Pathway to Japanese Literature

Koizumi Yakumo, who loved reciting the long poem of Urashima from the Manyoshu and wandered day and night while murmuring its verses, was none other than the child of Urashima himself.
Born on a solitary Mediterranean island of the Greek Ionian archipelago, raised in Ireland, traveled through France, crossed to America seeking work, journeyed across the West Indies, and finally drifted to Japan in the Far East to conclude his extraordinary life—Hearn was a Bohemian who wandered the world without rest in pursuit of the dream of an ideal utopia envisioned by his soul, truly akin to the child of Urashima, a sorrowful "eternal wanderer."

However, even this sorrowful fate-bearer came to experience some measure of peace and happiness after crossing over to Japan.
For him in later years, Japan was not the ideal utopian paradise or Fairyland he had initially envisioned—in his later years he sent a letter to a friend sighing that this too was no village where he should dwell—yet after taking a chaste and beautiful wife, fathering three beloved children, and establishing a peaceful family life, he experienced lonely yet contented later years.
For Hearn himself—who as if perpetually ashamed of his short stature and dwarfish build, his severe myopia bordering on disability in one eye, compounded by social awkwardness and ill temper—to have been consistently disliked by Western women everywhere due to these traits, yet upon coming to Japan to first become a man of average height and then take as wife a beauty surpassing ordinary measure who would deeply love him throughout her life: this must have been an unexpectedly rare happiness beyond all reckoning.
The extent to which his wife Koizumi Setsu served her husband with chaste devotion through old-fashioned Japanese virtues—loving and understanding him profoundly—is evident both through how even when later disillusioned with Japan and writing disparagingly of it to friends abroad, he never begrudged absolute praise for Japanese women alone; and through how the female characters appearing in his ghost stories—chaste women reminiscent of his own wife—embody traditional feminine virtues along with that particular graceful modesty and endearing charm distinctive to such women.
The famous essay by Hearn titled A Woman's Diary—which this author once critiqued—is said to have drawn partially from his beloved wife Koizumi Setsu as a model, though it claims textual collation as its basis.
For Hearn—who lost his mother in childhood, was raised in others' homes amidst poverty, endured hunger and cold treatment while wandering in search of work, fully tasting life's bitter hardships yet remaining lonely with a perpetually unfulfilled soul—Japan may not have ultimately become his Heimat; but at least the home embraced by his wife alone proved his final blessed refuge: that one joyful sanctuary of peaceful dwelling.
Perhaps it was then that Hearn first glimpsed in some corner of his heart the lonely essence of what is called happiness.

All people who grew up in impoverished households, deprived of parental love and raised amidst domestic and environmental adversity, came to passionately pursue the hunger of their hearts that had never been satisfied—more fervently than anything else—so that when they later became masters of households, they became devoted protectors of their wives and children, zealously transforming their homes into paradises.
In Lafcadio Hearn's case, he too proved no exception to this pattern.

Even his naturalization in Japan was not, as common sense would suppose, because he truly loved the country. By that time, he no longer saw Japan as a "land of dreams". And viewing Japan as an earthly, real society where "just as in Western nations, there too exists an ugly struggle for existence, with injustice and deceitful schemes perpetually at work." A fantastic dream country such as a poet might sketch in their imagination cannot exist on the actual earth. Moreover, the fated poet’s deepest yearning lies in this very passion: to spend a lifetime dreaming of an impossible utopia. Hearn, who had been a Bohemian from the very beginning, remained a Bohemian even in his later years—an eternal Child of Urashima without a homeland. If he had not had a wife and children, he would certainly have set out on an aimless wandering journey once again—on the very day he became disillusioned with Japan—to seek out "a new and unknown country." But at that moment, he thought of his wife and children. Hearn, now approaching old age, considered the status of his wife and children after his death. And he considered that a family without nationality could receive no protection from the Japanese government—neither regarding property nor life itself. Moreover, the anguish of forcing his wife—a purely Japanese, delicate woman—to live alone in what he called the "barbarian" society of Westerners was an act of cruelty unbearable even to imagine. Yet when he resolved to naturalize and steeled himself to become part of Japan’s soil, he must have felt an indescribable loneliness and frustration welling up from the depths of his heart. That this was what the Japanese poetically term resignation—even this, perhaps, Hearn came to understand.

