Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn

II

EDITED BY ELIZABETH BISLAND

ONE of the intimate charms of letters lies in their freedom from any “body of doctrine.” Through all the more formal literature a man may create runs instinctively, and of necessity, a thread of consistency. Having maintained a certain thesis, a consciousness of once having assumed an attitude constrains the omission of any expression of a contradiction of it. Yet the very act of announcing and defending a position exhausts the impulse momentarily, and a reaction inevitably ensues. In the selections here made from Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese letters this apparent inconsistency is frankly displayed. Having written two volumes of his first impressions and delights in the land of his adoption, one sees him stretch himself after the long, cramping task, and exclaim with whimsical heartiness, “D—n the Japanese! ”

How little he ever anticipated publicity for these frank outpourings of his feelings and thoughts is proved by just such outbursts. And, no doubt for that very reason, it has been through these fluent, unbridled expressions of the mutabilities of his moods that he has found so much wider and more appreciative an audience than he was able to reach in his lifetime. Those who have come to know the richly human nature of the man have turned with new appetite to his serious, purposeful works.

KUMAMOTO, September 23, 1893.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
. . . The other night we had a singular festival next door. A teacher of dancing — an old woman of our neighborhood — died last year; and on the anniversary of her death, her ihai were placed on a platform erected for the occasion next door, and offerings set before it. Then all the little girls she had taught, from four years up, were brought to dance before the ihai to please her spirit. The dainty little fairy darlings! I went behind the scenes and saw all the dressing. The children were all faultless till the dance was over — but then, being tired, they would cry a little; and their mothers would carry them home, — looking like wonderful dolls in their tiny gorgeous Kaguradresses. Surely a Japanese baby-girl is the sweetest thing in all this world.
Beyond the other side of the garden I hear and see something much less pleasing — the training of a little geisha. The child is very young; but she is obliged to sing nearly seven hours every day. I can tell what time it is by the tone of weariness in her voice. Sometimes she breaks down and cries to be let alone, in vain. They do not beat her — but she must sing. Some day she will revenge herself on the world for this — and “sarve it right”!

The tsuki-tsuku-boshi is not yet dead; but it sings only at long intervals. There is great heat still — alternating with spells of sudden cold — each a little bit sharper than the last. Here winter and summer come and go by sudden jerks. What a funny country it is. There is nothing steady or permanent in nature. There is nothing steady or permanent in the race-character. And for fear that anything should be allowed to evolve and crystallize into anything resembling order, everything is being constantly remodelled and removed and reformed! What, what can come out of all this artificial fluidity! Ever most truly,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, September 24, 1893.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN:
The pendulum has swung to the right again; and the blue devils have vanished; and Kumamoto seems a good place to stay in for another two years. What do you think of that! I wonder whether Watson’s poems had anything to do with it. I have by no means read them all yet. This poetry is like wedding-cake: one must eat only a little at a time. The “Dream of Man ” is high sublimity; and urged me to fresh work at once on my “ Stone Buddha.” I was considering exactly the same puzzle; but my theory, luckily, is quite the reverse. It is that the motive and creative power of the universe are burnt-out passions and fears and sorrows, which are only transformed as forces by death, and must continue to make birth and rebirth till such times as they reach a second and supreme form of transformation by the triumph in all worlds of Buddha’s own theory. Alas! I can’t write poetry.
Reading the introduction, or dedication to London, there flashed to me memory of a mightier poem of the same kind by a smaller poet; — do you remember the colossal power of Alexander Smith’s “Edinburgh”? Smith could not have written “ The Dream of Man”; but he felt the grim heart of a city as I think no one else—certainly no Latin — ever felt it. Indeed Latin lands have not yet developed that awful thing, an industrial center, as the English and the Americans have, — the industrial center, whose blood is steam, whose nerves are steel, — devouring the weak, consuming the strong, — the machine in whose cogwork each man knows himself caught and doomed to whirl forever.
