Yet—Nemesis of his own instability, revealing also how absolutely alien to his sphere of thought were the surroundings in which he had spent his latter years—at his death his body was taken possession of by priests, who prepared it for burial, sat beside it until the obsequies were over, and conducted the burial service with every fantastic accomplishment of Buddhist ceremonial, in a Buddhist temple!
A detailed account is given of the funeral by an American lady, Miss Margaret Emerson. She arrived in Japan imbued with an intense admiration for Hearn's writings; and made every endeavour to meet him or hear him lecture, when one morning she saw his death announced in a Yokohama paper, accompanied by a brief notice stating that the funeral procession would start from his residence, 266, Nishi Okubo, at half-past one on September 29th, and would proceed to the Jitom Kobduera Temple in Ichigaya, where the Buddhist service was to be held.
It was one of those luminous Japanese days that had so often inspired the little artist's pen. Not even the filament of a cloud veiled the pale azure of the sky. Only the solitary cone of Fuji-yama stood out, a "ghostly apparition" between land and sea. Everywhere was life, and hope, and joy; the air full of the voices and laughter of little children, flying kites or playing with their balls, amidst a flutter of shadows and flicker of sunrays, as the tawdry procession filed out under the relentless light of the afternoon sun.
He, whose idea it would have been to slip out of life unheralded and unnoticed was carried to his last resting-place preceded by a priest ringing a bell, men carrying poles, from which hung streamers of paper gohei; others bearing lanterns and others again wreaths, and huge bouquets of asters and chrysanthemums, while two boys in rickshas carried little cages containing birds that were to be released on the grave, symbols of the soul released from its earthly prison. Borne, palanquin-wise, upon the shoulders of six men, of the caste whose office it is to dig graves and assist at funerals, was the coffin, containing what had been the earthly envelope of that marvellous combination of good and evil tendencies, the soul of Lafcadio Hearn.
While the temple bell tolled with muffled beat, the procession filed into the old Temple of Jitom Kobduera. The mourners divided into two groups, Hearn's wife, who, robed in white, had followed with her little daughter in a ricksha, entering by the left wing of the temple, while the male chief mourners, consisting of Kazuo, Lafcadio's eldest son, Tanabe (one of his former students at Matsue), and several university professors, went to the right.
Then followed all the elaborate ceremonial of the Buddhist burial service. The eight Buddhist priests dressed in magnificent vestments chanted the chant of the Chapter of Kwannon in the Hokkekyo.
After the addresses to the soul of the dead, the chief mourner rose and led forward Hearn's eldest son; together they knelt before the hearse, touching their foreheads to the ground, and placed some grains of incense upon the little brazier burning between the candles. The wife, when they had retired, stepped forward, leading a little boy of seven, in a sailor suit with brass buttons and white braid. She also unwrapped some grains of incense from some tissue paper, and placed them upon the brazier. Then, after a considerable amount of bowing and chanting, the ceremony ended and the congregation left the church.
Outside it was intimated to the assembled congregation that the body would be taken next day to the Zoshigaya Temple for the final rites of cremation in the presence of the family. Then the university students were dismissed by the professors with a few words, and the ceremony of the day was at an end.