fact that Japan, in order to keep pace with the competition of other
nations, must adopt the methods which are in direct variance to her old
morality, and all that which has made the Japanese what he is. Japan's
future depends upon her industrial development, and the fine old
qualities of self-sacrifice, simplicity, filial piety, the contentment
with little, are not the weapons for the modern struggle. In a
postscript to this essay, written two years later, after the war with
China, Hearn adds that "Japan has proved herself able to hold her own
against the world.... _Japan has won in her jiujutsu._"
Japan holds infinite legends of ghostly significance, and it is no
wonder that Hearn found so much that was sympathetic. Every new town or
new temple reveals some aspect of the odd. In this second book the
joyousness is gone; he is now a philosopher, and his philosophy reflects
much of the ghostly. The gruesome has been buried, but it is not dead:
it will return reincarnated, not of the ghastly of real life, but of the
dim, far-away, always more distant ghostly in the lives of the dead.
A revelation of the Nirvana into which Hearn is being slowly drawn
appears in "At Hakata." He has been telling the story of the sacred
mirror that a mother in dying gave to her daughter, bidding her to look
into it every morning and evening and there see her mother. And the girl
looked and "having the heart of meeting her mother every day," knew not
that the shadow in the mirror was her own face.
One are we all,--and yet many, because each is a world of
ghosts. Surely that girl saw and spoke to her mother's very
soul, while seeing the fair shadow of her own young eyes and
lips, uttering love!
And with this thought, the strange display in the old temple
court takes a new meaning,--becomes the symbolism of a sublime
expectation. Each of us is truly a mirror, imaging something of
the universe,--reflecting also the reflection of ourselves in
that universe; and perhaps the destiny of all is to be molten by
that mighty Image-maker, Death, into some great sweet
passionless unity. How the vast work shall be wrought, only
those to come after us may know. We of the present West do not
know: we merely dream. But the ancient East believes Here is the
simple imagery of her faith. All forms must vanish at last to
blend with that Being whose smile is immutable Rest,--whose
knowledge is Infinite Vision.
"The Red Bridal" is a story of _joshi_--the joint suicide for love.
These two young people had been playmates since their early school-days,
and were deeply attached to each other. The girl's father, under the
influence of an evil stepmother, agrees to sell his daughter to the
richest and also the most disreputable man in the village. Hearing this
awful command, the maiden only smiles the brave smile--inheritance of
her Samurai blood. She knows what she must do.... Together she and her
lover quietly meet the Tokyo express. As its low roar draws
nearer, they "wound their arms about each other, and lay down cheek to
cheek, very softly and quietly, straight across the inside rail."
We close the book with the memory of Yuko, heroic little Yuko, who, even
as noble Asakachi, who had his beautiful wish to die for his country
fulfilled, proves that the Japanese spirit of loyalty is far greater
than our word implies. With all her country, Yuko, a humble little
serving-maid, whose name signifies "valiant," is sorrowing because of a
Japanese attack upon the Czarevitch of the Russians. Her soul burns with
the desire to give something that will soften the sorrow of the August
One; for the heart of the girl, being that of a true Japanese, grieves
not alone for what has happened, but with a deeper sense of the grief
caused to the August One. The cry goes from Yuko asking how she, who has
nothing, can give; and from the lips of the dead within her comes the
answer: "Give thyself. To give life for the August One is the highest
duty, the highest joy." "And in what place?" she asks. "Saikyo,"
answer the silent voices; "in the gateway of those who by ancient custom
should have died."
Does she falter? No.
For her the future holds no blackness. Always she will see the
rising of the holy Sun above the peaks, the smile of the
Lady-Moon upon the waters, the eternal magic of the Seasons. She
will haunt the places of beauty, beyond the folding of the
mists, in the sleep of the cedar-shadows, through circling of
innumerable years. She will know a subtler life, in the faint
winds that stir the snow of the flowers of the cherry, in the
laughter of playing waters, in every happy whisper of the vast
green silences. But first she will greet her kindred, somewhere
in shadowy halls awaiting her coming to say to her:
"Thou hast done well,--like a daughter of Samurai. Enter, child!
because of thee to-night we sup with the Gods!"
It is daylight when Yuko enters Kyoto. She finds a lodging, and then
goes to a skilful female hairdresser. Her little razor is made very
sharp. Returning to her room, she writes a letter of farewell to her
brother, and an appeal to the officials asking that the Tenshi-Sama may
be begged to cease from suffering "seeing that a young life, even though
unworthy, has been given in voluntary expiation of the wrong."
At the dark hour before dawn she slips to the gate of the Government
edifice. Whispering a prayer, she kneels. Then with her long
under-girdle of silk she binds her robes tightly about her knees, for
the daughter of a Samurai must always be found in death with
limbs decently composed. Then, with steady precision, she makes
in her throat a gash, out of which the blood leaps in a pulsing
jet....
At sunrise the police find her, quite cold, and the two letters,
and a poor little purse containing five _yen_ and a few _sen_
(enough, she had hoped, for her burial); and they take her and
all her small belongings away.
KOKORO[32] (9), the next book, could well be a continuation of "Out of
the East." Hearn speaks of it as "terribly radical," and "rather crazy";
and he fears that his views, which are greatly opposed in the West, may
not be well received.
[32] Copyright, 1896, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
"The fifteen chapters of which the book is composed," says a German
review, "do not contain the results of any research into the domain of
politics, art or religion. They are rather fragments from Japanese life,
and so clear is the language that the pictures given are brought home to
us with wonderful effect. Lafcadio Hearn is a journalist in the best
sense of the word. He is a writer who has something striking and
original to say upon the events of the day, upon the conditions and
institutions of a land, upon the possibilities of development in a
people, upon deep philosophical, social and religious problems, upon the
'Idea of Pre-existence,' upon Buddhism and Shintoism, upon the
difference between Occidental and Oriental culture, and who judges all
things, all conditions that he sees, from lofty heights. He is besides a
character, a man of great ideals; he has a fine artistic feeling and is,
moreover, able to render in wonderfully sympathetic language tender
moods which come to him at the sight of a landscape, a work of art.
Extraordinarily capable of assimilation, he, to whom Japan has become a
second home, has entirely fitted himself into the Japanese life. He is
so delighted with the customs, with the political and social conditions,
with the simple family life, with the religion, the ceremonies, the
ancestor-worship, and with the business intercourse carried on among
themselves--which he assures us is characterized by exceptional
probity--in short, he is so delighted with all the activities of this
people that he thinks them the best possible because they spring from
the inmost life of an ethical and never intellectual temperament.
Therefore he takes sides with them passionately against the modern
tendencies of Europe." (395.)
In the opening story, which I think will be found one of his best, is
portrayed the manner of a Japanese crowd in dealing with a criminal; and
how this criminal was brought to atonement by the gaze of a little
child, the son of the man he murdered, while the little one was yet in
his mother's womb.
The next chapter is a discussion of Japanese Civilization. In 1903 Hearn
wrote:--
"The Genius of Japanese Civilization" is a failure. I thought
that it was true when I wrote it; but already Japan has become
considerably changed, and a later study of ancient social
conditions has proved to me that I made some very serious
sociological errors in that paper.
He shows that in the wonderful development of Japanese power, there is
vitally no self-transformation. All that Japan is, she always has been.
Nor is there any outward change. "The strength of Japan, like the
strength of her ancient faith, needs little material display: both exist
where the deepest real power of any great peoples exists,--in the Race
Ghost." He contrasts the noise and confusion and vastness of Western
cities. The construction of the West is endurance; of Japan
impermanency. The very land is a land of impermanence. But in this
impermanency Hearn finds the greatest excellence. He contrasts how
little impedimenta the Japanese have--by that means alone how
independent they are. He shows with what a quiet simplicity Japan has
become a great commercial centre. He fears the new Western spirit which
threatens her:--
I confess to being one of those who believe that the human
heart, even in the history of a race, may be worth infinitely
more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner or later
prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the cruel
enigmas of the Sphinx of Life.--I still believe that the old
Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are
we, just because they recognized moral beauty as greater than
intellectual beauty.
It is the old spirit which found infinite meaning--
in the flushed splendour of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the
coming and the going of the cicadae, in the dying crimson of
autumn foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive
motion of wave or cloud.
The beautiful voice of a blind peasant woman fills Hearn with gentle
memories and an exquisite delight. He muses upon what the meaning of
this charm can be; and he realizes that it is the old sorrows and loving
impulses of forgotten generations.
The dead die never utterly. They sleep in the darkest cells of
tired hearts and busy brains,--to be startled at rarest moments
only by the echo of some voice that recalls their past.
The lovely spirit of showing only one's happiest face to the world is
charmingly brought out in the little incident that, when in a railway
carriage, a Japanese woman finds herself becoming drowsy, before she
nods she covers her face with her long kimono sleeve.
Sometimes one may recall the dead, and speak with them. So it happened
that O-Tayo heard once again the voice of her little child who begged
her not to weep any more, for when mothers weep, the flood of the River
of Tears rises so high that the soul cannot pass, and must wander and
wander.
O-Tayo never wept again, but softly she herself became as a little
child. Her good parents built a tiny temple and fitted it with miniature
ornaments, and here all day long children came to play games with her.
And when at last she died, the children still played there, for as a
little girl of nine said, "We shall still play in the Court of Amida.
She is buried there. She will hear us and be happy."
The pathetic tale of Haru gives an interesting picture of the relation
in Japan between man and wife; of the exquisite submission of the wife
under the saddest conditions, even to the moment when the little grieved
heart, which has never murmured, has the dying strength to utter only
the single word, "_Anata_." (Thou.)
"A Glimpse of Tendencies" analyzes many conditions in Japan, with
various predictions for her future, and speaks of her lack of sympathy
for her foreign teachers.
In "A Conservative" Hearn gives a searching study of how the evils of
our civilization appear to a Japanese youth.
"In the chapter, 'The Idea of Pre-existence,' Hearn makes the
interesting attempt of bringing the teachings of the Buddhistic religion
and the conclusions of modern science into accord. The idea which
differentiates the Oriental mode of thinking from our own, which more
than any other permeates the whole mental being of the Far-East--'it is
universal as the wash of air; it colours every emotion; it influences,
directly or indirectly, almost every act'--which inspires the utterances
of the people, their proverbs, their pious and profane exclamations,
that is the idea of pre-existence. The expression, '_Ingwa_,' which
signifies the Karma as inevitable retribution, serves as explanation for
all suffering, all pain, all evil. The culprit says: 'That which I did I
knew to be wicked when doing; but my _ingwa_ was stronger than my
heart,' _Ingwa_ means predestination, determinism, necessity." (395.)
In his chapter on "Ancestor-Worship" it is further proved how important
a part of the household are the dead.
Another delightful study is "Kimiko,"--the story of one who turns
dancing-girl out of filial piety. In the height of her fame she falls in
love with a rich young man, and he with her. Kimiko is so good a woman
at heart, that the man's friends do not object to his marrying her. She
refuses, however, for her life has made her unworthy to be wife or
mother. The man hopes to change her, but one day she disappears and is
utterly lost to sight. Years pass and he marries. At last Kimiko returns
as a wandering nun, looks at her lover's little son, whispers a message
for the father in his ear, and is gone once more. The grace with which
the story is told is inimitable, and the sickly sentimentality that
revolts us in the _Dame aux Camelias_ is absent. (381.)
GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS[33] (10) is the third book of the Japanese
period, and was written at Kobe. In this volume of essays, intermingled
with sketches in lighter vein, Hearn continues his philosophical
studies. There are the unmistakable signs that even this ardour is
losing zest. The charm of Japan is going fast; and after this volume,
until his final interpretation, which is a summary of all that has gone
before, is reached, we find him seeking material in fairy-tales,
legends, and even returning to old thoughts about the West Indian life.
[33] Copyright, 1897, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Many of his critics feel that Hearn is becoming too subjective to be
quite trustworthy; others feel that he is still too charmed by Japan to
render a faithful picture. A review in _Public Opinion_ says:--
"But, this feature of almost pardonable exaggeration pointed out, there
is little for the critic to carp at in the majority of the eleven essays
that compose the book. The opening paper, 'A Living God,' is a perfect
specimen of the author's style, and evinces in a marked degree the
influence of Oriental environment on a sensitive mind. It treats of the
temples, shrines, and worship of the people, and tells by legend how
even a living individual may come to be worshipped as a god by his
friends....
"The essay, however, that betrays most strongly the bent of the author's
mental metamorphosis, and one, we venture to say, that will be generally
challenged is that on 'Faces in Japanese Art.' The contention it
embodies, which he boldly fathers, is a flat denial of the truth and
worth of our accepted schools of art,--of drawing especially." (376.)
Criticizing the chapters on Buddhism in the present book, the _Athenaeum_
says:--
"They are finely written, but the Buddhism is the Buddhism of Mr. Hearn,
not of China or Japan, or of anywhere else. Nevertheless, we think them
the most attractive of these gleanings. Laputa is placed not very far
from Japan; to a quasi-Laputa Mr. Hearn has gone, and his Laputian
experiences are more interesting than any ordinary terrestrial
experiences could have been." (298.)
The _Spectator_ says:--
"His chapter on Nirvana, which he describes as 'a study in synthetic
Buddhism,' will be read with very great interest by all who care for the
problems involved. There have been plenty of studies of the doctrine of
Nirvana more elaborate and complete, but few more suggestive and more
taking.... Mr. Hearn begins by combating the popular Western notion that
the idea of Nirvana signifies to Buddhist minds complete annihilation.
The notion is, he declares, erroneous because it contains only half the
truth, and a half of the truth which is of no value or interest or
intelligibility except when joined to the other half. According to Mr.
Hearn, and, indeed, according to 'the better opinion' generally, Nirvana
means not absolute nothingness or complete annihilation, but only the
annihilation of what constitutes individualism and personality,--'the
annihilation of everything that can be included under the term "I".'"
(382.)
Hearn makes an elaborate study of the varying stages of births and
heavens that one must generally pass through before one rises into the
"infinite bliss" of Nirvana. The chapter closes with this significant
sentence:--
The only reality is One;--all that we have taken for Substance
is only Shadow;--the physical is the unreal:--_and the outer-man
is the ghost_.
There are two short chapters devoted to the Japanese Songs. The first
songs, "Out of the Street," are, as Manyemon, who would not have the
Western people deceived, tells us, the vulgar songs, or those sung by
the washermen, carpenters, and bamboo-weavers, etc. The theme always
holds some glint of love. Hearn has arranged certain ones in three
groups forming a little shadow romance.
To Heaven with all my soul I prayed to prevent your going;
Already, to keep you with me, answers the blessed rain.
Things never changed since the Time of the Gods: The flowing of
water, the Way of Love.
The second chapter is devoted to Folk-Songs with Buddhist allusions.
Nearly all the arts and the greater number of the industries show the
influence of Buddhism. A typical song is:--
Even the knot of the rope tying our boats together Knotted was
long ago by some love in a former birth.
Another:--
Even while praying together in front of the tablets ancestral,
Lovers find chance to murmur prayers never meant for the dead.
On the "Trip to Kyoto" there is more to be learned about poor little
Yuko, who gave her life for her nation. To the Japanese all the small
details of her story are of the greatest importance, and are carefully
treasured. Hearn thinks that the Western "refined feeling" might not
care for the poor little blood-stained trifles; if so it is to be
regretted.
In "Dust," with a dainty touch, he teaches again that we are but
millions upon billions of dead people; that the cells and the souls are
themselves recombinations of old welding of forces--forces of which we
know nothing save that they belong "to the Shadow-Makers of universes."
You are an individual--but also you are a population! This leads on to
the end that
In whatsoever time all human minds accord in thought and will
with the mind of the Teacher, there shall not remain even one
particle of dust that does not enter into Buddhahood.
The last chapter, "Within the Circle," is of a philosophy so impermanent
that it seems but Shadow-play, and one may not behold a visible form,
for--like all that which it symbolizes--it is but an illusion.
EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES[34] (11) faithfully followed the ensuing
year. The effort to write is manifest; even to himself Hearn is
admitting that the _frisson_ which Japan gave him is passing. He is
beginning to make copy; and the subjects are becoming more vague,
vapoury, and ghostly.
[34] Copyright, 1898, by Little, Brown and Company.
I must eat some humble pie. My work during the past ten months
has been rather poor. Why, I cannot quite understand--because it
costs me more effort. Anyhow, I have had to rewrite ten essays:
they greatly improved under the process. I am trying now to get
a Buddhist commentary for them--mostly to be composed of texts
dealing with pre-existence and memory of former lives. I took
for subjects the following:--Beauty is Memory--why beautiful
things bring sadness;--the Riddle of Touch--_i. e._ the thrill
that a touch gives;--the Perfume of Youth;--the Reason of the
Pleasure of the Feeling Evoked by Bright Blue;--the Pain Caused
by Certain Kinds of Red;--Mystery of Certain Musical
Effects;--Fear of Darkness and the Feeling of Dreams. Queer
subjects, are they not? I think of calling the collection
"Retrospectives.
The _Athenaeum_, that wise critic, feels that in this book Hearn "shows
himself at his best. He is more subdued," it says, "than is his wont,
and indulges less freely in excessive laudation and needless
disparagement. The chapters on 'Insect Musicians,' on the 'Literature of
the Dead,' and--oddly as it may sound to us--on 'Frogs,' are among the
most delightful of all his writings. The keynote of all is struck in the
pretty stanza that heads the first of the three:--
_Mushi, yo mushi,
Naite ingwa ga
Tsukuru nara?_
(Insect, O insect!
Singing fulfil you
Your fire-life and all life!)
"The translation is ours. The fondness of the Japanese for many kinds of
chirping insects, which they keep in little bamboo-cages, is one of the
prettiest of the surviving echoes of the past. The plaintive little cry
satisfies the curious melancholy that characterizes the reflective moods
of the lieges of Mutsu. In the long series of changes that is to end in
perfect Buddha-forms, there is hope always, but always tinged with the
sadness of vague memories of past pains, and the resigned dread of
sorrows to come, one knows not how oft to be repeated ere in 'Nirvana'
all earthly moods are lost. There is a regular trade in these tiny
songsters, of the history of which Mr. Hearn tells the pleasant story."
(299.)
Hearn leads us to a cemetery in a quaint lonesome garden, and teaches us
something about the wonderful texts and inscriptions that are chiselled
into the stone of the tombs, or painted on the wooden _sotoba_, and go
to form the important literature of the dead. A suggestive _sotoba_-text
is:--
The Amida-Kyo says: "All who enter into that country enter
likewise into that state of virtue from which there can be no
turning back."
From the Kaimyo which is engraved on the tomb, we may select:--
_Koji_--
(Bright-Sun-on-the-Way-of-the-Wise, in the Mansion of
Luminous Mind.)
_Koji_--
(Effective-Benevolence-Hearing-with-Pure-Heart-the-Supplications
-of-the-Poor,--dwelling in the Mansion of the Virtue of Pity.)
The frog is another favourite of the Japanese. There is one special
variety called the Kajika, or true singing-frog of Japan, which is kept
as a pet in a little cage. For over a hundred years the frog has been
the subject of numerous poems. Many of these little verses are
love-poems, for the lovers' trysting-hour is also the hour when the
frog-chorus is at its height. Here is a quotation from the Anthology
called "Kokinshu," compiled A.D. 905, by the poet Ki-no-Tsurayuki:--
The poetry of Japan has its roots in the human heart, and thence
has grown into a multiform utterance. Man in this world, having
a thousand million of things to undertake and to complete, has
been moved to express his thoughts and his feelings concerning
all that he sees and hears. When we hear the _uguisu_ singing
among flowers, and the voice of the _kawazu_ which inhabits the
waters, what mortal (_lit. "who among the living that lives"_)
does not compose poems?
A charming frog poem is:--
_Te wo tsuite
Uta moshi-aguru,
Kawazu kana!_
(With hand resting on the ground, reverentially you repeat your poem, O
frog!)
And another:--
_Tamagawa no
Hito wo mo yogizu
Naku kawazu,
Kono yu kikeba
Oshiku ya wa aranu?_
(Hearing to-night the frogs of the Jewel River--or Tamagawa, that sing
without fear of man, how can I help loving the passing moment?)
A vivid chapter is Hearn's description of his ascent of Fuji-no-Yama.
Here he may once again use his palette of many colours, but certainly
not with the old _abandon_.
Brighter and brighter glows the gold. Shadows come from the
west,--shadows flung by cloud-pile over cloud-pile; and these,
like evening shadows upon snow, are violaceous blue.... Then
orange-tones appear in the horizon; then smouldering crimson.
And now the greater part of the Fleece of Gold has changed to
cotton again,--white cotton mixed with pink.... Stars thrill
out. The cloud-waste uniformly whitens;--thickening and packing
to the horizon. The west glooms. Night rises; and all things
darken except that wondrous unbroken world-round of white,--the
Sea of Cotton.
A lurking of the gruesome flashes out when the snow-patches against the
miles of black soot and ashes on the mountain make him think "of a gleam
of white teeth I once saw in a skull,--a woman's skull,--otherwise burnt
to a sooty crisp."
"Retrospectives" is a group of gentle reveries, where we may muse with
Hearn on such elusive themes as the "Sadness in Beauty," for beauty has
no real existence, it is the emotion of the dead within us. Or there is
the analysis of that favourite word _frisson_, "the touch that makes a
thrill within you is a touch that you have felt before,--sense-echo of
forgotten intimacies in many unremembered lives." "Azure Psychology" and
"A Red Sunset" recall Hearn's earlier criticisms on colour.
IN GHOSTLY JAPAN[35] (12) followed. The title is revelatory of the Japan
that is to people this book and those which are to come. In the opening
chapter Hearn crystallizes in a powerful sketch the sum of Buddhist
lore. Of this the _Academy_ writes:--
[35] Copyright, 1899, by Little, Brown and Company.
"Of Nirvana one carries away this one picture, painted in words
curiously colourless and intangible--the picture of a mountain up whose
steep side toil two creatures--the soul and his guide--toiling,
stumbling upwards over a brittle and friable chaos of skulls. Skulls
crumbled into powder and skulls crumbling mark out the road; 'and every
skull,' says the guide, 'is yours, and has been yours in some past
incarnation; and the dust that rises round your present body is the dust
of your past and deserted bodies that have served you well or ill as may
be in your past lives.' In the fine and bewildering haze of this thought
we lose our poet, and henceforward he is not a face nor a voice, but an
echo of a living man's voice. We hear the echo, but the voice we do not
hear. And we grudge the voice, even to Nirvana where all silences are
merged in one." (286.)
