it is always summer

Lafcadio Hearn to Sentaro Nishida

Tokyo, 1897

Dear Nishida,

This morning (the 17th) Mr Takahashi came with your letter of introduction. He is a charming gentleman, and I felt unhappy at not being able to talk Japanese to him. He brought a most beautiful present a tea-set of a sort I had never even seen before,--"crackled" porcelain inside to the eye, and outside a chocolate-coloured clay etched with pretty designs of houses and groves and lakes with boats upon them. The cups were a great surprise and delight--especially as they were made in Matsue. Mr. Takahashi gave me better news of you than your last letter brought me: he thought you were getting stronger, so I have hopes of pleasant chats with you. He told us many things about Matsue. He is a very correct, courteous gentleman; and I felt quite clumsy, as I always do when I meet a real gentleman of the Japanese school. I think I should like any of your friends. Mr. Takahashi had something about him which brought back to me the happy feeling.of my pleasant time in Izumo.

I don't feel to-day, though, like I used to feel in Izumo. I have become very grey, and much queerer looking; and as I never make any visits or acquaintances outside of my quiet little neighbourhood, I have become also rather henjin. But I have written half a new book. I am not able to say now what it will be like: for the things I most wish to put into it--stories of real life have not yet been written. I have finished only the philosophical chapters. One subject is "Nirvana," and another the study of matter in itself as unreality, or at least as a temporary apparition only. Then I have taken up the defence of Japanese methods of drawing, under the title of "Faces in the Old Picture-Books." My public, however, is not all composed of thinkers; and I have to please the majority by telling them stories sometimes. After all, every public more or less resembles a school-class. They say, just like my students always used to say when they felt very tired or sleepy, hot days,--"Teacher, we are tired: please tell us some extraordinary story."

I can't just now remember when--at Matsue--a man came into the classroom to watch my teaching. He came from some little island. I have quite forgotten the name. He looked a little like Mr. Takahashi;--but there was something different in his face,--a little sad, perhaps. When the class was over he came to me and said something very good and kind, and pressed my hand and went away to his island. It is a queer thing that experiences of this kind are often among the most vivid of one's life--though they are so short. I have often dreamed of that man. Often and often. And the dream is always the same. He is the director of a beautiful little school in a very large garden, surrounded by high white walls. I go into that garden by an iron gate. It is always summer. I teach for that man; and everything is gentle and earnest and pleasant and beautiful, just as it used to be in Matsue,--and he always repeats the nice things he said long ago. If I can ever find that school, with the white walls and the iron gate,--I shall want to teach there, even if the salary be only the nice things said at the end of the class. But I fear the school is made of mist, and that teacher and pupils are only ghosts. Or perhaps it is in Horai.

Ever with best regards from all of us, faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

-from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elizabeth Bisland in 2 volumes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) volume 2, p. 330-32.

Mr. Yakumo Koizumi

Lafcadio Hearn (Y. Koizumi) to Sentaro Nishida

Kobe, April, 1896.

Dear Nishida, - It made me happy to get your letter, and to hear from you that you think I am beginning to understand the Japanese a little better. My other books have had success in Europe as well as America;--the leading French review (Revue des Deux Mondes) had a long article about me; and the Spectator, the Athenaeum, the Times and other English journals have been kind. Still, I am not foolish enough to take the praise for praise of fact,--feeling my own ignorance more and more every day, and being more pleased with the approval of a Japanese friend than with the verdict of a foreign reviewer, who, necessarily, knows nothing to speak of about Japan. But one thing is encouraging,--namely, that whatever I write about Japan hereafter will be widely read in Europe and elsewhere,--so that I may be able to do good. My first book is being translated into German.

I got a beautiful letter from Mr. Senke the other day, to which he has, I trust, by this time the answer,--in which I told him that I hope to see Matsue and Kizuki again in about another month. Setsu, mother, and the boy come with me. Kazuo is now much better--except morally;--he is more mischievous than ever. I want him to have as much of the sea this summer as he can bear. And I want to swim at Kizuki and Mionoseki, and to talk to you all I can--without tiring you.

I have been away. I have been at Ise, Futami, and nearly a week in Osaka. Ise disappointed me a little. The scenery is superb; but I like Kizuki better. At Ise there is so much money, - - such enormous hotels,--such modernization: the place did not feel holy to me, as Kizuki did. Even the miko won't show their faces for less than five yen. Besides, it was bitterly cold, and hurt my lungs. I came back sick. Osaka delighted me beyond words. Excepting Kyoto, it is certainly the most interesting city on this side of Japan. And I could never tell you how Tennoji delighted me--what a queer, dear old temple. I went to Sakai, of course,--and bought a sword, and saw the grave of the eleven samurai of Tosa who had to commit seppuku for killing some foreigners,--and told them I wished they could come back again to kill a few more who are writing extraordinary lies about Japan at this present moment. I would rather live a month in Osaka than ten years free of rent in Tokyo.

Speaking of Tokyo reminds me to tell you that my engagement with the university is not yet assured. Day before yesterday I had a letter from Professor Toyama that my becoming a Japanese citizen had raised a difficulty "which," he wrote, "we must manage to get over somehow." I wrote him that I was not worried about the matter, and had never allowed myself to consider it very seriously,--hinting also that I would not accept any low salary. What he will next write I don't know, and don't very much care. If Matsue were a little warmer in winter I should rather be teaching there. Indeed I think that even after a few years in Tokyo, I should be asking to get back to Matsue; and in any event I hope to make a home there. If I can get such a yashiki as I had--mean buy one for my own home--Matsue would be a very happy place to work and study in. Besides, if my health keeps fair, I can hope eventually to be able to travel in the coldest winter months, and then the Matsue climate would make no difference for me. In summer it is delicious. Even Setsu now thinks it better to live in the interior; and I shall be glad to escape from the open ports. I have seen enough of the foreigners here, and like them less than ever.

I should certainly like Mr. Asai very much, from your charming account of him; and, at any rate, I expect to see both you and him within forty days from this writing. If you think he would like a copy of 'Kokoro' it will make me very happy to send him one. As he has studied philosophy, however, I don't know what he will think of the chapters on the Idea of Pre-existence and the Worship of Ancestors. You know the school of thought that I follow is bitterly opposed; and I believe it is not honestly taught in any English establishment. In one or two American universities it is partly taught; but only the French have given it really fair attention abroad.

Lafcadio Hearn (Y. Koizumi).

