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"OUT OF THE EAST"

REVERIES AND STUDIES IN NEW JAPAN

LAFCADIO HEARN

AUTHOR OF "GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN"

"As far as the east is from the west--"

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1895




TO

NISHIDA SENTARŌ

IN DEAR REMEMBRANCE OF

IZUMO DAYS



CONTENTS

    I. The Dream of a Summer Day
   II. With Kyūshū Students
  III. At Hakata
   IV. Of the Eternal Feminine
    V. Bits of Life and Death
   VI. The Stone Buddha
  VII. Jiujutsu
 VIII. The Bed Bridal
   IX. A Wish fulfilled
    X. In Yokohama
   XI. Yuko: A Reminiscence


"The Dream of a Summer Day" first appeared in the "Japan Daily
Mail."




OUT OF THE EAST



I


THE DREAM OF A SUMMER DAY



I


The hotel seemed to me a paradise, and the maids thereof celestial
beings. This was because I had just fled away from one of the Open
Ports, where I had ventured to seek comfort in a European hotel,
supplied with all "modern improvements." To find myself at ease once
more in a yukata, seated upon cool, soft matting, waited upon by
sweet-voiced girls, and surrounded by things of beauty, was therefore
like a redemption from all the sorrows of the nineteenth century.
Bamboo-shoots and lotus-bulbs were given me for breakfast, and a fan
from heaven for a keepsake. The design upon that fan represented only
the white rushing burst of one great wave on a beach, and sea-birds
shooting in exultation through the blue overhead. But to behold it
was worth all the trouble of the journey. It was a glory of light, a
thunder of motion, a triumph of sea-wind,--all in one. It made me want
to shout when I looked at it.

Between the cedarn balcony pillars I could see the course of the pretty
gray town following the shore-sweep,--and yellow lazy junks asleep at
anchor,--and the opening of the bay between enormous green cliffs,--and
beyond it the blaze of summer to the horizon. In that horizon there
were mountain shapes faint as old memories. And all things but the gray
town, and the yellow junks, and the green cliffs, were blue.

Then a voice softly toned as a wind-bell began to tinkle words of
courtesy into my reverie, and broke it; and I perceived that the
mistress of the palace had come to thank me for the chadai,[1]
and I prostrated myself before her. She was very young, and more
than pleasant to look upon,--like the moth-maidens, like the
butterfly-women, of Kuni-sada. And I thought at once of death;--for
the beautiful is sometimes a sorrow of anticipation.

She asked whither I honorably intended to go, that she might order a
kuruma for me. And I made answer:--

"To Kumamoto. But the name of your house I much wish to know, that I
may always remember it."

"My guest-rooms," she said, "are augustly insignificant, and my maidens
honorably rude. But the house is called the House of Urashima. And now
I go to order a kuruma."

The music of her voice passed; and I felt enchantment falling all about
me,--like the thrilling of a ghostly web. For the name was the name of
the story of a song that bewitches men.


[1] A little gift of money, always made to a hotel by the guest shortly
after his arrival.



II


Once you hear the story, you will never be able to forget it. Every
summer when I find myself on the coast,--especially of very soft,
still days,--it haunts me most persistently. There are many native
versions of it which have been the inspiration for countless works
of art. But the most impressive and the most ancient is found in the
"Manyefushifu," a collection of poems dating from the fifth to the
ninth century. From this ancient version the great scholar Aston
translated it into prose, and the great scholar Chamberlain into both
prose and verse. But for English readers I think the most charming form
of it is Chamberlain's version written for children, in the "Japanese
Fairy-Tale Series,"--because of the delicious  pictures by
native artists. With that little book before me, I shall try to tell
the legend over again in my own words.


Fourteen hundred and sixteen years ago, the fisher-boy Urashima Taro
left the shore of Suminoyé in his boat.

Summer days were then as now,--all drowsy and tender blue, with only
some light, pure white clouds hanging