Lafcadio Hearn (Y. Koizumi).
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, February, 1898.
Dear McDonald,—I must try to forget some of your beautiful letter for fear that it should give me much too good an opinion of myself. A reverse state of mind is, on the whole, much better for the writer,—I mean for any professional writer.
I believe all that you wish me to believe about your generous call—but, if friend McDonald does not think my house a poor rat-trap, that is because friend McDonald has not yet discovered what a beautiful Japanese house is like. Let me assure him, therefore, that it is something so dainty, so wonderful, that only by custom can one cease to be afraid to walk about in it.
Yes, as you surmised, one of your suggestions is wrong. The professional writer, however small his own powers may be, generally knows the range of literary possibilities; and I know that what you wish cannot be done by any Western writer with the least hope of success. It has been extensively tried—always with the result of failure. The best attempt, perhaps, was the effort of Judith Gautier,—a very delicate French writer; but it did not succeed. As for “A Muramasa Blade,” “Mito Yashiki,” etc., the less said the better. In any case, it is not so much that the subject itself is immensely difficult for a foreigner, as that even supposing this difficulty mastered, the Western public would not care twopence about the result. Material is everywhere at hand. Yearly, from the Japanese press are issued the most wonderful and thrilling stories of Japanese feudal life; but a master-translation of these, accompanied with illustrations of the finest kind, would fall dead in a Western book-market, and find its way quickly into the ten-cent boxes of second-hand dealers. And why? Simply because the Occidental reader could not feel interested in the poetry or romance of a life so remote.
No: the public want in fiction things taken raw and palpitating out of life itself,—the life they know,—the life everybody knows,—not that which is known only to a few. Stories from Japan (or India or China, for that matter) must be stories about Western people among alien surroundings. And the people must not be difficult to understand; they must be people like the owner of the “Mary Gloster” in Kipling’s “Seven Seas.” (You ought to buy that book—and love it.) Of course, I don’t mean to say that I could ever do anything of Kipling’s kind—I should have to do much humbler work,—but I am indicating what I mean by “raw out of life.”
As for the other suggestion,—who ever was such a pretty maker of compliments!—I can only say that I am happy to have a friend who thus thinks of me.
Gratefully, with much thanks for your charming letter,
Lafcadio Hearn.