Concerning Lafcadio Hearn Part 24

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

Perhaps we still see the famous picture of Kwas.h.i.+n Koji, which had a soul, for "it is well known that some sparrows, painted upon a sliding screen (_fusuma_) by Hogen Yens.h.i.+n, once flew away, leaving blank the s.p.a.ces which they had occupied upon the surface. Also it is well known that a horse painted upon a certain Kakemono, used to go out at night to eat gra.s.s." So the water in the picture on the screen of Kwas.h.i.+n overflowed into the room, and the boat thereon glided forth, but not a ripple from the oar was heard. Then Kwas.h.i.+n 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 Kwas.h.i.+n was heard of no more.

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

The _Athenaeum_ finds the story of Kwas.h.i.+n 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 k.u.mamoto. 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 j.a.panese Fairy Tale Series (15), published in Tokyo, his renditions of four of these stories.

KOTTo[38] (16) followed. Says the _Athenaeum_:--

"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 hards.h.i.+ps and small enjoyment--according to our notions, at least--of the colourless existence led by the bulk of the j.a.panese poorer cla.s.ses upon a total family wage of twelve pounds a year or less." (302.)

[38] Copyright, 1902, by the Macmillan Company.

Except for "A Woman's Diary" and "Fireflies" the tales in "Kotto" 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 G.o.ds.

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-Kame, who returned each night to haunt her husband; of Chugoro, 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 j.a.panese, 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 ofmemory, 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 G.o.ds of a time beyond Time. And the nectar of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 s.h.i.+vering 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 "j.a.pan," 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 b.u.t.terflies. 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-Nas.h.i.+-Hochi, whose ears were torn off because the holy texts which were written everywhere else upon his body were there forgotten. Sonjo, the hunter, killed the mate of a female _os.h.i.+dori_, 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 Chosei of Echigo. So loyal is the love of O-Sode, 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.

[39] Copyright, 1904, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

j.a.pAN[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:--

[40] Copyright, 1904, by the Macmillan Company.

They will form a book explaining j.a.pan from the standpoint of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p. They are suited only to a cultivated audience.

The substantial idea of the lectures is that j.a.panese society represents the condition of ancient Greek society a thousand years before Christ. I am treating of religious j.a.pan,--not of artistic or economical j.a.pan except by way of ill.u.s.tration.

"The history of j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan 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 cla.s.sic 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 j.a.panese under his armour, modern science. The j.a.panese, outwardly, are ruled by treaties, diplomacy, governments, codes, Imperial Diet, armies and battles.h.i.+ps--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 'ill.u.s.trious 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan, 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 s.h.i.+p and man.... His book is a re-reading of all j.a.panese history, a sociological apprais.e.m.e.nt of the value of j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese soul has been changed in fifty years." (326.)

From the _Spectator_ I quote:--

"Both the prose and poetry of j.a.panese life are infused into Mr. Hearn's charming pages. n.o.body, so far as we know, has given a better description of the fascination which j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan was something more than a beautiful mirage. 'Old j.a.pan,' 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 j.a.pan 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 n.o.ble rule of _bus.h.i.+-do_, hardened the j.a.panese 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 s.p.a.ce will not permit citations of Hearn's tributes to the j.a.panese 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 s.h.i.+ntoism, the ethnic faith of the j.a.panese, as the following: 's.h.i.+nto 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 G.o.d, 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 j.a.pan's abas.e.m.e.nt before the 'Christian' powers was complete, and therefore everything j.a.panese a.s.sumed to be worthless. But the reaction came, of course, and is now pretty well completed. j.a.pan's novel yet glorious art conquered the world; j.a.pan'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 s.h.i.+ntoism 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 s.h.i.+nto 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 j.a.panese 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan confirms Spencer's exposition of religious origins.

The greater G.o.ds were all evolved from ghost-cults. Good men made good G.o.ds; 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 j.a.panese scholar Hirata is correct when he declares the wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d.

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-G.o.d, 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 paris.h.i.+oner 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 G.o.d 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. s.h.i.+ntoism had no moral code, because at this stage of ancestor-cult religion and ethics coincide.

"(Chap. 7.) The great G.o.ds of nature were developed from ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, though their real history has been long forgotten.