Then again, our social morals! We never in the West talk to people of their duties. Do orators make speeches about duties? Do any, except priests, talk about social duties? But what do we talk to the people about? We talk to them about their rights,—“by G—d!” Always, incessantly, ad nauseam, about their rights. Now to talk to people who know nothing of social science, of political economy, of ethical ideas in their relation to eternal truths,—to talk to such people about their rights, is like giving a new-born baby a razor to play with. Or putting a loaded revolver in the hands of a mischievous child. Or inviting a crowd of urchins to make a bonfire in the immediate vicinity of ten thousand barrels of gunpowder. And the Oriental knows this. (Wherefore in China it was a law that he who should say or invent anything new should be put to death,—an extreme view of the necessities of the case, but not much more extreme than our own philistinism.)

The Japanese of the new school do not, however, keep to the Chinese wisdom. They show evidence now of a desire to put to death those who say anything older than yesterday. They are becoming infected with the Western moral poison. They are beginning to love their wives more than their fathers and mothers;—it is much cheaper....

By the way, I am in a world of new sensations. My first child will be born, I expect, about September next. The rest of my family have come from Matsue,—father-in-law, father’s father also, a nice old man of 84. We are now all together. There is universal joy because of the birth in prospect. And I am accused of not seeming joyful enough. I am not sorry. But I hope my little one will never have to face life in the West, but may always dwell in a Buddhist atmosphere.

Ever most faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Kumamoto, April, 1893.

Dear Hendrick,—Your most welcome lines of March 1 came to me during a lonesome spring vacation—to brighten it up. Your wish about a Japanese love-story has been partly answered in the March Atlantic; and in the June number, you will have a paper of mine, entitled the “Japanese Smile,” which you will find as philosophical as you could wish.—No, I have been working well, but for a book only; and of that book only five or six chapters can be published in a magazine. I am not yet sure if the book will be published in the shape I want,—although the publishers show some signs of yielding.

So much for me. I was too egotistic last time, and will not be so much so again, unless I get a very awful attack of the blues within the next five years....

To return to Japan and Japanese life. What do you think of the following? It happened near Kumamoto. A peasant went to consult an astrologer what to do for his mother’s eyes: she had become blind. The astrologer said that she would get her sight back if she could eat a little human liver,—taken fresh and from a young body. The peasant went home crying, and told his wife. She said: “We have only one boy. He is beautiful. You can get another wife as good, or better than I, very easily, but might never be able to get another son. Therefore, you must kill me instead of the son, and give my liver to your mother.” They embraced; and the husband killed her with a sword, and cut out the liver and began to cook it, when the child awoke and screamed. Neighbours and police came. In the police court, the peasant told his tale with childish frankness and cited stories from the Buddhist scriptures. The judges were moved to tears. They did not condemn the man to death;—they gave only nine years in prison. Really the man who ought to have been killed was the astrologer. And this but a few miles off from where they are teaching integral calculus, trigonometry, and Herbert Spencer! yet Western science and religion could never inspire that idolatrous self-devotion to a mother which the old ignorant peasant and his wife had. She thought it her sacred duty to die for her mother-in-law....