MARRIAGE
"'Marriage may be either a hindrance or help on the path,'
the old priest said, 'according to conditions. All depends
upon conditions. If the love of wife and child should cause a
man to become too much attached to the temporary advantages
of this unhappy world, then such love would be a hindrance.
But, on the contrary, if the love of wife and child should
enable a man to live more purely and more unselfishly than he
could do in a state of celibacy, then marriage would be a
very great help to him in the Perfect Way. Many are the
dangers of marriage for the wise; but for those of little
understanding, the dangers of celibacy are greater, and even
the illusion of passion may sometimes lead noble natures to
the higher knowledge.'"
Hearn's marriage, as his widow told us, took place early in the year of
1891, "23rd of Meiji." That on either side it was one of passionate
sentiment is doubtful. Marriages in Japan are generally arranged on the
most businesslike footing. By the young Japanese man, it is looked upon
as a natural duty that has duly to be performed for the perpetuation of
his family. Passion is reserved for unions unsanctioned by social
conventions.
Dominated as he was by the idea that his physical deficiencies rendered
a union with one of his own nationality out of the question, he yet knew
that at his time of life he had to enter into more permanent conditions
with the other sex than hitherto, or face a future devoid of settled
purpose or stability. His state of health also demanded domestic comfort
and feminine care. The only alternative that presented itself to a
celibate life was to choose a wife from amongst the people with whom his
lines were cast.
From the first moment of his arrival, Hearn had been carried away by
enthusiasm for the gentleness, the docility, of the women of Japan. He
compares them, much to their advantage, with their American sisters. "In
the eternal order of things, which is the highest being, the childish,
confiding, sweet Japanese girl, or the occidental Circe women of
artificial society, with their enormous power of evil and their limited
capacity for good?" In his first letter to Miss Bisland, he writes:
"This is a domesticated nature, which loves man and makes itself
beautiful for him in a quiet grey and blue way like the Japanese women."
It seems an unromantic statement to make with regard to an artist who
has written such exquisite passages on the sentiment that binds a man to
a woman, but Hearn, in spite of his intellectual idealism, had from
certain points of view a very material outlook. All considerations--even
those connected with the deepest emotions that stir the human
heart--were secondary to the necessities of his genius and artistic
life.
His intimacy with Althea Foley in Cincinnati was prompted and fostered
by gratitude for her care in preparing his meals, and nursing him when
ill, thus saving him from the catastrophe of relinquishing his position
on the staff of the _Enquirer_, which meant not only the loss of all
means of subsistence, but also the possibility of prosecuting the
ambition of his life--a literary career.
Now, at Matsue, after a touch of somewhat severe illness obliging him to
pass some weeks in bed, it became really a matter of life or death that
he should give up living from hand to mouth in country inns.
With the Japanese teacher of English at the Matsue College, an
accomplished English scholar, Hearn had formed a close intimacy from the
moment of his arrival, an intimacy, indeed, only broken by Nishida
Sentaro's death in 1898.
"His the kind eyes that saw so much for the stranger, his the kind lips
that gave him so much wise advice, helping him through the difficulties
that beset him, in consequence of his ignorance of the language." At the
beginning of his first term Hearn found the necessity of remembering or
pronouncing the names of the boys, even with the class-roll before him,
almost an insurmountable difficulty. Nishida helped him; gave him all
the necessary instructions about hours and text-books, placed his desk
close to his, the better to prompt him in school hours, and introduced
him to the directors and to the governor of the province. "Out of the
East," the volume written later at Kumamoto, was dedicated to Nishida
Sentaro, "In dear remembrance of Izumo days."
"Hearn's faith in this good friend was something wonderful," his wife
tells us. "When he heard of Nishida's illness, in 1897, he exclaimed: 'I
would not mind losing everything that belongs to me if I could make him
well.' He believed in him with such a faith only possible to a child."
Nishida Sentaro was also one of the ancient lineage and caste, and an
intimate friend of the Koizumi family.
