I found I had forgotten, in writing you the other day, to speak about Kompira, as you asked me. What a pity I had not known about the real temple of Kompira, which I did not see at all. Yes, I did find the place interesting and very beautiful. But it was interesting because of the quaint shops and streets and customs; and it was beautiful _because the day happened to be very beautiful_. The vast blue light coloured everything,--walls, timbers, awnings, draperies, dresses of pilgrims; and the cherry-trees were one blaze of snowy blossoms; and the horizon was clear as crystal. In the distance towered Sanuki-Fuji,--a cone of amethyst in the light. I wished I could teach in some school at Kompira _uchimachi_, and stay there always.
I like little towns. To live at Tadotsu, or at Hishi-ura in Oki, or at Yunotsu in Iwami, or at Daikon-shimain Naka-umi, would fill my soul with joy. I cannot like the new Japan. I dislike the officials, the imitation of foreign ways, the airs, the conceits, the contempt for Temp[=o], etc. Now to my poor mind, all that was good and noble and true was Old Japan: I wish I could fly out of Meiji forever, back against the stream of Time, into Temp[=o], or into the age of the Mikado Y[=u]riaku,--fourteen hundred years ago. The life of the old fans, the old _by[=o]bu_, the tiny villages--that is the _real_ Japan I love. Somehow or other, Kumamoto doesn't seem to me Japan at all. I hate it.
DEAR NISHIDA,--Both of your letters were as interesting as they were kind. They revealed to me much more than I had been able to learn from the newspapers. I am more than sorry for that terrible destruction and suffering in the _Ken_; but when I think of Okayama, again, I cannot help thinking that the good fortune, which seems especially to belong to Matsue, has not yet deserted her. And the Governor seems to be a first-class man. I like that story of his action with the rice-dealers. But really, the people are very patient. In some Western countries, notably in parts of America, it would have been more than dangerous for men to have acted so selfishly; and they would be in any case afterwards "boycotted," and obliged perhaps to leave the city. It is a great pity they were not made to suffer for such atrocious meanness. When I think of the chrysanthemums in your garden, and read your extraordinary story about catching fish in it, I can realize what a tremendous loss there must have been through all the rice-country. Certainly Matsue is fortunate to have escaped as she did.