Matsue lies on the northern coast, near that western end of Japan which trails like a streaming feather of land through the Eastern Pacific along the coast of China. It is a town of about thirty-five thousand inhabitants, situated at the junction of Lake Shinji and the Bay of Naka-umi, and was at that time far out of the line of travel or Western influence, the manners of the people remaining almost unchanged, affording a peculiarly favourable opportunity for the study of feudal Japan. The ruins of the castle of the Daimyō, Matsudaira,—descendant of the great Shōgun Ieyasu,—who was overthrown in the wars of the Meiji, still frowned from the wooded hill above the city, and still his love of art, his conservatism of the old customs, his rigid laws of politeness were stamped deeply into the culture of the subjects over whom he had reigned, though ugly modern buildings housed the schools of that Western learning he had so contemned, and which the newcomer had been hired to teach. But this was a teacher of different calibre from those who had preceded him. Here was one not a holder of the “little yellow monkey” prepossession. Here was a rare mind capable at the age of forty of receiving new impressions, of comprehending a civilization alien to all its previous knowledge.
Out of this remarkable experience—a stray from the Nineteenth Century moving about in the unrealized world of the Fourteenth—grew that portion of his first Japanese book, “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,” which he called “From the Diary of an English Teacher,” and “The Chief City of the Province of the Gods.” It is interesting to compare the impression made upon the teacher by his pupils with the opinion formed by the pupils of their foreign teacher.
Hearn says:—
“I have had two years’ experience in large Japanese schools; and I have never had personal knowledge of any serious quarrel between students.... A teacher is a teacher only: he stands to his pupils in the relation of an elder brother. He never tries to impose his will upon them ... severity would scarcely be tolerated by the students.... Strangely pleasant is the first sensation of a Japanese class, as you look over the ranges of young faces.... Those traits have nothing incisive, nothing forcible: compared with Occidental faces they seem but ‘half-sketched,’ so soft their outlines are.... Some have a childish freshness and frankness indescribable ... all are equally characterized by a singular placidity—expressing neither love nor hate nor anything save perfect repose and gentleness.... I find among the students a healthy tone of skepticism in regard to certain forms of popular belief. Scientific education is rapidly destroying credulity in old superstitions.... But the deeper religious sense remains with him; and the Monistic Idea in Buddhism is being strengthened ... by the new education.... Shintō the students all sincerely are ... what the higher Shintō signifies,—loyalty, filial piety, obedience to parents, and respect for ancestors.... The demeanour of a class during study hours is if anything too faultless. Never a whisper is heard; never is a head raised from the book without permission.... My favourite students often visit me of afternoons.... Their conversation and thoughts are of the simplest and frankest.... Often they bring me gifts of flowers, and sometimes they bring books and pictures to show me—delightfully queer things,—family heirlooms. Never by any possible chance are they troublesome, impolite, curious, or even talkative. Courtesy in its utmost possible exquisiteness seems as natural to the Izumo boy as the colour of his hair or the tint of his skin.”
Of the teacher one of his pupils, Teizabur? Inomata, now a student at Yale College, says:—
“We liked him for his appearance and for his gentle manners. He seemed more pleasing in his looks than most foreigners do to the Japanese.”
Masanobu Ōtani, his favourite pupil in Matsue, says: “He was a very kind and industrious teacher, incomparable to the common foreigners engaged in the Middle Schools of those days. No wonder therefore that he won at once the admiration of all the teachers and students of the school.” He sends a copy of one of his own compositions corrected and annotated by Hearn, and observes:—
“How he was kind and earnest in his teaching can well be seen by the above specimen. It seems that themes for our composition were such as he could infer our artless, genuine thoughts and feelings.... He attentively listened to our reading, corrected each mispronunciation whenever we did.... We Japanese feel much pain to pronounce ‘l’ and ‘th.’ He kindly and scrupulously taught the pronunciation of these sounds. He was not tired to correct mispronunciation.... He was always exact, but never severe.”
Hearn’s first residence in Matsue was at an inn in the quarter called Zaimoku-ch?, “but,” says his wife in the reminiscences which she set down to assist his biographer, “circumstances made him resolve to leave it very soon. The chief cause was as follows: The daughter of the innkeeper was suffering from a disease of the eyes. This aroused his sympathy (as did all such troubles in a special manner); he asked the landlord to send her to a hospital for treatment, but the landlord did not care much about her, and refused, to Hearn’s great mortification. ‘Unmerciful fellow! without a father’s heart,’ he said to himself, and removed to a house of his own on the shore of the lake.”
This house was near the bridge Ōhashi which crossed the largest of the three outlets from the lake to the bay, and commanded the beautiful scenery described in “The Chief City of the Province of the Gods”:—