Section 10 of 1891 in collection. This is a liver box recording. All liver box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit liverbox.org.
Recording by Mount Perard. 1891 in collection by various. Section 10. Two journal entries.
By Lachario Hearn from the Diary of an English teacher found in Glemse's of an unfamiliar Japan. May 1st, 1891. My favorite students often visit me of afternoons. They first send me their cards to announce their presence.
On being told to come in, they leave their foot gear on their doorstep. Enter my little study, prostrate themselves, and we all swap down together on the floor, which is in all Japanese houses like a salt mattress. The servant brings zapiton or small cushions to Neulopon and cakes and tea. To sit as the Japanese do requires practice, and some Europeans can never acquire the habit.
To acquire it, indeed, one must become accustomed to wearing Japanese custom. But once the habit of thus sitting has been formed, one finds it is the most natural and easy of positions, and assumes it by preference for eating, reading, smoking, or chatting. It is not to be recommended, perhaps, for writing with a European pen, as the motion in our Occidental style of writing is from the supported wrist. But it is the best posture for writing with the Japanese foot in using which the whole arm is unsupported and the motion from the oboe.
After having become habituated to Japanese habits for more than a year, I must infest that I find it now somewhat irksome to use a chair, when we have all greeted each other and taken our places upon the kneeling questions, a little polite silence ensues, which I am the first to break. Some of the lads speak a good deal of English. They understand me well when I pronounce every word slowly and distinctly using simple phrases and avoiding idioms. When a word with which they are not familiar must be used, we refer to a good English Japanese dictionary, which gives each vernacular meaning, both in the kana and in the Chinese characters.
Usually my young visitors stay a long time and their stay is rarely tiresome. Their conversation and their thoughts are of the simplest and frankest. They do not come to learn. They know that to ask their teacher to teach out of school would be unjust.
They speak chiefly of things which they think have some particular interest for me. Sometimes they scarcely speak at all, but appear to sink into a sort of happy reverie. What they come really for is the quiet pleasure of sympathy. Not an intellectual sympathy, but the sympathy of pure goodwill.
The simple pleasure of being quite comfortable with a friend. They pay with my books and pictures, and sometimes they bring books and pictures to show me, delightfully queer things, family heirlooms, which I regret much that I cannot buy. They also like to look at my garden and enjoy all that is in it even more than I. Often they bring me gifts of flowers.
Never by any possible chance are they troublesome, impolite, curious, or even talkative. Courtesy and its utmost possible exquisiteness, and exquisiteness of which even the French have no conception, seems natural to the zumoboy, as the color of his hair or the taint of his skin. Nor is he less kind than courteous. To contrive pleasurable surprises for me is one of the particular delights of my boys, and they either bring or cause to be brought to the house all sorts of strange things.
Of all the strange, or beautiful things which I am thus privileged to examine, none gives me so much pleasure as a certain wonderful chacamono of Amira Niare. It is a rather large picture, and has been borrowed from a priest that I may see it. The Bodhup stands in the attitude of exultation, with one hand uplifted. Behind his head a huge moon makes an oriole, and, across the face of that moon, scream winding lines of thinnest cloud.
Beneath his feet, like a rolling of smoke, curl heavier, and darker clouds. Merely as a work of color and design, the thing is a marble, but the real wonder of it is not in color or design at all. My Newt examination reveals the astonishing fact that every shadow and clouding is formed by a fairy text of Chinese characters, so my Newt that only a keen eye can discern them. And this text is the entire text of two famed sultras, the Quamo Regal Kio and the Amira Kio, text no larger than the limbs of fleas.
And all the strong dark lines of the figure, such as the seams of the Buddha's robe, are formed by the characters of the holy invocation of the shinshoot sect, repeated thousands of times, Namu Amira, but suh. Infinite patience, tireless, silent labor of love and faith, in some dim temple long ago. Another day, one of my boys, persuades his father to let him bring to my house a wonderful statue of Koshi Confucius. Made, I am told, in China, toward the close of the period of the Ming Dynasty, I am also assured it is the first time the statue has ever been removed from the family residence to be shunned by anyone.
Previously, whoever desire to pay at reverence had to visit the house, it is truly a beautiful bronze. The figure of a smiling bearded old man, with fingers uplifted and lips apart as a discoursing. He wears quaint Chinese shoes, and his flowing robes are adorned with a figure of the mystic phoenix. The microscopic finish of detail seems indeed to reveal the wonderful cunning of a Chinese hand.