There are bits here and there that made me think of Villon. (Of course you know Payne’s wonderful translations.) I was a little startled by the verses on Oscar Wilde. Why do we feel that a poet like Watson has no right to be a mocker, to say cruel things to his fellow man? We feel the same in reading Tennyson’s terrible satire on Bulwer Lytton, and Browning’s brutal anger at Edward FitzGerald. I think we regard it as we regard an obscene poem by a priest, or in other words a sort of sacrilege to self. We have not yet learned (as I think we shall some day) to confess aloud that the highest poetry is Religion, and its world-priests the true prophets and teachers. But we feel it. Therefore we are shocked and pained when these betray any sign of those paltry or mean passions above which their art at other times lifts us.
To-day I must tell you the Legend of my house. There are, you know, two kinds of Haunters in Japan — the Living and the Dead. He who built this house to spend his age in was happy in all things, except a child. So he and his wife made agreement with a girl to bear a child for them, under certain conditions: Rachael and her handmaid. She gave him a boy; and he sent her away, — hiring a nurse for the boy. But he did not keep his promise in all things, — and even his wife blamed him. Whereat he said nothing. Presently, for the first time in his life, he fell ill. The physician (a garrison doctor), after trying what could be done, declared he must die. The Kannushi told him why — “there was an iki-ryo in his home.” So others said. Then remorse seized him. They tried to find the girl. She was gone — lost in the forty millions, God knows where. And the days dragged in uttermost pain. Then came a hyakusho saying he had heard where the woman was; he might be able to bring her back within a week. But the sick man said: “No, she would not forgive in her heart, it is too late.” And he returned his face to the wall and died. Then the widow, and the little boy, and the pet cat went away; and I took up my dwelling in the house. The iki-ryo has passed.
Ever faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO,September 27, 1893.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: -
... I have conquered the first vexation of licking my cubs into shape. They are good boys, as a whole; but each new class comes in absolutely savage. Only the Gods know how they have been trained. It takes real trouble for a while to get them into the regular drill. And you know how a foreign teacher is placed — he has no moral support whatever, and must smooth everything himself. I have never been obliged to complain — but I feel, if I did, that the blame of the result would be rather for me than for the offenders. The whole idea is that a good teacher should be able to keep his crew in hand; if he complains, it is a sign that HE is wrong! There is some sense in the policy, but it is too d——bly general.
Speaking of the oddity of the reception of our guests from Horai reminds me of another queer fact I want to chat with you about. It affords a striking proof of the fact that any foreigner who, without very considerable experiences, ventures to draw inferences about Japanese conduct is sure to be dead wrong.
You remember my story about the iki-ryo. It is true, of course. Now listen to the odd sequel. The people blamed the girl very much. They attributed to her the death of the man who had been unkind to her. They sympathized with her, but they blamed her.
Here comes the puzzle. Why did they blame her? Perhaps you don’t perceive the whole face of the puzzle yet. She was not blamed as a witch. She was not blamed for sorcery. But she was blamed for the death — caused by the haunting of the iki-ryo.
Now the sending of an iki-ryo is not voluntary at all. Other Things (with a capital “ T ”) may be sent. But an ikiryo goes forth quite independently of the will of the person from whom it emanates, and even without the knowledge of that person.
How then could the people blame the woman for the coming of the ikiryo and the death of the man?
Well, they blamed her for being TOO angry, — because anger secretly nursed may cause an iki-ryo to form, and therefore she ought to have known better than to allow herself to be so angry!
Who could divine such an explanation of the facts in the case? Eh?
Faithfully ever,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO,October 11, 1893.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: -
I am thinking it is time to write you — though there is no news. Suppose I write you of one day of my life as a sample. I don’t see why I should n’t — though I would not write it to anybody else on either side the world.
Morning, 6 A. M. The little alarm clock rings. Wife rises and wakes me, — with the salutation de rigueur of old Samurai days. I get myself into a squatting posture, draw the never-extinguished hibachi to the side of the futons, and begin to smoke. The servants enter, prostrate themselves, and say good morning to the damasama, and proceed to open the to. Meanwhile in the other chambers the little oil lamps have been lighted before the tablets of the ancestors, and the Buddhist— (not the Shinto deities)—and prayers are being said, and offerings to the ancestors made. (Spirits are not supposed to eat the food offered them, — only to absorb some of its living essence. Therefore the offerings are very small.) Already the old men are in the Garden, saluting the rising sun, and clapping their hands, and murmuring the Izumo prayers. I stop smoking, and make my toilet on the Engawa.
