TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Tōkyō, January, 1896.
Dear Hendrick,—It is really queer, you know—this university. It is imposing to look at,—with its relics of feudalism, to suggest the picturesque past, surrounding a structure that might be in the city of Boston, or in Philadelphia, or in London, without appearing at all out of place. There is even a large, deserted, wood-shadowed Buddhist temple in the grounds!
The students have uniforms and peculiar caps with Chinese letters on them; but only a small percentage regularly wear the uniform. The old discipline has been relaxed; and there is a general return to sandals and robes and hakama,—the cap alone marking the university man.
About seventy-five per cent of the students ought not to be allowed in the university at all for certain branches. Some who know no European language but French attend German lectures on philosophy; some who know nothing of any European language attend lectures on philology. What is the university, then?—is it only a mask to impose upon the intellectual West? No: it is the best Japan can do, but it has the fault of being a gate to public office. Get through the university, and you have a post—a start in life. Fancy the outside Oriental pressure to force lads through—the influences intercrossing and fulminating! Accordingly, the power within is little more than nominal. Who rules in fact? Nobody exactly. Certainly the Directing President does not,—nor do the heads of colleges, except in minor matters of discipline. All, or nearly all, are graduates of German, English, or French or American universities;—they know what ought to be—but they do only what they can. Something nameless and invisible, much stronger than they,—political perhaps, certainly social,—overawes the whole business.
MR. HEARN’S GARDEN IN TŌKYŌ
I ought not to say anything, and won’t except to you. No foreign professor says much,—even after returning home. None have had just cause to complain of treatment received. Besides, if things were as they are in the West, I wouldn’t be allowed to teach (there would be a demand for a “Christian” and gentleman). I lecture on subjects which I do not understand; and yet without remorse, because I know just enough to steer those who know much less. After a year or two I shall probably be more fit for the position.
Studying in one class, for a university text, Tennyson’s “Princess” (my selection); in another, “Paradise Lost,”—the students wanted it, because they heard it was difficult. They are beginning to perceive that it is unspeakably difficult for them. (Remember, they know nothing of Christian mythology or history.) I lecture on the Victorian poets, etc., and on special themes,—depending a good deal on dictation.