Each tooth, each hair, looks as though it had been made the subject of a special study. Another student conducts me to the home of one of his relatives, that I may see a cat made of wood, said to have been chiseled by the famed Hidari Jinkoro, a cat crouching and watching, and so lifelight that real cats have been known to put up their backs and spit at it. Nevertheless, I have a private convection that some old artists even now living in Matsu could make a still more wonderful cat. Among these is the venerable Arakawa, Genosuk, who wrought many rare things for the demiote of Isumu in the Tebow era and his acquaintance.
I have been unable to make through my school friends. One evening, he brings to my house something very odd to show me, concealed in his sleeve. It is a doll, just a small carbon and painted head, without a body. The body being represented by a tiny robe only attached to the neck, yet as Arakawa, Genosuki, manipulates it, it seems to become alive.
The back of its head is like the back of a very old man's head, but its face is the face of an amused child, and there is scarcely any forehead nor any evidence of a thinking disposition. And whatever the way the head is turned, it looks so funny that one cannot help laughing at it. It represents a kara kubo, what we might call, in English, a jolly old boy, one who is naturally too hearty and too innocent to feel trouble of any sort. It is not an original, but a model of a very famous original whose history is recorded in a faded scroll which Arakawa takes out of his other sleeve and which a friend translates for me.
This little history throws a curious light upon the simple-hearted ways of Japanese life and thought in other centuries. 360 years ago, this doll was made by a famous maker of no masks in the city of Kyoto for the Emperor Go Miju. No, oh. The emperor used to have it twice beside his pillow each night before he slept and was very fond of it, and he composed the following poem, concerning it.
On the death of the emperor, this doll becomes the property of Prince Kanoyi. In his family, it is said to be still preserved. About 107 years ago, they then asked Empress, whose posthumous name is Seikoa Manin, borrowed the doll from Prince Kanoyi, and ordered a copy of it to be made. This copy, she kept always beside her and was very fond of it.
After the death of the good Empress, this doll was given to a lady at the court. His family name is not recorded. Afterwards, this lady, for reasons which are not known, cut off her hair and became a Buddhist nun, taking the name of Shindo In, and one who knew the nun, Shindo In, a man whose name was Kondo Ju Hakou in Tokyo, had the honor of receiving the doll as a gift. Now I, who write this document at one time, fell sick, and my desicness was caused by despondency.
And my friend Kondo Ju Hakou in Tokyo, coming to see me, said, I have in my house something which will make you well. And he went home, and presently returning, brought to me this doll, and lent it to me, putting it by my pillow that I might see it and laugh at it. Afterward, I, myself, having called upon the nun, Shindo In, whom I now also have the honor to know, wrote down the history of the doll, and make a poem there, a poem, dated about 90 years ago, no signature. Jun first, 1891.
I find among the students a healthy tone of skepticism in regard to certain forms of popular belief. Science, education, is rapidly destroying, credulity in old superstitions, yet current among the unleattered, and especially among the peasantry, as, for instance, fate and mamori and olfuda. The outward forms of Buddhism, its images, its relics, its common practices affect the average student very level. He is not, as a foreigner, may be, interested in iconography, or religious folklore, or the comparative study of religions.
And in nine cases out of ten, he is rather ashamed of the signs and tokens of popular faith all around him. But the deeper religious sense, which underlies all symbolism, remains with him, and the monistic idea in Buddhism, is being strengthened and expanded rather than weakened, by the new education. What is true of the effect of the public schools upon the lower Buddhism is equally true of its effect upon the lower Shindo. The students all sincerely are, or very nearly all.
Yet not as fervent worshipers of certain kami, but as rigid observers of what the higher Shindo signifies, loyalty, filial, pity, obedience to parents, teachers, and superiors, and respect to ancestors. Or Shindo means more than fate. When, for the first time, I stood before the shrine of the great deity of Kitzu, as the first occidental to whom that privilege had been accorded. Not without a sense of awe, there came to me.
The, this is the shrine of the father of a race. This is the symbolic center of a nation's reverence for its past, and I, too, paid reverence to the memory of the progenitor of this people. As I then felt, so feels the intelligent student of the Meiji era, whom education has lifted above the common plane of popular creeds. And Shindo also means for him, whether he reasons upon the question or not, all the ethics of the family, and all that spirit of loyalty, which has become so innate, that, at the call of duty, life itself ceases to have value, save as an instrument for duty's accomplishment.
