Does she falter? No.
For her the future holds no blackness. Always she will see the rising of the holy Sun above the peaks, the smile of the Lady-Moon upon the waters, the eternal magic of the Seasons. She will haunt the places of beauty, beyond the folding of the mists, in the sleep of the cedar-shadows, through circling of innumerable years. She will know a subtler life, in the faint winds that stir the snow of the flowers of the cherry, in the laughter of playing waters, in every happy whisper of the vast green silences. But first she will greet her kindred, somewhere in shadowy halls awaiting her coming to say to her:
"Thou hast done well,—like a daughter of Samurai. Enter, child! because of thee to-night we sup with the Gods!"
It is daylight when Yuko enters Kyotō. She finds a lodging, and then goes to a skilful female hairdresser. Her little razor is made very sharp. Returning to her room, she writes a letter of farewell to her brother, and an appeal to the officials asking that the Tenshi-Sama may be begged to cease from suffering "seeing that a young life, even though unworthy, has been given in voluntary expiation of the wrong."
At the dark hour before dawn she slips to the gate of the Government edifice. Whispering a prayer, she kneels. Then with her long under-girdle of silk she binds her robes tightly about her knees, for
the daughter of a Samurai must always be found in death with limbs decently composed. Then, with steady precision, she makes in her throat a gash, out of which the blood leaps in a pulsing jet....
At sunrise the police find her, quite cold, and the two letters, and a poor little purse containing five yen and a few sen (enough, she had hoped, for her burial); and they take her and all her small belongings away.
Kokoro[32] (9), the next book, could well be a continuation of "Out of the East." Hearn speaks of it as "terribly radical," and "rather crazy"; and he fears that his views, which are greatly opposed in the West, may not be well received.
[ [32] Copyright, 1896, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
"The fifteen chapters of which the book is composed," says a German review, "do not contain the results of any research into the domain of politics, art or religion. They are rather fragments from Japanese life, and so clear is the language that the pictures given are brought home to us with wonderful effect. Lafcadio Hearn is a journalist in the best sense of the word. He is a writer who has something striking and original to say upon the events of the day, upon the conditions and institutions of a land, upon the possibilities of development in a people, upon deep philosophical, social and religious problems, upon the 'Idea of Pre-existence,' upon Buddhism and Shintōism, upon the difference between Occidental and Oriental culture, and who judges all things, all conditions that he sees, from lofty heights. He is besides a character, a man of great ideals; he has a fine artistic feeling and is, moreover, able to render in wonderfully sympathetic language tender moods which come to him at the sight of a landscape, a work of art. Extraordinarily capable of assimilation, he, to whom Japan has become a second home, has entirely fitted himself into the Japanese life. He is so delighted with the customs, with the political and social conditions, with the simple family life, with the religion, the ceremonies, the ancestor-worship, and with the business intercourse carried on among themselves—which he assures us is characterized by exceptional probity—in short, he is so delighted with all the activities of this people that he thinks them the best possible because they spring from the inmost life of an ethical and never intellectual temperament. Therefore he takes sides with them passionately against the modern tendencies of Europe." (395.)
In the opening story, which I think will be found one of his best, is portrayed the manner of a Japanese crowd in dealing with a criminal; and how this criminal was brought to atonement by the gaze of a little child, the son of the man he murdered, while the little one was yet in his mother's womb.
The next chapter is a discussion of Japanese Civilization. In 1903 Hearn wrote:—