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(★)(The fifteen stories and essays in this bewitching volume by Lafcadio Hearn treat of the inner rather than of the outer life of Japan. For this reason they have been grouped under the title ´Kokoro (heart)´. The word also signifies mind, in the emotional sense ; spirit ; courage ; resolve ; sentiment ; affection ; and inner meaning --the same as the English expression, ´the heart of things.´ Hearn penetrates to the heart of things Japanese in stories such as ´Kimiko,´ the name of a beautiful geisha who learned about the power of beauty and the weakness of passion ; the craft of promises and the worth of indifference ; and all the folly and evil in the hearts of men.／ Fulfilling the Japanese ideal of beauty, Kimiko became a fashionable mania, a craze, a delirium --one of the great sights and sensations of the time. But she allowed no one to imagine himself a special favorite. Then a ´fool´ tried to kill himself because of her, and she nursed him back to ´foolishness.´ Kimiko loved this youth, but between her and other geisha there was a difference of gentle blood, and she refused to marry him, saying,´In the knowing of wrong, I am very, very much wiser than you... Never shall I be your wife to become your shame.´ In the period of the tenth month, Kimiko disappeared, never to be seen again.／ A handsome young Buddhist priest has a similar problem in ´By Force of Karma.´´He was ... extremely handsome... much too handsome for a priest, the women said. He looked like one of those beautiful figures of Amida made by the great Buddhist statuaries of other days... ´The women did not think about his virtue or his learning only : he possessed the unfortunate power to attract them, independently of his own will, as a mere man. He was admired by them in ways not holy... And the more he shrank from the admiration of the timid, or the adulation of the unabashed, the more the persecution increased, till it became the torment of his life.´ Eventually he received a letter ´written in that woman-language in which every syllable is a little caress of humility.´ It was more than he could bear : ´The hour was early ; the night windy and dark... he hurried out into the blackness, and reached the railway exactly in time to kneel down in the middle of the track, facing the roar and rush of the express from Kobe.´／ In ´A Street Singer´ Hearn feels ´the sorrow and the sweetness and the patience of the life of Japan pass with her voice into my heart, plaintively seeking for something never there. A tenderness invisible seemed to gather and quiver about us ; and sensations of places and of times forgotten came back softly, mingled with feelings ghostlier --feelings, not of any place or time in living memory.´ Hearn has aptly called the pieces in this volume ´hints and echoes of Japanese inner life.´ Interestingly enough, although much has changed in Japan since the days when Hearn fell in love with that country, these ´hints and echoes´ still have a remarkable truth about them, for the Japanese spirit has changed considerably less than the material conditions of Japanese life.／ ▼TABLE OF CONTENTS／ ●I.At a Railway Station ●II.The Genius of Japanese Civilization ●III.A Street Singer ●IV.From a Traveling Diary ●V.The Nun of the Temple of Amida ●VI.After the War ●VII.Haru ●VIII.A Glimpse of Tendencies ●IX.By Force of Karma ●X.A Conservative ●XI.In the Twilight of the Gods ●XII.The Idea of Pre-existence ●XIII.In Cholera-Time ●XIV.Some Thoughts about Ancestor-Worship ●XV.Kimiko ●Appendix : Three Popular Ballads／) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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