7 A. M. — Breakfast. Very light — eggs and toast. Lemonade with a spoonful of whiskey in it, and black coffee. Wife serves; and I always make her eat a little with me. But she eats sparingly, — as she must afterward put in an appearance at the regular family breakfast. — Then Kurumaya comes. — I begin to put on my yofuku. I did not at first like the Japanese custom, — that the wife should give each piece of clothing in regular order, see to the pockets, etc.; — I thought it encouraged laziness in a man. But. when I tried to oppose it, I found I was giving offense and spoiling pleasure. So I submit to the ancient rule.
7:30 A. M. —All gather at the door to say Sayonara; but the servants stand outside, — according to the new custom requiring the servants to stand when the master is in yofuku. I light a cigar, — kiss a hand extended to me (this is the only imported custom), and pass to the school.
BLANK of 4 to 5 hours.
Returning, at the call of the Kurumaya, — all come to the door again as before, to greet me with the O-Kaeri; and I have to submit to aid in undressing, and in putting on the kimono, obi, etc. The kneeling cushion and hibachi are ready. There is a letter from Chamberlain San, or Mason San. Dinner.
The rest eat only when I am finished; because there are two ukyo, but I am the worker. The principle is that the family supporter’s wants are first to be considered, — though in other matters he does not rank first. For instance, the place of honor when sitting together is always by age and parentage. I then take the fourth place, and wife the fifth. And the old man ¹ is always then served the first.
During the repast there is a sort of understanding that the rest of the family and the servants are not to be disturbed without necessity. There is no rule; but the custom I respect. So I never go into that part of the house unnecessarily till they have finished. There is also some etiquette about favorite places,—which is strictly observed.
3 P. M.-4. — If very hot, everybody sleeps, — the servants sleeping by turns. If cool and pleasant, all work. The women make clothes. The men do all kinds of little things in the garden and elsewhere. Children come to play. The Asahi Shimbun arrives.
6 P. M. — Bath hour.
6:30-7:30. — Supper.
8 P. M. — Everybody squats round the hako-hibachi to hear the Asahi Shimbun read, or to tell stories. Sometimes the paper does not come, — then curious games are played, in which the girls join. The mother sews at intervals. But if the night is very fine, we sometimes go out — always taking turns so that the girls get their share of the outing. Sometimes the theatre is the attraction. Sometimes there are guests. I think the greatest joy, though, is the discovery and purchase of odd or pretty things in some lamp-lit shop at night. It is brought home in great triumph, and all sit round it in a circle to admire. My own evening, however, is generally passed in writing. If guests come for me, the rest of the family remains invisible till they go away, — except wife, - that is, if the guests are important. Then she sees to their comfort. Ordinary guests are served only by the girls.
As evening wanes, the turn of the Kami-Sama comes. During the day, they receive their usual offerings, but it is at night the special prayers are made. The little lamps are lighted; and each of the family in turn, except myself, says the prayers and pays reverence. These prayers are always said standing, but those to the hotoke are said kneeling. Some of the prayers are said for me. I was never asked to pray but once — when there was grief in the house; and then I prayed to the Gods, repeating the Japanese words one by one as they were told to me. — The little lamps of the Kami are left to burn themselves out.
All wait for me to give the signal of bed-time, — unless I should become so absorbed in writing as to forget the hour. Then I am asked if I am not working too hard. The girls spread the futons in the various rooms; and the hibachi are replenished, so that we — i. e. I and the men only — may smoke during the night if we wish. Then the girls prostrate themselves with an o-yasumi! and all becomes quiet.
Sometimes I read till I fall asleep. Sometimes I keep on writing — with a pencil in bed, — but always, according to ancient custom, the little wife asks pardon for being the first to go to sleep. I once tried to stop the habit — thinking it too humble. But after all it is pretty, — and is so set into the soul that it could not be stopped. And this is an ordinary day in outline. Then we sleep.
