Lafcadio Hearn, the Man

TOWARD the close of autumn, eight years ago, Hearn sent me a letter of condolence upon my sister’s death, and said,—

“What a world it is! We think of our absent friends and acquaintances always as we last saw them, and rarely think of the possibilities of change of conditions till we hear of them that such changes have occurred. The older I grow, the more fragile and fugitive everything seems.”

Who could have thought that the writer of these words had unwittingly anticipated in them the feelings of his friends at the news of his own untimely death ? It took place at nine o’clock on the night of the 26th of September last, the cause being paralysis of the heart. I was in Kamakura, when the news came to me. I could not believe it was true. Then I doubted my eyes that read it, and then I doubted I was awake; but the sad event, alas! was not a dream. I returned home next day to pay mournful tributes of friendship to the man whom I can never forget.

Many are the letters he wrote to me on various occasions, and these have now become, alas! his keepsake. Not a few of his readers would, perhaps, like to know more as to the author himself than could be gathered from his books. I shall attempt a slight delineation of the man, Lafcadio Hearn, corroborating my statements with quotations from his letters; ¹ for it appears he has been somehow misunderstood by the reading public, especially with regard to his character and religious persuasion.

First let us consider his literary side. Owing to the inimitable charm of his style, some critics have been led to suppose that the author occasionally invented stories to suit his own taste. But this is a mistake. Hearn himself says,—

“ I do not invent² ~ my stories. I get them from Japanese life — facts told in papers, facts told me by pilgrims, travellers, servants. — facts observed in travelling myself.”

He made observations at home also. Even his own children did not escape them. He writes of his little son thus, —

“My little boy is talking well: it is always ‘ Botchan³ ! wants’— ‘Botchan sees.’ The idea of ’I’ has not yet come, — just as in Western children, who say ‘Willie wants’ — etc., never ‘I want.’ But the real idea of ‘I’ and the wonder and mystery of it do not come till much later in life: I was thirty before it fully came.”

He was insatiable in getting information. The more he got, the more did he want to know, and ever retained what he had learned. Once when he asked me some questions on Buddhism, he added,—

“Don’t imagine that I know anything.

I have read as many Sûtras as I could find in English or French, — that is all.”

I was then too busily occupied with other matters to give him a sufficient answer. I could send him only a short note with apology. He wrote me in return,—

“Nothing valuable is ever lost upon me, — even your least word containing a new thought; and your letter was more than valuable.”

When making studies on Shinto shrines he wrote me,—

“You understand, of course, how difficult it is for a foreigner to convey to Western minds the feeling of these things as they impress him. On the other hand, he cannot convey the feeling of the Japanese mind, because he has not experienced it. He can only guess or imagine.”

Yet how correctly Hearn “guessed or imagined” the “feeling of the Japanese mind” is amply shown in some of his papers, such as “ Yūko ”⁴ and “ The Japanese Smile.” ⁵ No Japanese could give a better elucidation of those subjects. Still the author was modest in estimating his own powers, as the following quotation will show: —

“You will be glad to hear that I have already half-finished a new book on Japan. It will be about the same size as Out of the East. I must tell you also that your frank encouragement, as a representative Japanese thinker, gave me the principal stimulus. I had done scarcely anything before your letter reached me.”

For a man with Hearn’s powers of insight and expression to call my admiration of his performance “the principal stimulus” for further work! — this may seem preposterous, if not ironical; but it was his modesty that prompted him. This puts me in mind of an incident told me by the late Colonel John A. Cockerill of New York. It happened at the Oriental Hotel in Kobe, while the veteran journalist was traveling in Japan in 1895. To give it in the colonel’s words, —

“While chatting with Hearn of our mutual friends and old incidents in the hotel reading room, an American gentleman of scholarly appearance caught the name of Hearn, and happening to know me by sight, he came up and requested an introduction to the author. This being complied with, he said: ‘Mr. Hearn, I have visited Japan several times, and I may say that I have read everything of interest touching her people and her history that I could find, and I wish to say that in my opinion you have written the most interesting and valuable work on Japan that the world possesses to-day. I merely want to shake your hand, and thank you for your splendid achievement.’ I studied the quaint little writer while these words were spoken — words of sincere praise, which should have warmed the heart of any aspirant for literary recognition. He blushed like a girl, stammered his thanks, and turned away with a diffidence which he could not control.” ⁶

This modesty made Hearn a conscientious writer desirous to render everything he wrote indisputably correct, as shown in the following: —

“Hope I am not intruding upon you with questions at too busy a time, — and please do not inconvenience yourself, if otherwise immediately occupied. But I am anxious to get a few pages of MS. (herewith enclosed) corrected by you, — especially as regards the spelling and meaning of the proper names.”

Always setting less value on his own abilities than their actual worth, as is usual with a real inquirer, he resented what he considered undue praise. He wrote to me once of an author who was on a visit to Japan, and who had sent him a letter highly complimenting him on his books, —

“I had a letter from him [the above mentioned author] some time ago, full of such fulsome and offensive compliments that I supposed he was trying to be sarcastic. At all events I wrote back rather sharply that I thought him a fine master of sarcasm, and I have not heard from him since. It will he interesting to observe how he takes things. I fear he intends to take Japan altogether from the standpoint of an homme du monde,—which will be utterly absurd. And I fear also that he forms his ideas at the Club — that nest of gossip and slander.... I send you his letter; you know me well enough to understand that it vexed me.”

