Chapter XII · —APPRECIATIONS AND EPITOMES (continued 2)

Hearn spends a long happy day at Matsue, the chief city of the Province of the Gods, where he gathers legends and impressions. Of course it has its temples. The temple is the best place to see the life of the people. There it is that the children play all day long. In the summer evening, the young artisans and labourers prove their strength in wrestling-matches. The sacred dances are held there; and on holidays it is also the place where toys are sold.

Often at night your attention will be drawn to a large, silent, admiring group of people standing before some little booth. They will be looking at a few vases of sprays of flowers—an exhibition of skill in their arrangement.

Returning homeward, there is seen a poor woman scattering some white papers into a stream of water, and, as she throws each one in, murmuring something sweet in a low voice. She is praying for her little dead child, and these are little prayers that she has written to Jizō.

Kitzuki is the most ancient shrine in Japan, and it is the living centre of Shintō. There the ancient faith burns as brightly as ever it did in the unknown past. Buddhism may be doomed to pass away, but Shintō "unchanging and vitally unchanged remains dominant, and appears but to gain in power and dignity." Many of the wisest scholars have tried to define Shintō.

But the reality of Shintō lives not in books, nor in rites, nor in commandments, but in the national heart, of which it is the highest emotional religious expression, immortal and ever young. Far underlying all the surface crop of quaint superstitions and artless myths and fantastic magic, there thrills a mighty spiritual force, the whole soul of a race with all its impulses and powers and intuitions. He who would know what Shintō is must learn to know that mysterious soul in which the sense of beauty and the power of art and the fire of heroism and magnetism of loyalty and the emotion of faith have become inherent, immanent, unconscious, instinctive.

At Kaka is the Cave of the Children's Ghosts. No evil person may enter the Shin-Kukedo, for if he does, a large stone will detach itself and fall down upon him. Here in this great vault, lifting forty feet above the water, and with walls thirty feet apart, is a white rock out of which drips a water apparently as white as the rock itself. This is the Fountain of Jizō, which gives milk to the souls of little dead children.

And mothers suffering from want of milk come hither to pray that milk may be given unto them; and their prayer is heard. And mothers having more milk than their infants need come hither also, and pray to Jizō that so much as they can give may be taken for the dead children; and their prayer is heard and their milk diminishes.

At least thus the peasants of Izumo say.

In another cavern are countless little piles of stones and pebbles, which must have been made by long and patient labour. It is the work of the dead children. One must step carefully, for the sake of these little ones, for if any work is spoiled, they will cry. In the sand are prints of little naked feet, "the footprints of the infant ghosts." Strewn here and there on the rocks are tiny straw sandals, pilgrims' offerings to keep the baby feet from being bruised by the stones.

In the temple of Hojinji of the Zen sect at Mionoseki, there is an altar which bears many images of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy. Before the altar, and hung from the carven ceiling, is a bright coloured mass of embroidered purses, patterns of silk-weaving and of cotton-weaving, also balls of threads and worsted and silk. These are the first offerings of little girls. As soon as a baby girl learns how to sew or knit or embroider, she brings to the Maid-Mother of all grace and sweetness and pity, the first piece that she has made successfully.

Even the infants of the Japanese kindergarten bring their first work here,—pretty paper-cuttings, scissored out and plaited into divers patterns by their own tiny flower-soft hands.

Among the many Notes on Kitzuki which interest, is the annual festival of the Divine Scribe, the Tenjin-Matsuri, to which every school-boy sends a specimen of his best writing. The texts are in Chinese characters, and are generally drawn from the works of Confucius or Mencius. And Hearn remarks that the children of other countries can never excel in the art of Japanese writing. The inner ancestral tendencies will not let them catch the secret of the stroke with the brush. It is the fingers of the dead that move the brush of the Japanese boy.

At every temple festival in Japan there is a sale of toys. And every mother, however poor, buys her child a toy. They are not costly, and are charming. Many of these toys would seem odd to a little English child. There is a tiny drum, a model of the drum used in the temples; or a miniature sambo table, upon which offerings are presented to the gods. There is a bunch of bells fastened to a wooden handle. It resembles a rattle, but it is a model of the sacred suzu which the virgin priestess uses in her dance before the gods. Then there are tiny images of priests and gods and goddesses. There is little of grimness in the faiths of the Far East; their gods smile. "Why religion should be considered too awful a subject for children to amuse themselves decently with never occurs to the common Japanese mind."

Besides these, there are pretty toys illustrating some fairy-tale or superstition and many other playthings of clever devices, and the little doll, O-Hina-San (Honourable Miss Hina), which is a type of Japanese girl beauty. The doll in Japan is a sacred part of the household. There is a belief that if it is treasured long enough it becomes alive. Such a doll is treated like a real child: it is supposed to possess supernatural powers. One had such rare powers that childless couples used to borrow it. They would minister to it, and would give it a new outfit of clothes before returning it to its owners. All who did this became parents. To the Japanese a new doll is only a doll; but a doll that has received the love of many generations acquires a soul. A little Japanese girl was asked, "How can a doll live?" "Why," was the lovely answer, "if you love it enough, it will live!"

Never is the corpse of a doll thrown away. When it has become so worn out that it must be considered quite dead, it is either burned or cast in running water, or it is dedicated to the God Kōjin. In almost every temple ground there is planted a tree called enoki, which is sacred to Kōjin. Before the tree will be a little shrine, and either there or at the foot of the sacred tree, the sad little remains will be laid. Seldom during the lifetime of its owner is a doll given to Kōjin.

When you see one thus exposed, you may be almost certain that it was found among the effects of some poor dead woman—the innocent memento of her girlhood, perhaps even also of the girlhood of her mother and of her mother's mother.

There is a sad and awful tradition in the history of the Kengyōs, the oldest of the noble families of Izumo. Seven generations ago the Daimyō of Izumo made his first official visit to the temples of Hinomisaki, and was entertained royally by the Kengyō. As was the custom, the young wife served the royal visitor. Her simple beauty unfortunately enchanted him, and he demanded that she leave her husband and go with him. Terrified, but like a brave loving wife and mother, she answered that sooner than desert her husband and child she would kill herself.

The Lord of Izumo went away, but the little household well knew the evil that now shadowed it. And shortly the Kengyō was suddenly taken from his family; tried at once for some unknown offence, and banished to the islands of Oki, where he died. The Daimyō was exultant, for no obstacle was in the way of his desire. The wife of the dead Kengyō was the daughter of his own minister, whose name was Kamiya. Kamiya was summoned before the Daimyō, who told him that there was no longer any reason why Kamiya's daughter should not enter his household, and bade Kamiya bring her to him.

The next day Kamiya returned, and with the utmost ceremony announced that the command had been fulfilled—the victim had arrived.

Smiling for pleasure, the Matsudaira ordered that she should be brought at once into his presence. The Karō prostrated himself, retired, and presently returned, placed before his master a kubi-oke upon which lay the freshly-severed head of a beautiful woman,—the head of the young wife of the dead Kengyō,—with the simple utterance:

"This is my daughter."

Dead by her own brave will,—but never dishonoured.

"None love life more than the Japanese; none fear death less." So it is that when two lovers find that they can never wed, they keep the love death together, which is jōshi or shinjū. By dying they believe that they will at once be united in another world. They always pray that they may be buried together. (In other books are written additional stories illustrating the touching custom.)

At the temple of Yaegaki at Sakusa, are the Deities of Wedlock and of Love, and thither go all youths and maidens who are in love. Hundreds of strips of soft white paper are knotted to the gratings of the doors of the shrine. These are the prayers of love. Also there are tresses of girls' hair, love-sacrifices, and offerings of sea-water and of sea-weed. In the soil around the foundation of the shrine are planted quantities of small paper flags.

All over Japan there are little Shintō shrines before which are images in stone of foxes.

The rustic foxes of Izumo have no grace: they are uncouth; but they betray in countless queer ways the personal fancies of their makers. They are of many moods,—whimsical, apathetic, inquisitive, saturnine, jocose, ironical; they watch and snooze and squint and wink and sneer; they wait with lurking smiles; they listen with cocked ears most stealthily, keeping their mouths open or closed. There is an amusing individuality about them all, and an air of knowing mockery about most of them, even those whose noses have been broken off. Moreover, these ancient foxes have certain natural beauties which their modern Tōkyō kindred cannot show. Time has bestowed upon them divers speckled coats of beautiful colours while they have been sitting on their pedestals, listening to the ebbing and flowing of the centuries and snickering weirdly at mankind. Their backs are clad with finest green velvet of old mosses; their limbs are spotted and their tails are tipped with the dead gold or the dead silver of delicate fungi. And the places they most haunt are the loveliest,—high shadowy groves where the uguisu sings in green twilight, above some voiceless shrine with its lamps and its lions of stone so mossed as to seem things born of the soil—like mushrooms.

It is difficult to define the Fox superstition, chiefly because it has sprung from so many elements. The origin is Chinese, and in Japan it has become mixed with the worship of a Shintō deity, and further enlarged by the Buddhist belief of thaumaturgy and magic. The peasants worship foxes because they fear them. But there are good foxes and bad ones. The country holds legend after legend of goblin foxes and ghost foxes, and foxes that take the form of human beings. Every Japanese child knows some of them.