Matsue had been at one time almost exclusively occupied by the Samurai
feudal lords. After throwing open her doors to the world, and admitting
western civilisation, Japan found herself obliged to accept, amongst
other democratic innovations, the sweeping away of the great feudal and
military past, reducing families of rank to obscurity and poverty.
Youths and maidens of illustrious extraction, who had only mastered the
"arts of courtesy" and the "arts of war," found themselves obliged to
adopt the humblest occupations to provide themselves and their families
with the means of livelihood. Daughters of men once looked upon as
aristocrats had to become indoor servants with people of a lower caste,
or to undertake the austere drudgery of the rice-fields or the
lotus-ponds. Their houses and lands were confiscated--their heirlooms,
costly robes, crested lacquer ware, passed at starvation prices to those
whom "misery makes rich." Amongst these aristocrats the Koizumis were
numbered. Nishida Sentaro, knowing their miserable circumstances, and
seeing how advisable it would be, if it were Hearn's intention to remain
in Japan, to have a settled home of his own, formed the idea of bringing
about a union between Setsu and the English teacher at the Matsue
College.
On his own initiative he undertook the task of approaching his foreign
friend. Finding him favourably inclined, he suggested the marriage as a
suitable one to Setsu's parents.
It is supposed that marriage in Japan must be solemnised by a priest,
but this is not so. A Japanese marriage is simply a legal pledge, and is
not invested with any of the solemnity and importance cast around it in
occidental society. A union between an Englishman and a Japanese woman
can be dissolved with the greatest facility; in fact, it is seldom
looked upon as an obligatory engagement. It is doubtful if Nishida, when
he undertook to act as intermediary, or _Nakodo_, as they call it in
Japan, looked upon the contract entered into by Lafcadio Hearn and Setsu
Koizumi as a permanent affair. Hearn from the first took it seriously,
but it was certainly not until after the birth of his first child that
the marriage was absolutely legalised according to English notions, and
then only by his nationalising himself a Japanese citizen.
One of Hearn's saving qualities was compassion for the weak and
suffering. The young girl's surroundings were calculated to inspire the
deepest pity in the hearts of those admitted--as he was--behind the
closely drawn veil of pride and reserve that the Samurai aristocrats
drew between their poverty and public observation.
What the Samurai maiden,--brought up in the seclusion of Matsue--may
have thought of the grey-haired, odd-looking little Irishman of
forty-four (a patriarchal age in Japan), who was offered to her as a
husband, we know not. She accepted her fate, Japanese fashion, and as
the years went by and she began to appreciate his gentlemanly breeding
and chivalry, inherited as was hers from generations of well-bred
ancestors, the fear and bewilderment with which he filled her during
these first years of marriage, changed to a profound and true affection,
indeed, to an almost reverential respect for the _Gakusha_ (learned
person) who kept the pot boiling so handsomely, and was run after by all
the American and English tourists at Tokyo.
So far as we can judge now, Setsu Koizumi can never have had any of the
exotic charm of the butterfly maidens of Kunisada, or the irresistible
fascination ascribed to her countrywomen by foreign male visitors to
Japan. The Izumo type is not a good-looking one,--the complexion darker
and less fresh than that of the Tokyo women--but comely, with the
comeliness of truth, common-sense and goodness she always must have
been.
Tender and true, as her _Yerbina_, or personal, name, "Setsu,"
signifies, she had learned in self-denial and poverty the virtues of
patience and self-restraint--a daughter of Japan--one of a type fast
becoming extinct--who deemed it a fault to allow her personal trials to
wound other hearts.
She may not have been obliged to submit to the trials of most Japanese
wives, the whims and tyranny, for instance, of her father- and
mother-in-law, or the drudgery to provide for, or wait upon a numerous
Japanese household; but from many indications we know that her life
sometimes was not by any means a bed of roses. Humorous, and at the same
time pathetic, are her reminiscences of these first days of marriage, as
related in later life.