But Heart sought and welcomed honest, sincere criticisms. In fact, he and myself used to exchange criticisms on our performances. Sometimes we read or sent to each other our manuscripts before publishing them. In order to show the better how he appreciated a well-meant criticism, let me first cite a few instances of his way of treatment, as a friendly critic, of some papers submitted to his judgment. Once, by way of an answer to his questions on Buddhism, I sent him a copy of a manuscript I had previously prepared on the same subjects as those to which his questions related, telling him he could make whatever use he liked of it, and requesting him at the same time to let me know his opinion about it. He wrote back: —

“Your magnificent replies to the questions asked (more than exhaustive, and so admirably written, that the document, printed by itself just as it stands, would immediately win recognized value) simply delighted me. I don’t know how to thank you. The thing is really beautiful, and my obligation to you is not small. With this MS. I can very easily finish my sketch. The MS. itself puts me, however, rather in awe of you. I shall feel quite ‘shaky’ about your judgment of my forthcoming book, —you will find so many errors in it.”

This is flattering, indeed, coming from a writer such as Hearn. But here is another one on a manuscript sketch, the merit of which I had felt a little “shaky ” about.

“Although you say Shat you do not need an answer to your lust kind letter, I think it will be better to write about the MS. matter at once — so that the notagreeable subject of our coming discussion may be settled in advance. To be quite brief, then, — the MS. won’t do at all ; and I can only advise you to burn it at once.”

And he adduced so many convincing reasons for his “quite brief” advice, that I promptly threw the paper into the fire; and we had a hearty laugh over the matter, when we met a few days later.

Now about the way in which Hearn received criticisms. Of the manner in which he accepted a favorable one, an instance has already been given above, — his calling it “the principal stimulus” for further labors. Let me quote from another of his letters to show how he took unfavorable criticisms.

“Your last letter, just received, completely smashes me, and I rather enjoy being smashed. As for ‘wanting to know,’I should like to sit down at your feet for two or three years, and learn one tenthousandth part of the strange and beautiful things which you know. Of course the changes shall be made as you indicate.”

But he did not make “changes,” unless he was thoroughly convinced of the truth of criticism. Sometimes it required repeated exchange of letters before that conviction came. At such a time he would write me a sort of excuse for his persistence, as if it required any apology. Here is an example: —

“I hope you will not think it preposterous for me to resist criticism until I find myself obliged to give in. That is really the duty of a writer under all ordinary circumstances, because he is supposed to do his best, and change of one word may affect the whole construction and quality (especially musical) of a sentence. But these circumstances are extraordinary, and it does seem a little ‘ cheeky' not to accept your criticisms at once, instead of trying to oppose them. But you know why,—so many other things are involved in any change. Thank you again for your kindness in criticising: even if I ‘kick against the pricks’ for a moment, I am not less grateful and delighted on that account.”

If he was very careful in making any change in what he had written, he was still more careful in writing an original piece. So far as I know, he never wrote on “the spur of the moment” anything that appeared under his signature. He took time. In a letter written in August, 1894, he says, —

“In 1890 I used to get chances to talk with a delightful old priest of the Jūdo⁷ sect. Part of our conversation I transcribed; but various circumstances obliged me to postpone the rest of the work, — especially the conviction that some years of experience would be necessary to enable me to make it effective.”

And he never wrote one sketch or essay at a time. He did not. begin at the beginning; he worked at parts first, and from parts built up a whole. In answer to my letter, in which I mentioned the difficulty I found in beginning an essay or a sketch, he wrote, —

“ What you say about beginning is eminently true. Therefore I never ’begin.' It is too much trouble. I write down the easiest thing first, then something else, — finally the forty or fifty fragments interlink somehow, and shape into a body. It is like the Prophet’s vision of dry bones.”

In certain cases it took a considerable time for the “fragments” to “shape into a body.” Besides, in writing on some subjects, Hearn was not satisfied with having simply seen, read, understood them; he waited till he felt them. Until the desired sensation, feeling, came upon him, his mind was in a state of restless suspense. Let me quote from a letter written in that mood.

“But somehow, working is ‘against the grain.’ I get no thrill, no frisson, no sensation. I want new experiences, perhaps; and Tōkyō is no place for them. Perhaps the power to feel thrill dies with the approach of a man’s fiftieth year. Perhaps the only land to find the new sensations is in the Past, — floats bluepeaked under some beautiful dead sun ‘in the tropic clime of youth.’ Must I die and be born again to feel the charm of the Far East; — or will Nobushige Amenomori discover for me some unfamiliar blossom growing beside the Fountain of Immortality ? Alas, I don’t know! He is largely absorbed by things awfully practical, — guidebooks, hotels, silkstocks, markets, and politics, — I suppose. He has little time to travel to the Islands of the Blest.”

For instance, I have personal knowledge that “ A Conservative,” in his Kokoro, took near two years to finish, and “ Nirvana” in Gleanings in BuddhaFields, a little more than three.

But once he got his desired “feeling,” he was “honest to himself,” and believed that he had made at least “an approach to truth.” And in order to publish the truth he had thus found, he did all that lay in his power. He used to say, “Literary work is nearly all sacrifice.” Fame or profit did not form his main object. His principal aim was to get at truth, and once having secured it, he boldly gave it out; he did not mind what immediate consequences it might bring upon him, firmly believing that the truth he unfolded would win at length. He says, —

“So far as the success of a man’s ideas go, one need never be anxious. Give them to the world, and the world will learn to value them at last, — even after the writer has ceased to appear on the streets. Time weeds out the errors and stupidities of cheap success,and preserves the truth. It takes, like the aloe, a very long time to flower, but the blossom is all the more precious when it appears.”

