You will not be sorry to hear that I am to have the same publishers as Mr. Lowell,—at least according to present indications. I am not vain enough to think I can ever write anything so beautiful as his “Chosōn” or “Soul of the Far East,” and will certainly make a poor showing beside his precise, fine, perfectly worded work. But I am not going to try to do anything in his line. My work will deal wholly with exceptional things (chiefly popular) in an untilled field of another kind.
I gave 72 boys, as subject for composition the other day, the question: “What would you most like in this world?” Nine of the compositions contained in substance this answer: “To die for our Sacred Emperor.” That is Shintō. Isn’t it grand and beautiful? and do you wonder that I love it after that?
Most grateful regards from yours most sincerely,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, 1891.
Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I went to Kōbe by rail, and thence by jinrikisha across Japan over mountains and through valleys of rice-fields—a journey of four days; but the most delightful in some respects of all my travelling experiences. The scenery had this peculiar effect, that it repeated for me many of my tropical impressions—received in a country of similar volcanic configuration,—besides reviving for me all sorts of early memories of travel in Wales and England which I had forgotten. Nothing could be more beautiful than this mingling of the sensations of the tropics with those of Northern summers. And the people! My expectations were much more than realized: it is among the country-people Japanese character should be studied, and I could not give my opinion of them now without using what you would call enthusiastic language. I felt quite sorry to reach this larger city, where the people are so much less simple, charming, and kindly,—although I have every reason to be pleased with them. And in a mountain village I saw a dance unlike anything I ever saw before—some dance immemorially old, and full of weird grace. I watched it until midnight, and wish I could see it again. Nothing yet seen in Japan delighted me so much as this Bon-odori—in no wise resembling the same performance in the north. I found Buddhism gradually weaken toward the interior, while Shintō emblems surrounded the fields, and things suggesting the phallic worship of antiquity were being adored in remote groves.
Lafcadio Hearn.