LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
LETTERS
1890-1904
TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
1890.
Dear Elizabeth,— ... I feel indescribably towards Japan. Of course Nature here is not the Nature of the tropics, which is so splendid and savage and omnipotently beautiful that I feel at this very moment of writing the same pain in my heart I felt when leaving Martinique. This is a domesticated Nature, which loves man, and makes itself beautiful for him in a quiet grey-and-blue way like the Japanese women, and the trees seem to know what people say about them,—seem to have little human souls. What I love in Japan is the Japanese,—the poor simple humanity of the country. It is divine. There is nothing in this world approaching the naïve natural charm of them. No book ever written has reflected it. And I love their gods, their customs, their dress, their bird-like quavering songs, their houses, their superstitions, their faults. And I believe that their art is as far in advance of our art as old Greek art was superior to that of the earliest European art-gropings—I think there is more art in a print by Hokusai or those who came after him than in a $10,000 painting—no, a $100,000 painting. We are the barbarians! I do not merely think these things: I am as sure of them as of death. I only wish I could be reincarnated in some little Japanese baby, so that I could see and feel the world as beautifully as a Japanese brain does.
And, of course, I am studying Buddhism with heart and soul. A young student from one of the temples is my companion. If I stay in Japan, we shall live together.—Will write again if all goes well.
My best love to you always.
Lafcadio Hearn.