P. S. It made me feel queer to be addressed by Prof. Toyama as "Mr. Yakumo Koizumi"!

-from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elizabeth Bisland in 2 volumes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) volume 2, p. 297-99.

forced by necessity

Lafcadio Hearn to Ellwood Hendrick

Kobe, Autumn, 1895.

Dear Hendrick, . . . It has often occurred to me to ask whether you think other men feel as I do about some things--you yourself, for example. Work with me is a pain--no pleasure till it is done. It is not voluntary; it is not agreeable. It is forced by necessity. The necessity is a curious one. The mind, in my case, eats itself when unemployed. Reading, you might suggest, would employ it. No: my thoughts wander, and the gnawing goes on just the same. What kind of gnawing? Vexation and anger and imaginings and recollections of unpleasant things said or done. Unless somebody does or says something horribly mean to me, I can't do certain kinds of work,--the tiresome kinds, that compel a great deal of thinking. The exact force of a hurt I can measure at the time of receiving it: "This will be over in six months;' 'This I shall have to fight for two years;' "This will be remembered longer." When I begin to think about the matter afterwards, then I rush to work. I write page after page of vagaries, metaphysical, emotional, romantic,--throw them aside. Then next day, I go to work rewriting them. I rewrite and rewrite them till they begin to define and arrange themselves into a whole,--and the result is an essay; and the editor of the Atlantic writes, "It is a veritable illumination," and no mortal man knows why, or how it was written,--not even I myself,--or what it cost to write it. Pain is therefore to me of exceeding value betimes; and everybody who does me a wrong indirectly does me a right. I wonder if anybody else works on this plan. The benefit of it is that a habit is forming,--a habit of studying and thinking in a way I should otherwise have been too lazy-minded to do. But whenever I begin to forget one burn, new caustic from some unexpected quarter is poured into my brain: then the new pain forces other work. It strikes me as being possibly a peculiar morbid condition. If it is, I trust that some day the power will come to do something really extraordinary--I mean very unique. What is the good of having a morbid sensitive spot, if it cannot be utilized to some purpose worth achieving? . . .

Ever affectionately,

Lafcadio Hearn

-from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elizabeth Bisland in 2 volumes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) volume 2, p. 271-73.

ghostology

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

Kobe, 1895.

Dear Chamberlain,

I might one of these days get a job in Loochoo, when the country becomes richer,--and explore ghostology. The ghost-business must be simply immense: it must be immense anywhere that the dead are better housed than the living. Of old I felt sure that if the Egyptian demotic texts were translated, the ghostly side of that literature would be amazing for just the same reason. Well, they have been translated; and the ghost-stories are without parallel. Assyrian ghostology is also very awful; but we don't know much about their necropoles, for whatever those were, they were of perishable stuff.

As I told the Houghton firm I had a volume of philosophical fairy-tales in mind, and wanted to read Andersen again, they sent me four volumes; . . . the old charm comes back with tenfold force, and makes me despair. How great the art of the man!--the immense volume of fancy,--the magical simplicity--the astounding force of compression! This isn't mere literary art; it is a soul photographed and phonographed and put, like electricity, in storage. To write like Andersen, one must be Andersen. But the fountain of his inspiration is unexhausted, and I hope to gain by drinking from it. I read, and let the result set up disturbances interiorly. Disturbances emotional I need. I have had no sensations since leaving Kyushu.

Lafcadio Hearn.

-from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elizabeth Bisland in 2 volumes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. 251-52.

out of the east

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

Kobe, March, 1895.

Dear Chamberlain, --It was very comforting to get a letter from you; for I wanted an impulse to write. I have been blue--by reason partly of the weather; and partly because of those reactions which follow all accomplished work in some men's cases. Everything done then seems like an Elle-woman,--a mere delusive shell; and one marvels why anybody should have been charmed.

Of course I did not ask point-blank for criticisms, because you told me long ago, "Every man should make his own book,"--and, although it is the literary custom in America to consult friends, I could see justice in the suggestion. The title "Out of the East" was selected from a number. It was suggested only by the motto of the Oriental Society, "Ex Oriente lux." The "Far East" has been so monopolized by others that I did not like to use the phrase. "Out of the Uttermost East" would sound cacophonously,--besides suggesting a straining for effect. I thought of Tennyson's "most eastern east," but the publishers didn't approve it. The simpler the title, and the vaguer--in my case--the better: the vagueness touches curiosity. Besides, the book is a vague thing. Sound has much to do with the value of a title. If it hadn't, you would have written "Japanese Things" instead of "Things Japanese"--which is entirely different, and so pretty that your admirers and imitators snapped it up at once. So we have "Things Chinese" by an imitator, and "Things Japanese" is a phrase which has found its recognized place in the vocabulary of critics of both worlds. Your criticism on "Out of the East," though, would have strongly influenced me, if you had sent it early enough. I noticed the very same suggestion in the Athenaeum regarding the use of the word "Orient" and the phrase "Far East" by Americans. For our "Orient" is, as you say, still the Orient of Kinglake, of De Nerval, etc. But why should it be ? To Milton it was the Indian East with kings barbaric sitting under a rain of pearls and gold.

Manila was long my dream. But, although my capacity for sympathy with the beliefs of Catholic peasantry anywhere is very large,--the ugly possibility exists that the Inquisition survives in Manila, and I have had the ill-fortune to make the Jesuits pay some attention to me. You know about the young Spaniard who had his property confiscated, and who disappeared some years ago,--and was restored to liberty only after heaven and earth had been moved by his friends in Spain. I don't know that I should disappear; but I should certainly have obstacles thrown in my way. Mexico would be a safer country for the same class of studies,--Ceram ought to be interesting: in Wallace's time the cost of life per individual was only about 8s. 6d. a year! A moist, hot tropical climate I like best. The heat is weakening, I know, but that moisture means the verdure that is a delight to the eyes, and palms, and parrots, and butterflies of enormous size;--and no possibility of establishing Western conditions of life. I should like very much to see the book you kindly offered to lend me. It might create new aspirations: I am always at night dreaming of islands in undiscovered seas, where all the people are gods and fairies.

Of course I cannot know much about it now, but I am almost sure of having been in Malta as a child. At a later time my father, who was long there, told me queer things about the old palaces of the knights, and a story about a monk who, on the coming of the French, had the presence of mind to paint the gold chancel-railng with green paint. Southern Italy and the Mediterranean islands are especially fitted for classical scholars, like Symonds; but what a world of folk-lore also is there still ungathered! I should think that, next to Venice, Malta must be the most romantic spot in Europe. . . .

