A MASTER-WORKMAN
It was characteristic of the oddity of Hearn's whole life that his way
to the Farthest East should have led through the Farthest West, and that
his way to a land where one's first impressions are of having strayed
into a child's world of faëry,--so elfishly frail and fantastically
small that one almost fears to move lest a rude gesture might destroy a
baby's dear "make believe,"--should have led through plains as gigantic
as empires, and mountain gorges vast as dreams.
Something of the contrast and amazement are recorded in "My First
Day"--the introductory paper in "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan":--
"The first charm is intangible and volatile as a perfume.... Elfish
everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small and queer
and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little
shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in their blue
costumes.... Hokusai's own figures walking about in straw rain-coats and
straw sandals--bare-limbed peasants; and patient-faced mothers, with
smiling bald babies on their backs, toddling by upon their _geta_....
And suddenly a singular sensation comes upon me as I stand before a
weirdly sculptured portal,--a sensation of dream and doubt. It seems to
me that the steps, and the dragon-swarming gate, and the blue sky
arching over the roofs of the town, and the ghostly beauty of Fuji, and
the shadow of myself there stretching upon the grey masonry, must all
vanish presently ... because the forms before me--the curved roofs, the
coiling dragons, the Chinese grotesqueries of carving--do not really
appear to me as things new, but as things dreamed.... A moment and the
delusion vanishes; the romance of reality returns, with freshened
consciousness of all that which is truly and deliciously new; the
magical transparencies of distance, the wondrous delicacy of tones, the
enormous height of the summer blue, and the white soft witchery of the
Japanese sun."
That first witchery of Japan never altogether failed to hold him during
the fourteen years in which he wrought out the great work of his life,
though he exclaims in one of his letters of a later time, "The
oscillation of one's thoughts concerning Japan! It is the hardest
country to learn--except China--in the world." He grew aware too in time
that even he, with his so amazing capacity for entering into the spirit
of other races, must forever remain alien to the Oriental. After some
years he writes:--
"The different ways of thinking and the difficulties of the 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 a European child--perhaps closer and sweeter because
infinitely more natural and naturally refined. Cultivate his mind, and
the more it is cultivated the farther you push him from you.
Why?--Because here 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 he will think in the opposite direction from
you."
Though he arrived at a happy moment, his artistic _Wanderjahre_ done,
and the tools of his art, after long and bitter apprenticeship, at last
obedient to his will and thought in the hand of a master-workman; the
material with which he was to labour new and beautiful; yet he never
ceased to believe that his true medium was denied to him. In one of his
letters he cries:--
"Pretty to talk of my 'pen of fire.' I've lost it. Well, the fact is, it
is of no use here. There isn't any fire here. It is all soft, dreamy,
quiet, pale, faint, gentle, hazy, vapoury, visionary,--a land where
lotus is a common article of diet,--and where there is scarcely any real
summer. Even the seasons are feeble ghostly things. Don't please imagine
there are any tropics here. Ah! the tropics--they still pull at my
heart-strings. Goodness! my real field was there--in the Latin
countries, in the West Indies and Spanish America; and my dream was to
haunt the old crumbling Portuguese and Spanish cities, and steam up the
Amazon and the Orinoco, and get romances nobody else could find. And I
could have done it, and made books that would sell for twenty years."
Perhaps he never himself quite realized how much greater in importance
was the work chance had set him to do. In place of gathering up in the
outlying parts of the new world the dim tattered fragments of old-world
romance--as a collector might seek in Spanish-American cities faded bits
of what were once the gold-threaded, glowing tapestries brought to adorn
the exile of Conquistadores--he had the good fortune to be chosen to
assist at one of the great births of history. Out of "a race as
primitive as the Etruscan before Rome was"--as he declared he found
them--he was to see a mighty modern nation spring full-armed, with all
the sudden miraculous transformation of some great mailed beetle
bursting from the grey hidden shell of a feeble-looking pupa. He saw the
fourteenth century turn swiftly, amazingly, into the twentieth, and his
twelve volumes of studies of the Japanese people were to have that
unique and lasting value that would attach to equally painstaking
records of Greek life before the Persian wars. Inestimable, immortal,
would be such books--could they anywhere be found--setting down the
faiths, the traditions, the daily lives, the songs, the dances, the
names, the legends, the humble lore of plants, birds, and insects, of
that people who suddenly stood up at Thermopylæ, broke the wave from the
East, made Europe possible, and set the cornerstone of Occidental
thought. This was what Lafcadio Hearn, a little penniless, half-blind,
eccentric wanderer had come to do for Japan. To make immortal the story
of the childhood of a people as simple as the early Greek, who were to
break at Mukden the great wave of conquest from the West and to
rejuvenate the most ancient East.