Faithfully ever,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, December 14, 1893.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: -
What you said in your last letter about the effect of darkness upon you in childhood, haunted me: I thought I would revert to it another time. And now that about 100 compositions have been corrected, I can find a chance to chat about it.
You specified nothing: I understand the feeling itself was vague, — like many other feelings of childhood, of which the indefiniteness itself is a fear, — a sort of mysterious depression of which you could not yourself have told the cause. (This I also remember, — but it became coupled with other unpleasant sensations of which I shall speak presently.) It seems to me these feelings of earliest childhood — so intense and yet so vague — are the weirdest in all human experience, and that for the best of reasons: they are really ghostly. Not of our own experience are these;—they are of the dead — of the vanished generations behind us; — and I am not sure but that our pleasures are equally weird at that age. I remember crying loudly at an air played upon the piano, — in the midst of a fashionable gathering;—and I remember people (long buried) whose names I have quite forgotten, making their voices and faces kind, and trying to coax me to tell what was the matter. Naturally I could not tell; — I can only vaguely guess now; I know the emotions stirred within my child-heart were not of me — but of other lives. But then I had to give a reason: so I lied. I said I was thinking of my uncle who was dead (though I never really cared for him at all). Then I got petting, and cake, and wondered, young as I was, how I had been able to deceive.
Have you not noticed how utterly the psychologists have failed to explain the Fear that comes in dreams? The suspension of will-power is given as an explanation; but that will not do,— because there is frequently loss of willpower in dreams unaccompanied by the real fear of nightmare. The real fear of nightmare is greater than any fear possible to experience in waking moments; it is the highest possible form of mental suffering; it is so powerful that were it to last more than a few instants it would cause death; and it is so intimately linked to feelings of which we know nothing in waking hours — feelings not belonging to life at all — that we cannot describe it. It is certainly well that we cannot. Now I have long fancied that this form of fear also is explainable only by the inheritance of ancestral memories, — not any one painful experience, but the multitudinous fears of a totally unknown past, which the Gods have otherwise mercifully enabled us to forget. The memories themselves are indeed gone — only the sensations of them remain — stir into life at vague moments of sleep, and especially in the sleep of sickness, when the experiences of real life grow faintest in recollection.
Well, when I was a child, bad dreams took for me real form and visibility. In my waking hours I saw them. They walked about noiselessly and made hideous faces at me. Unhappily I had no mother then — only an old grand-aunt who never had children of her own, and who hated superstition. If I cried for fear in the dark, I only got whipped for it; but the fear of ghosts was greater than the fear of whippings — because I could see the ghosts. The old lady did not believe me; but the servants did, and used to come and comfort me by stealth. As soon as I was old enough to be sent to a child-school, I was happier, — because, though badly treated there, I had companions at night who were not ghosts. Gradually the phantoms passed — I think when I was about ten or eleven I had ceased to fear. It is only in dreams now that the old fear ever comes back.
Now I believe in ghosts. Because I saw them? Not at all. I believe in ghosts though I disbelieve in souls. I believe in ghosts because there are no ghosts in the modern world. And the difference between a world full of ghosts and another kind of world shows us what ghosts mean — and gods.
The awful melancholy of that book of Pearson’s may be summed up in this, I think: “The Aspirational has passed forever out of life.” It is horribly true. What made the aspirational in life? Ghosts. Some were called Gods, some Demons, some Angels; — they changed the world for man; they gave him courage and purpose and the awe of Nature that slowly changed into love; — they filled all things with a sense and motion of invisible life, — they made both terror and beauty.
There are no ghosts, no angels and demons and gods: all are dead. The world of electricity, steam, mathematics, is blank and cold and void. No man can even write about it. Who can find a speck of romance in it? What are our novelists doing? Crawford must write of Italy or India or ancient Persia; Kipling of India; Black of remote Scotch country life; James lives only as a marvellous psychologist, —and he has to live and make his characters live on the Continent; Howells portrays the ugliest and harshest commonplaces of a transient democracy; — what great man is writing, or can write of fashionable society anything worth reading, or of modern middle life, — or of the poor of cities, — unless after the style of Ginx’s Baby? No! those who write must seek their material in those parts of the world where ghosts still linger, — in Italy, in Spain, in Russia, in the old atmosphere of Catholicism. The Protestant world has become bald and cold as a meeting-house. The ghosts are gone; and the result of their departure proves how real they were. The Cossacking of Europe might have one good result,:—that of bringing back the ghosts, — with that Wind of the Spirit which moves the ocean of Russian peasant life for the gathering storm. Sometimes I think of writing a paper to be called “The Vanishing of the Gods.”