Seldom is a Japanese garden a flower-garden: it may not contain a flower. It is a landscape garden, and its artistic purpose is to give the impression of a real scene. Besides, it is supposed to express "a mood in the soul." Such abstract ideas as Chastity, Faith, Connubial Bliss were expressed by the old Buddhist monks who first brought the art into Japan. Little hills, and slopes of green, tiny river-banks, and little islands, together with trees, and stones, and flowering shrubs are combined by the artist. All these things have their poetry and legend, and sometimes have a special name signifying their position and rank in the whole design.

In the ponds little creatures such as the frog and water-beetle live, and they too have their legends. The children make all of these creatures and the insects their playmates. Then there are the semi, which are musicians, and lovely dragon-flies which skim over the ponds; and back on the hill above the garden are many birds. It is not necessary to have a garden outdoors, for there are indoor gardens too which can even be put into a koniwa, the size of a fruit-dish.

The dead are never dead with the Japanese; they become even more important members of the family, for the spirits of the dead control the lives of the living. Each day there is some ceremony in memory of these blessed dead; and no home is so poor but it has its household shrine. And Shintō, ancestor-worship,

signifies character in the higher sense,—courage, courtesy, honour, and above all things loyalty. The spirit of Shintō is the spirit of filial piety, the zest of duty, the readiness to surrender life for a principle without a thought of wherefore. It is the docility of the child; it is the sweetness of the Japanese woman. It is conservatism likewise; the wholesome check upon the national tendency to cast away the worth of the entire past in rash eagerness to assimilate too much of the foreign present. It is religion,—but religion transformed into hereditary moral impulse,—religion transmuted into ethical instinct. It is the whole emotional life of the race,—the Soul of Japan.

Self-sacrifice, loyalty, the deepest spirit of Shintō, is born with the child. If you ask any Japanese student what his dearest wish is he will surely answer,—"To die for His Majesty, our Emperor." It is impossible in this limited space to give an adequate idea of all that Shintōism implies.

The dressing of the hair is a very important part of a Japanese woman's toilet. It is dressed once in every three days, and the task takes probably two hours. The elaborateness of the coiffure changes with the growing age of the maiden. But when she is twenty-eight, she is no longer young, and so thereafter only one style is left, that worn by old women. Of course, there are many superstitions about women's hair. It is the Japanese woman's dearest possession, and she will undergo any suffering not to lose it. At one time it was considered a fitting vengeance to shear the hair of an erring wife, and then turn her away.

Only the greatest faith or the deepest love can prompt a woman to the voluntary sacrifice of her entire chevelure, though partial sacrifices, offerings of one or two long thick cuttings, may be seen suspended before many an Izumo shrine.

What faith can do in the way of such sacrifice, he best knows who has seen the great cables, woven of women's hair, that hang in the vast Hongwanji temple at Kyōto. And love is stronger than faith, though much less demonstrative. According to an ancient custom a wife bereaved sacrifices a portion of her hair to be placed in the coffin of her husband, and buried with him. The quantity is not fixed: in the majority of cases it is very small, so that the appearance of the coiffure is thereby no wise affected. But she who resolves to remain for ever faithful to the memory of the lost yields up all. With her own hand she cuts off her hair, and lays the whole glossy sacrifice—emblem of her youth and beauty—upon the knees of the dead.

It is never suffered to grow again.

The "Diary of a Teacher" gives a careful picture of the school-life in Japan as Hearn finds it. At the Normal School, which is a state institute, the young man student has no expenses. In return for these kindnesses, when he graduates he serves as a teacher for five years. Discipline is severe, and deportment is a demand. "A spirit of manliness is cultivated, which excludes roughness but develops self-reliance and self-control."

The silence of study hours is perfect, and without permission no head is ever raised from a book.

The female department is in a separate building. Girls are taught the European sciences, and are trained in all the Japanese arts, such as embroidery, decoration, painting; and of course that most delicate of arts—the arranging of flowers. Drawing is taught in all the schools. By fifty per cent. do Japanese students excel the English students in drawing.

There is also a large elementary school for little boys and girls connected with the Normal School. These are taught by the students in the graduating classes. Noteworthy is the spirit of peace prevailing at the recesses that occur for ten minutes between each lesson. The boys romp and shout and race, but never quarrel. Hearn says that among the 800 scholars whom he has taught, he has never even heard of a fight, nor of any serious quarrel. The girls sing or play some gentle game, and the teachers are kind and watchful of the smaller scholars. If a dress is torn or soiled the child is cared for as carefully as if she were a younger sister.

No teacher would ever think of striking a scholar. If he did so he would at once have to give up his position. In fact, punishments are unknown. "The spirit is rather reversed. In the Occident the master expels the pupil. In Japan it happens quite as often that the pupil expels the master."

It takes the Japanese student seven years to acquire the triple system of ideographs, which is the alphabet of his native literature. He must also be versed in the written and the spoken literature. He must study foreign history, geography, arithmetic, astronomy, physics, geometry, natural history, agriculture, chemistry, drawing.

Worst of all he must learn English,—a language of which the difficulty to the Japanese cannot be even faintly imagined by any one unfamiliar with the construction of the native tongue,—a language so different from his own that the very simplest Japanese phrase cannot be intelligibly rendered into English by a literal translation of the words or even the form of the thought.

And he studies all this upon the slimmest of diets, clad in thin clothes in cold rooms. No wonder many fall by the way.

The students have been trained to find a moral in all things. If the theme given to them for a composition is a native one, they will never fail to find it. For instance,—a peony is very beautiful, but it has a disagreeable odour; hence we should remember that "To be attracted by beauty only may lead us into fearful and fatal misfortune." The sting of the mosquito is useful, for "then we shall be bringed back to study."

There is nothing distinctive about the Japanese countenance, but there is an intangible pleasantness that is common to all. Contrasted with Occidental faces they seem "half-sketched." The outlines are very soft, there is "neither aggressiveness nor shyness, neither eccentricity nor sympathy, neither curiosity nor indifference.... But all are equally characterized by a singular placidity,—expressing neither love nor hate, nor anything save perfect repose and gentleness,—like the dreamy placidity of Buddhist images." Later, these faces become individualized.

In another chapter Hearn tells of Two Festivals: one the festival of the New Year; and the other, the Festival of Setsubun, which is the time for the casting out of devils. On the eve of this latter festival, the Yaku-otoshi, who is the caster-out of the demons, goes around, to any houses that may desire his services, and performs his exorcism, for which he receives a little fee. The rites consist of the recitation of certain prayers, and the rattling of a shakujō. The shakujō is an odd-shaped staff. There is a tradition that it was first used by Buddhist pilgrims to warn little creatures and insects to get out of the way.

I quote from a French review for the description of one of Hearn's stories:—

"But the most beautiful of all, 'A Dancing Girl,' is drawn from the chronicles of that far-off past, from which, say what one may, he is certainly wise in drawing his inspirations. It is the story of a courtesan in love.

"At the height of her celebrity, this idol of a capital disappears from public life, and nobody knows why. Leaving fortune behind, she flies with a poor youth who loves her. They build for themselves a little house in the mountains, and there exist apart from the world, one for the other. But the lover dies one cold winter, and she remains alone, with no other consolation than to dance for him every evening in the deserted house. For he loved to see her dance, and he must still take pleasure in it. Therefore, daily, she places on the memorial altar the accustomed offerings, and at night she dances decked out in the same finery as when she was the delight of a large city. And the day comes, when old, decrepit, dying, reduced to beggary, she carries her superb costume faded with time, to a painter who had seen her in the days of her beauty, that he may accept it in exchange for a portrait made from memory, which shall be placed before the altar always bearing offerings, that her beloved may ever see her young, the most beautiful of the shirabyashi, and that he may forgive her for not being able to dance any more.

"This shirabyashi, from the distance of time, appears to us here, clothed with I know not what of hieratical dignity, such as the modern geisha could never possess. Lafcadio Hearn in no wise pretends in the pages he devotes to these latter, to idealize them beyond measure. They appear under his pen as pretty animals somewhat dangerous; but is it not their calling to be so? Whatever be the rank of the Japanese woman, he only speaks of her with an extreme discretion, and with a caution that one would look for in vain in the portrait of Mme. Chrysanthème. The subtle voluptuousness of his style is never extended to the scenes he reproduces; it is a style immaterial to a rare degree; he knows how to make us understand what he means, without one word to infringe those proprieties that are dear to the Japanese, even more than virtue itself. And to believe him, the young, well-brought-up girl, the honest wife, are in Japan the most perfect types of femininity that he has ever met in any part of the world;—he, who has travelled so much. Opinions formed superficially by globe-trotters on this subject that he scarcely glances at because of respect, arouse as much indignation in him as could they in the Japanese themselves. Evidently he has penetrated into their inner life, into the mystery of their thoughts, into their hidden springs of action, to the point of participating in their feelings." (390.)

From Hōki to Oki there is much to learn about the landscapes of Western and Central Japan; and Hearn gives many legends, and many more impressions and intimate glimpses.

As there are only walls of thin paper separating the lives of these Japanese people, no privacy can exist. Really everything is done in public, even your thoughts must be known. And it never occurs to a Japanese that there should be any reason for living unobserved. This must show a rare moral condition, and is understood only by those who appreciate the charm of the Japanese character, its goodness, and its politeness.

No one endeavours to expand his own individuality by belittling his fellow; no one tries to make himself appear a superior being: any such attempt would be vain in a community where the weaknesses of each are known to all, where nothing can be concealed or disguised, and where affectation could only be regarded as a mild form of insanity.