Thus confiding in the final triumph of his ideas, he smiled at some criticisms which they evoked. Shortly after the publication of Gleanings in Buddha-Fields he wrote to me, —

“I am getting a number of letters about Ihe last book, — the Buddhist papers seem to have made an impression. . . . You will be amused at some of the religious notices, — regretting my power to debauch the ' minds of my pupils.’ ” Being a master of expression, Hearn labored rather at analyzing and defining his own ideas or feelings, than at polishing his sentences. He was unconsciously conscious, so to speak, of his own ability to express any idea or feeling, if only he could get a clear view of it. This fact is disclosed in the advice he gave me, when I told him of the dissatisfaction I felt with a story I had written. After giving a rough analysis of one of his contemplated books, he proceeds, —

“Now with regard to your own sketch or story. If you are quite dissatisfied with it, I think this is probably due not to what you suppose, — imperfection of expression, — but rather to the fact that some latent thought or emotion has not yet defined itself in your mind with sufficient sharpness. You feel something and have not been able to express the feeling — only because you do not yet quite know what it is. We feel without understanding feeling; and our most powerful emotions are the most undefinable. This must be so, because they are inherited accumulations of feeling, and the multiplicity of them — superimposed one over another— blurs them, and makes them dim, even though enormously increasing their strength. . . . Unconscious brain work is the best to develop such latent feeling or thought. By quietly writing the thing over and over again, I find that the emotion or idea often develops itself in the process, — unconsciously. Again, it is often worth while to try to analyze the feeling that remains dim. The effort of trying to understand exactly what it is that moves us sometimes proves successful. . . . If you have any feeling — no matter what — strongly latent in the mind (even only a haunting sadness or a mysterious joy), you may be sure that it is expressible. Some feelings are, of course, very difficult to develop. I shall show you one of these days, when we see each other, a page that 1 worked at for months before the idea came clearly. . . . When the best result comes, it ought to surprise you, for our best work is out of the Unconscious.”

The “page” at which he had labored so hard I found, on our next meeting, to be a fragment of an intended essay on a palm-tree, — the emotion caused by the sight of a palm-tree as a possible result of many ancestral memories. He said then, “Probably this will never be finished.” Unfortunately it proved more than probable. The essay was never finished.

Among his proposed, yet unfinished works may be mentioned sketch-books of life in Tokyo and in open-ports, and an essay on the Buddhist Hell. The reasons for their non-completion may be seen in the following quotation: —

“I thought of a series of sketches of open-port life; but I have been able to write only one. The open-port life is life in which I cannot mingle: I have no sympathies with it; — it jars on me — only makes me wish to be back again in Oki or Izumo.”

And this; —

“Meanwhile I keep collecting things for a book about Tōkyō life, to be completed perhaps within two years; but I have no heart for the subject just now. I don’t like Tdkyo very much. I have no overpowering impulses to write anything about it.”

Or once more, rather jocosely: —

“Don’t feel now like writing about Hell; I shall later on perhaps. But familiarity with a place spoils all inclination to write about it, aud my soul is in H., — at least in Tōkyō, — which seems to me identical. . . . Come up some time, and console me, when you have nothing else to do.”

This trait of Hearn, his dislike of openport or city life, has misled some people into regarding him as an eccentric or a recluse. Let us take up this point; and it brings us to consideration of Hearn’s social side. He had, no doubt, some eccentricities, but a man who is anything of a genius is more or less eccentric, and Hearn had no small claim to that title. But a recluse he certainly was not. While in the employ of the government school in Kumamoto he wrote me, —

“By the way, I am hoping to leave the Gov’t service, and begin journalism at Kobe. I am not sure of success; but Gov’t service is uncertain to the degree of terror, — a sword of Damocles; and Gov’t does n’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 kindliness, — instead of being made to feel that he is only the servant of petty political clerks. And I have been so isolated, that I must acknowledge the weakness of wishing to be among Englishmen again — with all their prejudices and conventions.”

And again, —

“I wish there was some kindred soul here to exchange ideas with betimes, —■ and that soul yours. However, if we cannot talk, or walk through some luminous street at night, we can surely write betimes. When you are not too busy, I hope you will write me, and feel assured of a prompt reply.”

Such are not the letters of a recluse. Hearn did not like isolation, yet he was driven into it for the most part by what he saw, or thought he saw, in city life. Being possessed of a keen intellect and a pure, sincere heart, and filled with lofty enthusiasm for truth, he utterly disliked affectation. He was an implacable hater of shams. The following was written some time after he had settled in the capital:

“The Tōkyō affectations of culture are disgusting shams; I do not think there is one f—r in the capital capable even of stating correctly the position of the higher agnosticism, — not one, even if you put all the books on the subject in his hands. These men try to read the thoughts of the nineteenth century with the ideas of the eighteenth ! They read words, and think they are reading thoughts; — just as if I were to think by looking at a column of Chinese characters that I was really reading Chinese!! ”

Not only was he disgusted with seeing in others what he thought affectation, but he abhorred to appear himself in the least degree affected. Shortly after he had taken the chair of English Literature in the Imperial University, Tōkyō, when I wrote him a letter, I addressed him as Professor Lafcadio Hearn, etc., on the envelope. He wrote back, —

“Perhaps it will seem strange to you, but I do feel a little uncomfortable at being addressed as Professor. I don’t feel wise enough yet for that title, though I may have, according to the suggestion of the University folks, to let it appear on my next title-page. But I am not even a graduate of any school, much less of a university.”