Perhaps you are tired of theories. But I want to speak of one thing more, — a theorizer, a beautiful French boy of seventeen, whose name was Henry Charles Reade. He died at seventeen. Friends who loved him collected his boyish poems, and printed them in a little book, — seven or eight years ago. One of these poems expresses a sensation only a psychologist of power could explain. It relates to what Spencer tells us is relative to all antecedent experience. I offer my own “overdone” translation of it —because I have not the original. The original was more simple, and in all respects worthy of a better rendering, but the idea is as follows: —

Certainly the lad who could write such a poem at sixteen might have been a poet if he lived, — don’t you think so?
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, January 12, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —<BR/> . . . Mason’s criticism is partly right from his point of view as expressed in his letter, I think. But I also think that neither in this article nor in a previous one did he quite understand my drift, which was psychological. I still think, as you say, the foreigner does not see the real Japanese life, even under the most favoured conditions. Only the other day, at a Japanese house, my host, drawing his child to his breast, and caressing it, said to me, “We cannot do that among ourselves, and the little fellow knows he has not any right to come near me [meaning cuddle up to him] when there are guests. But as you are a foreigner, you will excuse him.” In Izumo, I noticed contrary signs, proving that the conduct of husband and wife to each other is by rigid rule purely formal under observation; even the pretended throwing aside of formality is formal. Of course I have learned something of other lives, — but not by my own observation. The emotional side, — even in the case of death, is forever hidden, not from us alone, but from all. I heard the other day of tragedies that astounded me. The sufferers — fellow teachers — never interrupted duty, nor hinted of their loss or suffering in any possible way. They would have thought themselves degraded to have done so.
And now for the big? — Are you really surprised that I think evolutional philosophy has enormously spiritualized our idea of woman and made her infinitely more precious? Well, it is true I have seen no books written upon the subject, but the doctrine entails the result I specify. Here I would wish to be able to talk; to explain my thoughts on paper fully would take too long. I can only suggest. The physical or material facts of evolution are terribly beautiful and wonderful. But what is infinitely more terrible, and beautiful, and wonderful, is the psychological story of evolution. Let us think of a sweet young pure girl, with the mother-soul (mutter seele?) in her but half fledged. According to theology what does she represent? A freshly created being, moulded by an imaginary God. According to materialism what is she? A perfect female body, brought into existence by material laws, and destined to live and perish like a plant, a human polycotyledon. According to evolutional philosophy what is she? Not ONE, — but countless myriads of millions of dead in ONE LIFE MANIFESTATION, — an incomprehensible Multiple, that has appeared but once in the order of the Cosmos, and never can appear again.
But that is only the barest definition. Why is she beautiful? Because in the struggles of unknown millions of years between the tendency to beauty and the tendency to ugliness, the beautiful triumphed over unspeakable obstacles and won. Why is she good and sweet and loveable? Because by the sacrifices, and the love, and the sense of goodness acquired by countless millions of mothers, — in spite of all conceivable suffering and pain and terror and fear and wickedness, — the sum of all the unthinkable multitude of tendencies in the race to goodness triumphed to appear in her. A good man, a good woman, seemed a small matter a century ago, — men and women were, as for Heine, Nos. 1, 2, 3 . . . 11, 12. But when we learn scientifically at what an awful cost of suffering and struggle and death any single moral being is evolved, surely the sense of the value of a life is increased unspeakably. And on the other hand, — how much more terrible does a crime appear! For of old a crime was a violation of the laws of a country, a particular society, a particular theology. But in the light of the new philosophy, a real crime becomes a crime against not only the totality of all human experience with right and wrong, but a distinct injury to the universal tendency to higher things, — a crime against not humanity only but the entire Cosmos, — against the laws that move a hundred millions of systems of worlds.