His acceptance of Tokyo Imperial University’s invitation and departure from Matsue and Kumamoto also represented, for Hearn himself, a devoted sacrifice made for his beloved wife.
Tokyo—which he had glimpsed on the day of his landing and found so revolting it induced vomiting, which he denounced as a metropolis epitomizing modern Japan’s hideous aspects, and which he declared more dreary and devoid of artistry than any filthy, vulgar city in the world—remained a place he would not wish to inhabit even in death.
Moreover, for his wife—like many young women of her time—Tokyo was a city of longing, and life there represented the highest ideal of her existence.
“I’ll wear a frock coat.
I’ll live in Tokyo.
It’s all for your sake,” Hearn himself finally grumbled to his wife.
His wife understood her husband’s heart well: “Hearn’s entire life was a sacrifice devoted entirely to me and the children.
It was such an undeserved blessing,” she reminisced poignantly in her recollections.

How ardently he loved his wife was well illustrated by the letters he sent from Yaizu to her remaining at home.

My dear little Mama-san.

Your dear letter saying "Please come soon" arrived this morning.
I was delighted beyond words.

Mama-sama, there is nothing dangerous happening at all.
Please do not worry.
This year I have not gone to the sea at night even once.
Otokichi and Niimi both take great care with the children.
Even if Kazuo swims in deep places, there is nothing dangerous.
This summer, I am terribly afraid of jellyfish.
I swim frequently and play heartily.

I think of that amulet from Narita-sama.
That amulet is a lovely thing.

I am a little lonely.
The reason I haven't seen your face now is...
Is it still...?
I want to see it.

Because fleas swarm in crowds, sleeping is somewhat difficult.
But since I swim in the sea every morning, everyone forgets their nighttime worries.

This year I take baths in the Kosaitarai Bath every two or three days.

Yaizu, August 17th

From Papa

To the lovely children, and best regards to everyone.

Koizumi Yakumo

My dear little Mama-san.

This morning, Mr. Narita’s amulet arrived.
Papa gave it to Otokichi.
When he did so, he was utterly delighted.
(Omitted)

Mama—I ask this of you.
Please take care of yourself.
You must be very busy now—
With carpenters and plasterers and all this work—
Therefore I ask that you please take care of your health.

I was busy today,
Because the bookstore handled the proofreading.
However, everyone managed well.

Iwao and Kazuo are healthy and adorable.
They played so much at the sea they became tanned.
Otokichi takes good care of them.
They study every day.

Goodbye, dear Mama-san.

Kind words to Grandmother.

Kisses to the children.

Yaizu, August 18th

Koizumi Yakumo

This letter imbued with tender emotion was not from their newlywed days.
Written over a decade into their marriage when Hearn had passed fifty and become father to two boys and a girl, it belonged to his later years.
Hearn, who affectionately addressed his wife as "My dear little Mama-san," revealed through it how doting a father he remained.
He always concluded his letters with phrases like "Best regards to Grandmother" or "Kind words for Grandmother."
Obaba-sama was his wife's mother—nominally his own mother through adoption into the Koizumi family—and thus stood as his elderly mother-in-law.
Hearn lived together with his wife and this maternal elder as one household, fulfilling filial duties through purely Japanese customs.
This mother-in-law too had been raised in a samurai family, educated in traditional Japanese etiquette, and possessed an exceptionally kind-hearted nature.
While many claim the models for Japanese women in Hearn's literature derived more from this elderly matriarch than his wife, at minimum fortune had favored him in this aspect.
For even within Japan itself, such virtuous wives and benevolent mothers-in-law were never common.
Hence some argued that had Hearn wed a shrewish wife and shared roof with spiteful in-laws, his vision of Japan as divine realm would likely have inverted completely.

Hearn's lifestyle was entirely Japanese in character.
He always wore traditional Japanese garments—particularly favoring yukata—sat formally in seiza posture on tatami mats, and smoked finely cut tobacco from his kiseru pipe.
His meals consisted of steamed rice with miso soup, vegetable pickles, and simmered fish, while evenings found him savoring two or three gō of sake with dinner.
(Though mornings saw him drink whiskey and relish beefsteak.) Though he changed residences frequently, he invariably chose purely Japanese-style houses and abhorred any trace of Western influence.
Even when calling on Japanese acquaintances, being received in Western-style parlors left him thoroughly disgruntled long after returning home.
Japan at that time lay enthralled by Civilization and Enlightenment's infatuation with the West, ensuring such irritations awaited him everywhere.
He perpetually lamented how the Japanese people willfully mimicked barbarians despite possessing an admirable civilization of their own.
In his personal lexicon, the term "barbarians" carried identical meaning to "Westerners."

Hearn’s lifestyle in this manner was one of utmost simplicity.
To his students too, he consistently admonished against extravagance while advocating simplicity, and explained the benefits of simplifying one’s life.
For the more luxurious one’s lifestyle became, the more life grew complicated with trivialities, making it impossible to devote oneself to work.
Hearn—who told his visitor that with just two or three gō of steamed rice per day, a modest amount of side dishes, and two or three gō of Japanese sake his life was perfectly sufficient—indeed lived a scholar-like simple existence.

