TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA
Kumamoto, August, 1893.
Dear Nishida,—I have missed you very much this long vacation; but, as I anticipated, it could not be helped. Another bundle of proofs has been keeping me at work; and I find the book promises to be bigger than I told you in my last letter. They are using type that will spread it out to probably 750 pp. I send you one specimen proof—just to show you the size of the type.
The man who has been sent for to fill the place in Kyōto, will not, I imagine, be able to keep it. He is a rabid proselytizer; in Kumamoto, years ago, he formed a society of Christians, called the Christian Band (I forget the Japanese name): that is why the Kyūshū folk nearly killed him. Privately—between you and me—I think there will be great changes in the Kyōto middle school next year; and I think that I shall get there. But there is nothing sure. I will not go to Tōkyō as long as I can help it.
Many thanks for your splendid letter about the legends of the ballads. I have put it away carefully to use in a future essay.—You say, if you were to tell me about the noble things the common people do, you would never get done. Indeed, one strong fact would give me work for two or three months. The publishers wrote me to say they want stories of the life of the common people to-day,—showing the influence of moral teaching on conduct: that is, Buddhist, Shintō, and ancestor-teaching. I have been trying to get the facts about the poor girl who killed herself in Kyōto because the Emperor “augustly mourned” after the crazy action of Tsuda Sanzo; but I have not yet succeeded. By the way, I think Tsuda Sanzo will be more kindly judged by a future generation. His crime was only “loyalty-run-mad.” He was insane for the moment with an insanity which would have been of the highest value in a good cause and time. He saw before him the living representative of the awful Power which makes even England tremble;—the power against which Western Europe has mustered an army of more than 15,000,000 of men. He saw, or thought he saw (perhaps he really did see: time only can show) the Enemy of Japan. Then he struck—out of his heart, without consulting his head. He did very wrong;—he made a sad mistake; but I think that man’s heart was noble and true, in spite of all his foolishness. He would have been a hero under happier circumstances....
I have just heard that the name of one kind of those horrid beetles in Kumamoto is gane-bun-bun, and the hyakushō call them gane-bu; and people throw them out of the window, saying, “Come back the day-before-yesterday.” Then they never come back at all.
I have made a mistake again. The gane-bun-bun is not the greatest plague I was complaining of,—but the fu-mushi. There is yet another small one, I have not found out the name of. They make a whole room smell horribly. Some, however, call both the big fu-mushi and the small creature by the same name—distinguishing them only as the green and the black. By the way, I will put a fu-mushi in this letter, because they keep coming on the table so that I think it may be well to send one to Izumo, in the hopes of inducing the rest to emigrate.
