Lafcadio Hearn.
I still see you sitting at the wharf to watch us go. I think I shall always see you there.
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Tōkyō, 1896.
Dear Hendrick,—I am in immediate and awful need of books, and am going to ask you to put me into communication with a general book-dealer to whom I can send P. O. orders, and who will mail me books directly on receipt of cash. It is hopeless ordering through local book-dealers,—not simply because of charges and errors, but because of enormous delays. On a separate sheet I enclose some titles of what I badly want for the moment; and I am sending some cash. This said, I promise not to trouble you further except when I can’t help it. See what a nuisance I am!
You may well believe me in a hurry when I send a letter with such a beginning. Imagine my position:—a professor of literature without books, improvising lectures to students without books. I reached Tōkyō about seven days ago, and have not yet got a house,—but am living in a hotel. At present I can give you no valid impressions:—everything is a blur. But so far the position does not seem disagreeable—rather the reverse. In fact I am afraid to express my satisfaction,—remembering Polyxenes. The salary is 400 yen,—and in Japan, a yen is a dollar though it is only fifty-odd cents in America. Old pupils of Izumo and elsewhere gather round me, welcoming me, delighted—some needing help and winning it—some needing only sympathy. Professors far off, moving in separate and never-colliding orbits. I can teach for years—if I please—without ever seeing any of my colleagues. But Government favour, you know, is uncertain. The chances are that I shall hold on for three years at least.
When I heard last from you I was in Izumo. There I became very strong by constant swimming and starving,—Japanese diet takes all the loose flesh from a man in short order. My lungs got quite sound, and my miserable eye nearly well.
I suppose that I partly owe this place to my books, and partly to Professor Chamberlain’s kind recommendation. The Japanese seldom notice literary work,—but they have paid considerable attention to mine, considering that I am a foreigner. My ambition, though, is independence in my own home,—an old-fashioned yashiki, full of surprises of colour and beauty and quaintness and peace. And a few years abroad with my boy,—who is very mischievous now, and beats his father occasionally.—Curious, how much better the Japanese understand children than we do. You remember as a boy the obligatory morning dip in the sea, no doubt. This no Japanese parents would inflict on their child. I tried it with mine, but the folks said, “That is wrong: it will only make him afraid of the water.” Which proved true. Moreover, he would not allow me to come near him any more in the sea,—but used to order me to keep away. “Go away, and don’t come back any more.” Then the grandmother took him in charge; and in a week he was as fond of the water as I,—had overcome his fear of it. But it requires great patience to treat children Japanese-style,—by leaving them almost free to follow their natural impulses, and coaxing courage by little and little.
Awful weather,—floods, wreckings, ruinings, drownings. I think the deforestation of the country is probably the cause of these terrible visitations. In Kōbe just before I left, the river, usually a dry sandbed, burst its banks after rain, swept away whole streets, wrecked hundreds of houses, and drowned about a hundred people. Then you know the tidal wave in the north—it was only 200 miles long—destroyed some 30,000 lives. A considerable part of East Central Japan is still under water at this moment—river water. Lake Biwa rose and drowned the city of Ōtsu.