Ever faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

-from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elizabeth Bisland in 2 volumes (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1906) Volume II, p. 211-214.

twilight time

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

July 24, 1894.

Dear Chamberlain,

Mason is gone,--leaving a great void in my psychical atmosphere. I linger awhile, hoping to-day or to-morrow at latest to have the Atlantic for you, and to arrange a little matter in connexion with the Boston firm.

I never had the experience before of coolly taking possession of a friend's house during his absence,--and feel a slight remorse of conscience which I can't get over, no matter how many kind things you may say. If I did not hope to be able to give you some day an almost equal amount of pleasure, I should really feel very bad--and there is no use reasoning about the thing at all, because feeling is quite independent of reasoning. Indeed reason is the most tricky and treacherous thing in the world; and the Shinto formula, "obey your own heart" is much more satisfactory.--There are several pleasures in having been here which I did not speak about yet. First it is nice to know a friend's home--in which something of him always lives wherever he be;--to comprehend his pleasures and habits through the kindness of servitors who try to make the guest as happy as their own master (placing the lounge for him where the breeze blows, and all these little attentions);--to get an idea of the geography of his intellectual world, and glimpses of the favourite literary paths;--to notice and sympathize with his comments on margins;--to be instructed by the mere names of the volumes he has collected in all places;--to understand something of his tastes, and so to take pleasure in all his happiness;--in short, to have the definite sensation of what we might call "The Soul of the House." For every dwelling in which a thinker lives certainly acquires a sort of soul--there are Lares and Penates more subtle than those of the antique world;--these make the peace and rest of a home. And besides, there are memories of England which bring back visions of my boyhood--suggestions no American home furnishes. The English crest on silver plate,--the delicious little castors, the "homey" arrangement of articles which represent the experience of generations in search of good solid comfort, all created for me a sort of revival of old, old, and very intimate impressions. Therefore, I suppose, some ghosts of very long ago came soundlessly about me once or twice in twilight time,--and portraits of another era, forgotten for thirty-five years, faintly shaped themselves for me in the dusk before the lighting of the lamp. In thought I sat again upon the floor of a house which no longer exists, and shot at armies of tin soldiers with cannon charged with dried peas. For, just as the faintest odour of fresh tar recalls visions of unnumbered days of travel,--decks and faces and ports and horizons of which the names have faded out altogether,--so it requires only a very little suggestion of England to resurrect home-days.

I have almost stopped mining in sheer despair. It would take me ten years to work through all these veins--I mean the veins I could work a little; for one large section would ever remain for me incomprehensible as a grimoire.--I never saw the work of Captain Basil Hall before,--though his name, attached to translations of his books, has been long familiar to me in French catalogues. Looking over the beautiful little volumes in calf, I could not help thinking that our English prints of to-day are, on the whole, quite inferior to the choice texts of that time--when type, paper, and binding possessed a durable solidity and beauty that latter-day competition is destroying. To-day, our best English prints seem like imitations of French work.

Since you thought enough of the Creole Grammar* to bind it, I must send you a couple of Creole prints I have at home. Should I ever be able to recover my library, I could give you an almost complete set of works relating to all the French-Creole dialects. What I regretted was my inability to procure the Catechism of Goux (Pere). I had it in my hands, but could not persuade the owner to part with it, I think my next letter will be from Yokohama.

Ever faithfully,

Lafcadio.

*Gombo Zhèbes, A Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (New York: Coleman, 1885) by Lafcadio Hearn.

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 359-62.

mining in your library

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

July 22,1894.

Dear Chamberlain,

Yesterday at Otsu with Mason,--but would rather far have passed the day in his house. Still we had a glorious swim, and the sight of a fishing-net pulled in,--what splashing and spraying of prismatic colours! Otsu is not Japanese, however,--except the background of sky and mountain and sea. It has been spoiled--become a mere trap for foreign flies--saucy girls--rough proprietor--huge straggling spaces of "ramshackle" rooms--as one of the guests called them. There is, however, a glorious beach, and a great warm wind like a trade-wind.

After all, I am not going to Nagano!--After glancing over my passport, Mason came to the conclusion that we could be only one day together; and as the anticipated pleasure depended largely upon his company, I gave up the notion. I am getting ready to say good-bye to Tokyo, and shall disappear as soon as he flits. I shall go to Yokohama, however, and pass there a few days, feeling pulses--as I want to provide if possible against being compelled to leave Japan. What may happen next March none of us can guess. One sure thing is that if the Department conclude to do without us for a spell, we shall never be taken back again upon the same terms. This uncertainty (which Mason well calls the sword of Damocles) poisons every pleasure, and paralyzes every undertaking.

Still mining in your library. I envy you the glorious sets of Transactions, of the various Asiatic Societies; and the "Lettres Edifiantes" have finally got hold of me. I took the liberty, also, to cut with the horse-hoofed paper-cutter the pages of a book you had not read--the bard of the Deinbovitzu. I found queer inexpressible beauties and originalities in them--a sort of savage tenderness and fierce grief such as reminded me of the Servian poetry. The Servian poetry seemed to me, however, far more interesting, and, with all its strange ferocities, more perfectly natural. A half-suspicion clings to this collection: its tone seems due to individual taste in setting, pruning, and decorating. What a curious half-Eastern world is this world of Eastern Europe! I suppose you have read the Unwritten literature of the Caucasus:--the same indescribable mingling of bloody ferocity with tenderness and lamentation.

I have not yet found among your books the pretty translations of Japanese moral tales made by Turretini (I think) which I used to possess (Romaji text and French version), and some of the charming prints of the Musee Guimet. Perhaps you have them stowed away. If you have not, I think you might like to add them to this glorious collection. My library of ancient days was chiefly folk-lore. I had the Arabic poets in many editions, the whole Bibliotheque Orientale Elzevirienne (Leroux) up to date,--the larger Bibliotheque Orientale, containing Burnouf's great essay, etc., etc.,--"Les Litteratures Populaires" (Maisonneuve), and hosts of such things. Except that their perusal enriches fancy, and gives glimpses of other race-souls, however, they are of small use to men not serious scholars or finished poets. To you I fancy some of these French series would be highly valuable. The genius of the race shows itself even in the serious work of their philologists: they select, curiously enough, just those subjects which English translators rarely touch. It seems to me that the really human side of Oriental literature in the Transactions of your own Asiatic Society has been appreciated only by Aston, Satow, and yourself. Such papers as "Mistress An's Tale," and "A Literary Lady of Old Japan" and three or four others, form so striking a contrast to the work usually done by the mass of the contributors. This literary sense strikes me as being shown in a more general way by the French Orientalists,-- however defective their work may be in other respects. Comparing, for example, Lenormant and Maspero in Assyrian and Egyptian studies with English studies in the same line,--how much greater is the charm of the former for one able to understand the literary side only. . . .