Next time I wrote, I told him it was quite needless for him to feel uneasy about being called a professor, because he was a professor in a university; and, with regard to his being a non-graduate, I cited the examples of J. S. Mill, H. Spencer, and others, and said that it is not from the machine-dug wells of universities alone that we get water of knowledge, but that there have been springs and fountains of truth, whence have gushed out living streams, giving new life to human thought; not to speak of such men as Socrates, Confucius, Jesus, and Sakyamuni, none of whom was the product of a university workshop. Hearn replied, — “Your letter — at least the first part of it ⁸ — gave me much pleasure: the second part did not convert me. What you call my modesty, is rather the fear of immodesty, — of appearing willing to figure, among my friends, as something much bigger than I know myself to be. What you say about our non-university giants is indeed true; the great minds seldom issue from universities, — but they change human thought. As for this waif here, however, he does not know what he could really ‘profess,’ — except a Fair knowledge of Herbert Spencer. No: please do not write ' Professor ’ on the envelope; to you I do not wish ever to be anything more than plain ‘H’ or ‘K.”⁹

He loved the society of simple, sincere, open-hearted men, among whom he could with ease “call a spade a spade.” Consequently he was fond of mingling with farmers, workmen, laborers, and fishermen. As an instance of it, let me quote from a letter he sent me just after his return from a trip to Fuji. Owing to the difficulty he experienced in making the ascent, he engaged four gorilci, experienced coolie-guides who carry the luggage of the traveler, and help him on the road. Of these men he says, —

“Perhaps the trouble with me was not merely that I am old and fat, but that I have what the gorilci call buta-ashi,¹⁰ — little narrow feet that can take no hold of anything. Coming down, the guides made me don tabi¹¹ and waraji¹² — and very good they felt to my feet. 1 have had the experience at all events, — never to be forgotten; — it. will remain with me till I join all the dead people who looked at sunrise from Fuji. And there will be mixed with it a certain grateful — I might honestly say, affectionate — remembrance of my gorilci. What splendid good hearty simple fellows they were, — and (forgive me for saying it) I wish the officials of the New Japan could be like them!”

Sometimes, however, this yearning after the society of simple-hearted men carried him to extremes. Here is an instance: —

“To get out of Japan would indeed be delightful for us both, were there better conditions to reach. Such conditions exist in the tropics and especially, perhaps, in the great tropical archipelago south of us. But soon there will be no simple, happy life in all this world. Mechanical industrialism and its vices and its ugliness are invading and destroying all things. In America, in Europe also, the advantage of living means still the ability to meet sincere and earnest men, — to form unconventional fraternal circles, — to nourish the mind with literature and art. But every year, everY day, every hour, the difficulty of living in London or Paris or Munich or Venice, etc., becomes more extraordinary. The most one can reasonably hope for, perhaps, is a tropical rest in the Malay region or in Equatorial South America. The former is possible now at any time, — the latter will be impossible for a long period to come. Elsewhere I see no chance, — except in the Arctic or Antarctic desolation. The plague of machinery is upon the world, and is transforming the human mind.”

At “home” and to his “old friends” no husband was more kind, no father more fond, and no man more lovable than Lafcadio. For his family he worked hard, and suffered much. For their sake he lived in “Hell,” went to “the treadmill,” “the grind,” and bore hardships such as he would never have borne, had he remained single. He was utterly disgusted with government service. He called it “an ugly business.” Yet he went three times into it merely for the benefit of his family. A little before accepting the professorship in the Imperial University, he wrote to me, —

“Awhile ago I felt that I should have to leave Japan this summer, but now it seems likely that I shall go back into Government service. I don’t like to; — I should rather be teaching in a Buddhist or a country school; and the prospects arc that I shall be ‘squeezed out’ as soon as possible. But the opportunity is good for my folks’ sake, and may allow me chances to make another volume or two on Japan.”

And thus on another occasion,—

“My best regards to you and all your kind household. Sorry to hear you have been ill. I am sick, too, — a little, — but manage to scrape along. And I am soulsick, too, angry about things, — unjust things.... If I did n’t belong to other and happier lives than my own, I think I should like to become a monk.”

Indeed, it was solely for the sake of those “other and happier lives” that depended on him for subsistence, that he became a Japanese subject. Previous to the coming into force of the revised treaties, and while there obtained in Japan the extra-territorial jurisdiction of the treatypowers, properties left intestate by the foreigners that had married Japanese wives used to go, not to their families in this country, but to their relations at home. Hearn knew this, and therefore wished to put it beyond dispute, by getting himself naturalized in this country, that his whole estate — whatever that might be — should devolve on his family he so much loved. But there was then in Japan no law of naturalization except by adoption. Under such circumstances the only way open to him of obviating the difficulties was to get himself adopted in the family of his wife’s father. Accordingly he did so, and assumed the Japanese name of Yakumo Koizumi. On this matter I find it inconvenient to quote from his letters to substantiate the foregoing statements, because the letters are of a character too personal to be printed. But I am in position to say that his anxiety for the welfare of his family was the only motive of his assumption of Japanese citizenship, because I was one of the few friends he consulted on the business at the time; and I liked him the more for this marked demonstration of his love of wife and children.

I have said that, to his friends, no man was more lovable than Lafcadio. On this topic I can cull his kind words from all his letters in my possession. A few, however, will suffice.

When I had sore eyes, and asked his pardon for not having answered his letter sooner, he wrote me, —

“ Even if you had no justifiable reason for not writing to me, or speaking to me, I certainly should not feel angry towards you — though I might feel disappointed or grieved; but as it is, I can only say that I feel a very sincere pain to hear that you have trouble with your eyes. I shall not write much, for fear of giving you needless trouble in reading my scribble — yet I must beg you to be extremely careful. Your eyes are your life, in one sense; and I have had so much agony with my own, that I can scarcely bear to think of your running any risks. I pray you to be very careful indeed, and to let me know if I can help you in case you need it.”

Were telepathy established on a sufficiently scientific basis, we might regard the following as an instance of it. Early in May, 1896, I met with an accident as I rode in a jinrikisha down the slope of a hill. The puller stumbled. I jumped out from my seat, but my garment was caught by something, and I fell headlong on the ground. My shoulder struck against a stone that stood by, and the left arm was dislocated. I was laid up, and unable to write to Hearn for some time. When at length I informed him of it, he answered me under the date of the 6th of June, —

“I feared that something in Kokoro had given you offence, and that you did not intend to write to me any more; then, on the night of the 4th, I had a curious dream about you. You pointed to your breast on the right side, near the shoulder, and said something which I do not know (in dreams you rarely hear voices, you only feel words); then I saw you were very much hurt. But I thought it was the lungs. Then, waking, I said— ’Only a dream!’ and I made a note of the time. So your letter surprised me. Perhaps there is more of a ghostly sympathy between us than I know.”