So naturally humble was his estimate of himself that it is safe to
assert that not at this time, perhaps at no time, was he aware of the
magnitude and importance of the work he had been set to do. For the
moment he was concerned only with the odylic charm of the new faëry
world in which he found himself, but even in faëry-land one may find in
time rigidities underlying the charm. No Occidental at that period had
as yet divined the iron core underlying the silken courtesy of the
Japanese character. Within the first lustrum of his residence there
Hearn had grasped the truth, and expressed it in a metaphor. In the
volume entitled "Out of the East" he says:--
"Under all the amazing self-control and patience there exists an
adamantine something very dangerous to reach.... In the house of any
rich family the guest is likely to be shown some of the heirlooms.... A
pretty little box, perhaps, will be set before you. Opening it you will
see only a beautiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord decked
with tiny tassels. Very soft and choice the silk is, and elaborately
figured. What marvel can be hidden under such a covering? You open the
bag and see within another bag, of a different quality of silk, but very
fine. Open that, and lo! a third, which contains a fourth, which
contains a fifth, which contains a sixth, which contains a seventh bag,
which contains the strangest, roughest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay
that you ever beheld. Yet it is not only curious but precious; it may be
more than a thousand years old."
In time he came to know better than any other Occidental has ever known
all those smooth layers of the Japanese nature, and to understand and
admire that rough hard clay within--old and wonderful and precious.
Again he says:--
"For no little time these fairy folk can give you all the softness of
sleep. But sooner or later, if you dwell long with them, your
contentment will prove to have much in common with the happiness of
dreams. You will never forget the dream--never; but it will lift at
last, like those vapours of spring which lend preternatural loveliness
to a Japanese landscape in the forenoon of radiant days. Really you are
happy because you have entered bodily into Fairyland, into a world that
is not, and never could be your own. You have been transported out of
your own century, over spaces enormous of perished time, into an era
forgotten, into a vanished age, back to something ancient as Egypt or
Nineveh. That is the secret of the strangeness and beauty of things, the
secret of the thrill they give, the secret of the elfish charm of the
people and their ways. Fortunate mortal; the tide of Time has turned for
you! But remember that here all is enchantment, that you have fallen
under the spell of the dead, that the lights and the colours and the
voices must fade away at last into emptiness and silence."
For in time he realized that feudal Japan, with its gentleness and
altruism, had attained to its noble ideal of duty by tremendous coercion
of the will of the individual by the will of the rest, with a resultant
absence of personal freedom that was to the individualism of the
Westerner as strangling as the stern socialism of bees and ants.
These, however, were the subtler difficulties arising to confront him as
the expatriation stretched into years. The immediate concern was to find
means to live. His original purpose of remaining only long enough to
prepare a series of illustrated articles for _Harper's Magazine_--to be
later collected in book form--was almost immediately subverted by a
dispute with the publishers. The discovery, during the voyage, that the
artist who accompanied him was to receive more than double the pay
allowed for the text, angered him beyond measure, and this, added to
other matters in which he considered himself unjustly treated, caused
him to sever abruptly all his contracts.
It was an example of his incapacity to look at business arrangements
from the ordinary point of view that he declined even to receive his
royalties from the books already in print, and the publishers could
discharge their obligations to him only by turning over the money to a
friend, who after some years and by roundabout methods succeeded in
inducing him to accept it. That his indignation at what he considered an
injustice left him without resources or prospects in remote exile caused
him not a moment's hesitation in following this course. Fortunately a
letter of introduction carried him within the orbit of Paymaster
Mitchell McDonald, a young officer of the American navy stationed in
Yokohama. Between these two very dissimilar natures there at once sprang
up a warm friendship, from which Hearn derived benefits so delicately
and wisely tendered that even his fierce pride and sensitiveness could
accept them; and this friendship, which lasted until the close of his
life, proved to be a beautiful and helpful legacy for his children. The
letters to Paymaster McDonald included in Volume II have a special
character of gaiety and good fellowship--with him he forgot in great
measure the prepossessions of his life, and became merely the
man-of-the-world, delighting in the memories of good dinners, good wine
and cigars, enjoyed together; long evenings of gay talk and
reminiscences of a naval officer's polyglot experiences; long days of
sea and sunshine; but agreeable as were these cheerful experiences--so
foreign to his ordinary course of existence--he was continually driving
from him, in comic terror, the man who drew him now and again to forget
the seriousness of his task.
Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, already famous for his studies of
Japanese life and literature, also became interested in the
wanderer,--and through his potent influence Hearn received an
appointment to the Jinjō-chūgakkō or Ordinary Middle School at Matsue,
in the province Izumo, in Shimane Ken, to which he went in August of
1890.
