KUMAMOTO
"Of course Urashima was bewildered by the gods. But who is
not bewildered by the gods? What is Life itself but a
bewilderment? And Urashima in his bewilderment doubted the
purpose of the gods, and opened the box. Then he died without
any trouble, and the people built a shrine to him as Urashima
Mio-jin....
"These are quite differently managed in the West. After
disobeying Western gods, we have still to remain alive and to
learn the height and the breadth and the depth of superlative
sorrow. We are not allowed to die quite comfortably just at
the best possible time: much less are we suffered to become
after death small gods in our own right. How can we pity the
folly of Urashima after he had lived so long alone with
visible gods?
"Perhaps the fact that we do may answer the riddle. This pity
must be self-pity; wherefore the legend may be the legend of a
myriad souls. The thought of it comes just at a particular
time of blue light and soft wind,--and always like an old
reproach. It has too intimate relation to a season and the
feeling of a season not to be also related to something real
in one's life, or in the lives of one's ancestors."
Only for a year did Hearn's sojourn in Fairyland last. The winter
following his arrival was a very severe one. The northern coast of Japan
lies open to the Arctic winds blowing over the snow-covered plains of
Siberia. Heavy falls of snow left drifts five feet high round the
_Yashiki_ on the hill. The large rooms, so delightful in the summer with
their verandah opening on the garden, were cold as "cattle barns" in
winter, with nothing but charcoal braziers to heat them. He dare not
face another such experience, and asked, if possible, to be transferred
to warmer quarters. Aided again by his friend, Professor Chamberlain,
the authorities at Tokyo were induced to give him the professorship of
English at the Imperial University at Kumamoto.
Kumamoto is situated in Kyushu, facing Formosa and the Chinese coast;
the climate, therefore, is much milder than that of Matsue. Here,
however, began Hearn's first disillusionment; like Urashima Taro, having
dwelt within the precincts of Fairyland he felt the shock of returning
to Earth again. The city struck him as being ugly and commonplace, a
half-Europeanised garrison town, resounding to the sounds of bugles and
the drilling of soldiers, instead of pilgrim songs and temple bells.
"But Lord! I must try to make money; for nothing is sure in Japan and I
am now so tied down to the country that I can't quit it, except for a
trip, whether the Government employs me or not."
He began to look back with regret to the days passed at Matsue. "You
must travel out of Izumo," he said, "after a long residence, and find
out how unutterably different it is from other places,--for instance,
this country ... the charming simplicity of the Izumo folk does not here
exist."
All his Izumo servants had accompanied him to his new quarters, and
apparently all his wife's family, for he mentions the fact that he has
nine lives dependent upon him: wife, wife's mother, wife's father,
wife's adopted mother, wife's father's father, then servants, and a
Buddhist student.
This wouldn't do in America, he says to Ellwood Hendrik, but it is
nothing in Japan. The moral burden, however, was heavy enough; he
indulged in the luxury of filial piety, and it was impossible to let a
little world grow up round him, to depend on him, and then break it all
up--the good and evil results of "filial piety" are only known to
orientals, and an oriental he had now become. His people felt like fish
out of water, everything surrounding them was so different from their
primitive home in Izumo. A goat in the next yard, "_mezurashii
kedamono_," filled his little wife with an amused wonder. Some geese and
a pig also filled her with surprise, such animals did not exist in the
highlands of Japan.
The Kumamoto Government College was one of the largest in Japan,--came
next, indeed, to the Imperial University in Tokyo in importance. It was
run on the most approved occidental lines. A few of the boys still
adhered to their Japanese dress, but most of them adopted the military
uniform now, as a rule, worn in Japanese colleges. There were three
classes, corresponding with three higher classes of the _Jinjo
Chugakko_--and two higher classes. He did not now teach on Saturdays.
There were no stoves--only _hibachi_. The library was small, and the
English books were not good. There was a building in which Jiu-jitsu was
taught; and separate buildings for sleeping, eating, and bathing. The
bath-room was a surprise. Thirty or forty students could bathe at the
same time; and four hundred could sit down to meals in the great
dining-hall. There was a separate building, also, for the teaching of
chemistry, natural history, etc.; and a small museum.
Hearn apparently foregathered with none of the masters of the college,
except the old teacher of Chinese. The others he simply saluted morning
and evening, and in the intervals between classes sat in a corner to
himself smoking his pipe.
"You talk of being without intellectual companionship!" he writes to
Hendrik. "OH YE EIGHT HUNDRED MYRIADS OF GODS! What would you do if you
were me? Lo! The illusion is gone! Japan in Kyushu is like
Europe--except I have no friend. The differences in ways of thinking,
and the difficulties of language, render it impossible for an _educated_
Japanese to find pleasure in the society of a European. My scholars in
this great Government school are not boys, but men. They speak to me
only in class. The teachers never speak to me at all. I go to the
college and return after class,--always alone, no mental company but
books. But at home everything is sweet."
In consequence of this isolation, or because of the softening influence
of matrimony, here at Kumamoto he seemed for the first time to awake to
the fact of having relations in that distant western land he had left so
many years before. "Our soul, or souls, ever wanders back to its own
kindred," he says to his sister.
His father, Charles Bush Hearn, had left three children by his second
wife (daughters), all born in India. Invalided home, Charles Hearn had
died, in the Red Sea, of Indian fever; the three orphan children and his
widow continued their journey to Ireland.
At their mother's death, which occurred a few years later, the girls
were placed under the guardianship of various members of the family; two
of them ultimately married; one of them a Mr. Brown, the other a Mr.
Buckley Atkinson. The unmarried one, Miss Lillah Hearn, went out to
Michigan in America, to stop with Lafcadio's brother, and her own
half-brother, Daniel James Hearn, or Jim, as he was usually called.
Public interest was gradually awakening with regard to Japanese affairs.
Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain's and Satow's books were looked upon as
standard works to refer to for information concerning the political and
social affairs of the extraordinary little people who were working their
way to the van in the Far East. But, above all, Lafcadio Hearn's
articles contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_, afterwards published
under the title of "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," had claimed public
attention.