Such is the tone of his letters sent me when I was ill; let me quote from some others also. The following was written when he had removed to his new house. Is there a note more charming than this ?

“My present hours at the University are scattered through morning and afternoon; so that you might come when I am out. I therefore have told everybody to coax you in, whether I am absent or not, and to keep you. My house is now tolerably comfortable,— (though far inferior to any of the Izumo kachū-yashiki) ,¹³ — and my books are in order. So far as you care for accommodation in this rather remote part of Tōkyō, my house is yours, mi casa es a la disposicion de V d. ; but I suppose that you have much finer houses at your disposal, though I should feel inclined to dispute whether they contain friends who would be more happy to see you.”

Or this ? —

“The other day at Uyeno, what should I see for sale but a sakura-no-seirei,¹⁴ — kakemono! Only two yen sixty sen, I believe. Did n’t I seize upon it with joy! Though cheap, it is quite pretty; and when I get it mounted, you will see it. I am going to hang it in the room you sleep in sometimes, and when you stay overnight again, the pretty ghost will perhaps step out of the alcove, and caress you, — like the tapestry-woman in Gautier’s beautiful story.”

Of our mutual friend, Pay-Inspector McDonald, he says in another letter, —

“I have just had a kind letter from the dear Paymaster, who promises to come with you to see me before long, — after the next mail for home perhaps. I knew he would be much too busy to get away at once, for he is ‘no slouch’ in business and has more electric energy in him than five average John Bulls. He has lots to do just now, I am sure. (Keep his friendship, for he likes you thoroughly; and he is true as steel.)”

It is impossible to forgot that afternoon when the “dear Paymaster” and myself went to see Lafcadio at Kugenuma, — near the island, Enoshima, — where he was spending with his family a summer vacation. We all went down to the beach. The day was fine. About half a mile in front of us lies Enoshima, Picturesque Island, a mass of foliage floating on the blue; on our left the pine-grown cliffs of Katase and Inamura extend into the sea; and far off to the right the misty ranges of Hakone and Izu are faintly visible in the azure expanse; and above them all rises to the skies the ethereal cone of the snowclad Fuji, where gods are said to dwell. We strip ourselves and plunge into the surf. We swim. Lafcadio, a good swimmer, makes somersaults in the water to show us his skill. We are in the best of spirits. Coming out of the sea, we play in pure Adamic suit like children on the beach. Terrified are the small crabs, for we chase them; preventing some from getting into their holes, and digging others out of holes. A young white dog of the village comes running to us, and joins us in the chase. We did not kill the crabs, be it said; we simply chased them for fun, only the dog had his own way of disposing of them. It seemed very short, that day; and dusk brought us back to Lafcadio’s lodging. There we played with his children. The “dear Paymaster” taught Kazuwo, the eldest son, some gymnastic exercises; and Lafcadio and myself performed some acrobatic feats, vying with each other, to the great amusement of his wife, children, the nurses, and the hotel-servants. It was only the recollection of our duties of next day that obliged us, the Pay-Inspector and myself, to come back to Yokohama. Hearn returned to Tōkyō shortly after, and he wrote me, —

“ We had a most glorious day at Kugenuma, which I shall never forget, — and I trust we shall have many another in divers places. Many thanks to you for bringing our dear friend down, — not less than for the good time itself.”

I cannot forbear relating some incidents illustrative of his character. A few years ago, the street in front of his house was dug up to lay water-work pipes. One day a man was severely wounded, one of the pipes that were piled up having fallen on him. In a letter written next day Hearn says, —

“The whole street in front of my house is now torn up, and I have to get special permission from the police to take my kuruma¹⁵ round over the hill. There was a man killed, or nearly killed, yesterday in front of the house: a pipe fell on his back! I shall hate the sight of a water pipe for the rest of my mortal days.”

I found afterwards that Hearn helped the poor man by defraying part of his hospital expense.

In summer, 1901, while he was staying with his family and a pupil at Yaizu, he went to a shabby barber’s shop to get shaved. Delighted with the sharpness of the barber’s razor, he asked the barber to sharpen for him a penknife. The knife was returned to Hearn next day. He was pleased with it, and sent his pupil with fifty sen to pay the man. But the economical student gave him only twenty sen, and brought back the balance, saying that the barber was quite satisfied with what he gave him. Hearn got angry. “ Surely you would willingly pay a higher price,” said he, “if the fellow kept a better shop. I pay for worth, and not for appearance.” He told the student to go with the money right back to the man, and say to him that what other people gave him for a similar service was not a standard for Hearn, who was anxious to pay for his skill. The barber wrote a letter of thanks to Hearn. He showed it to me, and said that he was infinitely more glad to get it than he should be if he received some high-worded profession of gratitude from the Prime Minister.

Then he brought a black kitten from Yaizu. As he was taking a walk there, he met with a man who had something in his hand, wrapped in a piece of cloth; the thing seemed to budge. Hearn asked him what it was. The man answered it was a small cat, which he was going to throw into the sea. Hearn was moved with pity. He bought the kitten from the man. It was a sprightly little thing, skipping about like a spark. He called it Hinoko (Spark), and fondled it like a child.