Hearn speaks of the strange public curiosity which his presence aroused at Urago. It was not a rude curiosity; in fact, one so gentle that he could not wish the gazers rebuked. But so insistent did it become that he had to close his doors and windows to prevent his being watched while he was asleep.

Kinjurō, the ancient gardener, knows a great many things about souls. "No one is by the gods permitted to have more souls than nine." Kinjurō also knows legends about ghosts and goblins.

An essay penetrating the very heart of the Japanese, is the chapter on the "Japanese Smile." It crowns Hearn's work as a superb interpretation of Japanese soul-life. This smile is the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of self-sacrifice. It is metaphysically and psychologically exquisite. It is an etiquette which for generations has been cultivated. It was a smile, in origin, however, demanded by hard heathen gods of the victims they sacrificed; and, in history, it was demanded of the subject race by the early conquerors. If refused, then off came their heads! The smile is born with the Japanese child, and is nurtured through all the growing years.

The smile is taught like the bow; like the prostration; like that little sibilant sucking-in of the breath which follows, as a token of pleasure, the salutation to a superior; like all the elaborate and beautiful etiquette of the old courtesy.

The Japanese believe that one should always turn one's happiest face to people. It is a wrong to cause them to share your sorrow or misfortune, and so hurt or sadden them. One should never look serious. It is not only unkind but extremely rude to show one's personal griefs or anger: these feelings should always be hidden. Even though it is death one must face, it is a duty to smile bravely.

It was with such a smile that the dying boy Shida wrote and pasted upon the wall over his bed:—

Thou, my Lord-Soul, dost govern me. Thou knowest that I cannot now govern myself. Deign, I pray thee, to let me be cured speedily. Do not suffer me to speak much. Make me to obey in all things the command of the physician.

This ninth day of the eleventh month of the twenty-fourth year of Meiji.

From the sick body of Shida to his Soul.

The key to the mystery of the most unaccountable smiles is Japanese politeness. The servant sentenced to dismissal for a fault prostrates himself, and asks for pardon with a smile. That smile indicates the very reverse of callousness or insolence: "Be assured that I am satisfied with the great justice of your honourable sentence, and that I am aware of the gravity of my fault. Yet my sorrow and my necessity have caused me to indulge the unreasonable hope that I may be forgiven for my great rudeness in asking pardon." The youth or girl beyond the age of childish tears when punished for some error, receives the punishment with a smile which means: "No evil feeling arises in my heart; much worse than this my fault has deserved."

This quality, which has become as natural to the Japanese as the very breath of his body, is the sweet tonic-note of his whole character.

Sayōnara! Across the waters echoes the cry, Manzai, Manzai! (Ten thousand years to you! ten thousand years!). Hearn is leaving. He is going far away. His pupils write expressing their sorrow and regret. He sends them a letter thanking them for their gift of a beautiful sword, and in a loving farewell says:—

May you always keep fresh within your hearts those impulses of generosity and kindliness and loyalty which I have learned to know so well, and of which your gift will ever remain for me the graceful symbol!

And a symbol not only of your affection and loyalty as students to teachers, but of that other beautiful sense of duty expressed, when so many of you wrote down for me, as your dearest wish, the desire to die for His Imperial Majesty, your Emperor. That wish is holy: it means perhaps more than you know, or can know, until you shall have become much older and wiser. This is an era of great and rapid change; and it is probable that many of you, as you grow up, will not be able to believe everything that your fathers believed before you, though I sincerely trust you will at least continue always to respect the faith, even as you still respect the memory, of your ancestors. But however much the life of New Japan may change about you, however much your own thoughts may change with the times, never suffer that noble wish you expressed to me to pass away from your souls. Keep it burning there, clear and pure as the flame of the little lamp that glows before your household shrine.

Out of the East[31] (8), followed "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan." The charm of the first impression is waning.

In a letter Hearn writes:—

Every day, it strikes me more and more how little I shall ever know of the Japanese. I have been working hard at a new book, which is now half finished, and consists of philosophical sketches chiefly. It will be a very different book from the "Glimpses," and will show you how much the Japanese world has changed for me. I imagine that sympathy and friendship are almost impossible for any foreigner to obtain,—because of the amazing difference in the psychology of the two races. We only guess at each other without understanding.

In another letter, speaking of the title for this book, he continues:—

It was suggested only by the motto of the Oriental Society, "Ex Oriente lux." ... The simpler the title, and the vaguer—in my case—the better: the vagueness touches curiosity. Besides, the book is a vague thing.

The Academy, writing of "Out of the East," says:—

"Each book marks a longer step towards the Buddhist mysticism, wherein we have lost our poet. 'The Stone Buddha,' in the first mentioned book, is a dreamy dialogue between the wisdom of the West; Science, with her theories of evolution, revolution and dissolution; Buddhism, with its re-birth on re-rebirth; and Nirvâna at the end. This thing also is vanity. As there can be no end, so there can be no beginning; even Time is an illusion, and there is nothing new beneath a hundred million suns." (286.)

The old charm of word colour sparkles in "The Dream of a Summer Day."

Mile after mile I rolled along that shore, looking into the infinite light. All was steeped in blue,—a marvellous blue, like that which comes and goes in the heart of a great shell. Glowing blue sea met hollow blue sky in a brightness of electric fusion; and vast blue apparitions—the mountains of Higo—angled up through the blaze, like masses of amethyst. What a blue transparency! The universal colour was broken only by the dazzling white of a few high summer clouds, motionlessly curled above one phantom peak in the offing. They threw down upon the water snowy tremulous lights. Midges or ships creeping far away seemed to pull long threads after them,—the only sharp lines in all that hazy glory. But what divine clouds! White purified spirits of clouds, resting on their way to the beatitude of Nirvâna? Or perhaps the mists escaped from Urashima's box a thousand years ago?

The gnat of the soul of me flitted out into that dream of blue, 'twixt sea and sun,—hummed back to the shore of Suminoyé through the luminous ghosts of fourteen hundred summers.

And Hearn tells with charm why "the mists escaped from Urashima's box a thousand years ago," and also of the old, old woman who drank too deeply of the magical waters of youth.

Reviewing the present volume, the Spectator remarks:—

"The main drift of his books, however, is to bring into view not so much the glories of Japanese sunlight or the charms of animate or inanimate Nature, on which it falls, as the prevalence, at any rate in extensive sections of Japanese society, of modes of thought and standards of conduct which, though often widely apart from our own, demand the respect of every candid Englishman. And certainly in this endeavour he meets with a large measure of success. His account of the essays written and the questions asked by the members of his class in English language and literature at the Government college, or Higher Middle School, of Kyūshū, discloses not only what must be regarded as a very good development of general intelligence among those young men, but a moral tone which in many respects is quite as high, though with interesting differences in point of view, as would be expected among English boys or young men in the upper forms of our great public-schools or at the Universities. Of course, what boys or young men write for or say to their masters and tutors cannot by any means always be taken as sure evidence of their inner feelings or of the character of their daily life. But, so far as one can judge, Hearn's pupils appear to have given him their confidence, and what he tells us of them may therefore reasonably be taken without much discount. It certainly illustrates an attractive simplicity of character and thought, not untouched by poetic imagination, together with a high development of family affection and strong sense of family duty, and also a remarkably high level of patriotic feeling. This spirit is apparently inherited from the old military class of the island of Kyūshū, and it is not surprising to hear that rich men at a distance are keen to give their sons the opportunity of acquiring the Kyūshū 'tone.' Towards the close of his book Mr. Hearn gives an extremely interesting account of a farewell visit paid him in the autumn of 1894 by an old pupil who had entered the army after leaving college, and had been placed, at his own request, in one of the divisions ordered for service in Corea:—

"And now I am so glad," he exclaimed, his face radiant with a soldier's joy, "we go to-morrow." Then he blushed again, as if ashamed of having uttered his frank delight. I thought of Carlyle's deep saying, that never pleasures, but only suffering; and death are the lures that draw true hearts. I thought also—what I could not say to any Japanese—that the joy in the lad's eyes was like nothing I had ever seen before, except the caress in the eyes of a lover on the morning of his bridal.

"A beautiful thought, the reader will agree; but why could it not be uttered to a Japanese? A good deal will be found on this subject in Mr. Hearn's book, and, as we have indicated, we do not think it all holds together. His class of students, we learn, professed to think it 'very, very strange' that there should be so much in English novels about love and marrying; and then he tells us that—

Any social system of which filial piety is not the moral cement; any social system in which children leave their parents in order to establish families of their own; any social system in which it is considered not only natural but right to love wife and child more than the authors of one's being; any social system in which marriage can be decided independently of the will of the parents by the mutual inclination of the young people themselves ... appears, to the Japanese student of necessity a state of life scarcely better than that of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, or at best a sort of moral chaos.

"Now, of course, it is known here that in Japan, as in other Oriental countries, it is a rule for marriages to be family arrangements, as regards which it is expected that the young persons will conform to the wishes of their respective parents.

"But of course some inconsistencies are to be expected from an author enamoured of the whole country. He is very Buddhist, and is anxious to show that Buddhists have always held, in matters of faith, something very like the doctrines of modern science with regard to the perpetual sequence of evolution and dissolution. On this subject he argues cleverly and effectively; but when, by implication or expressly, he compares Buddhism with Christianity, it is evident that the latter faith has not received any very close study from him. None the less is his book, though dominated by a somewhat uncritical enthusiasm, full of interest and instruction as to the difference between the gifts, the motives, and the mental and moral attitude of the Japanese and the peoples of the West, ourselves in particular. It is well worth while to study that remarkable people as they are seen by one who is so much captivated by them, and believes in them so strongly, as Mr. Lafcadio Hearn." (380.)