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 356-59.

son of the wish

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

Dear Chamberlain,

What do you think about the idea of getting up a new "Japanese Fairy Tale Series"? I have quite a number of tales splendidly adapted to weird illustrations. Is there money in such a thing? Do you know this poem?

BRAHMA

I am the mote in the sunbeam; and I am

the burning sun: "Rest here," I whisper the atom;

I say to the orb, "Roll on!"

I am the blush of the morning, and I am

the evening breeze: I am the leaf's low murmur,

the swell of the terrible seas.

I am the vine and the vineyard,--grapes,

winepress, and must, and wine,

The guest, the host, the traveller,--the goblet

of crystal fine;--

I am the net, the fowler, the bird and its

frightened cry;--

The mirror, the form reflected, the sound

and its echo, I;--

I am the breath of the flute;--I am

the mind of man,--

Gold's glitter, the light of sunrise,--and the

sea-pearl's lustre wan,--

The Rose, her poet-nightingale,--the songs

from his throat that rise,

The flint, the spark, the taper,--the moth

that about it flies;--

The lover's passionate pleading,--the maiden's

whispered fear,--

The warrior, the blade that smites him,--his

mother's heart-wrung tear;

I am both Good and Evil,--the deed, and

the deed's intent,--

Temptation, victim, sinner, crime, pardon

and punishment;--

I am what was, is, will be,--creation's

ascent and fall,--

The link, the chain of existence,--beginning

and end of all!

-(Ritter, from Djellalleddin Rumi.)

I have studied this poem for years, and every time I read it,--the grander it seems. To-day I found the old copy I made of it in 1879 among some loose papers.

There isn't anything new to tell you that you could care about.

Faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

25th May, 1894.

I wish it were 1994,--don't you? (OVER) I forgot to tell you:--

To-day I spent an hour in reading over part of the notes taken on my first arrival, and during the first six months of 1890. Result, I asked myself: "How came you to go mad?--absolutely mad?" It was the same kind of madness as the first love of a boy.

I find I described horrible places as gardens of paradise, and horrid people as angels and divinities. How happy I must have been without knowing it! There are all my illusions facing me,--on faded yellow paper. I feel my face tingle as I study some of them. Happily I had the judgment not to print many lines from them.

But--I ask myself--am I the only fool in the world? Or was I a fool at all? Or is everybody, however wise, at first deluded more or less by unfamiliar conditions when these are agreeable, the idea always being the son of the wish?

Perhaps I was right in one way. For that moment Japan was really for me what I thought it. To the child the world is blue and green; to the old man grey--both are right.

So with all things. Relations alone exist. The writer's danger is that of describing his own, as if they were common or permanent. Perhaps the man who comes to Japan full of hate for all things Oriental may get nearer to truth at once--though, of course, he will also make a kindred mistake.

Ever,

Lafcadio Hearn

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 311-13.

an adopted son

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

January 27, 1894.

Dear Chamberlain,

Your letter was a great pleasure to me for more reasons than one, especially, however, because giving what a man is always most hungry for in this world (unless he is a Diogenes)--sympathy. First, about the registration question:--Perhaps your idea of my destiny is prophetical, and I may again be a traveller. I think I ought to travel a little for literary material. But I cannot imagine any circumstance, except banishment by the Tenshi-sama, that should prevent me from making my home in Japan. Indeed, I never thought about such a possibility. The only grim outlook is death,--because I am much older than I like to be; in that case English citizenship would be of no use to my folk. As for my wife, she is only a simple sweet-hearted country-girl; she would never feel at home in the life of the open ports, or be able to mingle at ease in the Europeanized circles of their Japanese society. Again, none of my folks know anything about business;--they would be easily deprived of anything. I could leave them in any of the settlements; but as for myself, I can't imagine anything which could separate us indefinitely in life. Leaving the moral question aside altogether--though it is a stronger one than any--there comes the consideration of the facts, thus: The Japanese are still the best people in the world to live among;--therefore why wish ever to live elsewhere? No one will ever, or could ever, love me any more than those about me now love me;--and that is the most precious consideration in life aside from the mere capacity to live. The ugly questions are death and lack of employment. The latter is quite possible. The former is important. In either event, It were better that mother and son were able to live in the interior, and own their own homestead, and have a little revenue, and take care of each other until better times. There's the odds. Yes, as you say, it is a hard nut to crack; but I fancy the safe side is that suggested by the family instinct--they have all decided not to risk loss of citizenship. The patriarch, of course, considers me only an adopted son; and thinks that Izumo should always be the family home.

What you say of Japanese costume as a protection by mimicry is glorious. I should like to meet the Japanese who had shrewdness enough to say so delicious a thing! The fact struck me a good while ago (and I embodied it in my article on "Jiujutsu")* that the Japanese have never really adopted European costume at all. It is worn only outside the house; the reifuku as a business uniform, the yofuku as a military uniform. Even the officers of the garrison resume at home the kimono, obi, haori, and tabi. The Kencho officials, the judges, the Governors of provinces, the teachers, are, at home, each and all, just as much Japanese as they were a thousand years ago. The students even hate the uniforms and confess its value only as a military garb. . . .

I suppose you can scarcely have failed to observe the extraordinary benevolence exercised toward students throughout the country. Every official and every teacher--or nearly every--has a number of shosei in his house. Nominally they should support themselves, but I fancy they are in all cases largely aided, even as to food. What you may not have noticed, perhaps, is that in modern Japanese houses of a fair class--such as my own--special architectural provision is made for shosei. There are two or more small walled-off rooms (solid kabe-work) contrived about the entrance which are called "student-rooms." The soshi-business in Tokyo represents only the perversion of this benevolent custom to political ends. I myself intend, if things turn out pretty well, to take an Izumo student or two later on, and help as far as can reasonably be expected. I am often asked by local students, but as often refuse; for others have prior claims, and, besides, my present house is too small.

