The Last Days of Lafcadio Hearn

IN the 37th year of Meiji, September 19, at three o’clock in the afternoon, I went to his study. He was walking round, putting his hands on his breast.

‘Are you not well?’ I asked.

‘I have a new kind of sickness.’

I inquired, ‘What kind?’

‘Sickness of heart, I think.’

‘I think that you worry too much. You had better rest quietly.’

This was my word of consolation for him. Immediately I sent a two-man jinrikisha for Dr. Kizawa, our family physician.

Hearn never wished to have me or the children see him troubled. He told me that I had better go away and not worry; but I was worried, and I stayed there near his desk. He started to write something, and I advised him to keep quiet.

Hearn asked me to leave him alone, and finished his writing. He said,‘This is a letter to Ume-san. If trouble comes, he will help you. Perhaps if this pain of mine increases, I may die. If I die, do not weep. Buy a little urn; you can find one for three or four sen. Put my bones in it, and bury it near a quiet temple in the country. I shall not like it if you cry. Amuse the children and play cards with them — how much better I shall enjoy that! There will be no need of announcing my death. If any one asks, reply, “Oh, he died some time ago!” That will be quite proper.’

I asked him not to talk so sadly.

When I said that to him, he replied, ‘I am very serious. Honestly, from my heart,’ he said, emphatically. Then he added, ‘No use,’ and rested quietly.

Several minutes later he stood up and said, ‘ I have no more pain. I wish to take a bath.’ He wanted a cold bath, and took one in the bathroom.

‘The pain has gone entirely. Strange — I feel very well. Mama-san, the sickness has left me,’ he said. ‘How about a little whiskey for me?’

I thought to myself, ‘ Whiskey is not good for the heart’; but he insisted.

I said, ‘I don’t know. However, if you wish some badly, I will give you some with water.’

I gave him a glass, and he raised the glass to his lips and said, ‘I shall not die.’

It made me feel better. Then he told me that he had had this particular pain for several days. ’I will rest a little while,’ he said, and got on to the bed with a book.

In the mean time the doctor had come. Hearn said, ‘What shall I do?’ He left his book and went into the guestroom, where he received the doctor. He said, laughingly, ‘You must excuse me, my sickness is gone.’

After the doctor had examined him, he told us that there was nothing serious the matter, and, as usual, talked and joked.

Hearn was almost always in good health. He dreaded like a child to have a doctor examine him, or to take medicine. He would not have a doctor unless I begged him to. When he was a trifle ill, and I failed to get a doctor in time, he would say to me afterwards, ‘I am greatly pleased that you forgot the doctor.’

Hearn, when he was not writing, would walk around the room, or up and down the roka, thinking things. Even when he was sick, he was not the kind of man who could stay in bed.

Two or three days before he died, Osaki, the maid, told me that the cherry tree was blossoming out of season (kaerizaki) in the garden by the studio. (In my household things like that are of great interest. To-day some little bamboo-sprouts have shot up in the woods; look! a yellow butterfly is flitting about; Kazuo, my son, found a little ant-hill; a toad came to the door; or the sunset is full of beautifully changing colors.) Such details as these drew more attention from us than if they had been important matters, and Hearn was informed of every one of these incidents. He was delighted to hear about them. It seems funny that this gave us so much pleasure. Toads, butterflies, ants, spiders, cicadas, bamboo-sprouts, and sunsets were among Papa-san’s best friends.

Now, in Japan, kaerizaki (to have the cherry tree blossom out of season) is not a sign of good fortune, so it worried me a little. But when I told Hearn about it, he was delighted, and replied,

‘ Arigato’ (Thanks). He went near the edge of the roka, or narrow veranda that runs around the outside of our house, and, looking at the flowers, said, ‘Hello.’ He added, '“It is warm like spring,” the cherry tree thought. “Ah! this is my world again”; and blossomed.’

Meditating a little while, he said again, ‘Pity! soon it will become cold and frightened, and die.’

The flowers bloomed just one day, on the 27th; in the evening all the petals had fluttered to the ground. This cherry tree blossomed every season, and Hearn loved it. Probably the cherry tree remembered that, and blossomed to bid him farewell.