[Illustration: LAFCADIO HEARN AND MITCHELL McDONALD]
Matsue lies on the northern coast, near that western end of Japan which
trails like a streaming feather of land through the Eastern Pacific
along the coast of China. It is a town of about thirty-five thousand
inhabitants, situated at the junction of Lake Shinji and the Bay of
Naka-umi, and was at that time far out of the line of travel or Western
influence, the manners of the people remaining almost unchanged,
affording a peculiarly favourable opportunity for the study of feudal
Japan. The ruins of the castle of the Daimyō, Matsudaira,--descendant
of the great Shōgun Ieyasu,--who was overthrown in the wars of the
Meiji, still frowned from the wooded hill above the city, and still his
love of art, his conservatism of the old customs, his rigid laws of
politeness were stamped deeply into the culture of the subjects over
whom he had reigned, though ugly modern buildings housed the schools of
that Western learning he had so contemned, and which the newcomer had
been hired to teach. But this was a teacher of different calibre from
those who had preceded him. Here was one not a holder of the "little
yellow monkey" prepossession. Here was a rare mind capable at the age of
forty of receiving new impressions, of comprehending a civilization
alien to all its previous knowledge.
Out of this remarkable experience--a stray from the Nineteenth Century
moving about in the unrealized world of the Fourteenth--grew that
portion of his first Japanese book, "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,"
which he called "From the Diary of an English Teacher," and "The Chief
City of the Province of the Gods." It is interesting to compare the
impression made upon the teacher by his pupils with the opinion formed
by the pupils of their foreign teacher.
Hearn says:--
"I have had two years' experience in large Japanese schools; and I have
never had personal knowledge of any serious quarrel between students....
A teacher is a teacher only: he stands to his pupils in the relation of
an elder brother. He never tries to impose his will upon them ...
severity would scarcely be tolerated by the students.... Strangely
pleasant is the first sensation of a Japanese class, as you look over
the ranges of young faces.... Those traits have nothing incisive,
nothing forcible: compared with Occidental faces they seem but
'half-sketched,' so soft their outlines are.... Some have a childish
freshness and frankness indescribable ... all are equally characterized
by a singular placidity--expressing neither love nor hate nor anything
save perfect repose and gentleness.... I find among the students a
healthy tone of skepticism in regard to certain forms of popular belief.
Scientific education is rapidly destroying credulity in old
superstitions.... But the deeper religious sense remains with him; and
the Monistic Idea in Buddhism is being strengthened ... by the new
education.... Shintō the students all sincerely are ... what the
higher Shintō signifies,--loyalty, filial piety, obedience to
parents, and respect for ancestors.... The demeanour of a class during
study hours is if anything too faultless. Never a whisper is heard;
never is a head raised from the book without permission.... My favourite
students often visit me of afternoons.... Their conversation and
thoughts are of the simplest and frankest.... Often they bring me gifts
of flowers, and sometimes they bring books and pictures to show
me--delightfully queer things,--family heirlooms. Never by any possible
chance are they troublesome, impolite, curious, or even talkative.
Courtesy in its utmost possible exquisiteness seems as natural to the
Izumo boy as the colour of his hair or the tint of his skin."
Of the teacher one of his pupils, Teizaburō Inomata, now a student at
Yale College, says:--
"We liked him for his appearance and for his gentle manners. He seemed
more pleasing in his looks than most foreigners do to the Japanese."
Masanobu Ōtani, his favourite pupil in Matsue, says: "He was a very
kind and industrious teacher, incomparable to the common foreigners
engaged in the Middle Schools of those days. No wonder therefore that he
won at once the admiration of all the teachers and students of the
school." He sends a copy of one of his own compositions corrected and
annotated by Hearn, and observes:--
"How he was kind and earnest in his teaching can well be seen by the
above specimen. It seems that themes for our composition were such as he
could infer our artless, genuine thoughts and feelings.... He
attentively listened to our reading, corrected each mispronunciation
whenever we did.... We Japanese feel much pain to pronounce 'l' and
'th.' He kindly and scrupulously taught the pronunciation of these
sounds. He was not tired to correct mispronunciation.... He was always
exact, but never severe."
Hearn's first residence in Matsue was at an inn in the quarter called
Zaimoku-chō, "but," says his wife in the reminiscences which she set
down to assist his biographer, "circumstances made him resolve to leave
it very soon. The chief cause was as follows: The daughter of the
innkeeper was suffering from a disease of the eyes. This aroused his
sympathy (as did all such troubles in a special manner); he asked the
landlord to send her to a hospital for treatment, but the landlord did
not care much about her, and refused, to Hearn's great mortification.
'Unmerciful fellow! without a father's heart,' he said to himself, and
removed to a house of his own on the shore of the lake."