In a beautiful chapter Hearn outlines all that might be written about
the important subject of incense. He tells a good deal about its
religious, luxurious, and ghostly uses. There is also a charming custom
of giving parties where dainty games are played with it.
Sometimes there can be love between the living and the dead, or so it
appears in the ghostly story of "A Passional Karma," or O-Tsuyu, who
died of love of Shinzaburo and returns to be his bride. Every night,
by the light of their Peony Lanterns, she, accompanied by her maid,
comes to keep the ghostly tryst. Shinzaburo does not know that
O-Tsuyu is dead, but his servant Tomozo, overhearing voices, gazes
through a chink, and sees--
the face of a woman long dead,--and the fingers caressing were
fingers of naked bone,--and of the body below the waist there
was not anything: it melted off into thinnest trailing shadow.
Where the eyes of the lover deluded saw youth and grace and
beauty, there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only,
and the emptiness of death.
Now he whose bride is a ghost cannot live. No matter what force flows in
his blood he must certainly perish. Shinzaburo is warned and an
amulet to protect him from the dead is given to him, but treachery is
played, and the amulet is stolen; so one morning Tomozo finds his
master
hideously dead;--and the face was the face of a man who had died
in the uttermost agony of fear;--and lying beside him in the bed
were the bones of a woman! And the bones of the arms, and the
bones of the hands, clung fast about his neck.
The gentle heart of the Japanese shines in the chapter on "Bits of
Poetry." You might find yourself, Hearn says, in a community so poor
that you could not even buy a cup of real tea, but no place could you
discover "where there is nobody capable of making a poem." Poems are
written on all occasions and for all occasions.
Poems can be found upon almost any kind of domestic
utensil;--for example, upon braziers, iron-kettles, vases,
wooden-trays, lacquer-ware, porcelains, chopsticks of the finer
sort,--even toothpicks! Poems are painted upon shop-signs,
panels, screens, and fans. Poems are printed upon towels,
draperies, curtains, kerchiefs, silk-linings, and women's
crepe-silk underwear. Poems are stamped or worked upon
letter-paper, envelopes, purses, mirror-cases, travelling-bags.
Poems are inlaid upon enamelled ware, cut upon bronzes, graven
upon metal pipes, embroidered upon tobacco-pouches.
A Japanese artist would not think of elaborating a sketch, and a poem to
be perfect must also only stir one's fancy. _Ittakkiri_, meaning
"entirely vanished" in the sense of "all told," is a term applied
contemptuously to him who expresses all his thought.
Japan is rich in proverbs. Hearn has translated one hundred examples of
Buddhist proverbs.
_Karu-toki no Jizo-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao._
(Borrowing-time, the face of Jizo; repaying-time, the face of
Emma.)
_Sode no furi-awase mo tasho no en._
(Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by some
relation in a former life.)
A powerful relic of the old clinging love of the gruesome is the story
of _Ingwa-banashi_. The _daimyo's_ wife knew that she was dying; and
she thought of many things, especially of her husband's favourite, the
Lady Yukiko, who was nineteen years old. She begged her husband to send
for the Lady Yukiko, whom, she said, she loved as a sister. After the
dying wife had told Lady Yukiko it was her wish that she should become
the wife of their dear lord, she begged that Yukiko would carry her on
her back to see the cherry-bloom.
As a nurse turns her back to a child, that the child may cling
to it, Yukiko offered her shoulders to the wife, and said:--
"Lady, I am ready: please tell me how I best can help you."
"Why, this way!" responded the dying woman, lifting herself with
an almost superhuman effort by clinging to Yukiko's shoulders.
But as she stood erect, she quickly slipped her thin hands down
over the shoulders, under the robe, and clutched the breasts of
the girl, and burst into a wicked laugh.
"I have my wish!" she cried--"I have my wish for the
cherry-bloom, but not the cherry-bloom of the garden!... I could
not die before I got my wish. Now I have it!--oh, what a
delight!"
And with these words she fell forward upon the crouching girl,
and died.
When the attendants tried to lift the body from Yukiko's shoulders, they
found that the hands of the dead had grown into the quick flesh of the
breasts of the girl. And they could not be removed. A skilful physician
was called, and he decided that the hands could be amputated only at the
wrists, and so this was done. But the hands still clung to the breasts;
and there they soon darkened and dried up like the hands of a
person long dead.
Yet this was only the beginning of the horror.
Withered and bloodless though they seemed, those hands were not
dead. At intervals they would stir--stealthily, like great grey
spiders. And nightly thereafter,--beginning always at the Hour
of the Ox,--they would clutch and compress and torture. Only at
the Hour of the Tiger the pain would cease.
Yukiko cut off her hair, and became a mendicant-nun.
Every day she prayed to the dead for pardon, and every night the torture
was renewed. This continued for more than seventeen years until Yukiko
was heard of no more.
SHADOWINGS[36] (13) appeared the next year, 1900. Of this volume the
_Bookman_ says:--
[36] Copyright, 1900, by Little, Brown and Company.
"He gives us several essays upon matters Japanesque, which obviously
involve no small amount of erudition and patient research. Such are his
papers upon the various species of _Semi_, or Japanese singing-locusts,
and on the complicated etiquette of Japanese female names. But the
distinctive feature of this volume is the first half, which is given up
to a collection of curious tales by native writers, weird, uncanny,
little stories, most of them, of ghouls and wraiths, and vampires, or at
least the nearest Japanese equivalents for such Occidental spectres."
(316.)
The _Athenaeum_ does not find "Shadowings" equal to the volume "Exotics."
It thinks that Hearn is "perilously near exhausting his repertory of
_Kokin_ [one-stringed fiddle] themes."
"The stories with which the present volume opens have no particular
merit: they have lost their chief and real advantage--their local
colour--in Hearnesque translation, and seem to be little more than
suggestions or drafts of 'nouvelles,' out of which skilful hands might
perhaps have made something much better. A good example is the story of
the Screen Maiden, which is a most lame presentment of a charming motif.
The chapters on female names, on _semi_, couplets and 'Old Japanese
Songs' are more interesting, but only to those who possess a
considerable knowledge of old Japanese life and literature.... Of the
'Old Japanese Songs'--where is the proof of their antiquity?--much the
best is the dance-ballad of the dragon-maid, who bewitched a
_yamabushi_, and chased him over moor and hill and river, until the
temple of Dojo was reached, under the great bell of which the trembling
hill-warrior or outlaw (_yamabushi_ were such originally in all
probability) hid himself, whereupon the dragon-maid wrapped her body
round the bell once and again and the third time the bell melted and
flowed away like boiling water. And with it, according to the legend,
flowed away the ashes of the unwilling object of the dragon-maid's
affections, consumed not through love, but through disdain." (300.)
Strange things happen in the group of tales, and not the least is the
tale of the maiden in the screen whose loveliness so bewitches a youth
that he becomes sick unto death. Then an old scholar tells him that the
person whom the picture represents is dead, but since the painter
painted her mind as well as her form, her spirit lives in the picture
and he may yet win her.
So every day, Tokkei, following out the old scholar's injunctions, sits
before the portrait calling softly the maiden's name. And finally after
many days the maiden answered, "_Hai!_" And stepping down from out the
screen, she kneels to take the cup of wine (which was to be so),
whispering charmingly, "How could you love me so much?"
Also there is the tale of the Corpse Rider, in which the husband had to
ride for one whole night, so far that he could not know the distance,
the dead body of his divorced wife; and this was to save him from her
vengeance.
The gruesome gleams here, and again in the tale of "The Reconciliation,"
when the repentant husband found that the wife he was holding in his
arms is "a corpse so wasted that little remained save the bones, and the
long black tangled hair."
There is no small amount of etiquette in the prefixes and suffixes of
the Japanese female names. The majority of the _Yobina_, or personal
names, are not aesthetic. Some are called after the flowers, and there
are also place names, as for instance _Mine_ (Peak) _Hama_ (Shore); but
the large proportion express moral or mental attributes.
Tenderness, kindness, deftness, cleverness, are frequently
represented by _yobina;_ but appellations implying physical
charm, or suggesting aesthetic ideas only, are comparatively
uncommon. One reason for the fact may be that very aesthetic
names are given to _geisha_ and to _joro_, and consequently
vulgarized. But the chief reason certainly is that the domestic
virtues still occupy in the Japanese moral estimate a place not
less important than that accorded to religious faith in the life
of our own Middle Ages. Not in theory only, but in every-day
practice, moral beauty is placed far above physical beauty; and
girls are usually selected as wives, not for their good looks,
but for their domestic qualities.
I give a few names gleaned from Hearn's
lists:--_O-Jun_--"Faithful-to-death"; _O-Tame_--"For-the-sake-of,"--a
name suggesting unselfishness; _O-Chika_--"Closely Dear"; _O-Suki_--"The
Beloved"--_Aimee_; _O-Tae_--"The Exquisite"; _Tokiwa_--"Eternally
Constant."
From the "Fantasies," we read of the Mystery of Crowds, and the horrors
of Gothic Architecture, the joys of levitation while one is asleep--with
a moral attached; of Noctilucae. Also, as we gaze with the adolescent
youth into a pair of eyes we come to know that
The splendour of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only
as brightness to the morning-star. It is a reflex from beyond
the shadow of the Now,--a ghost-light of vanished suns.
Unknowingly within that maiden-gaze we meet the gaze of eyes
more countless than the hosts of heaven,--eyes otherwhere passed
into darkness and dust.
Thus, and only thus, the depth of that gaze is the depth of the
Sea of Death and Birth, and its mystery is the World-Soul's
vision, watching us out of the silent vast of the Abyss of
Being.
Thus, and only thus, do truth and illusion mingle in the magic
of eyes,--the spectral past suffusing with charm ineffable the
apparition of the present;--and the sudden splendour in the soul
of the Seer is but a flash, one soundless sheet-lightning of the
Infinite Memory.
A JAPANESE MISCELLANY[37] (14) was the next book. What does the memory
hold of these stories and sketches? Surely that picture of Old Japan
with its charming sentiment for Dragon-flies, to which such delicate
poems were written.
[37] Copyright, 1901, by Little, Brown and Company.
_Tombo no
Ha-ura ni sabishi,--
Aki-shigure._
(Lonesomely clings the dragon-fly to the under-side of the
leaf--Ah! the autumn-rains!)
And that verse by the mother poet, who seeing many children playing
their favourite pastime of chasing butterflies, thinks of her little one
who is dead:--
_Tombo-tsuri!--
Kyo wa doko made
Itta yara!_
(Catching dragon-flies!... I wonder where _he_ has gone to-day!)
Then there are the children's songs about Nature and her tiny creatures,
and all their little songs for their plays; the songs which tell a
story, and the sweet mother songs that lull the babies to sleep.
How we pity poor misguided O-Dai, who forgot loyalty to her ancestors to
follow the teachings of the Western faith. At its bidding even the
sacred tablets and the scroll were cast away. And when she had forsaken
everything, and had become as an outcast with her own people, the good
missionaries found they needed a more capable assistant. Poor little
weak O-Dai, without the courage to fill her sleeves with stones and then
slip into the river, longing for the sunlight, and so "flung into the
furnace of a city's lust."
We hear the gruesome tinkle of the dead wife's warning bell, and we
certainly shudder before the vision of her robed in her grave-shroud:--
"Eyeless she came--because she had long been dead;--and her
loosened hair streamed down about her face;--and she looked
without eyes through the tangle of it; and spake without a
tongue."