Miss Lillah Hearn was the first member of the family to write to this
half-brother, who was becoming so famous, but received no answer. Then
Mrs. Brown, the other sister, approached him, silence greeted her
efforts as well. On hearing of his marriage to a Japanese lady, Mrs.
Atkinson, the youngest sister, wrote. Whether it was that she softened
the exile's heart in his expatriation by that sympathy and innate tact
which are two of her distinguished qualities, it is impossible to say,
but her letter was answered.
This strange relative of theirs who had gone to Japan, adopted Japanese
dress and habits, and married a Japanese lady, had become somewhat of a
legendary character to his quiet-going Irish kindred. The arrival of the
first letter, therefore, was looked upon as quite an event and was
passed from house to house, and hand to hand, becoming considerably
mutilated in its journeyings to and fro. The first page is entirely
gone, and the second page so erased and torn that it is only
decipherable here and there. We are enabled to put an approximate date
to it by his reference to Miss Bisland's marriage, of which he had heard
towards the end of his stay at Matsue.
"I have written other things, but am rather ashamed of them," he adds.
"So Miss Bisland has married and become Mrs. Wetmore. She is as rich at
least as she could wish to be, but I have not heard from her for more
than a year. I suppose friendship ends with marriage. If my sister was
not married, I think--I only think--I would feel more brotherly.
"Well, I will say _au revoir_. Many thanks for the letter you wrote me.
I would like Please give me you can. Don't
think busy to write--much I teach for a week--English and
Elementary Latin: the time I study and write for
pleasure, not for profit. There isn't much profit in literature unless,
as a novelist, one happens to please a popular taste,--which isn't good
taste. Some exceptions there are, like Rudyard Kipling; but your brother
has not his inborn genius for knowing, seizing and painting human
nature. Love to you and yours--from
"LAFCADIO HEARN.
"_Tetorihomnatu_ 34,
"_Kumamoto, Kyushu,
"Japan._"
Mrs. Atkinson replied immediately, thus beginning a series of delightful
letters, which alas! relate, so many of them, to intimate family affairs
that it is impossible to publish them in their original form.
"My sweet little sister," he wrote in answer, "your letter was more than
personally grateful: it had also an unexpected curious interest for me,
as a revelation of things I did not know. I don't know anything of my
relations--their names, places, occupations, or even number: therefore
your letter interested me in a peculiar way, apart from its amiable
charm. Before I talk any more, I thank you for the photographs. They
have made me prouder than I ought to be. I did not know that I had such
nice kindred and such a fairy niece. My wife stole your picture from me
almost as soon as I had received it, to caress it, and pray to Buddha
and all the ancient gods to love the original: she has framed it in a
funny little Japanese frame, and suspended it in that sacred part of the
house, called the Toko, a sort of alcove, in which only beautiful things
are displayed. Formerly the gods were placed there (many hundred years
ago); but now the gods have a separate shrine in the household, and the
Toko is only the second Holy place...."
[Illustration: Mrs. Atkinson (Hearn's Half-sister).]
The next letter is dated June 27th, '92, 25th year of Meiji.
"Dear sister, I love you a little bit more on hearing that you are
little. The smaller you are the more I will be fond of you. As for
marriage being a damper upon affection between kindred, it is true only
of Occidental marriages. The Japanese wife is only the shadow of her
husband, infinitely unselfish and naive in all things....
"If you want me to see you soon, you must pray to the Occidental gods to
make me suddenly rich. However, I doubt if they have half as much
influence as the gods of Japan,--who are helping me to make a bank
account as fast as honest work can produce such a result. I have no
babies; and don't expect to have, and may be able to cross the seas one
of these days to linger in your country a while. But really I don't
know. I drift with the current of events.
"As for my book on Japan,--my first book,--there is much to do yet,--it
ought to be out in the Fall. It will be called "Glimpses of Unfamiliar
Japan," and will treat of strange things.
"I would like to see you very much; for you are too tantalizing in your
letters, and tell me nothing about your inner self. I want to find out
what the angel shut up in your heart is like. No doubt very sweet, but I
would like to pull it out, and stroke its wings, and make it chipper a
little. As for the little ones, make them love me; for if they see me
without previous discipline, they will be afraid of my ugly face when I
come--I send you a photo of one-half of it, the other is not pleasant, I
assure you: like the moon, I show only one side of myself. In Spanish
countries they call me Leucadio--much easier for little folk to
pronounce. By the way, you never gave me your address,--sign of
impulsive haste, like my own.
"With best love,
"LAFCADIO HEARN."
Then in January, 1903, he writes again, "Your kind sweet letter reached
me at Christmas time, where there is no Christmas. Don't you know that
you are very happy to be able to live in England? I am afraid you do
not. Perhaps you could not know without having lived much elsewhere....
Your photo has come. The same eyes, the same chin, brow, nose: we are
strangely alike--excepting that you are very comely, and I very much the
reverse--partly by exaggeration of the traits which make your face
beautiful, and partly because I am disfigured by the loss of an
eye--punched out at school.... Won't you please give my kindest thanks
to your husband for the pains he has taken to please me! I hope to meet
him some day, and thank him in person, if I don't leave my bones in some
quaint and curious Buddhist cemetery out here...."
The wonderful series of letters to Professor Hall Chamberlain, recently
published by Miss Bisland, are also written from Kumamoto and Kobe, and
to a great extent run simultaneously with those to his sister. He had a
habit of repeating himself; the same expressions, the same quotations,
appear in both series, and sometimes are again repeated in his published
essays. When struck by an idea or incident, it seems as if he must
impart it as something noteworthy to every one with whom he was holding
communion. He gives, for instance, the same account to his sister of the
routine of his Japanese day as related to Professor Hall Chamberlain and
Ellwood Hendrik.
