For my friends have been dying quickly. Some years ago, one said to me: “You will outlive us: foreigners live longer than Japanese.” This I did not think true, as I know many Japanese over eighty, and the longevity of the western farmers is sometimes extraordinary—110 years being not very rare, and 100 plentiful, as examples. But my friend was doubtless referring to the more delicate classes—the hot-house plants, conservatory-growths, moulded by etiquette and classical culture and home-law. And I fear he was right. Nearly all my Japanese friends are dead. The last case was three or four days ago,—the sweetest of little women,—a creature not seemingly of flesh and blood, but made of silk embroidery mixed with soul. She was highly accomplished—one of my wife’s school friends. Married to a good man, but a man unable to care for her as she ought to have been cared for. No force to bear children: the pretty creature had never been too strong, and over-education had strained her nerves. She ought never to have been married at all. She knew she was dying, and came to bid us good-bye, laughing and lying bravely. “I must go home,” she said, “but I’ll soon be well and come back.” She must have suffered terribly for more than a year—but she never complained, never ceased to smile, never broke down. Died soon after reaching home.

Another friend, a man, dying, tells his wife: “Open the windows (shōji) wide, that my friend may see the chrysanthemums in the garden.” And he watches my face, laughing, while I pretend to be pleased. The beauty of his soul is finer than any chrysanthemum, and it is flitting. He wakes up in the night and calls: “Mother, did you hear from my friend? is his son well?” Then he goes to sleep again—his last words—for he is dead at sunrise. These lives are too fine and frail for the brutal civilization that is going to crush them all out—every one of them,—and prove to the future that sweetness is immoral à la Nietzsche: that to be unselfish is to sentence one’s self to death and one’s beloved to misery and probable extermination.

But then imagine beings who never, in their lives, did anything which was not—I will not say “right,” that is commonplace—any single thing which was not beautiful! Should I write this the world would, of course, call me a liar, as it has become accustomed to do. But I could not now even write of them except to you—the wounds are raw.

I am thinking about Velvet Souls in general, and all ever known by me in particular. Almost in every place where I lived long, it was given me to meet a velvet soul or two—presences (male or female mattered nothing) which with a word or look wrapped all your being round in a softness and warmth of emotional caress inexpressible. “Velvet” isn’t a good word. The effect is more like the bath of tropical light and warmth to the body of a sick voyager from lands of consumption and rheumatism. These souls are intellectual in many cases, but that is not the interest of them—the interest is purely emotional. A purely intellectual person is unpleasant; and I fancy our religion is chiefly hateful because it makes its gods of the intellectual kind now-a-days. I should like to write about such souls—but how difficult. A queer thing for me is that in memory they unite, without distinction of sex, into one divine type of perfect tenderness and sympathy and knowledge,—like those Living Creatures of Dante’s Paradise composed of many different persons. I have found such souls also in Japan—but only Japanese souls. But they are melting into the night.

Lafcadio.

P.S. A very sad but curious story. A charming person, of high rank, bore twins. A Western woman would be proud and pleased. Shame struck the Japanese mother down. She became insane for shame. All Japanese life is not beautiful, you see. Imagine the cruelty of such a popular idea,—a peasant would have borne the trouble well,—but a daughter of princes—no!

TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA
Tōkyō, 1897.

Dear Nishida,—Your last kind letter came just after I had posted mine to you. Since then I have been horribly busy, and upset, and confused,—and even now I write rather because feeling ashamed at having been so long silent, than because I have time to write a good letter. We got a house only on the 29th, and are only half-settled now. The house is large—two-storied, and new—but not pretty, and there is no garden (at least nothing which deserves to be called a garden). We moved into it before it was finished, so as to make sure of it. It is all Japanese, of course—ten rooms. It belongs to a man who owns seven hundred and eighty houses!—a very old man, a Sakeya, named Masumoto Kihei. (Somebody tells me I am wrong,—that he has more than eight hundred houses.) He buries poor people free of charge—that is one of his ways of showing charity. He has one superintendent who, with many assistants, manages the renting of the houses. The house is very far from the university—forty-five minutes by kuruma—in Ushigome, and almost at the very end of Tōkyō. But it was a case of Shikata ga nai.

I teach only twelve hours. I have no text-books except for two classes,—one of which studies Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and the other Tennyson’s “Princess” (at my suggestion). I did not suggest “Paradise Lost;” but as the students wanted in different divisions of the class to study different books, made them vote, and, out of seventy-eight, sixty-three voted for “Paradise Lost”! Curious! (Just because it was hard for them, I suppose.) My other classes are special, and receive lectures on special branches of English literature (such as Ballad Literature, Ancient and Modern; Victorian Literature, etc.);—the professor being left free to do as he pleases. Of course, the position, as I try to fill it, will be an expensive one. I shall probably have to buy $1000 worth of books before next summer. Ultimately everything will be less expensive. The classes are very badly arranged (badly is a gentle word); for the 1st, 2d and 3d years of literature make one class;—the 2d and 3d together another class;—the 3d by itself a third class. You will see at once how difficult to try to establish a systematic three-years’ course. I am doing it, however,—with Professor Toyama’s approval;—hoping that the classes may be changed next year.