This house was near the bridge Ōhashi which crossed the largest of
the three outlets from the lake to the bay, and commanded the beautiful
scenery described in "The Chief City of the Province of the Gods":--
"I slide open my little Japanese paper window to look out upon the
morning over a soft green cloud of foliage rising from the river-bounded
garden below. Before me, tremulously mirroring everything upon its
farther side, glimmers the broad glassy mouth of the Ōhashi-gawa,
opening into the Shinji Lake, which spreads out broadly to the right in
a dim grey frame of peaks.... But oh, the charm of the vision,--those
first ghostly love-colours of a morning steeped in mist soft as sleep
itself!... Long reaches of faintly-tinted vapour cloud the far lake
verge.... All the bases of the mountains are veiled by them ... so that
the lake appears incomparably larger than it really is, and not an
actual lake, but a beautiful spectral sea of the same tint as the
dawn-sky and mixing with it, while peak-tips rise like islands from the
brume--an exquisite chaos, ever changing aspect as the delicate fogs
rise, slowly, very slowly. As the sun's yellow rim comes into sight,
fine thin lines of warmer tone--violets and opalines--shoot across the
flood, tree-tops take tender fire.... Looking sunward, up the long
Ōhashi-gawa, beyond the many-pillared wooden bridge, one high-pooped
junk, just hoisting sail, seems to me the most fantastically beautiful
craft I ever saw,--a dream of Orient seas, so idealized by the vapour is
it; the ghost of a junk, but a ghost that catches the light as clouds
do; a shape of gold mist, seemingly semi-diaphanous, and suspended in
pale blue light."
Here, constantly absorbed when off duty in the study of the sights and
sounds of the city,--the multitudinous soft clapping of hands that
greeted the rising sun, the thin ringing of thousands of wooden _geta_
across the bridge, the fantastic craft of the water traffic, the trades
of the street merchants, the plays and songs of the children,--he began
to register his first impressions, to make his first studies for his
first book. Of its two volumes he afterwards spoke slightingly as full
of misconceptions and errors, but it at once, upon its appearance in
print, attracted the serious consideration of literary critics, and is
the work which, with "Japan: an Interpretation," remains most popular
with his Japanese friends. It records his many expeditions to the
islands and ports of the three provinces included in the Ken of Shimane,
and his study of the manners, customs, and religion of the people. Of
special value was his visit to the famous temple at Kizuki, to whose
shrine he was the first Westerner ever admitted. Lord Senke Takamori,
priest of this temple, was a friend of the family of the lady who
became Hearn's wife, and prince of a house which had passed its office
by direct male line through eighty-two generations; as old a house as
that of the Mikado himself. From him Hearn received the unusual courtesy
of having ordered for his special benefit a religious dance by the
temple attendants.
It was while Lafcadio was living in the house by the Ōhashi bridge
that he married, in January, 1891, Setsu Koizumi, a lady of high samurai
rank. The revolution in Japan which overthrew the power of the Shōguns
and restored the Mikado to temporal power had broken the whole feudal
structure of Japanese society, and with the downfall of the daimyōs,
whose position was similar to that of the dukes of feudal England, fell
the lesser nobility, the samurai, or "two-sworded" men. Many of these
sank into as great poverty as that which befel the _émigrés_ after the
French Revolution, and among those whose fortunes were entirely ruined
were the Koizumis. Sentarō Nishida, who appears to have been a sort of
head master of the Jinjō-chūgakkō, in special charge of the English
department, was of one of the lesser samurai families, his mother having
been an inmate of the Koizumi household before the decline of their
fortunes. Because of his fluency in English, as well as because of what
seems to have been a peculiar sweetness and dignity of character, he
soon became the interpreter and special friend of the new English
teacher. It was through his mediation that the marriage was arranged.
Under ordinary circumstances a Japanese woman of rank would consider an
alliance with a foreigner an inexpugnable disgrace; but the
circumstances of the Koizumis were not ordinary, and whatever may have
been the secret feelings of the girl of twenty-two, it is certain that
she immediately became passionately attached to her husband, and the
marriage continued to the end to be a very happy one. It was celebrated
by the local rites, as to have married according to English laws, under
the then existing treaties, would have deprived her of her Japanese
citizenship and obliged them to remove to one of the open ports; but the
question of the legality of the marriage and of her future troubled
Hearn from the beginning, and finally obliged him to renounce his
English allegiance and become a subject of the Mikado in order that she
and her children might never suffer from any complications or doubts as
to their position. This could only be achieved by his adoption into his
wife's family. He took their name, Koizumi, which signifies "Little
Spring," and for personal title chose the classical term for Izumo
province, Yakumo, meaning "Eight Clouds"--or "the place of the issuing
of clouds"--and also being the first word of the oldest known Japanese
poem.
Mrs. Hearn says: "We afterwards removed to a samurai house where we
could have a home of our own conveniently equipped with numbers of
rooms,--our household consisting of us two, maids, and a small cat. Now
about this cat: while we lived near the lake, when the spring was yet
cold, as I was watching from the veranda the evening shadow falling upon
the lake one day, I found a group of boys trying to drown a small cat
near our house. I asked the boys and took it home. 'O pity! cruel
boys!' Hearn said, and took that all-wet, shivering creature into his
own bosom (underneath the cloth) and kindly warmed it. This strongly
impressed me with his deep sincerity, which I ever after witnessed at
various occasions. Such conduct would be very extreme, but he had such
an intensity in his character." This cat seems to have been an important
member of the household. Professor Ōtani in referring to it says: "It
was a purely black cat. It was given the name of _Hinoko_ (a spark) by
him, because of its glaring eyes like live coals. It became his pet. It
was often held in his hat."