We can imagine his rigidly Protestant Irish relations amidst the
conventional surroundings of an Irish country house, following minutely
the services of the established church as preached to them by their
local clergyman, utterly bewildered in reading the description of the
outlandish cult to which he, their relation, subscribed in Japan. The
awakening to the rising of the sun with the clapping of hands of
servants in the garden, the prayers at the _Butsudan_, the putting out
the food for the dead, all the strange, quaint customs that mark the
passing of the day in the ancient Empire of Nippon. Not by thousands of
miles only was he separated from his occidental relations, but by
immemorial centuries of thought.
On May 21st, 1893, there is another letter to his sister, Mrs. Atkinson,
in which he first announces his expectation of becoming a father. It is
so characteristic of Lafcadio to take it for granted that the child
would be a boy, and already to make plans for his education abroad.
"_Tsuboi, Nichihorabata_ 35, _Kumamoto,
"Kyushu, Japan.
May_ 21_st_, '93.
"MY DEAR MINNIE:
"(I think 'sister' is too formal, I shall call you by your pet name
hereafter.) First let me thank you very, very much for the photographs.
I was extremely pleased with that of your husband;--and thought at once,
'Ah! the lucky girl!' For your husband, my dear Sis, is no ordinary man.
There are faces that seen for the first time leave an impression which
gives the whole of the man, _ineffaceably_. And they are rare. I think I
know your husband already, admire him and love him,--not simply for your
sake, but for his own. He [is] all man,--and strong,--a good oak for
your ivy. I don't mean physical strength, though he seems (from the
photograph) to have an uncommon amount of it, but strength of character.
You can feel pretty easy about the future of your little ones with such
a father. (Don't read all this to him, though,--or he will think I am
trying to flatter either him or you,--though, of course, you can tell
him something of the impression his photo gives me, in a milder form.)
And you don't know what the real impression is,--nor how it is enhanced
by the fact that I have been for three years isolated from all English
or European intercourse,--never see an English face, except that of some
travelling missionary, which is apt to be ignoble. The Oriental face is
somewhat inscrutable,--like the faces of the Buddhist gods. In youth it
has quite a queer charm,--the charm of mysterious placidity, of smiling
calm. (But among the modernised, college-bred Japanese this is lost.)
What one never--or hardly ever--sees among these Orientals is a face
showing strong character. The race is strangely impersonal. The women
are divinely sweet in temper; the men are mysteries, and not altogether
pleasant. I feel myself in exile; and your letters and photographs only
make me homesick for English life,--just one plunge into it again.
"--Will I ever see you? Really I don't know. Some day I should like to
visit England,--provided I could assure myself of sufficient literary
work there to justify a stay of at least half-a-year, and the expense of
the voyage. Eventually that might be possible. I would never go as a
mere guest--not even a sister's; but I should like to be able to chat
with the sister occasionally on leisure-evenings. I am quite a savage on
the subject of independence, let me tell you; and would accept no
kindnesses except those of your company at intervals. But all this is
not of to-day. I cannot take my wife to Europe, it would be impossible
to accustom her to Western life,--indeed it would be cruel even to try.
But I may have to educate my child abroad,--which would be an
all-powerful reason for the voyage. However, I would prefer an Italian,
French, or Spanish school-life to an English one.
"--Oh yes, about the book--'Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan' is now in
press. It will appear in two volumes, without illustrations. The
publishers are Houghton, Mifflin & Co., of Boston,--the best in America.
Whether you like the book or no, I can't tell. I have an idea you do not
care much about literary matters;--that you are too much wife and mother
for that;--that your romances and poetry are in your own home. And such
romance and poetry is the best of all. However, if you take some
interest in trying to look at ME between the lines, you may have
patience to read the work. Don't try to read it, if you don't like.
"--But here is something you might do for me, as I am not asking for
certain friendly offices. When the book is criticised, you might kindly
send me a few of the best reviews. Miss Bisland, while in London, wrote
me the reviews of some of my other books had been very kindly; but she
never dreamed of supplementing this pleasant information by cutting out
a few specimens for me.--By the way, she has married well, you
know,--has become awfully rich and fashionable, and would not even
condescend to look at me if she passed me in Broadway--I _suppose_. But
she well deserved her good fortune; for she was certainly one of the
most gifted girls I ever knew, and has succeeded in everything--against
immense obstacles--with no help except that of her own will and genius.
"--And now I must give you a lecture. I don't want more than one
sister,--haven't room in my heart for more. All appear to be as charming
as they are sweet looking. I am interested to hear how they succeed,
etc., etc. But don't ask me to write to everybody, and don't show
everybody my letters. I can't diffuse myself very far. You said you
would be 'my favourite.' A nice way you go about it! Suppose I tell you
that I am a very jealous, nasty brother; and that if I can't have one
sister by herself I don't want any sister at all! Would that be very,
very naughty? But it is true. And now you can be shocked just as much as
you please.
"--Yes, I have lost an eye, and look horrible. The operation in Dublin
did not cause the disfigurement, but a blow, or rather the indirect
results of a blow, received from a play-fellow.
"--You ask me if I should like a photograph of father. I certainly
should, if you can procure me one without trouble. I hope--much more
than to see England,--to visit India, and try to find some tradition of
him. I did not know positively, until last year, that father had been in
the West Indies. When I went there, I had the queerest, ghostliest
sensation of having seen it all before. I think I should experience even
stranger sensations in India! The climate would be agreeable for me.
Remember, I passed fourteen years of my life south of winter. The first
snow I saw from 1876 to 1890 was on my way through Canada to Japan.
Indeed, if ever I become quite independent, I want to return to the
tropics.
"Enough to tire your eyes,--isn't it?--for this time.
"Ever affectionately,
"LAFCADIO HEARN.
"In the names of the eight hundred myriads of Gods,--do give me your
address. The only way I have been able to write you is by finding the
word _Portadown_ in _Whittaker's Almanac_. You are a careless, naughty
'Sis.'
"I enclose my name and address in Japanese.
"YAKUMO KOIZUMI,
"_Tsuboi,
"Nichihorabata 35,
"Kumamoto, Kyushu_."
