DEAR E. H.,-- ... Your thoughts about the Shadows of the East are
touching. You ought to be able to write something beautiful and quite
new if you had time....
You have been seized by the fascination of monstrous cities built up
to heaven, and eternally sending their thunder to the smoke-blacked
sky,--cities where we live by machinery. I can shudder now only to think
of walking down a street between miles of houses two hundred feet high,
with a roaring of traffic through them as of a torrent in a cañon. And
that fascination means elegance, fashion, social duties.... I have been
trying to deal with these two problems: "What has been the moral value
of Christianity to mankind?" and "Why is Western civilization still in
slavery to religious hypocrisy?" The answer to the former seems to be
that without the brutal denial of the value of life and pleasure by
Christianity, we could never have learned that the highest enjoyments
are, after all, intellectual, and that progress can be effected only by
self-sacrifice to interest and indifference to physical gratifications.
And the latter question, though I have not yet solved it, seems to
suggest that the hypocrisy itself may have large hidden value,--may be
in process of transmutation into a truth.
Yes, Japanese women are all that your question implies you would wish
them to be. They are children, of course. They perceive every possible
shade of thought,--vexation, doubt, or pleasure,--as it passes over
the face; and they know all you do not tell them. If you are unhappy
about anything, then they say: "I will pray to the Kami-sama for my
lord,"--and they light a little lamp, and clap their hands and pray.
And the ancient gods hearken unto them; and the heart of the foreign
barbarian is therewith lightened and made luminous with sunshine. And
he orders the merchants of curious textures to bring their goods to the
house, which they do--piling them up like mountains; and there is such
choice that the pleasure of the purchase is dampened by the sense of
inability to buy everything in this world. And the merchants, departing,
leave behind them dreams in little Japanese brains of beautiful things
to be bought next year.
Also Japanese women have curious Souls. The other day in Nagano, a
politician told a treacherous lie. Whereupon his wife robed herself all
in white as those are robed who are about to journey to the world of
ghosts, and purified her lips according to the holy rite, and, taking
from the storeroom an ancient family sword, thereupon slew herself.
And she left a letter, regretting that she had but one life to give in
expiation of the shame and the wrong of that lie. And the people do
now worship at her grave, and strew flowers thereupon, and pray for
daughters with hearts as brave.... But the worms are eating her.
Because you sent me that horrid book, I revenge myself. I send you a
much more horrid book. But if you do not enjoy it, I shall commit _hara
kiri_, or _seppuku_, which is the polite name. And a woman wrote it--a
woman! Christopher Columbus! what a _terrible_ woman she must be!...
The "tract" you sent is giving much amusement to friends here. Send
anything _really_ good of that sort you can find: it makes life happier
for the exile.
I am not easy about my book, of which I now await the proofs. It lacks
colour--it isn't like the West Indian book. But the world here is not
forceful: it is all washed in faint blues and greys and greens. There
are really gamboge, or saffron-coloured valleys,--and lilac fields; but
these exist only in the early summer and the rape-plant season, and
ordinarily Japan is chromatically spectral. My next book will probably
be on Buddhism in common life.
You write me delightful letters, which, alas! I can't answer. Well, they
are not answerable in themselves. They are thinking. I can only say
this about one point: the isolation ought--unless you are physically
tired by the day's work--to prove of value. All the best work is done
the way ants do things--by tiny but tireless and regular additions. I
wouldn't recommend introspection,--except in commentary. You _must_ see
interesting life. Of course only in flashes and patches. But preserve
in writing the memory of these. In a year you will be astounded to find
them self-arranging, kaleidoscopically, into something symmetrical,--and
trying to live. Then play God, and breathe into the nostrils,--and be
astonished and pleased.
Lovingly ever yours
LAFCADIO HEARN.