Later another pet was added to the establishment--an _uguisu_, sent to
him by "the sweetest lady in Japan, daughter of the Governor of Izumo,
who, thinking the foreign teacher might feel lonesome during a brief
illness, made him the gift of this dainty creature."
"You do not know what an _uguisu_ is?" he says. "An _uguisu_ is
a holy little bird that professes Buddhism ... very brief indeed
is my feathered Buddhist's confession of faith,--only the sacred
name of the _sutras_ reiterated over and over again, like a
litany--'_Ho-ke-kyō!_'--a single word only. But also it is written:
'He who shall joyfully accept but a single word from this _sutra_,
incalculably greater shall be his merit than the merit of one who should
supply all the beings in the four hundred thousand worlds with all
the necessaries for happiness.' ... Always he makes a reverent little
pause after uttering it. First the warble; then a pause of about five
seconds; then a slow, sweet, solemn utterance of the holy name in a tone
as of meditative wonder; then another pause; then another wild, rich,
passionate warble. Could you see him you would marvel how so powerful
and penetrating a soprano could ripple from so minute a throat, yet his
chant can be heard a whole _chō_ away ... a neutral-tinted mite almost
lost in his box-cage darkened with paper screens, for he loves the
gloom. Delicate he is, and exacting even to tyranny. All his diet must
be laboriously triturated and weighed in scales, and measured out to him
at precisely the same hour each day."
In this house, surrounded with beautiful gardens, and lying under the
very shadow of the ruined Daimyō castle, Hearn and his wife passed a
very happy year. The rent was about four dollars a month; his salaries
from the middle and normal schools, added to what he earned with his
pen, made him for the first time in his life easy about money matters.
He was extremely popular with all classes, from the governor to the
barber; the charm and wonder of the life about him was still unstaled by
usage, and he found himself at last able to achieve some of that beauty
and force of style for which he had so long laboured. He even found
pleasure in the fact that most of his friends were of no greater stature
than himself. It seems to have been in every way the happiest portion of
his life. Mrs. Hearn's notes concerning it are so delightful as to
deserve literal reproduction.
"The governor of the prefecture at that time was Viscount Yasusada
Koteda, an earnest advocate of preserving old, genuine Japanese
essentials, a conservatist. He was very much skilful in fencing; was
much respected by the people in general.
"Mr. Koteda was also very kind to Lafcadio.
"Thus all Izumo proved favourable to him. The place welcomed him and
treated him as a member of its family, a guest, a good friend, and not
as a stranger or a foreigner. To him all things were full of novel
interest; and the hospitality and good-naturedness of the city-people
were the great pleasure for him. Matsue was, as it were, a paradise for
him; and he became enthusiastically fond of Matsue. The newspapers of
the city often published his anecdotes for his praise. The students were
very pleased that they had a good teacher. In the meantime, the
wonderful thread of marriage happened to unite me with Lafcadio....
"When I first saw Lafcadio, his property was a very scanty one,--only a
table, a chair, a few number of books, a suit of both foreign and
Japanese cloth [clothes], etc.
"When he came home from school, he put on Japanese cloth and sat on
cushion and smoked.
"By this time he began to be fond of living in all ways like Japanese.
He took Japanese food with chopsticks.
"In his Izumo days, he was pleased to be present on all banquets held by
the teachers; he also invited some teachers very often and was very glad
to listen to the popular songs.
"On the New Year's day of 1891, he went round for a formal call with
Japanese _haori_ and _hakama_....
"But on those days I had to suffer from the inconvenience of
conversation between us. We could not understand each other very well.
Nor was Hearn familiar with complicated Japanese customs. He was a man
with a rare sensibility of feeling; also he had a peculiar taste. Having
been teased by the hard world, and being still in the vigour of his
life, he often seemed to be indignant with the world. (This turned in
his later years into a melancholic temperament.) When we travelled
through the province of Hōki, we had to rest for a while at a
tea-house of some hot-spring, where many people were making merry. Hearn
pulled my dress, saying: 'Stop to enter this house! No good to rest
here. It is an hell. Even a moment we should not stay here.' He was
often offended in such a way. I was younger than now I am and
unexperienced with the affairs of the world; and it was no easy task for
me then to reconcile him with the occasions.
"We visited Kūkedo, which is a cave on a rocky shore in the sea of
Japan. Hearn went out from the shore and swam for about two miles,
showing great dexterity in various feats of swimming. Our boat entered
the dark, hollow cave, and it was very fearful to hear the sounds of
waves dashing against the wall. There are many fearful legends
concerning this cave. To keep our boat from the evil-spirit, we had to
continue tapping our boat with a stone. The deep water below was
horribly blue. After hearing my story about the cave, Hearn began to put
off his clothes. The sailor said that there would be a great danger if
any one swam here, on account of the devil's curse. I dissuaded him from
swimming. Hearn was very displeased and hardly spoke with me till the
next day....
