KUMAMOTO, January, 1892.
DEAR HENDRICK,--Your jolly letter just came--Jan. 3rd,--to find me
celebrating the new year after the Japanese fashion. There is not one
New Year's day here, but three. Over the gate, and all the alcoves of
each apartment, the straw rope (_shimenawa_), which is the Shintō
emblem of the gods, is festooned; upon the _kamidana_, or "god-shelf,"
lights are burning before the tablets of those deities who have
pledged themselves in Japanese ideographs to love and protect this
foreigner,--and I have given to them offerings of rice-cakes and sake.
For the guests are dishes of raw fish, and others which it would take
too long to describe, and hot sake. My little wife does the honours.
Before the gate are Japanese flags and pine-trees--emblems of green old
age and unflinching purpose.
--Well, here I am in Kyūshū, a thousand miles and more south of
Yokohama, at a salary of 200 yen a month. All my Izumo servants came
with me. Our house is not nearly so beautiful as that in Matsue, and the
city is devilishly ugly and commonplace,--an enormous, half-Europeanized
garrison-town, full of soldiers. I don't like it; but Lord! I must
try to make money, for nothing is sure in Japan, and I am now so tied
down to the country that I can't quit it, except for a trip, whether
the Government employs me or not. I have nine lives depending on my
work--wife, wife's mother, wife's father, wife's adopted mother, wife's
father's father, and then servants, and a Buddhist student. How would
_you_ like that? It wouldn't do in America. But it is nothing here--no
appreciable burden. The _moral_ burden, however, is heavy enough. You
can't let a little world grow up around you, to depend on you, and then
break it all up--not if you are a respectable person. And I indulge
in the luxury of "filial piety"--a virtue of which the good and evil
results are only known to us Orientals.
I translated into Hearnian dialect all you said. And my wife, whose name
is Setsu, or Chi-yo (alternative), knows you well by your photograph,
and said such nice things about that photograph that I dare not tell
you. Which is all the more extraordinary because when I showed her some
pictures of "distinguished foreigners" she and the girls all said that
if they should ever meet such people they would "become Buddhas for
fear"--i. e., die of fright. American and English faces--their deep-set
eyes--terrify unsophisticated Japanese. Children cry with fear at the
sight of a foreigner. So your photo must reveal exceptional qualities to
make such an impression....
Everybody gets drunk here to-day; but a cultivated Japanese is never
offensively drunk. To get _properly_, politely drunk upon sake is the
_summum bonum_.... Although a gentleman knows how to act, however drunk,
it is the custom, when your host makes you drunker than usual (which
delights him), to call at the house next morning, and thank him for the
entertainment--at the same time apologizing for any _possible_ mistakes.
Of course, there are no ladies at men's dinners--only professional
dancing-girls, _maiko_ or _geisha_.
Work progresses; but the barrier of language is a serious one. My
project to study Buddhism must be indefinitely delayed on that account.
For the deeper mysteries of Buddhism cannot be explained in the Hearnian
dialect.
What some people say about Miss Bisland--ah! I mean Mrs. Wetmore--being
only beautiful when she wants to be is, I think, perfectly true. She
can change into seventeen different women. She used to make me almost
believe the stories about Circe and Lilith. She laughed to scorn the
terrible scientific test of the photograph--of the science which reveals
new _nebulae_ and tells a man in advance whether he is going to get the
small-pox or not. No two photos of her ever represented the same human
being. In ordinary mortals the sort of thing called _Ego_, which is not
"I" but "They," is worked up into a recognizable composite photo. But
in her case, 'tis quite otherwise. The different dead that live in her,
live quite separately from each other, in different rooms, and receive
upon different afternoons. And yet--if even Rudyard Kipling were to
write the truth about that person--or rather that ghostly congregation
of persons called Elizabeth Bisland,--who but a crazy man would believe
that truth? Assuredly Mr. W. ought to think himself lucky. Ever to
get tired of Elizabeth is out of human possibility. There are too
many different Elizabeths, belonging to different historical epochs,
countries, and conditions. If he should tire of one Elizabeth,--lo!
there will appear another. And there is one very terrible Elizabeth,
whom I had a momentary glimpse of once, and whom it will not be well for
Mr. W. or anybody else to summon from her retirement. But I am glad for
the compound Elizabeth that she has this Protector in reserve.--Lord!
how irreverently I have been talking! But that is because you can read
under the irreverence....
What can't be insured against is earthquake. I have become afraid.
Do you know that the earthquake the other day in Gifu, Aichi, etc.,
destroyed nearly 200,000 houses and nearly 10,000 lives? My house in
far-off Matsue rocked and groaned like a steamer in a typhoon. It isn't
the quake one's afraid of: it is being held down under a ton of timber
and slowly burned alive. That is what happened to most of the dead. Five
millions of dollars will scarcely relieve the distress....
Well, here's a thousand happy New Years to you and yours,--all luck, all
blessings, all glorious sensations.
Ever from your old disoccidentalized chum,
LAFCADIO HEARN.