However, his spiritual life was conversely exquisitely delicate and extravagant.
Anything that might impair his poetic inspiration or offend his aesthetic sensibilities—be it people, furniture, or noises—was absolutely forbidden entry into that household.
When Hearn worked in his study, even the faintest surrounding noise would immediately make him exclaim, "My thoughts are shattered!" as he furiously flung down his pen.
In her memoirs, his wife records that she took care to open even the chest drawers without making a sound.
Yet in other moments, he would share innocent jests to amuse his wife and children, drawing even the maidservants into their circle, thereby cultivating an atmosphere of familial harmony.

Whenever he traveled anywhere, he always took his wife with him.
The only exception was when he took two children to Yaizu.
(At that time, the youngest daughter had just been born and could not yet leave her mother’s care.) This habit of his was no mere formality, unlike the customary practices of many Westerners.
“I feel somewhat lonely.
Not seeing your face now—
Is it not yet?
I want to see you soon.” As evident from this Yaizu letter, he so adored Mrs. Koizumi that no journey brought him joy unless accompanied by his wife.
Before they had children, this newlywed young couple traveled through the remote islands along the San’indō.
It was a dark and desolate archipelago with almost no connection to the mainland—places where only a few poor fishermen lived here and there in lonely mountain shadows.
The mountain paths, devoid of human traces, offered no passage for rickshaws, so the young couple wandered for hours along narrow trails overgrown with vines and kudzu, supporting each other as they went.
They would be threatened by ruffian-like men with eerie and fearsome faces, or stay in houses reminiscent of the Black Mound’s solitary dwelling, glared at by terrifying white-haired old women.
His wife later recalled that time, saying it felt exactly like experiencing in reality a tale she had read in illustrated chapbooks.
The young wife, still not free from childish innocence soon after their marriage, likely trembled with fear yet experienced life’s most joyful and unforgettable dream.

Hearn always enjoyed taking walks and would wander through every corner of unfamiliar towns on his way home from school; however, whenever he discovered a new object of interest, he would invariably take his wife to show her the place again. “Today I found an interesting place. Let’s go there together,” he would say as he led his wife out—though these destinations were mostly desolate and quiet spots like temple cemeteries, vacant gardens of estates, or small hills with panoramic views. In short, these were precisely the kind of places where modern Japanese young girls would feel most bored and exclaim, “How dreary!” However, his wife—educated in koto music, flower arrangement, and tea ceremony, versed in poetic pathos through waka and old tales—could share and savor those pleasures with her husband. Yet one time when Hearn guided her out along a pitch-dark country path to a small hillock surrounded by endless rice fields under night’s canopy, Mrs. Koizumi questioned him in puzzlement at the complete lack of scenery or charm. Hearn pointed to his ear and said, “Listen—what a delightful song this is!” All around them in the rice fields, frogs were croaking like rainfall.

Until moving from Matsue to Tokyo, the Hearn couple did not own their own home. Sometimes they stayed in boarding houses, sometimes rented rooms, sometimes leased homes—constantly moving from one residence to another. However, after moving to Tokyo—with many children being born and their house becoming cramped, along with some savings accumulated—they decided, on Mrs. Koizumi’s suggestion, to purchase a house for sale. One day, the two walked through the Ushigome area searching for estates for sale, keeping each other company affectionately as usual. Then they found a suitable house. It was a former hatamoto’s estate with a large samurai-style gate and a lotus pond in the garden. However, permeated by a gloomy dim dampness that gave an oddly eerie and unpleasant feeling, despite Mrs. Koizumi instinctively opposing it, Hearn took an immediate liking to the house at first glance. Like a child, he exclaimed repeatedly, “What an interesting house! What an interesting house!” and insisted they absolutely must purchase it. In the end, the purchase was canceled due to Mrs. Koizumi’s vehement opposition, but when they later discovered it was a famous haunted house, whereas she heaved a sigh of relief, Hearn became terribly disappointed and said, “That’s exactly why we should have lived there!” “I thought that house was such an interesting house,” he lamented repeatedly, his voice thick with regret.