The Athenæum does not speak so cordially, and a review in the Atlantic Monthly says:—

"Mr. Hearn is not at his best as a metaphysician.... But we can forgive him in that he stands forth a staunch champion, defying the West from the heart of the Japanese people. He does this most clearly in his finest essay, 'Jiujutsu.' Here the very meaning of the martial exercise, to 'conquer by yielding' is taken as text to explain the phenomena or national awakening which foreign cities have denounced as a 'reversal.' Japan has borrowed weapons of force from the West, in order successfully to resist its insidious influence. True progress is from within. Mr. Hearn writes:—

However psychologists may theorize on the absence or the limitations of personal individuality among the Japanese, there can be no question at all that, as a nation, Japan possesses an individuality stronger than our own." (306.)

Hearn further brings out in a conversation with a young Japanese the fact that Japan, in order to keep pace with the competition of other nations, must adopt the methods which are in direct variance to her old morality, and all that which has made the Japanese what he is. Japan's future depends upon her industrial development, and the fine old qualities of self-sacrifice, simplicity, filial piety, the contentment with little, are not the weapons for the modern struggle. In a postscript to this essay, written two years later, after the war with China, Hearn adds that "Japan has proved herself able to hold her own against the world.... Japan has won in her jiujutsu."

Japan holds infinite legends of ghostly significance, and it is no wonder that Hearn found so much that was sympathetic. Every new town or new temple reveals some aspect of the odd. In this second book the joyousness is gone; he is now a philosopher, and his philosophy reflects much of the ghostly. The gruesome has been buried, but it is not dead: it will return reincarnated, not of the ghastly of real life, but of the dim, far-away, always more distant ghostly in the lives of the dead.

A revelation of the Nirvâna into which Hearn is being slowly drawn appears in "At Hakata." He has been telling the story of the sacred mirror that a mother in dying gave to her daughter, bidding her to look into it every morning and evening and there see her mother. And the girl looked and "having the heart of meeting her mother every day," knew not that the shadow in the mirror was her own face.

One are we all,—and yet many, because each is a world of ghosts. Surely that girl saw and spoke to her mother's very soul, while seeing the fair shadow of her own young eyes and lips, uttering love!

And with this thought, the strange display in the old temple court takes a new meaning,—becomes the symbolism of a sublime expectation. Each of us is truly a mirror, imaging something of the universe,—reflecting also the reflection of ourselves in that universe; and perhaps the destiny of all is to be molten by that mighty Image-maker, Death, into some great sweet passionless unity. How the vast work shall be wrought, only those to come after us may know. We of the present West do not know: we merely dream. But the ancient East believes Here is the simple imagery of her faith. All forms must vanish at last to blend with that Being whose smile is immutable Rest,—whose knowledge is Infinite Vision.

"The Red Bridal" is a story of jōshi—the joint suicide for love. These two young people had been playmates since their early school-days, and were deeply attached to each other. The girl's father, under the influence of an evil stepmother, agrees to sell his daughter to the richest and also the most disreputable man in the village. Hearing this awful command, the maiden only smiles the brave smile—inheritance of her Samurai blood. She knows what she must do.... Together she and her lover quietly meet the Tōkyō express. As its low roar draws nearer, they "wound their arms about each other, and lay down cheek to cheek, very softly and quietly, straight across the inside rail."

We close the book with the memory of Yuko, heroic little Yuko, who, even as noble Asakachi, who had his beautiful wish to die for his country fulfilled, proves that the Japanese spirit of loyalty is far greater than our word implies. With all her country, Yuko, a humble little serving-maid, whose name signifies "valiant," is sorrowing because of a Japanese attack upon the Czarevitch of the Russians. Her soul burns with the desire to give something that will soften the sorrow of the August One; for the heart of the girl, being that of a true Japanese, grieves not alone for what has happened, but with a deeper sense of the grief caused to the August One. The cry goes from Yuko asking how she, who has nothing, can give; and from the lips of the dead within her comes the answer: "Give thyself. To give life for the August One is the highest duty, the highest joy." "And in what place?" she asks. "Saikyō," answer the silent voices; "in the gateway of those who by ancient custom should have died."

Does she falter? No.

For her the future holds no blackness. Always she will see the rising of the holy Sun above the peaks, the smile of the Lady-Moon upon the waters, the eternal magic of the Seasons. She will haunt the places of beauty, beyond the folding of the mists, in the sleep of the cedar-shadows, through circling of innumerable years. She will know a subtler life, in the faint winds that stir the snow of the flowers of the cherry, in the laughter of playing waters, in every happy whisper of the vast green silences. But first she will greet her kindred, somewhere in shadowy halls awaiting her coming to say to her:

"Thou hast done well,—like a daughter of Samurai. Enter, child! because of thee to-night we sup with the Gods!"

It is daylight when Yuko enters Kyotō. She finds a lodging, and then goes to a skilful female hairdresser. Her little razor is made very sharp. Returning to her room, she writes a letter of farewell to her brother, and an appeal to the officials asking that the Tenshi-Sama may be begged to cease from suffering "seeing that a young life, even though unworthy, has been given in voluntary expiation of the wrong."

At the dark hour before dawn she slips to the gate of the Government edifice. Whispering a prayer, she kneels. Then with her long under-girdle of silk she binds her robes tightly about her knees, for

the daughter of a Samurai must always be found in death with limbs decently composed. Then, with steady precision, she makes in her throat a gash, out of which the blood leaps in a pulsing jet....

At sunrise the police find her, quite cold, and the two letters, and a poor little purse containing five yen and a few sen (enough, she had hoped, for her burial); and they take her and all her small belongings away.

Kokoro[32] (9), the next book, could well be a continuation of "Out of the East." Hearn speaks of it as "terribly radical," and "rather crazy"; and he fears that his views, which are greatly opposed in the West, may not be well received.

"The fifteen chapters of which the book is composed," says a German review, "do not contain the results of any research into the domain of politics, art or religion. They are rather fragments from Japanese life, and so clear is the language that the pictures given are brought home to us with wonderful effect. Lafcadio Hearn is a journalist in the best sense of the word. He is a writer who has something striking and original to say upon the events of the day, upon the conditions and institutions of a land, upon the possibilities of development in a people, upon deep philosophical, social and religious problems, upon the 'Idea of Pre-existence,' upon Buddhism and Shintōism, upon the difference between Occidental and Oriental culture, and who judges all things, all conditions that he sees, from lofty heights. He is besides a character, a man of great ideals; he has a fine artistic feeling and is, moreover, able to render in wonderfully sympathetic language tender moods which come to him at the sight of a landscape, a work of art. Extraordinarily capable of assimilation, he, to whom Japan has become a second home, has entirely fitted himself into the Japanese life. He is so delighted with the customs, with the political and social conditions, with the simple family life, with the religion, the ceremonies, the ancestor-worship, and with the business intercourse carried on among themselves—which he assures us is characterized by exceptional probity—in short, he is so delighted with all the activities of this people that he thinks them the best possible because they spring from the inmost life of an ethical and never intellectual temperament. Therefore he takes sides with them passionately against the modern tendencies of Europe." (395.)

In the opening story, which I think will be found one of his best, is portrayed the manner of a Japanese crowd in dealing with a criminal; and how this criminal was brought to atonement by the gaze of a little child, the son of the man he murdered, while the little one was yet in his mother's womb.

The next chapter is a discussion of Japanese Civilization. In 1903 Hearn wrote:—

"The Genius of Japanese Civilization" is a failure. I thought that it was true when I wrote it; but already Japan has become considerably changed, and a later study of ancient social conditions has proved to me that I made some very serious sociological errors in that paper.

He shows that in the wonderful development of Japanese power, there is vitally no self-transformation. All that Japan is, she always has been. Nor is there any outward change. "The strength of Japan, like the strength of her ancient faith, needs little material display: both exist where the deepest real power of any great peoples exists,—in the Race Ghost." He contrasts the noise and confusion and vastness of Western cities. The construction of the West is endurance; of Japan impermanency. The very land is a land of impermanence. But in this impermanency Hearn finds the greatest excellence. He contrasts how little impedimenta the Japanese have—by that means alone how independent they are. He shows with what a quiet simplicity Japan has become a great commercial centre. He fears the new Western spirit which threatens her:—

I confess to being one of those who believe that the human heart, even in the history of a race, may be worth infinitely more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner or later prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the cruel enigmas of the Sphinx of Life.—I still believe that the old Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are we, just because they recognized moral beauty as greater than intellectual beauty.

It is the old spirit which found infinite meaning—

in the flushed splendour of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming and the going of the cicadæ, in the dying crimson of autumn foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of wave or cloud.

The beautiful voice of a blind peasant woman fills Hearn with gentle memories and an exquisite delight. He muses upon what the meaning of this charm can be; and he realizes that it is the old sorrows and loving impulses of forgotten generations.

The dead die never utterly. They sleep in the darkest cells of tired hearts and busy brains,—to be startled at rarest moments only by the echo of some voice that recalls their past.

The lovely spirit of showing only one's happiest face to the world is charmingly brought out in the little incident that, when in a railway carriage, a Japanese woman finds herself becoming drowsy, before she nods she covers her face with her long kimono sleeve.

