What you write about little Miss Constance is very sweet. I hope soon to send her some Japanese fairy-tales written by your humble servant;—that is, I hope; for the Tōkyō publisher is awfully slow in getting them out. You have had anxiety, I find. But the delicacy that causes it means a highly complex nervous organization; and the anxieties will be well compensated, I fancy, later on. She will become, judging from the suggestion of that gold-head in the photograph, almost too beautiful: I hope to see another photograph later on. I shall send one of Kazuo in a few days. We were terribly frightened about him,—for he caught a serious cold on the lungs; but after a few weeks he picked up well. He gets taller, and every day surprises us with some new observation. He seems to get fairer always instead of darker—nobody now ever takes him to be a Japanese boy. He is very jealous of his mother,—won’t allow me to monopolize her for even five minutes; and I am no longer master in my own house. Servants and relatives and grandparents, they all obey him,—and pay no attention at all to my wishes unless they happen to be in harmony with his own. Certainly Japanese people are kinder to children than any other people in the world,—too good altogether. Still, they do not spoil children,—for as a general rule they manage to make them grow up strangely, incomprehensibly obedient. I don’t understand it,—except as heredity: indeed, I may as well frankly say that the longer I live in Japan, the less I know about the Japanese. “That is a sign,” says one Oriental friend, “that you are beginning to understand. It is only when a foreigner confesses he knows nothing about us that there is some reason to expect he will understand us later on.”
About the letters, I need only say, perhaps, that I shall give you the best of what I write this year (excepting, of course, essays on Buddhist philosophy, or stuff of that sort, which would be out of place, no doubt, in a newspaper). I may include a few little stories....
“Kokoro” ought to reach you next March. It is rather a crazy book; but I wish I could hear you read one or two pages in it....
Ever affectionately,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO OCHIAI
Kōbe, February, 1896.
Dear Ochiai,—I am delighted that you have taken up medicine, for two reasons. First, it will assure your independence—your ability to maintain yourself, and to help your people. Secondly, it will change all your ideas about the world we live in, and will make you large-minded in many ways, if you study well. For in these days, you cannot study medicine without studying many different branches of science—chemistry, which will oblige you to understand something of the nature of the great mystery of matter,—physiology, which will show you that the most ordinary human body is full of machinery more wonderful than any genius ever invented,—biology, which will give you perceptions of the eternal laws which shape all form and regulate all motion,—histology, which will show you that all life is shaped, after methods that no man can understand, out of one substance into millions of different forms,—embryology, which will teach you how the whole history of a species or a race is shown in the development of the individual, as organ after organ unfolds and develops in the wonderful process of growth. The study of medicine is, to a large extent, the study of the universe and of universal laws,—and makes a better man of any one who is intelligent enough to master its principles. Of course you must learn to love it,—because no man can do anything really great with a subject that he does not like. There are many very horrible things in it which you will have to face; but you must not be repelled by these, because the facts behind them are very beautiful and wonderful. There is so much in medicine—such a variety of subjects, that you will have a wide choice before you in case some particular branch should not be attractive to you.
Also do not forget that your knowledge of English will be of great use to you in medicine, and that, if you love literature, medicine will give you plenty of chance to indulge that love. (Some of our best foreign authors, you know, have been practising physicians.) In Kōbe I find that some of the best Japanese doctors find English very useful to them, not only in their practice, but also in their private studies. But you will also have to learn German; and that language will open to you a very wonderful literature, if you like literature—not to speak of the scientific advantages of German, which are unrivalled.
Well, I trust to hear good news from you later on. Take great care of your health, I beg of you, and believe me ever anxious for your success.