The native benevolence does not draw the line at shosei. I know a number of cases of hard-worked teachers contributing regularly every month to the university expenses of boys whom they have taught. I asked, "Are they really grateful?" of a very cynical professor. He said, "Yes, I believe they are;--they are grateful to their Japanese teachers for personal favours." I said, "But they are not grateful to foreign teachers?"He answered,--"Well, no: that is quite a different matter." Then I wondered whether this is not just because we foreign teachers are really so much more selfish towards them--for reasons we cannot help, of course.

Lastly: The benevolence of the teachers does not stop there. Special teachers devote their whole spare time to unpaid, gratuitous teaching,--in many instances. Take jiujutsu! Our present teacher, a disciple of Kano's, builds here at his own expense, in his own residence grounds, a jiujutsu hall, and teaches all his spare time without a cent of remuneration. Take natural history! The least sympathetic of all the teachers gives his whole leisure to extra labour in this direction. Perhaps it is the very excess of such kindness on the part of the native teachers which creates the feeling of "offness" between the foreign teacher and the students. His greatest kindness suffers terribly by comparison.

Again the foreign teacher is trusted only as an intellectual machine. His moral notions, his sympathies,, his intuitions, his educational ideas are not trusted at all; a Japanese teacher is always consulted by preference. There seems to be the set conviction in every official mind that a foreigner cannot understand Japanese students. Indeed I suspect that those among us who sympathize with them, and wish to know them, may really understand them much better than they can understand us, which is saying a good deal, just because of this solid conviction about our mental incapacity. . . .

Ever most truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

*Published in his book, Out of the East (Houghton, Mifflin, 1895).

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 232-36.

things Japanese

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

[August 1893]

Dear Chamberlain,

I have just got your letter, and a copy of the Advertiser which makes me glad that I changed the sentence about the sailors in proofs. I have a great mind to subscribe for the Advertiser, and stop reading the Mail;--I am so sick of all the stuff about missionaries and Christianity. Why can't a newspaper have mercy on people who don't care to have religious stuff forever thrust under their noses? I see the missionaries are still telling the people they are savages, and idolaters, etc., and have been making a row at Bakkan, among other places There's no truth ever told about these matters; what the missionaries really do is never published.

I wonder if the Archduke's Indian servant is a Sikh. Travellers write that the Sikh policemen and troopers look like demigods or kings; and some illustrations in the London News gave me the same notion.

It rejoiced me to hear of your living in the Japanese wing, and in yukata. I am sure it is the very best thing you could do for health in this hot season. Foreign dress soaks through almost immediately, and then becomes a wet wrap which, breathed on by a cold wind, chills the lungs at once. I have been wearing considerably less than a yukata lately during the hottest part of the day; but when I go out in a white suit I wonder how any Japanese can don yofuku in July and August. No matter how thin, a tight-fitting dress is a torture in this heat to anybody accustomed to the kimono.

I had a long letter from the editor of the Atlantic. He wants sketches of real Japanese life (sketches showing emotional character): doesn't care for religious or philosophical sketches. He wants, in short, exactly what I want, but what is very difficult to find. The fixed policy in Kumamoto has been to conceal everything from me, and although there is an approach to kindness in other directions, this policy is not likely to change much. I must devise some means of defeating it.

Reading over some part of "Things Japanese"* the other day, it occurred to me that I might be able to speak of something not known to you about the household bath. Of course it is only a suggestion. It is true, as you say, that all the members of a household, in hierarchical order, use the same water. But the simple statement of this fact might create a wrong idea in European minds. The rule in such cases is worth recording. It is that each person washes outside the bath, and thoroughly rinses the whole body outside the bath, with hot water from a kanadari or other vessel, before entering into the tub proper. Consequently, in a household where this rule is observed, the servant girl who bathes last, will find the water nearly as clear as the Inkyo who bathes first. All the real washing is not done in the bath at all. And in some bathing-places, I have seen this rule strictly observed by hundreds of people,--as at Kitzuki. Of course among the poorer classes there is less nicety. . . .

*Things Japanese (1890) by Basil Hall Chamberlain.

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 147-48.

perfume of syllables in blossom

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

June 5, 1893.

Dear Chamberlain,

Thanks for strictures and suggestions. I changed the text as you desired, except in the case of the word Kurunia. That has been fully explained in preceding articles. (By the way, I never heard a Japanese use the word jin- rikisha.) My observations about the sailors were based upon police reports in the Japan Mail. I killed the word gwaikokujin; as you said, it is an ugly word. I revised, indeed, the whole paper.

Recognizing the ugliness of words, however, you must also recognize their physiognomical beauty. I see you and the Editor of the Atlantic are at one, however, in condemning my use of Japanese words. Now, I can't entirely agree with either of you. As to the practical side of the question, I do. But as to the artistic, the romantic side, I don't. For me words have colour, form, character; they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; they have moods, humours, eccentricities;--they have tints, tones, personalities. That they are unintelligible makes no difference at all. Whether you are able to speak to a stranger or not, you can't help being impressed by his appearance sometimes,--by his dress,--by his air,--by his exotic look. He is also unintelligible, but not a whit less interesting. Nay! he is interesting BECAUSE he is unintelligible. I won't cite other writers who have felt the same way about African, Chinese, Arabian, Hebrew, Tartar, Indian, and Basque words,--I mean novelists and sketch writers.

To such it has been justly observed : "The readers do not feel as you do about words. They can't be supposed to know that you think the letter A is blush-crimson, and the letter E pale sky-blue. They can't be supposed to know that you think EH wears a beard and a turban; that initial X is a mature Greek with wrinkles;--or that--no--has an innocent, lovable, and childlike aspect." All this is true from, the critic's standpoint.