All the women are making funny little Japanese baby-clothes, and all the
Buddhist Divinities, who watch over little children, are being prayed
to.... "Letters of congratulation," he said, "were coming from all
directions, for the expectation of a child is always a subject of great
gladness in Japan.... Behind all this there is a universe of new
sensations, revelations of things in Buddhist faith which are very
beautiful and touching. About the world an atmosphere of delicious,
sacred naivete,--difficult to describe because resembling nothing in the
Western world...."
Hearn's account of his home before the birth of his son throws most
interesting lights on Japanese methods of thought and daily life. He
refers to the pretty custom of a woman borrowing a baby when she is
about to become a mother. It is thought an honour to lend it. And it is
extraordinarily petted in its new home. The one his wife borrowed was
only six months old, but expressed in a supreme degree all the Japanese
virtues; docile to the degree of going to sleep when bidden, and of
laughing when it awakened. The eerie wisdom of its face seemed to
suggest a memory of all its former lives. The incident he relates also
of a little Samurai boy whom he and his wife had adopted is interesting
as showing the Spartan discipline exercised over Japanese children from
earliest youth, enabling them in later life to display that iron
self-control that has astonished the world; interesting, also, as
showing how nothing escaped Hearn's quick observation and assiduous
intellect. Hearn, at first, wanted to fondle the child, and make much of
him, but he soon found that it was not in accordance with custom. He
therefore ceased to take notice of him; and left him under the control
of the women of the house. Their treatment of him Hearn thought
peculiar; the little fellow was never praised and rarely scolded. One
day he let a little cup fall and broke it. No notice was taken of the
accident for fear of giving him pain. Suddenly, though the face remained
quite smilingly placid as usual, he could not control his tears. As soon
as they saw him cry, everybody laughed and said kind things to him, till
he began to laugh, too. But what followed was more surprising.
Apparently he had been distantly treated. One day he did not return from
school until three hours after the usual time; suddenly the women began
to cry--they were, indeed, more deeply affected than their treatment of
the boy would have justified. The servants ran hither and thither in
their anxiety to find him. It turned out that he had only been taken to
a teacher's house for something relating to school matters. As soon as
his voice was heard at the door, every one was quiet, cold, and
distantly polite again.
On September 17th he writes again to his sister, thanking her for a copy
she had sent him of the _Saturday Review_. "You could send me nothing
more pleasing, or more useful in a literary way. It is all the more
welcome as I am really living in a hideous isolation, far away from
books, and book-shops, and Europeans. When I can get--which I hope is
the next year--into a more pleasant locality, I shall try to pick out
some pretty Oriental tales to send to the little ones." He was not able,
he goes on, to go far from Kumamoto, not liking to leave his little wife
too long alone; so his vacation was rather monotonous. He travelled only
as far as Nagasaki. It was quaint and pretty, but hotter than any West
Indian port in the hot season. He was economising, he said, and had
saved nearly three thousand five hundred dollars. Once he had provided
for his wife, he hoped to be able to make a few long voyages to places
east of Japan. "You are much to be envied," he goes on to his sister,
"for your chances of travel. What a pity you are not able to devote
yourself to writing and painting in a place like Algiers--full of
romance and picturesqueness. If you go there, don't fail to see the old
Arab part of the city--the Kasbah, I think they call it. How about the
Continent? Have you tried Southern Italy? And don't you think that one
gets all the benefit of travel only by keeping away from fashion-resorts
and places consecrated by conventionalism? Nothing to me is more
frightful than a fashionable seaside resort--such as those of the
Atlantic Coast. My happiest sojourns of this sort have been in little
fishing villages, and little queer old unknown towns, where there are no
big vulgar hotels, and where one can dress and do exactly as one
pleases.
"What will you do with your little man when he grows up? Army, or Civil
Service? Whatever you do, never let him go to America, and lose all his
traditions. Australia would be far better. I expect he will be
gloriously well able to take care of himself anywhere,--judging by his
father, but I have come to the belief that one cannot too soon begin the
cultivation of a single aim and single talent in life. This is the age
of specialism. No man can any longer be successful in many things. Even
the 'general practitioner' in medicine has almost become obsolete.
"Nothing seems to me more important now for a little boy than the
training of his linguistic faculties,--giving him every encouragement in
learning languages by ear--(the only natural way); and your travelling
sometimes with him will help you to notice how his faculties are in that
direction. But perhaps it will be possible for him to pass all his life
in England. (For me, England, Ireland and Scotland mean the same thing.)
That would be pleasant indeed.... When I think of your little man with
the black eyes, I hope that his life will always be in the circle of
English traditions, wherever the English Flag flies, there remain.
"I suppose you know that in this Orient the construction of the family
is totally different to what it is in Europe.... We are too conceitedly
apt to think that what is good for Englishmen is good for all
nations,--our ethics, our religion, our costumes, etc. The plain facts
of the case are that all Eastern races lose, instead of gaining, by
contact with us. They imitate our vices instead of our virtues, and
learn all our weaknesses without getting any of our strength. Already
statistics show an enormous increase of crime in Japan as the result of
'Christian civilisation'; and the open ports show a demoralisation
utterly unknown in the interior of the country, and unimaginable in the
old feudal days before 1840 or 1850...."
In the next letter he gives his sister a minute account of his Japanese
manner of life on the floor without chairs or tables. It has been
described so often by visitors to Japan, and by Hearn himself, that it
is unnecessary to repeat it here. He ends his letter:--
"I am now so used to the Japanese way of living, that when I have to
remain all day in Western clothes, I feel very unhappy; and I think I
should not find European life pleasant in summer time. Some day, I will
send you a photograph of my house.
"I wish you much happiness and good health and pleasant days of travel,
and thank you much for the paper.
"This letter is rather rambling, but perhaps you will find something
interesting in it.
"Ever affectionately,
"LAFCADIO."
In September comes another letter to Mrs. Atkinson:
"You actually talk about writing too often,--which is strange! There is
only this difficulty about writing,--that we both know so little of each
other that topics interesting to both can be only guessed at. That
should be only a temporary drawback.