"In the summer of 1891 he visited Kizuki with Mr. Nishida. The next day
he sent for me to come. When I arrived at his hotel I found the two had
gone to sea for swimming, and Hearn's money, packed in his stocking, was
left on the floor. He was very indifferent in regard to money until in
later years he became anxious for the future of family, as he felt he
would not live very long on account of his failing health....
"He was extremely fond of freedom, and hated mere forms and restraint.
As a middle school teacher and as a professor in the University he was
always democratic and simple in his life. He ordered to make flock-coat
when he became University professor, and it was after my eager advice.
He at first insisted that he would not appear on public ceremony where
polite garments are required, according to the promise with Dr. Toyama,
and it was after my eager entreaties that at last he consented to have
flock-coat made for him. But it was only some four or five times that he
put on that during his life. So whenever he puts on that, he felt the
task of putting on very troublesome, and said: 'Please attend to-day's
meeting instead of me. I do not like to wear this troublesome thing;
daily cloth is sufficient, etc.' He disliked silk-hat. Some day I said
in joke: 'You have written about Japan very well. His Majesty the
Emperor is calling you to praise. So please put on the flock-coat and
silk-hat.' He answered: 'Therefore I will not attend the meeting;
flock-coat and silk-hat are the thing I dislike.'
"Our conversation was through Japanese language. Hearn would not teach
me English, saying: 'It is far lovelier for the Japanese women that they
talk in Japanese. I am glad that you do not know English.'
"Some time (when at Kumamoto) I told him of various inconveniences on
account of my ignorance of English. He said that if I were able to write
my name in English it would be sufficient; and instead he wanted me to
teach him Japanese alphabet. He made progress in this and were able to
write letters in Japanese alphabet with a few Chinese characters
intermixed.
"Our _mutual_ Japanese language made great progress on account of
necessity. This special Japanese of mine proved much more intelligible
to him than any skilful English of Japanese friend. Hearn was always
delighted with my Japanese. By and by he was able to teach Kazuo in
Japanese. He also taught Japanese stories to other children in Japanese.
"But on Matsue days we suffered in regard to conversations. Sometimes we
had to refer to the dictionary. Being fond from my girlhood of old
tales, I began from these Matsue days telling him long Japanese old
stories, which were not easy for him to understand, but to which he
listened with much interest and attention. He called our mutual Japanese
language 'Hearn san Kotoba' (Hearn's language). So in later years when
he met some difficult words he would say in joke to explain them in our
familiar 'Hearn san Kotoba.'"
* * * * *
Unfortunately this idyllic interval was cut short by ill health. The
cold Siberian winds that pass across Izumo in winter seriously affected
his lungs, and the little _hibachi_, or box of burning charcoal, which
was the only means in use of warming Japanese houses, could not protect
sufficiently one who had lived so long in warm climates. Oddly too, cold
always affected his eyesight injuriously, and very reluctantly, but
under the urgent advice of his doctor, he sought employment in a warmer
region and was transferred to the Dai Go Kōtō Gakkō, the great
Government College, at Kumamoto, situated near the southern end of the
Inland Sea. In "Sayonara"--the last chapter of the "Glimpses"--there is
a description of his parting:--
"The quaint old city has become so endeared to me that the thought of
never seeing it again is one I do not venture to dwell upon.... These
days of farewells have been full of charming surprises. To have the
revelation of gratitude where you had no right to expect more than plain
satisfaction with your performance of duty; to find affection where you
supposed only good will to exist: these are assuredly delicious
experiences.... I cannot but ask myself the question: Could I have lived
in the exercise of the same profession for the same length of time in
any other country, and have enjoyed a similar unbroken experience of
human goodness? From each and all I have received only kindness and
courtesy. Not one has addressed to me a single ungenerous word. As a
teacher of more than five hundred boys and men I have never even had my
patience tried."
There were presents from the teachers, of splendid old porcelains, of an
ancient and valuable sword from the students, of mementos from every
one. A banquet was given, addresses made, the Government officials and
hundreds of friends came to bid him good-bye at the docks, and thus
closed the most beautiful episode of his life.
Matsue was old Japan. Kumamoto represented the far less pleasing Japan
in the stage of transition. Here Hearn remained for three years, and at
the expiration of his engagement abandoned the Government service and
returned to journalism for a while. Living was far more expensive, the
official and social atmosphere of Kumamoto was repugnant to him, and he
fell back into the old solitary, retiring habits of earlier
days--finding his friends among children and folk of the humbler
classes, excepting only the old teacher of Chinese, whose name signified
"Moon-of-Autumn," and to whom he makes reference in several of his
letters. In "Out of the East"--the book written in Kumamoto--he says of
this friend: "He was once a samurai of high rank belonging to the great
clan of Aizu. He had been a leader of armies, a negotiator between
princes, a statesman, a ruler of provinces--all that any knight could be
in the feudal era. But in the intervals of military or political duty he
seems always to have been a teacher. Yet to see him now you would
scarcely believe how much he was once feared--though loved--by the
turbulent swordsmen under his rule. Perhaps there is no gentleness so
full of charm as that of the man of war noted for sternness in his
youth."