Years ago I wrote a story I am now ashamed of; but I cut out a paragraph and send it, because it embodies some of my fancies on this topic. Still, I can’t write my thoughts to you; they are things to talk over only. Thousands of illustrations only could satisfy me.
Then there is this other very awful thing. Here is a woman, for example, who is good, sweet, beautiful. Since the beginning of the world, all life, all humanity, all progress, has been working against evil and death in one line. The end of the line only is visible. It is that girl. She represents the supreme effort. But she is a creator. Her place is to continue the infinite work of the dead. He who weds her has an awful responsibility both to the dead and to the unborn. To the dead, if he should mar their work. To the future, if he plant in that bosom a life incapable of continuing the progress of the past. But this is too long. Are you not tired?
Ever most truly,
LAFCADIO IIEARN.

KUMAMOTO, (no date.)
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN : -
. . . But about Japanese art. I, too, thought of the anatomy question. It did not solve the question for me. Why? Because I don’t believe the Greeks knew anything about anatomy. I say this after a careful study of Winkelmann and the monuments so matchlessly engraved by the Society of Dilettanti (what would I not give to have the edition I saw), and the engravings of gems, etc., etc. The astounding thing is that the great Italians who studied osteology, — who drew the skeleton before covering it with painted flesh, — never approached the commonest Greek outline. Did the Greeks ever dissect? It strikes me their religion would have rendered that impossible, and their humanity. How did they manage? What is the awful, — really awful secret of their knowledge of grace? We know the geometrical rules for the face. But those for the limbs, — those long, lithe, light, wondrous limbs! and the torso, — and the divine symmetry of the rest, — we cannot find. We know they drew by rule, squaring off the surface with cross-lines first. But what was the rule? And how did they find it? And the muscles of the Farnese, — the supplement of the miraculous Aphrodite, — the abdominal lines of the Apollo, — nay, the mere set of the limbs of the smallest nude figure on a gem! Yet they cannot have studied anatomy at all in the modern sense. No; they loved the body, — they found the secrets of the divine geometrical idea of it through the intuition of that love, possible only in a time when there was no sense of shame or shyness, or what we call conscience, about sexual matters in themselves. I can’t think scientific knowledge of anatomy could have helped them much in groping for the pure ideal which they found; it would rather have balked them. And I don’t think ignorance of the subject would alone explain the Japanese incapacity in the anatomical direction.
Strange to say, however, yesterday I saw an inartistic cow. Really! I had been invited to look at some kakemono by Ippo, and lo! — the first was a running cow. It was very good. But why? Curiously enough the cow had been drawn exactly like an insect; the figure was about as large as this sheet, and foreshortened, — the hindquarters being turned toward the gazer. What the artist had caught was the motion, — the queer crooked lumbering knockkneed motion of the cow. I don’t believe he could have done it on a bigger scale at all; he could not have then given the sense of the gawky movement.

KUMAMOTO, January 30, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: -
. . . The secret of many enthusiasms evoked by national song must be, I imagine, hidden from those of alien race and experience. I was horribly disappointed by the Ranz des Vaches; perhaps one must have lived in Switzerland to understand it. Songs there are, like the Marseillaise, which explain their history by the melody alone; so powerfully do they reflect the emotion of an hour. But I doubt whether even so splendid a song as the Death of Nelson, with its shouting lines, —

could be fully understood by any Latin. And what would an Irish or Scotch air mean to an Italian or a Spaniard, in most cases? Association is the great witchcraft. Still there are songs which combine the triple charm of poetry, melody, and association.
“Patti is going to sing at the St. Charles,” said a friend to me years ago. “I know you hate the theatre, but you must go.” (I had been surfeited with drama by old duty as a dramatic reporter, and had vowed not to enter a theatre again.) I went. There was a great dim pressure, a stifling heat, a whispering of silks, a weight of toiletperfumes. Then came an awful hush; all the silks stopped whispering. And there suddenly sweetened out through that dead hot air a clear, cool, tense thread-gush of melody unlike any sound I had ever heard before save — in tropical nights — from the throat of a mocking-bird. It was Auld Lang Syne only — but with never a tremolo or artifice; a marvellous, audacious simplicity of utterance. The silver of that singing rings in my heart still.