Sometimes one may recall the dead, and speak with them. So it happened that O-Tayo heard once again the voice of her little child who begged her not to weep any more, for when mothers weep, the flood of the River of Tears rises so high that the soul cannot pass, and must wander and wander.

O-Tayo never wept again, but softly she herself became as a little child. Her good parents built a tiny temple and fitted it with miniature ornaments, and here all day long children came to play games with her. And when at last she died, the children still played there, for as a little girl of nine said, "We shall still play in the Court of Amida. She is buried there. She will hear us and be happy."

The pathetic tale of Haru gives an interesting picture of the relation in Japan between man and wife; of the exquisite submission of the wife under the saddest conditions, even to the moment when the little grieved heart, which has never murmured, has the dying strength to utter only the single word, "Anata." (Thou.)

"A Glimpse of Tendencies" analyzes many conditions in Japan, with various predictions for her future, and speaks of her lack of sympathy for her foreign teachers.

In "A Conservative" Hearn gives a searching study of how the evils of our civilization appear to a Japanese youth.

"In the chapter, 'The Idea of Pre-existence,' Hearn makes the interesting attempt of bringing the teachings of the Buddhistic religion and the conclusions of modern science into accord. The idea which differentiates the Oriental mode of thinking from our own, which more than any other permeates the whole mental being of the Far-East—'it is universal as the wash of air; it colours every emotion; it influences, directly or indirectly, almost every act'—which inspires the utterances of the people, their proverbs, their pious and profane exclamations, that is the idea of pre-existence. The expression, 'Ingwa,' which signifies the Karma as inevitable retribution, serves as explanation for all suffering, all pain, all evil. The culprit says: 'That which I did I knew to be wicked when doing; but my ingwa was stronger than my heart,' Ingwa means predestination, determinism, necessity." (395.)

In his chapter on "Ancestor-Worship" it is further proved how important a part of the household are the dead.

Another delightful study is "Kimiko,"—the story of one who turns dancing-girl out of filial piety. In the height of her fame she falls in love with a rich young man, and he with her. Kimiko is so good a woman at heart, that the man's friends do not object to his marrying her. She refuses, however, for her life has made her unworthy to be wife or mother. The man hopes to change her, but one day she disappears and is utterly lost to sight. Years pass and he marries. At last Kimiko returns as a wandering nun, looks at her lover's little son, whispers a message for the father in his ear, and is gone once more. The grace with which the story is told is inimitable, and the sickly sentimentality that revolts us in the Dame aux Camelias is absent. (381.)

Gleanings in Buddha-Fields[33] (10) is the third book of the Japanese period, and was written at Kobé. In this volume of essays, intermingled with sketches in lighter vein, Hearn continues his philosophical studies. There are the unmistakable signs that even this ardour is losing zest. The charm of Japan is going fast; and after this volume, until his final interpretation, which is a summary of all that has gone before, is reached, we find him seeking material in fairy-tales, legends, and even returning to old thoughts about the West Indian life.

Many of his critics feel that Hearn is becoming too subjective to be quite trustworthy; others feel that he is still too charmed by Japan to render a faithful picture. A review in Public Opinion says:—

"But, this feature of almost pardonable exaggeration pointed out, there is little for the critic to carp at in the majority of the eleven essays that compose the book. The opening paper, 'A Living God,' is a perfect specimen of the author's style, and evinces in a marked degree the influence of Oriental environment on a sensitive mind. It treats of the temples, shrines, and worship of the people, and tells by legend how even a living individual may come to be worshipped as a god by his friends....

"The essay, however, that betrays most strongly the bent of the author's mental metamorphosis, and one, we venture to say, that will be generally challenged is that on 'Faces in Japanese Art.' The contention it embodies, which he boldly fathers, is a flat denial of the truth and worth of our accepted schools of art,—of drawing especially." (376.)

Criticizing the chapters on Buddhism in the present book, the Athenæum says:—

"They are finely written, but the Buddhism is the Buddhism of Mr. Hearn, not of China or Japan, or of anywhere else. Nevertheless, we think them the most attractive of these gleanings. Laputa is placed not very far from Japan; to a quasi-Laputa Mr. Hearn has gone, and his Laputian experiences are more interesting than any ordinary terrestrial experiences could have been." (298.)

The Spectator says:—

"His chapter on Nirvâna, which he describes as 'a study in synthetic Buddhism,' will be read with very great interest by all who care for the problems involved. There have been plenty of studies of the doctrine of Nirvâna more elaborate and complete, but few more suggestive and more taking.... Mr. Hearn begins by combating the popular Western notion that the idea of Nirvâna signifies to Buddhist minds complete annihilation. The notion is, he declares, erroneous because it contains only half the truth, and a half of the truth which is of no value or interest or intelligibility except when joined to the other half. According to Mr. Hearn, and, indeed, according to 'the better opinion' generally, Nirvâna means not absolute nothingness or complete annihilation, but only the annihilation of what constitutes individualism and personality,—'the annihilation of everything that can be included under the term "I".'" (382.)

Hearn makes an elaborate study of the varying stages of births and heavens that one must generally pass through before one rises into the "infinite bliss" of Nirvâna. The chapter closes with this significant sentence:—

The only reality is One;—all that we have taken for Substance is only Shadow;—the physical is the unreal:—and the outer-man is the ghost.

There are two short chapters devoted to the Japanese Songs. The first songs, "Out of the Street," are, as Manyemon, who would not have the Western people deceived, tells us, the vulgar songs, or those sung by the washermen, carpenters, and bamboo-weavers, etc. The theme always holds some glint of love. Hearn has arranged certain ones in three groups forming a little shadow romance.

The second chapter is devoted to Folk-Songs with Buddhist allusions. Nearly all the arts and the greater number of the industries show the influence of Buddhism. A typical song is:—

Another:—

On the "Trip to Kyōto" there is more to be learned about poor little Yuko, who gave her life for her nation. To the Japanese all the small details of her story are of the greatest importance, and are carefully treasured. Hearn thinks that the Western "refined feeling" might not care for the poor little blood-stained trifles; if so it is to be regretted.

In "Dust," with a dainty touch, he teaches again that we are but millions upon billions of dead people; that the cells and the souls are themselves recombinations of old welding of forces—forces of which we know nothing save that they belong "to the Shadow-Makers of universes." You are an individual—but also you are a population! This leads on to the end that

In whatsoever time all human minds accord in thought and will with the mind of the Teacher, there shall not remain even one particle of dust that does not enter into Buddhahood.

The last chapter, "Within the Circle," is of a philosophy so impermanent that it seems but Shadow-play, and one may not behold a visible form, for—like all that which it symbolizes—it is but an illusion.

Exotics and Retrospectives[34] (11) faithfully followed the ensuing year. The effort to write is manifest; even to himself Hearn is admitting that the frisson which Japan gave him is passing. He is beginning to make copy; and the subjects are becoming more vague, vapoury, and ghostly.

I must eat some humble pie. My work during the past ten months has been rather poor. Why, I cannot quite understand—because it costs me more effort. Anyhow, I have had to rewrite ten essays: they greatly improved under the process. I am trying now to get a Buddhist commentary for them—mostly to be composed of texts dealing with pre-existence and memory of former lives. I took for subjects the following:—Beauty is Memory—why beautiful things bring sadness;—the Riddle of Touch—i. e. the thrill that a touch gives;—the Perfume of Youth;—the Reason of the Pleasure of the Feeling Evoked by Bright Blue;—the Pain Caused by Certain Kinds of Red;—Mystery of Certain Musical Effects;—Fear of Darkness and the Feeling of Dreams. Queer subjects, are they not? I think of calling the collection "Retrospectives.

The Athenæum, that wise critic, feels that in this book Hearn "shows himself at his best. He is more subdued," it says, "than is his wont, and indulges less freely in excessive laudation and needless disparagement. The chapters on 'Insect Musicians,' on the 'Literature of the Dead,' and—oddly as it may sound to us—on 'Frogs,' are among the most delightful of all his writings. The keynote of all is struck in the pretty stanza that heads the first of the three:—

"The translation is ours. The fondness of the Japanese for many kinds of chirping insects, which they keep in little bamboo-cages, is one of the prettiest of the surviving echoes of the past. The plaintive little cry satisfies the curious melancholy that characterizes the reflective moods of the lieges of Mutsu. In the long series of changes that is to end in perfect Buddha-forms, there is hope always, but always tinged with the sadness of vague memories of past pains, and the resigned dread of sorrows to come, one knows not how oft to be repeated ere in 'Nirvâna' all earthly moods are lost. There is a regular trade in these tiny songsters, of the history of which Mr. Hearn tells the pleasant story." (299.)

Hearn leads us to a cemetery in a quaint lonesome garden, and teaches us something about the wonderful texts and inscriptions that are chiselled into the stone of the tombs, or painted on the wooden sotoba, and go to form the important literature of the dead. A suggestive sotoba-text is:—

The Amida-Kyō says: "All who enter into that country enter likewise into that state of virtue from which there can be no turning back."

From the Kaimyō which is engraved on the tomb, we may select:—

Koji—

(Bright-Sun-on-the-Way-of-the-Wise, in the Mansion of Luminous Mind.)

Koji—

(Effective-Benevolence-Hearing-with-Pure-Heart-the-Supplications-of-the-Poor,—dwelling in the Mansion of the Virtue of Pity.)