One wonder regarding Hearn was that while he knew Japan better than the Japanese themselves through his extensive study of diverse literature, he hardly knew any Japanese at all.The Japanese characters he knew were limited to katakana's iroha syllabary and a handful of kanji, while his spoken Japanese—as seen in letters from Yaizu—was an original creation with peculiar grammar resembling a child's babble.When adding a new study to their later-purchased Ōkubo house, he entrusted all design and administrative matters to his wife and remained completely indifferent.Yet whenever she occasionally brought up consultations, he would say irritably: “You’ll tell me when that house is ready.“Papa-san, please come to Ōkubo today.“I say goodbye to this house in the morning.I go to the university.“When ready, I will go to Ōkubo.“To that new house.“That’s all,” he said impatiently.This peculiar Japanese of Hearn’s proved nearly incomprehensible to outsiders.The family called it “Herun-san kotoba” and found it amusing.Such strange Japanese likely became frequent humorous catchphrases within the household.Ever since the haunted house incident, the phrase “interesting house” had probably gained ironic currency among them as sardonic shorthand for all unclean or gloomy dwellings.As a result, it rendered Yakumo’s household even more cheerful and convivial.

However, none could truly comprehend Hearn's peculiar speech except his wife.
In such moments, she too would reply using Mr. Hearn's distinctive language.
The sight of two affectionate adults chattering in childlike fragments—laughing and playing together for hours on end—might well have been something straight from fairyland.
These marital exchanges remained incomprehensible not just to maids and manservants, but even to their own children.
"Our Papa and Mama talk in mysterious words about mysterious things that nobody understands," a schoolboy once proudly told his friends—such was the unearthly quality of their conversation.
(When speaking with his children, Hearn primarily used English.)

By nature, human conversation proves remarkably imperfect when compared to that of animals.
Creatures like dogs and small birds achieve perfect mutual understanding through mere nose-touching, tail-wagging, or brief eye contact, yet humans conduct laboriously protracted dialogues while still failing to convey their thoughts effectively.
To have one's true will and emotions thoroughly comprehended requires the listener to be an intimate confidant fully acquainted with one's temperament - without such familiarity, even a million words might be wasted.
Between lovers who grasp entire meanings through exchanged glances, ordinary words and conversations become entirely superfluous.
And the Hearns' peculiar manner of speech likely belonged precisely to this category.

“The most joyful moment in life is,” Goethe once said.
“when lovers converse with each other in words no one else can comprehend, sharing secrets and joys no one else can fathom.”
Precisely this man and woman—who spent hours conversing affectionately in a mysterious language scarcely understood even by family members sharing their home—embodied the world’s most ideally happy couple.
All lovers yearn to live and speak solely with each other on some remote isle devoid of other souls.
And the Hearn couple’s life matched this ideal perfectly.
Though surrounded by others, these lovers conversed as if on an uninhabited island, freely savoring an existence meant only for two.

At dinner, Hearn would always grow quite cheerful while sipping two or three bottles of sake from his cup.
His wife and family members attended him at both sides, pouring drinks while reading aloud from that day's Japanese newspaper.
(Since Hearn himself could only read English-language newspapers.) One day, an article of the following nature appeared:
In a certain part of Yamanote lived an elderly woman of the kazoku peerage who harbored an extreme aversion to all things Western; she adamantly refused to use anything imported or fashionable, declaring them all to "smell Western."
Consequently, her household strictly prohibited everything from soap and lamps down to the maids' hair ornaments and personal effects—with all matters meticulously mirroring old daimyo palaces—so that no maid could endure staying and would flee. Even when requesting others to recruit help, people would refuse saying "That mansion's too proper, too proper!" Such was the article written in the characteristically satirical style of Meiji-era newspapers.

When Mrs. Koizumi read that out to him, Hearn became thoroughly delighted and exclaimed, “How delightful! How delightful!” clapping his hands like a child in joy. “I like that person very much! Such a person would be my best friend! I want to see! That house—I must see it! I don’t smell Western at all!” he declared with great satisfaction, adding, “You don’t smell Western either, do you?”

“But your nose is too Western,” she teased.
“Your eyes are blue.”
“No good.”

Lamenting, “Oh, what should I do? This nose of mine...” he then gleefully used his newly acquired Japanese phrase—“Too rigid! Too rigid!”—sending both his wife and maidservants into fits of laughter. Yet afterward he solemnly declared, “But please consider carefully... I, Koizumi Yakumo, love the real Japan more than the Japanese themselves.”

Hearn was truly a poet who passionately cherished Japan. Even during his later years when he felt somewhat disillusioned with Japan, whenever other foreigners criticized it maliciously, he would flare up in righteous anger like a knight defending an insulted lover, wielding sharp counterarguments.

Yakumo’s state of mind seems to have closely resembled that of parents who, though privately disillusioned by their child’s dullness, grow enraged when others criticize their beloved offspring.