There is no song which moves me so much, — not because of the “ intolerable pathos ” only (as Matthew Arnold calls it) of the words, nor only because of the souvenir of the divine voice. But there is a dream fastened to that song — the dream of an Indian city stifling in reek of pestilence and smoke of battle, — trenches piled with sweltering corpses, —grim preparation against worse than death, — the sense of vast remoteness from all dear things, — and the sudden lighting up of all those memories which grow vivid only at the last hour. And then, like one of those memories itself, — startling beyond all startlingness, — the Highland piping beyond the walls, —

I believe it was first the Clan call of the MacGregors; then Auld Lang Syne. What was Beethoven to that?
Well, your mere statement of the history of the existing military songs of course kills all hope of finding in them anything corresponding to sincerity of thought and true emotional art. Such merits belong only to spontaneous work, and especially to the creations of the people. Only the melodies and the historical or local suggestions can therefore account for the excitement these new songs produce;— and the most one could attempt would be to give the lilt and an occasional suggestive fragment, — in a purely literary study of them. On the other hand, their Zeit-geist quality is of the most extraordinary, and worthy of a very elaborate essay. The idea of “ Supensa ” and “ Dawin ” is too enormously grotesque! — what a study you could make! The romance would n’t be on the surface, — but deep down under the whole thing there is certainly the broad interest of a raceeffort for independence. It would apologize for the atrocities of many an utterance. “ Supensa ” ! ! “ Dawin ” !!!
I read Kipling’s ballad three times last night, and every time I found new surprises in it. Queer how he hits the local color and the exact human tone always. I used to chat while stopping at Carey’s in Yokohama with just such men as the sealers. I rather like seamen, engineers, — all that hard class. They can tell you wonderful things; and their talk is never dull. But to use it like Kipling one must have worked with them, lived their life. I always fail in trying to work out one of their yarns; the stage of the action is too unfamiliar to me.
Ever faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, February 16, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN : —
. . . Perhaps the condition of the Japanese dog is one thing which tells powerfully against our beliefs about the influence of Buddhism upon the treatment of animals. The Japanese dog remains very close to the primitive wolf or jackal. The chin makes only an exception to the rule. We must talk of the dog in general. What a difference between the Western and the Japanese dog! How different the gaze, the intuition, the memory! And how utterly deficient the Japanese dog in gratitude! And how indifferent to the question of who owns him! He is still pretty savage, — occasionally shows it in very ugly ways. He feeds his young exactly like a wolf, — chewing up, half-digesting, and then regorging for the benefit of the pup. He is curiously cunning, — but in a savage sneaking way.
A great russet brute lies on the sunny half of the street facing the college. He lets the children play about him, but is n’t demonstrative; Japanese dogs never are. He is apathetic in demeanor. I notice his sharp ears suddenly prick, and his sharp eyes aim for a minute far down the road. That means inward emotion, but what it is I can’t imagine, because he deliberately turns his head the other way, and stares at the smoke of the AsoSan. Presently I discern, far, far away, the cause of the momentary emotion, coming at a lope. It is a dog of foreign breed, — setter build, — long, light, with silky drooping ears. Approaching, his very large eyes get bigger. He sees the red bulk lying in the middle of the road. A moment he hesitates; but the wolfish muzzle is pointed toward Aso-San. There is a chance. The Gwai-koku-jiu “ spurts ” to pass. But at exactly the right moment the red jaws take him by the back. Oh! the agony and the howling! The foreigner howls, yelps, desperately fights. The native does n’t make a sound, — he only bites. For half-a-mile he follows the fugitive, — rolls him over, turns him in circles, — torments him into frenzy. At last he comes back slowly, and lies down again, without a sign of excitement, among the children. A peasant strides along with his horse, and scowls at the dog. The late warrior suddenly changes to jackal, — because the peasant happens to have a bamboo. Such a combination of cunning, ferocity, and cowardice, is not of the civilized dog.