As yet, this orient little needs to reason about the origin of its loftier ethics. Imagine the musical sense in our own race so developed that a child could play a complicated instrument so soon as the little fingers gained sufficient force and flexibility to strike the notes. By some such comparison, only can one obtain a just idea of what inherent religion and instinctive duty signify in Isumo, of the rude and aggressive form of skepticism so common in the Occident. Which is the natural reaction after suddenly emancipation from superstitious belief.
I find no trace among my students. But such sentiment may be found elsewhere, especially in Tokyo, among the university students, one of whom, upon hearing the tones of a magnificent temple bell, exclaim to a friend of mine, is it not a shame that in this nineteenth century we must still hear such a sound? For the benefit of curious travelers, however, I may here take occasion to observe that to talk Buddhism to Japanese gentlemen of the new school, isn't just as bad taste as to talk Christianity at home to men of that class. Home knowledge has placed above creeds and forms.
There are, of course, Japanese scholars willing to aid researchers of foreign scholars in religion or in folklore. But these specialists do not undertake to gratify idle curiosity of the globetrotting description. I may also say that the foreigner, desirous to learn the religious ideas or superstitions of the common people, must obtain them from the people themselves, not from the educated classes. Among all my favorite students, two or three from each class, I cannot decide whom I like to vast.
Each has a particular merit of his own. But I think the names and faces of those of whom I am about to speak will longest remain vivid in my remembrance. Ishihara, Otani, Masanogu, and Zuki Zawa, Yokoji, Ishida. Ishihara is a samurai.
A very influential lad in his class because of his uncommon force of character. Compared with others, he has a somewhat brusque, independent manner. Please, however, by its honest manliness. He says everything he thinks, and precisely in the tone that he thinks it.
Even to the degree of being a little embarrassing sometimes. He does not hesitate, for example, to find fault with the teacher's method of explanation and to insist upon a more lucid one. He has criticized me more than once, but I never found that he was wrong. We like each other very much.
He often brings me flowers. One day, that he had brought two beautiful sprays of plumb blossoms, he said to me. I saw you bow before our Emperor's picture at the ceremony on the birthday of his Majesty. You were not like a former English teacher we had.
How? He said, we were savages. Why? He said there is nothing respectable except God, his God, and that only vulgar and ignorant people respect anything else.
Where did he come from? He was a Christian clergyman and said he was an English subject. But if he was an English subject, he was bound to respect her Majesty. The Queen.
He could not even enter the office of a British Council without removing his hat. I don't know what he did in the country he came from, but that was what he said. Now we think we should love and honor our Emperor. We think it is a duty.
We think it is a joy. We think it is happiness to be able to give our lives for our Emperor. But he said, we were only savages, ignorant savages. What do you think of that?
I think, my dear lad, that he himself was a savage. A vulgar, ignorant, savage bigot. I think it is your highest social duty to honor your Emperor, to obey his laws, and to be ready to give your blood whenever he may require it of you for the Second Japan. I think it is your duty to respect the gods of your fathers, the religion of your country, even if you yourself cannot believe all that others believe.
And I think also that it is your duty, for your Emperor's sake, and for your country's sake, to resent any such wicked and vulgar language as that you have told me of, no matter by whom uttered. Massanobu visits me seldom, and always comes alone. A slender, handsome lad with rather effeminate features reserved and perfectly self-possessed and matter refined. He is somewhat serious, does not often smile, and I never heard him laugh.
He has risen to the head of his class and appears to remain there without any extraordinary effort. Much of his leisure time, he devotes to botany collecting and classifying plants. He is a musician, like all the male members of his family. He plays a variety of instruments never seen or heard of in the West, including flutes of marble, flutes of ivory, flutes of bamboo, of wonderful shapes and tones, and that shrill Chinese instrument called shou, a sort of mouth-hearted consisting of 17 tubes of different lengths fixed in a silver frame.
He first explained to me the uses in temple music of the taiko and shouko, which are drums. Other flutes called fe, or peki, of the fledulae, turned ichariki, and of the kakou, which is a little drum shaped like a spool with very narrow waist. Ungreat Buddhist festivals, Massanobu and his father and his brothers are the musicians in the temple services, and they play the strange music called ojo and battle. Music which at first no Western air can feel pleasure in, but which, when often heard, becomes comprehensible, and is found to possess a weird charm of its own.
When Massanobu comes to the house, it is usually in order to invite me to attend some Buddhist or Shinto festival, Matsuri, which he knows will interest me. Adzu Ki-Zawa bears so little resemblance to Massanobu that one might suppose the tube belonged to totally different races. Asu Ki-Zawa is a large, rob-owned, heavy-looking, with a face singularly like that of a North American Indian. His people are not rich, he can afford few pleasures, which cost money, except one, buying books.