The frog is another favourite of the Japanese. There is one special variety called the Kajika, or true singing-frog of Japan, which is kept as a pet in a little cage. For over a hundred years the frog has been the subject of numerous poems. Many of these little verses are love-poems, for the lovers' trysting-hour is also the hour when the frog-chorus is at its height. Here is a quotation from the Anthology called "Kokinshū," compiled a.d. 905, by the poet Ki-no-Tsurayuki:—

The poetry of Japan has its roots in the human heart, and thence has grown into a multiform utterance. Man in this world, having a thousand million of things to undertake and to complete, has been moved to express his thoughts and his feelings concerning all that he sees and hears. When we hear the uguisu singing among flowers, and the voice of the kawazu which inhabits the waters, what mortal (lit. "who among the living that lives") does not compose poems?

A charming frog poem is:—

(With hand resting on the ground, reverentially you repeat your poem, O frog!)

And another:—

(Hearing to-night the frogs of the Jewel River—or Tamagawa, that sing without fear of man, how can I help loving the passing moment?)

A vivid chapter is Hearn's description of his ascent of Fuji-no-Yama. Here he may once again use his palette of many colours, but certainly not with the old abandon.

Brighter and brighter glows the gold. Shadows come from the west,—shadows flung by cloud-pile over cloud-pile; and these, like evening shadows upon snow, are violaceous blue.... Then orange-tones appear in the horizon; then smouldering crimson. And now the greater part of the Fleece of Gold has changed to cotton again,—white cotton mixed with pink.... Stars thrill out. The cloud-waste uniformly whitens;—thickening and packing to the horizon. The west glooms. Night rises; and all things darken except that wondrous unbroken world-round of white,—the Sea of Cotton.

A lurking of the gruesome flashes out when the snow-patches against the miles of black soot and ashes on the mountain make him think "of a gleam of white teeth I once saw in a skull,—a woman's skull,—otherwise burnt to a sooty crisp."

"Retrospectives" is a group of gentle reveries, where we may muse with Hearn on such elusive themes as the "Sadness in Beauty," for beauty has no real existence, it is the emotion of the dead within us. Or there is the analysis of that favourite word frisson, "the touch that makes a thrill within you is a touch that you have felt before,—sense-echo of forgotten intimacies in many unremembered lives." "Azure Psychology" and "A Red Sunset" recall Hearn's earlier criticisms on colour.

In Ghostly Japan[35] (12) followed. The title is revelatory of the Japan that is to people this book and those which are to come. In the opening chapter Hearn crystallizes in a powerful sketch the sum of Buddhist lore. Of this the Academy writes:—

"Of Nirvâna one carries away this one picture, painted in words curiously colourless and intangible—the picture of a mountain up whose steep side toil two creatures—the soul and his guide—toiling, stumbling upwards over a brittle and friable chaos of skulls. Skulls crumbled into powder and skulls crumbling mark out the road; 'and every skull,' says the guide, 'is yours, and has been yours in some past incarnation; and the dust that rises round your present body is the dust of your past and deserted bodies that have served you well or ill as may be in your past lives.' In the fine and bewildering haze of this thought we lose our poet, and henceforward he is not a face nor a voice, but an echo of a living man's voice. We hear the echo, but the voice we do not hear. And we grudge the voice, even to Nirvâna where all silences are merged in one." (286.)

In a beautiful chapter Hearn outlines all that might be written about the important subject of incense. He tells a good deal about its religious, luxurious, and ghostly uses. There is also a charming custom of giving parties where dainty games are played with it.

Sometimes there can be love between the living and the dead, or so it appears in the ghostly story of "A Passional Karma," or O-Tsuyu, who died of love of Shinzaburō and returns to be his bride. Every night, by the light of their Peony Lanterns, she, accompanied by her maid, comes to keep the ghostly tryst. Shinzaburō does not know that O-Tsuyu is dead, but his servant Tomozō, overhearing voices, gazes through a chink, and sees—

the face of a woman long dead,—and the fingers caressing were fingers of naked bone,—and of the body below the waist there was not anything: it melted off into thinnest trailing shadow. Where the eyes of the lover deluded saw youth and grace and beauty, there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only, and the emptiness of death.

Now he whose bride is a ghost cannot live. No matter what force flows in his blood he must certainly perish. Shinzaburō is warned and an amulet to protect him from the dead is given to him, but treachery is played, and the amulet is stolen; so one morning Tomozō finds his master

hideously dead;—and the face was the face of a man who had died in the uttermost agony of fear;—and lying beside him in the bed were the bones of a woman! And the bones of the arms, and the bones of the hands, clung fast about his neck.

The gentle heart of the Japanese shines in the chapter on "Bits of Poetry." You might find yourself, Hearn says, in a community so poor that you could not even buy a cup of real tea, but no place could you discover "where there is nobody capable of making a poem." Poems are written on all occasions and for all occasions.

Poems can be found upon almost any kind of domestic utensil;—for example, upon braziers, iron-kettles, vases, wooden-trays, lacquer-ware, porcelains, chopsticks of the finer sort,—even toothpicks! Poems are painted upon shop-signs, panels, screens, and fans. Poems are printed upon towels, draperies, curtains, kerchiefs, silk-linings, and women's crêpe-silk underwear. Poems are stamped or worked upon letter-paper, envelopes, purses, mirror-cases, travelling-bags. Poems are inlaid upon enamelled ware, cut upon bronzes, graven upon metal pipes, embroidered upon tobacco-pouches.

A Japanese artist would not think of elaborating a sketch, and a poem to be perfect must also only stir one's fancy. Ittakkiri, meaning "entirely vanished" in the sense of "all told," is a term applied contemptuously to him who expresses all his thought.

Japan is rich in proverbs. Hearn has translated one hundred examples of Buddhist proverbs.

Karu-toki no Jizō-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao.

(Borrowing-time, the face of Jizō; repaying-time, the face of Emma.)

Sodé no furi-awasé mo tashō no en.

(Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by some relation in a former life.)

A powerful relic of the old clinging love of the gruesome is the story of Ingwa-banashi. The daimyō's wife knew that she was dying; and she thought of many things, especially of her husband's favourite, the Lady Yukiko, who was nineteen years old. She begged her husband to send for the Lady Yukiko, whom, she said, she loved as a sister. After the dying wife had told Lady Yukiko it was her wish that she should become the wife of their dear lord, she begged that Yukiko would carry her on her back to see the cherry-bloom.

As a nurse turns her back to a child, that the child may cling to it, Yukiko offered her shoulders to the wife, and said:—

"Lady, I am ready: please tell me how I best can help you."

"Why, this way!" responded the dying woman, lifting herself with an almost superhuman effort by clinging to Yukiko's shoulders. But as she stood erect, she quickly slipped her thin hands down over the shoulders, under the robe, and clutched the breasts of the girl, and burst into a wicked laugh.

"I have my wish!" she cried—"I have my wish for the cherry-bloom, but not the cherry-bloom of the garden!... I could not die before I got my wish. Now I have it!—oh, what a delight!"

And with these words she fell forward upon the crouching girl, and died.

When the attendants tried to lift the body from Yukiko's shoulders, they found that the hands of the dead had grown into the quick flesh of the breasts of the girl. And they could not be removed. A skilful physician was called, and he decided that the hands could be amputated only at the wrists, and so this was done. But the hands still clung to the breasts;

and there they soon darkened and dried up like the hands of a person long dead.

Yet this was only the beginning of the horror.

Withered and bloodless though they seemed, those hands were not dead. At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders. And nightly thereafter,—beginning always at the Hour of the Ox,—they would clutch and compress and torture. Only at the Hour of the Tiger the pain would cease.

Yukiko cut off her hair, and became a mendicant-nun.

Every day she prayed to the dead for pardon, and every night the torture was renewed. This continued for more than seventeen years until Yukiko was heard of no more.

Shadowings[36] (13) appeared the next year, 1900. Of this volume the Bookman says:—

"He gives us several essays upon matters Japanesque, which obviously involve no small amount of erudition and patient research. Such are his papers upon the various species of Sémi, or Japanese singing-locusts, and on the complicated etiquette of Japanese female names. But the distinctive feature of this volume is the first half, which is given up to a collection of curious tales by native writers, weird, uncanny, little stories, most of them, of ghouls and wraiths, and vampires, or at least the nearest Japanese equivalents for such Occidental spectres." (316.)

The Athenæum does not find "Shadowings" equal to the volume "Exotics." It thinks that Hearn is "perilously near exhausting his repertory of Kokin [one-stringed fiddle] themes."

"The stories with which the present volume opens have no particular merit: they have lost their chief and real advantage—their local colour—in Hearnesque translation, and seem to be little more than suggestions or drafts of 'nouvelles,' out of which skilful hands might perhaps have made something much better. A good example is the story of the Screen Maiden, which is a most lame presentment of a charming motif. The chapters on female names, on sémi, couplets and 'Old Japanese Songs' are more interesting, but only to those who possess a considerable knowledge of old Japanese life and literature.... Of the 'Old Japanese Songs'—where is the proof of their antiquity?—much the best is the dance-ballad of the dragon-maid, who bewitched a yamabushi, and chased him over moor and hill and river, until the temple of Dojo was reached, under the great bell of which the trembling hill-warrior or outlaw (yamabushi were such originally in all probability) hid himself, whereupon the dragon-maid wrapped her body round the bell once and again and the third time the bell melted and flowed away like boiling water. And with it, according to the legend, flowed away the ashes of the unwilling object of the dragon-maid's affections, consumed not through love, but through disdain." (300.)