Nay, his sympathy extended even to the inanimate. Within the precincts of the temple, Kobudera, there is a grove; and in that grove was a big old enoki, celtis sinensis. Hearn liked to see it every day from upstairs of his house. One stormy night its largest branch was broken by the gale, and, in falling upon the ground, damaged the fence and some tombstones. Two days later a committee of the parishioners held a meeting in the temple, and decided to cut down the tree. Hearn heard of this, and remonstrated with the men, saying that the old enoki had stood there for hundreds of years, and that it would be a great pity to cut it down, since the poor old patriarch of the grove had suffered enough by losing his great arm. In order the better to dissuade the committee, he mentioned some classical Japanese poems about the ghosts of ancient trees, and begged them to have mercy on the spirit of the aged enoki. But none of the men was of a poetical turn of mind; they said they would get good timber and fuel out of the tree. Thereupon Hearn proposed to buy it, with the ground on which it stood. The terms, however, were difficult to settle; the negotiation terminated, after much discussion, in exactly nothing. The enoki was felled, and its roots were dug up. Hearn missed it greatly. It was one of the causes that induced him to build a new house in Okubo, more than a mile distant from the temple, for he could not bear seeing the big gap that was made in the grove.

A man of such character could not well mingle in the busy, practical, or fashionable life of a city; therefore he shunned it, and was grossly misunderstood by those who were not admitted into his “fraternal circle.” I have recently noticed in an English paper an article on Hearn. The writer, after highly praising the merits of Hearn’s books, goes on,—

“But to do all this a great price had to be paid. . . . The price was the sacrifice of race, of language, of custom, habit, and very thought. . . . He left the world of his fellows, and entered a new one, he took a wife from among the foreign people with whom he lived, he obtained citizenship and therefore had to sacrifice his former name, he changed his food, his habits, and ere long his religion, for Lafcadio Hearn, to still use the name by which he was known to us, became a Shintoist. He buried himself away from the haunts of visitors, so far and so deeply that when he died, two days elapsed ere the news of his death was published.” ¹⁶

The paper itself is not worthy of notice; but as it seems to embody the general misunderstanding about my friend, I am tempted to consider it a little minutely. To take up, then, the various points in their order. How can a man sacrifice his race? He may indeed change his nationality, in the sense of membership of a particular country, but his race will remain ever the same. He cannot possibly change it, except by a new birth; so that this point, Hearn’s sacrifice of his race, is out of question. And so is his “sacrifice of language,” for is it not his books that have made him famous? and are they not all written in English, his mother tongue ? He spoke and wrote in English to his last moment. For a man who had lived for so many years in Japan, Hearn did not speak well the language of the country. He never spoke it, unless obliged to. This seems to have been a sort of crevice, through which slipped some mistakes into what he wrote. These are, however, minor ones, being generally about the etymology of some words, or about some details of Japanese etiquette or the plots of some dramas, in no way affecting the principal bearings of his stories or the main trend of his reasoning. His marriage with a Japanese lady was simply a matter of personal liking; and why and how he obtained Japanese citizenship has already been told above, so that it requires no repetition here. The business had no literary object whatever. That he changed his food, custom, and habits, how can a person who has never seen him, never been even to his house, presume to say? Hearn never took Japanese food except when traveling in the interior; and as to his custom and habits, let us have his own words: —

“What you tell me about Count Sasaki¹⁷ " rather surprises me. Of course it will be a great privilege to see him. But if I ever have the pleasure of going with you, you would have to pray him to excuse a man, who, although a Japanese in name, remains a barbarian in manners and total ignorance of etiquette.”

In fact, Hearn stuck to his own custom and habit, and that was the very reason why he was obliged to avoid “the haunts of visitors.” He knew very well the inevitable isolation of a man who resolves to be entirely himself. He says, —

“But I suppose you must know, or feel, that any one who wishes and resolves to be purely himself, must be isolated in all countries. The world’s fight is to prevent men from being themselves, — to mould them into the fashion of a day, deck them with a swallow-tail coat, and educate them to waste life and thought in the cultivation of conventions. Some very clever men are able to make a compromise, at great cost of self-worth; but the best men never obey, and are therefore left alone. I need not cite great names to you”

If the reader compares this letter with the one quoted above, in which Hearn expresses his desire to have some kindred soul near him to talk with, the reader will accord at least that I know Hearn’s feeling on this matter. He strove to live as far as possible up to his own ideal, to be himself. Among his “friends” there were Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, and Italians, as well as Japanese. On the other hand, it was not every Japanese who fared well with him, just as it was not every Occidental who found favor with him. He was a cosmopolitan in this respect ; his likes and dislikes were not governed by the difference of race. It is not therefore correct to say, “He left the world of his fellows, and entered a new one.” It would be more in accordance with fact to say that Hearn endeavored to leave the world of affectation and conventionalism, and to enter another of simplicity and sincerity. I have already quoted from his letters passages bearing on this point. He would have been “left alone” to a certain extent in whatever country he might have been. His success as an interpreter and expounder of the Japanese inner life and thought was due, not to any “sacrifice” he had made, but to his keen insight, deep sympathy, and insatiable desire to learn. It has always seemed to me wonderful that Hearn is almost sure to be correct, when he gives his own interpretation of Japanese ideas, rather than when he gives what he got. from some unthinking student.

We come now to the most important of the points raised; the question whether he gave up his thought and religion. It is rather surprising to find that any one who has read Hearn’s books should think the author had given up his thought. Indeed, the author described Japanese life, and interpreted Japanese thought, as no foreigner had ever done before him; but that was not sacrificing his ideas. He kept his thought intact ; nay, he was maturing it. It was because some Japanese ideas coincided with his own that he took so deep an interest in them. To say that he sacrificed his thought in order to imbibe Japanese thought is to confess to a dead failure to perceive the evolutionist ideas that pervade his works on Japan. Unless a person has mastered the works of Herbert Spencer, whom Hearn almost adored, — especially the Principles of Biology, Psychology, and Ethics, — he cannot read Hearn’s books on Japan in the light in which the author meant that they should be read.

