[190] See Appendix LII.

[191] The Salt Monopoly profits are estimated at 314,204 yen for 1920-21.

CHAPTER XXIX

FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

(SHIMANE, TOTTORI AND HYOGO)

Those who suffer learn, those who love know.—­MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS

At Matsue, with which the name of Lafcadio Hearn will always be associated, I chanced to arrive on the anniversary of his death.  His local admirers were holding a memorial meeting.  As a foreigner I was honoured with a request to attend.  First, however, I had the chance of visiting Hearn’s house.  Matsue was the first place at which Hearn lived.  He always remembered it and at last came back there to marry.  Except that a pond has been filled up—­no doubt to reduce the number of mosquitoes—­the garden of his house is little changed.

The most interesting feature of the meeting was old pupils’ grateful recollections of Hearn, the middle-school teacher.  The gathering was held in a room belonging to the town library in the prefectural grounds, but neither the Governor nor the mayor was present.  A sympathetic speech was made by a chance visitor to the town, the secretary-general to the House of Peers.  He recalled the antagonism which the young men at Tokyo University, himself among them, felt towards the odd figure of Hearn—­he had a terribly strained eye and wore a monocle—­when he became a professor, and how very soon he gained the confidence and regard of the class.

I had often wondered that there was no Japanese memorial to Hearn, and when I rose to speak I said so.  I added that it was rare to meet a Japanese who had any understanding of how much Hearn had done in forming the conception of Japan possessed by thousands of Europeans and Americans.  The fault in so many books about Japan, I went on, was not that their “facts” were wrong.  What was wrong was their authors’ attitude of mind.  I had heard Japanese say that Hearn was “too poetical” and that some of his inferences were “inaccurate.”  That was as might be.  What mattered was that the mental attitude of Hearn was so largely right.  He did not approach Japan as a mere “fact” collector or as a superior person.  What he brought to the country was the humble, studious, imaginative, sympathetic attitude; and it was only by men and women of his rare type that peoples were interpreted one to the other.

In that free-and-easy way in which meetings are conducted in Japan it was permissible for us to leave after another speech had been made.  The proceedings were interrupted while the promoters of the gathering showed us a collection of books and memorials of Hearn, arranged under a large portrait, and accompanied us to the door of the hall.  I do not recall during the time I was in Japan any other public gathering in honour of Hearn, and I met several prominent men who had either never heard his name or knew nothing of the far-reaching influence of his books.  But some months after this Matsue meeting there was included among the Coronation honours a posthumous distinction for Hearn—­“fourth rank of the junior grade."[192]