Hearn used to get up early in the morning; but as he feared to disturb our dreams, he always waited in his studio, sitting by the hibachi (bronze bowl of lighted charcoal) and smoking quietly.

He preferred a long kind of pipe. He had about a hundred of them. The oldest one he had the year he came, and the others had been added. Each pipe was carved. Among the carvings were: Urashima (the Rip van Winkle of Japan) ; the kinuta of autumnal nights (the kinuta is a wooden mallet used by women to pound linen); eggplants; praying demons; crows on a leafless branch; utensils of the tea-ceremony; and verses of poems, for instance, ‘To-night of last year.’ These were the favorite ones among the hundred.

It seems that it was interesting to him to smoke these. He chose one from many, and always looked first at the mouthpiece and the bowl, then lighted it. Sitting on the floor-cushion very correctly, he rocked himself slowly back and forth, and smoked.

The day he died, the morning of the 26th, about half-past six, I went to his study. He was already up and smoking. I greeted him: ‘Good morning!’

He seemed to be thinking about something. Then he said, ‘ I had a very unusual dream last night.’

We always talked about our dreams. I inquired what kind of a dream it was.

He replied, ‘I traveled for a very long distance. Now that I am smoking here, it hardly seems to have been a real journey. It was like a dream,’ he continued; ‘not a journey in Europe, nor in Japan — it was a strange place.’ He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Before they went to bed, it was the custom for our three children to say, ‘Papa-san, good night, pleasant dreams.’ And their Papa-san replied, ‘The same to you.’ Or, in Japanese, ‘Yoki yume mimasho.’

That morning Kazuo, my son, before going to school, came and said, ‘Good morning.’ To this greeting his Papa-san replied, ‘Pleasant dreams.’ ‘The same to you,’ said Kazuo.

At eleven o’clock in the morning he was walking up and down the roka. He saw a kakemono (painting) depicting the sunrise, in the library tokonoma (raised recess at one end of a room). This is a picture of early morning. Many crows are flying around, and it looks like a scene from a dream. Hearn made the remark: ‘What beautiful scenery! I should like to live in a place like that.’

He bought many kakemono. He did not decide to hang this one or that one, but left the choice to me. He enjoyed looking at whichever one I hung. He looked at it as a visitor would, and was pleased. He had a very æsthetic taste, I think. He liked tea and drank it with pleasure. When I made tea he played the part of a guest. He did not perform the intricate details, but he understood the principle of the cha-no-yu, or teaceremony.

Hearn enjoyed listening to singing insects. That autumn we had a matsumushi (pine-insect). Toward the end of September, when the song of insects is hushed, it made us all feel sad to hear the matsu-mushi.

I asked Hearn, ‘Do you hear that noise?’

He replied, ‘That poor little insect has sung for us beautifully. How much I enjoyed it! As the weather grows colder and colder, does it know that it will have to die soon? Poor, sad little insect!’ After saying that, so piteously, he continued, ‘Some of these warm days we had better let it go into the bushes.’

The early blossoming of the cherry tree, the dream of a long journey, and the dying song of the matsu-mushi must have been signs of his death, of which it makes me very, very sad to think, even to-day.

In the afternoon he asked, ‘What book shall we send to Fujizaki-san, who is in the Manchurian campaign?’ He looked for the book on the library shelves, and afterwards wrote a letter to his friend.

While he was eating supper he looked unusually happy, and joked and laughed loudly. ‘Papa-san, good Papa-san!’ — ‘Sweet chickens!’— He talked with the children, and, as usual, walked round the library roka.

In a little less than an hour he came back to me with a drawn face, and said quietly, ‘Mama-san, the sickness of the other day has come back again.’

I went with him. For a little while he walked around the room with his hands on his breast. I advised him to lie quietly on the bed, and he did so. Very soon after that he was no longer of this world.

He died without any pain, having a little smile around his mouth. It could not be helped, if it was the order of Heaven. I wish that I could have taken care of him, and given all my strength in nursing him. This was too easy a death for me.²