Japan was growing Western-smelling, its culture and customs becoming increasingly Europeanized day by day—an unbearable sorrow for Hearn.
What grieved him most was how Bon dances and other rural traditions had naturally withered after being suppressed by the Meiji government.
Though indignant about this, his true wrath turned toward Christianity.
The government’s prohibition of Bon dances, citizens aping Westerners, the demise of native Japanese culture—all were blamed on Christian missionary propaganda, every evil laid at Christianity’s feet.
“Everyone—it’s Christianity making them do it.”
“Christianity makes everyone bad.”
“Christianity is Japan’s enemy,” he denounced everywhere, loathing its missionaries like sworn foes.
This same man stood as an ardent Buddhist believer.
Within his faith lay Buddhist concepts of reincarnation and eternal life, transformed through Hearn’s characteristically innocent poetic imagination into a uniquely personal worldview.
“Even were I reborn as bird or insect after death, I’d feel no sadness.”
“For I cannot think their lives more wretched than humans’,” wrote Hearn in one essay—Hearn who understood that lyrical pathos called mono no aware, the Buddhist sentiment rooted deep in Japan’s soul.

The walking area that Hearn—Koizumi Yakumo—always favored most was the tranquil temple grounds.
Especially when living in Tomikura-cho, Tokyo, he would go out to the nearby Kobudera Temple almost daily.
The temple had a spacious garden with a grove of ancient cedars behind it, making this his most cherished spot for meditative walks.
He became acquainted with the temple’s elderly priest and eventually declared his wish to become its head priest, leading to the following exchange with his wife.

“Mama-san, I will sit in this temple. Would it be difficult?”

“You are not a priest. That’s why it would be difficult, isn’t it?”

“I am a priest. How happy we would be. Even becoming a priest would be good.”

“You will become a priest. What an amusing priest you’d be. You would be a big-eyed, high-nosed, fine priest.”

“At the same time, you shall become a nun. Kazuo (note: eldest son) is a little monk. How adorable he is! He’ll live joyfully by reciting sutras daily and tending to graves.”

“In another life, please be reborn a monk.”

“Ah, I do wish for that.”

Hearn, who claimed insects and birds knew greater happiness than humans, understood nothing of life beyond sorrow.
This world-weary perspective—this renunciation of the saha realm’s earthly bonds—persisted as the bedrock of his distinctive literary sensibility throughout his works.

His literature was essentially akin to Japan’s Hōjōki and Tsurezuregusa—works of “Recluse Literature” grounded in Buddhist impermanence—and Hearn himself existed as a real-world recluse. His declaration about wanting to become a temple’s head priest, withdraw from society, and spend his remaining years chanting sutras while tending graves was no passing jest, but rather a revelation of boundless sorrow within his heart. Yet this very sorrow in Yakumo perpetually caused his wife the deepest anguish. For here was a grief that no wifely devotion—however perfectly virtuous—could ever alleviate. Still, had Yakumo truly become a worldly renunciant in reality, his ever-chaste wife might well have transformed into “at that same moment” a bhikkhunī nun.

Such sorrowful dialogues—could there be dialogues more sorrowful than these?—were always spoken between this husband and wife as half-poetry, half-playful banter.

When saying things like “Your nose is too high! Your eyes are too big!”, his wife would poke Hearn’s face with her finger and tease him playfully as if handling a child. Each time, Hearn would laugh and joke around, saying things like “Sorry! Sorry!” Those observing only such outward appearances likely perceived this couple’s life as mere childish make-believe houseplay. Moreover, those dialogues always contained life’s most sorrowful words. And in all the world, there existed only two who understood the meaning of that sorrow—the wife and her husband. “Papa and Mama at home speak mysterious words no one understands about mysterious things no one understands,” came a child’s innocent observation—an utterance that in truth held far more profound mystery.

The Hearns’ marriage was extraordinary in every aspect, differing from ordinary marital relationships.
For Hearn, his wife was his only lover in this world and forever “My dear little Mama-san,” while also being his devoted assistant and secretary in his work.
Hearn, who couldn’t read Japanese characters, obtained the materials for works like Kwaidan and Kottō primarily through his wife’s oral accounts.
When she told ghost stories, he would always dim the lamp wick and sit formally before her in a room steeped in shadowy atmosphere, listening intently.
When the story reached its most thrilling part, Hearn would turn pale with fear and tremble violently, saying, “That story is scary, so scary!”
For his wife, this was more amusing than anything else; her storytelling naturally grew more eloquent as she spoke soothingly like one addressing a child.

