KŌBE, January, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--To-day is a spring day and I can add a little to my
screed. The weather brightens up my eyes.
I was thinking just now about the difference between the Japanese
_hyakushō_ and the English merchant.
My servant girl from Imaichi--who cannot read or write--saw you at
Kumamoto and said words to this effect: "He speaks Japanese like a
great man. And he is so gentle and so kind." Vaguely something of the
intellectual and moral side of you had reached and touched her simple
mind. The other day a merchant said of you: "Chamberlain--Oh, yes. Met
him at Miyanoshita. Tell you, he's a gentleman--plays a good game of
whist!" There 's appreciation for you. Which is the best soul of the
two--my servant girl's or that merchant's?
A merchant, however, has inspired me with the idea of a sketch, to be
entitled "His Josses"!...
On the other hand it strikes me that in another twenty years, or perhaps
thirty, after a brief artificial expansion, all the ports will shrink.
The foreign commerce will be all reduced to agencies. A system of small
persecutions will be inaugurated and maintained to drive away all
the foreigners who can be driven away. After the war there will be a
strong anti-foreign reaction--outrages--police-repressions--temporary
stillness and peace: then a new crusade. Life will be made wretched
for Occidentals--in business--just as it is being made in the
schools--by all sorts of little tricky plans which cannot be brought
under law-provisions, or even so defined as to appear to justify
resentment--tricks at which the Japanese are as elaborately ingenious
as they are in matters of etiquette and forms of other kinds. The
nation will show its ugly side to us--after a manner unexpected, but
irresistible.
The future looks worse than black. As for me, I am in a perpetual
quandary. I suppose I'll have to travel West,--and console myself with
the hope of visiting Japan at long intervals.
Well, there's no use in worrying--one must face the music,
I am sorry your eyes are weak, too. What the devil of a trouble physical
trouble is!--a dead weight check on will! Still, you have good luck in
other ways, and after all, eye-trouble is only a warning in both our
cases.
Ever truly,
LAFCADIO HEARN.