In his article on the "Eternal Feminine," he endeavours to prove that the Japanese man is incapable of love, as we understand it in the West. Having taken up an idea, he uses all his skill in the manipulation of words to support his view, even though in his inner consciousness he fostered a conviction that it was not exactly a correct one. The fact of occidental fiction being revolting to the Japanese moral sense is far-fetched. Many people amongst ourselves are of opinion that in much of our fictional work the sexual question is given a great deal too much prominence; what wonder, therefore, that the male Japanese, being bound by social convention to keep all feeling under restraint, from the first moment he can formulate a thought, should look upon it as indecorous, and, above all, inartistic, to express his sentiments unreservedly on the subject of the deeper emotions, but that does not for a moment prove that he is incapable of feeling them.
All Japanese art, poetry as well as painting, is impressionistic and suggestive instead of detailed. "Ittakkiri" (entirely vanished, in the sense of "all told"), is a term applied contemptuously to the poet who, instead of an indication, puts the emotion itself into words.
The art of writing poetry is universal in Japan; verses, seldom consisting of more than two lines, are to be found upon shop-signs, panels, screens and fans. They are printed upon towels, draperies, curtains and women's crêpe silk underwear, they are written by every one and for all occasions. Is a woman sad and lonely at home, she writes poems. Is a man unoccupied for an hour, he employs himself putting his thoughts into poetry. Hearn was continually on the quest of these simple poems: to Otani he writes, "Please this month collect for me, if you can, some songs of the sound of the sea and the sound of the wind." The translations given by him in his essay entitled "Out of the Street," contradict his statement that the Japanese are incapable of deep feeling, and prove that love is as important an element in the Island Empire as with us, though the expression is less outspoken. Some of them are charming.
"To Heaven with all my soul I prayed to prevent your going;
Already, to keep you with me, answers the blessed rain.
"Things never changed since the Time of the Gods:
The flowing of water, the Way of Love."
His next book was "Exotics and Retrospectives"; he thought of dedicating this volume to Mrs. Wetmore (Elizabeth Bisland), but in a letter to Ellwood Hendrik he expresses a doubt as to the advisability of doing so, as some of the essays might be rather of a startling character. Ultimately he dedicated it to H. H. Hall, late U. S. Navy, "In Constant Friendship."
The prefatory note shows how permeated his mode of thought was at this time with Buddhistical theories.... "To any really scientific imagination, the curious analogy existing between certain teachings of Eastern faith,—particularly the Buddhist doctrine that all sense-life is Karma, and all substance only the phenomenal result of acts and thoughts,—might have suggested something much more significant than my cluster of 'Retrospectives.' These are offered merely as intimations of a truth incomparably less difficult to recognise than to define."
The first essay, describing his ascent of Fuji-no-yama, is as beautiful a piece of impressionistic prose as Hearn ever wrote—the immense poetry of the moment as he stood on the summit and looked at the view for a hundred leagues, and the pilgrims poised upon the highest crag, with faces turned eastward, clapping their hands as a salutation to the mighty day.
The colossal vision had already become a memory ineffaceable—a memory of which no luminous detail could fade till the light from the myriad millions of eyes that had looked for untold ages from the summit supreme of Fuji to the rising of the sun had been quenched, even to the hour when thought itself must fade.