glorious fact, that we can reach the highest life only through that self-separation which the experiences of illness, that is, the knowledge of physical weakness, brings; perfect health always involves the domination of the spiritual by the physical—at least in the present state of human evolution.

Perhaps it will interest you to know the effect of Japanese life upon your little friend after the experiences of a year and a half. At first, the sense of existence here is like that of escaping from an almost unbearable atmospheric pressure into a rarefied, highly oxygenated medium. That feeling continues: in Japan the law of life is not as with us,—that each one strives to expand his own individuality at the expense of his neighbour’s. But on the other hand, how much one loses! Never a fine inspiration, a deep emotion, a profound joy or a profound pain—never a thrill, or, as the French say so much better than we, a frisson. So literary work is dry, bony, hard, dead work. I have confined myself strictly to the most emotional phases of Japanese life,—popular religion and popular imagination, and yet I can find nothing like what I would get at once in any Latin country, a strong emotional thrill. Whether it is that the difference in our ancestral history renders what we call soul-sympathy almost impossible, or whether it is that the Japanese are psychically smaller than we, I cannot venture to decide—I hope the former. But the experience of all thinking persons with whom I have had a chance to speak seems to be the same.

But how sweet the Japanese woman is!—all the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be con centrated in her. It shakes one’s faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression,—then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamond-hard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the subject. In the eternal order of things which is the highest being,—the childish, confiding, sweet Japanese girl,—or the superb, calculating, penetrating Occidental Circe of our more artificial society, with her enormous power for evil, and her limited capacity for good? Viscount Torio’s idea haunts me more and more;—I think there are very formidable truths in his observations about Western sociology. And the question comes: “In order to comprehend the highest good, is it necessary that we must first learn the largest power of evil?” For the one may be the Shadow of the other.

I am very much disappointed with Rein. I got much more information about my own particular line of study from your “Things Japanese” than from Rein. Rein himself confesses, after seven or eight years’ labour, that he has only been able to make “a patchwork”! What, then, can a man like myself hope to do,—without scientific knowledge, and without any hope of even acquiring the language of the country so as to read even a newspaper? Really it seems to me almost an impertinence on my part to try to write anything about Japan at all, and the only fact which gives me courage is that there exists no book especially devoted to the subject I hope to consider.

The deity of Mionoseki is called always by the people Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami;—in the guide the deity is said to be Hiruko, who, I believe, has been identified by Shintō commentators with Hiruko, as I find in the article on the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, in the Asiatic Transactions. But I am not sure what to say about Hiruko being the deity of Mio Jinja, as a general statement. My friends say that only a Shintō priest can decide, and I am going to see one.

Most truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, August, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—I have just received and read your most interesting letter on my return from Kizuki,—where I should have liked to remain longer, but I must go to see the Bon-odori at Shimo-ichi, where it is danced differently from anywhere else, so far as I can learn, and in a thrillingly ghostly manner,—so that one thinks he is looking at a Dance of Souls.

Before leaving I had a copy of Murray’s Guide sent to the Kokuzō, who was more than pleased to see the picture of the great temple reproduced and to hear what was said about it. Before I went away, he gave me another singular entertainment, such as he alone could do—for he is King of Kizuki. (By the way, the old reverence for the Kokuzō is not dead. Folks do not believe now that whoever he looks at immediately becomes unable to move; but as I and my companion followed him to the great shrine, the pilgrims fell down and worshipped him as he passed.)

This was the entertainment he gave me:—Having invited me to the temple grounds, where seats were prepared, and a supper got ready for us, Mr. Senke gave some order, and the immense court immediately filled with people,—thousands. Then at a signal began a round dance, such as I had never seen before,—the Hōnen-odori, as anciently performed in Kizuki. It was so fascinating that I watched it until two o’clock in the morning. At least three hundred dancers were in the ring;—and the leader, standing on a mochi-mortar turned upside down, with an umbrella over his head, formed the axis of the great round, and turned slowly within it upon his pedestal. He had a superb voice. The Kokuzō also got the beautiful miko dances photographed to please me, and presented me with many curious MSS., some of which I hope to show you later on. They were written expressly for me.

Now as to the shōryō-bune. Just as the Bon-odori differs in every part of Japan, and just as everything at Kizuki is totally different from everything at Ise, even to the Miko-kagura, so is the custom of sending away the Ships of the Souls different here. In many parts the ships are launched at two or three o’clock in the morning of the day after the Bon; or if ships are not launched, then floating lanterns are sent out by way of guiding the dead home. But in Kizuki the shōryō-bune are launched only by day and for those who have been drowned at sea, and the shapes of the ships vary according to the kind of ship in which the lost man or woman perished. And they are launched every year for ten years after the death:—and when the soul returns yearly to visit the home, the ship is made ready, and a little stick of incense is lighted before launching it to take the beloved ghost back again, and a little stock of provisions is placed in it upon kawarake (principally dango). And the kaimyō of the dead is written upon the sail. And these boats are launched,—not at night, as elsewhere, but in the daytime.

I have had the shōryō-bune boxed and addressed to you, and a priest wrote for me the kaimyō upon the sail and the date of death, according to the usual custom. But you will not get the thing before three weeks, as I am forwarding it by express, and you know how slow the process is!

As for my letters, use anything you wish, and, if you desire, my name. The only matter is this: that I am so small a personage as an author that I am much in doubt whether the use of my name attached to any opinion would give the opinion more weight than if expressed impersonally. Unless it should, it might not be good for the book. I leave the decision entirely to you.

I have been reading Mr. Lowell’s book over again; for it is one thing to read it in Philadelphia, and quite another thing to read it after