Then the hideous horror of the evil crime, as this dead wife in her
jealousy tore off the head of the sleeping young wife. The terrified
husband following the trail of blood found
a nightmare-thing that chippered like a bat: the figure of the
long-buried woman erect before her tomb,--in one hand clutching
a bell, in the other the dripping head.... For a minute the
three stood numbed. Then one of the men-at-arms, uttering a
Buddhist invocation, drew, and struck at the shape. Instantly it
crumbled down upon the soil,--an empty scattering of grave-rags,
bones, and hair;--and the bell rolled clanking out of the ruin.
But the fleshless right hand, though parted from the wrist,
still writhed; and its fingers still gripped at the bleeding
head--and tore, and mangled,--as the claws of the yellow crab
fast to a fallen fruit.
Who but Hearn would have chosen this ghastly scene, and described it
with such terrible reality?
With the parents we have unravelled the mystery of Kinume, whose spirit
belonged to one family, and whose body was the child of the other.
Perhaps we still see the famous picture of Kwashin Koji, which had a
soul, for "it is well known that some sparrows, painted upon a sliding
screen (_fusuma_) by Hogen Yenshin, once flew away, leaving blank the
spaces which they had occupied upon the surface. Also it is well known
that a horse painted upon a certain Kakemono, used to go out at night to
eat grass." So the water in the picture on the screen of Kwashin
overflowed into the room, and the boat thereon glided forth, but not a
ripple from the oar was heard. Then Kwashin Koji climbed into the boat,
and it receded into the picture, and the water dried in the room. Over
the painted water slipped the painted vessel until all disappeared, and
Kwashin was heard of no more.
And we remember too the strange brave way that Umetsu Chubei won the
gift of great strength for his children, and their children's children.
The _Athenaeum_ finds the story of Kwashin the best of this collection.
Speaking of the study, "On a Bridge," it says:--
"The author narrates a personal experience of a _riksha_ man who drew
him across an old bridge near Kumamoto. It was in the time of the
Satsuma _muhon_ (rebellion), some twenty-two years earlier, that the
_Kurumaya_ (_riksha_ man) was stopped on the bridge by three men, who
were dressed as peasants, but had very long swords under their
raincoats. After a time a cavalry officer came along from the city.
The moment the horse got on the bridge the three men turned and
leaped:--and one caught the horse's bridle; and another gripped
the officer's arm; and the third cut off his head--all in a
moment.... I never saw anything done so quickly.
"The seeming peasants then waited, and presently another cavalry officer
came and was murdered in like manner. Then came a third, who met a
similar fate. Lastly, the peasants went away, having thrown the bodies
into the river, but taking the heads with them. The man had never
mentioned the matter till long after the war--why? 'Because it would
have been ungrateful.'
"No doubt this is a true story." (301.)
It was probably during the ensuing year that Hearn contributed to the
Japanese Fairy Tale Series (15), published in Tokyo, his
renditions of four of these stories.
KOTTO[38] (16) followed. Says the _Athenaeum_:--
"The gem of this volume is 'A Woman's Diary,' purporting to be 'the
history of a woman's married life recorded by herself, found in a small
_haribako_ (work-box) which had belonged to her.' It is an ordinary
story, not in the least sensational, yet pitiful and even touching in
its record of poverty and suffering, showing the hardships and small
enjoyment--according to our notions, at least--of the colourless
existence led by the bulk of the Japanese poorer classes upon a total
family wage of twelve pounds a year or less." (302.)
[38] Copyright, 1902, by the Macmillan Company.
Except for "A Woman's Diary" and "Fireflies" the tales in "Kotto" are
fragmentary. Some are gruesome as the history of the Gaki; or as the
story of O-Katsu-San, who was so bold as to go by night to Yurei-Daki,
and who to win her bet brought back the little money-box of the gods.
But when she came to give her baby his milk,--
Out of the wrappings unfastened there fell to the floor a
blood-soaked bundle of baby clothes that left exposed two very
small brown feet, and two very small brown hands--nothing more.
The child's head had been torn off!
There is also the story of O-Kame, who returned each night to haunt her
husband; of Chugoro, who was bewitched by a beautiful woman whom
he married beneath the waters. But he sickened and died, for his blood
had been drained by his Circe, who was "simply a Frog,--a great and ugly
Frog!"
The literature and the significance of the fire-flies holds an important
place with the Japanese, and for more than a thousand years the poets
have been making verses about these little creatures.
A sketch in which Hearn is most fortunate is "Pathological," where Tama,
the mother-cat, dreams of her dead kittens--
coos to them, and catches for them small shadowy things,--perhaps
even brings to them, through some dim window ofmemory, a sandal
of ghostly straw....
Beautiful is the "Revery of Mother-Love":--
Yet those countless solar fires, with their viewless millions of
living planets, must somehow reappear: again the wondrous
Cosmos, self-born as self-consumed, must resume its sidereal
whirl over the deeps of the eternities. And the love that
strives for ever with death shall rise again, through fresh
infinitudes of pain, to renew the everlasting battle.
The light of the mother's smile will survive our sun;--the
thrill of her kiss will last beyond the thrilling of stars;--the
sweetness of her lullaby will endure in the cradle-songs of
worlds yet unevolved;--the tenderness of her faith will quicken
the fervour of prayers to be made to the hosts of another
heaven,--to the gods of a time beyond Time. And the nectar of
her breasts can never fail: that snowy stream will still flow
on, to nourish the life of some humanity more perfect than our
own, when the Milky Way that spans our night shall have vanished
for ever out of Space.
Like unto the Soul is a Drop of Dew for
Your personality signifies, in the eternal order, just as much
as the especial motion of molecules in the shivering of any
single drop. Perhaps in no other drop will the thrilling and the
picturing be ever exactly the same; but the dews will continue
to gather and to fall, and there will always be quivering
pictures.... The very delusion of delusions is the idea of death
as loss.
KWAIDAN[39] (17) was the book before "Japan," which was published
after Hearn's death. It is a collection of old stories, many of them
of the gruesome, and of careful studies of ants, mosquitoes, and
butterflies. Striking is the tale of Yuki-Onna, the snow-woman, as is
also the incident of Riki-Baka. One bewitched by the dead is
Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi, whose ears were torn off because the holy texts which
were written everywhere else upon his body were there forgotten. Sonjo,
the hunter, killed the mate of a female _oshidori_, who after appearing
to him in a dream as a beautiful woman, who rebukes him the following
day as a bird, tears open her body, and dies before his eyes. O-Tei is
reborn in the shape of a woman that she may wed years later her promised
husband--Nagao Chosei of Echigo. So loyal is the love of O-Sode, the
milk-nurse, that the cherry-tree which is planted in commemoration of
her, on the anniversary of her death, blossoms in a wonderful way.
Because of his selfish wickedness in thinking only of the gains in his
profession, a priest was made to be reborn into the state of a
_jikininki_, who had to devour the corpses of people who died in his
district. Other devourers of human flesh are the Rokuro-Kubi. The head
of a Rokuro-Kubi separates itself from its body.
[39] Copyright, 1904, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
JAPAN[40] (18): AN ATTEMPT AT INTERPRETATION is the last book that Hearn
published. He was reading its proofs at the time of his death. Although
a posthumous volume appeared, this may rightly be termed his final word.
It is the crystallization and the summary of all that has been said
before. It contains a group of twenty-one lectures, which Hearn had
expected at first to deliver at Cornell University. His own words will
best reveal their import:--
[40] Copyright, 1904, by the Macmillan Company.
They will form a book explaining Japan from the standpoint of
ancestor-worship. They are suited only to a cultivated audience.
The substantial idea of the lectures is that Japanese society
represents the condition of ancient Greek society a thousand
years before Christ. I am treating of religious Japan,--not of
artistic or economical Japan except by way of illustration.
"The history of Japan is really the history of her religion," is the key
to the book.
The _Academy_ remarks:--
"No one who wishes to understand the possibilities of the future of
Japan can afford to neglect the past, and no one who would grasp the
meaning of the past can afford to neglect Mr. Hearn's fine and
thoughtful work." (288.)
In a review Mr. Griffis says:--
"They felt that he had done his best and was degenerating. Yet here is a
work which is a classic in science, a wonder of interpretation. It is
the product of long years of thought, of keenest perception, or
marvellous comprehension.
"One cannot quote, one must read this work. It shows the Japanese under
his armour, modern science. The Japanese, outwardly, are ruled by
treaties, diplomacy, governments, codes, Imperial Diet, armies and
battleships--all modern and external. Inwardly they--that is, forty-nine
millions of them--are governed by ghosts. The graveyard is the true
dictator. It is ever their 'illustrious ancestors' who achieve
victories. They, as a nation, are superbly organized for war. There is
no originality, no personality, no individuality worth speaking of in
the island empire. It is all done by the government, the community. In
social evolution the Japanese are even yet far behind the Romans, and
much as the pre-Homeric Greeks.
"In a word, Lafcadio Hearn outdoes the missionaries in dogmatism,
exceeds even the hostile propagandist in telling the naked truth.
Devoted friend of Japan, he excels the sworn enemies of her religions in
laying bare, though with admiration, the realities.... Lafcadio Hearn
turns the white and searching beams on the ship and man.... His book is
a re-reading of all Japanese history, a sociological appraisement of the
value of Japanese civilization, and a warning against intolerant
propaganda of any sort whatever. This book is destined to live, and to
cause searchings of heart among those who imagine that the Japanese soul
has been changed in fifty years." (326.)
From the _Spectator_ I quote:--
"Both the prose and poetry of Japanese life are infused into Mr. Hearn's
charming pages. Nobody, so far as we know, has given a better
description of the fascination which Japanese life has at first for such
as enter into its true spirit, and of its gradual disappearance.... Of
course it must be remembered that this charm of Japan was something more
than a beautiful mirage. 'Old Japan,' in the opinion of Mr. Hearn, 'came
nearer to the achievement of the highest moral ideal than our far more
evolved societies can hope to do for many a hundred years. Curiously
enough, it was under the shadow of the sword that the fascinating life
of Japan matured; universal politeness was nurtured by the knowledge
that any act of rudeness might, and probably would, cause a painful and
immediate death. This supremacy of the sword, governed by the noble rule
of _bushi-do_, hardened the Japanese temper into the wonderful spirit of
self-sacrifice and patriotism which is now making itself apparent in the
stress of war. All this is admirably portrayed in Mr. Hearn's
pages,--the swan-song of a very striking writer." (383.)
In _The American Journal of Sociology_ there is a review of this book,
by Edmund Buckley of the University of Chicago, which is so admirable
and inclusive that I have obtained Professor Buckley's kind permission
to quote it in its entirety. This review leaves small margin for further
comment. But it is to be regretted that space will not permit citations
of Hearn's tributes to the Japanese home, woman and character.
"On p. 160 of W. E. Griffis' 'The Mikado's Empire,' is textual evidence
that, so late as 1876, intelligent men, and theologians at that--rather,
in sooth, because they are theologians--could harbour such atrocious
notions about Shintoism, the ethnic faith of the Japanese, as the
following: 'Shinto is in no proper sense of the term a religion....