"The more I see your face in photos, the more I feel drawn toward you.
Lillah and the other sister represent different moods and tenses
pictorially. You seem most near to me,--as I felt on first reading your
letter. You have strength, too, where I have not. You are certainly very
sensitive, but also self-repressed. I think you are not inclined to make
mistakes. I think you can be quickly offended, and quick to forgive--if
you understand the offence to be only a mistake. You would not forgive
at all should you discern behind the fault a something much worse than
mistake,--and in this you would be right. You are inclined to reserve,
and not to bursts of joy;--you have escaped my extremes of depression
and extremes of exultation. You see very quickly beyond the present
relations of a fact--I think all this. But of course you have been
shaped in certain things by social influences I have never had,--so that
you must have perfect poise where I would flounder and stumble.
"But imagining won't do always. I should like to know more of you than a
photograph or a rare letter can tell. I don't know, remember, anything
_at all_ about you. I do not know where you were born, where you were
educated,--anything of your life; or what is much more, infinitely more
important, I don't know your emotions and thoughts and feelings and
experiences in the past. What you are now, I can guess. But what _were_
you,--long ago? What memories most haunt you of places and people you
liked? If you could tell me some of these, how pleasantly we might
compare notes. Mere facts tell little: the interest of personality lies
most in the infinitely special way that facts affect the person. I am
very curious about you,--but, don't take this too seriously; because
though my wishes are strong, my disinclination to cause you pain is
stronger; and you have told me that writing is sometimes fatiguing to
you. It were so much better could we pass a day or two together.
"You must not underrate yourself as you did in your last. Your few lines
about the scenery,--short as they were,--convinced me that you could do
something literary of a very nice sort had you the time and chance to
give yourself to any such work. But I do not wish that you would--except
to read the result; for literary labour is extremely severe work, even
after the secret of method is reached. I am only beginning to learn; and
to produce five pages means to write at least twenty-five. Enthusiasms
and inspirations have least to do with the matter. The real work is
condensing, compressing, choosing, changing, shifting words and
phrases,--studying values of colour and sound and form in words; and
when all is done, the result satisfies only for a time. What I wrote six
years ago, I cannot bear the sight of to-day. If I had been a genius, I
wonder whether I would feel the same.
"Romances are not in novels, but in lives. Can you not tell me some of
yours when you are feeling very, very well, and don't know what to do?
What surprised me was your observation about 'sentimental' in your last
letter,--and that upon such a worthy topic! What can you think of me?
And here in this Orient, where the spirit of more ancient faiths enters
into one's blood with the sense of the doctrine of filial piety, and the
meaning of ancestor worship,--how very, very strange and cruel it seems
to me that my little sister should be afraid of being thought
_sentimental_ about the photograph of her father! What self-repression
does all this mean, and what iron influences in Western life--English
life that I have almost forgotten! However, character loses nothing:
under the exterior ice, the Western could only gain warmth and depth if
it be of the right sort. I hope, nevertheless, my little sister will be
just as 'sentimental' as she possibly can when she writes to Japan,--and
feel sure of more than sympathy and gratitude. Unless she means by
'sentimental' only something in regard to style of writing--in which
case I assure her that she cannot err. If she is afraid of being thought
really sentimental, I should be much more afraid of meeting her,--for I
should wish to say sweet things and to hear them, too, should I deserve.
"At all events remember that you have given me something very
precious,--not only in itself,--but precious because precious to you.
And it shall never be lost,--in spite of earthquakes and possible
fires."
(The something he alludes to as "very precious" was a photograph of
their father, Charles Hearn, that Mrs. Atkinson had sent him.)
"--I wish I could talk to you more about Father and India. I wish to ask
a hundred thousand questions. But on paper it is difficult to express
all one wishes to say. And letters of mere questions carry no joy with
them, and no sympathy. So I shall not ask _now_ any more. And you must
not tire your dear little aching head to write when you do not feel
well. I shall write again soon. For a little while good-bye, with love
and all sweet hope to you ever,
"LAFCADIO HEARN.
"_Kumamoto,
"Kyushu, Japan.
"Jan_. 30, '94."
On November 17th, 1893, at one o'clock in the morning, Hearn's eldest
son, Leopold Kazuo Koizumi, was born.
He declared that the strangest and strongest sensation of his life was
hearing for the first time the cry of his own child. There was a strange
feeling of being double; something more, also, impossible to
analyse--the echo in a man's heart of all the sensations felt by all the
fathers and mothers of his race at a similar instant in the past.
A few weeks later he writes to his sister, giving her news about his
son. "The physician says that from the character of his bones he ought
to become very tall. He is very dark. He has my nose and promises to
have the Hearn eyebrows; but he has the Oriental eye. Whether he will be
handsome or ugly, I can't tell: his little face changes every day;--he
has already looked like five different people. When first born, I
thought him the prettiest creature I ever saw. But that did not last. I
am so inexperienced in the matter of children that I cannot trust myself
to make any predictions. Of course I find the whole world changed about
me....
"My wife," he goes on, "is quite well. Happily the old military caste to
which she belongs is a strong one, but how sacred and terrible a thing
is maternity. When it was all over I felt very humble and grateful to
the Unknowable Power which had treated us so kindly. The possibility of
men being cruel to the women who bear their children seemed at the
moment to darken existence.
"I have received your last beautiful photograph--or I should say
two:--the vignette is, of course, the most lovable, but both are very,
very nice. I gave the full-figure one to Setsu. She would like to have
her boy grow up looking either like you or like Posey--but most like
you. (Thanks also for the pretty photo of yourself and Posey: Posey is
decidedly handsome.) But I fear my son can never be like either of you.
He is altogether Oriental so far,--looks at me with the still calm
Buddhist eyes of the Far East, and the soul of another race. Even his
nose will never declare his Western blood; for the finest class of the
Japanese offer many strongly aquiline faces. Setsu is a Samurai, and
though her own features are the reverse of aquiline, there are aquiline
faces among the kindred.
