OUT OF THE EAST
"So Japan paid to learn how to see shadows in Nature, in
life, and in thought. And the West taught her that the sole
business of the divine sun was the making of the cheaper kind
of shadows. And the West taught her that the higher-priced
shadows were the sole product of Western civilisation, and
bade her admire and adopt. Then Japan wondered at the shadows
of machinery and chimneys and telegraph poles; and at the
shadows of mines and of factories, and the shadows in the
hearts of those who worked there; and at the shadows of
houses twenty storeys high, and of hunger begging under them;
and shadows of enormous charities that multiplied poverty;
and shadows of social reforms that multiplied vice; and the
shadows of shams and hypocrisies and swallow-tail coats; and
the shadow of a foreign God, said to have created mankind for
the purpose of an auto-da-fe. Whereat Japan became rather
serious, and refused to study any more silhouettes.
Fortunately for the world, she returned to her first
matchless art; and, fortunately for herself, returned to her
own beautiful faith. But some of the shadows still cling to
her life; and she cannot possibly get rid of them. Never
again can the world seem to her quite so beautiful as it did
before."
After the lapse of a certain amount of time Hearn gradually became more
reconciled to Kumamoto. The climate agreed with him, he put on flesh,
all his Japanese clothes, he declared, even his _kimono_, had become too
small. "I cannot say whether this be the climate, the diet, or what.
Setsu says it is because I have a good wife: but she might be
prejudiced, you know."
It is more likely that his well-being at this time arose from his having
given up the experiment of living exclusively on a Japanese regimen.
After his bout of illness at Matsue, he found that he could not
recuperate on the fare of the country, even when reinforced with eggs.
Having lived for ten months thus, horribly ashamed as he was to confess
his weakness, he found himself obliged to return to the flesh-pots of
Egypt, and devoured enormous quantities of beef and fowl, and drank
terrific quantities of beer. "The fault is neither mine nor that of the
Japanese: it is the fault of my ancestors, the ferocious, wolfish
hereditary instincts and tendencies of boreal mankind. The sins of the
fathers, etc."
Meantime, his knowledge of the strange people amongst whom his lot was
cast was deepening and expanding. "Out of the East," the collection of
essays--essence of experiences accumulated at this time, and the book,
next perhaps to "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," by which he is best
known--is typical of his genius at its best and at its worst. The first
sketch, entitled, "The Dream of a Summer's Day," is simply a bundle of
impressions of the journey to which he alludes when writing to his
sister, made from Nagasaki to Kumamoto, along the shores of the Inland
Sea. This journey, through some of the most beautiful scenery of Japan,
after the horrors of a foreign hotel at an open port, was one of those
experiences that form an epoch in an artist's life, touching him with
the magic wand of inspiration. All the delightful impressions made by
the poetry and the elusive beauty of old Japan seem concentrated into
six pages of poetic prose. To the world it is known as "The Dream of a
Summer's Day."[24] To those who have been in Japan, and love the delicate
beauty of her mountain ranges, the green of her rice-fields, and the
indigo shadows of her cryptomeria-groves, it summons up delightful
memories, the rapture felt in the crystalline atmosphere, its
picturesque little people, its running waters, the flying gleams of
sunlight, the softly tolling bells, the distant ridges blue and remote
in the warm air. Like a bubbling spring the sense of beauty broke forth
from the caverns of ancient memory, where, according to Lafcadio, it had
lain imprisoned for years, to ripple and murmur sweet music in his ears.
He went back to the days of his childhood, back to dreams lying in the
past in what had become for him an alien land; the fragrance of a most
dear memory swept over his senses. The gnat of the soul of him flitted
out into the gleam of blue 'twixt sea and sun, back to the cedarn
balcony pillars of the Japanese hotel, whence he could see the opening
of the bay and the horizon, haunted by mountain shapes, faint as old
memories, and then again to distant and almost forgotten memories of his
youth by Lough Corrib, in the West of Ireland, the result being as
beautiful a prose poem as Hearn ever wrote.
[24] "Out of the East," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
[Illustration: Dorothy Atkinson.]
The last essay in the collection is called "Yuko," a reminiscence.
There are many of Lafcadio Hearn's critics who say that, in consequence
of his ignorance of the Japanese language, and the isolation in which he
lived, he never could have known anything really of the innermost
thoughts and feelings of the people to whom he professed to act as
interpreter. Sometimes they maintain that his views are unfavourable to
an exaggerated extent, at another too laudatory. His essay entitled
"Yuko" might certainly be taken as an example of the manner in which he
selected certain superficial manifestations as typical of the inner life
of the Japanese--a people as reserved, as secretive, as difficult to
follow in their emotional aspects as the hidden currents to which he
compares them, quoting the words of Kipling's pilot: "And if any man
comes to you, and says, 'I know the Javva currents,' don't you listen to
him; for those currents is never yet known to mortal man!"
