All send kindest regards to you, and pray you to take good care of your health.
With every best wish, believe me ever,
Most faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO SENTARŌ NISHIDA
Kumamoto, 1893.
Dear Nishida,—It gave me much pleasure to get your last kind letter. There was much depth in your statement of the present instability being consequent upon the stagnation of three hundred years. As to the consequence, however, only two theories are possible. The instability means—however it end—disintegration. Is the disintegration to be permanent?—or is there to be a re-integration? That is what nobody can say. There is this, however. Usually a movement of disintegration represents something like this line,—the undulations signifying waves of reaction. This movement is downward, and ends in ruin. However, so far, the undulations in Japan have been, I think, of a very different character,—something like this:—
which would mean restoration of national solidity upon a much higher plane than before. The doubt is whether a much larger movement of disintegration is not going on,—whose undulations are too large to be seen in a space of thirty years.
