A pleasant vision is the one we conjure up of him on the verandah of the old Yashiki, squatted, Buddha-wise, smoking a tiny long-stemmed Japanese pipe, his little wife seated near him, relating, by the aid of the interpreter, the superstitions and legends of the ancient Province of the Gods.
She tells us how he took even the most trivial tale to heart, murmuring, "How interesting," his face sometimes even turning pale while he looked fixedly in front of him.
Under these conditions of tranquillity and well-being his genius seemed to expand and develop. The "Shirabyoshi,"[22] or "Dancing Girl," the finest piece of imaginative work he ever did, was conceived and written during the course of the summer passed in the old Yashiki. Its first inception is indicated in a letter to Basil Hall Chamberlain, in 1891. "There was a story some time ago in the Asahi-shimbun[23] about a 'Shirabyoshi,' that brought tears to my eyes, as slowly and painfully translated by a friend."
[22] "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
[23] The Asahi-shimbun was one of the principal Japanese illustrated daily papers, printed and published at Osaka.
The "Dancing Girl" has been translated into four foreign languages—German, Swedish, French and Italian—a writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes declares it to be one of the love-stories of the world. The only remarkable fact is, that it has not made more of a stir in England.
The hero is the well-known Japanese painter Buncho; the heroine a Geisha. There is something simple, natural, tragic and yet intangible and ethereal in the manner in which Hearn tells it; the presence of a vital spirit, the essential element of passion and regret, the throb of warm human emotion, in spite of its exotic setting, brings it into kinship with the human experience of all times and countries. There is no attempt at scenery, only a woman hidden away in the heart of nature, in a lonely cottage amongst the hills, with her love, her memory, her regret. Into this solitary life enters youth, attractive, beautiful, the possibility of further romance; but no romance other than the one she cherishes is for her.
Unfortunately it is only possible to give the merest sketch of the story that Hearn unfolds with consummate artistic skill. He begins with an account of dancing-girls, of the education they have to undergo, how they use their accomplishments to cast a web of enchantment over men.
It is one of these apparently soulless creatures, a dancing-girl, a woman of the town, wearing clothes belonging neither to maid nor wife, that he makes the central figure of his story; and by her constancy to ideal things, her pure and simple passion, he thrills us through with the sense of the impermanence of humanity and beauty, and the strength of love overcoming and conquering the tragedy of life.
How different the manner in which he treats the scenes between the young man and the beautiful dancing-girl, compared to the manner in which his French prototypes—in which Pierre Loti, for instance, whom Hearn declares to be one of the greatest living artists—would have treated it. Far ahead has he passed beyond them; the moral, the life of the soul, is never lost sight of, in not one line does he play on the lower emotions of his readers.