"I am awfully anxious that the boy should get to be like you. I have had
your most beautiful photograph copied by a clever photographer here and
have sent the copies to friends, saying, 'this is my sister; and this is
the boy. I want him to look like her.' You see I am proud of you,--not
only as to the ghostly, but also as to the material part of you.
Physiologically I am all Latin and Pagan,--even though my little boy's
eyes are bright blue.
"... It is really nonsense, sending such a thing as his photo at
fifty-five days old, because the child changes so much every week. But
you are my little sister. I have called him Leopold Kazuo Hearn--for
European use and custom. Kazuo, in Japanese, signifies 'First of the
Excellent.' I have not registered him under that name, however; because
by the law, if I registered my wife or son in the Consulate, both become
English citizens, and lose the right to hold any property, or do any
business in Japan, or even to live in the interior without a passport. I
have, therefore, stopped at the Japanese marriage ceremony, and a
publication of the fact abroad. In the present order I dare not deprive
my folks of their nationality."
Then some time later he writes:--
"You ask for all kinds of news about Kajiwo. Well, he is now able to
stand well, and is tremendously strong to all appearance. He tries to
speak. 'Aba' is the first _word_ spoken by Japanese babes: it means
'good-bye.' Here is a curious example of the contrast between West and
East,--the child comes into the world saying farewell. But this would be
in accordance with Buddhist philosophy,--saying farewell to the previous
life.
"You are right about supposing that the birth of a son in Japan is an
occasion of special rejoicing. All the baby clothes are ready long
before birth--(except the ornamental ones)--as the _Kimono_ or little
robe is the same shape for either sex (_of children_). But, when the
child is born, if it be a girl, very beautiful clothes of bright
colours, covered with wonderful pictures, are made for it. If it be a
boy the colours are darker, and the designs different. My little
fellow's silken Kimono is covered with pictures of tortoises, storks,
pine, and other objects typical of long life, prosperity, steadfastness,
etc. This subject is enormously elaborate and complicated,--so that I
cannot tell you all about it in a letter.
"After the child is born, all friends and relatives bring presents,--and
everybody comes to see and congratulate the mother. You would think this
were a trial. I was afraid it would tire Setsu. But she was walking
about again on the seventh day after birth. The strength of the boy is
hers,--not mine.
"I was also worried about the physician. I wanted the chief surgeon of
the garrison,--because I was afraid. He was a friend, and laughed at me.
He said: 'If anything terrible should happen, call me, but otherwise
don't worry about a doctor. The Japanese have managed these things in
their own way for thousands of years without doctors: a woman or two
will do.' So two women came, and all was well. I hated the old women
first, but after their success, I became very fond of them, and hugged
them in English style, which they could not understand."
The kind dull veil that nature keeps stretched between mankind and the
Unknown was drawn again. The world became to Hearn nearly the same as it
had been before the birth of his child, and he could plan, he said, for
the boy's future. He was afraid he might be near-sighted, and wondered
if he would be intellectual. "He was so proud of him," his wife says,
"that whenever a guest, a student, or a fellow-professor called, he
would begin talking about him and his perfections without allowing his
friend to get a word in. He perfectly frightened me with a hundred toys
he brought home when he returned."
After his son's birth, Hearn naturally became still more anxious to have
Setsu registered legally as his wife, but he was always met by official
excuses and delays. He was told that if he wished the boy to remain a
Japanese citizen he must register him in the mother's name only. If he
registered him in his own name his son became a foreigner. On the other
hand, Hearn knew that if he nationalised himself his salary would be
reduced to a Japanese level.
[Illustration: Kazuo (Hearn's Son) and his Nurse.]
"I don't quite see the morality of the reduction," he says, "for
services should be paid according to the market value at least;--but
there is no doubt it would be made. As for America, and my relatives in
England, I am married: that has been duly announced. Perhaps I had
better wait a few years and then become a citizen. Being a Japanese
citizen would, of course, make no difference whatever as to my relations
in any civilised countries abroad. It would only make some difference in
an uncivilised country,--such as revolutionary South America, where
English or French, or American protection is a good thing to have. But
the long and the short of the matter is that I am anxious about Setsu's
and the boy's interests: my own being concerned only at that point where
their injury would be Setsu's injury."
The only way out of the difficulty, he concluded, was to abandon his
English nationality and adopt his wife's family name, Koizumi. As a
prefix for his own personal use he selected the appellation of the
Province of Izumo "Yakumo" ("Eight clouds," or the "Place of the Issuing
of Clouds," the first word of the ancient, Japanese song "Ya-he-gaki").
On one of his letters he shows his sister how his name is written in
Japanese.
Mrs. Atkinson's youngest child, Dorothy, was born in March, 1894. There
is an interval of exactly four months between her and her cousin Kazuo.
It is in reference to this event that the following letter was
written:--
"How sweet of you to get Mrs. or Miss Weatherall to write me the dear
news! You will be well by the time this reaches you, so that I may
venture to write more than congratulations.
"I was quite anxious about you,--feeling as if you were the only real
_fellow-soul_ in my world but one:--and birth is a thing so much more
terrible than all else in the universe--more so than death itself--that
the black border round the envelope made my heart cold for a moment. I
had forgotten the why. Now I hope you will not have any more sons or
daughters; you have three,--and I trust you will have no more pain or
trouble. As for me, I am very resolved not to become a father again.
"You will laugh at me, and perhaps think it very strange that when only
thirty-five I began to feel a kind of envy of friends with children. I
knew their troubles, anxieties, struggles; but I saw their sons grow up,
beautiful and gifted men, and I used to whisper to myself,--'But I never
shall have a child.' Then it used to seem to me that no man died so
utterly as the man without children: for him I fancied (like some folk
still really think in other lands) that death would be utter eternal
blackness. When I did, however, hear the first cry of my boy--_my_ boy,
dreamed about in forgotten years--I had for that instant the ghostly
sensation of being _double_. Just then, and only then, I did not
think,--but _felt_, 'I am TWO.' It was weird but gave me thoughts that
changed all pre-existing thoughts. My boy's gaze still seems to me a
queerly beautiful thing: I still feel I am looking at myself when he
looks at me. Only the thought has become infinitely more complicated.
