TŌKYŌ, February, 1898.
DEAR McDONALD,--I must try to forget some of your beautiful letter
for fear that it should give me much too good an opinion of myself. A
reverse state of mind is, on the whole, much better for the writer,--I
mean for any professional writer.
I believe all that you wish me to believe about your generous call--but,
if friend McDonald does not think my house a poor rat-trap, that is
because friend McDonald has not yet discovered what a beautiful Japanese
house is like. Let me assure him, therefore, that it is something so
dainty, so wonderful, that only by custom can one cease to be afraid to
walk about in it.
Yes, as you surmised, one of your suggestions is wrong. The professional
writer, however small his own powers may be, generally knows the range
of literary possibilities; and I _know_ that what you wish cannot be
done by any Western writer with the least hope of success. It has
been extensively tried--always with the result of failure. The best
attempt, perhaps, was the effort of Judith Gautier,--a very delicate
French writer; but it did not succeed. As for "A Muramasa Blade," "Mito
Yashiki," etc., the less said the better. In any case, it is not so much
that the subject itself is immensely difficult for a foreigner, as that
even supposing this difficulty mastered, the Western public would not
care twopence about the result. Material is everywhere at hand. Yearly,
from the Japanese press are issued the most wonderful and thrilling
stories of Japanese feudal life; but a master-translation of these,
accompanied with illustrations of the finest kind, would fall dead in a
Western book-market, and find its way quickly into the ten-cent boxes of
second-hand dealers. And why? Simply because the Occidental reader could
not feel interested in the poetry or romance of a life so remote.
No: the public want in fiction things taken raw and palpitating out of
life itself,--the life they know,--the life everybody knows,--not that
which is known only to a few. Stories from Japan (or India or China,
for that matter) must be stories about Western people among alien
surroundings. And the people must not be difficult to understand; they
must be people like the owner of the "Mary Gloster" in Kipling's "Seven
Seas." (You ought to buy that book--and love it.) Of course, I don't
mean to say that I could ever do anything of Kipling's kind--I should
have to do much humbler work,--but I am indicating what I mean by "raw
out of life."
As for the other suggestion,--who ever was such a pretty maker of
compliments!--I can only say that I am happy to have a friend who thus
thinks of me.
Gratefully, with much thanks for your charming letter,