Strange things happen in the group of tales, and not the least is the tale of the maiden in the screen whose loveliness so bewitches a youth that he becomes sick unto death. Then an old scholar tells him that the person whom the picture represents is dead, but since the painter painted her mind as well as her form, her spirit lives in the picture and he may yet win her.

So every day, Tokkei, following out the old scholar's injunctions, sits before the portrait calling softly the maiden's name. And finally after many days the maiden answered, "Hai!" And stepping down from out the screen, she kneels to take the cup of wine (which was to be so), whispering charmingly, "How could you love me so much?"

Also there is the tale of the Corpse Rider, in which the husband had to ride for one whole night, so far that he could not know the distance, the dead body of his divorced wife; and this was to save him from her vengeance.

The gruesome gleams here, and again in the tale of "The Reconciliation," when the repentant husband found that the wife he was holding in his arms is "a corpse so wasted that little remained save the bones, and the long black tangled hair."

There is no small amount of etiquette in the prefixes and suffixes of the Japanese female names. The majority of the Yobina, or personal names, are not æsthetic. Some are called after the flowers, and there are also place names, as for instance Miné (Peak) Hama (Shore); but the large proportion express moral or mental attributes.

Tenderness, kindness, deftness, cleverness, are frequently represented by yobina; but appellations implying physical charm, or suggesting æsthetic ideas only, are comparatively uncommon. One reason for the fact may be that very æsthetic names are given to geisha and to jōro, and consequently vulgarized. But the chief reason certainly is that the domestic virtues still occupy in the Japanese moral estimate a place not less important than that accorded to religious faith in the life of our own Middle Ages. Not in theory only, but in every-day practice, moral beauty is placed far above physical beauty; and girls are usually selected as wives, not for their good looks, but for their domestic qualities.

I give a few names gleaned from Hearn's lists:—O-Jun—"Faithful-to-death"; O-Tamé—"For-the-sake-of,"—a name suggesting unselfishness; O-Chika—"Closely Dear"; O-Suki—"The Beloved"—Aimée; O-Taë—"The Exquisite"; Tokiwa—"Eternally Constant."

From the "Fantasies," we read of the Mystery of Crowds, and the horrors of Gothic Architecture, the joys of levitation while one is asleep—with a moral attached; of Noctilucæ. Also, as we gaze with the adolescent youth into a pair of eyes we come to know that

The splendour of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only as brightness to the morning-star. It is a reflex from beyond the shadow of the Now,—a ghost-light of vanished suns. Unknowingly within that maiden-gaze we meet the gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts of heaven,—eyes otherwhere passed into darkness and dust.

Thus, and only thus, the depth of that gaze is the depth of the Sea of Death and Birth, and its mystery is the World-Soul's vision, watching us out of the silent vast of the Abyss of Being.

Thus, and only thus, do truth and illusion mingle in the magic of eyes,—the spectral past suffusing with charm ineffable the apparition of the present;—and the sudden splendour in the soul of the Seer is but a flash, one soundless sheet-lightning of the Infinite Memory.

A Japanese Miscellany[37] (14) was the next book. What does the memory hold of these stories and sketches? Surely that picture of Old Japan with its charming sentiment for Dragon-flies, to which such delicate poems were written.

(Lonesomely clings the dragon-fly to the under-side of the leaf—Ah! the autumn-rains!)

And that verse by the mother poet, who seeing many children playing their favourite pastime of chasing butterflies, thinks of her little one who is dead:—

(Catching dragon-flies!... I wonder where he has gone to-day!)

Then there are the children's songs about Nature and her tiny creatures, and all their little songs for their plays; the songs which tell a story, and the sweet mother songs that lull the babies to sleep.

How we pity poor misguided O-Dai, who forgot loyalty to her ancestors to follow the teachings of the Western faith. At its bidding even the sacred tablets and the scroll were cast away. And when she had forsaken everything, and had become as an outcast with her own people, the good missionaries found they needed a more capable assistant. Poor little weak O-Dai, without the courage to fill her sleeves with stones and then slip into the river, longing for the sunlight, and so "flung into the furnace of a city's lust."

We hear the gruesome tinkle of the dead wife's warning bell, and we certainly shudder before the vision of her robed in her grave-shroud:—

"Eyeless she came—because she had long been dead;—and her loosened hair streamed down about her face;—and she looked without eyes through the tangle of it; and spake without a tongue."

Then the hideous horror of the evil crime, as this dead wife in her jealousy tore off the head of the sleeping young wife. The terrified husband following the trail of blood found

a nightmare-thing that chippered like a bat: the figure of the long-buried woman erect before her tomb,—in one hand clutching a bell, in the other the dripping head.... For a minute the three stood numbed. Then one of the men-at-arms, uttering a Buddhist invocation, drew, and struck at the shape. Instantly it crumbled down upon the soil,—an empty scattering of grave-rags, bones, and hair;—and the bell rolled clanking out of the ruin. But the fleshless right hand, though parted from the wrist, still writhed; and its fingers still gripped at the bleeding head—and tore, and mangled,—as the claws of the yellow crab fast to a fallen fruit.

Who but Hearn would have chosen this ghastly scene, and described it with such terrible reality?

With the parents we have unravelled the mystery of Kinumé, whose spirit belonged to one family, and whose body was the child of the other.

Perhaps we still see the famous picture of Kwashin Koji, which had a soul, for "it is well known that some sparrows, painted upon a sliding screen (fusuma) by Hōgen Yenshin, once flew away, leaving blank the spaces which they had occupied upon the surface. Also it is well known that a horse painted upon a certain Kakémono, used to go out at night to eat grass." So the water in the picture on the screen of Kwashin overflowed into the room, and the boat thereon glided forth, but not a ripple from the oar was heard. Then Kwashin Koji climbed into the boat, and it receded into the picture, and the water dried in the room. Over the painted water slipped the painted vessel until all disappeared, and Kwashin was heard of no more.

And we remember too the strange brave way that Umétsu Chūbei won the gift of great strength for his children, and their children's children.

The Athenæum finds the story of Kwashin the best of this collection. Speaking of the study, "On a Bridge," it says:—

"The author narrates a personal experience of a riksha man who drew him across an old bridge near Kumamoto. It was in the time of the Satsuma muhon (rebellion), some twenty-two years earlier, that the Kurumaya (riksha man) was stopped on the bridge by three men, who were dressed as peasants, but had very long swords under their raincoats. After a time a cavalry officer came along from the city.

The moment the horse got on the bridge the three men turned and leaped:—and one caught the horse's bridle; and another gripped the officer's arm; and the third cut off his head—all in a moment.... I never saw anything done so quickly.

"The seeming peasants then waited, and presently another cavalry officer came and was murdered in like manner. Then came a third, who met a similar fate. Lastly, the peasants went away, having thrown the bodies into the river, but taking the heads with them. The man had never mentioned the matter till long after the war—why? 'Because it would have been ungrateful.'

"No doubt this is a true story." (301.)

It was probably during the ensuing year that Hearn contributed to the Japanese Fairy Tale Series (15), published in Tōkyō, his renditions of four of these stories.

Kottō[38] (16) followed. Says the Athenæum:—

"The gem of this volume is 'A Woman's Diary,' purporting to be 'the history of a woman's married life recorded by herself, found in a small haribako (work-box) which had belonged to her.' It is an ordinary story, not in the least sensational, yet pitiful and even touching in its record of poverty and suffering, showing the hardships and small enjoyment—according to our notions, at least—of the colourless existence led by the bulk of the Japanese poorer classes upon a total family wage of twelve pounds a year or less." (302.)

Except for "A Woman's Diary" and "Fireflies" the tales in "Kottō" are fragmentary. Some are gruesome as the history of the Gaki; or as the story of O-Katsu-San, who was so bold as to go by night to Yurei-Daki, and who to win her bet brought back the little money-box of the gods. But when she came to give her baby his milk,—

Out of the wrappings unfastened there fell to the floor a blood-soaked bundle of baby clothes that left exposed two very small brown feet, and two very small brown hands—nothing more.

The child's head had been torn off!

There is also the story of O-Kamé, who returned each night to haunt her husband; of Chūgorō, who was bewitched by a beautiful woman whom he married beneath the waters. But he sickened and died, for his blood had been drained by his Circe, who was "simply a Frog,—a great and ugly Frog!"

The literature and the significance of the fire-flies holds an important place with the Japanese, and for more than a thousand years the poets have been making verses about these little creatures.

A sketch in which Hearn is most fortunate is "Pathological," where Tama, the mother-cat, dreams of her dead kittens—

coos to them, and catches for them small shadowy things,—perhaps even brings to them, through some dim window of memory, a sandal of ghostly straw....

Beautiful is the "Revery of Mother-Love":—

Yet those countless solar fires, with their viewless millions of living planets, must somehow reappear: again the wondrous Cosmos, self-born as self-consumed, must resume its sidereal whirl over the deeps of the eternities. And the love that strives for ever with death shall rise again, through fresh infinitudes of pain, to renew the everlasting battle.