In this couple’s life, reading was the wife’s crucial role.
While Hearn was at school, his wife snatched moments to read avidly, scouring for books of old Japanese legends and ghost stories to the fullest extent she could manage.
When his wife cleaned the study or attended to household chores, Hearn was always displeased.
“Mama-san.
You have no maid.
During that free time, you read books.
You just read books—give me lots of stories,” he said.
However, Hearn had no interest whatsoever in the articles from books that were read aloud.
All stories had to be narrated through his wife’s own subjective emotions and interpretations, conveyed with visceral immediacy.
“You mustn’t look at books.
It must only be your stories, your words, your thoughts,” he always insisted.
Therefore, many of Hearn’s works were not derived from materials obtained through books, but rather from those subjectively adapted and creatively reworked by his wife, which Hearn then poetically transformed into literature.
Therefore, Hearn also declared that all his works were due to his wife’s contributions, deeply thanking her for her efforts—to the extent that he even attempted to publish certain writings under her actual name.
Yet his wife remained ever humble toward her husband.
Having only graduated from a provincial school of modest standing and not received sufficient higher education, she constantly lamented her own lack of learning and apologized profusely for being unable to provide satisfactory service to her husband.

One time, when questioned by Hearn about a poem from the Manyōshū and unable to answer, she wept in apology for her lack of learning and begged her husband for forgiveness of her failure in devotion.
At that moment, Hearn silently led her before the bookshelf, showed her his extensive collected works, and said:
“How do you think I wrote all these books of mine?”
“All were written by listening to your stories—thanks to you alone, my dear wife.”
“When you had learning,” he continued, “I could not write these books.”
“When you had no learning, I could write.”
Indeed, had his wife been an educated woman, she likely could not have sincerely felt Japan’s ancient legends and ghost tales with a woman’s innocent heart.
“An unschooled yet virtuous woman surpasses genius,” as Nietzsche declared—and a woman like Hearn’s wife was indeed “more than genius” by that very measure.

Attended by this virtuous wife, the poet Hearn spent his later years in Japan peacefully—and even he himself became conscious of that solitary contentment.
He wrote letters to friends in his homeland detailing his actual living conditions in Japan as follows:
When school lectures ended, a rickshaw puller would come with a jinrikisha to meet him.
Upon reaching his home’s entrance, the rickshaw puller would call out in a vigorous booming voice, “O-kaeri-i!”
Then all household members would come filing out.
His wife and maids would line up sitting on the entranceway tatami to bow and say “O-kaeri-asobase.”
When entering the sitting room, his wife would help him change from Western clothes into Japanese attire.
It was exactly like a girl playing with her doll-toy.
“I let my wife handle everything as she does,” he wrote.
Then after resting a little, he would enter his study to work.
At dinner time, family members would gather and converse.
“As I drink Japanese sake, my wife pours it for me.
The women often laugh.
I too sometimes make joking remarks.
On busy workdays, I often stay up late writing.
At such times,” he continued, “my wife makes a point of coming to me to say ‘As it grows late, I beg leave to retire first,’ performing a formal three-fingered bow before retreating to her bed.
Though I’ve repeatedly told her—since this happens so often—to henceforth abandon formalities and simply retire first as she pleases, my wife insists this would violate wifely virtue and stubbornly refuses, leaving me quite at a loss...”

In these letters, Hearn’s self-satisfied delight manifested itself.
Indeed, women who served their husbands with such devoted fidelity as his wife were scarcely found among ordinary Western women, and a household where the man was treated like a lord to such an extent was inconceivable in the West; thus one could imagine the extent to which foreigners who read Hearn’s letters must have envied their friend in Japan.
Hearn himself, of course, had written with full awareness of this, and a pride that seemed to declare, “How about that? You must be envious!” was clearly evident between the lines of such letters.

However, serving a man as sensitive, difficult, and prone to violent emotional shifts as Hearn would not have been an easy task for any ordinary Japanese woman.
True “virtuousness” lies not in serving one’s husband with the dutiful obedience of a servant, but in service that deeply understands his temperament and character, striving to assimilate with him and become one in body and mind.
And to achieve this, it requires perceptive wisdom to discern human psychology and devoted willpower along with ceaseless effort striving for assimilation.
The Japanese woman who was Hearn’s wife was naturally extremely intelligent, and through her Bushido stoicism-infused home education, she exerted tremendous willpower in her efforts.
She herself confessed this, saying that it took no ordinary effort before she could fully grasp her husband’s temperament.
However, she said that once she came to fully understand him, he was a person as honest and single-minded as a child, pure-hearted beyond compare.
In truth, Hearn—like many genius poets—was a man of character who possessed an essentially childlike purity and innocence.
Therefore, while serving him respectfully through old Japanese wifely virtue and etiquette on one hand, his wife had to treat him like a child on the other.
To his wife, Hearn was both her most trusted husband and, in another light, “a big spoiled child.”
Hearn’s tastes were thoroughly plebeian in all matters, and as he detested formalities, he intensely disliked ceremonial attire such as frock coats, always calling them “how barbaric!”
So during school ceremonies and such occasions, while all the other teachers attended in formal attire, Hearn stubbornly stuck to wearing his one good suit.
However, as this was rather unbecoming, his wife strongly urged him to have a new frock coat made, but he stubbornly refused to comply.
So his wife told him, “You’ve written so splendidly about Japan that the authorities have summoned you to commend you.”
“When attending court, you must wear a silk hat and frock coat,” she managed to persuade him as if deceiving a child, and though he finally had new formalwear made, he still refused to wear it at all.
On days with ceremonies, his wife had to physically restrain him while the maid joined in the commotion, coaxing and cajoling as if handling a spoiled child, forcing him into the detested garments.