Even to be able to do this, he works in his leisure hours to earn money. He is a perfect bookworm, a natural-born researcher, a collector of curious documents, a hunter of all the queer, second-hand stores, and teramachi and other streets where old manuscripts or prints are on sale as waste paper. He is an omnivorous reader, and a perpetual, borrower of volumes, which he always returns in perfect condition, after having copied what he deemed of the most value to him. But his special delight is philosophy, and the history of philosophers in all countries.
He has read various epidermies of the history of philosophy and the oxidant, and everything of modern philosophy, which has been translated into Japanese, including Spencer's first principles. I have been able to introduce him to Luz and John Fis, both of which he appreciates, although the strain of studying philosophy in English is no small one. But happily, he is so strong that no amount of study is likely to enter his health, and his nerves are tough as wire. He is quite an ascetic, with all.
As it is, the Japanese custom, too, sub-kicks and TV for visitors, I always have both in readiness, and especially fine quality of quashy, made at kisuki, of which the students are very fond. Atsuki-zawa, alone, refuses to taste kicks or confectionery of any kind, saying, As I am the youngest brother, I must begin to earn my own living, soon. I shall have to endure much hardship, and if I allow myself to like deities now, I shall own suffer more later on. Atsuki-zawa has seen much of human life and character.
He is naturally observant, and he has managed, in some extraordinary way, to learn the history of everybody in Matsu. He has brought me old, tethered prints to prove that the opinions now held by our director are diametrically opposed to the opinions he advocated 14 years ago in a public address. I asked the director about it, he laughed and said, of course, that is Atsuki-zawa, but he is right, I was very young then. And I wonder if Atsuki-zawa was ever young.
Yokochi, Atsuki-zawa's dearest friend, is a very rare visitor, for he is always studying at home. He is always first in his class, the third-year class, while Atsuki-zawa is fourth. Atsuki-zawa's account at the beginning of the acquaintance is this. I watched him when he came and saw that he spoke very little, walked very quickly, and looked straight into everybody's eyes, so I knew he had a particular character.
I'd like to know people with a particular character. Atsuki-zawa was perfectly right, under a very gentle exterior. Yokochi has an extremely strong character. He is the son of a carpenter, and his parents could not afford to send him to the middle school, but he had shown such exceptional qualities while in the middle of the city.
He has a very exceptional qualities while in the elementary school that a wealthy man became interested in him and offered to pay for his education. He is now the pride of the school. He has a remarkably placid face with peculiarly long eyes and a delicious smile. In class, he is always asking intelligent questions, questions so original that I am sometimes extremely puzzled how to answer them, and he never ceases to ask until the explanation is quite satisfactory to himself.
He never cares about the opinion of his comrades if he thinks he is right. On one occasion, when the whole class refused to attend the lectures of a new teacher of physics, Yokochi alone refused to act with them, arguing that although the teacher was not all that could be desired, there was no immediate possibility of his removal, and no just reason for making unhappy a man who, though unskilled, was sincerely doing his best. Atsuki-zawa finally stood by him. These two alone attended the lectures until the remainder of the students, two weeks later, found that Yokochi's viewers were rational.
On another occasion, when some vulgar proselytism was attempted by a Christian missionary, Yokochi went boldly to the proselytizers' house, argued with him on the morality of his effort, and reduced him to silence. Some of his comrades praised his cleverness in the argument. I am not clever, he may answer. It does not require cleverness to argue against what is morally wrong.
It requires only the knowledge that one is morally right, at least such as about the translation of what he said, as told by Atsuki-zawa. Shida, another visitor, is a very delicate, sensitive boy. This all is full of art. He is very skillful at drawing and painting, and he has a wonderful set of picture books by the old Japanese masters.
The last time he came, he brought some prints to show me, a rare once, fairy maintenance and ghosts. As I looked at his beautiful pale face and weirdly frail fingers, I could not help fearing for him, bearing that he might soon become a little ghost. I have not seen him now for more than two months. He has been very, very ill, and his lungs are so weak that the doctor has forbidden him to converse.
But Atsuki-zawa has been to visit him and brings me this translation of a Japanese letter which the sickle I wrote and pasted upon the wall of his bed. Thou, my Lord Saul, thus govern me, thou knowest that I cannot now govern myself. Dan, I pray thee, to let me be cured speedily. Do not suffer me to speak much.
Make me to obey in all things that command of the physician. This is not today of the eleventh month of the twenty-fourth year of Mishi, from the sick body of Shida to his soul. End of Section 10.