Of Ghosts & Spirits

In 1894, Houghton Mifflin & Co published Lafcadio Hearn’s two volume work, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Hearn had arrived in Japan four years earlier, at the age of 40, commissioned as a newspaper correspondent. This commission was very soon broken off, but that was of little concern to a man who had found both a home and his greatest inspiration. He lived the remainder of his years in Japan, marrying a Japanese, taking the name Koizumi Yagumo and becoming a naturalized citizen of the country.

It is through Lafcadio Hearn’s writings that most Westerners of earlier years were introduced to things Japanese. Easy now to accuse Hearn of romanticizing Japan, exaggerating the exotic, but his descriptions were among the first impressions of pre-industrial Japan offered to the outside world. Another writer-adventurer, Pierre Loti did much the same sort of thing a few years earlier, only with an even greater degree of exoticism.

Hearn’s years in Japan make and interesting study, especially for the gradual evolution of feeling for his adopted country. At the time of his death things were perhaps not as rosy as they once were. But to this day he remains an almost-hero to Japanese of an older generation, and signs of his influence linger in many, many places.

Among my books here in Florida—most shipped from Japan—is a two-volume first edition set of Hearn’s Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Some of the books in my shelves were obtained for their value as first editions, signed or otherwise. In relation to that I looked up something on the web this morning about Hearn’s books. That got me thinking about the man and his experience in late 19th, early 20th century Japan.

My own first experience in Japan, though ninety years after Hearn, is perfectly described on page one of Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan… ‘The first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume.’ Short and dead on target. From my own first days in Japan I understand how accurate the writer is in that description.

Hearn completed Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan while a teacher at a middle school in Kyushu. He later taught English literature at famed Tokyo University, but left under a cloud when administrators calculated his salary based upon his Japanese citizenship. This bothered Hearn as he knew other ‘visiting’ Western teachers on the faculty were receiving much more. His final post was as a professor at Waseda University, where he remained until his death.

During his years in Japan Hearn published fourteen books, most of them dealing with topics best described by the title of a 1902 book, Kottô: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs. From early age Hearn was fascinated by the unconventional and the outlandish. Following this line, his writings tend to hover around such things as ghosts, spirits and fairy tales. From this world of the supernatural the writer set a tone that colored many of his pages. Perhaps the reason he has been accused of exaggeration, of romanticizing Japan.

Hard for me to recommend that someone run out and buy a book by Lafcadio Hearn, but should you stumble upon an old soy sauce stained copy of something by him in a yard sale or thrift shop, it would be worth taking home for that occasional afternoon or evening when exotic calls your name.

One Man’s View

Not one who can be counted among soccer fans, more often than not soccer news, World Cup or otherwise doesn’t color my day. But I saw in the news this morning that Japan lost to Paraguay in the best sixteen series of the World Cup. Can’t really say that such news brought me down, but it did make me wish the result had been different. Seems I’m on another missing Japan low and waxing nostalgic about most things of my longtime home.

With my mind on ‘the good old days’ I spent a few minutes looking through one of my books illustrating and describing the Japan of old. It might have been better had my hand fallen on a different book, because in looking again at The Japan Diaries of Richard Gordon Smith, I opened it to a page that immediately raised my ire. The back flap of the book’s cover makes no pretense of hiding the author’s attitudes toward his host country and states, ‘His views may be chauvinistic, even racist at times, but he was a man of his time, proud to be British and not afraid to express strong opinions.’ You have to read a little deeper to learn that as a young man he failed his exams and was forced to derive his income from the family’s business investments, and though not actually rich, never had to work for a living. This left him free to pursue his real interests—fishing and shooting.

Gordon Smith first arrived in Japan in late December of 1898. He returned to England several times, but spent most of his days in Japan until spring of 1907. There is little doubt that his “Ill-Spelled Diaries” offer a wealth of fascinating observations and odd facts about the country, and his name deserves to be remembered as one of Japan’s early archivists. There were few places he was reluctant to go, few experiences he was afraid of at least sampling. The problem with travelers of Gordon Smith’s time, and this is perhaps especially true of the British, was the superior mind-set engendered by colonialism. Everything in his upbringing and world view told him he was superior to the Japanese. This attitude supplied the palette of colors through which Gordon Smith described Japan and his time there.

The photo shown here of the fisherman includes partial comments about an experience on May 29, 1900. ‘I got up in a bad humour ordering five boatloads of fishermen, who surrounded the yacht, to clear off at once; I had a quick shot at one boatload who did not, and had them told that I did so because they were the ugliest men I had ever seen (and so they were). Their idiotic and insolent staring is at times most insulting. They think nothing of laughing at you yet they, themselves, have positively diabolically ugly heads and are more vulgarly clad than the naked savages of the tropics. A blue shirt comes only to their hips leaving bare all that is supposed to be covered; it is almost impossible to imagine what low looking beasts they appear.’

In the photograph of Gordon Smith with two of his house staff, you can read his somewhat demeaning label, ‘My two smallest servants, Egawa and O-Miyo-san.’

We have to comfort ourselves with one of his reflections upon returning to England when he found the contrast with the East thoroughly distasteful: the people, the climate and culture had all become unpalatable.