KUMAMOTO, April, 1893.
DEAR HENDRICK,--Your most welcome lines of March 1 came to me during a
lonesome spring vacation--to brighten it up. Your wish about a Japanese
love-story has been partly answered in the March _Atlantic_; and in
the June number, you will have a paper of mine, entitled the "Japanese
Smile," which you will find as philosophical as you could wish.--No, I
have been working well, but for a book only; and of that book only five
or six chapters can be published in a magazine. I am not yet sure if the
book will be published in the shape I want,--although the publishers
show some signs of yielding.
So much for me. I was too egotistic last time, and will not be so much
so again, unless I get a very awful attack of the blues within the next
five years....
To return to Japan and Japanese life. What do you think of the
following? It happened near Kumamoto. A peasant went to consult an
astrologer what to do for his mother's eyes: she had become blind. The
astrologer said that she would get her sight back if she could eat a
little human liver,--taken fresh and from a young body. The peasant
went home crying, and told his wife. She said: "We have only one boy.
He is beautiful. You can get another wife as good, or better than I,
very easily, but might never be able to get another son. Therefore, you
must kill me instead of the son, and give my liver to your mother." They
embraced; and the husband killed her with a sword, and cut out the liver
and began to cook it, when the child awoke and screamed. Neighbours
and police came. In the police court, the peasant told his tale with
childish frankness and cited stories from the Buddhist scriptures. The
judges were moved to tears. They did not condemn the man to death;--they
gave only nine years in prison. Really the man who ought to have been
killed was the astrologer. And this but a few miles off from where they
are teaching integral calculus, trigonometry, and Herbert Spencer!
yet Western science and religion could never inspire that idolatrous
self-devotion to a mother which the old ignorant peasant and his wife
had. She thought it her sacred duty to die for her mother-in-law....
I am going to have the delight of a visit from the author of "The Soul
of the Far East." He is a lucky man,--wonderful genius, strength, youth,
and plenty of money. He spends six months of each year in the Orient.
Professor Chamberlain, my other friend, spent a few days with me last
week. He speaks Japanese better than the Japanese;--in fact, he is
_Professor of Japanese in the Imperial University of Japan_. He mentions
me in his books; and Conder, who writes those beautiful books about
Japanese flower arrangement and Japanese gardens, has just written a
book with a kindly reference to me.
Enough to tire you, I fear, already. Well, _au revoir_, till the next
mail. Affectionately ever,