Did Hearn “sacrifice” or “change” his religion, and become a Shintoist or a Buddhist? Nothing would be more absurd than to answer this question in the affirmative. For, first of all, Lafcadio Hearn had absolutely no religion. To say that a man “sacrificed” or “changed” that which he had not, is a sheer nonsense. Being a firm believer in Evolution, especially as expounded by Herbert Spencer, Hearn was a thorough-going agnostic, and remained so till he died. The only thing this over-diffident man used to pride himself on was his “fair knowledge of Herbert Spencer.” ¹⁸ Yet he was at the same time a poet, though he versified little. Being a poet, he naturally found pleasure in the emotional, and he saw the emotional side of Evolutionism, so to speak, in Buddhism and Shintoism. Hence his delight in handling some tenets of these religions. All the efforts of his literary life, at least while in Japan, were centred in an endeavor to propagate Evolutionism by means of the emotional; and by way of expedients to attain that end, he made use of some doctrines of Buddhism and Shintoism, because in them he found quaint, beautiful symbols wherewith to clothe his favorite theories. I am inclined to think that, had Hearn lived longer and taken to versifying, he would have been to Evolutionism what, in a sense, Pope was to the philosophy and theology of Bolingbroke. As Pope embellished his ideas with Christian tenets, so Hearn ornamented, in prose, his ideas with Buddhist and Shintoist beliefs; and as some verses of Pope’s have been thought models of orthodox Christian devotion on account of their beauty concealing their real sentiment,¹⁹ so a similar illusion has been created with regard to Hearn’s books because of their uncommon charm. But Hearn was an agnostic, though he made use of Buddhism ²⁰ and Shintoism. Even the old philosophical systems of Europe did not please him, if not interpreted by evolutional philosophy; much less an Oriental religion. On these points allow me to quote again from his letters, in order to substantiate my foregoing statements. He says, —

“Unless one has made a special study of evolutional philosophy, one is likely to be disappointed in reading philosophical books. Anything outside of the advanced thought of our time, is almost certainly barren and useless, unless it has been taken up and revivified — as Hume and Berkeley have been by Huxley.”

And about Buddhism, thus: —

“Real science is very much in accord with Buddhism; and Huxley said that only a very shallow thinker could reject Buddhism as irrational. The deepest thought of to-day is so nearly Buddhistic that I have no doubt of its finding sympathy in the West. But, as you know, the number of real thinkers is very few.” And, a little more particularly: —

“I have half-written a volume of psychological sketches, — from the same point of view as that expressed in the philosophic papers in Kokoro, — a mingling of Buddhist and Shinto thought with English and French psychology—(they do not simply mix well, — they absolutely unite, like chemical elements, — rush together with a shock). For instance, I take the history of the most common enigmatic sensations — such as pleasure in color, etc. — and attempt to explain them by preëxistence as the exact symbol of compound psychical inheritance.”

Or, still more fully: —“An apple represents to the senses form, color, odor, weight, and other qualities. These qualities to science signify only vibrations. Remove the qualities, or the vibrations which represent them, one by one, — there is no apple. What are the vibrations separated ? Motions of ultimates. What are the ultimates? Centres of forces only, — vortices in an infinite of which we know nothing. Form is emptiness. So vanishes the apple into absolute nothing — except incomprehensibility.

“A mind represents conceptions, sensations, feelings, perception — the units of all being simple sensations. Remove the sensations one by one, — there is no individual mind. Buddhism declares that there is no self, — no individuality. Forms are phantoms. The mind is a combination, and therefore doomed to disintegration, But if there be disintegration, there must be ultimates. What are the ultimates ? Spencer supposes psychical units as the ultimates of sensation. Buddhism supposes the combination called the karma. Thus both Science and Buddhism seem to me to agree in denying the simple character of that which we call self. By Buddhism and Science alike the individual is a composite. But the composition is different. Science gives the multiple for the past ten centuries at about fifteen quintillions of ancestral inheritances for each individual. The nature of karma is still a puzzle to us all. But that the psychical karma is a mere temporary combination involves the idea of other combinations. Worlds, mountains, etc., are created (as phenomena) by acts. Do not these acts imply combinations of phenomena ? I think they do. The suggestion of science to me is that the whole universe consists of nothing but vibrations representing soul-polarities. And I feel pretty sure that in the West we must soon throw away the idea of individuality, which leads only to selfishness. Science will force us to do so; for the new schools of philosophy teach that the Self is an almost infinite compound. And I think this is Buddhism. . . . My slight studies have forced me to abandon the idea of individuality, and to frankly attack it — as an enemy of progress. And I think all the evidence is in my favor. Nature offers no individual analogies. Everything material is compound. The mind is a mass of souls as the body is of cells — figuratively, — that is, ultimates of sensation. . . . Without pantheism the Mahayana doctrine affords an explanation of the universe in such a harmony with scientific philosophy, that I think the religious world must eventually accept it.”

So Hearn accepted some doctrines of Shintoism and Buddhism, because and so far as they seemed to him to agree with scientific, evolutional philosophy. Having accepted them, he gave them to the world. But how? Here are his own words describing his method.

“It occurs to me more and more that I can reach the cultivated class abroad on the subjects of philosophy and Buddhism most readily by spreading the bread with jam. Everybody likes sketches, stories, reveries; few love thinking for the mere sake of thinking; but all people of real culture can be made to like it by being betrayed into doing it. So, when I flank a paper on abstract questions with two little sketches or stories, the medicine is taken for the sake of the sugar.”

The “sugar” of Hearn was so delicious that the “medicine” was forgotten, and the physician came at last to be mistaken for a confectioner! In other words, Hearn wished to expound Evolutionism, the only “medicine” he thought good for human progress; and with a view to attracting the attention of his readers by some novelty, he approached it through some tenets of Buddhism and Shintoism; and again, to get those tenets “taken” with more ease, he “flanked” them with some strange, weird sketches or stories illustrative of some Shintoist or Buddhist beliefs: but these sketches, stories, or reveries were so charming that the author came to be misconceived as a Buddhist, or Shintoist, or even as a mystic.

