what you tell me about Izumo pronunciation. It makes the difficulty much greater.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

KUMAMOTO, February, 1893.

DEAR HENDRICK,--This is not going to be a pleasant letter,--though it may have interest for you. I don't hesitate to tell my friends about shadows as well as lights, and I rather think the latter alone would cease to be interesting. Besides, we are all most interested in what most closely relates to the realities of life; and the realities of life are ugly to no small degree. Dreams are realities--of desire for things out of reach; but the diet of dreams is not substantial enough for the sense of friendship to live upon. So here goes for the lamentations,--or as a Frenchman would say, a _jérémiade_....

I might cite a fourth, a fifth;--but happily there are lights. I made one delightful friend here, Professor Chamberlain, and I told you about Major McDonald....

I am perfectly conscious that to a thorough man of the world I must be only a contemptible fool. Even to a friend like you who are not spoiled and cannot be spoiled by your _milieu_, I must seem something of a fool. Be that as it may,--here I am. Now what is this fool to do?...