KŌBE, January, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I'm able now to write and read a little every
day--not much, as to reading: writing tires the eyes less. Glad you like
"Glimpses," as I see by your last kind letter. Of course it is full of
faults: any work written in absolute isolation must be. It's taking,
though: the publishers announce a third edition already, and the notices
have been good--in America, enthusiastic. _The Athenæum_ praised it
fervidly; but a few English papers abuse it. The mixture of blame and
praise means literary success generally.
The earthquakes are really horrible. I can sympathize with you.
The sensation of foreign life here is very unpleasant, after life in
the interior. A foreign interior is a horror to me; and the voices
of the foreign women--China-Coast tall women--jar upon the comfort
of existence. Can't agree with you about the "genuine men and women"
in the open ports. There are some--very, very few. (Thank the Gods I
shall never have to live among them!) The number of Germans here makes
life more tolerable, I fancy. They are plain, but homely, which is a
virtue, and liberal, which commercial English or Americans (the former
especially) seldom are. They have their own club and a good library. But
life in Yunotsu or Hino-misaki, or Oki, with only the bare means for
Japanese comfort, were better and cleaner and higher in every way than
the best open ports can offer.
The Japanese peasant is ten times more of a gentleman than a foreign
merchant could ever learn to be. Unfortunately the Japanese official,
with all his civility and morality rubbed off, is something a good
deal lower than a savage and meaner than the straight-out Western
rough (who always has a kernel of good in him) by an inexpressible per
cent. Carpets--pianos--windows--curtains--brass bands--churches! how I
hate them!! And white shirts!--and _yōfuku!_ Would I had been born
savage; the curse of civilized cities is on me--and I suppose I can't
get away permanently from them. You like all these things, I know. I'm
not expecting any sympathy--but thought you might like to know about
the effect on me of a half-return to Western life. How much I could hate
all that we call civilization I never knew before. How ugly it is I
never could have conceived without a long sojourn in old Japan--the only
civilized country that existed since antiquity. Them's my sentiments!
I have not yet been able to read Lowell's new book through. But he must
have worked tremendously to write it. It is a very clever book--though
disfigured by absolutely shameless puns. It touches truths to the
quick,--with a light sharp sting peculiar to Lowell's art. It is
painfully unsympathetic--Mephistophelian in a way that chills me. It is
scientific--but the fault of it strikes me as being that the study is
applicable equally to Europe or America as to Japan. The same psychical
phenomena may be studied out anywhere, with the same result. The race
difference in persons, like the difference between life and not-life in
biology, is only one of degree, not of kind. Still, it is a wonderful
book.
Ever truly,
LAFCADIO HEARN.