Hearn, who detested so-called "civilization," conversely cherished all of nature profoundly.
He particularly adored insects, birds, and other small creatures, taking delight in snakes, frogs, cicadas, spiders, dragonflies, and butterflies.
To these diminutive beings, he always addressed them as "you," speaking as one would converse with fellow humans.
This cosmic benevolence of his stemmed from Buddhist pantheism - the belief that spiritual essence dwells within all natural things, from plants to every element of creation.
Thus he vehemently condemned any mistreatment or killing of living creatures, extending this principle from animals down to vegetation.
The maid earned his reproach for shooing away a snake; the gardener faced reprimand for uprooting bamboo shoots; even Grandmother Obaba-sama received admonishment for removing withered morning glories, with Hearn gently chiding, "You're normally so kindhearted, Obaba-sama, yet you've shown cruelty to these morning glories."

Hearn also had a particular fondness for cats.
Whether in Matsue or Yaizu, whenever he came across a stray cat on the road, he would pick it up and take it home, raising as many as he found.
Shortly after marrying his wife, he found a kitten drenched by rain, brought it home, and kept the mud-caked creature tucked inside his bosom, gently warming it for a long time.
According to his wife’s confession, her true love for her husband first arose at that time.
She marveled that there could exist a person so deeply affectionate and gentle-hearted, and toward Hearn she even felt something poignantly pitiable.

In Hearn’s household, even the slightest natural events and phenomena always became causes for great excitement as something wondrously novel. For instance, whenever a family member discovered something like a snake appearing in the backyard bamboo grove, a toad croaking, an ant hill being found, a single plum blossom blooming, or a beautiful sunset emerging, they would each time go report it to Hearn. Then Hearn would rush out of his room in great delight, exclaiming “How adorable!” or “What a delightful voice!” or “How beautiful!” while spending hours gazing at the small creature or admiring the sunset clouds. Whenever such minor incidents were discovered, the maids, students, and other family members would race to Hearn’s side as if reporting a grand achievement, vying to be first with their news, so that the house always bustled with gentle merriment.

However, Hearn at work was the most difficult and particular of masters.
He would complain that even the slightest household noises or voices disrupted his inspiration.
Even his wife was not permitted to enter the study.
“It was like taking the utmost care upon care to avoid breaking a ‘beautiful soap bubble’,” the widowed wife later remarked.
But when the room grew too disorderly and his wife would seize an opportunity to clean it—“You and your endless cleaning, cleaning, cleaning!
“It’s your bad habit,” she would say, refusing to relent—the study only grew increasingly cluttered.

At the right side of Hearn’s desk there was always prepared a Japanese tobacco tray and kiseru pipe.
Hearn favored Japanese kiseru pipes, so whenever his wife went out she would find different ones and bring them back.
Having accumulated thirty of these, Hearn kept every last one at his desk, grabbing whichever came to hand even while working to stuff them with Kokubu’s cut tobacco and smoke.
One day his wife bought a large conch shell as a souvenir from an outing to Enoshima and brought it home.
Hearn took great delight in it, exclaiming “What an amusing sound!” while puffing out his cheeks to blow boo-oo through the shell, then continuing with “How delightful!” as he kept playing.
They consequently placed the conch shell on his desk and made an agreement that henceforth whenever his tobacco fire went out he would blow the conch instead of clapping his hands.

When they moved to the Nishi-Okubo residence, there were three children alongside the Hearns and the mother-in-law. With two maids, a live-in student, an elderly manservant, and a personal rickshaw man completing the household, the home proved sufficiently spacious—multiple rooms connected by long corridors. Yet whenever Hearn worked, the entire family maintained such nervous vigilance that the house sank into hushed and serenely still silence. On such evenings, when the conch's call carried from his study, its low boo-oo would reverberate through the expansive rooms like lingering wave echoes. At this signal—as if crying "The shell sounds!"—the wife would lead maids and students in a clamorous race to the detached study. "He found blowing it so delightful that he'd extinguish his tobacco fire on purpose just to play it endlessly," his wife later recalled in her memoirs—likely during those moments when Hearn's pen stalled mid-inspiration. To dispel the loneliness and vexation of such creative blocks, the poet would deliberately snuff his tobacco embers and blow into the melancholy conch, its mournful boo-oo echoing through paper-walled rooms.