In its lower forms it is blind obedience to governmental and priestly
dictates.' The present reviewer bears these Christian apologists and
heathen defamers 'witness that they have a zeal for God, but not
according to knowledge.' They wrote in the days when hierology
(comparative religion) was still inchoate, for C. P. Ticle's 'Elements'
did not appear in its English dress until 1877; and when Japan's
abasement before the 'Christian' powers was complete, and therefore
everything Japanese assumed to be worthless. But the reaction came, of
course, and is now pretty well completed. Japan's novel yet glorious art
conquered the world; Japan's new yet ever-victorious army has conquered
Russia's imposing array; and now Mr. Hearn completely routs the
contemners of a people's sincere faith. The consensus of hierologists
that no people was ever found without a religion had already been given;
and the creed, cult, and ethics of Shintoism had been correctly
described; but it remained for Mr. Hearn to give a more complete and
intimate account than had previously been done of the ancestorism in
Shinto and of its profound influence upon politics and morality.
"It will surprise no one to learn that Mr. Hearn overdid his contention,
just because such excess is the well-nigh inevitable reaction from the
underestimate that he found current and sought to correct. As he states
the case on p. 4: 'Hitherto the subject of Japanese religion has been
written of chiefly by the sworn enemies of that religion; by others it
has been almost entirely ignored.' But now that 'see-saw' has followed
'see,' we may hope to win a final equilibrium of correct appreciation.
To this end several corrections are called for; but, before they are
made, clearness will be secured by a concise analysis of the treatise;
for in its course religion, politics, and morality are interwoven on a
historic warp. The entire fabric runs about as follows: (Chap. 3.) The
real religion of the Japanese is ancestorism, which showed in three
cults--the domestic, the communal, and the state. The domestic arose
first, but the primitive family might include hundreds of households.
Ancestorism in Japan confirms Spencer's exposition of religious origins.
The greater gods were all evolved from ghost-cults. Good men made good
gods; bad men, bad ones. (Chap. 4.) The domestic cult began in offerings
of food and drink made at the grave; then, under Chinese influence, was
transferred to the home before tablets; where it was maintained until
this present by Buddhism. Thin tablets of white wood, inscribed with the
names of the dead, are placed in a miniature wooden shrine, which is
kept upon a shelf in some inner chamber. Tiny offerings of food,
accompanied with brief prayer, must be made each day by some member of
the household in behalf of all; for the blessed dead still need
sustenance, and in return can guard the house. The Buddhist rite,
however, made prayer, not _to_, but _for_ these dead. The Japanese
scholar Hirata is correct when he declares the worship of ancestors to
be the mainspring of all virtues. (Chap. 5.) The family was united only
by religion. The father--not the mother--was supposed to be the
life-giver, and was therefore responsible for the cult. Hence the
inferior position of woman. The ancestral ghost of an _uji_, or family
of several households, became later the _ujigami_, or local tutelar god.
Subordination of young to old, of females to males, and of the whole
family to its chief, who was at once ruler and priest, shows that the
family organization was religious and not marital. Both monogamy and the
practice of parents selecting their child's spouse arose because best
accordant with religion. Later custom makes the decision, not of the
father alone, but of the household and kindred, determinative of any
important step.
"(Chap. 6.) The communal cult of the district ruled the family in all
its relations to the outer world. The _ujigami_, or clan-god, was the
spirit rather of a former ruler than of a common ancestor. Hochiman was
a ruler, but Kasuga an ancestor. Beside the _uji_ temple of a district,
there may be a more important one dedicated to some higher deity. Every
_ujiko_ or parishioner is taken to the _ujigami_ when one month old and
dedicated to him. Thereafter he attends the temple festivals, which
combine fun with piety; and he makes the temple groves his playground.
Grown up, he brings his children here; and, if he leaves home, pays his
respects to the god on leaving and returning. Thus the social bond of
each community was identical with the religious bond, and the cult of
the _ujigami_ embodied the moral experience of the community. The
individual of such a community enjoyed only a narrowly restricted
liberty. Shintoism had no moral code, because at this stage of
ancestor-cult religion and ethics coincide.
"(Chap. 7.) The great gods of nature were developed from
ancestor-worship, though their real history has been long forgotten.
(Chap. 8.) Rites of worship and of purification were many. (Chap. 9.)
The rule of the dead extended to moral conduct and even to sumptuary
matters, language, and amusements. (Chap. 10.) Buddhism absorbed the
native ancestor-cult, but prescribed that prayers be said for them, not
to them. In accordance with its principle, 'First observe the person,
then preach the law'--that is, accommodate instruction to the hearer's
capacity--Buddhism taught the masses metempsychosis instead of
palingenesis, and the paradise of Amida instead of the nirvana of
Buddha. Buddhism rendered its greatest service to Japan by education in
the learning and arts of China. (Chap. 11.) The higher Buddhism is a
kind of monism.
"(Chap. 12.) Japanese society was simply an amplification of the
patriarchal family, and its clan-groups never united into a coherent
body until 1871. At first the bulk of the people were slaves or serfs,
but from the seventh century a large class of freedmen--farmers and
artisans--came into existence. The first period of Japanese social
evolution was based on a national head, the Mikado, and a national cult,
Shintoism; it began in this seventh century, but developed to the
limit of its type only under the Tokugawa shoguns, in the seventeenth
century.
"Next to the priest-emperor at the head came the _kuge_, or ancient
nobility, from whose ranks most of the latter regents and shoguns were
drawn. Next ranked the _buke_ or _samurai_, which was the professional
military class, and was ruled by nearly three hundred _daimyo_, or
feudal lords of varying importance. Next came the commonalty, _heimin_,
with three classes--farmers, artisans, and tradesmen, the last being
despised by the _samurai_, who also could cut down any disrespectful
_heimin_ with impunity. Lowest of all came the _chori_--pariahs, who
were not counted Japanese at all, but _mono_-'things.' But even among
them distinctions arose according to occupation. The close care taken of
the native religion by the government precluded rise of a church. Nor
was Buddhism, divided into hostile sects and opposed by the _samurai_,
ever able to establish a hierarchy independent of the government.
Personal freedom was suppressed, as it would be now under Socialism,
which is simply a reversion to an overcome type.
"(Chap. 13.) The second period of Japanese social evolution lasted from
the eleventh to the nineteenth century, and was marked by dominance over
the mikadoate of successive dynasties of shoguns. The permanence of this
mikadoate amid all perturbations of the shogunate was owing to its
religious nature. (Chap. 14.) Following the lord in death, suicide, and
vendetta were customs based on loyalty, and they involved the noblest
self-sacrifice. (Chap. 15.) Catholic missions were suppressed lest they
should lead to the political conquest of Japan. (Chap. 16.) The Tokugawa
shoguns exercised iron discipline, and now were brought to perfection
those exquisite arts and manners of the Japanese. (Chap. 17.) A revival
of learning, begun in the eighteenth century, slowly led to a new
nationalist support of the Mikado; and when by 1891 the shogun had
resigned and the daimiates been abolished, the third period in Japan's
social evolution began. (Chap. 18.) In spite of outward seeming, the
ancient social conditions and ancestor-cult still control every action.
(Chap. 19.) The individual is still restrained by the conventions of the
masses, by communistic guilds of craftsmen, and by the government's
practice of taking loyal service in all its departments without giving
adequate pecuniary reward. (Chap. 20.) The educational system still
maintains the old communism by training, not for individual ability, but
for co-operative action. This is favoured, too, by the universal
practice of rich men meeting the personal expenses of promising
students. (Chap. 21.) Japanese loyalty and courage will support her army
and navy, but industrial competition with other peoples calls for
individual freedom. (Chap. 22.) The Japanese are not indifferent to
religion, and can be understood only by a study of their religious and
social evolution. Future changes will be social, but ancestor-cult will
persist, and offers an insuperable obstacle to the spread of
Christianity.
"The critical reader will not have failed to meet in this summary many
positions that challenge his previous knowledge, and whether these be
correct or not can be determined only by an examination of the full
text, which it eminently deserves. The reviewer, however, will confine
himself to certain matters that seem to him the dominating errors of the
whole. Probably three greater errors were never compressed into a single
sentence than in this from p. 27: 'The real religion of Japan, the
religion still professed in one form or another by the entire nation, is
that cult which has been the foundation of all civilized religion and of
all civilized society--ancestor-worship.' That ancestor-worship is still
professed by the entire nation is negatived by all we know from other
sources as well as all we should expect. The ancestor-worship native to
Japan had been appropriated by Buddhism; and, since the revolution of
1868 with its disestablishment of that church, the Butsudan, where the
tablets were kept, has been largely sold as an art object or has been
simply disused. The _mitamaya_ mentioned on p. 50, as if in extensive
use for ancestor-worship, is found only in a few purist families, and is
known to the mass of Japanese only as the rear apartment or structure of
a Shintoist shrine.
"That ancestor-worship is 'the real religion of Japan' and 'has been the
foundation of all civilized religion' are errors that Mr. Hearn owes to
Herbert Spencer's influence, which is confessed here, and indeed is
evident throughout the work. Perhaps nothing has brought Spencer into
more discredit than the lengths he went to prove this basic nature of
ancestorism in his 'Principles of Sociology,' and the reader of pp.
121-24 of Mr. Hearn's work will readily see how futile also is the
attempt to show that the nature-deities of Shintoism were only
'transfigured ghosts.' No, indeed, God did not make man and leave ghosts
to make him religious. The heaven and the earth were here before ghosts,
and man could personify them just as soon as he knew himself as a
person, which he must have done long before he analyzed himself into a
ghost-soul and a body. Had Mr. Hearn not ignored Reville, Max Mueller,
Pfleiderer, and Saussaye, while steeping himself in Spencer, he might
have observed, what is plainly visible in Shintoism as elsewhere:
that religion has _two_ tap roots, ancestorism indeed, but also
naturism.
"Again, Mr. Hearn's sentence declares that ancestor-worship is 'the
foundation of all civilized society.' This is the prevailing view
throughout the work; for example, on pp. 23, 57, 86, 99, 175, and 320.
But other passages imply the saner view that religion and morality are
coordinate functions of one man. Thus at p. 511, Mr. Hearn attributes
Japan's power to 'her old religious and social training.' The many and
strong cases of influence of religion upon conduct that can really be
shown in Japan amount only to influence, of course, and not to
'foundation' or 'origination,' A quite transparent case of Mr. Hearn's
error is where (p. 152) he attributes the exceptional cleanliness of the
Japanese to their religion, which here, as usual, he sums up as
ancestor-worship. One wonders, however, why this world-wide phenomenon
of religion should determine a Japanese cleanliness; why
ancestor-worshippers are not always clean; as for example the Chinese,
who bathe most rarely. It seems saner to seek a cause for the unique
daily bath of the Japanese in their also uniquely numerous thermal
springs, which occur in no less than 388 different localities. Symbolism
did indeed in Japan, as elsewhere, lead to religious bathing in rivers;
but bathing in rivers, as in ocean, was never popular in Japan until
recently learned from the foreigner; whereas the thermal springs are
crowded, and the daily baths at home are always taken exceedingly hot
after the thermal pattern, for these have been found not only cleansing,
but curing and warming, the last quality being a great merit where
winters are cold and houses unheated.
"Finally, the reader need not expect to meet here any adequate reference
to those vices that have been fostered by religion in Japan. The
concubinage, confirmed by ancestorism, is once mentioned; and the
harlotry, promoted by phallicism (the phallos was frequently found in a
brothel, though not exclusively there, of course), is relegated to a
simple footnote. But such matters can be learned elsewhere, whereas the
close and frequent points of influence which religion exercised upon
politics and morality in Japan can nowhere else be so well studied as
here." (292.)
THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY[41] (19) is Hearn's posthumous book. The
last memories are of the "Weaving Lady of the Milky Way"; of "Goblin
Poetry"; of "Ultimate Questions," which are called forth by the essay of
that name written by the author of the "Synthetic Philosophy"; of the
"Mirror Maiden" whom Matsumura, the priest, saved from the well, and who
repaid him by good-fortune. Moreover, of the alluring maiden in the
dream of Ito Norisuke--if one is to choose a ghost for a bride, who
would not seek Himegimi-Sama? As a finale there is the picture of
Admiral Togo sending to Tokyo "for some flowering-trees in
pots--inasmuch as his responsibilities allowed him no chance of seeing
the cherry-flowers and the plum-blossoms in their season."
[41] Copyright, 1905, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I
AMERICAN AND ENGLISH EDITIONS[42]
ORIGINAL WORKS
(Nos. 1-19)
[42] For the English Editions, the English Catalogue of Books
has been followed.
No. 1.
1884. STRAY LEAVES FROM STRANGE LITERATURE.
Stories reconstructed from the Anvari-Soheili, Baital, Pachisi,
Mahabharata, Pantchatantra, Gulistan, Talmud, Kalewala, etc. Boston:
James R. Osgood and Company, 1884, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, Cr. 8vo.
No. 2.
1885. GOMBO ZHEBES. Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs, selected from
six Creole dialects. Translated into French and into English, with
notes, complete index to subjects and some brief remarks upon the Creole
idioms of Louisiana. New York: Will H. Coleman, 1885, 8vo.
No. 3.
1887. SOME CHINESE GHOSTS. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887, 16mo.
New Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1906, 12mo.
No. 4.
1889. CHITA: A Memory of Last Island. New York: Harper and Brothers,
1889, 12mo.
No. 5.
1890. YOUMA, The Story of a West-Indian Slave. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1890, 12mo.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1890, 8vo.
No. 6.
1890. TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1890, 8vo.
The Same. London: Harper and Brothers, 1890, 8vo.
New Edition. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1900, 8vo.
No. 7.
1894. GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN. Boston and New York: Houghton,
Mifflin and Company, 1894, 2 vols., 8vo.
The Same. London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1894, 2 vols., 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, 2 vols., Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, 2 vols., Cr.
8vo.
No. 8.
1895. "OUT OF THE EAST." Reveries and Studies in New Japan. Boston and
New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895, 16mo.
The Same. London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1895, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, Cr. 8vo.
No. 9.
1896. KOKORO: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life. Boston and New
York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896, 16mo.
The Same. London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1896, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1903, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1905, 8vo.
No. 10.
1897. GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS, Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far
East. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1897, 12mo.
The Same. London: Constable and Company, 1897, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, 8vo.
No. 11.
1898. EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1898, 16mo.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1898, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1899, 8vo.
New Popular Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1904, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1905, 8vo.
No. 12.
1899. IN GHOSTLY JAPAN. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1899, 16mo.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1899, 8vo.
New Popular Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1904, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1905, Cr. 8vo.
No. 13.
1900. SHADOWINGS. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1900, 12mo.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1900, 8vo.
New Popular Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1904, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1905, Cr. 8vo.
No. 14.
1901. A JAPANESE MISCELLANY. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1901,
12mo.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1901, 8vo.
New Popular Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1904, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1905, Cr. 8vo.
No. 15.
1902. JAPANESE FAIRY TALES. Tokyo, Japan: T. Hasegawa (4 vols.),
16mo.
No. 16.
1902. KOTTO. Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs. New York:
The Macmillan Company (London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd.), 1902, 8vo.
Reprinted, April, 1903.
No. 17.
1904. KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Boston and New
York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904, 12mo.
The Same. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1904, 12mo.
No. 18.
1904. JAPAN: An Attempt at Interpretation. New York: The Macmillan
Company (London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd.), 1904, 8vo.
No. 19.
1905. THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY, and other Studies and Stories.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905, 12mo.
The Same. London: Constable and Company, 1905, Cr. 8vo.
TRANSLATIONS
(Nos. 20-21)
No. 20.
1882. ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS, and other Fantastic Romances. By
Theophile Gautier. Faithfully translated by Lafcadio Hearn. New York: R.
Worthington, 1882, 8vo.
New Edition. New York: Brentano's, 1899, 12mo.
New Edition. New York: Brentano's, 1906, 12mo.
CLARIMONDE. New York: Brentano's, 1899, 16mo.
No. 21.
1890. THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD (Member of the Institute). By
Anatole France. The Translation and Introduction by Lafcadio Hearn. New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1890, 8vo.
II
FOREIGN EDITIONS
(Nos. 22-30)
DANISH
No. 22.
1902. FRA SKYGGERNES VERDEN ("From the World of the Shadows"). Complete
and translated by Johanne Muenther.
178 pages, one portrait. Gyldendalske book-trade, Copenhagen, 1902, 8vo.
FRENCH
No. 23.
1904. LE JAPON INCONNU. (esquisses psychologiques). Par Lafcadio Hearn.
Traduit de l'anglais avec l'autorisation de l'auteur, par Mme. Leon
Raynal. In 18 jesus, 111-354 p. Mayenne, impr. Colin, Paris, lib.
Dujarric, 1904.
(Selections from "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.")
GERMAN
No. 24.
1905. KOKORO. Von Lafcadio Hearn. Einzig autorisierte Uebersetzung aus
dem Englischen von Berta Franzos. Mit vorwort von Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Buchschmuck von Emil Orlik. Frankfurt a Main: Ruetten und Loening, 1905,
8vo.
No. 25.
1906. LOTUS. Blicke in das unbekannte Japan. Einzig autorisierte
Uebersetzung aus dem Englischen von Berta Franzos. Mit vorwort von Hugo
von Hofmannsthal. Buchschmuck von Emil Orlik. Frankfurt a Main: Ruetten
und Loening, 1905, 8vo.
(Selections from "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.")
No. 26.
1907. Lafcadio Hearn's Werke ueber Japan in kuenstlerischer
Buchausstattung von Emil Orlik. Band I. Kokoro. Band II. Lotus. Band
III. Izumo. Frankfurt a Main: Ruetten und Loening, 1907.
SWEDISH
No. 27.
1903. EXOTICA. Noveller och studier fran Japan, af Lafcadio Hearn.
Bemyndigad oefversaettning af Karin Hirn; med nagra notiser om foerfattaren
af Yrjoe Hirn. Tredje Upplagen. Stockholm: Wahlstroem & Widstrand, 1903,
16mo., 2 end pages, pp. 227, decorated paper.
(Selections from "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," "Out of the East,"
"Kokoro," "Exotics and Retrospectives," "In Ghostly Japan,"
"Shadowings.")
Reprint 1905.
No. 28.
1903. EXOTICA. Noveller och studier fran Japan, af Lafcadio Hearn. Ny
samling. Bemyndigad oefversaettning af Karin Hirn. Stockholm: Wahlstroem &
Widstrand, 1903, 16mo., 2 p. l., pp. 248, decorated paper.
(Selections from "Out of the East," "Kokoro," "Gleanings in
Buddha-Fields," "Exotics and Retrospectives," "In Ghostly Japan,"
"Shadowings," "A Japanese Miscellany," "Kotto.")
No. 29.
1904. SPOeKEN OCH DROeMMAR FRAN JAPAN. (Exotica. Tredje Samlingen) af
Lafcadio Hearn. Bemyndigad oefversaettning fran Engelskan af Karin Hirn.
Wahlstroem & Widstrands, Foerlag, Stockholm, MCMIV., 16mo., 1 end page,
pp. 218, decorated paper.
(Selections from "Shadowings," "A Japanese Miscellany," "Kotto,"
"Kwaidan.")
No. 30.
1905. NATALIKA. ("Stray Leaves from Strange Literature") af Lafcadio
Hearn. Bemyndigad oefversaettning af Karin Hirn. Stockholm: Wahlstroem &
Widstrand, 16mo., pp. 189, decorated paper.
("Runes from the Kalewala" omitted.)
III
LIST, WITH DESCRIPTION, OF SEPARATE
PUBLISHED WORKS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
(Nos. 1-21)
ORIGINAL WORKS
No. 1.
1884. STRAY LEAVES FROM STRANGE LITERATURE. Stories reconstructed from
the Anvari-Soheili, Baital Pachisi, Mahabharata, Pantchatantra,
Gulistan, Talmud, Kalewala, etc. By Lafcadio Hearn. (Publisher's
Monogram.) Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1884.
16mo., pp. (16) 225, green cloth, black lettering, and decorations.
(5) Dedication:--
To my Friend
PAGE M. BAKER
Editor of the
New Orleans Times-Democrat
(7-11) Explanatory (_Extract_).
While engaged upon this little mosaic work of legend and fable, I felt
much like one of those merchants told of in Sindbad's Second Voyage, who
were obliged to content themselves with gathering the small jewels
adhering to certain meat which eagles brought up from the Valley of
Diamonds. I have had to depend altogether upon the labour of translators
for my acquisitions; and these seemed too small to deserve separate
literary setting. By cutting my little gems according to one pattern, I
have doubtless reduced the beauty of some; yet it seemed to me their
colours were so weird, their luminosity so elfish, that their intrinsic
value could not be wholly destroyed even by so clumsy an artificer as I.
In short, these fables, legends, parables, etc., are simply
reconstructions of what impressed me as most fantastically beautiful in
the most exotic literature which I was able to obtain. With few
exceptions, the plans of the original narratives have been preserved....
This little collection has no claim upon the consideration of scholars.
It is simply an attempt to share with the public some of those novel
delights I experienced while trying to familiarize myself with some very
strange and beautiful literatures.
... My gems were few and small: the monstrous and splendid await the
coming of Sindbad, or some mighty lapidary by whom they may be wrought
into jewel bouquets exquisite as those bunches of topaz blossoms and
ruby buds laid upon the tomb of Nourmahal.
New Orleans, 1884.
(13-14) Bibliography.
(15-16) Contents:--
Stray Leaves
The Book of Thoth. _From an Egyptian Papyrus._
The Fountain Maiden. _A Legend of the South Pacific._
The Bird Wife. _An Esquimaux Tradition._
Tales retold from Indian and Buddhist Literature
The Making of Tilottama
The Brahman and his Brahmani
Bakawali
Natalika
The Corpse-Demon
The Lion
The Legend of the Monster Misfortune
A Parable Buddhistic
Pundari
Yamaraja
The Lotos of Faith
Runes from the Kalewala
The Magical Words
The First Musician
The Healing of Wainamoinen
Stories of Moslem Lands
Boutimar, the Dove
The Son of a Robber
A Legend of Love
The King's Justice
Traditions retold from the Talmud
A Legend of Rabba
The Mockers
Esther's Choice
The Dispute in the Halacha
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zachai
A Tradition of Titus
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, Crown 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, Cr. 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
Charles W. Coleman, Jr., _Harper's Monthly_, May, 1887, vol. 74,
p. 855.
No. 2.
1885. GOMBO ZHEBES. Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs, selected from
six Creole dialects. Translated into French and into English, with
notes, complete index to subjects and some brief remarks upon the Creole
idioms of Louisiana. By Lafcadio Hearn. New York: Will H. Coleman,
Publisher, No. 70, Business Quarter, Astor House, 1885.
8vo., 6 p. l., pp. 42, brown cloth, design on cover.
(3-4) Introduction (_Extract_).
