He was still in Kumamoto when Japan went to war with China, and his record of the emotion of the people is full of interest. The war spirit manifested itself in ways not less painful than extraordinary. Many killed themselves on being refused the chance of military service.
It was here in the previous year, November 17, 1893, that his first child was born, and was named Kazuo, which signifies “the first of the excellent, best of the peerless.” The event caused him the profoundest emotion. Indeed, it seemed to work a great change in all his views of life, as perhaps it does in most parents, reconciling them to much against which they may have previously rebelled. Writing to me a few weeks after this event he declared with artless conviction that the boy was “strangely beautiful,” and though three other children came in later years, Kazuo always remained his special interest and concern. Up to the time of his death he never allowed his eldest son to be taught by any one but himself, and his most painful preoccupation when his health began to decline was with the future of this child, who appeared to have inherited both his father’s looks and disposition.
The constant change in the personnel of the teaching force of the college, and many annoyances to which he was subjected, caused his decision at the end of the three years’ term to remove to Kōbe and enter the service of the Kōbe Chronicle. Explaining to Amenomori he says:—
“By the way, I am hoping to leave the Gov’t service, and begin journalism at Kōbe. I am not sure of success; but Gov’t service is uncertain to the degree of terror,—a sword of Damocles; and Gov’t doesn’t employ men like you as teachers. If it did, and would give them what they should have, the position of a foreign teacher would be pleasant enough. He would be among thinkers, and find some kindliness,—instead of being made to feel that he is only the servant of petty political clerks. And I have been so isolated, that I must acknowledge the weakness of wishing to be among Englishmen again—with all their prejudices and conventions.”
Kōbe was at that time, 1895, an open port, that is to say, one of the places in which foreigners were allowed to reside without special government permission, and under the extra-territorial rule of their own consuls. Of Hearn’s external life here there seems to be but scant record. He worked as one of the staff of the Chronicle,—his editorials frequently bringing upon him the wrath of the missionaries,—he contributed some letters to the McClure Syndicate, and there was much talk of a projected expedition, in search of material for such work, to the Philippines or the Loo Choo Islands; a project never realized. The journalistic work seriously affected his eyes, and his health seems to have been poor at times. He made few acquaintances and had almost no companions outside of his own household, where in 1896 another son was born.
Perhaps because of the narrowness of his social life his mental life deepened and expanded, or possibly his indifference to the outer world may have resulted from the change manifesting itself in his mental view.
“Kokoro” (a Japanese word signifying “The Heart of Things”) was written in Kōbe, as was also “Gleanings in Buddha-Fields,” and they quite remarkably demonstrate his growing indifference to the externals of life, the deepening of his thought toward the intrinsic and the fundamental. The visible beauty of woman, of nature, of art, grew to absorb him less as he sought for the essential principle of beauty.
In one of the letters written about this time he says: “I have to acknowledge to feeling a sort of resentment against certain things in which I used to take pleasure. I can’t look at a number of the Petit Journal pour Rire or the Charivari without vexation, almost anger. I can’t find pleasure in a French novel written for the obvious purpose of appealing to instincts that interfere with perception of higher things than instincts. I should not go to the Paris Opera if it were next door. I should not like to visit the most beautiful lady and be received in evening dress. You see how absurd I have become—and this without any idea of principle about the matter except the knowledge that I ought to avoid everything which does not help me to make the best of myself—small as it may be.”
And again: “I might say that I have become indifferent to personal pleasure of any sort ... what is more significant, I think, is the feeling that the greatest pleasure is to work for others—for those who take it as a matter of course that I should do so, and would be as much amazed to find me selfish about it as if an earthquake had shaken the house down.... It now seems to me that time is the most precious of all things conceivable. I can’t waste it by going out to hear people talk nonsense.... There are rich natures that can afford the waste, but I can’t, because the best part of my life has been wasted in the wrong direction and I shall have to work like thunder till I die to make up for it.”
The growing gravity and force of his thought was shown not only in his books but in his correspondence. Most of the letters written at this period were addressed to Professor Chamberlain, dealing with matters of heredity and the evolution of the individual under ancestral racial influences. The following extract is typical of the tone of the whole:—