In his later years, Yakumo immersed himself in his work to a painful degree.
Aware that old age was approaching, he grew despondent as he considered how much of importance still remained unwritten in the scant time left to him, sighing repeatedly, “Life is too short.”
He had a heart condition.
Those dangerous symptoms had begun appearing frequently after he passed fifty years of age.

When they first moved into their new home in Ōkubo, it was a radiant spring day, with Japanese bush warblers trilling incessantly in the bamboo thicket behind the house.
Yakumo stood on the engawa veranda listening raptly, exclaiming “How wonderfully amusing and joyous!” before adding, “My heart pains me.”
When his wife asked if something troubled him, he replied that being so intensely happy made him anxious—wondering how long they might dwell in this house, how long such bliss could endure.
True to his words, tangible worries soon descended.
Having recognized that old age had arrived and death drew near, he began regarding all nature with sentimental intensity, pouring into every phenomenon something profounder than love.
One late autumn day, seeing the garden cherry tree bloom anew, he murmured, “Thinking it felt like spring, I remembered you, Cherry.”
“Ah, now you’ve become my whole world.”
“So you blossomed.”
“Yet…” he continued sorrowfully, “how pitiful.”
“The cold will soon return.”
“You’ll shrivel in shock,” he said.
The cherry petals scattered completely within that single day.
That same autumn evening, hearing the caged pine cricket sing, he observed, “You tiny creature—what a splendid voice you’ve shared.”
“It brought me such delight.”
“But the chill grows keener by the day.”
“Do you know?”
“Can you not know?”
“That you must perish soon.”
“How cruel this is.”
“Poor little thing,” he murmured despondently, then directed the household to discreetly release the insect into grassy thickets during these milder days.

At that time, Hearn—cherishing every moment as he immersed himself in his work—could no longer travel or take walks with his wife as frequently as before.
Therefore, he tried to ease his wife’s worries and often urged her to go on outings and excursions.
“Go out and see something worthwhile,”
he would say.
“When you return, tell me a little about it.
Just staying home reading books all day won’t do,” he insisted.
Sometimes he encouraged her to attend plays: “The papers say Danjuro at the Kabukiza Theatre is tremendously entertaining.
You must go without fail—bring back stories as souvenirs,” he’d declare, only to add dejectedly afterward: “But when you return, it’ll be ten or eleven o’clock.
When you’re away, this house ceases to be my home.
How dreary it becomes.
Still…there’s nothing to be done,” he’d conclude with resignation.

When the first attack of illness struck, Hearn became fully aware of his fate, entrusting the protection of his wife and children after his death and the management of his assets entirely to his legal scholar friend to ensure there would be no lingering concerns.
And then he said to his wife:
“If this pain grows too severe, I will likely die.”
“Even if I die, you must not cry—never.”
“We should buy a small bottle.”
“It costs about three or four sen.”
“To hold my bones.”
“And bury it at some lonely country temple.”
“If you grieve, I won’t be happy.”
“You must play karuta with the children.”
“How that would delight me.”
“I need no announcement of my death.”
“If anyone asks, just say: ‘Ah, he passed away recently.’”
“‘That will suffice,’ he said, adding that should any troubles arise, she should consult Legal Scholar Mr. Ume.”
“Don’t speak such mournful things.”
To his wife’s protest—“Such things shall never happen”—he responded earnestly, “These words come from my heart,” and with “It can’t be helped!” steeled himself for death.
Moreover, contemplating his unfinished work, he sighed repeatedly: “Life is too short.”

Not long after the day the cherry blossoms bloomed unseasonally—mere days later—Hearn died.
On his final day's eve, he told his wife of a strange dream.
A dream of journeying not to Japan nor China, but to some impossibly distant unknown land.
He asked her whether his present self here was real or his traveling self true, then murmured "Ah, this dream-world," sighing forlornly.
Our wandering poet Bashō died uttering: "Sick on a journey—my dreams race through withered fields."
Poets who lived through dreaming must also die within their dreams.
Hearn the wanderer—who roamed nations yet never eased his heart's longing—in the end wandered anew through that dream, traversing strange far realms.
Now this sorrowful poet's spirit lies interred as mere bone-fragments in Zōshigaya's weed-choked cemetery.

(September–October 1941 [Shōwa 16])