But from ours, the standpoint of

The dreamer of dreams

To whom what is and what seems

Is often one and the same,--

To us the idea is thus:--

"Because people cannot see the colour of words, the tints of words, the secret ghostly motions of words:--

"Because they cannot hear the whispering of words, the rustling of the procession of letters, the dream-flutes and dream-drums which are thinly and weirdly played by words:--

"Because they cannot perceive the pouting of words, the frowning and fuming of words, the weeping, the raging and racketing and rioting of words:--

"Because they are insensible to the phosphorescing of words, the fragrance of words, the noisomeness of words, the tenderness or hardness, the dryness or juiciness of words, the interchange of values in the gold, the silver, the brass and the copper of words:--

"Is that any reason why we should not try to make them hear, to make them see, to make them feel? Surely one who has never heard Wagner, cannot appreciate Wagner without study! Why should the people not be forcibly introduced to foreign words, as they were introduced to tea and coffee and tobacco?" Unto which, the friendly reply is, "Because they won't buy your book, and you won't make any money." And I say: "Surely I have never yet made, and never expect to make any money. Neither do I expect to write ever for the multitude. I write for beloved friends who can see colour in words, can smell the perfume of syllables in blossom, can be shocked with the fine elfish electricity of words. And in the eternal order of things, words will eventually have their rights recognized by the people."

All this is heresy. But a bad reason, you will grant, is better than etc.

Faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn

[The Atlantic Monthly, July 1892, In a Japanese Garden by Lafcadio Hearn.]

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 105-07.

shadow and sun

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

May 30, 1893.

Dear Chamberlain,
Your criticism about my idea of a volume of stories delights me.

But I am not insensible to the comic side. I want the best of anything I can get in that direction. I want it, however, under reservations.

In the "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan"* I think you will find something more than pathos. I think you may have found something more than the minor key even in the West Indian Sketches. But--besides the fact that I know the narrow limitations of my own power, I have an artistic theory about comedy.

For sincere work I think comedy should always be very close to tears,--as it is in real life. Shadow and sun make the picture. The strongest possible pathos is created by the use of comedy in the proper time and place.

But it is very hard to do this. Those who have been able to do it well are the giants. Take Heine's work; what is the nervous power of it; surely, aside from mere verbal art and fancy, it is in this very thing. He amuses, caresses, brings tears; then with a lightning flash of sarcasm lie illuminates the bitter gulfs. Or the mockery first, and then the pathos. I don't think the Elizabethan writers knew this art; they had to introduce fools and mad people to off-set tragedy. It seems to me an art yet undeveloped. Most men can work safely only in one direction,--having but one faculty powerfully developed. Heine had two;--but he was only half alive in his best years. I think myself a book all in one key is weak. I should like to venture at work in two. But I am small. I am groping and don't know. All I can say is,--Any and every suggestion I can get during the next two years will be gold and diamonds.

The little follies, the childish errors, the blunders and mistakes of life, do not however make me laugh. I cannot laugh at the real,--unless it's offensive. Rather all these things seem to me infinitely pathetic; the comedy of them is the tragedy played by human children before the Unknown. In an artistic sketch, I think the comedy ought not to provoke more than a smile. But hard and fast rules are out of the question. And what would the Japanese say? They don't understand. I once ventured a jest in Izumo about the ancient Gods,--in the presence of one who did not believe. It was an innocent jest, too,--not derogatory to the Gods. But,--well, I never tried it again; not even when I heard much racier jests made by the same person.

I am not good, I fear, like you. I do not always give gentle answers, which is a sign of strength, but nasty ones, which is a sign of weakness. However, I have lately effected a compromise with myself. I think this way:--"Assuredly, the people who ask you so impertinently to do things for money, conceive that money is an all-fired great consideration with you,--because it is with them. To undeceive them would injure their feelings,--stab them in the only place where they have any feelings. Wherefore it were more Christian to answer them according to their kind. An answer of this sort cannot satisfy them altogether, but it will teach them respect for you."

Therefore when I am asked, for example, to write letters for a particular sort of patronizing newspaper, "I am very grateful, dear Sir, for your kindly appreciation of my work, and for your courteous offer. In answer to your question about terms, I may say, that, although now unusually occupied, I hope to find time to write you a few letters on the following conditions: One thousand dollars in gold per letter,--to be paid in each case in advance,--by draft on London,--and copyright of letters to be secured in the name of my publishers, at your expense,--which, of course, will be trifling. Trusting, my dear sir, etc."

Now, if they really agree to the terms, they would be worth the while. If they don't, it is all the same,--except that they will see even an author loves money, and esteems himself at the right value. Of course, that is only me. You ought to charge enormous rates, and you might get them. Some years ago in New York, when there was no Russian Secretary, a Russian document had to be translated in a hurry. There was only one man in New York then who could do the work, and the man knew it. The legend is that he charged $10,000 and got it. If you write a perfumery ad. in Chinese for those people you ought to charge enough to elevate the price of the perfume bottles 150 p. c. ? ? ? The fun of all this is that I, who write it, can't get any big prices for anything yet. By dint of pretended scorn, perhaps some day I shall get a gold mine all to myself.
Best wishes ever and thanks,

Lafcadio Hearn

*Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894 Houghton Mifflin) - 2 vols. 1000 sets in green; (1894 Osgood McIlvaine) - 2 vols

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) p. 99-102.

Kokoro

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

September 4, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain, ... I think I wrote you before that the fox superstition in lzumo has special peculiarities, and is strong enough to affect the price of real estate to a very large amount. You know the translation by James of the "Discourse upon Infinite Vision." Now the most telling point of the whole thing to me was the priest's appeal to his hearers' superstition about the fox to prove his metaphysical argument, and the immediate success of that appeal. Even among the modernly educated here, the belief in the three kinds of foxes prevails to a large extent. Just as a student once wrote for me in an English comparison: "It is hard to say if these stories of foxes are true. But it is hard to say that they are not true."

What you say about Mr. Lowell's being probably less intimate with the common people than I now am, is, I think, true. Certainly so large a personality as his would find it extremely difficult--probably painful--to adopt Japanese life without reserves, its costumes, its diet, its life upon the floor, its interminable small etiquette, its everlasting round of interviews with people who have nothing to say but a few happy words, its Matsuri customs and household formalities. He has what the French would call une envergure trop vaste pour ca; and for so penetrating and finely trained an intellect, the necessary sacrifice of one's original self would be mere waste. Still, I think it is only by this way, in the course of years, that I can get at the Kokoro* of the common people,--which is my whole aim,--the religious and emotional home life. What I have seen of the educated modernized Japanese does not strike me as worth studying for literary purposes. They seem to me like a soft reflection of Latin types, without the Latin force and brilliancy and passion--somewhat as in dreams the memory of people we have known become smilingly aerial and imponderable.

