Is it true Japan gave Hearn nothing ?

Abstract

In TLS January 11. 1985, Japan, Mr. Anthony Thwaite wrote about Hearn under the title of From the heart of things. “Even at his bitterest, he (Hearn) always wrote about Japan with love and respect, as an outsider who worked from Kokoro - the heart of things.” “He thought the Japanese spontaneous and free, a child-like people. But by the time he wrote Japan : an Attempt at Interpretation, he saw them as disciplined and determined.” This book was published in 1904, the year of Hearn's death, and twenty years had passed when An American Miscellany by Lafcadio Hearn, void (collected by Albert Mordell) was issued in New York with the collector Mordell's very long introduction.It is on page lxxvi of the introduction that we find “Japan gave him (Hearn) nothing;... He had done in America precisely what he did in Japan.” On reading this, almost all of us are immediately brought about to manifest it unconvincing, or rather doubt if Mordell read Hearn's various works in Japan without bias and without favor. We cannot help bringing forth a counterargument from the Japanese side.Suppose Japan gave Hearn nothing, we may say Hearn's writings in Japan will cease to have a raison d'être because his stand on a unique and splendid description of Japanese things mental or physical is eradicated.It does not require a lot of time to call to mind what Japan gave Hearn. Some of them are the Japanese climate, Japanese manners and customs, human feelings, Setsuko, the Japanese smile, heart, soul and spirit, Japanese tales, stories or legends, Shintoism or Buddhism and the like. No doubt he cultivated them as media.Staying in Matsue, where he got his job as a teacher in English at Matsue middle school, he was soon enamored with Shintoism, which surpassed his knowledge and anticipation cherished in America to a surprising extent. Shintoism may be counted as one of the biggest that answered his purpose to interpret Japan and the Japanese. As is often said, there are, in Shintoism, no set doctrines, no ethical codes or no dominance of a particular god or gods. And to Hearn's great surprise, the people could worship Buddhism side by side with Shintoism.It seems quite suitable for us to inquire into the relation between Japan and Hearn beginning with Shintoism. And, if possible, it would be better to take Hearn and Japanese into consideration, because Japanese was a formidable barrier for him to get over till he breathed his last in Tokyo in 1904.