Before leaving I had a copy of Murray’s Guide sent to the Kokuzō, who was more than pleased to see the picture of the great temple reproduced and to hear what was said about it. Before I went away, he gave me another singular entertainment, such as he alone could do—for he is King of Kizuki. (By the way, the old reverence for the Kokuzō is not dead. Folks do not believe now that whoever he looks at immediately becomes unable to move; but as I and my companion followed him to the great shrine, the pilgrims fell down and worshipped him as he passed.)
This was the entertainment he gave me:—Having invited me to the temple grounds, where seats were prepared, and a supper got ready for us, Mr. Senke gave some order, and the immense court immediately filled with people,—thousands. Then at a signal began a round dance, such as I had never seen before,—the Hōnen-odori, as anciently performed in Kizuki. It was so fascinating that I watched it until two o’clock in the morning. At least three hundred dancers were in the ring;—and the leader, standing on a mochi-mortar turned upside down, with an umbrella over his head, formed the axis of the great round, and turned slowly within it upon his pedestal. He had a superb voice. The Kokuzō also got the beautiful miko dances photographed to please me, and presented me with many curious MSS., some of which I hope to show you later on. They were written expressly for me.
Now as to the shōryō-bune. Just as the Bon-odori differs in every part of Japan, and just as everything at Kizuki is totally different from everything at Ise, even to the Miko-kagura, so is the custom of sending away the Ships of the Souls different here. In many parts the ships are launched at two or three o’clock in the morning of the day after the Bon; or if ships are not launched, then floating lanterns are sent out by way of guiding the dead home. But in Kizuki the shōryō-bune are launched only by day and for those who have been drowned at sea, and the shapes of the ships vary according to the kind of ship in which the lost man or woman perished. And they are launched every year for ten years after the death:—and when the soul returns yearly to visit the home, the ship is made ready, and a little stick of incense is lighted before launching it to take the beloved ghost back again, and a little stock of provisions is placed in it upon kawarake (principally dango). And the kaimyō of the dead is written upon the sail. And these boats are launched,—not at night, as elsewhere, but in the daytime.
I have had the shōryō-bune boxed and addressed to you, and a priest wrote for me the kaimyō upon the sail and the date of death, according to the usual custom. But you will not get the thing before three weeks, as I am forwarding it by express, and you know how slow the process is!
As for my letters, use anything you wish, and, if you desire, my name. The only matter is this: that I am so small a personage as an author that I am much in doubt whether the use of my name attached to any opinion would give the opinion more weight than if expressed impersonally. Unless it should, it might not be good for the book. I leave the decision entirely to you.
I have been reading Mr. Lowell’s book over again; for it is one thing to read it in Philadelphia, and quite another thing to read it after having spent a year and a half in Japan. And the power and the charm impress me more than ever. But I am so much horrified by its conclusions—at least a few of them—that I try very hard to find a flaw therein. I think the idea that the degree of the development of individuality in a people necessarily marks its place in the great march of mind is not true necessarily. At least it may be argued about. For as the tendency of the age is toward class specialization and interdependent subdivision of all branches of knowledge and all practical application of that knowledge, the development of the individuality of every integer of a community would seem to me to unfit the unit to form a close part of any specialized class. In brief, I doubt, or rather I wish to doubt, that the development of individuality is a lofty or desirable tendency. Much of what is called personality and individuality is intensely repellent, and makes the principal misery of Occidental life. It means much that is connected with pure aggressive selfishness: and its extraordinary development in a country like America or England seems a confirmation of Viscount Torio’s theory that Western civilization has the defect of cultivating the individual at the expense only of the mass, and giving unbounded opportunities to human selfishness, unrestrained by religious sentiment, law, or emotional feeling.
THE CITY OF MATSUE
What you say about your experience with Japanese poetry is indeed very telling and very painful to one who loves Japan. Depth, I have long suspected, does not exist in the Japanese soul-stream. It flows much like the rivers of the country,—over beds three quarters dry,—very clear and charmingly beshadowed;—but made temporarily profound only by some passional storm. But it seems to me that some tendencies in Japanese prose give hope of some beautiful things. There was a story some time ago in the Asahi Shimbun about a shirabyōshi that brought tears to my eyes, as slowly and painfully translated by a friend. There was tenderness and poetry and pathos in it worthy of Le Fanu (I thought of the exquisite story of Le Fanu, “A Bird of Passage,” simply as a superb bit of tender pathos) or Bret Harte—though, of course, I don’t know what the style is. But the Japanese poem, as I judge from your work and the “Anthologie Japonaise,” seems to me exactly the Japanese coloured print in words,—nothing much more. Still, how the sensation of that which has been is flashed into heart and memory by the delicious print or the simple little verse.