By the way, since you like those Shintō prints,—and I might get you others,—what about a possible edition of your “Kojiki” illustrated by Japanese conceptions of this kind, colours and all? Such work can be so cheaply done in Japan! And an index! How often I wished for an index. I have made an imperfect one of my own. It is believed here that Hahaki is the ancient name of the modern Hōki. I was told this when I wanted to go to the legendary burial-place of Izanami.
As usual, I find I have been too presumptuous in writing offhand about cats’ tails. On enquiring, I learn that there are often, born of the same mother, Izumo kittens with short tails, and kittens with long tails. This would show that two distinct species of cats exist here. The long-tailed kittens are always deprived when possible of the larger part of their caudal appendage. The short tails are spared. If an old cat be seen with a short tail, people say,—“this cat is old, but she has a short tail: therefore she is a good cat.” (For the obake cat gets two tails when old, and every wicked cat has a long tail.) I am told that at the recent bon, in Matsue, cats of the evil sort were seen to dance upon the roofs of the houses.
What you tell me about those Shintō rituals and their suspicious origin seems to me quite certainly true. So the kara-shishi and the mon and the dragon-carvings and the tōrōs,—all stare me in the face as pillage of Buddhism. But the funeral rite which I saw and took part in, on the anniversary of the death of Prince Sanjō, struck me as immemorially primitive. The weird simplicity of it—the banquet to the ghost, the covering of the faces with white paper, the moaning song, the barbarian music, all seemed to me traditions and echoes of the very childhood of the race. I shall try to discover the genesis of the book you speak of as dubious in character. The Shintō christening ceremony is strictly observed here, and there are curious facts about the funeral ceremonies—totally at variance with and hostile to Buddhism.
By the way, when I visited a tera in Mionoseki after having bought o fuda at the Miojinja, I was told I must not carry the o fuda into the court of the tera. The Kami would be displeased.
For the moment, good-bye.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Matsue, 1891.
Dear Hendrick,— ... My household relations have turned out to be extremely happy, and to bind me very fast here at the very time that I was beginning to feel like going away. It does not now seem possible for me ever to go away. To take the little woman to another country would be to make her extremely unhappy; for no kindness or comfort could compensate for the loss of her own social atmosphere—in which all thoughts and feelings are so totally different from our own.