Volume I Part 10 (2/2)

”He resented in his heart thatof the fact that there existWestern style He regretted that japan would thus be lost So he abhorred the foreign style which japanese assulad that many Waseda professors wore japanese _haori_ and _hakan dress of japanese lady and proud girl speaking English We one day went to a bazar at Ueno Park He asked the price of an article in japanese The storekeeper, a girl of new school, replied in English He was displeased and drew my dress and turned away When he became the professor of Waseda, Dean Takata invited him to his house

It was very rare that he ever accepted an invitation At the portal, Mrs Takata welcoreatly pleased him, so he told me when he returned home In our ho were all in genuine japanese style If I happened to buy son taste, he would say: 'Don't you love japanese arts?' He wanted our boy put on japanese cloths and wear _geta_ instead of shoes Sometimes in company with him in usual walks, one of our boys would wear shoes He say: 'Mamma San, look at my toes Don't you ured in such manner as ner, he taught hiht up in japanese way We kept no interpreter since our Matsue days A japanese guest would coarettes, but the host receives him in japanese cloth and does all in japanese fashi+on--a curious contrast

With one glance of his nose-glass which he keeps he catches the whole appearance of any first visitor even to the shted; and the lance is the whole time of his observation; still his wonderfully keen observation often astonishedstory to him from a japanese paper: 'A certain nobleman's old mother is extreonistic to the modern manners The maids were to wear _obi_ in old ways Lamps were not allowed, but paper _ando_ was used instead Nor soaps were to be used in this household So ' Hearn was very hted to learn that there still existed such a family 'How I like that!' he said 'I would like to visit them' One time I said to hiard to your nose' Then he said: 'What shall I do with this nose? But I am a japanese I love japan better than any born japanese'

”Indeed, he loved japan with his whole heart, but his sincere love for japan was not very well understood by japanese

”When asked anything to hi he did he did it with his sincere and whole heart!

”One day he said to n people are very desirous to know of my whereabouts Some papers have reported that Hearn disappeared from the world What do you think of this? How funny!--disappeared from the world' Thus his chief pleasure was only to write, without being disturbed from without O, while I thus talk ofscolded by hi of him 'Where is Hearn now? He has disappeared from the world'

This was his desire--unknown to the rest of the world But though he would scold me I wish to tell about hi he was so enthusiastically that any sreat pain to hiard to the opening and shutting of doors, the footsteps of family, etc; and I always chose to enter his room when necessary as I heard the sound of his pipes (tobacco-sh voice But after reh and his library was very remote from the children's room and the portal So he could enjoy his enjoy the story of 'Mietful of the approach of evening In the darkness of the evening twilight he was sitting on the cushi+on in deep thought Outside of the paper-screens of his room, I for a trial called with a low voice, 'Hochi! Hochi!' 'Yes, I am a blind ining as if he himself were Hochi with a _biwa_ in his hand

Whenever he writes he is entirely absorbed with the subject On those days I one day went to the city and bought a little doll of blind priest with a _biwa_ I put it secretly upon his desk As he found it he was overjoyed with it and see noise of fallen leaves in the garden woods he said seriously: 'Listen! the Heike are fallen They are the sounds of waves at Dan-no-ura' And he listened attentively Indeed soht he was s that were not and heard things that were not”

His life outside of the university and of his own hoan to create legends about him, so seldom was he seen The only person ever able to draw him forth was his friend Mitchell McDonald, whose sympathy and hospitality he constantly fled from and constantly yielded to To Mrs Fenollosa he wrote:

”My friends are erous than my enemies These latter--with infinite subtlety--spin webs to keep oand they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost love them They helpBlessed be my enemies, and forever honoured all them that hate me!

”But my friends!--ah! my friends! They speak so beautifully of my work; they say they want more of it,--and yet they would destroy it! They do not knohat it costs, and they would break the wings and scatter the feather-dust, even as the child that only wanted to caress the butterfly And they speak of converse and sympathy And they say,--only a day--just an afternoon--but each of the

And the sum of the days is a week of work dropped forever into the Abyss I must not even think about people's kind words and faces, but work, work, work, while the Scythe is sharpening within vision”

Under the strain of constant work his eyesight again began to fail, and in 1902 he wrote to friends in A to consult a specialist, and to bring for instruction in English his beloved Kazuo--from whom he would never be parted for a day He was entitled to his sabbatical year of vacation froe of it he wished to for those inimical to him made him fear for the tenure of his position His family had increased by the birth of another son, and his responsibilities--eakening lungs and eyesight--began to weigh heavily on his ement was made for him to lecture for a season in Cornell University at a salary of 2500, and these lectures he at once began to prepare When, however, he applied for leave it was refused hi at this juncture, of the intrusion of an English traveller into his classrooin in ination to have a significance out of all proportion to its real ht by the authorities in their purpose to be rid of hined The students--aware that influences were at work to rob him of his place--made some demonstrations of resentment, but finally abandoned theed more deeply, at once, into the preparation of his work for the American lectures, but shortly before he was to have sailed for America the authorities at Cornell withdrew from their contract on the plea that the epidemic of typhoid at Ithaca the previous suorous efforts were at once undertaken by his friends in A him employment elsewhere, with but partial success, but all these efforts were rendered useless by a sudden and violent illness, attended by bleeding froht on by strain and anxiety After his recovery the lectures prepared for Cornell were recast to form a book, but the work proved a desperate strain upon already weakened forces

Mrs Hearn says this:--

”Of his works, 'japan: an Interpretation' seereat labour to him

So hard a task it was that he said at one occasion: 'It is not difficult that this book will kill ine how hard it is to write such a big book in so short a time with no helper' To write was his life; and all care and difficulties he forgot while writing As he had no work of teaching in the university, he poured forth all his forces in the work of 'japan'

”When the lad and had the shape and wrote addresses upon the cover forforward to see the new voluine that he could hear the sound of type-work of 'japan' in America But he was unable to see the book in his lifetime”

Toon the completion of creative work: ”The 'rejected addresses' will shortly appear in book for a serious treatise on sociology I ought to keep to the study of birds and cats and insects and flowers, and queer ss--and leave the subject of the destiny of empires to nized it as the crowning achieve effort to interpret his adopted country to the world

Shortly after its colish in the Waseda University, founded by Count Okuain to be a father and his pen was unable to meet all the demands upon his incootiation with hiested that Oxford also wished to hear hinition froreatest satisfaction he had ever known But his forces were completely exhausted The desperate hardshi+ps of his youth, the immense labours of his manhood, had burned away the sources of vitality

On the 26th of Septe the last letter included in these volu on Marshal Oyaht he sank down suddenly as if the whole fabric of life had crumbled within, and after a little space of speechlessness and pain, his long quest was over

In ”Kwaidan” he had written: ”I should like, when raveyard of the ancient kind, so thatfor the fashi+ons and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji That old ce there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been shaped by so brain; even the shadows are not of this tiotten, that never knew stea bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings so strangely far away from all the nineteenth-century part of s of them makepeal but I beco in the abyssal part ofto reach the light beyond the obscurations of a millionof that bell”

In so far as was possible this was co to Buddhist rites One as present at his funeral thus describes it:--

”The procession left his residence, 266 Nishi+ Okubo, at half past one and proceeded to the Jito-in Kobu-dera Teaya First careat pyramidal bouquets of asters and chrysanthe streaohei_; after the birds to be released, symbols of the soul released from its earthly prison