Lafcadio Hearn

by Nina H. Kennard

From these early morning hours until late at night every moment was packed full of new experiences, new sensations. Not only was the old city itself full of strange and unexpected delights, but the country round was a land of dreams, strange gods, immemorial temples.

One day it was a visit to the Cave of the Children's Ghosts, where at night the shadowy children come to build their little stone-heaps at the feet of Jizo, changing the stones every night. Doubtless in the quaint imagination of the people there still lingers the primitive idea of some communication, mysterious and awful, between the world of waters and the world of the dead. It is always over the sea, after the Feast of Souls, that the spirits pass murmuring back to their dim realm, in those elfish little ships of straw which are launched for them upon the sixteenth day of the seventh moon. The vague idea behind the pious act is that all waters flow to the sea and the sea itself unto the "Nether-distant Land."

Then a visit to Kitzuki to visit the Buddhist temple, into whose holy precincts no European had hitherto been admitted. Senke Takamori, the spiritual governor of Kitzuki, whose princely family dated back their ancestry to the goddess of the sun, received him with extraordinary urbanity. Senke, it appears, was connected with the Koizumis, the family to which Hearn's future wife belonged.

To see the ancient temple of Kitzuki at that time was to see the living centre of Shinto, to feel the life pulse of the ancient cult throbbing in the nineteenth century as in the unknown past—that religion that lives not in books, nor ceremonial, but in the national heart. The magnetism of another faith polarised his belief. The forces about him, working imperceptibly, influenced him and drew him towards the religion of those amongst whom he lived, moulding and forming that extraordinary mixture of thought and imagination that enabled him to enter into the very heart and soul of ancient Japan.

If ever a man was, as religious people term it, "called," Hearn was called to the task of interpreting the superstitions and beliefs of this strange people. Putting jesting on one side, he once said, if he could create something unique and rare he would feel that the Unknowable had selected him for a mouthpiece for a medium of utterance in the holy cycle of its eternal utterance.

The half-blind, vagrant little genius had at last found the direction in which the real development of his genius lay; the loose, quivering needle of thought, that had moved hither and thither, was now set in one direction. The stage he was treading, though at first he did not realise it, was gradually becoming the sphere of a drama with eternal and immutable forces as scene-shifters and curtain-raisers. The qualities that had enabled Japan to conquer China, and had placed her practically in the forefront of far eastern nations, he was called upon to analyse and explain; to interpret the curious myths of this great people of little men, who, shut off from the rest of the world for hundreds of years, had, out of their own inner consciousness, built up a code of discipline and behaviour that, in its self-abnegation, its sense of cohesion, and fidelity to law, throws our much-vaunted western civilisation into the shade. Hearn brought to bear upon the interpretation a rare power of using words, sympathetic insight, an earnest and vivid imagination that enabled him to comprehend the strongly accentuated characteristics of a race living close to the origins of life; barbaric, yet highly refined; superstitious, yet capable of adapting themselves to modern thought; playful as children, yet astounding in their heroic gallantry and patriotism. His genius enabled him to catch a glimpse of the indisputable truth that legend and tradition are a science in themselves, that, however grotesque, however fantastic primeval myths and allegories may be, they are indicative of the gradual evolution of the heart and mind of generations as they arise and pass away.

An idea, he said, was growing upon him about the utility of superstition, as compared with the utility of religion. In consequence of his having elected to live the everyday life, and enter into the ordinary interests and occupations of this strange people, as no occidental ever had before, he was enabled to see that many Japanese superstitions had a sort of shorthand value in explaining eternal and valuable things. When it would have been useless to preach to people vaguely about morality or cleanliness or ordinary rules of health, a superstition, a belief that certain infringement of moral law will bring direct corporal punishment, that maligned spirits will visit a room that is left unswept, that the gods will chastise over-excess in eating or drinking, are related to the most inexorable and highest moral laws, and it is easy to understand how invaluable is the study of their superstitions in analysing and explaining so enigmatical a people as the Japanese.

"Hearn thought a great deal of what we educated Japanese think nothing," said a highly-cultured Tokyo professor to me, with sarcastic intonation. Hearn, on the other hand, maintained that not to the educated Japanese must you go to understand the vitality of heart and intelligence which through centuries of the Elder Life has evolved so remarkable a nationality. To set forth the power that has moulded the character of this far eastern people, material must be culled from the unsophisticated hearts of the peasants and the common folk. "The people make the gods, and the gods the people make are the best." Hearn did not attempt, therefore, a mechanical repetition of social and religious tenets; but in the mythological beliefs, in the legendary lore that has slumbered for generations in simple minds he caught the suggestion of obedience and fidelity to authority, the strenuous industry and self-denial that endowed these quaint superstitions with a potency far beyond the religion and meaning, or the primitive idea that caused their inception. Merely accurate and erudite students would call the impressions that he collected here, in this unfamiliar Japan, trifling and fantastic, but he is able to prove that the details of ordinary intercourse, however trifling, the way in which men marry and bring up their children, the very manner in which they earn their daily bread, above all, the rules they impose, and the punishment and rewards they invoke to have them obeyed, reveal more of the manner by which the religion, the art, the heroism of this far eastern people have been developed, than hundreds of essays treating of dynasties, treaties and ceremonials.

Aided by that very quality which some may look upon as a mental defect, Hearn's tendency to over-emphasise an impressive moment at the expense of accuracy stood him now in good stead. Physical myopia, he maintained, was an aid to artistic work from one aspect: "The keener the view, the less depth in the impression produced. There is no possibility of attraction in wooded deeps or mountain recesses for the eye that, like the eye of a hawk, pierces shadow and can note the separate quiver of every leaf." So mental myopia united with the shaping power of imagination was more helpful in enabling him to catch a glimpse of the trend of thought and characteristics of the folk whose country he adopted than the piercing judgment that saw faults and intellectual short-comings.

Many people, even the Japanese themselves, have said that Hearn's view in his first book of things in their country was too roseate. Others have declared that he must have been a hypocrite to write of Japan in so enthusiastic a strain when in private letters, such as those to Chamberlain and Ellwood Hendrik, he expresses so great a detestation for the people and their methods. Those who say so do not know the nature of the man whom they are discussing; compromise with those in office was entirely antagonistic to his mode of thought. His life was composed of passing illusions and disillusions. That he, with his artistic perception, should have been carried off his balance by the quaintness and mysticism that he encountered in the outlying portions of the country was but natural. Go into the highlands of Japan amongst the simple folk, where primitive conditions still reign, where the ancient gods are still believed to haunt the ancient shrines, where the glamour and the grace of bygone civilisation still lingers, you will yield to the same charm, and, as Hearn himself says, better the sympathetic than the critical attitude. Perhaps the man who comes to Japan full of hate for all things oriental may get nearer the truth at once, but he will make a kindred mistake to him who views it all, as I did at first, almost with the eyes of a lover.