For I think about all the dead who live in the little heart of
him--races and memories diverse as East and West. But who made his eyes
blue and his hair brown? And will he be like you? And will he ever see
the little cousin who has just entered the world? The other day, for one
moment, he looked just like your boy in the picture."
Mrs. Atkinson about this time went through private trials upon which it
is unnecessary to touch here. The following letter of consolation and
encouragement was written to her by her half-brother:--
"Well, you too have had your revelations,--which means deep pains. One
must pay a terrible price to see and to know. Still, the purchase is
worth making. You know the Emerson lines:--
"Though thou love her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay;
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know
When half-Gods go,
The Gods arrive!...
"Reverse the condition: the moral is the same,--and it is eternal. By
light alone one cannot see; there must be shadows in multitude to help.
What we love is good, and exists, but often exists only in _us_,--then
we become angry at others, not knowing the illusion was the work of the
Gods. The Gods are always right. They make us sometimes imagine that
something we love ever so much is in others, while it is only in our own
hearts. The reason they do this to some, like you and me, is to teach us
what terrible long, long mistakes we might have made without their help.
Sometimes they really cause a great deal of more serious trouble, and we
can't tell why. We must wait and believe and be quite sure the Gods are
good.
"What is not always good is the tender teaching we get at home. We are
told of things so beautiful that we believe everybody must believe
them,--truth, and love, and duty, and honour of soul, etc. We are even
taught the enormous lie that the world is entirely regulated by these
beliefs. I wonder if it would not be much better to teach children the
adult truth:--'The world is thus and so:--those beliefs are ideal only
which do not influence the intellectual life, nor the industrial life,
nor the social life. The world is a carnival-ball; and you must wear a
mask thereat,--and never, _never_ doff it;--except to the woman or the
man you must love always. Learn to wear your mask with grace--only keep
your heart fresh in spite of all bitter knowledge.' Wouldn't this be the
best advice? As a mere commonplace fact,--the whole battle of life is
fought in disguise by those who win. No man knows the heart of another
man. No woman knows the heart of another woman. Only the woman can learn
the man, and the man the woman;--and this only after years! What a great
problem it is; and how utterly it is neglected in teaching the little
human flowers that we set out in the world's cold without a thought!
"You are more and more like me in every letter; but you are better far.
I have not learned reserve with friends yet: I supply the lack by a
retreating disposition,--a disinclination to make acquaintances. I love
very quickly and strongly; but just as quickly dislike what I loved--if
deceived, and the dislike does not die. My general experience has been
that the loveable souls are but rarely lodged in the forms which most
attract us: there _are_ such exceptions on the woman's side as my dear
little Sis,--and there are exceptions on the male side of a particular
order, and rare. But the rule remains. I wonder if all these jokes are
not played on us by the Gods, who think,--'No!--you want the infinite!
That can be reached later only,--after innumerable births. First learn,
for a million years or so, just to love only _souls_. You _must_! for
you will be punished if you try to obtain all perfections in one.' I
think the Gods talk to us about that way; and when we leave the Spring
season of life behind, we find the Gods were right after all.
"--Still, the great puzzle is in all these things there are no general
rules solid enough to trust in. I fancy the best teaching for a heart
would be,--'Always caution,--but--believe the tendency of the world is
to good.' And _largeness_ seems to be necessary,--never to suffer
oneself to see only one charm; but to train oneself to study
combinations and understand them. Any modern human nature is too complex
to be otherwise judged.
"Music,--yes! If I were near you I would be always teasing you to
play:--and would bring you all kinds of queer exotic melodies to make
variations on: strange melodies from Spanish America and the Creole
Islands, and Japan, and China, and all sorts of strange places. We
should try to do very curious things in the way of ballads and songs,
and you would teach me all sorts of musical things I don't know. By the
way, you will be shocked to learn, perhaps, that I have never been able
to appreciate the superiority of the new German music: The Italian still
seems to me the divine: but that may be because I have never had time to
train myself to appreciate.
"--You do not know how much I sympathise with all your anxieties and
troubles, and how much I wish for your strength and happiness. Would I
not like to be travelling with you to countries where you would find all
the rest and light and warmth you could enjoy! Perhaps, some day that
may be. Pray to the Gods for my good fortune; and we shall share the
pleasure together if They listen. If They do not, we must wait as the
Buddhists say until the future birth. Then I want to be a very rich man,
or woman, and you a very dear little sister or brother;--and I want to
have a steam yacht of 30,000 horse-power.
"--Your sweetest little daughter, may you live to see her happiness in
all things! I am glad I have no daughter. A boy can fight--must fight
his way; but a daughter is the luxury of a rich man. Had I a daughter,
she would be too dear; and I should feel inclined to say if dying:--'My
child, I am unable to guard you longer, and the world is difficult: you
would do better to come to Shadowland with me.' But your Marjory will be
well guarded and petted, and have the world made sweet for her; and you
will have no more grief. You have had all your disappointments and
troubles in girlhood--childhood;--the future must be kind to you. As for
me, I really think the Gods owe me some favours; they have ignored me so
long that I am now all expectation."
Then again:--
"MY VERY SWEET LITTLE SISTER,
"Your dear letter came yesterday, and filled us all with gladness. You
see I say US;--for my folks prayed very hard for you to the ancient Gods
and to the Buddhas,--that I might not lose that little sister of
mine.--And now to answer questions.
"Indeed, Setsu got the photos, and wondered at them, for she had never
seen a carriage before of that kind, or a room like your room; and very
childishly asked me to make her a room like yours. To which I
said:--'The cost of such a room would buy for you a whole street in your
native city of Matsue; and besides, you would be very unhappy and
uncomfortable in such a room.' And when I explained, she wondered still
more. (A very large Japanese house could be bought with the grounds for
about L30--I mean a big, big merchant's house--in Izumo.) Another wonder
was the donkey in the other photo, for none had ever seen such an
animal.