The light of the mother's smile will survive our sun;—the thrill of her kiss will last beyond the thrilling of stars;—the sweetness of her lullaby will endure in the cradle-songs of worlds yet unevolved;—the tenderness of her faith will quicken the fervour of prayers to be made to the hosts of another heaven,—to the gods of a time beyond Time. And the nectar of her breasts can never fail: that snowy stream will still flow on, to nourish the life of some humanity more perfect than our own, when the Milky Way that spans our night shall have vanished for ever out of Space.

Like unto the Soul is a Drop of Dew for

Your personality signifies, in the eternal order, just as much as the especial motion of molecules in the shivering of any single drop. Perhaps in no other drop will the thrilling and the picturing be ever exactly the same; but the dews will continue to gather and to fall, and there will always be quivering pictures.... The very delusion of delusions is the idea of death as loss.

Kwaidan[39] (17) was the book before "Japan," which was published after Hearn's death. It is a collection of old stories, many of them of the gruesome, and of careful studies of ants, mosquitoes, and butterflies. Striking is the tale of Yuki-Onna, the snow-woman, as is also the incident of Riki-Baka. One bewitched by the dead is Mimi-Nashi-Hōïchi, whose ears were torn off because the holy texts which were written everywhere else upon his body were there forgotten. Sonjō, the hunter, killed the mate of a female oshidori, who after appearing to him in a dream as a beautiful woman, who rebukes him the following day as a bird, tears open her body, and dies before his eyes. O-Tei is reborn in the shape of a woman that she may wed years later her promised husband—Nagao Chōsei of Echigo. So loyal is the love of O-Sodé, the milk-nurse, that the cherry-tree which is planted in commemoration of her, on the anniversary of her death, blossoms in a wonderful way. Because of his selfish wickedness in thinking only of the gains in his profession, a priest was made to be reborn into the state of a jikininki, who had to devour the corpses of people who died in his district. Other devourers of human flesh are the Rokuro-Kubi. The head of a Rokuro-Kubi separates itself from its body.

Japan[40] (18): An Attempt at Interpretation is the last book that Hearn published. He was reading its proofs at the time of his death. Although a posthumous volume appeared, this may rightly be termed his final word. It is the crystallization and the summary of all that has been said before. It contains a group of twenty-one lectures, which Hearn had expected at first to deliver at Cornell University. His own words will best reveal their import:—

They will form a book explaining Japan from the standpoint of ancestor-worship. They are suited only to a cultivated audience.

The substantial idea of the lectures is that Japanese society represents the condition of ancient Greek society a thousand years before Christ. I am treating of religious Japan,—not of artistic or economical Japan except by way of illustration.

"The history of Japan is really the history of her religion," is the key to the book.

The Academy remarks:—

"No one who wishes to understand the possibilities of the future of Japan can afford to neglect the past, and no one who would grasp the meaning of the past can afford to neglect Mr. Hearn's fine and thoughtful work." (288.)

In a review Mr. Griffis says:—

"They felt that he had done his best and was degenerating. Yet here is a work which is a classic in science, a wonder of interpretation. It is the product of long years of thought, of keenest perception, or marvellous comprehension.

"One cannot quote, one must read this work. It shows the Japanese under his armour, modern science. The Japanese, outwardly, are ruled by treaties, diplomacy, governments, codes, Imperial Diet, armies and battleships—all modern and external. Inwardly they—that is, forty-nine millions of them—are governed by ghosts. The graveyard is the true dictator. It is ever their 'illustrious ancestors' who achieve victories. They, as a nation, are superbly organized for war. There is no originality, no personality, no individuality worth speaking of in the island empire. It is all done by the government, the community. In social evolution the Japanese are even yet far behind the Romans, and much as the pre-Homeric Greeks.

"In a word, Lafcadio Hearn outdoes the missionaries in dogmatism, exceeds even the hostile propagandist in telling the naked truth. Devoted friend of Japan, he excels the sworn enemies of her religions in laying bare, though with admiration, the realities.... Lafcadio Hearn turns the white and searching beams on the ship and man.... His book is a re-reading of all Japanese history, a sociological appraisement of the value of Japanese civilization, and a warning against intolerant propaganda of any sort whatever. This book is destined to live, and to cause searchings of heart among those who imagine that the Japanese soul has been changed in fifty years." (326.)

From the Spectator I quote:—

"Both the prose and poetry of Japanese life are infused into Mr. Hearn's charming pages. Nobody, so far as we know, has given a better description of the fascination which Japanese life has at first for such as enter into its true spirit, and of its gradual disappearance.... Of course it must be remembered that this charm of Japan was something more than a beautiful mirage. 'Old Japan,' in the opinion of Mr. Hearn, 'came nearer to the achievement of the highest moral ideal than our far more evolved societies can hope to do for many a hundred years. Curiously enough, it was under the shadow of the sword that the fascinating life of Japan matured; universal politeness was nurtured by the knowledge that any act of rudeness might, and probably would, cause a painful and immediate death. This supremacy of the sword, governed by the noble rule of bushi-do, hardened the Japanese temper into the wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice and patriotism which is now making itself apparent in the stress of war. All this is admirably portrayed in Mr. Hearn's pages,—the swan-song of a very striking writer." (383.)

In The American Journal of Sociology there is a review of this book, by Edmund Buckley of the University of Chicago, which is so admirable and inclusive that I have obtained Professor Buckley's kind permission to quote it in its entirety. This review leaves small margin for further comment. But it is to be regretted that space will not permit citations of Hearn's tributes to the Japanese home, woman and character.

"On p. 160 of W. E. Griffis' 'The Mikado's Empire,' is textual evidence that, so late as 1876, intelligent men, and theologians at that—rather, in sooth, because they are theologians—could harbour such atrocious notions about Shintōism, the ethnic faith of the Japanese, as the following: 'Shintō is in no proper sense of the term a religion.... In its lower forms it is blind obedience to governmental and priestly dictates.' The present reviewer bears these Christian apologists and heathen defamers 'witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.' They wrote in the days when hierology (comparative religion) was still inchoate, for C. P. Ticle's 'Elements' did not appear in its English dress until 1877; and when Japan's abasement before the 'Christian' powers was complete, and therefore everything Japanese assumed to be worthless. But the reaction came, of course, and is now pretty well completed. Japan's novel yet glorious art conquered the world; Japan's new yet ever-victorious army has conquered Russia's imposing array; and now Mr. Hearn completely routs the contemners of a people's sincere faith. The consensus of hierologists that no people was ever found without a religion had already been given; and the creed, cult, and ethics of Shintōism had been correctly described; but it remained for Mr. Hearn to give a more complete and intimate account than had previously been done of the ancestorism in Shintō and of its profound influence upon politics and morality.

"It will surprise no one to learn that Mr. Hearn overdid his contention, just because such excess is the well-nigh inevitable reaction from the underestimate that he found current and sought to correct. As he states the case on p. 4: 'Hitherto the subject of Japanese religion has been written of chiefly by the sworn enemies of that religion; by others it has been almost entirely ignored.' But now that 'see-saw' has followed 'see,' we may hope to win a final equilibrium of correct appreciation. To this end several corrections are called for; but, before they are made, clearness will be secured by a concise analysis of the treatise; for in its course religion, politics, and morality are interwoven on a historic warp. The entire fabric runs about as follows: (Chap. 3.) The real religion of the Japanese is ancestorism, which showed in three cults—the domestic, the communal, and the state. The domestic arose first, but the primitive family might include hundreds of households. Ancestorism in Japan confirms Spencer's exposition of religious origins. The greater gods were all evolved from ghost-cults. Good men made good gods; bad men, bad ones. (Chap. 4.) The domestic cult began in offerings of food and drink made at the grave; then, under Chinese influence, was transferred to the home before tablets; where it was maintained until this present by Buddhism. Thin tablets of white wood, inscribed with the names of the dead, are placed in a miniature wooden shrine, which is kept upon a shelf in some inner chamber. Tiny offerings of food, accompanied with brief prayer, must be made each day by some member of the household in behalf of all; for the blessed dead still need sustenance, and in return can guard the house. The Buddhist rite, however, made prayer, not to, but for these dead. The Japanese scholar Hirata is correct when he declares the worship of ancestors to be the mainspring of all virtues. (Chap. 5.) The family was united only by religion. The father—not the mother—was supposed to be the life-giver, and was therefore responsible for the cult. Hence the inferior position of woman. The ancestral ghost of an uji, or family of several households, became later the ujigami, or local tutelar god. Subordination of young to old, of females to males, and of the whole family to its chief, who was at once ruler and priest, shows that the family organization was religious and not marital. Both monogamy and the practice of parents selecting their child's spouse arose because best accordant with religion. Later custom makes the decision, not of the father alone, but of the household and kindred, determinative of any important step.

"(Chap. 6.) The communal cult of the district ruled the family in all its relations to the outer world. The ujigami, or clan-god, was the spirit rather of a former ruler than of a common ancestor. Hochiman was a ruler, but Kasuga an ancestor. Beside the uji temple of a district, there may be a more important one dedicated to some higher deity. Every ujiko or parishioner is taken to the ujigami when one month old and dedicated to him. Thereafter he attends the temple festivals, which combine fun with piety; and he makes the temple groves his playground. Grown up, he brings his children here; and, if he leaves home, pays his respects to the god on leaving and returning. Thus the social bond of each community was identical with the religious bond, and the cult of the ujigami embodied the moral experience of the community. The individual of such a community enjoyed only a narrowly restricted liberty. Shintōism had no moral code, because at this stage of ancestor-cult religion and ethics coincide.