Mr. Senke has sent me the most beautiful letter, which I hope to answer by this same mail. What a divine thing the old Japanese courtesy was! and how like Kami sama the dear old men who remember it, and preserve it. Of course Mr. Senke is a young man, but his courtesy is the old courtesy. The high schools seem to me to be ruining Japanese manners, and therefore morals—because morals are manners to a certain extent. Those who lose the old ways never replace them; they cannot learn foreign courtesy, which is largely a matter of tone,—tone of voice, address, touch of minds, and benevolence in small things, which is our politeness. So they remain without any manners at all, and their hearts get hardened in some queer way. They cease to be lovable, and often become unbearable. I hope the great reaction will bring back, among other things, some of the knightly old ways.
I send a reprint of my last Japanese story. Hope my book will reach you soon, and will not displease you. Of course, you will find in it many mistakes—as any book written by a foreigner must be rich in errors. But the general effect of the book will not be bad, I think. I am now trying to write a sketch about Yuko Hatakeyama, the girl who killed herself at Kyōto in May, 1891, for loyalty’s sake. The fact is full of wonderful meaning—as indicating a national sentiment.
Kazuo is crawling about, opening drawers, and causing much trouble. His eyes have again changed colour,—from blue to brown, like my own; but his hair remains chestnut. His upper teeth are well out, and everybody wonders how strong he is. He has one Japanese virtue: he does not cry, and keeps his self-control even when hurt. I hope he will keep all these traits. My whole anxiety is now about him: I must send him, or, if possible, take him abroad—for a scientific education, if he prove to have a good head. That will be expensive. But I hope to do it. I do not think a father should leave his son alone in a foreign school, if it can be helped: he ought to be always near him, until manhood. And Setsu would feel at home soon in France or in Italy,—at least at home enough to bear the life until Kazuo could get through a course or two.
The foreign community sorrows about the war,—naturally. Business is paralyzed. Every one feels the Japanese will win the fights. But who will win the war? That might be a question of money. Japan is daring to do what the richest country in Europe fears to do—because it costs so much to fight China. And some of the Izumo boys are out there in the rice-fields of Chosön. I trust they will pass safely through all perils. Please send me any news of them you can.
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Matsue, September, 1894.
Dear Hendrick,—If ever I must go to America, I hope I can keep out of New York. The great nightmare of it always dwells with me,—moos at me in the night, especially in the time of earthquakes. Of London I should be much less afraid. But in such great cities I do not think a literary man can write any literature. Certainly not if he has to stay in the heart of the clockwork. Society withers him up—unless he have been born into the manner of it; and the complexities of the vast life about him he never could learn. Fancy a good romance about Wall Street,—so written that the public could understand it! There is, of course, a tremendous romance there; but only a financier can really know the machinery, and his knowledge is technical. But what can the mere littérateur do, walled up to heaven in a world of mathematical mystery and machinery! Your own city of Albany is a paradise compared to the metropolis: you are really very fortunate—very, very happy to be able to live at home.
Of course, there is a philosophy of good manners—too much of it, eh? There is Emerson, all suggestive,—but touching eternal truths in his essays on conduct, behaviour, etc.; and there is Spencer, who traces back the history of nearly all good manners to the earliest period of savagery and perpetual war. (You know about the origin of the bow, of our forms of address, and of the forms of prayer.) Politeness survives longest and develops most elaborately under militant conditions, and diminishes in exact proportion as militancy decreases. That there should be less politeness in America than in other countries, and less in the Northern States than in the Southern, might be expected. This was true as to both conditions: it is now true probably only as to the first. With the growth of industrialism,—the sense of equal chances, at least of equal rights before the law,—the abolition of class distinctions,—fine manners vanish more or less. Nevertheless I fancy that under all the American roughness and lack of delicacy, or of that politeness which means “benevolence in small things,” there is growing up a vast, deep feeling of human brotherhood,—of genuine kindliness, which may show itself later under stabler conditions. All now is unsettled. It is said that nearly all our formal politeness must eventually disappear under conditions of industrialism, and be replaced by something more real and more agreeable,—kindly consideration, and natural desire to please. But that will be in ages and ages only after we are dead. There must be an end of all fighting first,—of cruelty in competition, and this cannot happen until with intellectual expansion, population ceases to so increase as to enforce competition without mercy.