Any one who has ever paid a flying visit to New Orleans probably knows
something about those various culinary preparations whose generic name
is "Gombo"--compounded of many odds and ends, with the okra-plant, or
true gombo for a basis, but also comprising occasionally "lose,
zepinard, laitie," and the other vegetables sold in bunches in the
French market. At all events, any person who has remained in the city
for a season must have become familiar with the nature of "gombo file,"
"gombo fevi," and "gombo aux herbes," or as our coloured cook calls it
"gombo zhebes"--for she belongs to the older generation of Creole
_cuisinieres_, and speaks the patois in its primitive purity, without
using a single "r." Her daughter, who has been to school, would
pronounce it _gombo zhairbes_:--the modern patois is becoming more and
more Frenchified, and will soon be altogether forgotten, not only
throughout Louisiana, but even in the Antilles. It still, however,
retains originality enough to be understood with difficulty by persons
thoroughly familiar with French; and even those who know nothing of any
language but English, readily recognize it by the peculiar rapid
syllabification and musical intonation. Such English-speaking residents
of New Orleans seldom speak of it as "Creole": they call it _gombo_, for
some mysterious reason which I have never been able to explain
satisfactorily. The coloured Creoles of the city have themselves begun
to use the term to characterize the patois spoken by the survivors of
slavery days. Turiault tells us that in the town of Martinique, where
the Creole is gradually changing into French, the _Bitacos_, or country
negroes who still speak the patois nearly pure, are much ridiculed by
their municipal brethren:--_Ca ou ka pale la, che, c'est neg;--Ca pas
Creole!_ ("What you talk is 'nigger,' my dear:--that isn't Creole!") In
like manner a young Creole negro or negress of New Orleans might tell an
aged member of his race: _Ca qui to parle ca pas Creole; ca c'est
gombo!_ I have sometimes heard the pure and primitive Creole also called
"Congo" by coloured folks of the new generation.
The literature of "gombo" has perhaps even more varieties than there are
preparations of the esculents above referred to;--the patois has
certainly its gombo fevi, its gombo file, its "gombo zhebes"--both
written and unwritten. A work like Marbot's "Bambous" would deserve to
be classed with the pure "fevi";--the treatises of Turiault, Baissac,
St. Quentin, Thomas, rather resemble that fully prepared dish, in which
crabs seem to struggle with fragments of many well-stewed meats, all
strongly seasoned with pepper. The present essay at Creole folklore, can
only be classed as "gombo zhebes"--(_Zhebes ce feuil-chou, cresson,
laitie, bettrav, lose, zepinard_); the true okra is not the basis of our
preparation;--it is a Creole dish, if you please, but a salmagundi of
inferior quality.
* * * * *
Needless to say, this collection is far from perfect;--the most I can
hope for is that it may constitute the nucleus of a more exhaustive
publication to appear in course of time. No one person could hope to
make a really complete collection of Creole proverbs--even with all the
advantages of linguistic knowledge, leisure, wealth, and travel. Only a
society of folklorists might bring such an undertaking to a successful
issue;--but as no systematic effort is being made in this direction, I
have had no hesitation in attempting--not indeed to fill a want--but to
set an example. _Gouie passe, difil sivre_:--let the needle but pass,
the thread will follow.
L. H.
(6) Creole Bibliography.
Pages 40-42 Indexes.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Nation, The_, April 23, 1885, vol. 40, p. 349.
No. 3.
1887. SOME CHINESE GHOSTS. By Lafcadio Hearn. (Chinese Characters.)
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887. 16mo., p. (8) 185, brown cloth with
Chinese mask on cover, red top.
Facing Title-page:--
_If ye desire to witness prodigies and to behold marvels, be not
concerned as to whether the mountains are distant or the rivers far
away._
Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan.
(2) Dedication:--
To my Friend,
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
The Musician,
who, speaking the
speech of melody unto the
children of Tien-hia,--
unto the wandering Tsing-jin, whose skins
have the colour of gold,--
moved them to make strange sounds upon the
serpent-bellied San-hien;
persuaded them to play for me upon the
shrieking Ya-hien;
prevailed on them to sing me a song of their
native land,--
the song of Mohli-hwa,
the song of the jasmine-flower.
(Sketch of Chinaman's head.)
(Reverse) Chinese Character.
(3-4) Preface.
I think that my best apology for the insignificant size of this volume
is the very character of the material composing it. In preparing the
legends I sought especially for _weird beauty_; and I could not forget
this striking observation in Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on Imitations of
the Ancient Ballad": "The supernatural, though appealing to certain
powerful emotions very widely and deeply sown amongst the human race,
is, nevertheless, _a spring which is peculiarly apt to lose its
elasticity by being too much pressed upon_." Those desirous to
familiarize themselves with Chinese literature as a whole have had the
way made smooth for them by the labours of linguists like Julien, Pavie,
Remusat, De Rosny, Schlegel, Legge, Hervey-Saint-Denys, Williams, Biot,
Giles, Wylie, Beal, and many other Sinologists. To such great explorers
indeed, the realm of Cathayan story belongs by right of discovery and
conquest; yet the humbler traveller who follows wonderingly after them
into the vast and mysterious pleasure-grounds of Chinese fancy may
surely be permitted to cull a few of the marvellous flowers there
growing,--a self-luminous _hwa-wang_, a black lily, a phosphoric rose or
two,--as souvenirs of his curious voyage.
L. H. New Orleans, March 15, 1886.
(5) Contents:--
The Soul of the Great Bell
The Story of Ming-Y
The Legend of Tchi-Niu
The Return of Yen Tchin-King
The Tradition of the Tea-Plant
The Tale of the Porcelain God
Appendix:--
Notes. Glossary.
New Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1906, 12mo.
Articles and Reviews:--
Charles W. Coleman, Jr., _Harper's Monthly_, May, 1887, vol. 74,
p. 855.
_Nation, The_, May 26, 1887, vol. 44, p. 456.
No. 4.
1889. CHITA: a Memory of Last Island. By Lafcadio Hearn
"_But Nature whistled with all her winds, Did as she pleased, and went
her way._"
--Emerson.
New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1889. 12mo., 3 p. l., pp.
204, terra-cotta cloth, decorated.
(Published first in _Harper's Monthly_, April, 1888.)
(1) Dedication:--
To my Friend
DR. RODOLFO MATAS
of
New Orleans
(2) Contents:--
Part I
The Legend of L'ile Derniere
Part II
Out of the Sea's Strength
Part III
The Shadow of the Tide
(Reverse)
_Je suis la vaste melee,--
Reptile, etant l onde; ailee,
Etant le vent,--
Force et fuite, haine et vie,
Houle immense, poursuivie
Et poursuivant._
--Victor Hugo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Boston Evening Transcript, The_, November 2, 1889.
Hutson, Charles Woodward, _Poet-Lore_, Spring, 1905, vol. 16,
p. 53.
No. 5.
1890. YOUMA. The Story of a West-Indian Slave. By Lafcadio Hearn.
(Publisher's Vignette.) New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square,
1890.
12mo., 1 p. l., pp. 193, frontispiece illustration, red cloth.
(Published first in _Harper's Monthly_, January-February, 1890.)
(1) Dedication:--
To my friend
JOSEPH S. TUNISON.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1890, 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Athenaeum, The_, August 30, 1890, p. 284.
_Nation, The_, May 7, 1891, vol. 52, p. 385.
No. 6.
1890. TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES. By Lafcadio Hearn.
Illustrated. (Publisher's Vignette.) New York: Harper & Brothers,
Franklin Square, 1890. 8vo., pp. (12) 431, 38 full-page illustrations, 6
illustrations in the text, green cloth ornamental.
(Reverse)
"_La facon d'etre du pays est si agreable, la temperature si bonne, et
l'on y vit dans une liberte si honnete, que je n'aye pas vu un seul
homme, ny une seule femme, qui en soient revenus, en qui je n'aye
remarque une grande passion d'y retourner._"--Le Pere Dutertre (1667).
(3) Dedication:--
A mon cher ami
LEOPOLD ARNOUX
Notaire a Saint Pierre, Martinique.
_Souvenir de nos promenades,--de nos voyages,--de nos causeries,--des
sympathies echangees,--de tout le charme d'une amitie inalterable et
inoubliable,--de tout ce qui parle a l'ame au doux Pays des Revenants._
(5-6) Preface (_Extract_).
The introductory paper, entitled "A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics"
consists for the most part of notes taken upon a voyage of nearly three
thousand miles, accomplished in less than two months. During such hasty
journeying it is scarcely possible for a writer to attempt anything more
serious than a mere reflection of the personal experiences undergone;
and, in spite of sundry justifiable departures from simple note-making,
this paper is offered only as an effort to record the visual and
emotional impressions of the moment.
My thanks are due to Mr. William Lawless, British Consul at St. Pierre,
for several beautiful photographs, taken by himself, which have been
used in the preparation of the illustrations.
L. H.
Philadelphia, 1889.
(7) Contents:--
A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics (_Harper's Monthly_,
July-September, 1888)
Martinique Sketches:--
I. Les Porteuses (_Harper's Monthly_, July, 1889)
II. La Grande Anse (_Harper's Monthly_, November, 1889)
III. Un Revenant
IV. La Guiablesse
V. La Verette (_Harper's Monthly_, October, 1888)
VI. Les Blanchisseusses
VII. La Pelee
VIII. 'Ti Canotie
IX. La Fille de Couleur
X. Bete-ni-Pie
XI. Ma Bonne
XII. "Pa combine, che!"
XIII. Ye
XIV. Lys.
XV. Appendix: Some Creole Melodies
(9-10) Illustrations:--
The Same. London: Harper and Brothers, 1890, 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_New York Times, The_, September 1, 1890.
No. 7.
1894. GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN. By Lafcadio Hearn. In two volumes.
(Vignette.) Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company (The
Riverside Press, Cambridge), 1894.
8vo., 2 vols. pp. (x) 699, dull green cloth, silver lettering and
design, gilt top.
(1) Dedication:--
To the Friends
whose kindness alone rendered possible
my sojourn in the Orient,--
to
PAYMASTER MITCHELL McDONALD, U. S. N.
and
BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN, ESQ.
_Emeritus Professor of Philology and Japanese in the
Imperial University of Tokyo_
I dedicate these volumes
in token of
Affection and Gratitude.
(V-X) Preface (_Extract_).
But the rare charm of Japanese life, so different from that of all other
lands, is not to be found in its Europeanized circles. It is to be found
among the great common people, who represent in Japan, as in all
countries, the national virtues, and who still cling to their delightful
old customs, their picturesque dresses, their Buddhist images, their
household shrines, their beautiful and touching worship of ancestors.
This is the life of which a foreign observer can never weary, if
fortunate and sympathetic enough to enter into it,--the life that forces
him sometimes to doubt whether the course of our boasted Western
progress is really in the direction of moral development. Each day,
while the years pass, there will be revealed to him some strange and
unsuspected beauty in it. Like other life, it has its darker side; yet
even this is brightness compared with the darker side of Western
existence. It has its foibles, its follies, its vices, its cruelties;
yet the more one sees of it, the more one marvels at its extraordinary
goodness, its miraculous patience, its never-failing courtesy, its
simplicity of heart, its intuitive charity. And to our own larger
Occidental comprehension, its commonest superstitions, however contemned
at Tokyo, have rarest value as fragments of the unwritten
literature of its hopes, its fears, its experience with right and
wrong,--its primitive efforts to find solutions for the riddle of the
Unseen.
Contents:--
Volume I.