"--As for your ever coming to Japan, my dear, if you do, you shall have
a chair. But I fear--indeed I am almost certain--that the day is not
very far away when I must leave Setsu and Kajiwo to the care of the
ancient Gods, and go away and work bravely for them elsewhere, till
Kajiwo is old enough to go abroad. The days of foreign influence and of
foreign teaching in Japan are rapidly drawing to a close. Japan is
learning to do well without us; and we have not been kind enough to her
to win her love. We have persecuted her with hordes of fanatical
missionaries, robbed her by unjust treaties, forced her to pay monstrous
indemnities for trifling wrongs;--we have forced her to become strong,
and she is going to do without us presently, the future is dark. Happily
my folks will be provided for; and I expect to be able, if I must go, to
return in a few years. It is barely possible that I might get into
journalism in Japan,--but not at all sure. I suppose you know that is my
living profession: I understand all kinds of newspaper work. But as I am
no believer in conventions, I am not likely to get any of the big
sinecures. To do that one must be a ladies' man, a member of some
church, a social figure. I am no ladies' man: I am known to the world as
an 'infidel,' and I hate society unutterably. Were I rich enough to live
where I please, I should certainly (if unable to live in Japan) return
to the tropics. Indeed, I have a faint hope of passing at least the
winters of my old age near the Equator. Where the means are to come from
I don't know; but I have a kind of faith in Goethe's saying, that
whatever a man most desires in youth, he will have an excess of in his
old age. Leisure to write books in a warm climate is all I ask. Pray to
the Gods, if you believe in any Gods, to help the dream to be realised.
"Kajiwo is my nightmare. I am tortured all day and all night by the
problem of how to set him going in life before I become dust. Sometimes
I think how bad it was of me to have had a child at all. Yet before
that, I did not really know what life was; and I would not lose the
knowledge for any terms of gifts of years. Besides, I am beginning to
think I am really a tolerably good sort of fellow,--for if I had been
really such a monster of depravity as the religious fanatics declared,
how could I have got such a fine boy. There must be some good in me
anyhow. Nobody shall make a 'Christian' of Kajiwo if I can help it--by
'Christian' I mean a believer in absurd and cruel dogmas. The world
talks much about Christianity, but no one teaches it.
"--So glad to hear you are able to go out a little again. Perhaps a long
period of strong solid calm health is preparing for you. After the
trials and worries of maternity such happy conditions often come as a
reward. I hope to chat with you by a fire when we are both old, and Kaji
has shot up into a man,--looking like his aunt a little--with a delicate
aquiline face. But only the Eternities know what his face will be like.
It is changeable as water now. I won't send another photo of him till he
looks pretty again.
"With best love,
"LAFCADIO HEARN.
"_June_ 24, '94.
"I must go off travelling in a couple of weeks. Perhaps there will be a
little delay before my next letter reaches you."
[Illustration: KAZUO (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVEN).]
In the next letter he touches upon these travels undertaken with his
wife, mother-in-law, and Kaji (an abbreviation of Kazuo, or Kajiwo, as
Hearn was in the habit of calling him at first).
"How sweet of you," he says, "to send that charming photo of the
children. It delighted us all. Setsu never saw a donkey--there are none
in Japan; and all wondered at the strange animal. What I wondered at was
to see what a perfect pretty little woman the charming Marjory is. As
for the boy, he is certainly what every parent wants a boy to be as to
good looks; but I also think he must have a very sweet temper. I trust
that you won't allow the world to spoil it for him. They do spoil
tempers at some of the great public schools. I cannot believe it is
necessary to let young lads be subjected to the brutality of places like
Eton and Harrow. It hardens them too much. The answer is that the great
school turns out the conquerors of the world,--the subalterns of
Kipling,--the Clives,--the daring admirals and great captains, etc.
Perhaps in this militant age it is necessary. But I notice the great
thinkers generally come from other places. However, this is the
_practical_ age,--there is nothing for philosophers, poets, or painters
to succeed in, unless they are independently situated. I shall try to
make a good doctor out of Kaji, if I can. I could never afford to do
more for him. And if possible I shall take him to Europe, and stay there
with him for a couple of years. But that is a far-away matter."
Characteristically with that apprehensive mind of his, his son's future,
as Hearn himself confesses, became a perfect nightmare.
"I must make an Englishman of him, I fear. His hair has turned bright
brown. He is so strong that I expect him to become a very powerful man:
he is very deep-chested and thick-built and so heavy now, that people
think I am not telling the truth about his age.
"Kajiwo's soul seems to be so English that I fancy his memory of former
births would scarcely refer much to Japan. How about the real compound
race-soul, though? One would have to recollect having been two at the
same time. This seems to me a defect in the popular theory--still the
Japanese hold, or used to hold, that the soul is itself a multiple--that
each person has a _number of souls_. That would give an explanation.
Scientifically it is true. We are all compounds of innumerable
lives--each a sum in an infinite addition--the dead are not dead--they
live in all of us and move us,--and stir faintly in every heart-beat.
And there are ghostly interlinkings. Something of _you_ must be in _me_,
and of both of us in Kajiwo.
"--I wonder if this also be true of little Dorothy. It is a curious
thing that you tell me about the change in colour of the eyes. I only
saw that happen in hot climates. Creole children are not uncommonly born
with gold hair and bright blue eyes. A few years later the skin, eyes,
hair seem to have entirely changed,--the first to brown, the two last to
coal-black.
"--I am writing all this dreamy stuff just to amuse my sweet little
sister,--because I can't be near to pet her and make her feel very
happy. Well, a little Oriental theory may have some caressing charm for
you. It is a very gentle faith--though also very deep; and you will find
in my book how much it interests me.
"Take very, very, _very_ good care of your precious little self,--and do
not try to write till you feel immensely strong. Setsu sends sweet words
and wishes. And I----!
"With love,
"LAFCADIO HEARN.
"_Kumamoto, June_ 2, '94."