When we met together, — and we did so quite often, — he used to express his wish for ability to devote his whole time to the contemplation of truth. Once he wrote me jestingly,—

. . . “but the Hokekyō ²¹ says that the merit of him who even speaks well of the sûtra shall be incalculable. Surely wE ought to have merit enough to give us in even this perishable world at least enough wealth to devote ourselves altogether to the study of beautiful truths and thoughts and to leave the detestable struggle for bread-and-butter to those who do not speak well of the Lotus of the Good Law.”

Born, in 1850, of an Irish surgeon and his Greek wife, in Leucadia, Ionian Islands, Hearn had roamed far and wide— in Ireland, England, France, and Spain, the United States of America and the French West Indies, — finding nowhere peace to his mind or to his body; and finally came to Japan to end his life in maturing the ideas he had gotten from his studies and travels. One summer he went to Ishiyama in the province of Omi, where the ancient poetess, Murasaki Shikibu, composed her well-known novel, Genji-Monogatari. He liked the place immensely. “Ishiyama is not of this world;” he wrote to me, “it is Paradise. Just to live there one summer, — what happiness!”

But that happiness was not to be his lot. While he was working hard to realize his ideal life, he passed away without realizing it.

Such was the guileless man, Lafcadio Hearn, a poet, thinker, loving husband and father, and sincere friend. His ashes now rest in the quiet cemetery of Zōshigaya. His tombstone bears this legend,—

SHŌGAKU IN-DEN-JŌ-GÉ HACHI-UN KOJI

Believing Man Similar to Undefiled Flower Blooming like Eight Rising Clouds, who dwells in Mansion of Right Enlightenment.

Yes, like an undefiled flower, a lotus, the man was in his heart. In outward appearance he was no way prepossessing. Slightly corpulent in later years, short in stature, hardly five feet high, of somewhat stooping gait. A little brownish in complexion, and of rather hairy skin. A thin, sharp, aquiline nose, large protruding eyes, of which the left was blind, and the right very near-sighted, requiring an eye-glass of grade No. 4, which was tied to a button of his vest by means of a long string, and carried in the pocket. He usually put on Japanese clothes at home. Out of doors he wore his native costume, which was clean but of coarse material. He never wore a starched collar nor cuffs, except in full dress; nor carried an umbrella when going out. If it rained,he usually took a jinrikisha. Moderate in habits, the only dish he relished was thick, well-done beefsteak, and his habitual drink was orange-squash and claret, of which he took not more than two glasses in an evening; but he was very particular about its quality, taking only the best French brand procurable. In tobacco he was rather an epicure. He kept himself supplied with Havana cigars and Japanese tobacco, both the best in the market. He smoked the latter with Japanese pipes, of which he had many of various shape and workmanship, their number reaching in later years to eighty-six. These he kept in boxes of his own design; two long cases, without lids, fixed on a stand one over the other. In the upper case he kept clean pipes, putting into the lower one those which needed cleaning. When he had a visitor, he would light one of these pipes, and talk like a man who was extremely afraid of offending his superior. Then he would slowly take out from the pocket his eyeglass. With it he would first look at the garden, and call the visitor’s attention to some tree or stone. While the guest was looking at the object, receiving thereby the light on his face, Hearn would quickly turn, and steal an electric glance at him. The glass was then put back into the pocket, and the conversation carried on as if nothing had happened. But this one quick glance had a power stronger than flash-light photography, for it enabled Hearn to take in the entire picture of the man: the color, material, and make of his clothes, the peculiarities of his countenance, — nay, even to read his mind.

Hearn was an early riser, although he sat up late at night. When in his writing mood, he wrote till two or three o’clock in the morning. I shall ever retain the vivid remembrance of the sight I had when I stayed over night at his house for the first time. Being used myself also to sit up late, I read in bed that night. The clock struck one in the morning, but there was light in Hearn’s study. I heard some low, hoarse coughing. I was afraid my friend might be ill; so I stepped out of my room and went to his study. Not wanting, however, to disturb him, if he was at work, I cautiously opened the door just a little, and peeped in. I saw my friend intent in writing at his high desk, with his nose almost touching the paper. Leaf after leaf he wrote on. In a while he held up his head, and what did I see! It was not the Hearn I was familiar with; it was another Hearn. His face was mysteriously white; his large eye gleamed. He appeared like one in touch with some unearthly presence.

Within that homely looking man there burned something pure as the vestal fire, and in that flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and poetry out of dust, and grasped the highest themes of human thought. One day he wrote me a reverie.

“An idea has been growing — getting wings; but I have not yet got it fairly out of the chrysalis. Probably you remember Carlyle’s Infinite Bootblack. Your letter this morning made my Imago stir i n its cocoon. Evolution tells us that our desires are relatively infinite because of the relatively infinite inheritance of dead wishes composing them. Carlyle’s notion is that they are infinite, because man is infinite; and that is also Buddhism, but Buddhism also tells us something in accord with modern ethics, that desire defeats itself, and that we obtain things once wished only on ceasing to wish for them. There are strange suggestions in all this. If we had the love of all mankind, we should pine for the love of the races of other worlds. If we possessed a solar system, — even that of Sirius, — we should want the Milky Way! When we have All by becoming All, then perhaps (?) desire will cease. Will it thereafter dream, and by dreaming create the yet-not-existing ? ” Has the man who wrote this reverie obtained All by becoming All ? Is that All now creating some yet-not-existing? These things are not given us to know. Of one thing, however, we are certain: that a portion of his karma, his works, will go on producing in the multitudes of his appreciating readers innumerable waves and impressions on their nerves and brains, thus calling into existence new countless selves that are images reflecting the milliards of souls that once constituted the charming being known among men as Lafcadio Hearn.