"He was such an intense nature," she says, "and so completely absorbed
in his work of writing that it made him appear strange and even
outlandish in ordinary life. He even acknowledged himself that he must
look like a madman."
During the course of his life, when undergoing any severe mental or
physical strain, Hearn was subject to periods of hysterical trance,
during which he lost consciousness of surrounding objects. There is a
host of superstitions amongst the Japanese connected with trances or
fainting fits. Each human being is supposed to possess two souls. When a
person faints they believe that one soul is withdrawn from the body, and
goes on all sorts of unknown and mysterious errands, while the other
remains with the envelope to which it belongs; but when this takes place
a man goes mad; mad people are those who have lost one of their souls.
On first seeing her husband in this condition, the little woman was so
terrified that she hastened to Nishida Sentaro to seek advice. "He
always acted for us as middle-man in those Matsue days, and I confess I
was afraid my husband might have gone crazy. However, I found soon
afterwards that it was only the time of enthusiasm in thought and
writing; and I began to admire him more on that account."
The calm and material comforts of domestic life gave Hearn, for a time,
a more assured equilibrium, but these trances returned again with
considerable frequency in later days.
Amenomori, his secretary at Tokyo, tells a story of waking one night and
seeing a light in Hearn's study. He was afraid Hearn might be ill, and
cautiously opened the door and peeped in. There he saw the little
genius, absorbed in his work, standing at his high desk, his nose almost
touching the paper on which he wrote. Leaf after leaf was covered with
his small, delicate handwriting. After a while, Amenomori goes on, he
held up his head, "and what did I see? It was not the Hearn I was
familiar with; his face was mysteriously white; his eyes gleamed. He
appeared like one in touch with some unearthly presence."
Many other peculiarities and idiosyncrasies used to cause his wife much
perturbation of soul. "He had a rare sensibility of feeling,"[21] she
says, "also peculiar tastes." One of his peculiar tastes, apparently,
was his love of cemeteries. She could not find out what he found so
interesting in ancient epitaphs and verses. When at Kumamoto he told her
that he had "found a pleasant place." When he offered to take her there,
she found that it was through a dark path leading to a cemetery. He
said, "Stop and listen. Do you hear the voices of the frogs and the
Uguisu singing?" The poor little woman could only tremble at the dark
and the eerieness.
[21] It is well to remember that Mrs. Hearn cannot speak or write a word
of English; all her "Reminiscences" are transcribed for her by the
Japanese poet, Yone Noguchi.
She gives a funny picture of herself and Lafcadio, in a dry-goods store,
when clothes had to be bought "at the changing of the season," he
selecting some gaudy garment with a large design of sea-waves or
spider-nests, declaring the design was superb and the colour beautiful.
"I often suspected him," the simple woman adds, "of having an
unmistakable streak of passion for gay things--however, his quiet
conscience held him back from giving way to it."
His incurable dislike, too, to conform to any of the rules of
etiquette--looked upon as all-important in Japan, especially for people
in official positions--was a continued source of trouble to the little
woman. She could hardly, she says, induce him to wear his "polite
garments," which were _de rigueur_ at any official ceremony. On one
occasion, indeed, he refused to appear when the Emperor visited the
Tokyo College because he would not put on his frock coat and top hat.
The difficulty of language was at first insuperable. After a time they
instituted the "Hearn San Kotoba," or Hearnian language, as they called
it, but in these Matsue days an interpreter had to be employed. The
"race problem," however, was the real complication that beset these two.
That comradeship such as we comprehend it in England could exist between
two nationalities, so fundamentally different as Setsu Koizumi's and
Lafcadio Hearn's, is improbable if not impossible. "Even my own little
wife," Hearn writes years afterwards, "is somewhat mysterious still to
me, though always in a lovable way--of course a man and a woman know
each other's hearts; but outside of personal knowledge, there are race
tendencies difficult to understand."