CHAPTER XXVII
VISIT TO JAPAN
"Every dwelling in which a thinker lives certainly acquires a sort of soul. There are Lares and Penates more subtle than those of the antique world; these make the peace and rest of a home."
On the 16th March, 1909, early in the morning, Mrs. Atkinson, Miss Atkinson and myself, left Kobe, reaching Yokohama late in the evening. Mrs. Atkinson, who had written from Kobe to her half-sister-in-law, announcing our arrival in Japan, expected to find a letter from Nishi Okubo awaiting us at the Grand Hotel. She had not made allowance for the red tape—the bales of red tape—that surround social as well as official transactions in Japan.
Before we left Kobe, Mr. Robert Young had given us a letter of introduction to Mr. W. B. Mason, Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain's coadjutor in the editing of Murray's "Handbook to Japan," late of the Imperial Department of Communications, also custodian of the Club library at Yokohama, and a person, we were told, to whom every one had recourse in a difficulty. He cast sidelights on the probable reasons for delay in the answer to Mrs. Atkinson's letter.
To begin with, Tokyo covers an area of one hundred square miles, and, though ostensibly modelled on English lines, the Japanese postal system leaves much to be desired, especially in dealing with English letters; in finding fault on this score, I wonder what a London postman would do with letters addressed in Japanese? Mr. Mason also reminded us that Mrs. Koizumi did not understand a word of English; she must have recourse to an interpreter before communicating with her Irish sister-in-law, but, above all, in accounting for delay, Mrs. Atkinson had addressed her letter to "Mrs. Lafcadio Hearn," a name by which no properly constituted Japanese postman would find himself justified in recognising Hearn's widow. By nationalising himself a Japanese, Hearn's identity, so far as his occidental inheritance went, had vanished forever. He and his wife were only known at Tokyo as Mr. and Mrs. Koizumi.
Mr. Mason, like many others whom we met, was full of anecdotes about Lafcadio, his oddities, his caprices. In days gone by he had been extremely intimate with him, but Hearn had put a sudden end to the friendship; Mr. Mason never knew exactly why, but imagined it was in consequence of his neglecting to take off his footgear and put on sandals one day before entering Hearn's house. In passing judgment on Hearn for these sudden ruptures with friends, because of their lapses from the punctilio of Japanese tradition, it is well to remember that his wife came of the ancient Izumo stock, and was educated according to Japanese rules; a dusty or muddy boot placed on her cream-white tatami was almost an indignity. Hearn deeply resented any slight shown to her, and, from the moment he married, observed all old habits and customs, and insisted on his visitors doing the same.
The expression in Japan for an unceremonious or bad-mannered person is "another than expected person"; the definition is delightfully Japanese; it explains the traditions of the race: no one ever does anything unexpected—all is arranged by rule and order; in any other civilised country, considering the circumstances, Mrs. Atkinson would have taken a Tokaido train to Tokyo, and from the Shimbasi station gone immediately in a jinrikisha to see her sister-in-law; the two ladies would have fallen into one another's arms, and a close intimacy would have been begun. Not so in Japan.
"Patience is a virtue inculcated by life in the Far East," said Mr. Mason. "Come out with me, I will show you some of the most beautiful sights in the world, and in course of time either Mrs. Koizumi or a letter will turn up."