KŌBE, September, 1895.
DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... I am waiting every day for the sanction of the
minister to change my name; and I think it will come soon. This will
make me Koizumi Yakumo, or,--arranging the personal and family names
in English order,--"Y. Koizumi." "Eight clouds" is the meaning of
"Yakumo," and is the first part of the most ancient poem extant in the
Japanese language. (You will find the whole story in "Glimpses"--article
"Yaegaki.") Well, "Yakumo" is a poetical alternative for Izumo, my
beloved province, "the Place of the Issuing of Clouds." You will
understand how the name was chosen.
If all goes well, and I am not obliged to return to America, I shall
next year probably return to Izumo, and make a permanent home there. So
long as I can travel in winter, I need not care about the weather. When
my boy grows big enough, if I live, I shall take him abroad, and try to
give him a purely scientific education--modern languages if possible,
no waste of time on Latin, Greek, and stupidities. (Literature and
history can be best learned at home; and the greatest men are not the
products of schools, not in England or America, at least: Germany is an
exception.) He might turn out to be very commonplace, in which case all
plans must be changed; but I suspect he will not be stupid. He says, by
the way, that he was a doctor in his former birth. It is quite possible,
for he has my father's eyes.
In regard to what you asked me about the English literature business,
I think there is no way of teaching English literature except by
selections,--joined together with an evolutional study of English
emotional life, illustrated after the manner of Taine's "Art in
Italy," etc. But such work, combining history with literature, would
involve the use of an immense library, and would be very costly to the
teacher. By the way, I _hate_ English literature. French literature
is much more interesting. What I should most like would be to make a
study of comparative literature--including Sanscrit, Finnish, Arabic,
Persian,--systematizing the best specimens of each into kindred
groupings on the evolutional plan. That _would_ be worth doing; for it
means a study of the evolutional development of all mankind. But such
undertakings, I fear, are for the extremely rich.