Your illustration about homeopathy is superb, a little severe, but I think it is impossible to state the whole weak side of anything without some forcible severity. But the ultimate tendency would thus be toward a second Ryubu-Shinto,--would it not? I must confess I would sacrifice much, if I had anything worth sacrificing, to see a pure strong revival of Buddhism. But the Buddhists seem to have no great men now, no forces:--no possibility of another Nichiren, is there? I fear it cannot come: this hoped-for revival, through native sources alone; the Buddhist scholars are lukewarm souls--mere bookworms. But it might come through the influence of the Western higher philosophy, indirectly. To make the Japanese people simply irreligious, would destroy everything beautiful in their life, and nothing seems to me so admirably suited to that gentle life as the faith of Buddhism. The sight of a superb Japanese iron-clad at Mionoseki the other day, filled me with regret. That splendid monster appeared as an omen of some future so much more dismal and artificial than the present. . . .

*["the heart of things, feelings."]

-from The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn edited with an introduction by Elizabeth Bisland (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) pp. 16-18.

literary success

[Lafcadio Hearn to Mitchell McDonald]

Tokyo, January, 1898.

Dear McDonald,

It would do me a great deal of harm if I could believe your appreciations and predictions; but I am quite sure you are mistaken about both. As to success, I think my good fortune would consist in being able occasionally to travel for about six months,--just to pick up strange or beautiful literary material. If I can ever manage that much--or even if I can manage to get so far independent that I can escape from officialdom--I shall be very fortunate indeed. Want to get to Europe for a time, in any case, to put my boy there. But all this is dream and shadow, perhaps.

Literary success of any enduring kind is made only by refusing to do what publishers want, by refusing to write what the public want, by refusing to accept any popular standard, by refusing to write anything to order. I grant it is not the way to make money quickly; but it is the way--and the only way--to win what sincerity in literary effort ought to obtain. My publishers have frankly gone over to the Philistines. I could not write for them further even if they paid me $100 per line.

What a selfish letter I am writing! You are making me talk too much about my own affairs, and you would really spoil me, if you could. Talking to me of fame and hundreds of thousands of dollars! Of course I should like to have hundreds of thousands, and to hold them at your disposal; but I should also like to live in the realization of the life of the Arabian Nights. About the truth of life seems to be this: You can get what you wish for only when you have stopped wishing for it, and do not care about keeping it.

I see your name in the papers often now, and in connections that fill me with gladness. You are a power again in the land--wish you could be here for longer than you are going to stay. But, after all, that would not be best for you--would it?

Affectionately ever,

Lafcadio.

-from Lafcadio Hearn: Letters from Tokyo translated and edited by M. Otani (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1920) p. 90-92.

Loneliness Thickens

[Lafcadio Hearn to Ellwood Hendrick]

Tokyo, May 1897.

Dear E. H.,

I have been reading your last over and over again--because it is very pretty indeed, one of the very prettiest letters I ever read. There is altogether something so deliciously assured about it--so full of happy confidence, that I feel quite comfortable and jolly about you. . . notwithstanding the fact that I am tolerably sure you will be taken utterly away from me in the end. For this shall a man leave not only his friend, but his father and his mother,--saith the Sacred Book. You know that particular passage makes the Japanese mad,--but not quite so mad as the observation: "Unless a man shall hate his father and his mother," etc., which has knocked the wind out of much missionary enterprise.

I can't write much more about yourself, because I don't know anything yet. So I shall talk about Tokyo.

As you know, I have been somewhat idle--for a month at least. And the loneliness thickens. And certain gentlemen make it a rule to spit upon the ground with a loud noise when I pass by. I believe the trick is not confined to the Occident, having found Japanese skillful at it; but these be nevertheless manners of Heidelberg doctors! Nevertheless, it won't work.

But really the conditions are very queer. I felt instinctively before going to Tokyo, that I was going into a world of intrigue; but what a world I had no conception. The foreign element appears to live in a condition of perpetual panic. Everybody is infinitely afraid of everybody else, afraid to speak not only their minds, but to speak about anything except irrelevant matters, and then only in a certain formal tone sanctioned by custom. They huddle together sometimes at parties, and talk all together loudly about nothing,--like people in the expectation of a possible catastrophe, or like folks making a noise to drive away ghosts, or fear of ghosts. Somebody, quite accidentally, observes--or rather drops an observation about facts. Instantly there is a scattering away from that man as from dynamites. He is isolated for several weeks by common consent. Then he goes to work to reform a group of his own. Gradually he collects one--and rival groups are formed. But presently someone in another party or chat talks about something as it ought to be. Bangfizz--chaos and confusion. Then all the groups unite to isolate that wicked tongue. The man is dangerous--an intriguer--ha! And so on--ad lib.

This is panic, pure and simple, and the selfishness of panic. But there is some reason for it--considering the class of minds. We are all in Japan living over earthquakes. Nothing is stable. All Japanese officialdom is perpetually in flux,--nothing but the throne is even temporarily fixed; and the direction of the currents depends much upon force of intrigue. They shift, like currents in the sea, off a coast of tides. But the side currents penetrate everywhere, and clapotent all corners, and swirl round the writing-stool of the smallest clerk,--whose pen trembles with continual fear for his wife's and babies' rice. Being good or clever or generous or popular or the best man for the place counts for very little. Intrigue has nothing at all to do with qualities. Popularity in the biggest sense has, of course, some value, but only the value depending upon certain alternations of rhythm of outs-and-ins. That's all.

. . .And I--am as a flea in a washbowl. My best chance is to lie quiet and wait the coming of events. I hope to see Europe, with my boy, some day.

Well, this is only private history to amuse E. H. to make Western by contrast to Eastern life seem more beautiful to him.

Affectionately,

Lafcadio

-from Lafcadio Hearn: Letters from Tokyo translated and edited by M. Otani (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1920) p. 46-54.

Lafcadio Caged

[Lafcadio Hearn to Ellwood Hendrick]

Tokyo, August, 1897.

Dear Hendrick,

. . . The other night I got into a little-known part of Tokyo,--a street all ablaze with lanterns about thirty feet high, painted with weird devices. And I was interested especially by the insect-sellers. I bought a number of cages full of night-singing insects, and am now trying to make a study of the subjects. The noise made by these creatures is very much more extraordinary than you could imagine; but the habit of keeping them is not merely due to a love of the noise itself. No: it is because these little orchestras give to city-dwellers the feeling of the delight of being in the country,--the sense of woods and hills and flowing water and starry nights and sweet air. Fireflies are caged for the same reason.