I. My First Day in the Orient
II. The Writing of Kobodaishi
III. Jizo
IV. A Pilgrimage to Enoshima
V. At the Market of the Dead (_Atlantic Monthly_,
September, 1891)
VI. Bon-Odori
VII. The Chief City of the Province of the Gods
(_Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1891)
VIII. Kitzuki: The Most Ancient Shrine in Japan
(_Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1891)
IX. In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts
X. At Mionoseki
XI. Notes on Kitzuki
XII. At Hinomisaki
XIII. Shinju
XIV. Yaegaki-Jinja
XV. Kitsune
Volume II.
XVI. In a Japanese Garden (_Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1892)
XVII. The Household Shrine
XVIII. Of Women's Hair
XIX. From the Diary of an English Teacher
XX. Two Strange Festivals
XXI. By the Japanese Sea
XXII. Of a Dancing Girl (_Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1893)
XXIII. From Hoki to Oki
XXIV. Of Souls XXV. Of Ghosts and Goblins
XXVI. The Japanese Smile (_Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1893)
XXVII. Sayonara!
Pages 695-99 Index.
The Same. London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1894, 2 vols., 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, 2 vols., Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, 2 vols., Cr.
8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
Bentzon, Th., _Revue des Deux Mondes_, June 1, 1904, vol. 21, p.
556.
Brandt, M. von, _Deutsche Rundschau_, October, 1900, vol. 27,
p. 68.
Challaye, Felicien, _Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale_, 1903,
vol. 11, p. 338.
Challaye, Felicien, _Revue de Paris_, December 1, 1904 vol. 6,
p. 655.
_Literary World, The_, October 20, 1894, vol. 25, p. 347.
Scott, Mrs. M. McN., _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1895, vol. 75,
p. 830.
_Spectator, The_, November 17, 1894, vol. 73, p. 698.
No. 8.
1895. "OUT OF THE EAST." Reveries and Studies in New Japan. By Lafcadio
Hearn.
"_As far as the east is from the west_"--
(Publisher's Vignette.) Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and
Company (The Riverside Press, Cambridge), 1895.
16mo., 2 p. 1., pp. 341, yellow cloth, silver lettering, yellow top.
(1) Dedication:--
To
NISHIDA SENTARO
in dear remembrance of
Izumo days
(2) Contents:--
I. The Dream of a Summer Day
II. With Kyushu Students
III. At Hakata (_Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1894)
IV. Of the Eternal Feminine (_Atlantic Monthly_, December,
1893)
V. Bits of Life and Death
VI. The Stone Buddha
VII. Jiujutsu
VIII. The Red Bridal (_Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1894)
IX. A Wish Fulfilled (_Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1895)
X. In Yokohama
XI. Yuko: a Reminiscence
"The Dream of a Summer Day" first appeared in the _Japan Daily Mail_.
The Same. London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1895, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, Cr. 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Athenaeum, The_, August 24, 1895, p. 249.
Brandt, M. von, _Deutsche Rundschau_, October, 1900, vol. 105,
p. 68.
Challaye Felicien, _Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale_, 1903,
vol. 11, p. 338.
Challaye, Felicien, _Revue de Paris_, December 1, 1904, vol. 6,
p. 655.
_Literary World, The_, April 20, 1895, vol. 26, p. 123.
Scott, Mrs. M. McN., _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1895, vol. 75,
p. 830.
_Spectator, The_, October 12, 1895, vol. 75, p. 459.
No. 9.
1896. KOKORO: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life. By Lafcadio
Hearn. (Top of page "Kokoro" in Japanese.) (Sketch of Japanese Head.)
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company (The Riverside Press,
Cambridge), 1896.
16 mo., 3 p. l., pp. 388, green cloth, gold lettering, gilt top.
(1) Dedication:--
To my Friend
AMENOMORI NOBUSHIGE
poet, scholar, and patriot
(2) Note:--
(Japanese character)
The papers composing this volume treat of the inner rather than of the
outer life of Japan,--for which reason they have been grouped under the
title, "Kokoro" (heart). Written with the above character, this word
signifies also mind, in the emotional sense; spirit; courage; resolve;
sentiment; affection; and inner meaning,--just as we say in English,
"the heart of things."
Kobe, September 15, 1895.
(3) Contents:--
I. At a Railway Station
II. The Genius of Japanese Civilization (_Atlantic Monthly_,
October, 1895)
III. A Street Singer
IV. From a Travelling Diary (_Atlantic Monthly_, December,
1895)
V. The Nun of the Temple of Amida
VI. After the War (_Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1895)
VII. Haru
VIII. A Glimpse of Tendencies
IX. By Force of Karma
X. A Conservative
XI. In the Twilight of the Gods (_Atlantic Monthly_, June,
1895)
XII. The Idea of Preexistence
XIII. In Cholera-Time
XIV. Some Thoughts about Ancestor-Worship
XV. Kimiko
Appendix. Three Popular Ballads
The Same. London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1896, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1903, Cr. 8vo.
Popular Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1905, Cr. 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Athenaeum, The_, August 8, 1896, p. 185.
Bentzon, Th., _Revue de Deux Mondes_, June 1, 1904, vol. 21, p.
556.
Brandt, M. von, _Deutsche Rundschau_, October, 1900, vol. 105,
p. 68.
Challaye Felicien, _Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale_, 1903,
vol. 11, p. 338.
Challaye Felicien, _Revue de Paris_, December 1, 1904, vol. 6,
p. 655.
Cockerill, Col. John A., _Current Literature_, June, 1896, vol.
19, p. 476.
Herzog, Wilhelm, _Die Nation_, January 6, 1906, vol. 23, p. 217.
_Literary World, The_, April 18, 1896, vol. 27, p. 116.
_Nation, The_, July 9, 1896, vol. 63, p. 35.
_Spectator, The_, May 23, 1896, vol. 76, p. 739.
Takayanagi, Tozo, _The Book Buyer_, May, 1896, vol. 13, p. 229.
No. 10.
1897. GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS, Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far
East. By Lafcadio Hearn. Lecturer on English Literature in the Imperial
University of Japan. (Publisher's Vignette.) Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin and Company. (The Riverside Press, Cambridge.)
12mo., pp. 296, blue cloth, gold lettering, gilt top.
Contents:--
I. A Living God (_Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1896)
II. Out of the Street (_Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1896)
III. Notes of a Trip to Kyoto (_Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1896)
IV. Dust (_Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1896)
V. About Faces in Japanese Art (Atlantic Monthly, August, 1896)
VI. Ningyo-no-Haka
VII. In Osaka
VIII. Buddhist Allusions in Japanese Folk-Song
IX. Nirvana
X. The Rebirth of Katsugoro
XI. Within the Circle
The Same. London: Constable and Company, 1897, 8vo.
New Edition. London: Gay and Bird's, 1902, Cr. 8vo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1903, 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Academy, The_, November 13, 1897, vol. 52, p. 395.
_Athenaeum, The_, November 13, 1897, p. 664.
Challaye, Felicien, _Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale_, 1903,
vol. 11, p. 338
_Critic, The_, April 9, 1898, vol. 29, p. 248.
_Independent, The_, November 24, 1898, vol. 50, p. 1508.
_Literary World, The_, November 13, 1897, vol. 28, p. 389.
_Nation, The_, February 3, 1898, vol. 66, p. 97.
_Outlook, The_, October 16, 1897, vol. 57, p. 435.
_Public Opinion_, November 25, 1897, vol. 23, p. 694.
_Spectator, The_, November 20, 1897, vol. 79, p. 736.
Wagner, John Harrison, _The Book Buyer_, June, 1898, vol. 16, p.
437.
No. 11.
1898. EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES. By Lafcadio Hearn. Lecturer on English
Literature in the Imperial University, Tokyo. Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, MDCCCXCIX.
16mo., 4 p. l., pp. 299, 4 full-page illustrations, 13 illustrations in
the text. Green cloth, decorated, gold lettering, gilt top.
(1) Dedication:--
To Dr. C. H. H. Hall, of Yokohama (late U. S. Navy) _In Constant
Friendship_
(2) (Prefatory Note)
All but one of the papers composing this volume appear for the first
time. The little essays, or rather fantasies, forming the second part of
the book, deal with experiences in two hemispheres; but their general
title should explain why they have been arranged independently of that
fact. To any really scientific imagination, the curious analogy existing
between certain teachings of evolutional psychology and certain
teachings of Eastern faith,--particularly the Buddhist doctrine that all
sense-life is Karma, and all substance only the phenomenal result of
acts and thoughts,--might have suggested something much more significant
than my cluster of "Retrospectives." These are offered merely as
intimations of a truth incomparably less difficult to recognize than to
define.
Tokyo, Japan, L. H. February 15, 1898.
(3) Contents:--
Exotics:
I. Fuji-no-Yama
II. Insect-Musicians
III. A Question in the Zen Texts
IV. The Literature of the Dead
V. Frogs VI. Of Moon-Desire
Retrospectives:
I. First Impressions
II. Beauty is Memory
III. Sadness in Beauty
IV. Parfum de Jeunesse
V. Azure Psychology (_Teikoku Bungaku_, Yokohama)
VI. A Serenade
VII. A Red Sunset
VIII. Frisson
IX. Vespertina Cognitio
X. The Eternal Haunter
(4) List of Illustrations.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1898, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1899, 8vo.
New Popular Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1904, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1905, 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
_Athenaeum, The_, January 6, 1900, p. 11.
Bentzon, Th., _Revue des Deux Mondes_, June 1, 1904, vol. 21,
p. 556.
_Dial, The_, July 16, 1899, vol. 27, p. 52.
_International Studio, The_, 1905, vol. 25, p. XL.
_Nation, The_, January 26, 1905, vol. 80, p. 68.
No. 12.
1899. IN GHOSTLY JAPAN. By Lafcadio Hearn. Lecturer on English
Literature in the Imperial University, Tokyo. Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, MDCCCXCIX.
16mo., 5 p. l., pp. 241, 4 full-page illustrations, 5 illustrations in
the text. Blue cloth, ornamented with white cherry-blossoms, gold
lettering, gilt top.
(1) Dedication:--
To
Mrs. Alice Von Behrens
_For Auld Lang Syne_
(2)
In Ghostly Japan
_Yoru bakari
Miru mono nari to
Omou-nayo!
Hiru sae yume
no Ukiyo nari-keri._
_Think not that dreams appear to the dreamer only at night: the
dream of this world of pain appears to us even by day_.
Japanese Poem.
(3) Contents:--
Fragment
Furisode
Incense
A Story of Divination
Silkworms
A Passional Karma
Footprints of the Buddha
Ululation
Bits of Poetry
Japanese Buddhist Proverbs
Suggestion
Ingwa-Banashi
Story of a Tengu
At Yaidzu
(4) List of Illustrations.
The Same. London: Sampson, Low and Company, 1899, 8vo.
New Popular Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1904, 16mo.
New Edition. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1905, Cr. 8vo.
Articles and Reviews:--
Inouye, Jukichi, _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1900, vol. 86,
pp. 399.
_International Studio, The_, 1905, vol. 25, p. XL.
_Nation, The_, January 26, 1905, vol. 80, p. 68.
No. 13.
1900. SHADOWINGS. By Lafcadio Hearn. Lecturer on English Literature in
the Imperial University, Tokyo, Japan. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1900.
12mo., pp. (IV) 268, cloth.
(I.) Dedication:--
To Paymaster Mitchell McDonald
U. S. Navy
My dear Mitchell,--
Herein I have made some attempt to satisfy your wish for "a few
more queer stories from the Japanese." Please accept the book as
another token of the writer's affection.