As for Japanese words, you might like “Out of the East” better. I don’t think there are five Japanese words in the book. But it is chiefly reverie—contains little about facts or places. Perhaps you will be less pleased with it in another way.
As for changing my conclusions,—well, I have had to change a good many. The tone of “Glimpses” is true in being the feeling of a place and time. Since then I’ve seen how thoroughly detestable Japanese can be, and that revelation assisted in illuminating things. I am now convinced, for example, that the deficiency of the sexual instinct (using the term philosophically) in the race is a serious defect rather than a merit, and is very probably connected with the absence of the musical sense and the incapacity for abstract reasoning. It does not follow, however, that the same instinct may not have been overdeveloped in our own case. To an Englishman, it would appear that such overdevelopment among Latin races would account for the artistic superiority as well as the moral weakness of French and Italians in special directions;—and the fact that even certain classes of music are now called sensual (not sensuous), and that there is a tendency to abjure Italian music in favour of the more aspirational German music,—would seem to show that the largest-brained races are reaching a stage in abstract æsthetics still higher than the highest possible development of the æsthetics based on the sexual feeling. That the Japanese can ever reach our æsthetic stage seems to me utterly impossible, but assuredly what they lack in certain directions they may prove splendidly capable of making up in others. Indeed the development of the mathematical faculty in the race—unchecked and unmollified by our class of æsthetics and idealisms—ought to prove a serious danger to Western civilization at last. At least it seems to me that here is a danger. Japan ought to produce scientific, political, and military haters of “ideologists,”—Napoleons of practical applications of science. All that is tender and manly and considerate and heroic in Northern character has certainly grown out of the sexual sentiment: but the same class of feelings in the far East would seem to have been evolved out of a different class of emotional habits, and a class bound to disappear. Imagine a civilization on Western lines with cold calculation universally substituted for ethical principle! The suggestion is very terrible and very ugly. One would prefer even the society of the later Roman Empire.
I am sorry your eyes are not all you could wish. Do you not think it may be the weather? The doctor tells me my eyes will be all right in summer, but that I have to be careful in cold weather. And the tropics did me wonderful good. I want to get to the warm zones occasionally—perhaps shall be able to. There are some tropics bad for the eyes,—lacking verdure. I have been unable to get facts about tropical conditions on this side of the world,—except through Wallace. Ceram suggests possibilities. But one must be well informed before going. Then there are the French Marquesas. A French colony ought to be full of romance, and void of missionaries. But all these are dreams.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kōbe, March, 1895.
Dear Chamberlain,—It was very comforting to get a letter from you; for I wanted an impulse to write. I have been blue—by reason partly of the weather; and partly because of those reactions which follow all accomplished work in some men’s cases. Everything done then seems like an Elle-woman,—a mere delusive shell; and one marvels why anybody should have been charmed.
Of course I did not ask point-blank for criticisms, because you told me long ago, “Every man should make his own book,”—and, although it is the literary custom in America to consult friends, I could see justice in the suggestion. The title “Out of the East” was selected from a number. It was suggested only by the motto of the Oriental Society, “Ex Oriente lux.” The “Far East” has been so monopolized by others that I did not like to use the phrase. “Out of the Uttermost East” would sound cacophonously,—besides suggesting a straining for effect. I thought of Tennyson’s “most eastern east,” but the publishers didn’t approve it. The simpler the title, and the vaguer—in my case—the better: the vagueness touches curiosity. Besides, the book is a vague thing. Sound has much to do with the value of a title. If it hadn’t, you would have written “Japanese Things” instead of “Things Japanese”—which is entirely different, and so pretty that your admirers and imitators snapped it up at once. So we have “Things Chinese” by an imitator, and “Things Japanese” is a phrase which has found its recognized place in the vocabulary of critics of both worlds. Your criticism on “Out of the East,” though, would have strongly influenced me, if you had sent it early enough. I noticed the very same suggestion in the Athenæum regarding the use of the word “Orient” and the phrase “Far East” by Americans. For our “Orient” is, as you say, still the Orient of Kinglake, of De Nerval, etc. But why should it be? To Milton it was the Indian East with kings barbaric sitting under a rain of pearls and gold.
Manila was long my dream. But, although my capacity for sympathy with the beliefs of Catholic peasantry anywhere is very large,—the ugly possibility exists that the Inquisition survives in Manila, and I have had the ill-fortune to make the Jesuits pay some attention to me. You know about the young Spaniard who had his property confiscated, and who disappeared some years ago,—and was restored to liberty only after heaven and earth had been moved by his friends in Spain. I don’t know that I should disappear; but I should certainly have obstacles thrown in my way. Mexico would be a safer country for the same class of studies,—Ceram ought to be interesting: in Wallace’s time the cost of life per individual was only about 8s. 6d. a year! A moist, hot tropical climate I like best. The heat is weakening, I know, but that moisture means the verdure that is a delight to the eyes, and palms, and parrots, and butterflies of enormous size;—and no possibility of establishing Western conditions of life. I should like very much to see the book you kindly offered to lend me. It might create new aspirations: I am always at night dreaming of islands in undiscovered seas, where all the people are gods and fairies.