Yuko was a servant-maid in a wealthy family at Kinegawa. She had read in
the daily newspaper the account of the attempt on the life of the
Czarevitch during his visit to Japan in 1891. Being an hysterical,
excitable girl, she was apparently wound up to the pitch of temporary
insanity. Leaving her employer's home, she made her way to Kyoto, and
there, buying a razor, she cut her throat opposite the gate of the
Mikado's palace. Hearn writes of the incident as if the girl were a Joan
of Arc, obeying the dictates of the most fervent patriotism. He goes to
the extent of describing the Mikado, "The Son of Heaven," hearing of the
girl's death, and "augustly ceasing to mourn for the crime that had been
committed because of the manifestations of the great love his people
bore him."
Afterwards, Hearn admitted that his enthusiasm was perhaps exaggerated,
for revelations showed that Yuko, in a letter she had left, had spoken
of "a family claim." Under the raw strong light of these commonplace
revelations, he confessed that his little sketch seemed for the moment
much too romantic, and yet the real poetry of the event remained
unlessened--the pure ideal that impelled a girl to take her own life
merely to give proof of the love and loyalty of a nation. No small,
mean, dry facts could ever belittle that large fact.
Let those, however, who say that Hearn did not understand the
enigmatical people amongst whom his lines were cast, read his article on
"Jiu-jitsu" in this same volume. It is headed by a quotation from the
"Tao-Te-King." "Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm
and strong. So is it with all things.... Firmness and strength are the
concomitants of death; softness and weakness are the concomitants of
life. Hence he who relies upon his own strength shall not conquer."
Preaching from this text, Hearn writes a masterly article, showing how
Japan, though apparently adopting western inventions, preserves her own
genius and mode of thought in all vital questions absolutely unchanged.
The essay ends with a significant paragraph, showing how we occidentals,
who have exterminated feebler races by merely over-living them, may be
at last exterminated ourselves by races capable of under-living us, more
self-denying, more fertile, and less expensive for nature to support.
Inheriting, doubtless, our wisdom, adopting our more useful inventions,
continuing the best of our industries--perhaps even perpetuating what is
most worthy to endure in our sciences and our arts; pushing us out of
the progress of the world, as the dinotherium, or the ichthyosaurus,
were pushed out before us.
Towards the end of his stay at Kumamoto, he wrote one of his delightful,
whimsically affectionate letters to his old friend, Mr. Watkin, in
answer apparently to one from him, recalling their talks and expeditions
in the old days at Cincinnati, and expressing his gratitude for the
infinite patience and wisdom shown in his treatment of his naughty,
superhumanly foolish, detestable little friend. "Well, I wish I were
near you to love you, and make up for all old troubles." He then tells
his "dad" that he has been able to save between $3,500 and $4,000, that
he has placed in custody in his wife's name. The reaction, he said,
against foreign influence was very strong, and the future looked more
gloomy every day. Eventually, he supposed, he must leave Japan and work
elsewhere, and he ends, "When I first met you I was nineteen. I am now
forty-four--well, I suppose I must have lots more trouble before I go to
Nirvana."
Towards the end of the Chinese-Japanese War Hearn was worried with
anxiety on the subject of the noncontinuance of his appointment at the
Kumamoto College. "Government Service," he writes to Amenomori, "is
uncertain to the degree of terror,--a sword of Damocles; and Government
doesn't employ men like you as teachers. If it did, and would give them
what they should have, the position of a foreign teacher would be
pleasant enough. He would be among thinkers and find some
kindness,--instead of being made to feel that he is the servant of petty
political clerks." He approached Page Baker, his old New Orleans friend,
asking him if he could get him anything if he started in the spring for
America. Something good enough to save money at, not only for himself,
but something that would enable him to send money to Japan; he was not
desirous of seeing Boston, New York or Philadelphia, but would rather be
in Memphis, Charleston, or glorious Florida. Page Baker had apparently
been sending him help, for on June 2nd Hearn writes acknowledging a
draft for one hundred and sixty-three pounds, thanking him ten thousand
times from the bottom of his much scarified heart. "I am now
forty-four," he adds, "and as grey as a badger. Unless I can make enough
to educate my boy well, I don't know what I'm worth,--but I feel that I
shall have precious little time to do it in; add twenty to forty-four,
and how much is left of a man?"
In another letter he again alludes to the manner in which the government
are cutting down the number of employes: "My contract runs only until
March," he ends, "and my chances are 0."
At last, after many hesitations, he definitely decided to leave
government service, and in the autumn of 1894 accepted the offer of a
position on the staff of the _Kobe Chronicle_ made by Mr. Robert Young,
proprietor and editor of the newspaper.
To his sister he wrote from the _Kobe Chronicle_ office, Kobe, Japan:--
"MY DEAR MINNIE,
"I am too much in a whirl just now to write a good letter to you (whose
was the little curl in your last?--you never told me). I am writing only
to say that I have left the Government Service to edit a paper in one of
the open ports. This is returning to my old profession, and is pleasant
enough,--though not just now very lucrative.
"Best love to you. Perhaps we shall meet in a few years. My boy is well,
beginning to walk a little. My book was to be issued on the 29th Sept.
"Ever affectionately,
"LAFCADIO."