Of his childish friends he relates a pretty story. They came upon one
occasion to ask for a contribution of money to help in celebrating the
festival of Jizō, whose shrine was opposite his house.
"I was glad to contribute to the fund, for I love the gentle god of
children. Early the next morning I saw that a new bib had been put about
Jizō's neck, a Buddhist repast set before him.... After dark I went
out into a great glory of lantern-fires to see the children dance; and I
found, perched before my gate, an enormous dragonfly more than three
feet long. It was a token of the children's gratitude for the help I had
given them. I was startled for a moment by the realism of the thing, but
upon close examination I discovered that the body was a pine branch
wrapped with coloured paper, the four wings were four fire-shovels, and
the gleaming head was a little teapot. The whole was lighted by a candle
so placed as to make extraordinary shadows, which formed part of the
design. It was a wonderful instance of art-sense working without a speck
of artistic material, yet it was all the labour of a poor little child
only eight years old!"
It was in Kumamoto that Hearn first began to perceive the fierceness and
sternness of the Japanese character. "With Kyūshū Students" and
"Jiu-jutsu" contain some surprising foreshadowings of the then
unsuspected future. Such characteristics, however he might respect or
understand them, were always antipathetic to his nature, and his
relations with the members of the school were for the most part formal.
He mentions that the students rarely called upon him, and that he saw
his fellow teachers only in school hours. Between classes he usually
walked under the trees, smoking, or betook himself to an abandoned
cemetery on the ridge of the hill behind the college, where an ancient
stone Buddha sat upon a lotus--"his meditative gaze slanting down
between half-closed eyelids"--and where he wrought out the chapter in
"Out of the East" which is called "The Stone Buddha." It became a
favourite resort. Mrs. Hearn says: "When at Kumamoto we two often went
out for a walk in the night-time. On the first walk at Kumamoto I was
led to a graveyard, for on the previous day he said: 'I have found a
pleasant place. Let us go there to-morrow night.' Through a dark path I
was led on, until we came up a hill, where were many tombs. Dreary place
it was! He said: 'Listen and hear the voices of frogs.'"
He was still in Kumamoto when Japan went to war with China, and his
record of the emotion of the people is full of interest. The war spirit
manifested itself in ways not less painful than extraordinary. Many
killed themselves on being refused the chance of military service.
It was here in the previous year, November 17, 1893, that his first
child was born, and was named Kazuo, which signifies "the first of the
excellent, best of the peerless." The event caused him the profoundest
emotion. Indeed, it seemed to work a great change in all his views of
life, as perhaps it does in most parents, reconciling them to much
against which they may have previously rebelled. Writing to me a few
weeks after this event he declared with artless conviction that the boy
was "strangely beautiful," and though three other children came in later
years, Kazuo always remained his special interest and concern. Up to the
time of his death he never allowed his eldest son to be taught by any
one but himself, and his most painful preoccupation when his health
began to decline was with the future of this child, who appeared to have
inherited both his father's looks and disposition.
The constant change in the personnel of the teaching force of the
college, and many annoyances to which he was subjected, caused his
decision at the end of the three years' term to remove to Kōbe and
enter the service of the Kōbe _Chronicle_. Explaining to Amenomori he
says:--
"By the way, I am hoping to leave the Gov't service, and begin
journalism at Kōbe. I am not sure of success; but Gov't service is
uncertain to the degree of terror,--a sword of Damocles; and Gov't
doesn't employ men like you as teachers. If it did, and would give them
what they should have, the position of a foreign teacher would be
pleasant enough. He would be among thinkers, and find some
kindliness,--instead of being made to feel that he is only the servant
of petty political clerks. And I have been so isolated, that I must
acknowledge the weakness of wishing to be among Englishmen again--with
all their prejudices and conventions."
Kōbe was at that time, 1895, an open port, that is to say, one
of the places in which foreigners were allowed to reside without
special government permission, and under the extra-territorial rule
of their own consuls. Of Hearn's external life here there seems
to be but scant record. He worked as one of the staff of the
_Chronicle_,--his editorials frequently bringing upon him the wrath of
the missionaries,--he contributed some letters to the McClure Syndicate,
and there was much talk of a projected expedition, in search of material
for such work, to the Philippines or the Loo Choo Islands; a project
never realized. The journalistic work seriously affected his eyes, and
his health seems to have been poor at times. He made few acquaintances
and had almost no companions outside of his own household, where in 1896
another son was born.
Perhaps because of the narrowness of his social life his mental life
deepened and expanded, or possibly his indifference to the outer world
may have resulted from the change manifesting itself in his mental view.