I have not yet been able to find a civilized cat. There must be some, but they are very rare. Shyness and treachery characterize most of them. The horses I don’t understand at all. Never have I seen one struck. The peasant marches along with them, speaks gently to them, does not ask them to labor harder than himself. I followed one day, for fully two miles, a peasant who walked behind his horse, holding the ends of two heavy planks fastened to the animal’s back. The motion of the horse caused them to oscillate;—so the peasant held the ends and handled them in such a manner as to prevent the horse’s back from being rubbed. I see lots of such actions. But why are these horses so horribly afraid? They actually whinny with fear when they hear a kuruma coming. It gives one an awful suspicion that they must have been started out in life with a sufficient experience of pain to render all further correction unnecessary. They give one the same unpleasant impression as performing dogs do — which is unspeakable.
This brings me to Buddhism. Surely, as you say, it were better for Japan to have any civilized religion than none, —and the danger is that of having none. You can’t imagine how many compositions I get containing such words as — “Is there a God? — I don’t know ” — which, strange as it may seem to you, does n’t rejoice me at all. I am agnostic, atheist, anything theologians like to call me; but what a loss to the young mind of eighteen or twenty years must be the absence of all that sense of reverence and tenderness which the mystery of the infinite gives. Religion has been very much to me, and I am still profoundly religious in a vague way. It will be a very ugly world when the religious sense is dead in all children. For it is the poetry of the young, that should color all afterthought, — or at least render cosmic emotions possible later on.
The Shinshu does seem to hold its own, or to gain. But there are curious obstacles. The students of its schools are obliged to reverence the Head of the sect as a living Buddha, — wherefore modern teaching must be tabooed, or modified and distorted. (The same thing, I believe, in the University; for at one time it was seriously proposed to secure John Fiske for the chair of Philosophy, but the discovery that the evolution theory assailed the Imperial prerogatives ended that project. I am also told there is no chance of having the Spencerian or any other form of Western philosophy ably taught in Japan for similar reasons — much as they pretend to follow Spencer.) But, as I was saying, what of the other sects of Buddhism? — the enormous ignorance, the hideous poverty, the corruption?

Shinto, on the other hand, has native nobility. It seems to me in many ways a noble creed; and the absurdities of its records of the Gods are not, after all, greater than those of other faiths, — either Indian or Hebrew or Moslem. But the fox-temples and fox-rites and divinations and exorcism mixed up with it, seem to have much more influence than the real thing.
Finally, Christianity offers the small choice of thirty-two different creeds. And the young man of the twentyseventh year of Meiji is disgusted. He thinks of all these beliefs as various forms of mental disease, and cannot naturally be expected to believe, without a study in advance of his years, that all — even the most corrupt — are growths rooted in universal truth.
For the educated classes no religion seems to be the certain goal. This means, not only that the whole moral experience of the past is being thrown overboard by that class, with nothing to replace it; but it means the rapid widening of an impassable gulf between the educated and the common people — the total separation of the head from the body — or at best a sort of nuke-kubi future. A ghastly business!
What is there, after all, to love in Japan except what is passing away? There are fairer lands and skies; — there is a larger — a vastly larger life — as much larger as Sirius is larger than the moon. The charm was the charm of nature in human nature and in human art, — simplicity, — mutual kindness, — child-faith, — gentleness, — politeness. These are evaporating more rapidly than ether from an uncorked bottle. And then what will there be but memories? The one tolerably good thing yet is the cottony softness of all this life, — the let-alone spirit of it,— for even hates work with smiles and pretty words. This is good, — although it means the absence of large feelings, sympathies, comprehensions. As the stronger the light, the blacker the shadow it casts, so are our highest feelings offset by evil ones of startling power. One does not meet these in Japan. But how long will this condition last? The bonds are only now being cast off; — the cage doors opened. By and by the games will begin — circenses.
I am through most of the indexing. Really it was more pleasant than I had anticipated — gives one such an exaggerated idea of the extent of one’s work. The book seemed to be enormous by the time I got to “Zuijin.” An enormous illusion — or, rather, evocation of the ghost of old Japan.
Ever most truly,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

(To be continued.)