This is a refinement of sensation, is it not?--only a poetical people could have imagined the luxury of buying summer-voices to make for them the illusion of nature where there is only dust and mud. Notice also that singers are night-singers. It is no use to cage the cicadae: they remain silent in a cage, and die.

In this horrid Tokyo I feel like a cicada:--I am caged, and can't sing. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever be able to sing any more,--except at night?--like a bell-insect which has only one note.

What more and more impresses me every year is the degree to which the writer is a creature of circumstance. If he can make the circumstance, like a Kipling or a Stevenson, he can go on forever. Otherwise he is likely to exhaust every motive in short order, to the same extent that he depends on outer influence.

One thing you will have to do,--that is, to take extremely good care of yourself for somebody else's sake. Which redounds to my benefit; for I really don't know what I should do without that occasional wind of sympathy wherewith your letters refresh me. I keep telling my wife that it would be ever so much better to leave Tokyo, and dwell in the country, at a very much smaller salary, and have peace of mind. She says that nowhere could I have any peace of mind until I become a Buddha, and that with patience we can become independent. This is good; and my few Japanese friends tell me the same thing. But perhaps the influence from 40 Kilby Street, Boston, is the most powerful and saving of all.

An earthquake and several other things (I hate earthquakes) interrupted this letter. It is awfully dull, I know--forgive its flatness. . . . . .

Ever, dear H., your
Lafcadio.

-from Lafcadio Hearn: Letters from Tokyo translated and edited by M. Otani (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1920) p. 76-80.

Lafcadio Hearn Without Books

To Ellwood Hendrick

Tokyo, 1896

Dear Hendrick,----- I am in immediate and awful need of books, and am going to ask you to put me into communication with a general book dealer to whom I can send P. O. orders, and who will mail me books directly on receipt of cash. It is hopeless ordering through local book-dealers,----not simply because of charges and errors, but because of enormous delays. On a separate sheet I enclose some titles of what I badly want for the moment; and I am sending some cash. This said, I promise not to trouble you further except when I can't help it. See what a nuisance I am!

You may well believe me in a hurry when I send a letter with such a beginning. Imagine my position: ---a professor of literature without books, improvising lectures to students without books. I reached Tokyo about seven days ago, and have not yet got a house, --but am living in a hotel. At present I can give you no valid impressions:----everything is a blur. But so far the position does not seem disagreeable---rather the reverse. In fact I am afraid to express my satisfaction,---remembering Polyxenes. The salary is 400 yen,--and in Japan, a yen is a dollar though it is only fifty-odd cents in America. Old pupils of Izumo and elsewhere gather around me, welcoming me, delighted--some needing help and winning it---some needing only sympathy. Professors far off, move in separate and never-colliding orbits. I can teach for years---if I please---without ever seeing any of my colleagues. But Government favour, you know, is uncertain. The chances are that I shall hold on for three years at least.

When I heard last from you I was in Izumo. There I became very strong by constant swimming and starving,---Japanese diet takes all the loose flesh from a man in short order. My lungs got quite sound and my miserable eye nearly well.

I suppose that I partly owe this place to my books and partly to Professor Chamberlain's kind recommendation. The Japanese seldom notice literary work---but they have paid considerable attention to my work, considering that I am a foreigner. My ambition though, is independence in my own home, ---an old fashioned yashiki, full of surprises of colour and beauty and quaintness and peace. . .

Well, here's love to you. (If the book-business does not bother you too much, please tell the book-dealer to mail everything,---not to send by express.)
Ever faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn

-from Lafcadio Hearn: Letters from Tokyo translated and edited by M. Otani (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1920) p. 20-26.

Lafcadio Hearn and Dust

To Ellwood Hendrick

Tokyo May, 1896.

Dear Hendrick,________.........Somebody (who, I do not know) has been sending me books. Did you send me a book by Richard Le Gallienne? I thought Mrs. Rollins had sent it, and I wrote to her nice things about it, which vexed her into sending me a very sharp criticism of it (she is a critic), and proving me to have praised a worthless book out of liking for the sender! Where am I! I am certainly wrong. I did think the book nice because of my belief that she sent it; and I am now equally convinced that it was not. I should certainly make a bad critic if I were acquainted with authors and their friends. One sees what does not exist wherever one loves or hates. As I am rather a creature of extremes, I should be an extremely crooked, visioned judge of work. I have not tried to answer Mrs. Rollins's letter-----fact is, I can't. . . .

What is the present matter with American civilization? Nearly all the clever American authors seem to be women, and most of them have to go "out of town" for their studies of life. American city-life seems to wither and burn up everything. There is something of the same sort noticeable in England----the authors have to go out of England. Of course, there are some great exceptions------like James and Mallock. But how many great writers deal with civilized life as it is? They go to the Highlands, like Black and Barrie, ----or to Italy, like Crawford, ------or to strange countries like Kipling; but who to-day would write "A London Romance"? This brings up another question. What is the meaning of English literary superiority? It is all very well to howl about the copyright question, and the shameful treatment of American authors; but what American authors have we to compare with the English? Excepting women like Mrs. Deland and Miss Jewett and Mrs. Phelps, etc.,-------what American writers can touch English methods? James is certainly our best; -----so London steals him; but he stands alone. America has no one like a dozen,-------nay, a score of English writers that might be named. It certainly is not a question of remuneration; for real high ability is always sooner or later able to get all it asks for. It must be an effect of American city-life, and American training, and American environment;------perhaps over education has something to do with it. Again----English work is so massive-------even at its worst: the effort made is always so much larger. Perhaps we do things to fast. The English are slow and exact. I am told that the other Northern races are still somewhat behind-----always excepting great Russia. But in the France of 1896, what is doing? The greatest writers of the age are dead or silent. Is not our horrible competitive civilization at last going to choke all aspirational life into silence? After the Du Maurier school, what will even England be able to do? Alfred Austin after Alfred Tennyson!

These are my thoughts sometimes; -------then, again, I think of a possible new idealism, ------ a new prodigious burst of faith and passion and song greater than anything Victorian; ------ and I remember that all progress is rhythmical. But if this comes, it will be only, I fear, after we have been dust for a century.

I feel this is an awfully stupid letter. But I'll write a better one soon. My best wishes for your big, big, big success. They will be realized, I think.

Ever affectionately,

Lafcadio Hearn.

-from Lafcadio Hearn: Letters from Tokyo translated and edited by M. Otani (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1920) p. 10-18.