"Kokoro" (a Japanese word signifying "The Heart of Things") was written
in Kōbe, as was also "Gleanings in Buddha-Fields," and they quite
remarkably demonstrate his growing indifference to the externals of
life, the deepening of his thought toward the intrinsic and the
fundamental. The visible beauty of woman, of nature, of art, grew to
absorb him less as he sought for the essential principle of beauty.
In one of the letters written about this time he says: "I have to
acknowledge to feeling a sort of resentment against certain things in
which I used to take pleasure. I can't look at a number of the _Petit
Journal pour Rire_ or the _Charivari_ without vexation, almost anger. I
can't find pleasure in a French novel written for the obvious purpose of
appealing to instincts that interfere with perception of higher things
than instincts. I should not go to the Paris Opera if it were next door.
I should not like to visit the most beautiful lady and be received in
evening dress. You see how absurd I have become--and this without any
idea of principle about the matter except the knowledge that I ought to
avoid everything which does not help me to make the best of
myself--small as it may be."
And again: "I might say that I have become indifferent to personal
pleasure of any sort ... what is more significant, I think, is the
feeling that the greatest pleasure is to work for others--for those who
take it as a matter of course that I should do so, and would be as much
amazed to find me selfish about it as if an earthquake had shaken the
house down.... It now seems to me that time is the most precious of all
things conceivable. I can't waste it by going out to hear people talk
nonsense.... There are rich natures that can afford the waste, but I
can't, because the best part of my life has been wasted in the wrong
direction and I shall have to work like thunder till I die to make up
for it."
The growing gravity and force of his thought was shown not only in his
books but in his correspondence. Most of the letters written at this
period were addressed to Professor Chamberlain, dealing with matters of
heredity and the evolution of the individual under ancestral racial
influences. The following extract is typical of the tone of the whole:--
"Here comes in the consideration of a very terrible possibility. Suppose
we use integers instead of quintillions or centillions, and say that an
individual represents by inheritance a total of 10-5 of impulses
favourable to social life, 5 of the reverse. (Such a balance would
really occur in many cases.) The child inherits, under favourable
conditions, the father's balance plus the maternal balance of 9,--four
of the number being favourable. We have then a total which becomes odd,
and the single odd number gives preponderance to an accumulation of
ancestral impulse incalculable for evil. It would be like a pair of
scales, each holding a mass as large as Fuji. If the balance were
absolutely perfect the weight of _one_ hair would be enough to move a
mass of millions of tons. Here is your antique Nemesis awfully
magnified. Let the individual descend below a certain level and
countless dead suddenly seize and destroy him,--like the Furies."
One begins to miss the beautiful landscapes against which he had set his
enchantingly realistic pictures of beautiful things and people, but in
the place of the sensuous charm, the honeyed felicities of phrase, he
offered such essays as the "Japanese Civilization" in "Kokoro," with its
astounding picture of New York City, and its sublimated insight into the
imponderable soul of the Eastern world--such intolerable imaginings as
"Dust" in the "Gleanings from Buddha-Fields," and the delicate
poignancies of "The Nun of the Temple of Amida" or of "A Street Singer."
I think it was at Kōbe he reached his fullest intellectual stature.
None of the work that followed in the next eight years surpassed the
results he there achieved, and much was of lesser value, despite its
beauty. He had attained to complete mastery of his medium, and had
moreover learned completely to master his thought before clothing it in
words--a far more difficult and more important matter.
Yet the clothing in words was no small task, as witness the accompanying
examples of how he laboured for the perfection of his vehicle. These are
not the first struggles of a young and clumsy artist, but the efforts at
the age of fifty-three of one of the greatest masters of English.
It was done, too, by a man who earned with his pen in a year less than
the week's income of one of the facile authors of the "six best
sellers."
As has been said of De Quincey, whom Hearn in many ways resembled, "I
can grasp a little of his morbid suffering in the eternal struggle for
perfection of utterance; I can share a part of his æsthetic torment over
cacophony, redundance, obscurity, and all the thousand minute delicacies
and subtleties of resonance and dissonance, accent and cæsura, that only
a De Quincey's ear appreciates and seeks to achieve or evade. How many
care for these fine things to-day? How many are concerned if De Quincey
uses a word with the long 'a' sound, or spends a sleepless night in his
endeavour to find another with the short 'a,' that shall at once
answer his purpose and crown his sentence with harmony? Who lovingly
examine the great artist's methods now, dip into the secret of his
mystery, and weigh verb against adjective, vowel against consonant, that
they may a little understand the unique splendour of this prose? And
who, when an artist is the matter, attempt to measure his hopes as well
as his attainments or praise a noble ambition perhaps shining through
faulty attempt? How many, even among those who write, have fathomed the
toil and suffering, the continence and self-denial of our great artists
in words?"
[Illustration: _Specimen of Hearn's MS., first draft._]
[Illustration]