The Japanese peasant is ten times more of a gentleman than a foreign merchant could ever learn to be. Unfortunately the Japanese official, with all his civility and morality rubbed off, is something a good deal lower than a savage and meaner than the straight-out Western rough (who always has a kernel of good in him) by an inexpressible per cent. Carpets—pianos—windows—curtains—brass bands—churches! how I hate them!! And white shirts!—and yōfuku! Would I had been born savage; the curse of civilized cities is on me—and I suppose I can’t get away permanently from them. You like all these things, I know. I’m not expecting any sympathy—but thought you might like to know about the effect on me of a half-return to Western life. How much I could hate all that we call civilization I never knew before. How ugly it is I never could have conceived without a long sojourn in old Japan—the only civilized country that existed since antiquity. Them’s my sentiments!
I have not yet been able to read Lowell’s new book through. But he must have worked tremendously to write it. It is a very clever book—though disfigured by absolutely shameless puns. It touches truths to the quick,—with a light sharp sting peculiar to Lowell’s art. It is painfully unsympathetic—Mephistophelian in a way that chills me. It is scientific—but the fault of it strikes me as being that the study is applicable equally to Europe or America as to Japan. The same psychical phenomena may be studied out anywhere, with the same result. The race difference in persons, like the difference between life and not-life in biology, is only one of degree, not of kind. Still, it is a wonderful book.
Ever truly,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kōbe, January, 1895.
Dear Chamberlain,—To-day is a spring day and I can add a little to my screed. The weather brightens up my eyes.
I was thinking just now about the difference between the Japanese hyakushō and the English merchant.
My servant girl from Imaichi—who cannot read or write—saw you at Kumamoto and said words to this effect: “He speaks Japanese like a great man. And he is so gentle and so kind.” Vaguely something of the intellectual and moral side of you had reached and touched her simple mind. The other day a merchant said of you: “Chamberlain—Oh, yes. Met him at Miyanoshita. Tell you, he’s a gentleman—plays a good game of whist!” There’s appreciation for you. Which is the best soul of the two—my servant girl’s or that merchant’s?
A merchant, however, has inspired me with the idea of a sketch, to be entitled “His Josses”!...