But how sweet the Japanese woman is!--all the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her. It shakes one's faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression,--then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamond-hard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the subject. In the eternal order of things which is the highest being,--the childish, confiding, sweet Japanese girl,--or the superb, calculating, penetrating Occidental Circe of our more artificial society, with her enormous power for evil, and her limited capacity for good? Viscount Torio's idea haunts me more and more;--I think there are very formidable truths in his observations about Western sociology. And the question comes: "In order to comprehend the highest good, is it necessary that we must first learn the largest power of evil?" For the one may be the Shadow of the other.
I am very much disappointed with Rein. I got much more information about my own particular line of study from your "Things Japanese" than from Rein. Rein himself confesses, after seven or eight years' labour, that he has only been able to make "a patchwork"! What, then, can a man like myself hope to do,--without scientific knowledge, and without any hope of even acquiring the language of the country so as to read even a newspaper? Really it seems to me almost an impertinence on my part to try to write anything about Japan at all, and the only fact which gives me courage is that there exists no book especially devoted to the subject I hope to consider.
The deity of Mionoseki is called always by the people Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami;--in the guide the deity is said to be Hiruko, who, I believe, has been identified by Shint[=o] commentators with Hiruko, as I find in the article on the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, in the Asiatic Transactions. But I am not sure what to say about Hiruko being the deity of Mio Jinja, as a general statement. My friends say that only a Shint[=o] priest can decide, and I am going to see one.
DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just received and read your most interesting letter on my return from Kizuki,--where I should have liked to remain longer, but I must go to see the Bon-odori at Shimo-ichi, where it is danced differently from anywhere else, so far as I can learn, and in a thrillingly ghostly manner,--so that one thinks he is looking at a Dance of Souls.