In this Tōkyō, this detestable Tōkyō, there are no Japanese impressions to be had except at rare intervals. To describe to you the place would be utterly impossible,—more easy to describe a province. Here the quarter of the foreign embassies, looking like a well-painted American suburb;—near by an estate with quaint Chinese gates several centuries old; a little further square miles of indescribable squalor;—then miles of military parade-ground trampled into a waste of dust, and bounded by hideous barracks;—then a great park, full of really weird beauty, the shadows all black as ink;—then square miles of streets of shops, which burn down once a year;—then more squalor;—then rice-fields and bamboo groves;—then more streets. All this not flat, but hilly,—a city of undulations. Immense silences—green and romantic—alternate with quarters of turmoil and factories and railroad stations. Miles of telegraph-poles, looking at a distance like enormous fine-tooth combs, make a horrid impression. Miles of water-pipes—miles and miles and miles of them—interrupt the traffic of the principal streets: they have been trying to put them underground for seven years,—and what with official trickery, etc., the work makes slow progress. Gigantic reservoirs are ready; but no water in them yet. City being sued by the foreign engineer (once a university professor) for $138,000 odd commission on plans! Streets melt under rain, water-pipes sink, water-pipe holes drown spreeing men and swallow up playful children; frogs sing amazing songs in the street.—To think of art or time or eternity in the dead waste and muddle of this mess is difficult. The Holy Ghost of the poets is not in Tōkyō. I am going to try to find him by the seashore.
The other night I got into a little-known part of Tōkyō,—a street all ablaze with lanterns about thirty feet high, painted with weird devices. And I was interested especially by the insect-sellers. I bought a number of cages full of night-singing insects, and am now trying to make a study of the subjects. The noise made by these creatures is very much more extraordinary than you could imagine; but the habit of keeping them is not merely due to a love of the noise in itself. No: it is because these little orchestras give to city-dwellers the feeling of the delight of being in the country,—the sense of woods and hills and flowing water and starry nights and sweet air. Fireflies are caged for the same reason.
This is a refinement of sensation, is it not?—only a poetical people could have imagined the luxury of buying summer-voices to make for them the illusion of nature where there is only dust and mud. Notice also that the singers are night-singers. It is no use to cage the cicadæ: they remain silent in a cage, and die.
In this horrid Tōkyō I feel like a cicada:—I am caged, and can’t sing. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever be able to sing any more,—except at night?—like a bell-insect which has only one note.
What more and more impresses me every year is the degree to which the writer is a creature of circumstance. If he can make the circumstance, like a Kipling or a Stevenson, he can go on forever. Otherwise he is likely to exhaust every motive in short order, to the same extent that he depends on outer influence.
There was a little under-ripple of premonition in that very sweet letter from Miss Josephine,—just the faintest suggestion of a thought that the future might hold troubles in its shadow. Now I suppose that for none can the future be only luminous; but that you will have a smooth and steady current to bear you along to the great sea appears to me a matter of course. I do not imagine there will be rocks and reefs and whirlpools for you. You have both such large experience of life as it is, and of the laws and the arts of navigating that water, that I have no anxiety about you at all. Such little disillusions as you may have should only draw you nearer together. But there is the sensation of being afraid for somebody else—one has to face that; and the more boldly, perhaps, the less the terror becomes. It is worse in the case where one would be helpless without the other. But I imagine that your union is one of two strong independent spirits—each skilled in self-guidance. That makes everything so much easier.
One thing you will have to do,—that is, to take extremely good care of yourself for somebody else’s sake. Which redounds to my benefit; for I really don’t know what I should do without that occasional wind of sympathy wherewith your letters refresh me. I keep telling my wife that it would be ever so much better to leave Tōkyō, and dwell in the country, at a very much smaller salary, and have peace of mind. She says that nowhere could I have any peace of mind until I become a Buddha, and that with patience we can become independent. This is good; and my few Japanese friends tell me the same thing. But perhaps the influence from 40 Kilby Street, Boston, is the most powerful and saving of all.
An earthquake and several other things (I hate earthquakes) interrupted this letter. It is awfully dull, I know—forgive its flatness....
Ever, dear H., your