Chapter XII: Appreciations and Epitomes (3)

"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 _joshi_ or _shinju_. 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 Shinto 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
Tokyo 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 Shinto 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 Shinto, ancestor-worship,

signifies character in the higher sense,--courage, courtesy,
honour, and above all things loyalty. The spirit of Shinto 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 Shinto, 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 Shintoism 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 Kyoto. 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 _shakujo_. The _shakujo_ 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. Chrysantheme_. 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 Hoki 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.

Kinjuro, the ancient gardener, knows a great many things about souls. "No one is by the gods permitted to have more souls than nine." Kinjuro 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.

_Sayonara!_ 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.

[31] Copyright, 1895, by Lafcadio Hearn; and published by
Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

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 Nirvana 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
Nirvana? 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 Suminoye
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 Kyushu, 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 Kyushu, and it is not surprising to hear that rich men at a distance are keen to give their sons the opportunity of acquiring the Kyushu '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 _Athenaeum_ 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 Nirvana 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 _joshi_--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 Tokyo 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. "Saikyo," 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 Kyoto. 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.

[32] Copyright, 1896, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

"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 Shintoism, 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 cicadae, 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 Kobe. 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.

[33] Copyright, 1897, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

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 _Athenaeum_ 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 Nirvana, 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 Nirvana more elaborate and complete, but few more suggestive and more taking.... Mr. Hearn begins by combating the popular Western notion that the idea of Nirvana 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, Nirvana 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 Nirvana. 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.

To Heaven with all my soul I prayed to prevent your going;
Already, to keep you with me, answers the blessed rain.

Things never changed since the Time of the Gods: The flowing of
water, the Way of Love.

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:--

Even the knot of the rope tying our boats together Knotted was
long ago by some love in a former birth.

Another:--

Even while praying together in front of the tablets ancestral,
Lovers find chance to murmur prayers never meant for the dead.

On the "Trip to Kyoto" 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.

[34] Copyright, 1898, by Little, Brown and Company.

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 _Athenaeum_, 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:--

_Mushi, yo mushi,
Naite ingwa ga
Tsukuru nara?_
(Insect, O insect!
Singing fulfil you
Your fire-life and all life!)

"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 'Nirvana' 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-Kyo says: "All who enter into that country enter
likewise into that state of virtue from which there can be no
turning back."

From the Kaimyo 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 "Kokinshu," 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:--

_Te wo tsuite
Uta moshi-aguru,
Kawazu kana!_