KŌBE, August, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--A delicious surprise,--though one that gave some
pain; for I suffered to think you should have used your eyes to such
an extent for my sake. Mason, too, one day actually wrote me that he
would copy something for me if I needed it (which luckily I had got from
another source): I should be pained to have either of you try your eyes
for my poor vagaries. Please don't think me too selfish;--it was simply
lovable of you, but don't do it again.
I think I may be able to use a fragment or two effectively: what I want
now to get is the rhythm used in the singing,--and that none of my
people can remember. They said it was very wonderful, but very difficult
to catch: so that it would seem some melodies are as hard for the
Japanese themselves to learn by ear, as they are for us to so learn.
I had the same curious experience at Sakai and in Kizuki; yet I asked
persons who had been listening to the singing for several hours, and
were natives of the place. They all said, "Ah! that is very difficult.
So a good _ondo tori_ is hard to find; and they are paid well to come to
our festivals." But when the woman comes again I shall try to syllabify
the measure on paper.
I can feel the popular mind in the peasant songs: in the military songs
I cannot. But there is a queer variation in tone used in military
singing which is very effective. The leader suddenly turns down his
voice nearly a full octave, and all the chorus follow: it is like a
sudden and terrible menace,--then all go back to high tenor notes again.
What you tell me about Ryūkyū priests' songs surprised me. You
must have got everything that could be got there in an astonishingly
short time. I sent you the Nara _miko_-songs,--mystical hymns about
sowing, etc.,--very artless. The Nara and Kompira _miko_ are really
virgins. _Entre nous_ I am sorry to say that the _miko_ of Kizuki are
not: but, as they ought to be, there is no use specifying in any public
way. It would be like denying the virtue of nuns in general, because
one or two sisters fall from grace. While the ideal lives anywhere it
strikes me as wrong to insist too much on realism.
I know you make a collection of everything relating to Japan, so I must
send you a photo of Yuko Hatakeyama. I had it copied from a badly faded
one--so it does not come out well. You are not of those who refuse
to see beyond the visible; and though there is nothing beautiful or
ideal in this figure, it was certainly the earthly chrysalis of a very
precious and beautiful soul, which I have tried to make the West love a
little bit. So you may prize it.
Some one, thinking to please me, sent me by this mail a large French
periodical, full of gravures porno-or semi-pornographiques, Saint
Anthony and French courtesans and angels mixed up together. I burned the
thing,--astonished at the revulsion of feeling it produced in myself.
(The work was beautiful in its way, of course, but the way!) After all,
it seems to me that Japanese life is essentially chaste: its ideals
are chaste. I can feel now exactly how a Japanese feels about certain
foreign tendencies. I know all about Japanese picture-books of a certain
class--innocent things in their very frankness: there is more real
evil, or at least more moral weakness in any number of certain French
public prints. It strikes me also that the charm even of the _jōro_
to the Japanese mind is quite different from any corresponding Western
feeling. She figures simply as an ideal lady of old time, and the graces
cultivated in her, and the costume donned, are those of an ideal past.
The animalism of half-exposures and suggestions of whole exposures
is not any more Japanese than it was old-Persian. Even the naughty
picture-books were intended for imitations, catechism.
Talking of catechism, I have been thinking of making a Buddhist
catechism of a somewhat fantastic sort.
"How old are you?"
"I am millions of millions of years old, as a phenomenon. As absolute I
am eternal and older than the universe," etc.
Faithfully ever,
LAFCADIO HEARN.